I don’t have to tell you that Steubenville is all over the news.
I don’t have to tell you that it’s a fucking joke that Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, the two teenagers convicted of raping a sixteen year old girl, were only sentenced to a combined three years in juvenile prison. Each will serve a year for the rape itself; Mays will serve an additional year for “illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.”
I probably don’t even have to tell you that the media treatment of this trial has been a perfect, if utterly sickening, example of rape culture, with its focus on how difficult and painful this event has been for the rapists who raped a sixteen year old girl then bragged about it on social media.
And I almost certainly don’t have to tell you that the world is full of seemingly nice, normal people who want to go to bat for the convicted rapists. I’m quite sure that you already know about the victim-blaming that’s been happening since this case first came to light. You know about the fact that people have actually come out and said that the real lesson to be learned here is that we need to be more careful with social media (i.e. go ahead and rape but make sure you don’t get caught). You already know that people seem to think that being a sports star and having a good academic record should somehow make up for the fact that you are a rapist.
I don’t have to tell you any of that because it’s all par for the course.
What I do want to tell you is that you need to stop using the “wives, sisters, daughters” argument when you are talking to people defending the Steubenville rapists. Or any rapists. Or anyone who commits any kind of crime, violent or otherwise, against a woman.
In case you’re unfamiliar with this line of rhetoric, it’s the one that goes like this:
You should stop defending the rapists and start caring about the victim. Imagine if she was your sister, or your daughter, or your wife. Imagine how badly you would feel if this happened to a woman that you cared about.
Framing the issue this way for rape apologists can seem useful. I totally get that. It feels like you’re humanizing the victim and making the event more relatable, more sympathetic to the person you’re arguing with.
You know what, though? Saying these things is not helpful; in fact, it’s not even helping to humanize the victim. What you are actually doing is perpetuating rape culture by advancing the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man.
The Steubenville rape victim was certainly someone’s daughter. She may have been someone’s sister. Someday she might even be someone’s wife. But these are not the reasons why raping her was wrong. This rape, and any rape, was wrong because women are people. Women are people, rape is wrong, and no one should ever be raped. End of story.
The “wives, sisters, daughters” line of argument comes up all the fucking time. President Obama even used it in his State of the Union address this year, saying,
“We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.”
This device, which Obama has used on more than one occasion, is reductive as hell. It defines women by their relationships to other people, rather than as people themselves. It says that women are only important when they are married to, have given birth to, or have been fathered by other people. It says that women are only important because of who they belong to.
Women are not possessions.
Women are people.
I seriously cannot believe that I have to say this in 2013.
On top of all of this, I want you to think of a few other implications this rhetorical device has. For one thing, what does it say about the women who aren’t anyone’s wife, mother or daughter? What does it say about the kids who are stuck in the foster system, the kids who are shuffled from one set of foster parents to another or else living in a group home? What does it say about the little girls whose mothers surrender them, willingly or not, to the state? What does it say about the people who turn their back on their biological families for one reason or another?
That they deserve to be raped? That they are not worthy of protection? That they are not deserving of sympathy, empathy or love?
And when we frame all women as being someone’s wife, mother or daughter, what are we teaching young girls?
We are teaching them that in order to have the law on their side, they need to be loved by men. That they need to make themselves attractive and appealing to men in order to be worthy of protection. That their lives and their bodily integrity are valueless except for how they relate to the men they know.
The truth is that I am someone’s wife. I am also someone’s mother. I am someone’s daughter, and someone’s sister. But those are not the things that define me, or make me valuable in this world. Those are not the reasons that I should be able to live a life free from rape, sexual assault or any kind of violent crime.
I have value because I am a person. Full stop. End of argument. This isn’t even a discussion that we should be having.
So please, let’s start teaching that fact to the young women in our lives. Teach them that you love, honour and value them because of who they are. Teach them that they should expect to be treated with integrity because it’s a basic human right. Teach them that they do not deserve to be raped because no one ever, ever, ever deserves to be raped.
Above all, teach them that they are people, too.
The Belle Jar 
In theory, I totally agree with your thoughts here. But I made this video, “How Not to Rape My Daughter” (see link) anyway. I guess that’s the great thing about public outcry–all the individual voices come together in a wall of sound that moves things to change. I’m very interested to hear what folks think of the video–it’s my first attempt and I just put it online.
