The scope of this foul ‘De Anza rape allegations case’ initially caused my obstreperal lobe to throw both its claws in the air, exclaim “That’s it!“, bundle a few provisions in a bindle, and take to the rails. This morning, unexpectedly, it came shuffling back, bruised but vociferant, clutching in its tentacles a slew of reports from San Jose MercuryNews.com. I’ve spent the last hour reviewing these, with increasing nausea.
By now you will have heard a summary of the case: in San Jose, California, at a house party on March 3 of this year, three men gang-raped a comatose teenager while ten jolly spectators whooped it up on the sidelines. On May 21, Santa Clara County DA Dolores Carr astonished the victim, the sheriff’s department, and right-thinking humans everywhere when she dismissed all charges because of ‘insufficient evidence.’
Outcry, both local and blogular, has ensued.
The media lump together the assault and its concomitant juridical circus under the moniker ‘the De Anza case’ because two of the rapists were members of the (San Jose, California) De Anza Community College baseball team. This factoid is significant because the media know a fortuitously sordid sequel to the popular ‘Duke lacrosse scandal’ when they see one, and can’t leave the sports angle alone. It is also significant because DA Dolores Carr clearly had no wish to toddle down the same thorny path as her College Sports Rape Scandal counterpart in Durham NC, old Mike Nifong, whose hubris-y personal ambitions got him busted for concealing evidence favorable to the Duke rapists.
MercuryNews reports are rife with male-dominant vernacular, both from quoted sources and in the reportage itself. This language reveals that, in the popular imagination, in adjudication of rape cases, and in media culture, there flourishes a truly despicable, antifeminist, misogynist zeitgeist. The prominent themes are alcohol-and-consent, the aforementioned irrelevant circumstance that the rapists were college athletes, and the bizarre idea that ‘insufficient evidence’ is now the equivalent of ‘it never happened.’
For your blaming convenience, here’s an overview of the case, compiled exclusively from MercuryNews articles, and viewed through Twisty-colored glasses.
March 4: Gang-rape occurs; spectators cheer; victim is taken to hospital by women from the party. Police captain Steve Angus asserts that “some sort of sexual assault occurred,” but the rape is always described as “alleged”; as we now know, if there is ‘insufficient evidence,’ suddenly there was no assault. This magical thinking omits to consider, you know, facts, as well as the views of the women who took the victim to the hospital after she’d been brutalized (they were never asked to testify before the grand jury), not to mention the victim herself.
Apparently it’s perfectly normal for incapacitated teenage girls to blithely service multiple baseball players while a shitfaced mob yuks it up. Says young eyewitness Megan Keefhaver, whose boyfriend just happens to be a De Anza baseball player, “The people in the room obviously were cheering the guys on or something like that. But I didn’t think of it as a rape situation.” Because she’s from the moon.
March 17: MercuryNews runs a story entirely devoted to the sorrowful heartbreak so unfairly inflicted on — yup, you called it — the baseball team. De Anza has suspended eight players for what reporter Elliot Almond calls ‘questionable behavior’ ; the team is suffering sorely as a result of the inconvenient rape. Laments coach Scott Hertler, “Mentally, none of us are sleeping great. We’re probably not eating right because we just don’t feel good.” He regrets that they didn’t teach him how to deal with rape-based morale-slippage in “coaching school.”
But the “team’s resilience” shines through, and they win the big game! Yay team!
Way to romanticize, via our dudely young athletes, those lofty all-American ideals of character, brotherhood and sportsmanship with which male college sports teams are commonly thought to be imbued.
They aren’t supposed to rape and pillage, though, before they turn pro.
March 19: 20-year-old Steve Rebagliati, host of the rape party and one of the ‘alleged’ rapists, executes a felony hit-and-run just hours before raping the teenager. This tidbit will disappear like magic from MercuryNews reports, but Rebagliati, whose family owns the rape house, will become the Face of the innocent baseball team.
April 9: A second woman comes forward. It turns out that she was raped by the same baseball team in the same house three months earlier. They’d given her shots of tequila and matched her with shots of beer. What sportsmanship!
Like the hit-and-run mentioned above, this allegation vanishes into the mist.
May 16: After testifying before the grand jury, the chivalrous sportsman MercuryNews calls “Freshman pitcher Ryan Kanzaki” is overheard in the hall gleefully reporting to his family that he has been granted immunity. MercuryNews implies that this human stain Kanzaki was one of the cheering crowd urging his teammates on to feats of drunken brutality. Of course! His all-American sportsmanlike team spirit naturally makes him reluctant to rat out his fellow criminals.
Two other uncharged suspects are described in terms of their wholesome sportiness: “sophomore Chris Skinner, an infielder,” and “Spencer Maltbie, who doubles as a pitcher and infielder.” Causing my obstreperal lobe to throb uncomfortably, Maltbie apparently believes that because he doesn’t “drink or smoke” he is above suspicion.
May 22: DA Dolores Carr issues brief statement re: the ‘insufficient evidence.” Mistaking this for vindication, suspect Rebagliati relates his sorrowful tale of woe at having been a “scapegoat.” A reporter actually asks what he would say to the victim if he had the chance. He would, in fact, take the opportunity to lecture the lying slut — because let’s face it; if there was no rape, but she did a baseball team, she has to be a lying slut — on the importance of developing character: “I’d ask her why she chose to put us and herself through so much. My only thought is I hope that she learned a lot, as well as about herself, in the last two months.”
In case you were wondering, he can sleep at night, knowing that “as a team, [we] are innocent and free to live normally again.”
There’s no interviewing the victim, who of course will never be “free to live normally” again, so MercuryNews reports that she’s “disappointed,” but that heavy drinking makes prosecuting sexual assaults “difficult.”
The real reason that prosecuting sexual assaults is difficult — i.e. our culture’s fucking endemic misogyny — is not mentioned.
May 21 In an opinion piece, Scott Herhold demands answers! He wants to know whether the cops flubbed the investigation, sure, but he won’t be satisfied until there has been a thorough and public recap of the actual rape. Presumably this is so he and all the other CSI-poisoned sexperts out there can judge for themselves whether or not the baseball team pronged the victim en masse because they are rapists, or because the drunken little slut just really likes “sex.” He wants details!
