DoucheArt

We almost had to name ourselves Douche of the Week again. After stating "if I never hear another Climax joke, it would be too soon" while sharing an earlier post from this week on my personal Facebook page, Ash and I proceeded, in fact, to make several more Climax jokes. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, though, there was a much more obvious choice.

Thanks, George Will, for taking the heat for us.

If you’re not the keen follower of rape culture news that I am, you may have missed the uproar about George Will’s column in the Washington Times this past week. If you didn’t catch it, here’s a recap: Good old George feels that the current examination by the White House of Title IX complaints of more than 50 campuses across the nation is unwarranted and a waste of time. The law itself encompasses equal treatment of the sexes on college campuses and specifically requires schools to thoroughly investigate rape and sexual assault claims. The schools under investigation have had complaints filed regarding the school’s handling (or often lack thereof) of sexual assault cases. George also feels that this epidemic of “sexual assault” (yes, he actually used condescending little quotation marks) is making real education impossible and is giving “victims” some sort of privileged status that comes with benefits and social recognition. It conveys that being a victim is something to be coveted, he says. It creates an environment where victims proliferate and the accused are the true victims as campuses cater to the mixture of “hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults” without regard for academia or due process.

The first thing to note here is that George Will has obviously never been raped. Anyone who had gone through the nightmares, the panic triggers, the crying, the shame, the unexplainable guilt, the loss of friends, the loss of happiness, the turmoil, the pain, and the suffering that comes from being sexually assaulted would never, ever be able to minimize what victims go through the way this asshat did. It’s not a fucking cakewalk. It isn’t as simple as getting drunk, banging, and the regretting it. When a woman says NO, she motherfucking means NO. When that isn’t respected and a man takes what he wants anyway even if she has said YES a thousand fucking times before, it is still rape. It is still a violation. And, yes oh yes she is still a victim.

There most certainly IS an epidemic of sexual assault across this entire country especially on college campuses but it has nothing to do with any benefits rape victims receive. It is most certainly because old, privileged white men like George Will—the people with truly coveted and benefited status--have no respect for women. They have no idea what it means to be afraid—to fear that every man you go on a date with will use force to get what he wants or worse. He has no idea what it’s like to be slapped in the face by rape scene after rape scene in movies, television, and books for entertainment value. And, he apparently has no idea that more times than not sexual assault is completely ignored or the victim is outright shamed for her behavior making it impossible to actually gain any of these fucking privileges he speaks of. Coveted status? If coveted means lower than dog shit on the dean's shoes, then oh yes, victim status is coveted. Men like him are the reason that rape culture in this country prevails because they deny. They deny the effects of rape, the culture of rape, and the very existence of rape. It doesn’t affect them personally at the end of the day (unless they happen to know someone who IS raped and even then, it’s not one of their own orifices) so why get all worked up over it?

As long as we have people who blame sexual assault on what a woman wears, where she was, what she had to drink, and whether or not she loved to have sex, we’re never going to see any changes in this very real epidemic. The blame is not on victims. It’s on the rapists—the people who feel entitled to take what they want from another person. We live in a culture where the shame and guilt are placed on the victim, where the victim has to answer for her actions and not the other way around. The guilt certainly should reside with rapists, but right there with them are their partners in crime--men like George Will who perpetuate this culture of violence through sheer, unadulterated, privileged fucking ignorance.
I'd say that the only way George Will will ever understand the experience of rape and what it puts you through...how it kills a part of you...is to be a victim himself, but having gone through that at 13 without a single fucking benefit to show for it, I wouldn't wish it on the biggest of douches--even him.