This is really interesting. I never thought of it that way. My annoyance with Obama was that he was always so concerned with “American families”. So what, we single people aren’t of concern, even though we also vote and pay taxes? I would argue we have it rougher because we are all on our own. Anyway…
I am sure this has been said, but I think some people are just so devoid of empathy and/or dense that they need their hand held and need to be walked through the steps to arrive at compassion. You could see this with that Republican Senator who changed his stance on gay marriage last week because all of a sudden it affected one of his family members directly (his son, a male). I think it’s appalling that many people are like that to begin with, but you see it time and time again. If empathy can be invoked at all, I would think that’s better than nothing.
And, of course I forgot the link. Here it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dVURXznJGU
I like the rules presented in the video.
They are especially relevant while the girl is young. Of course she will hopefully
not be drinking underage.
I especially like rule #4. The thing is, this requires women to communicate in a manner
they normally do not. If enough women embrace this concept of honest communication
of what they want and desire I think the world would be a much better place. Sadly, most
women do not communicate in this fashion.
I think it would take some time for men to get used to women providing, shall we say, direction. Right now men are expected to make “a move” at the “right time” and gracefully accept rejection. This includes, the first kiss. Hell, this includes asking the girl out. Women want confident men and this runs somewhat counter to the waiting for her to direct the action. Women have a tendency to expect the guy to pick up the non-verbal signs that she wants him to escalate, and men frequently get things wrong because the signs from one woman will not be the same as those from another as women are of course individuals not cookie-cutter copies of each other.
Men and women pay billions each year in the attempt to attract each other, a pity that we can’t just have women act bold, state what they want, accept rejection when it happens, and not judge each other for being bold. If you can manage to implement this change, future generations will bless you.
I found the embed, thank you.
This video lesson seems to make sense, but only if anyone is still thinking that rape is unconsented sex on the part of the victim. However, that thinking keeps the focus, as does the language in this video, on the victim and off the perpetrator.
Most people who work in the field of sexual assault trauma treatment and law enforcement agree that RAPE is NOT about SEX. It IS a CRIMINAL ACT of POWER & CONTROL. Sex is the weapon.
This video is too much about the potential victim, her relationship with the rapist, her condition, her relationship with and words to the rapist, rather than the rapists intent, attitude and actions.
That rape is a crime is barely mentioned. But if it helps one person stop and consider whether he/she is entering into consensual sex or raping, that is good.
I would just have preferred the video address the criminal aspect of rape.
As for addressing having sex, I think the problem here is exactly that of the language “my daughter.” Seems as if the mother is imposing rules on her daughter here, describing her ideal for her daughter.
I am a mother, and as much as I love my children, I give them the respect of separate individiuals on their own individual life journey. I don’t always like their choices, but I respect their rights to make them.
I disagree that a woman has to be sober to consent to sex. Nor does she have to know her sexual partner. Women can freely choose to have sex with strangers or someone they don’t know well. Women and women can choose sex for many reasons and liking the sex partner isn’t always one of them.
The only absolutes for consensual sex I am aware of are that any person has to be of an age to consent to sex with a person who is of a legally acceptable age also, in a condition to consent, under no coercion of any kind, and actually consent. Otherwise it isn’t sex, it is rape.
Betty Bond: still see no link in this comment…try again?
Well done Betty! Thank you.
Turns out it shows up as an embed, not a link. See above, thanks!
It would be nice if Obama were talking to everyone, not just people with wives, sisters and daughters (men?)
hi, this post is absolutely true. It’s ridiculous how some people still consider women as somebody’s possession. Women should absolutely be addressed as ‘women’ and not as somebody’s own. This is great! 🙂
I think fundamentally, there is a problem with how women are perceived in media- the default pronoun is ‘he’, and women are described in terms of ‘other’= e.g. ‘our’ women. Not ‘us’. How often do you hear ‘our men’? The default narrator is male, and women are described through their eyes- attractive, unattractive, stereotypical- our worth is assessed by men. Women’s voices need to be heard more loudly, so that we are no longer appealing to men to protect us, but demanding them to back off, and quit speaking for us, deciding for us and raping us! (Woah!!)
I always felt a little awkward or uncomfortable when politicians (yes, including Obama) would use the phrase “our women.” I felt like I was being othered. Thank you for writing this post; it made me realize why I felt uncomfortable with that phrasing even though no one else seemed to. Can’t believe I’ve made it this far without realizing how the “our women” concept is embedded so deep in our culture as to contribute to our rape culture. Women are NOT a special interest group and we do not belong to anyone. Hear, hear.
