Written by Shelby Knox and Rachel Simmons
On Saturday night, a fifteen year old girl was brutally gang raped outside a homecoming dance she attended. According to media reports, more than two dozen students watched, photographed and filmed while as many as ten different people raped her. They were then overheard "reminiscing" about it. The girl was found lying unconscious under a bench.
Yesterday, three young men were arraigned in the case wearing bulletproof vests after police reportedly received threats on their lives. It's important to note the outrage at the attackers is a delayed reaction. In reality, it took several days before the national media deemed this hideous event worthy of coverage at all. Four days after the attack, officials at the school where the rape occurred were still trying to put a positive spin on it, claiming the dance was otherwise a "successful event."
Four weeks ago, Kate Harding lit up the Internet condemning the celebrity defense of Roman Polanski's rape of a thirteen year old girl. It's no coincidence that we are once again late to recognize the violent sexual assault of yet another teenage girl.
On Thursday, five days after the rape, the women of The View marveled that California law only mandates reporting of a sexual assault when the victim is under the age of fourteen. The Washington Post's first mention of the assault was on Wednesday, when it speculated that the increase in violence against women on TV left the rape witnesses so desensitized that it didn't occur to them to take any action. And almost all the media coverage of the gang rape has focused on the twenty or so bystanders who watched and even live-tweeted the brutalization of a fellow student.
When the rape was eventually reported by the mainstream media, victim-blaming was first on the agenda. The New York Times was one of the first outlets outside of California to mention the assault, noting in all subsequent reports, "the girl had consumed a large amount of alcohol by the time the assault began." One almost expects for the next line to be a description of the "asking for it" outfit she must have been wearing.
Even the feminist media that led the outrage over Roman Polanski has neglected to report and investigate this story: Double XX (Slate's women's blog) has yet to mention it, Feministing recorded one line of outrage at the school official's stupid commentary on Wednesday, and Salon's Broadsheet logged 276 hand-wringing words on Tuesday, wondering, "When did high school students become so unafraid, so violent?"
What's even more disconcerting to us as girls' advocates is the muted response in the organized feminist community. None of the organizations that sent out press releases and appeared in the national media after Polanski's arrest have noted the connection that we're once again talking about the rape of a young girl. As the public rallies to throw the book at the defendants in this one particular case, no one has mentioned that a rape occurs every two minutes in the United States and 44% of victims are under the age of eighteen. This assault seems like an opportunity lost to talk about an epidemic of violence against young women, and the crisis of school safety in our country, but perhaps it's simply too inconveniently timed to coincide with the final push for health care reform - although it's worth noting that some insurance companies consider sexual assault a pre-existing condition.
In a welcome exception to the widespread silence, Rosalind Wiseman argued the assault is an opportunity to talk with all teens about what it means to be an empowered bystander, and the high cost of staying silent in the face of degradation and cruelty.
It's hard not to wonder how the conversation would be different if a 15 year old middle class girl was gang raped by black and Latino men outside a suburban homecoming dance. There is a growing media narrative about Richmond, and the high school where the attack occurred, as poor and notoriously violent. Is this because we want to believe that rape doesn't happen to wealthy girls? Did it take so long for the media to report this assault because the survivor is from a working class community and comes from a school where perhaps we simply expect kids to "act like that?" Is it because we still live in a society that deems the life of a less privileged woman less important?
When Kanye West hijacked the microphone from Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards, Twitter crashed with the force of bystanders outraged on her behalf. Facebook was awash in calls for Kanye's head. We live in a culture in which oceans of humanity speak up for a celebrity who hardly needs attention or help, while a girl is brutalized behind a school by two dozen boys and barely a ripple is felt.
It's not surprising, then, that the people who are speaking out on behalf of the girl are other girls. Friends of the victim stood up at a community meeting to protest the lack of security, both at the dance and at the school in general, claiming the young woman who was raped had felt unsafe before. Margarita Vargas, who was not at the dance but reported the assault after getting a text about it, placed the blame squarely on the perpetrators."They think it's cool," she said. "They weren't raised to respect girls."
Judging from the muted public reaction to this horrifying assault, we're starting to wonder if any of us were.
