Tuesday, July 17, 2007

On irresponsible actions and consequences

Okay, so I know posting has been sparse lately, and that's because I'm insanely, insanely busy at work. Insanely busy at work. I should be working right now. But I got a link to a blog post, and it had a link to a police report (pdf, not for the faint of heart or recent of lunch), and the post also had a bunch of comments, and I thought I should make a comment and then get back to work, so here:
The Minnesota Star-Tribune has the sordid details, and they’re as bad as you might imagine. A cell phone video captured a football player allegedly ejaculating onto the face of a woman who, drunk off eight shots of vodka, was hovering somewhere around a .30 BAC, could not possibly have consented, and has no memory of the incident.

The case has a decent chance of prosecution, as one of the football players recorded the whole thing on his cell phone, providing key evidence for the prosecution. U r so smrt!

If true: assholes. That’s all we can say. Total assholes all around. You’re all complete fucking shitbag die-in-a-ditch-now assholes.

Grosser than gross, right? Read the comments.
I’m gonna have to go ahead here and be the guy who can’t help but point out that if you let football players convince you into doing tons of shots, and you’re pretty much the only one doing them, this is the sort of shit they’re going to pull on you.

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Soooo, Victim A gets rip-snorting drunk and orders the triple baconator, but it’s the frosty she’s upset about?

May I never have a daughter. Evar. Nevar.

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I absolutely don’t want to sound like one of those “She was wearing a short skirt, she was asking for it” guys, but I have to agree with Brian@#9. Most intelligent people, around the fifth or sixth shot, will start pondering the question of whether the gentleman proffering said shots might only be looking for something inert and pliable to stick his Golden Gopher in.

Now, something that bugs me more than anything about rape cases is sentences that begin, "I'm not saying she was asking for it, BUT..." "I'm not saying this woman was to blame for her own rape, BUT..." Because generally, the rest of the sentence outlines the way in which she was somehow responsible for her own rape. "I'm not saying she was asking for it, BUT she sure acted irresponsibly when she..."

Sure, she acted irresponsibly. Getting that looped with a bunch of strangers? Not smart. Eight shots in a row? Not wise for any woman not built like Chyna.

You know what else isn't smart? Two beers in a hot football stadium in the sun. Eighty in a 70 zone. Accepting a check from a buyer on CraigsList. Going running without a cell phone. These are all irresponsible; some can even result in death. They're also things that happen every day and don't result in death. That's because speeding, or drinking in the sun, or running without a way to call the police, doesn't cause death. Sometimes there are other factors, sometimes things just happen, sometimes people are lucky, sometimes people aren't.

The punishment for irresponsible actions isn't rape.

Of course, we should all try to act responsibly. Of course, we should all look out for our own safety. But we don't do that, not all the time, and the price of failing to do that should not be getting gang raped and ejaculated on by a bunch of football players.

This woman was RAPED, and the reason that she was raped was that the men she was with were RAPISTS. If she'd had eight shots with non-rapists - if she'd had eight shots with eight football players who weren't rapists - she wouldn't have gotten raped. The shots were not the deciding factor in her rape.

It's a story I've told before, and it's not one that I'm proud of, but it's pertinent in this and many other cases: My junior year of college, I went out drinking with my roommates and got stumbling, shrieking, barfing drunk. My roommates, gems that they were, tucked me into a cab to send me home. In the cab already were six Marines from the nearby Naval supply school. Six Marines plus one very, very, very drunk girl. And not only did I get home safely, but as they got out of the cab at their stop, one of the Marines handed a twenty to the driver and said, "Make sure she gets home safely."

What I did was irresponsible. What my roommates did was irresponsible. But I did get home safely, because those Marines were NOT RAPISTS.

And the reason - the only reason - that that woman didn't get home safely was that those football players were.

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