I haven’t read the comments to see if someone already pointed this out or not. But your argument leaves out an important detail: that rape apologists are not just men, and that question is not just directed at men. I have seen just as many women as men be rape apologists in all the commentary surrounding this case and others. And the two CNN anchors who were focusing on the “plight” of the boys were women.
In addition, rape victims are not just women. Think about how many Penn State students and staff (male and female) were more outraged at Sandusky’s removal rather than being outraged at what happened to his male victims. Think about the Catholic response to priests’ pedophilia, mostly (or all?) of boys. Rape apologists come in both genders as do the victims they marginalize. So the question of “what if it was your…” really frames a rape victim in the light of his or her relationship to rape apologists of either gender. To center the focus on female rape and act as if only men are rape apologists is in itself sexist. Bigotry against either gender is bad for all of us, and only exacerbates the rape culture.
P.S. I’m a woman, just in case it matters to someone reading. And I want to grab rape apologists and stuff a heart into their chests. I don’t really see anything wrong with the “what if it were your…” (daughter/son, brother/sister etc etc) question, if it gets them to marginalize the victim even a teeny bit less.
Hear hear!
Reblogged this on Cat In The Rain's Blog and commented:
Food for thought. Excellent post.
I was pretty shocked with the news about Steubenville, not that I don’t know that such incidences happen almost everyday but the way media and normal people were trying to defend the rapists was sick. There was a bias in the coverage of the rape. As I have gone through the reports of many newspapers, these were the focus words that were used for the victim and the rapists. While the teenage girl was mentioned as “inebriated”, “drunk” and “careless”, this is what CNN’s Poppy Harlow stated after the verdict was given to the rapist boys:
“”Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart”
Sexual harassment is a very common thing these days and if you research than you will be shocked to know how much it happens with girls everyday, even at the safest of places that you can think. I was witness to one incidence in my University where 20-30 boys were harassing three girls. I was with 2 friends and I interfered. The boys were pushing the girls, touching them all over, calling them names while it all happened at a roadside in the University campus. We called the proctors and our batch-mates from our faculty and were able to rescue the girls. Later we staged a protest before the office of the Vice Chancellor to get those boys evicted from the varsity premises.
We sat for the whole day before the VC’s office but he didn’t show up. Later, one of his officers came and said that they will take some action against the boys. They were suspended for a month from the classes.
I wasn’t aware that daughters, sisters and wives were exclusive to men. Maybe hypocrisy like the kind in this binary logic is part of problem.
i really wish this blog had up and down votes for replies!
OH good idea. I wonder how I can make that happen!
I find myself agreeing with both sides. Yes, I agree Women deserve respect, and not to be raped, purely from the while “We’re human beings” argument. Yes, I buy that.
But, ifd you will forgive me, I also see much value, to appealing to men’s protective instincts. Yes, jerks, you “do that” to my mother, sister, niece, cousin, aunt, friend, WHOMEVER (including this girl), and I “see red”. No I do not own any of these people. But they are part of my tribe. Maybe I am too primitive, too unsophisticated. But harm my friends or family, and I will want justice, in some cases, revenge.
I will not discuss my desires or ideas for justice or vengeance, here. There would be an army of peace officers at my door. BUT: The little creeps ruined someone’s life. Enough said? But I also do wonder about the girl…. Justice and curiosity demand it. How the HECK did she get herself in that kind of a mess, with these kinds of people???? I’d like some answers…
Who the HELLA raised these little punks? What kind of mothers, fathers, family, friends, teachers, ministers, etc… did they have? My goodness! They obviously were not listening, when others spoke. And they thought this was a joke! They thought it was funny! They thought it was fun.
Excuse me. I am going to be sick. So I better conclude my little 2 cents, here.
Pete, The issues you bring up aren’t helpful to the problem of the rape culture.
1. Revenge is not protection. Justice after the fact will protect some women for some time, but if it doesn’t shift the mind set of the rapists and everyone related to them, or reporting on them, then it serves no long term solution. It may sway some men to consider consequences, but if they don’t see sexual assault as sexual assault as rape, or if they don’t care, if they don’t take personal responsibility, nothing changes.
