March 19, 2013 - I should have known when I said I'd be light on commentary this week that I'd have a lot to say at least the following day.
First up, let's start with today's comic. Technically having sex with someone who's been having sex with someone you know takes care of herself (like Star presumably knows about Val) is probably safer than sex with a total stranger, but this can overlook emotional consequences. Of course Star's generally oblivious to other people's emotions or at least pretends to be, so maybe this isn't a big deal to her.
Meanwhile there's a petition asking that CNN apologize for its coverage of the Steubenville rape trial. I've shied away from this case mostly because I feel the reporting of it has been extremely unprofessional on both sides, making me uncomfortable to link to any source because I felt the coverage was too biased one way or another. Before the outcome of the trial, it's important to treat all alleged criminals as presumed innocent, even (and perhaps especially) when there's overwhelming evidence of their guilt (as there was in this case). This way if they are found not guilty they can more easily reenter society without the shadow of condemnation hanging over them. This does put a lot of faith in the court system though, which isn't always right or fair, but our justice system is structured to allow the court to make the final ruling in legal matters and leaping to conclusions before hearing all sides of an argument can have dangerous consequences.
This doesn't mean that if someone is found not guilty that a crime did not occur or was not perpetrated by the alleged suspect, just that there was insufficient evidence and exposes a basic failure of finding evidence in such situations. The amount of evidence released to the public in the Steubenville case was somewhat ambiguous in my opinion. Though I've heard of other pictures, the only one I saw was one of the victim being carried by her wrists and ankles, which clearly demonstrates a lack of consent regarding anything that happened to her that night, but it doesn't actually show any wrongdoing. Other evidence included eye-witness testimony from people whose credibility I don't know. It all looked in line with the final verdict to me, but I never saw all the evidence (nor do I want to) and didn't want to commit to an opinion lest I be proven wrong.
Not guilty does not mean innocent. Instead it highlights the tricky necessity of having sufficient evidence to prove wrongdoing. I believe that evidence did exist in this case (and the final verdict validates that), but it is one of the major problems with the reporting of rape in this country and across the world. Without other witnesses and limited physical evidence, sexual assault can very quickly become an argument between he said, she said, which often does result in not guilty verdicts because the court's job is to prove guilt not innocence.
The solutions to such a situation are to foster strong relationships with others that validate that such actions would or would not be in character under a given circumstance. If you tell a friend with honesty your attitudes regarding sex, suddenly you can have an extra witness should something terrible occur. More importantly it can hopefully give you someone to turn to who can help overcome any such trauma and not let such a situation overwhelm you.
The biggest outrage to take away from the Steubenville tragedy is the amount of support the community (and now news organizations) seemed to have for the criminals and not the victim. I'm not advocating throwing the criminals to the wolves (though keeping a safe distance is probably better than outright supporting them), but when it seemed that this was happening to the victim, something is very wrong. Until the outcome of the trial was decided both parties should have been treated more or less equally, at least by people not close to the situation (which in my opinion includes keeping the names of the suspects anonymous, if that action was taken, suddenly so much of the problematic news coverage of this event disappears and we'd just be left with facts, which i think is a good thing). A major problem with this case though was that much of the community was closer to the perpetrators than the victim, and that brings to light questions about favoritism and special privileges. Did these boys believe they were above the law and what led them to such a belief?
Just because you believe something, doesn't make it right, and though their actions are disgusting and the law stipulates that they constitute rape, the perpetrators may not have even been aware that that was what their actions amounted to.
More needs to be done to educate what exactly rape is. I've talked before about the awesomeness of the "don't be that guy" campaign in Canada, and how well it seems to be working. In the United States I think we have this huge misconception that rape is something that only occurs in dark alleys between strangers. The truth is that it usually involves an acquaintance, probably a guy who can't seem to understand that rape between two people that know each other is still rape (like say the events in Steubenville). The sad thing is the guy walking a girl home to protect her from strangers in alleys is more likely to commit rape than a stranger in an alley (strangers are probably too busy buying drugs in said alley anyway :-/).
Meanwhile this problem isn't just in the United States. For example, India's still having massive problems over there. And yes, the source on that story is CNN. :-/
It'd be nice to have a more professional news organization in the US than what happened with this case.
