Posts Written by maria

Don’t get drunk or you could get raped: What do we tell our daughters after Steubenville?

By now we all know the horrific details of how they moved her limp and ravaged body from party to party, how they tweeted and texted, recorded and uploaded, and, how in graphic detail, they described to their friends what they were doing to the girl who was “like dead.” We also know that in the morning, Trent Mays, fearing he would be caught, called the girl’s father and explained, “That it was all a misunderstanding. I just took care of your daughter when she was drunk and made sure she was safe.” Then he texted his friends and asked for “as much help as [he] could get.” After that, he probably went home and passed out, secure in his thinking that he was a part of the invincible Big Red football team and that his coach, who had already seen the video and said nothing, would make it okay.

While these particular events read like a cyber-horror novel, the truth is that what happened to Jane Doe, as she’s come to be known, occurs with alarmingly regularity in the United States—every 1.3 minutes a girl is raped. We just don’t hear about it, because most rapists don’t stop to send text messages. But, there is something about this event, like the December rape in New Delhi, that is different, something that goes beyond the sheer stupidity of rapists tweeting their hatred for this unresponsive girl. Perhaps, it was the complete lack of empathy ...