I just saw a news article about 2 other girls leaving the victim violent/death threats on Facebook. Oh, rape culture. -_-

What the actual fuck??

What an upside down world we live in. The rapists get more love than ever when found guilty of rape. The victim gets so much hate when it is establihed that she was raped. And SHE isn't the one whose life was destroyed?

Hey guys, doesn't matter if she sleeps with a lot of men or drinks. She needs to consent to you no matter what, every single time.

I don't care if you are ghandi and rape someone, you should go to prison for at least a decade.

Another good read on this horrible case:

Humiliation Was The Point Of The Exercise
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/steubenville-humiliation-was-the-point-of-the-exercise/

Also, in this case, as in other similar ones, the emphasis quickly shifts to how much teens, especially teen girls, drink and reminding them not to overdo it because they too can become a victim. Which fails to mention that in cases such as this, the victim suspects she was drugged but because it is so hard to prove, there is no mention of it in the ensuing court case. Prime example - LA Times with what at first glance appeared to be a response to the victim-blaming, but went on to be just as bad as the stuff cited above. I'm surprised the author didn't take the victim to task for being out past her curfew or wearing a skirt :

Drunkenness isn't the Same as Consent http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-steubenville-20130319,0,7852962.column

Stunning comments. Not much else to say.

... and some people wonder why most rapes go unreported. -_-

Never in my entire life have I been so angry about misinformation and biased reporting in the media. More to the point, what are those silly girls tweeting about, calling the victim a 'whore'. Didn't they see the video posted by anonymous, didn't they hear those two boys bragging, see the pictures of her being carried by her ankles and wrists from party to party. And for what, a career in a what can loosely be called a sport that is played in one country only with any seriousness. I wonder what they would have to say if it was their own daughter or son, men get raped too.

Sick. Thank you for naming and shaming these obnoxious pricks.

No means No.

Silence means No.

Drunk means No.

Not Now means No.

Stop means No.

I hope these guys gets raped in jail by big leather men. Fucking disgusting animals!

I think some of you are forgetting that these two perpetrators are teenagers. Does that excuse what they did? Not a bit, they most certainly deserve the sentence they got and then some. But that doesn't mean that one is automatically pro-rape and anti-victim just because they show a little bit of solemnity for the fact that a formerly promising young person is going to jail.

A lot of the rhetoric I'm hearing about this CNN coverage sounds exactly like the kinds of things I hear whenever someone tries to shed sympathy on, say, a young man who does something bad after falling into gang culture or a young person who does something terrible because of a mental illness. Justice does demand retribution against the guilty, but that doesn't mean you need to be happy about it and it also doesn't mean that people who don't take someone's imprisonment as a cause for celebration is pro-crime.

Anything other than "Yes!" means no.

This whole situation reminds me so much of the novel (later turned into a movie starring Kristen Stewart) "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson.

It is so brave of this young girl to speak out about what happened to her, but it's sad to see that people's attitudes about rape haven't changed much.

I can only wonder who these two teenagers looked up to in their lives.

That's brutal! I wonder.....if a guy got so drunk that he couldn't remember walking down the street and got the absolute shit beat right out of him by a gang of thugs, so much so that he was in put into emergency with broken legs and brain damage, if they would label him responsible because he had a little too much? These f.....s got everything they deserved!

I'm wondering how much denial one has to be in to think there isn't enough evidence. There were videos on the internet where a guy was making a play by play. There were pictures, on the internet. They bragged about it on multiple platforms, and there must have been dozens of witnesses. She was so unconscious she couldn't even be woken up. That's a pretty clear-cut case to me.

Those tweets make me absolutely livid. I'll add another great read on the subject, since I couldn't say it any better:

"There Is No Asking For It"

First comment on Gawker:

"How in God's name can supposedly liberal commenters on this blog defend ruining a 16 year old's entire life based on this crime? Does anyone actually think that's fair? There are 16 year old murderers who won't have their lives ruined to the extent that this kid will if he has to be on the registry for his whole life. I feel like I'm scrolling through comments on the fucking National Review here."

There was photo and video evidence of these guys abusing an unconscious girl. What more proof do you need? The rule is, if she's unconscious there's no consent. Period. It's NEVER okay to molest an unconscious woman. It's rape, every single time. There is no such thing as implied consent. If my own husband were to have sex with me while I was unconscious, it would still be rape.