*sigh*
-D
First up, let's start with today's comic. Technically having sex with someone who's been having sex with someone you know takes care of herself (like Star presumably knows about Val) is probably safer than sex with a total stranger, but this can overlook emotional consequences. Of course Star's generally oblivious to other people's emotions or at least pretends to be, so maybe this isn't a big deal to her.
Meanwhile there's a petition asking that CNN apologize for its coverage of the Steubenville rape trial. I've shied away from this case mostly because I feel the reporting of it has been extremely unprofessional on both sides, making me uncomfortable to link to any source because I felt the coverage was too biased one way or another. Before the outcome of the trial, it's important to treat all alleged criminals as presumed innocent, even (and perhaps especially) when there's overwhelming evidence of their guilt (as there was in this case). This way if they are found not guilty they can more easily reenter society without the shadow of condemnation hanging over them. This does put a lot of faith in the court system though, which isn't always right or fair, but our justice system is structured to allow the court to make the final ruling in legal matters and leaping to conclusions before hearing all sides of an argument can have dangerous consequences.
This doesn't mean that if someone is found not guilty that a crime did not occur or was not perpetrated by the alleged suspect, just that there was insufficient evidence and exposes a basic failure of finding evidence in such situations. The amount of evidence released to the public in the Steubenville case was somewhat ambiguous in my opinion. Though I've heard of other pictures, the only one I saw was one of the victim being carried by her wrists and ankles, which clearly demonstrates a lack of consent regarding anything that happened to her that night, but it doesn't actually show any wrongdoing. Other evidence included eye-witness testimony from people whose credibility I don't know. It all looked in line with the final verdict to me, but I never saw all the evidence (nor do I want to) and didn't want to commit to an opinion lest I be proven wrong.
Not guilty does not mean innocent. Instead it highlights the tricky necessity of having sufficient evidence to prove wrongdoing. I believe that evidence did exist in this case (and the final verdict validates that), but it is one of the major problems with the reporting of rape in this country and across the world. Without other witnesses and limited physical evidence, sexual assault can very quickly become an argument between he said, she said, which often does result in not guilty verdicts because the court's job is to prove guilt not innocence.
The solutions to such a situation are to foster strong relationships with others that validate that such actions would or would not be in character under a given circumstance. If you tell a friend with honesty your attitudes regarding sex, suddenly you can have an extra witness should something terrible occur. More importantly it can hopefully give you someone to turn to who can help overcome any such trauma and not let such a situation overwhelm you.
The biggest outrage to take away from the Steubenville tragedy is the amount of support the community (and now news organizations) seemed to have for the criminals and not the victim. I'm not advocating throwing the criminals to the wolves (though keeping a safe distance is probably better than outright supporting them), but when it seemed that this was happening to the victim, something is very wrong. Until the outcome of the trial was decided both parties should have been treated more or less equally, at least by people not close to the situation (which in my opinion includes keeping the names of the suspects anonymous, if that action was taken, suddenly so much of the problematic news coverage of this event disappears and we'd just be left with facts, which i think is a good thing). A major problem with this case though was that much of the community was closer to the perpetrators than the victim, and that brings to light questions about favoritism and special privileges. Did these boys believe they were above the law and what led them to such a belief?
Just because you believe something, doesn't make it right, and though their actions are disgusting and the law stipulates that they constitute rape, the perpetrators may not have even been aware that that was what their actions amounted to.
More needs to be done to educate what exactly rape is. I've talked before about the awesomeness of the "don't be that guy" campaign in Canada, and how well it seems to be working. In the United States I think we have this huge misconception that rape is something that only occurs in dark alleys between strangers. The truth is that it usually involves an acquaintance, probably a guy who can't seem to understand that rape between two people that know each other is still rape (like say the events in Steubenville). The sad thing is the guy walking a girl home to protect her from strangers in alleys is more likely to commit rape than a stranger in an alley (strangers are probably too busy buying drugs in said alley anyway :-/).
Meanwhile this problem isn't just in the United States. For example, India's still having massive problems over there. And yes, the source on that story is CNN. :-/
It'd be nice to have a more professional news organization in the US than what happened with this case.
*sigh*
-D
comments powered by Disqus