What harm could it do? The case isn’t just about a rape victim, he says. It’s “about how our elected law enforcement officials do their job” (no doubt the victim would consider it just peachy if MercuryNews published a play-by-play of her rape, but alas, Herhold can’t ask her to confirm; she’s already moved away to escape the horror and humiliation). And besides, he says, who’s to say there isn’t a “problem with the credibility of the victim herself?” Everybody knows that 17-year-old girls constantly rush around to hospitals and make shit up about how they were gang-raped by baseball teams.
May 22: “Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said Tuesday she believes that ‘individuals got away with sexual assault’ at a party attended by members of the De Anza College baseball team, and that ‘at some point, someone needs to speak up for the victim.’” Well, duh.
May 23: This MercuryNews report characterizes the victim as “the girl” and her rape as a “controversy.” Also, readers who are anxious with concern for DA Dolores Carr’s conscience can rest easy. Quoth Carr, “I’m at peace with my decision.”
And once again, the right of mobs of drunken male athletes to relieve their incontinence in semi-conscious teen receptacles has been upheld by law enforcement. This sickening and egregious miscarriage of justice, my young onions, is precisely what the Twisty Consent? Schmonsent! Protocol would address.
I’m officially sick of sports, the people who play sports, and the fans of sports. I would appreciate it very much if men everywhere decided that basket weaving and other arts and crafts were worthy manly pursuits. Preferably to be pursued while sober and miles from the nearest woman.
I’m crying. It’s day like this you just hate this whole rotten world.
Thank god for Nifong and the immoral media! The hoopla over the Duke case has now made it quite likely that gang rape will be tacitly legal, because prosecuters will be scared to death to prosecute.
This is one of those things where my brain just shuts off. If I began to fully grasp the disgusting implications of this situation I think I’d have an aneurism. And I’m loving that ONE quote they are using from a witness throughout all the articles. “I didn’t think of it as a rape situation.” Can we hear from one of the women who took her to the hospital? Or how about the one guy who supposedly tried to stop it.
Wash’t the idea of team sports to channel male aggression so they wouldn’t run around raping and pillaging? Or was it simply to tire them out so they wouldn’t question The Man?
The idea of team sports is to hone the skills necessary for success in life under a paradigm of dominance and submission.
I just can’t comprehend how this could possibly be seen as anything but rape.
Some adult gave the victim alcohol, illegally. Three witnesses can testify that she was semi-conscious, vomiting (unable to keep anything down), and that they had to carry her out of the house she was so drunk. They can also testify that the men were holding the door closed. Why would they have to hold the door closed if this was consensual sex? AND SHE IS UNDERAGE! How is this not a crime?? HOW? How much more evidence do they need?
there aren’t enough words in the two languages I know to discribe my disgust. I really really hope that some one (perhapse this school’s women’s lib group?) will start protests at sporting events. if this was my school those players would be the one’s who have to leave.
Why are these guys being treated like real athletes? These guys are on a *community* college team. What’s next? We’ll let the little league team commit larceny? This has absolutely nothing to do with sports.
District Attorneys are elected aren’t they? Isn’t this problematic? (I’m not American, so correct me if I’m wrong). Is Dolores Carr trying to court the votes of Dude Nation?
Two of the women who rescued the girl have spoken to the press.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/13370961/detail.html
Or the votes of men who really hate teenage girls. Unfortunately, perhaps that is not such a small constituency.
And I would bet good money that the three young women who rescued this child are now being harassed.
In her election campaign, Carr had to battle expectations that she would not be independent enough of the police, because her husband is on the police force.
If I had any hope left, it would go toward the possibility that she will have something more to battle in the next election: an outraged public.
This morning I sent a letter to the state attorney general, hoping that someone in that office might think an investigation is in order. I don’t know, however, if that’s the correct office to contact.
Shabnam, Dolores Carr is trying to prove that she wasn’t lying when she got elected on a platform of “my San Jose police detective husband will in no way influence my decisions as DA.” True enough; ostensibly she and the cops depart wildly from each other on this case.
Oh, and she’s trying to court the votes of Dude Nation.
I see Vera has already answered Shabnam’s question. Someday I will understand blogs.
The Sherriff’s ofice is keeping the case open.
“Sources told CBS 5 that the Sheriff’s Office was considering a range of options from re-starting the investigation, to re-filing on new, lesser charges against the baseball players for having unlawful sex with a minor, or furnishing a minor with alcohol.”
I get the impression that the sheriff is watching and waiting for has the rapist who committed the hit/run to strike again.
Okay, the really devastating quotation for me is from the article linked by bad kitty. Speaking of the victim: “When they lifted her head up, her eyes moved and she said ‘I’m sorry.’”
jesus god what made her think she should be sorry?
badkitty, thanks for the link. The lowlight is this, from one of the gang-rapers: “This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.” She did what - gang-raped herself when she was so drunk she was vomiting and had to be carried out of the house?
“When they lifted her head up, her eyes moved and she said ‘I’m sorry.’â€
I do not have the ovaries to continue reading general coverage of this bullshit anymore, but jesus tapdancing christ. This is precisely why I write this fucking blog; I keep hoping, against all reason, that some parent somewhere will read it and think “Oh! Wow. Maybe I should try to imbue my son with some sense of T & B. And while I’m at it, maybe I should become a feminist.”
She’s a woman in a patriarchy. She really shouldn’t be out in public, let alone thinking she has the right to drink at a party where there are men without relegating herself to the slut class.
“This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.â€
Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.
“jesus god what made her think she should be sorry?”
A crime has been committed so someone needs to take the blame. As rapists are never to blame it falls on the victim to accept responsibility. That’s why everybody blames the victim too, at some level they know something terrible has happened, but they can’t quite bring themselves to blame men for their crimes against women, so the outrage gets conveniently transferred to the victims.
delphyne nails it, as usual.
Delphyne, it’s called shame, and all survivors of sexual assault carry it (myself included).
Me too lawbitch. I’m questioning why it happens. It’s just my own theory, but I think if communities were genuinely outraged about rape and supportive to victims that victims would find it easier (not easy though) to recover and not to blame ourselves. I mean if we can’t blame the rapist, it must be our fault, right? It’s the stinkiest of stinky dynamics.
