The six defendants in the absolutely horrific gang-rape case in Richmond (where as many as ten men raped a 15-yr-old girl for around two hours at the homecoming dance while as many as 20 people looked on and quietly passed the word around to their friends to come watch too) have entered not guilty pleas today.
The linked story is, for a mercy and a wonder, quite free of the usual shit reporting about rape. The assault is called what it is, not "forced sex" or any of that crap. But they include a quote from one Shyan Mason, a friend of one of the defendants, that literally made me cry.
"As far as with the girl, I'm not saying she is a bad person, but I feel that there had to be something that attracted them if they did it"
I'm sorry. WHAT? What. The. Fuck??? "Something that attracted them"? So you're not saying she's a bad person, of course, just that she brought it on herself somehow and so it's totez her fault that she was brutally gang raped for hours. She attracted them, that temptress; they couldn't help their poor widdle selves. Right.
How about we try something new for a change? BLAME THE FUCKING RAPISTS. Instead of blaming the victim of a crime, let's just go ahead and blame the perpetrator instead. Novel concept, I know.
And you know what? Even if there was "something that attracted them," that does not give them a green light to rape her! Her attractiveness is not her consent. You are not entitled to her body just because she attracts you. How is this a difficult idea to grasp?
Excuse me; I need to go watch videos of adorable kittehs to restore my faith in the world now.
5 comments:
This makes me so sad. One of the most disturbing psychological principles I ever learned was the bystander effect. Essentially, the more people who witness an incident, the less likely the victim is to receive help. People get their cues from those around them as to what actions they should take, and if no one perceives the action as wrong they determine that it must not be. And even if they do think it's wrong, they don't call for help because they assume someone else already has. This contributes to the victim-blaming because people can't take responsibility for their own damned actions (or lack there of) and therefore assume that something must have been wrong with the victim.
Humanity makes me sick sometimes...I just have to remember the people who pulled over to help me when I hydroplaned and almost ran my car off a freeway on-ramp, or the people who helped the girl who got stabbed on MUNI yesterday.There are good ones out there...they're just mixed in with the bad.
Ah, psychological principles that show that humanity is doomed. I remember that one.
All we can do is try to create a world where the good people outnumber the rest.
Which is the case, I think. The rest just get a lot more press.
Wow. That is FUCKED UP.
Isn't it, though, Vinna? On the one case we thought, hoped, might be immune to this for the sheer egregious horribleness of this in the public eye...no, it's there anyway. Sigh.
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