2 YOU, a man, who says you have natural instincts to protect other members of your tribe, questioning how the girl “got herself into” that mess IS part of the problem. Turning the focus on her even momentarily and saying that “justice and curiosity demand it,” IS perpetuating the concept that rape victims/survivors are responsible, are asking for it by putting themselves in the wrong places with the wrong people. Remember that some victims don’t survive, others don’t ever recover.
Anything she did, legal or illegal has nothing to do with the sexual assault crimes committed against her. Those men are not just creeps, they are rapists. Call them what they are, face the facts, face the culture that led them to believe their actions were acceptable, that led others to film and broadcast the crime, and laugh and joke about it, and the media to refer to these criminals as such promising young men whose lives are now ruinded.
Look at the true horror of it, and ASK YOURSELF what you can do to prevent these criminal atrocities.
Want to protect the vulnerable in our society? Then make a concerted effort to make it clear first in your own head that sexual assault is a serious crime, is inhuman, is terrorizing & traumatizing, is about power & control, and, like any other crime, is never the fault of the victim, only the fault of the perpetrator.
Then make a concerted effort to make those values the values of every member of human our tribe, so that it doesn’t happen, so that rapists know true justice will be served if they are found to be such a criminal.
I recommend http://www.acalltomen.org/ for starters.
If you really care and really want justice for all our tribe, get involved somewhere and make a difference!
Here’s a very short video with all that needs to be said about “real men” and women, created by a man.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/23/young-man-makes-anti-rape-psa-how-to-treat-a-drunk-girl/
I’ve been thinking about this one. When I first read it, it was really an eye-opener for me, and I said, “yeah, that’s right!” and I still believe it brings up a good point. BUT, this is what happened to me today, and it made me re-think the point (allow me to rant a bit): I am reading a book called, “House Girl,” by Tara Conklin. It’s about a young slave woman in the deep south, who is a “house girl,” caring for the plantation’s mistress, house, etc. Among the many injustices she has to endure is the fact that although she is a gifted artist, painting beautiful, soulful paintings, her mistress takes credit for the artwork. This is an excerpt I just read, and it takes place right after Josephine’s mistress again takes credit for one of her beautiful paintings: “An awareness came to her, as it had countless times before, that she possessed nothing, that she moved through the world empty-handed with nothing properly to give, nothing she might lay claim to. See, you have nothing. See, you are nothing, said a voice inside her head, and it was not Mister’s or Missus Lu’s, it was her own voice that said those words. See, you foolish girl. For one more moment Josephine stood before the frame and in the dim light of the hall she felt herself fading away, diminished as a shadow or a ghost…” What crossed my mind was, “how horrible – that this gifted, sensitive woman would feel like nothing,” and we all know that countless slave women felt this way (as countless abused girls and women continue to feel). But what really drove it home was when the thought suddenly entered my mind, “women like this were someone’s daughter. That could have been MY daughter, God forbid! That my intelligent, talented, beautiful, precious daughter (who wants to be a physicist/psychologist/actress when she grows up – hey, it’s possible – who just won first place in her Regional science fair competition and who feels happy, confident, cherished and that the world is a good place), if she had been born in a different time, different place, different circumstance, could have ended up feeling like she is nothing, is worthless, is a shadow or a ghost. That’s when my heart clinched, my soul screamed, and I truly felt the absolute horror of what these girls and women went through. So, short version: I don’t know that it’s always the wrong choice to attempt to reach to the very soul of people by asking them to imagine – in an attempt to get them to fully grasp the full meaning of the injustices others go through – that the victim could have been someone close to them. That but, for the grace of God or fate or whatever you believe, that could be your daughter, your mother, your son, your father, your sister. If I had a son and heard of a boy being raped, I would experience that same horror upon imagining the victim could have been my boy. It doesn’t mean the crime was less important if the victim didn’t have relatives, it just means that the significance of it was able to penetrate the dull, insensitive shell we protectively put around our psyches, to reach the heart and make an impact. Whatever helps people feel the full level of empathy for others that we should naturally be feeling is, in my book, a good thing. (sorry again for the long-winded rant!)
I am almost 50 years old. It astounds me that in the twenty-first century we even still have to have these arguments. As a little girl I hoped that by the time I was a mother, women would be recognized as people, not as second class citizens, not as someone’s possession. Sadly, I now fear that I’ll go to my grave without this becoming a reality for me. But maybe, because of people like you who dare to boldly speak up, and maybe even because of people like me who try to treat others as equals regardless of gender or race, and who has taught my son to do the same, just maybe if my son has a daughter, she will be able to live in a world where women are people and where rape is a crime, regardless of whether or not it was committed by promising football stars.