Reports like these make me want to commit violent acts against men. Hit them, beat them, kill them.
Yeah, yeah, I know it solves nothing, I guess.
sounds like you sure do buy in to the way the media twists a case in a girls direction…ever thought about what happened before the girl went in that roo…what she was doing…..saying….acting….perhaps when the truthful story comes out after all this dies down you will lower your chin a bit and look in the mirror…..the media is not the accurate source of info. they were not there in that room…i was….justice has been served
This is completely beyond the fucking pale. Insufficient evidence??? I was apparently under the mistaken impression that eyewitness accounts were still admissable in court and that even our present batch of misogynist fuckwits in the legal system included “Where a person is prevented from resisting by any intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the
accused (taken directly from the California Penal Code),” in their definition of rape. Absolutely nauseating. There should be violent vigilantes for this kind of situation.
I don’t know why I’m so surprised, really. Even community college athletes are obviously worth far more to the community than some stupid, drunken slut, right? After all, where would we be as a country if we let a little thing like a brutal gang rape interfere with the capacity of witless virile evolutionary events to hit leather wrapped spheres with crude phallic objects, to the adoration of thousands (okay, probably closer to dozens; this is community college, after all) of equally witless but less virile asshats with nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon? Fuck all these people.
I’ve been working on shame. Shame has a psychological function. Shame allows the victim to believe that she had control over her own life.
In my case, I suffered sexual abuse as a child. I clearly understand on an intellectual level that I was in no way responsible. I *needed* to feel like I had some control over my own body, even when that control did not exist. As an adult, I’ve even thought that it was my fault for not telling. My DH called me on that and reminded me that I would have been beaten for telling the truth. He is absolutely right. I did what I had to do to survive.
Well, well, well. ‘De anza player’, since you were there, by all means enlighten the group. We await ‘the truthful story’ with bated breath.
Just kidding! Banned!
re kate.
“Reports like these make me want to commit violent acts against men. Hit them, beat them, kill them.
Yeah, yeah, I know it solves nothing, I guess.”
I think most sane people feel like that after reading new like this; at least a little bit. logic comes in and reminds you that you’d get arrested and it doesn’t change the fact that it happened.
De Anza rape apologist,
ever thought about what happened before the girl went in that roo…what she was doing…..saying….acting…”
No, because it’s entirely irrelevant to what they (you?) did to her.
“I’d ask her why she chose to put us and herself through so much. My only thought is I hope that she learned a lot, as well as about herself, in the last two months.â€
Gang rape lovingly recast as an exercise in self-for the victim. How well our young have absorbed the art of spin and denial from our leaders, media and corporations.
“I’d ask her why she chose to put us and herself through so much. My only thought is I hope that she learned a lot, as well as about herself, in the last two months.â€
Gang rape lovingly recast as an exercise in self-improvement for the victim. How well our young have absorbed the art of spin and denial from our leaders, media and corporations.
Does anyone have the DA’s Phone Number and address? When Shaquanda Cotton was sentenced to 7 years in prison (at the age of 14), people literally harassed the judge until she was free. Sharpton didn’t even get a chance to protest. Perhaps we can start a similar movement.
I always get chills when I see some talking head (e.g. Scott Herhold) blithely questioning the “credibility of the victim herself” in a rape case. In the Duke scandal, the media gleefully reported that the victim had once had a nervous breakdown, so could not be trusted. (She was also a sex worker–enough said!) I suffer from depression, so it was too easy to imagine myself reporting an assault and having no one believe a word I said.
In the De Anza case, not only the victim herself, but her two rescuers insist a rape occurred! This suggests an unpleasant thought experiment: would the DA prosecute the case if the rescuers/eyewitnesses were male and not female? I probably don’t want to know the answer.
“How well our young have absorbed the art of spin and denial from our leaders, media and corporations.”
And how poorly they have absorbed grammar.
“Justice” will begin being served when some savvy lawyer convinces her to sue all their asses.
I doubt that the victim wants more attention. Perhaps you didn’t notice the discussion of shame?
Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse, I discover this about the “bondage webmaster.”
http://news.com.com/Police Blotter Bondage Webmaster fights abuse conviction/2100-1030_3-6185920.html?tag=html.alert.comp
I
Savage morons like the DeAnza rapists, everyone at the party who was aware of the rape(except for those three courageous girls), Judge Carr, and the Mercury people are the reason I hate this world. They’re the reason why I dread staying alone in a room with men. The reason why, the two times I allowed myself the luxury of getting drunk, I checked my clothes multiple times afterwards for signs of somebody messing with it and interrogated all my friends if they had been with me at all times(I suffer from blackouts when I get drunk, even a little drunk). They’re the reason why, even after being reassured by my female friends that they never left my side, I suffered from retroactive paranoia for months after each of those drunken experiences. And hated myself for allowing the drunkenness to happen. Hated myself, even though both times I got drunk accidentally - cause I was a 15-year-old kid who didn’t know her limit. Hated myself, despite the fact that everyone around me was drunk too. The fear. The guilt. It was unbearable. Still is, when I remember it. If I had actually gotten raped, I don’t know how I would have survived the guilt. I know there would have been no reason for me to feel gulty, but I also know that I still would. And I also know that I would have never, ever reported it. Not in a world like this. IBTP.
Ooops. Read about it here:
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/
I just don’t know what evidence anyone needs of how much people hate women as a group. I am so exhausted with being called “shrill,” “strident,” “angry,” and “overreactive” about feminism and women’s lot in life. Exactly what other option besides anger does one have? Sorrow and despair, I guess.
I have two sons and I want to go upstairs right now and scream at them pre-emptively that women are NOT their personal sexual receptacles.
Of course, since they’re 6 & 10 years old, they will have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.
But believe me, by the time the oldest one is 12, he will know. In the bluntest terms possible.
And really, the motivation, the hatred, the attitude, the entire sickening culture behind this and other similar events: how far are we, really, from a society that practices “honor” killings?
Not far, I think. Not far at all.
