BEFORE DADDY TURNER MADE THE STANFORD RAPE CASE GO VIRAL

"They were both intoxicated"

Those were some of the first words I read in the news regarding Stanford Rape Case, Brock Turner, and the woman he raped. And I knew what these words were supposed to be telling me. I've known ever since I was an over-protected school girl in college that these words are always meant to convey...

"She probably gave consent then forgot."

Really? That picture above isn't even close to what was happening when Brock Turner raped that woman.

warning graphic descriptions beyond this point

Link to Part 1 of this series: BEFORE I BELIEVED IN RAPE CULTURE

1) Turner was hidden behind a dumpster, pumping his hips into an unconscious woman. He shoved something inside her too; hospital staff found dirt inside her.

2) He ran when he knew he'd been seen.

3) He cried after he got caught 

CONCLUSIONS 

A) Brock Turner "buzzed" at best

while
B) the woman was unconscious.

Starting a story with "They were both intoxicated" is the male dominated media's way of enabling RAPE CULTURE

These four words alone move an accused rapist into the relative safety of the "false accusation" zone.

When these four words are spread through the land via newspapers, repeated over and over again online, they generate the intended thoughts in most readers heads: "We will never know what happened. We will have to let him go."  Discussions against this conclusion descend into arguments between those who believe that "false accusations of rape" are just as important and as numerous "rapists who walk away from their crimes of rape."

For those who understand race issues better than gender and sexism issues, and I'm still one of those people too, let me illustrate how derailing and ugly this is:

A person that keeps bringing up
the horror of "false rape accusations"
during a conversation about "rape"

as if these two things are equal
is like
a white person bringing up
the horrors "political correctness" for white people
during a conversation about
the deadliness of systemic racism of POCs*

as if these two things are equal.

Furthermore, bringing up "false accusations" now is like that same white person bringing up political correctness right after a white cop has killed another unarmed black person.  

(POC*- person of color)

The "false accusations of rape" is especially insulting right now as the ratio men who walk away from rape completely unscathed to the men falsely accused is probably 1000 to 1

Of course, most of you know that the statistics say that false rape rate is only 2% but I know it's much, much less than that because women refuse to report rape a lot. I know women that have been raped and never reported it. And I know other women that know women that never reported being raped. I know that I, myself, would refuse to report my own rape and subject myself to being accused of being careless or a slut, via the pattern of the questions, unless I could convince myself of this truth:

If I don't report it, he'll do this to someone else.

And I'm not sure I could convince myself. I'm not sure at all, especially if there weren't witnesses. Hell, after seeing what happened in this case. I'm not sure I'd come forward with a football team worth of witnesses.

I'm not even kidding.

Black social media appears to be turning the story about Brock Turner toward "Well what about black men?" again via "What about men who are falsely accused?" when there were three major decisions in California courts that have essentially communicated the following:

women are nothing

while

white men are everything

So I'm not going to comment on the "false accusation" story that was hunted down and presented as evidence of how black people are treated differently. Even though it's true, there was no reason to hunt that case down to illustrate racism. The other two court cases decided in the same week as this case concern injustices to black women and also happened in the state of California. Black women are black people too. Racism affects us too. It just looks like it doesn't affect us as much because any conversation that centers on women, especially black women, is worth derailing so as to get back to talking about black men. "Say Her Name" shouldn't have been necessary to make sure the Black Lives Matter movement focuses on women too. I can't tell you how upset I was about how few people turned up for Rekia Boyd. Check yourself and see if you have this habit of looking at black men and only black men when race issues arise. I swear most of us don't realize we're doing this:

Whenever something bad happens to a white person, we automatically know if White America has a cold then Black and Browns have the flu. So, in my mind it's legitimate to look for what's happening to black people in the same situation -- and prove the existence of our flu.  

The only question I have is why jump over the issues concerning black women in order to find one where a black man is at the center?

I'll bet a bunch of black people don't know Jasmine Richards or Enietra Washington's name. And Jasmine Richards just made history in a terrible way that's pointing to an ugly future for all black people.

Ignoring the issues of 1/2 of our race is always going to hold us back, I don't care how unconscious and automatic it is. 

Check Yourself.  It's not a slam. Just Check Yourself. We all have to do it sometimes.

More on the three cases to come

IN THE MEANTIME, A joke that's no joke