Sex with Timaree

Let me cut to the chase. After reading about the brutal gang rape of a 15 year old girl outside of her Homecoming dance, I feel physically ill. Not only was this young woman subjected to 2 and a half hours of fiendish brutality by a group young men, but a crowd of onlookers watched and recorded the attack on their cell phones like a bunch of gawking tourists, never trying to interrupt the violence, never alerting the police.

As I mentioned, I feel physically ill. The more details that emerged, the more upset I grew. Around midnight, she had left the dance to call her dad and go home. She was approached by one of the school bad boys to join some guys (some students, some local trouble makers who’d failed out) in drinking behind the building. Always having wanted to be popular, she agreed. After she was plied by brandy, she declined their initial requests for sex, was beaten, robbed, and savaged for hours by a mob of boys and young men who used their own bodies and inanimate objects to batter her. A crowd gathered, leering and cheering, calling their friends to come check out the debasement of their fellow student. They took pictures. They joined in the rape. Then they left her semiconscious under a bench and scattered like cockroaches.

Some point to the economic deprivation of the area, the racial makeup, the gang influence in Richmond, California where the attack occurred. Others point to the need for better security, more lighting, higher fences, more work on the part of the school.

And they are all right to an extent. Safety measures ought to be taken to ensure students are safe in their own schools. But there were 8 security guards there that night. We can keep adding security cameras further and further in concentric circles until every patch of asphalt is covered, give every girl a self defense class and throw every bad kid in jail at the first sign of trouble if we so please. This might prevent a fair number of assaults, but it’s not getting to the heart of the problem.

We need to address rape as a male problem.

The assailants were all male. The bystanders as well. Sure, we can cave to peer pressure and get swept up by situations and do things we regret. But this is not a matter of race, poverty, inadequate security, watching too much porn or teenage drinking. This could have happened anywhere, with people of any background. The real core of the issue is male bonding where women are treated as toys.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Peggy Reeves Sanday says, “The woman involved is a tool, an object, the centerfold around which boys both test and demonstrate their power and heterosexual desire by performing for one another…They prove their manhood on a wounded girl who is unable to protest. Her body stands in for the object of desire in porno-staged acts of sexual intercourse that boys often watch together.”

This is the result of a societal epidemic of raising girls to be obedient, sexy and careful for their safety and teaching boys that this makes girls OK to objectify. It happens when two guys hanging out have to remind each other they’re straight by talking degradingly about the woman walking by. It happens when guys holler out the car window at women walking by, when guys regale each other with tales of the “insert diminutive term for females” with whom they partied or hooked up. It happens every time another douchebag buys a Tucker Max book because “it’s funny.” No, actually, it’s not.

It also happens every time a woman objects to men acting like assholes and is shut down for being a feminazi or a bitch or whatever un-clever retort can be mustered between Jager bombs.

So what the fuck do we do about it? Even if we hunt down each and every one of the bottomfeeders involved in this Homecoming attack (some of whommay get off entirely for their part) and stab them directly in the brain, the problem will still exist. Here’s what we do:

1. Don’t rape anyone. Obviously, this is easy most of the time. Don’t assume consent from partners. Don’t purposefully get someone drunk so you can hook up. And don’t encourage it in others.
2. Talk to your sons and nephews (and cousins, etc) about rape. Tell them from day one that any behavior that treats women degradingly is unacceptable and something men only do when they can’t prove their manliness through any productive means.
3. Change the way you think and the way you talk. Don’t let guys around you talk about females they’ve treated like shit without calling them out on it. Be brave, even if it means looking like you’re lame. Remember the douchecanoe of bystanders and think about how they probably thought they’d look stupid if they tried to stop the rape. They’re a bunch of cowards. Don’t be one of them. You’re better than that.

In some ways, we can actually be glad that this incident has incited such outrage. A few hundred years ago, we would have only been concerned with a woman being treated this way if she was a noble woman and the attackers were men of lower class (or, god forbid, another race). Now we can see the humanity of women even if they aren’t wealthy and we are repulsed by the idea of such violence. We have come so far, let’s see if we can’t go the rest of the way.

Donations for the Richmond High School rape victim may be sent to: Richmond High Jane Doe, account No. 041-30-1188, Mechanics Bank, 3170 Hilltop Mall Road, Richmond, CA 94806.

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