Well, I’m left speechless and crying. I feel gutted for this poor girl, and terrified that my 13 year old daughter could someday be in the same situation. I can only hope that my time here at IBTP (long time lurker, infrequent commentor) has enabled me to instill in her the values we need for the revolution!
Luckily, De Anza college has a workshop on a timely topic.
http://www.deanza.edu/eventscalendar/main.php?view=event&eventid=1178210887823
ever thought about what happened before the girl went in that roo…what she was doing…..saying….acting….perhaps when the truthful story comes out after all this dies down you will lower your chin a bit and look in the mirror
De anza player, it’s high time YOU looked in the mirror. Where did this child get the alcohol which made her act in a way that you felt justified men having sex with a nearly comotose child?
Just because so many other men are no better than you doesn’t excuse you.
If you and your buddies had killed her through alcohol poisoning could you live with yourself so easily? She didn’t just happen to have alcohol in her system. Her vomitting may have saved her life. We both know the alcohol was your weapon of choice used with premeditation. You as a group used it as bait and you used it as a weapon of incapacitation. You did what you did because you could and because you wanted to. If you had sex with her you are a rapist, if you watched or stood guard you aided and abetted a felony whether you are ever convicted or not.
Anything else is just bullshit.
But if you looked at yourself in a mirror without the bullshit, you’d see more than is comfortable seeing. Denial and victim blaming are easier and those who go for the rape are all about taking the easy way no matter who it hurts as long as it isn’t you.
SusanM said what I was on my way down here to say. Even if that girl walked in the room, kicked off her pants. laid spread-eagled on the bed and offered to take all comers, the boys in the room are in the wrong and ought to pay for it. The fact that she was drunk, barely conscious, and regurgitating the contents of her stomach will only serve to render void and null any release they had the girl sign.
What, no release?
Surely the owner of the home in which the party took place has a duty of care toward those in attendance, particularly minors, even more particularly minors who have consumed alcohol on the premises. If bartenders and bar owners can be sued for accidents their patrons cause after consuming alcohol in their establishment, surely the host is liable for the harm that befell this girl, regardless of whether at any point she actually agreed to have sex. Bar patrons agree to consume alcohol, and voluntarily get in their cars and drive, and they are typically not minors, nor semi-conscious when they leave the bar.
She should expect fair compensation for the host’s negligence. His house, for a start.
Those two young ladies in the linked article above (badkitty’s link) need to be on a witness stand in front a jury, and soon, or pretty much everybody, elected or otherwise, in that law enforcement community needs to be looking for a new job. Kwillz has approximately the right idea.
I’m not that far away. For reasons that should be obvious, I’ll have to wait for the media attention to die down a bit. After that, I’ll see what I can do. It will be my pleasure.
Take care of that sick S&M bastard while you’re at it.
tinfoil hattie,
you would be surprised how patriarchy-brainwashed little boys can be. A few days ago I was walking past an elementary school when suddenly these two ten-year-olds(at best) run up to me and grab my butt, and then proceed to slap it, calling me a dirty whore. No, I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.
Besides, it’s enough to remember my own elementary school days. The first mysogynist sexual verbal assaults by my male classmates started in the first grade. From then on, it only got worse. But I was lucky - my class was normal, at least measured by patriarchy’s standards. I observed so many other girls throughout elementary school going through HELL, starting wt roughly the age of 11. For many of those girls having their classmates poke their crotch with umbrella or squeeze their breast painfully were routine events.
So, if I were you I’d probably speak to the older boy about it. I’m not trying to tell you how to be a parent or anything. I’ve just seen too much shit inflicted upon little girls in my life.
“Just kidding! Banned!”
And the gratitude flows like a tinkly little mountain creek: cool, clear and full of trout.
Not such a great metaphor, perhaps. But heartfelt.
DA Dolores Carr: “It’s interesting that during the election some questioned whether I could be independent from law enforcement. This is an indication the answer is yes.”
I found this chilling. Carr seems as concerned with this point as with anything else. This was her test case, exploited for political gain. May it come back to bite her in the butt.
May 24th: Rainbow Girl suffers rage-induced brain anyeurism.
A woman who was on the scene says:
“The people in the room obviously were cheering the guys on or something like that. But I didn’t think of it as a rape situation.â€
For fuck sake this makes me sick to my core. I realize that the patriarchy can poison the minds of women as much as men, but it still infuriates me when women will take the side of men over that of women. Women are so used to excusing and explaining and making up for men, it becomes second nature. They can tell themselves complete lies to keep their fairytales intact.
The fact that three female soccer players were the ones who got the girl out is the only reason I have any hope at all. These women did the right thing and their story needs to be heard by every woman who hears the rest of it.
All women must be en-couraged [given the courage] to do this any time there’s any question at all about a situation. Much of this shit we can’t do anything about because we’re not present, but sometimes we can do something, sometimes we can intervene, sometimes women have the chance raise hell in the moment to save each other. Doing nothing in that situation shouldn’t be an option that a decent human being would take and then smirk about it later.
Yes, men hate us and I don’t expect any better of them than this, but a woman sitting idly by while another woman is brutalized in the next room is unforgivable.
Porn tells them this is how to be Artemis.
This reminds me of an acquaintance of mine from high school choir. She was at a party and a group of boys (I think there may have been three of them) raped her and videotaped it. I didn’t know her well; I think she was two or three years younger than me, although when we had been children I had used to babysit her little sister sometimes.
I remember the trial taking a long-ass time, not being in the media at all, and the rapists getting a really light sentence–possibly probation. I think they were on the baseball team, in fact, although they may have been cross country/track and field boys.
I was only seventeen that year. One of the rapists had been in my social studies class in the seventh grade, and I remember thinking I had thought he seemed like a decent guy and resolving never to assume that again.
Lucija,
WTF??? GRABBED YOUR ASS AND CALLED YOU — I have no words.
And good point. My sister started being molested in school at age 10 — boys would prod her very large breasts and say, “Who’s Gumby’s pal? POKEY!” while the teacher sat there, oblivious.
I will find a way to talk to my older son about this. I have hope for him, because once when I pointed out some (relatively) innocuous patriarchal bullshit, he said, “If I were a girl I’d be the most bitter feminist in the world.” After I patted him on the back I said, “You don’t have to be a girl to be a bitter feminist.”
