I’ve been seeing the term ‘rape culture’ thrown around A LOT lately. To be honest I had never heard it before until I started paying attention to the rape case in Steubenville, OH. After hearing and seeing the term explained countless times, I get it now. It’s something I’ve been around for a long time and just didn’t know it.
That case baffled me, and still is baffling me because of the things coming out of it. I don’t care what a person has done before, whether it’s recent or not. It doesn’t mean that you can touch them just because you feel like it. All of those kids (yes… KIDS) that said they didn’t see anything wrong happening, that they didn’t know what rape was, that they thought all of this was normal… where on earth did they come up with that kind of mentality? How did they come to think that it was OK? The biggest thing that’s bothering me about it is that one of those boys’ attorneys is appealing on the grounds that his brain isn’t fully developed, so he couldn’t have known that he was doing wrong. IS THAT MAN OUT OF HIS MIND?!? If there was any degree of truth to that, then how are 16 year old kids aloud to work? How are they allowed to drive? How are they able to go places by themselves? How are they aloud to do anything at all? I was 16 once, and I did some stupid things, but I knew full well what I was doing, and as wrong as some of it may have been, I can’t blame it on anyone or anything but me. I consciously made some poor decisions then, and it was me that did it, not anyone else. In plain English: I knew better, but did it anyway.
Something else that just bothers the hell out of me is that people have been attacking Zerlina Maxwell because of her remarks about the case and rape in general. All I got out of what she said on Hannity is that she didn’t feel like a gun was the answer to every situation for every person, and as much as I support the right to own and carry a firearm, I think she was right one some level. Most people are assaulted by someone they know. She was able to point out a situation that was a wonderful example of where she didn’t think a gun would help. She had a point, and people are mad because they took it as ‘you hate guns, you want to take our rights away’. She even said if you felt you need to have a legal gun, then get one. I don’t think she was attacking anyone’s rights at all.
Something else she talked about was that rape prevention should start with teaching men to just not do it. Know what consent is, when you have it and when you don’t. It shouldn’t be all on a woman’s shoulders to prevent her rape. I don’t hate her for that. In an ideal world, I shouldn’t have to worry about something like that happening to me at all. Unfortunately however, I do need to worry, and I’ve had to worry before.
There will always be people out there that think it’s cool to be evil. Should I run into one of them, I want to be prepared. Bottom line here is that we need more education, more communication, and people need to stop being afraid to speak. I don’t agree with everything Ms. Maxwell has said, but I see where she was coming from. I think we could all learn something from her.
Stuff, things, and junk 