The Steubenville sex offenders deserve pity, but not for the reasons you think

[DonViejo]

Why are we supposed to have sympathy for rapists?

The Steubenville sex offenders deserve pity, but not for the reasons you think

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

-snip-

Long before 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16 year-old Ma’lik Richmond were declared guilty in juvenile court on Sunday of raping a Steubenville, Ohio, classmate, they were already being cast as the story’s victims. Those poor boys – young athletes with their whole lives ahead of them – until one fateful night changed everything. Just last week, ABC News declared that “the juvenile trial set to begin there is every parent’s nightmare” — because having your child on trial, not being raped and abused, is a parental nightmare. The story’s final line? Not about the victim, but about the boys, “who face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football.” And this weekend, when the verdict was handed down, CNN’s Poppy Harlow lamented to Candy Crowley, “I’ve never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional — 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 believe their life fell apart.” Crowley seemed to agree, pondering “the lasting effect of two young men being guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially.” You know, essentially.

Boo-hooing in the wrong direction wasn’t invented in Steubenville. So prevalent is the trope that the Onion made fun of it two years ago right around the time that the New York Times was reporting on a town’s agony over “how could their young men have been drawn into” gang-raping an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, Texas, sympathetically quoting a resident who noted that “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

And as the heated response to Zerlina Maxwell’s recent radical suggestion that we need to “train men not to grow up to become rapists” also proved, we are a very long way from grasping the notion that sexual assailants aren’t always faceless monsters with lengthy rap sheets. The idea that a rapist could be a good-looking, popular guy with a “promising future” doesn’t jibe with the comfortable, easily compartmentalized image of him as a glowering sketch of a guy in a ski mask on a Wanted poster. We don’t like to imagine that a rapist could be a classmate or a friend or a son. Certainly not a young man who belongs to our idolized class of individuals – our athletes. We love our boys. We love them to the extent that we couch their sex crimes in terms of how terrible the course of justice is for them.

Yet in a story that has from the beginning been so much about social media, it’s encouraging that the reaction to the media’s “poor babies” coverage has not gone quietly unremarked. After CNN’s Sunday pity party for Mays and Richmond, a Change.org petition demanding an apology swiftly garnered over 140,000 signatures – and it’s still growing. More importantly, though, cases like Steubenville – and the public conversation around them, conversation that extends far, far beyond the voices of cable news bubbleheads – is an opportunity to rethink what we believe about rape and rapists. And it doesn’t have to start completely from scratch.

-snip-

full article:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/why_are_we_supposed_to_have_sympathy_for_rapists/

Link to Change.org petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/cnn-apologize-for-your-disgusting-coverage-of-the-steubenville-rapists

[PearliePoo2]

1. Excellent writing and excellent points...

Now I'm off to the link to read the entire article and oh, yeah...find that CNN change.org petition to sign!


K&R

[DonViejo]

3. Thanks for reminding me...

I meant to add the link to the petition but forgot it. I've now added it to the OP. Thanks again!

[riderinthestorm]

2. Another K&R from me as well. Thanks for posting... nt

[seabeyond]

4. encouraging that the reaction to the media’s “poor babies” coverage has not gone quietly unremarked.

this has been the upside on this whole thing. beginning with a community that failed and the internet explosion attacking that fail. to now, media fail and the internet explosion that once again... fuckin'n wrong.

We have to see that one of the tragedies here is how badly we are failing our men and boys,

repeat reapeat repeat. failing our MEN and BOYs. repeat.

if we do not give a fuck about our girls, then KNOW is it failing our men and boys.

[snagglepuss]

5. .