But enlightening my already-pretty-decent son feels like putting out a fire with a watering can. What good will it do against this mountain of vicious rage against women?
Here’s a another side of the shame issue:
There are cases of childhood abuse where the child actually feels a degree of physical pleasure during the abuse episodes.
The child seeks to reconcile this physical sensation with the knowledge that what is being experienced is wrong, unwelcomed, and repulsive. The result is deep shame.
The body has its own responses to physical stimulation which may or may not reflect a person’s will, desire, or intention. The fact of the victim’s possible experience of physical pleasure can never justify the rape or abuse.
Thus, the men who claim “oh, she gets into it once we got going” as a justification of force are in fact still guilty of rape, just as the pedophile who abuses a child without causing physical pain is still guilty of sexual assault.
For a child, the experience of physical pleasure as a result of abuse is profoundly, insidiously damaging, as it causes extreme confusion, self-doubt, self-blame and abiding shame which can be pervasive and permanent.
So many forms of shame heaped on innocent women and children.
I’d love to shove the rapists’ face in it. I join the commenters here who are sickened, enraged and fed up.
tinfoil hattie: “And really, the motivation, the hatred, the attitude, the entire sickening culture behind this and other similar events: how far are we, really, from a society that practices “honor†killings? Not far, I think. Not far at all.”
Absolutely right! Patriarchy infests the whole globe. There are different varieties of this infestation in different parts of the world, which, on the surface, look completely different. But if you look closer, you see that it’s the same damn thing. Men hate us, and if they know they can get away with it, they will destroy us.
I only hope that women in the US will be rioting in the streets. None of this peace vigil stuff. They need to feel threatened.
Sorry, just to clarify: When I said “they should feel threatened” I meant anyone complicit with this rape.
Twisty and others: it is through this blog that I have found the courage to confront my own situation–that the fact that one reason I have been unhappy for so long is that I accepted my position in the patriarchy from the patriarchy. Your ability to clarify and lift the veil from the eyes is truly important. And freeing. Please don’t ever doubt that.
And that goes to all the blamers as well. I have learned more from all of you than I have in long years of life lived by the rule of shame.
And I thank you every day.
Kwillz asked about the contact information for the DA, Dolores Carr. Here you go:
Dolores Carr
70 West Hedding St.
San Jose, CA 95110
(408) 299-3099
Also, I found another number for her office: (408)299-7500. I called this number and left an irate message. You just have to wait through a very long message in many languages (yay multilingualism!) before you hear the beep.
If you happen to live in Santa Clara county (hi neighbor), make sure you mention that you are a constituent and will remember this case the next time she runs for public office. Your call will make an even bigger impact if you leave your address and ask for a written response to your concerns.
Happy dialing!
I’m sure that someone has already gotten around to this, but contact information for DA Dolores Carr is as follows:
Office of the District Attorney
70 West Hedding Street, West Wing
San Jose, CA 95110
Phone: (408) 299-7400
Email: webmaster@da.co.santa-clara.ca.us
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Perhaps the title of this thread could be altered a bit (not to correct Her TF):
“Men hate *really* drunk teenage girls”–
because nothing is worse than the sexually assaulted victim being so boozed she cannot even mutter her NeverEffingEver-consent, nor kick or scream or any of that other hot stuff women do.
Or maybe it’s just that the De Anza players have not finished reading their copy of “How to Perpetuate the Rape Culture” just yet. Because it’s a cardinal rule in Rape Culture that if one’s victim is not tearing in defense of her natural-bornless-unright that the Rapist is not going to reap the benefits of a full-fledged rape fantasy (insert “thought police” defense here). Also in said book is -2 pts for using a roofie and -10 if your fellow rapists are not surrounding you in chants of glory.
Twisty:
You succeeded. So, there’s one.
Once the Duke guys were able to get away with rape, as Amanda says, gang rape became legal.
I’m sorry but I have not had time to read all the comments just yet as I have a very huge final at 8 in the morning tomorrow.
But I just want to say that I saw this on the local news this morning (I live in San Francisco so I am in the Bay Area so perhaps this is getting more coverage.)
And they had an in depth interview with the two girls who took the raped and battered victim to the hospital.
It was absolutely horrifying. I actually started crying. I am starting to cry again right now with the pure rage I am feeling. This is completely outrageous. Nay, beyond outrageous. It is appalling and disgusting. In fact there are no words that can accurately portray how disgusting this is. I am so tired of this sh*t.
Since I will be done with school tomorrow I am going to write a letter to the DA. When I saw the DA was a woman I was even sicker in a way.
I am glad you posted this twisty. This is crazy. If there is going to be any organized protesting for this, you will bet your patoot I will be there yelling my head off. And I don’t usually go to demonstrations. In fact if anyone in the Bay Area wants to start one, please let me know.
So much of what is wrong with the world in one single case.
I just noted this on another thread, but it seems appropriate to reiterate it here: rape and its attendant hate crimes are male terrorism against women. The principal victim in this case is the 17-year-old, but the act doesn’t end with her. When some men do this, they are, consciously I think, sending a message to all the women in the world, which is exactly the same message sent by all terrorist organizations to their targets: It could be you next. Be afraid.
Even were this not the case, we would all need to support this woman as a victim of a shocking miscarriage of justice. But the reality of this situation is that we are all, to a degree, victims of it. We are all scared reading it, for ourselves, for our sisters, for our daughters, for our lovers. Not just because we know it can and will happen again, but because we know that, if it happens, there is no possibility of justice. In the last couple of thousand years, we haven’t moved on at all from the Old Testament definition of rape: that if a woman is raped in a town and is not heard to cry out, it is she that must be punished.
We are all victims of the campaign of male terrorism against women, and this DA has just made herself a supporter and abetter of terrorist activities. Until rape, its concomitant crimes and those who support or abet it are treated exactly like other forms of terrorism, the patriarchy will endure.
This is the front line.
“I’ve been working on shame. Shame has a psychological function. Shame allows the victim to believe that she had control over her own life.
