Yes, I am Tired

I’m tired. I’m tired of thinking about rape. I’m tired of reading stories of sexual violence against women. I’m tired of men who commit these acts of violence getting the minimum of consequences for their actions. I’m tired of women being victimized, diminished, and blamed for what they must suffer at the hands of perpetrators. I’m tired of the privileged culture in which we live straddling the line between tolerance and fairness and the oppressive and inherently unfair good old days.

Is this about the Stanford rape case? The one with the young, white Olympic hopeful who can never recover from the effects of a party culture that led to twenty minutes of action? The one whose father is worried about his inability to enjoy a steak? The one who will serve three hard months in prison of a six-month sentence because the judge does not want him to suffer any more?

Yes and no.

About a month ago, something horrible happened that involved my daughter’s middle school. You may have heard about it on the national news. It was kind of a big deal. An eighth grade girl from my daughter’s school and a boy from a different middle school hung out on a Sunday afternoon. They drank alcoholic beverages. They had consensual sex. They drank some more. The girl passed out, and the boy continued to do sexual things to her. He decided to share what he was doing by Face Timing at least one person. That individual, or possibly more people, saved the FaceTime video and shared it with other people. Some of those other people saved it as well to show it to even more people.

The girl was allegedly naked from the waist down and in her own vomit. She had to have her stomach pumped at the hospital. The boy was charged with second degree sexual assault. I don’t know if these details are accurate as reported in the news or just from the pieced-together version of the rumors.

The other people who saved and sent the video are also middle school students. Some of them go to my daughter’s school, and others are enrolled at other middle schools in the county. Four of those people, all middle school girls, were charged with disrupting school and possession of child pornography. Other students had their phones confiscated by police detectives for forensic testing. 

It was all anyone talked about for the last few weeks of school. Students talked to each other about it. Parents tried to figure out details. The only ones who remained silent were the school administrators, hiding behind the fact that the assault did not take place at school and therefore they were not obligated to address the rumors or provide support for students troubled by the assault or those rumors. We were all supposed to ignore it or pretend it didn’t happen, or worse, that it didn’t affect us.

When the students talked, they seemed to focus on the wrong information from the story. They discussed this girl’s already bad reputation. They said she was asking for it. They said what did she expect. They said she should have known better, and that she is just as much to blame. She drank. She had sex. She deserved it.

My daughter came home and shared these conversations with me, about how the girl never came back to school, how badly she felt for her, and how she tried to tell other students that it wasn’t the girl’s fault. My daughter was in the minority in her beliefs.

And that makes me tired.

Clearly, the two stories have similarities. Girls were drinking. Boys were drinking.  Girls passed out. Boys did things to them that they did not have consent to do. We all act shocked when we hear about it, and a percentage of us will try to make sense of it by blaming the victim.

I have two teenaged girls. They are both tall. They have some curves. They dress like most girls their age, which means skirts and shorts are short, and arms are bared, and bra straps frequently show, sometimes intentionally, sort of like an accessory.  They are not whores. They do not dress likes whores. They don’t know any whores, and they are also unsure of what whores wear. Nothing about their clothing means they are asking for unwanted attention. They dress like many girls their ages, and they are comfortable in their garments and in their skin, and they should be comfortable.

My daughters are good people. The Stanford victim and the middle school girl might be good people too. They might not. They might just be human. They did not deserve what happened to them.

The boys who sexually assaulted them are not scrutinized in the same way. They too drank, but they weren’t assaulted. They need to be held accountable for their actions. I don’t know if they are good people. They are also human, but they committed crimes and owe society, and women, a debt for their actions in order to return to the community.

I am tired of other people not understanding this simple fact.

Some of us call it rape culture. Some people say men can’t help that they are visually stimulated. Other people say that women need to be careful and stop putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations. But rape happens everywhere. It can happen at someone’s home, or at a party, or behind a dumpster. Alcohol is available in homes and groceries stores and restaurants and bars. Dumpsters are behind most every commercial property. What situations are women supposed to be avoiding?

It is always, at every level, about consent. If you do not have consent, you have no right to initiate further action on another person.

Some people also say that women who lie about being raped are part of the problem. I’m tired of that too. One person’s lie does not discredit many people’s truth. Instead, let’s concentrate on the men, because by and large, the men are entirely the problem.  Women who rape, like women who lie about rape, are not the issue. They are an anomaly. Men rape women, and other men, and children. It is by and large a male-perpetrated crime.

Men need to know they must have permission, even in a relationship, even in a marriage. Women need to know they have the power to say no. Men need to believe women when they say no. Men need to tell other men to believe women. Women need to tell other women that they believe them. Men and women need to talk about what no means with each other. They should discuss it with their children. Their children should understand what sex is and how it can only occur if both people say yes.

When you think children are too young for that conversation, remember my daughter’s middle school.  Stop wanting our society to return to the good old days. Rape was around then too, and women were property, and consent didn’t matter. Now it still is, and they aren’t, and it should, and everyone needs to talk about until we can all agree that it does not matter what a woman wears or drinks, it only matters if she said yes, and that any man, of any race or socioeconomic class or age or athletic ability, needs to accept her answer, or in the absence of one, realize that if she did not say yes, then it is a no.

And we should not stop talking about it until rape stops, until punishments are fair and enforced, until victims are no longer blamed, until we can all agree that consent is key.  Until we are all tired of the ways things used to be, and the way they are now.  If you want to make the world a better place, start with this issue, and don’t stop until everyone understands. Only then, after being tired for so long, can we rest.