Common people (male or female) do not always connect with a rape victim. The argument wife/ sister/ daughter just provides a way to connect with a victim, to empathize with them. This argument is not the sole basis, but usually works with broader audience.
Reblogged this on Warmchaos.
Don’t forget that rape culture is worldwide and in some societies wfe/sister/daughter doesn’t elicit empathy, but death from husband/brother/father for bringing shame to the MEN. Fortunately in our enlightened country these non-people are allowed to live and merely characterized as sluts and whores.
I don’t know if it really matters that I leave a comment because surely I’m not saying something that 975 others haven’t already covered. 🙂
But…thank you for this post. It definitely opened my eyes.
This has been a difficult story to watch unfold, and I’m still trying to make sense of it as a mother of a 5-year-old girl and another girl on the way. I recently wrote a blog post on how I’m responding to it at home with my girl, but it just never feels like enough.
But I will be more conscious of my language and the message it sends my girls, because of you. Thank you again.
yes, but..
What about all the times men are referred to as sons, brothers and husbands.. it isn’t like this is a one way street here.
I get it. Women as a whole are quite often discounted, which is sickening, but I don’t think that re-framing the discussion to make it personal is dehumanizing a group of people, but an aid to help those who have no frame of reference understand.
I can not fathom what that girl is going through, but I’m pretty sure all of this rhetoric on her behalf must be overwhelming. My heart goes out to her, and all the victims
Hi, I havent read all the comments – maybe someone has already mentioned this. But, an addition to the arguments for not using the “your wife/sister/daughter-rethoric” might be that this rethoric obscures the fact that being someones wife (sister/daughter) not at all is a “safe place”. It implies that men don’t rape/sexually assault their wifes, sisters or daughters.
I’m not sure if anyone else has mentioned that, but that is an excellent point!
Reblogged this on There's No Backspace With a Pen and commented:
My thoughts exactly and better articulated than I could ever hope for.
I think this post is a pretty uncharitable (and inaccurate) account of how the “wives, sisters, and daughters” argument is supposed to work. I teach moral philosophy and I (like many philosophers and psychologists who are interested in moral thought) spend lots of time asking my students to think about how morality requires that we treat strangers with the same sort of moral respect that we treat loved ones. This sort of argument does *not* suppose (even implicitly) that the people with whom we have relationships aren’t valuable in and of themselves; in fact, the point is precisely the opposite–people generally have little trouble recognizing that the people they love have moral standing; the issue is getting them to see that *other* people have this same sort of moral standing. This sort argument is super-common in the moral writings in almost every philosophical and religious tradition, and for good reason, since most peoples’ reasoning about morality is closely tied up with the sorts of relationships they are in. (In fact, a lot of recent feminist work on ethics has claimed that traditional ethical theories *underemphasize* the importance of intimate relationships in ethical reasoning). If we got rid of this sort of reasoning (as this post seems to suggest), I have a hard time seeing what we could possibly replace it with.
How about “equality reasoning?”
How does imagining one real person. upon whom a horrific crime has been committed, as being someone else, someone who has not experienced that horrific crime, reveal the real value of the first person?
In my mind, it diminishes the reality of the real victim, and puts in her place, an imagined/unreal scene & victim. How more diminishing can one be than to replace a real person’s tragedy with an imagined one?
And why would anyone choose to fantasize about their loved one being a victim of rape? So they can relate? Why can’t they relate to the reality? Are they morally bankrupt?
They’d most likely reject the opportunity to imagine such a thing.
Many people, when somehting bad happens to someone they know even, say, “I can’t even imagine…” nor do they want to imagine whatever tragedy has befallen someone else as being their own fate. Those people have no trouble relating morally.
And why would we ask someone to imagine a horrible thing happening to their loved ones.
Just because we’ve often talked a certain way and beleive it gives us certain results like empathy, doesn’t mean there isn’t another better way of speaking, and raising awareness.
I agree with the author.
So you’d rather live in an ideal world where people don’t need to be taught empathy, rather than in the real world with flawed human beings who need to be taught how to think about other people by having their loved ones substituted for strangers. Patrick’s point is valid. This is the real world, and this is a technique that works. Don’t demonise it and the people who use it.
Yes! Thank you for your response.