In my case, I suffered sexual abuse as a child. I clearly understand on an intellectual level that I was in no way responsible. I *needed* to feel like I had some control over my own body, even when that control did not exist. As an adult, I’ve even thought that it was my fault for not telling. My DH called me on that and reminded me that I would have been beaten for telling the truth. He is absolutely right. I did what I had to do to survive.”
This is an interesting thing, one I’ve never heard before, I personally don’t feel shame, so far as I know, I don’t do guilt. So this is hard for me to get to grips with.
“Wow. Maybe I should try to imbue my son with some sense of T & B.”
What’s T & B?
“But enlightening my already-pretty-decent son feels like putting out a fire with a watering can. What good will it do against this mountain of vicious rage against women?”
Every little helps. I can’t imagine thinking “I won’t tell this person important things”.
“Yes, men hate us and I don’t expect any better of them than this, but a woman sitting idly by while another woman is brutalized in the next room is unforgivable.”
Well, I do. I expect men to be non-rights-violating people, which includes sticking up for other people when your body is not threatened by doing so. I agree that women should do as above too, but I’m not letting men off the hook.
Hmm. I hadn’t read the earlier Herhold piece, just the one yesterday where he talked to the young women who intervened, and I thought it was a pretty good column. Maybe talking to the witnesses convinced him of the error of his ways?
Depressing as the whole thing is, I was heartened by the actions of the three young women. I must confess, on the topic of sports, that it did cross my mind that being on a soccer team together might have helped them forge the confidence and unity with which they confronted the rapists. And I was on the “sports, BAH” side of the recent “women and sports” kerfaffle at feministe.
I also have an optimistic view of the Sherriff’s comments. While she didn’t name the ‘individuals’, she said something to the effect of “and if they want to sue me for libel, bring it on!” which I fondly imagine to mean she is plotting to lure them into a civil case against her, wherein the lesser burden of proof and non-interference of scaredy-cat DAs will allow her to expose them to the world as rapists. That’s my pretty, Machiavellian little dream.
RadFemHedonist:
Truth & Beauty.
This has nothing to do with sports. I blame the patriarchy.
You misread me, RadFemHedonist. Never did I say that the thought “I won’t teach this person important things” runs through my brain. I expressed my despair and rage through metaphor.
Also, many people suffer from shame and guilt for not stopping their abuse, for sometimes feeling physical pleasure during the abuse, for being a bad girl who deserved the abuse, etc. You have really never heard of sexual and physical abuse victims feeling shame and guilt?
Bubba’s Nightmare: “You succeeded. So, there’s one. ”
Woot! I can retire!
This De Anza case reminds me of statistic I read a few years ago: A survey of college males found that 53% of them would rape a woman if they could get away with. In another study, 60% of the male participants indicated that it was likely that they would rape, if they could get away with it.
Here’s the source:
http://www.dianarussell.com/menrape.html
This has everything to do with sports. Everything. Men are revered for playing sports. Male athletes are little demi-gods who can do no wrong.
I’ve come to realize that I no longer consider myself part of society. I cannot and will not participate in the fucked-up-riarchy any more than I have to. I see myself as an outsider, looking into this fishbowl of our society/culture. I feel completely alienated. Everything, everywhere I look is produced for, predicated on, women-hating.
In my class this morning, during a discussion of how Angela Carter challenges gender in her book The Passion of New Eve, no one else seemed capable of understanding the feminist basis of the text. They thought it was “gross,”–but no one questioned why it so disturbed them. My feminist comments were received with looks of doubt and ’she’s crazy’. It blows my mind that they can’t see it. (Especially since Carter does an amazing job of pointing it all out.)
Cases like the De Anza one make me wish we could force sex-change operations on men, as Carter does in her narrative, with all of the accompanying plastic surgery. Then spin them around and push them off, randomly, into the patri-sphere and see how they fare as the “fairer” sex. It wouldn’t be long til we’d here them cry: rape! Gang rape! And they’d, naively, expect the rest of us to listen.
I honestly feel that the only way (the majority of) men will ever gain empathy for women is if they experience what women do. Obviously, forcing sex-changes isn’t a realistic or humane solution (but which of histories social ’solutions’ really have been, especially in terms of women and children?) Still. Only when patriarchy starts to negatively effect men more than it positively does will we ever see the light at the end of the patriarchal tunnel.
Sigh.
This situation makes me physically ache; theres a pain in my chest and a lump in my throat. I feel so freaking powerless.
Nothing short of a total revolution will do.
Thanks for this overview, Twisty.
I’m appropriately pissed off.
God help any sporto who crosses my path today.
Fuckers.
“This situation makes me physically ache; theres a pain in my chest and a lump in my throat. I feel so freaking powerless. ”
Right there with you. I could barely sleep last night. The evil and hate is just too much.
It’s times like this where being an atheist seems almost wrong. How I would love to be able to believe in hell for monsters like this, right now.
But, I can’t. If justice is not served in this life it is never served.
Tinfoil Hattie,
I have a 3 year old boy and am already watching him like a hawk. “Bitter feminist” I love it. I hope my kid comes up with that. I’ll make sure to enable as much as I can.
Any sportos cross my path today will probably get treated to a diatribe from a grown up Bitter Feminist.
Catherine Martell: “When some men do this, they are, consciously I think, sending a message to all the women in the world, which is exactly the same message sent by all terrorist organizations to their targets: It could be you next. Be afraid.”
If I nod my head any more vigorously I’ll get whiplash. The entire comment just cuts to the core. Beyond that, I’m having a hard time sorting through the emotional avalanche to come up with something coherent and grammatically correct. There is one thing I have to say above all else, so I’ll throw caution to the wind:
Thank you, commenters (sans rape apologist shitwad). I was in a similar situation. While I eventually stopped blaming myself in even the smallest way, the sting never goes away. Therefore, I for one can never hear these sorts of comments enough, or for too long. I wish I had heard them at the time, if only just one of them. So, it matters. It matters to me, to this 17 year-old, to the women who came to her aid and who are speaking out about it and to who knows how many others. Thank you.
Yeah, I am sleepless too. I went to sleep thinking about this and woke up thinking about this and I can’t stop thinking about this. And it increases my strong and immediate distrust of “sportos” — what a great term.