Follow Rachel Simmons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RachelJSimmons
People in this society are raised to be desensitized against violence (more particularly against women) and to trivialize it and to use it as entertainment (think media).
It is sick that this happened but it's no surprise, it is a an outgrowth of people's attitude towards women in general and thus, the outrage, of course, is late and anticlimactic but it is a corollary to the general lack of protest and the nonchalance that people display on a daily basis when it comes to this issue.
The most important area where we can take action is to reject any urge to blame the victim in any way and to challenge those who blame victims or who try to nullify any rape because of something they disapprove of about the victim. As a rape survivor I know how victim blaming, rape minimization and denial can work like an acid to add new harm to the trauma of sexual violence.
Many states, including California, are developing primary prevention plans related to sexual violence and the best way to turn those plans into a reality is for everyone who is appalled at this gang rape or any other act of sexual violence to support or become involved in primary prevention. I'm volunteering in Minnesota to make our prevention plan a reality and I urge everyone in the US to contact your state's sexual assault coalition and ask them what you can do to help.
But then there was a metaphoric heroine for teens to look towards "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" She gave powerful female portrait. Vampires as metaphor. Today Sookie from True Blood but only IF you can pay HBO
The rape-torture of that girl is an example of kids' vapid response to life. ITA, with Che joubert -Media, sports, entertainment all conspire to dull the sense of horror this act should have elicited.
But poor undermined Richmond, smushed into golden California's illusion of happy prosperity and riches raining on all. It has little to encourage a youth without options. From ritzy Marin the city is merely a means to Hwy 80, the Bay Bridge to SF, or East Bay, and even IKEA shopping.
No excuse merely background.
The school was lax, as were the police and chaperones. But so were the parents who themselves live in apathy or anger. What examples did they set.
Parents need to Take-Back-The-Night for their kids and for their own self-esteem.
Women need more proactive models and less the loopy reality show cr@p, Beauty Queens, lackadaisical crop of teen scream 'The Vampire Diaries' dips & dopes.
Years of Rap music/videos knocking women uh? Who or what has told them different.
GRrrrrrARgggh Give me Girl-Power Buffy any day.
Not new issue just updated to circa 2009
River's Edge (1986) body watchers
The Accused (1988) gang rape
She should have been able to trust her friends to watch out for her. She should have been able to trust her classmates to be human.
I am lost as to how so many people don't care about each other. I don't know the right answer.
Women on the other hand are designed by nature to teach and raise children for 18-20 years, their traits include nurturance, protectiveness, and patience. Nevertheless, in a world run by men, women are paid less, treated like sex objects, and live like second class citizens in many ways.
In sports creating a less advantaged group and forcing it to compete against more a more advantaged group would be called cheating. It is no exaggeration to say that men 'cheat' their way through life. Ask any man how he feels about this 'cheating' and watch him smirk over it. This goes for university professors, day laborers, businessmen and so on. They are so relieved not to be women. Women will be safe, or at least safer, when they take back government, get equal pay, get proper time off for child rearing without penalty, and completely control reproductive rights and child rearing.
This is not true. I did a report in college on male victims of domestic abuse. I found some very surprising statistics. Women are more prone to violence than men are. The reason that people don't hear so much about it is because women don't tend to be as strong as men, on average, which means they don't do as much damage and men aren't inclined to report domestic abuse due to the likelihood of ridicule. In a fight, women are ten times more likely to commit a violent act, such as strike a blow (with fists or blunt weapons), throw things or brandish sharp weapons than men are.
The statement that everyone has the desire to feel powerful is accurate. Some people use weapons, Others have their own strength to rely on. Still others use the power of numbers to gain advantage. Whatever it takes to end up on top, that's what people do. In the heat of a moment the concept of future consequences are irrelevant.
I’m writing this in the SF Bay area on Friday night. It’s a good bet that by Monday morning the news will be that a young life was cut short this weekend in a gang shooting or stabbing. Sometimes I wish that it would just rain hard enough to keep our kids inside for the weekend.
Don’t take me wrong, I was horrified, saddened, and angered by that rape; but it is only a part of the horror we foster on our children. Our society has turned into impersonal, dispassionate monster that goes its own way regardless of the damage it does to its most vulnerable members.
HR 676