It's a pandemic. Maybe there's a gang rape virus spreading from India. However, the Indian public is outraged. How come here the rapists get support while in India the people ask for the rapists' heads? Are we barbarians? The rapists go free and the mob chastises the victims. This feels like freakin medieval times!!! I say throw the supporters into jail preventatively, they are rapists-to-be who didn't have the guts yet to do it. And any female who supports them throw them in a men jail, too. There they can feel pity for their own rapists ('cause that's gonna happen).

I think how people are responding to the alleged victim with hostility and the two boys with sympathy are because many people do not perceive what the boys did was rape. The boys did not have sexual intercourse with the girl, with one of the boys (I think Trenton Mays) texting to a friend that he decided not to have sex with her because she was too drunk and not moving. Also, many people will not perceive the boys actions as sexual assault because they were not violent with her, meaning that she was not battered. Furthermore, two witnesses, friends of the alleged victim, said that the girl had earlier made plans to go to the party and have sex with one of the boys. They further stated that the girl got drunk and partied often. This means that the alleged victim had already consented before the party and suggests that her appearance in the videos/pictures was an often occurrence. Because of this, her peers are accusing her of being a “whore” or “slut” and perceived by them as being hypocritical believing that she is just as much to blame for the incident.

Also, a study made some time ago showed the ambiguity of how or what is perceived as rape and revealed that men were more likely to perceive sexual encounters as consensual while many women perceived the same encounters as rape. This is perhaps why 99% of rapists are men. About 7.7% of college men admitted to acts defined as rape but denied their actions were rape.

About a quarter of rapes are reported with 70% of them belonging to the same category as this case involving heavy alcohol consumption with women left relatively unharmed. The majority of rape, estimated 84%, goes unreported. Several studies report that this is because women mostly believe it to be a personal or private matter. Also, many do not perceive themselves as victims and don’t believe they were raped. Further still, many women fall in love, marry, and have children with the man.

Is this a cultural phenomenon or is it biological in nature? Either way these perceptions are worldwide with the definition of rape that our courts in the west use being fairly recent with them being mainly formed in the past century. This is probably why rape is seen with such ambivalence.

It's a pandemic. Maybe there's a gang rape virus spreading from India. However, the Indian public is outraged. How come here the rapists get support while in India the people ask for the rapists' heads? Are we barbarians? This feels like freakin' medieval times!!! I say throw the supporters into jail preventatively, they are rapists-to-be who didn't have the guts yet to do it. And the female supporters, throw them in with the guys. There they can feel pity for their own rapists ('cause that's gonna happen).

Wowzers... Not sure if the girl had consented or not...but for her to come forward and show her true colors ( obviously à wild child) for everyone to see and place their judgements upon her is at the very least commendable....and regardless of if thèse boys did or did not actually have sexual intercourse with said woman isnt even what i see an issue with....i keep seeing how they lives are ruined because of what she did( coming out) when fact is if they were so Bright and had such à great future ahead of them then why would they have been so ignorant as to post proof of there hanus behavior with an intoxicated person. Guilty or not they were everything but bright!

This garbage, low level thinking, is why so many victims keep quiet. It's sick that they thought this was okay, that people then say it was her fault, that she asked for it. No girl or woman regardless of how much she had to drink, how she looks, how she has dressed is asking to be raped. This culture of teaching girls don't get raped rather then teaching boys don't rape is sick and wrong

What about the responses to a recent story of a 19 y/o female babysitter molesting a 9 y/o boy? Or how about the article and commentary about a 42 y/o former professional cheerleader sexually assaulting 12 y/o boy? Go ahead and look them up. Are those "rape culture" as well? I'm just curious because this blog never seems to address any situation or story other than those where the victim is female and the perpetrator is male.

Here at my country (Brazil) rapists have no rights, no matter if the VICTIM is a drunk whore or a saint, RAPE is RAPE and rapists deserve to be RAPED ON JAIL or just beaten to death.

I hope the victims (there were two) never read these comments. I am hoping all these people unassociated with the case are just shooting off their mouths and don't understand what really happened, see the videos, etc. Otherwise I can't imagine especially a woman saying stuff like she deserved it. Even Serena Williams blurted out something stupid.

As far as the guys, actions have consequences. They were lucky they got away lightly. I wonder if they have siblings or children of their own one day if they will reflect on their actions. But really, I think the bare minimum was done to keep them from doing it again.