A Feminist View: Rape in College

I would like to introduce myself and explain why I decided to write about very hot button issues.

My name is Jonathan Blayne and I have been a feminist since December of last year after reading stories in the news about issues facing women and talking to several feminists. I decided to write about these articles for one reason, I feel when you read about stories facing women you are reading it from the point of view of a journalist and you usually end up not reading it with a feminists view.

So, I figured for my debut Feminism article that I would tackle one of the bigger and more controversial topics and that is rape. For as long as I can remember, you end up hearing about rape usually a few times a week and a majority of the time its a woman who is the victim. Another area where we see rape occurring is on college campuses that most of the time occur at a off campus house.

Recently, there has been several stories about this happening, but there is one story I want to look at that gain a ton of national attention. At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California where Brock Turner, a sophomore student and a star on the swimming team was charged with sexually assaulting a women he met at a house party back in January. This caused a lot of stir up because the normal punishment for a crime like this is 14 years in prison, but Brock Turner got sentenced to six months in jail and in the long run will only serve three months.

As the Judge, who also had a ton of skeletons in the closet, said that he didn’t want to put Brock in jail that long because it was too harsh of a punishment. You are kidding me? Its too harsh of a punishment. I have never heard of a dumber thinking behind a decision as one thing it was made obvious that they tried to make Brock Turner a not a monster and I disagree he is a monster.

The woman he raped, who didn’t even know about it until the next day when she heard it on the news, has to now live with the fact that a man who she doesn’t know and she did not give consent to was inside of her. She makes a point in her statement she wrote when she said, “He asked if he could finger her and she said yes. Most guys don’t ask that as it is a natural progression…” She also makes a point that he thought that him stroking her back was consent to having sex.

I want to know how did he get into Stanford because as the news kept coming out, he ended up looking more and more of an idiot. Its interesting because I read the victim’s statements, Brock’s statements and his father’s statements and you would think it was him who was the victim. Brock even makes a point in his statements that he has had a run-in with the law and alcohol as he was charged with alcohol as a minor.

But the general theme I got from Brock and his dad’s statements is that why should his son get punished for “20 minutes of actions.” I am starting to figure that the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree as his dad seems to be a huge idiot. Another line that Brock said in his statement was that he was drinking to fit in with his friends at college because he would feel like an outcast. As someone who went away to school for a few years, I did not go drinking weekly and I knew many people who didn’t drink on a weekly basis.

So that is the biggest load of crap I have read in a huge amount of crap.

Dan Turner, Brock’s father, tried to play off the sympathy card that his son is a good person and made a wrong choice. I found this disgusting because there was no mention of the women who was raped. I am not sitting here saying that one gender is better than the other, all I am saying is in this case it was clear as day that Brock made the wrong choice and was not thinking with his head and he was thinking with his other head.

It should also be noted that the Judge had some issues on his hands. Judge Aaron Persky has overseen many rape cases involving college athletes who have been brought up on rape charges but get off easy and it should also be mentioned his alma mater is Stanford University. Last I checked from my years of taking law classes in high school, is if there is a conflict of interest, he should of removed himself from the case.

I found some statistics that also show how rape is more of a issue facing women and less with men. One stat I found is that 673,000 women who attend a college in the United States has experienced rape at some point in there life. Also a female who lives in a sorority house are three times likely to experience rape. I found a lot of stats that is cringe worthy and bone chilling.

Some of them include that 13% of women who are raped attempt suicide, 30% of women who are raped end up reporting having PTSD symptoms within 9 months of the rape, 90% of adult rape victims are female, The age group with the highest percentage of being raped is 12-34 years old, and every two minutes a rape happens. People don’t realize how much psychological damage to the victim.

Overall, no matter how you look rape is an issue women are facing more than men. Yes, men get raped but not at the same volume as women end up getting raped.

When this decision came down, people started thinking does race have any determination in deciding if a rapist should go to prison. I bring this up because Judge Aaron Persky was presented a similar case to Brock Turner but it was a Latin man. He ended up getting sentenced to jail for a few years.

As a feminist and someone who has some logic, I feel if your white or African American it should not have any bearing on if you should go to jail. The moment you take the life of a woman because you decide to your race has no bearing on it.

Unfortunately, there was another case that just happened in Indiana University as a former student was charged with sexually assaulting two women and only ended up serving a day. This goes back to how people assume things, I have seen far too many times people automatically assume if you are not a white person, then you are criminal. Another thing that I found out from this case, the Stanford woman’s swimming team was basically told not to say anything to the media about when he was arrested.

They ended up talking to In touch, but did not say there names. None of them were honestly surprised that he was arrested because he seemed to be somewhat of creep around them. He even in one incident how he can see a swimmer’s t*ts in her swimsuit.

My take on this is its disgusting, we see countless amount of times when a rape case hits a college, especially one of the sports teams they end up brushing it under the rug and almost they want people to forget about it. Some examples were Penn State and Baylor who both tried to brush it under the rug. I feel these schools put there athletes on such a pedestal that they can do no wrong because they bring the school money.

Unfortunately, this issue of rape will still be a problem on colleges for years to come unless something is done about it.

I am not saying you should ban alcohol completely or ban college parties from happening because those are going to continue to happen. Personally, I do not know of a way to fix this problem that it would stop because I have learned from reading stories on rape and talking to rape victims, it can happen anywhere.

All I am going to say is to Brock Turner, you are a monster who took the advantage of a woman who was unconscious and instead of thinking to see what was wrong, you decided to take advantage of her and because you are an athlete, you thought nothing was wrong.

To Dan Turner, you should be a shamed for how you raised your son. I am not in any authority to tell you how to raise your child, but you raised a monster and not a gentleman. To school officials, please stop holding your athletes on such a high pedestal because it doesn’t help them, in essence these school officials are coddling the athletes.