the 18,437 perpetrators of steubenville

[niyad]

The 18,437 Perpetrators of Steubenville
January 24, 2013 By Michael Kimmel

The brutal gang rape of a 16-year-old girl by members of the Steubenville, Ohio football team has rightly shocked the nation – a nation, by the way, which is routinely shocked by gang rapes committed by athletes in the same way that Claude Rains was “shocked” to find that gambling was going on at Rick’s Café Americain in the movie Casablanca. Really? Athletes gang-raping a girl so drunk that she’s passed out. What a surprise!
. . . . .


As I found in my interviews with more than 400 young men for my book Guyland, in the aftermath of these sorts of events –when high-status high school athletes commit felonies, especially gang rape– they are surrounded and protected by their fathers, their school administrations and their communities. These out-of-control, rapacious thugs are our school’s heroes — “our guys,” as the gang rapists at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey were called nearly two decades ago. The players themselves hold to a code of silence, the omerta of sexual assault: No one ever rats out a fellow bro. The parents, the school and the community circle wagons in a culture of protection around the boys.

It’s often the girl herself, and her parents, who are vilified and receive death threats for daring to expose the crime in the first place. Raped boys, too, dare not complain: A few years ago, after rookies on the Mepham High School (Long Island) football team were sodomized with broom handles, golf balls and pine cones in a pre-season hazing ritual, the rookies’ parents got anonymous death threats for standing up for their brutalized sons.

The two players who are charged with raping the girl, and the several other players who allegedly participated, are surrounded in a protective bubble. Their fathers steadfastly stand by their sons. Their coaches wonder what the girl might have been wearing and why she got so drunk, suggesting it might have been a case of buyers’ remorse–as if she wanted to pass out and be urinated on and have an iron rod shoved inside her, but then perhaps thought better of it in the sober light of day. The police apparently covered up the crime to protect the boys. And, of course, the community rallied behind the boys, fearing that–gasp!–“their” football team might have a dark cloud hanging over it.

. . . . .

The global public outcry in India has begun to change their public conversation about gang rape. Citizens of Steubenville have a moral existential choice about where they stand. Whose side will they be on?

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/01/24/the-18437-perpetrators-of-steubenville/

[kairos12]

1. Thanks

Thanks for your hard work on this very difficult and important social calamity.

[niyad]

2. you are welcome, but I am not doing much. I am grateful to those who will not let this

horrendous crime pass into oblivion.

[agracie]

3. What chance is there that justice will be served? What a mess ! n/t

[chowder66]

4. Sex Crime Rituals/Rape Rituals

When I think of "hazing" I think of boys making "pledges/underlings" do stupid crap which does not include rape, sodomy and any other sex crime.

This should be called what it really is; sex crime rituals/rape rituals.

Male dominated fields have a fucking rape problem. And it isn't just women getting raped as we all well know.
After seeing "The Invisible War" I have just had it. I once respected the military and it's troops but I have to say I'm not so sure I can honestly say that anymore. At least not right now. Not with the cover ups, the witch hunts, the victim blaming, etc. And my nephews are in the armed services which freaks me out more than it did before. Which isn't saying much.
I feel like either one soldier is a rapist or another has been raped, silenced or mistreated. This issue just seems to be much bigger than I could ever have imagined and I thought it was a huge/massive problem in the first place.

Protecting these boys,men and women is causing a severe crisis in this country. This has to stop. We have to find a solution.
How does anyone even get the idea to put things into peoples privates and call it "hazing"? Who thinks like that? Seriously.

is there some sort of secret manual that tells males that violating humans is funny, okay, totally fine? or that they will become mighty and all powerful by subjecting others to trauma and violence? I can't grasp this crap in any form. Please excuse any generalities, I know all men/women do not do this but there is no denying there is a more than massive problem and it makes me angry and disgusted in ways that are nearly impossible to describe.

[datasuspect]

5. your question

"is there some sort of secret manual that tells males that violating humans is funny, okay, totally fine?"

the answer is no.

[chowder66]

8. I know but as I said I'm angry.

I should have said certain impressionable people? Hence the note to forgive for any generalities.

[Whisp]

6. this horrific stuff goes on

and some have the fucking nerve to call this the land of the free and criticize those barbaric 'muslins'.

*spits

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[progressoid]

9. Rec.

[redqueen]

10. K&R. Thank you for posting this.

So it’s a distraction to spend another minute on Nodi the Buffoon. What needs to happen instead is that the players be immediately suspended, pending the outcome of their court date. All colleges considering recruiting them should receive information about these criminal charges. Coaches? Fire them, not for what their players did but what they, the coaches, said about the crime. The era of asking what she did to bring this on herself is over. Police who covered it up? Same. Cancel football season–again, not because of what the players did but because the community needs to heal, and that requires more than a return to the status quo.

[davidn3600]

11. I think they already decided what side they are on...

...football.

Just like the students at Penn State rioting because Joe Paterno was fired.

[seabeyond]

12. hearing a chorus of adults saying “boys will be boys”, pernicious type of male bashing to assume ...

At the moment, we’re hearing a chorus of adults saying “boys will be boys”–surely the most depressing four words spoken about members of my gender. Haven’t you noticed that we always say that when boys have done something really bad? We shrug our collective shoulders in resignation–nothing we can do about it. How come we don’t say, “Oh wow, a man walked on the moon–boys will be boys!” Or “A man won the Novel Prize–boys will be boys!” “A man is working to cure cancer … ” you get the idea. It’s a pernicious type of male bashing to assume that boys can do no better than be wild rapacious animals. We can do better than this–and we can insist on better from boys as well.

having two sons, brothers, nephews, father, husband.... this is where i start from. i would never give this to the boys and men i love. what a fuckin' insult. and every one of my boys and men understand it is a fuckin' insult.

but, ya. do wrong. and just being boys. talk about creating and cementing fuckin' privilege and entitlement.

good article. thanks