I think his point mainly, is that the argument does not objectify women. It’s a ridiculous assumption. It may be overused though. People generally don’t relate to sufferings of strangers. If you really did, you’d be in Africa right now.
As trite as this device is, I don’t like it either, it fills a need, like Patrick said, not only in 2013 but in 2031 or any other year in our lifetime or in many lifetimes to come. It is only discriminatory if we react differently to this than to “your/somebody’s husband, brother, son”, another device Obama is fond of using.
When we read statistics like 22 women raped in Tahrir square or 168 children being killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, or some other atrocity of your choosing, these are numbers. First when they get a name, an age, a face, they start to become humans. Still, they are humans of our imagination, based on people we know or think we do. This device just tries to help the listener/reader along this process. Only if we take the time to read her or his story the person will come alive as a person in her/his own right.
Humanizing and dehumanizing is a very powerful mechanism, it completely changes the way we think about something, or suddenly someone. We react differently depending on whether the perpetrator, the victim, or both are humanized. We naturally humanize our own, for the others we sometimes need a little help. This goes for Steubenville too.
There is a darker mechanism at work too. We naturally think that the universe is just, that bad things don’t happen to good people, that what goes around comes around. The flip side of that is if somebody becomes a victim, she must have done something wrong. Our minds start looking for what wrong she must have done to make the perpetrator hurt her so, instead of looking at why the perpetrator did what she did. This mechanism is not at play, as you would expect, if the victim is our wife, sister, and mother. Another way our minds play tricks on us, just like I am late because I was delayed in traffic, while you are late because you are unreliable.
I really don’t mind the mothers, daughters, or wives thing, sometimes when I am talking to someone exceptionally stupid, usually a man, I pretend that they are my dad after a stroke has damaged his frontal cortex. And as we all know the frontal cortex is the reason and logic area of brain.
I actually agree wholeheartedly with Patrick. I understand Jane Doe is a person in her own right who is not defined by her relationship to others (including men). I believe the ‘wives, sisters, daughters’ argument is not intended to say women are only as valuable in that they relate to others. I think this argument is supposed to get through to people who generally don’t care about strangers as much as their family members. People who need to think about someone they care about before they can see Jane Doe as a person. It’s the next step in teaching empathy from when we tell little kids not to do X because you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you. These people understand they don’t want bad stuff happening to them, but now they need to grasp how we should be against bad stuff being done to others. If they already had a good grasp of empathy and saw Jane Doe as a person, they wouldn’t be rape apologists to begin with. The blind spot of not seeing people as if they matter until they matter to you is the reason many of the politicians who have recently declared support for homosexual marriage have only done so only after a son/daughter/other person close to them has come out. It is why one politician said gay marriage isn’t important to him because he doesn’t intend to get one. Is the ‘wives, sisters, daughters’ argument perfect? No. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary, but in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be rape apologists. In a perfect world, it would be understood that you don’t rape or assault or murder people .
Reblogged this on orientalnights.
This is one of the most positive articles I have ever read. I couldn’t agree more.
I get the point here and it’s a good one, but I don’t think that point on “Imagine if she was your sister, or your daughter, or your wife.” is really accurate. A sister can have another sister – or a brother, the daughter being imagined can be imagined by a mother – or a father, a wife can be homosexual – or heterosexual. I don’t see why the above sentence is being construed into a sentence that is for men only, because it isn’t and I feel like that is misleading.
How about this? Since sisters, daughters, wives, and mothers can be and are most often victimized by the people who are their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons. For instance, in Steubenville the victim was a former girlfriend of one of the boys in attendance – the idea of a relationship didn’t really compel him to act in her defence. She was the friend of a few more people there, and probably thought she was safe as a result of a relationship – again, nobody felt compelled to act based on relationship status.
No. True empathy is to imagine yourself as the victim. To recognize the relationship to you is really only a difference of who was chosen as a victim. Is the device in question completely useless? No. When we have someone who cannot for some reason empathize, it may be beneficial to find someone they are able to empathize with and draw them closer to empathy. That’s not the case with most people, though, so we’re asking them to empathize with the wrong person – the perpetrator. That’s what was evident in the reporting around this case; it became a story of young boys whose futures were destroyed rather than the story of perpetrators of a crime who were tried and convicted and found worthy of distinction as sexually-violent criminals. Or, gods forbid, the story of a victim of that crime who was present in court, stood up for herself, and has shown herself to be a supporter of other survivors in the process.
yup, that’s it,right there.