And I forgot to add, what my son really said was, “I would be the most CYNICAL, bitter feminst ever” — I loved the cynical part too.
I feel heartsick and soul-sick and I am going away to a river retreat for the weekend with my husband, and I can’t help but feel that in so doing, I am betraying everyone. Because I should be shouting in the streets until I’m hoarse about this.
The older I get, the more I despair.
Thank goddess for Twisty and her site and all the commenters here. Except that D’Anza rape apologist upthread.
Fuck. I posted the following on Feministe back in April:
The response I got, of course, was that I was full of shit; that the only message to prosecutors was to do their job properly, that this case wouldn’t have a chilling effect on rape prosecutions, and that an honest DA would have nothing to fear.
But I did think it’d take longer than six weeks to be proven right.
I’m a learning lurker here. My daughter is 2 1/2 years old and to me it seems that truth and beauty are her natural element; I’ve never seen anyone with such joy for life. Reading this blog, I get more and more angry and frightened by a world bound by patriarchy — which I had perceived, but not clearly, before — that is hell-bent on crushing that joy out of her because it views her essentially as an object rather than a human being. I’ve started to notice how patterns of dominance and submission are taught to children all the time. I’ve also noticed how adults simply take such things for granted and chalk up the most artificial arrangements as “natural”. For what it’s worth, Twisty, you’ve helped open my eyes.
The thing that really makes me see red is that under the Twisty Law, this wouldn’t have happened. Or if it had happened, if the sick creeps had still gone ahead and stuck their dicks into that poor drunk girl, there would be no question as to their getting a prison sentence.
And yet in that thread, there were quite a few people sitting back in their armchairs and nitpicking Twisty’s suggestion. And so many cries of dear me, what about the men? And all the while sick shit like this is actually happening to real living women.
Yes indeed. Better that hundreds of flesh-and-blood women are raped and receive no justice or satisfaction than one hypothetical innocent man be accused of rape. That’s how far the benefits of society are tilted in men’s favor. One completely imaginary man is more valuble than any living woman. Think about that and throw up.
This is one of those times when I’d like vengeance, as chances for justice seem slim.
Thanks for the contact info. I’ll be sure to pass this around.
I know I’m going to make myself unpopular with this comment, but it has been niggling at me since participating in the Marriott Ghetto thread. There is a divide between feminists who want liberation and those who’d rather wish on a star for male benevolence. Women who continue to cater to, birth, and raise men, in expectation of the miracle of male humanity (as in humane), act in direct counterproductivity to the well-being of the women and girls whose only real chance for salvation is separatism. I mean, it’s great that some women have lived charmed enough lives that they’re willing to put up with the possibility (which most definitely is more remote in some places than others) of male violence, but the fact of the matter is, in certain locations and for certain classes of women, the existence of men, at all, guarantees abuse. And I’m not just talking about the kind of abuse that is pressure to wear high heels or veils, either.
Most heterosocial women are willing to acknowledge this conflict even if they aren’t willing to adapt their lives accordingly. I can appreciate why they wouldn’t be. Maybe they aren’t college-aged women in a college town, or prostitutes, or 9-year-old girls in Afghanistan, so their risk of being assaulted for living while female might not be cause for too much urgency, and certainly not cause to deny themselves the pleasure of male contact. Like most instances of nonchalance, it basically comes down to privilege.
But, really, is a thread about one of the many, many unprosecuted gang rapes that happen in this country the most tactful place to talk about how many males (potential [gang] rapists, yes) you’ve inflicted on girls and women and are currently raising, under what some feminists (Lorde, for one) would call delusions of grandeur? I mean, I know every mother of a male child (or female, for that matter) thinks she’ll do a better job than the women who came before her, but this just seems like a really awful forum in which to express such unknowables. If Lorde is correct, such women are fooling themselves anyway, in addition to cavalierly adding to the horde.
Y’all always make me nervous when you talk about making your sons or daughters into radfeminists. Anything that had been shoved down my throat when I was young would have backfired. I did not like being preached to.
Myself, I noticed gender disparity from a young age. I could never figure out why everyone referred to insects and other animals of indeterminate sex as “he,” and I would ask, “How do you know it’s a he?” Also, being raised to be a Mormon person, I noticed in the Book of Mormon such lines as “And then the Nephites, with their wives and their children…,” and I would say, “But aren’t the wives and children Nephites too?” I sensed an anti-female stance in all of it, and I was not one to put up with being passed over.
justicewalks: Should women who have male offspring just drown them at birth, then? What about those of us who didn’t do that, and whose sons, 25 years later, have (just imagine!) turned out to be sweet, loving, decent, caring—dare I say it? humane—individuals? Shall I just take him out back now and shoot him, even though, as far as I know, he’s never raped anyone, as part of a gang or otherwise?
I blame the patriarchy, yes, but specifically, I blame the porn. Gang rape has become so common in porn, that you can put ten men in a room and not one of them will stop it from happening.
When I was the age of these boys, there was no such thing as readily-available, widely-disseminated, socially accepted, internet-accessable, normal everyday boring vanilla gang rape porn.
Back when porn was just becoming legal, the idea that gang rape porn would become one of the standard normal kinds of porn found everywhere, in every bedroom, was inconceivable.
Pretend, for a minute, that there is no such concept as feminism or women’s rights and that it’s a man’s world and that’s OK. How on earth does it still follow that it’s OK to gang rape teenage girls? Because it’s a common thing that happens every day - in PORNOGRAPHY.
This is why I would do anything to ban pornography. Bring on the god bags, if they’ll help, fine. Whatever it takes.
I’m still freaking out. I’ve forwarded it to tons of people, although I doubt most people will act. Maybe they will. I just feel like god, what will it take for us to change things? I just feel so helpless. I want to go storm that DA’s office and sit there until something happens. I feel powerless. I’m going to keep calling her and calling her and leaving messages, and emails. But who else to contact other than her? Who is her boss? Who else has power in this situation?
Fucking hell. Bloody fucking hell. My friend just wrote me how “that is so awful and I feel so lucky” I told her she has nothing to feel lucky about-next time she goes to the bar drinking it could happen to her, and there would be nothing she could do about it. But I think her response is typical for feminist woman who don’t actually DO anything about it. That’s awful, glad it’s not me! Glad I have a nice fiance now! Fuckity fuck.
