4/24/14
Rape Culture
I believe that rape culture should be eliminated from our society. Athletes or celebrities, even people with just a high social status or wealth, get of for crimes mostly like rape against women with a slap on the wrist.The rape culture in America is looked mostly at it being the victims fault. Crime like this occurs, often, most time the women are asked questions like what were you wearing, were you drinking, or what they have done to cause the assault. Never questioning the attackers choices at all. There are some people out there tat believe rape culture does not exist because, they aren't recognizing it but, the Rape culture in American has almost became a public norm and is even being explained as a normal inevitable and I believe the rape culture is responsible for why men today are getting away for crimes like this. Rape culture has a lot to do with sentencing time. Referring to my last sentence, as the culture being a normal inevitable, jurors in court cases don't recognize it either, which I will began to explain later in this essay.
I decided to do my claim on this topic because the culture of it is getting less recognized day by day. The culture hasn't evolved at all especially for
"important" people. People that we see as athletes or idols, we often think things like this that happen to them are often common mistakes, that aren't taken seriously or looked at as serious crimes. In, specific rape cases attractive defendants are less likely to be viewed as guilty than unattractive defendants. We often blame the women's background or say, "she was asking for it," giving the crime and excuse for why it happened. Today it is getting more and more recognized by me, how the publics ignorance over someone social status means that these crimes cause by a person like that can do five to no years at all when it comes to sentencing. Not to mention the distractions that takes place when trial cases like this happens, such as, judges, jurors, and others surrounded by the case will stop at nothing when it comes to their idols.
For example of men "getting off" for crimes like this would be the Steubenville, Ohio case. Steubenville was known for there great football team so of course if anything came between that, that would be a problem. The small town got huge publicity when Savannah Dietrich had been a victim of rape at a party and also a victim to social media when she was past out and Trent Mays and Malik Richmond fell suspect to raping and having everyone at the party take picture of her naked. Not only did the 16 year old girl get raped and taken pictures of, she also had gotten peed on by the boys.During the whole trial they
really never talked about the victim or at least mentioned their name. Even when you google the Steubenville trial, its all about the boys and from my research I didn’t even see her name or sometimes her even mentioned, just saying "rape case" on websites. The boys were recognized for their great athletic skills in football being only just a sophomores. So that's why when they went to trial, after seeing the video, pictures and other evidence of that night, the judged ruled out that they just get one year in jail. Which, by the way they got out early so they didn't even finish there sentence anyway. This story got huge media but, also reminded other of the Big Dan's gang rape that happened 30 years earlier in New Bedford, Massechutes. It's similar to the Steubenville case because in Big Dan's Tavern she was raped on a pin ball machine with bystanders watching and cheering. No one had called the police for two hours. Well, that was back in 1983, so really the only thing that has changed this time, and not for the better, is that bystanders that were involved in the Steubenville case had cell phones and took pictures of the girl naked.
Discrimination shows a big part in rape cases also. Jurors judged non-celebrity black defendants more than white defendants accused of the same crime (Shaw and Skolnick 1995). People's perspectives about rape are influenced by race and celebrity status and by there own gender as well. Judges have
historically been harsher on the defendants that have raped white women than black women (Field 1979). Of course, when the defendant is black and the rape victim is white, the punishment is always serverley. Kind of like that movie Rosewood, where in 1923, all the whites and blacks got along until white women was having sex with a black man but, got caught and yelled rape. The all the whites started a riot and killed 2,000 blacks in Rosewood. Even though it was a false accusation, the punishment was still severe and resulted in that. I feel no matter how far we advance in the years there are always going to be racist out there and laws that a racially discriminated, won't changed unless everyone recognizes it.
The Rape Shield Law was used when Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a nineteen year old hotel clerk. After she accuse Bryant of the rape she got a huge amount of publicity. Her name, phone number, yearbook photo, email address, ex-boyfriends, etc., was released to the public and the internet. Many public images like t-shirts, tank tops, and coffee mug feature derogatory images and words like "whore alert" and "lying bitch" that also displayed her doing sexual positions on Bryant. The accuser's mom went to trial again and that’s when they established The Rape Shield Law to protect rape victims personal life and sexaul
past at court, disclosing and private information about the accuser's personal life (The Privacy Protection for Rape Victims Act).
I believe with all the evidence collected and witnesses that take place in cases like this should reconsider the judges perspective when it comes to rape case like this. Jurors perspective also towards the victim is judged when the victim had reportedly been drinking, using drugs, and there character traits have been a complaint, such as they were "carelessness" and there gender role behavior. Even though, yes sometimes rape can be a hard thing to prove because, you can't just go off little vaginal tears, most evidences is pointed towards servre cases in tearing and bruising sometimes depending it you were drinking or not etc. Finch and Munro discovered that jurors rely on social convention meaning women who drink and flirt with the man cannot complain for the man's actions to want to engage in intercourse. Why do we blame women for the rapist in our world? When you go to a party, you always hear, "Don't get raped," when really it should be "Don't rape." Our society tends to blame victims because people are afraid of what hey don't know. They always expect that there is a reason behind rapist wanting to do this when there isn't guys just don't see the consequences when they are in heat of the moment. Being promiscuous is the number one excuse for rape victims', which doesn't make sense to me at all. It shouldn't matter if you’re
a hoe or not, you don't deserve to be violated that way. I understand that yes, there are common sense thing like, going to a athlete's room at 3 a.m., when obviously he's not going to want to watch a movie around that time. Not saying that what he/she did or felt like they were obligated to do it right.