Goblinbee, exactly what should poeple do? Give up? And I hvae to wonder how many gender differences you’d have noticed were they not enforced strictly from birth onward.
To be fair, that’s not quite what they said, Ginmar. She commented on the gender *disparities*. They weren’t referring to artificially enforced gender roles.
That said, one hardly has to force ideology down a child’s throat to make them into radfeminists.
Raising someone to be hardcore, or passionate, or radical, or whichever term you prefer, doesn’t require brainwashing or brutal tactics. The fact that anyong thinks becoming a radfeminist can only be the result of a harsh upbringing, just illustrates the bias against feminism in general.
What Rainbow Girl said could apply to me, too.
(sigh) I have to go outside and hack at the dirt for awhile now.
justice walks,
I didn’t respond on the other thread because I think we have fundamental value differences on some issues and I didn’t think it would be useful to argue about something that clearly neither one of us is going to change our mind about (though if Twisty writes about this, it would be an interesting discussion for this whole community to engage in- so in that sense, I appreciate your bringing it over here). This is particularly so because in my time lurking here and in the short period of time since I’ve been posting here, I have read your words and know them to be well-considered and passionate.
But no matter what our differences in our views of feminism are (and yes, I think men are human beings, and yes, I think no oppression is better than any oppression, and that this is possible– My mind is not going to be changed on this no matter how misguided you might think this position is, just as your mind is not going to change no matter how counterproductive I think your position is), I take exception at your presumptuousness on this thread and the other.
“No, I’d say it’s why you’re not a separatist.” — You don’t get to define me. Again, maybe we’re working from different definitions, but I really did think one of the cornerstones of feminism centers around autonomy. Sure, my views don’t lead me to separatism, but you don’t get to tell me why I am or am not a feminist.
“I mean, it’s great that some women have lived charmed enough lives that they’re willing to put up with the possibility (which most definitely is more remote in some places than others) of male violence, but the fact of the matter is, in certain locations and for certain classes of women, the existence of men, at all, guarantees abuse.” — You don’t know anything about the experience of women on IBTP except for what has been self-disclosed. Nor do you know the genealogy of anyone’s feminist development beyond this blog. Before you start assuming what other people’s privilege is, you might want to ask.
There’s no raising a kid “to be” anything. All you can do is open the door of enlightenment, see that she’s not punished for critical thinking, and let the kid take it from there.
Critical thinking is enough of a rarity these days, Twisty, that for a girl to display it will get her labelled uppity and dangerous. So if I were raising a girl I’d tell her what she’d have to expect.
Ginmar,
And then you’ve got those clueless assholes who swear that if you tell girl children what to expect, you’re only teaching them to be afraid, as if the only danger is a product of our overreactive imaginations, our paranoia that men are out to get us.
justice walks, I tend to think advocating separatism is letting men off too light. It’s saying, oh well, they just can’t help themselves, let’s get out of the situation–instead of listen, assholes, stop abusing women.
They’re human beings too. It’s their responsibility to grow up, get a clue and stop abusing; it’s not our responsibility to prevent them from abusing us.
Meanwhile, they’re the ones who send out those emails that basically say if you’re alone with a man you’ll get raped. And men like those emails because that means women are afraid all the time and that’s easier than having to be nice to women.
On the subject of separatism:
I am a separatist.
Nobody who has not identified as, worked for, lived for, dreamed and experienced the passion of female separatism knows what separatism is, what it’s worth, what it stands for or can define it.
I have been a married mother and heterosexual feminist. (1970). I was a het feminist for less than 6 months before I chucked it for the brilliant separatist energy that was developing in the SF Bay Area st that time.
I do not believe that there is any female collective, other than that imposed on us by male rule and male terrorism.
Ther will never ever ever be any danger of separatist females “forcing” or “luring” a male-loving female into any sort of separatist female space.
I have met females who could be raped and murdered by their own son, and still die loving him and the entire human male population. My mother was one of them.
Those women will stay with males to their dying days (whatever it is they die of).
There may or may not exist the faintest hope that any sort of critical mass of separatist females will coalesce that would at some point effect an actual *shift in the balance of power* between males and females.
If it did coalesce, I can only imagine that it would do so around the prevalence and *increase* in the sorts of atrocities under discussion in this thread.
At this point, I just have to figure not in my lifetime.
But I will leave you with this question:
Why, I wonder, would male-loving females choose to upbraid separatists for wanting to live our own private, or if we are lucky enough to find other separatists, collective lives *apart* from males?
“There’s no raising a kid ‘to be’ anything. All you can do is open the door of enlightenment, see that she’s not punished for critical thinking, and let the kid take it from there.”
I have been ninja’d.
Kids do tend to rebel against any ideology that is forced upon them without alternative, and of course are free to make their own choices (for good or ill) as they grow. Interestingly, however, even the ideologies they ultimately reject wind up informing their value systems for the rest of their lives (I was raised in a Fundamentalist household, and I still occasionally discover some element of that upbringing within my own opinions, no matter how vehemently I despise the thing).
Feminism and other philosophical ideologies based upon reason and compassion are far less likely to be thrown off if taught to children in a way that leaves them free to think critically about the issues. They’re less likely to be rejected because they actually do the kids the honor of allowing them their own brains in the matter.
I was taught about the horrors of racism by my stepfather at the age of seven, and I’ll be forever grateful to him for opening my eyes to how deeply it permeates all aspects of American society. It’s the only thing for which I will ever be grateful to him. The levels of psychological and physical abuse to which my mother, sister, and I were subjected left all of us profoundly fucked up for a long time. But I understood racism at a young age, and was able to recognize and think critically about it. The propositions were based upon reason, and the reason stayed with me, despite the brutality of the messenger.
Tell your children what they need to know. Don’t indoctrinate (I kept my own lessons despite that, not because of it, and your kid’s mileage may vary), but open the door, as Twisty just said. Allow them to engage the problem as their own problem and come up with their own answers, and I think you’ll raise girls who understand the worth they possess and boys who understand that too.