June 18, 2016



You Can't Escape "Rape Culture" -- Even If There Are Barely Any Men On Campus

Women at St. Catherine University demonstrated against the "rape culture" there -- despite how 97 percent of the undergrads are women, according to the Star Trib story by Maura Lerner:

St. Catherine University has cut ties with an event organizer, Heartland Inc., after protesters accused both the school and the company's owners of being insensitive to rape survivors. ...The furor began on June 10, when Heartland held a seminar on women in leadership at St. Catherine. That morning, a woman named Sarah Super led a small group of protesters on the edge of campus, drawing attention to the rape case involving the Neals' son, Alec. Super, 27, has publicly identified herself as the woman raped at knife point by Neal, who pleaded guilty last year and is serving a 12-year-prison term.

This is not rape culture -- where there's some encouraging and condoning of rape.

This is justice in action -- rape being treated as any decent, civilized, rational, mentally healthy person sees it: As a terrible crime.

What this really involved was campus organizers noticing that they could get some attention, vis a vis the protests of the Brock Turner case -- which is remarkably unsimilar to this one, save for how there was a sexual assault underlying:

"Turner's family rallied around Brock in ways that are pretty similar to my perpetrator's family," said Super. She criticized, in particular, a letter-writing campaign attesting to Alec Neal's character before his sentencing. Her goal, she said, was to show how that affects victims. "Brock Turner's case lit the flame for the conversation." The Neals, though, say they never attempted to minimize their son's crime. "We are heartbroken over the suffering Sarah has experienced," they wrote. "There wasn't a single letter that suggested Alec shouldn't be held accountable for his actions or that expressed anything but compassion and concern for Sarah."

Once again, this is a case of people seizing power by claiming there's been an injustice done -- and never mind whether one actually exists (beyond the rape itself, of course). They're talking about a culture of injustice that just isn't reflected here:

Heartland's supporters, meanwhile, have leapt to the Neals' defense. Jina Penn-Tracy, a Minneapolis investment adviser who has attended their workshops, wrote on Facebook: "I am very sorry for what Sarah suffered, but as a multiple rape survivor, I object to the families of offenders being targeted for attack and boycott ... This is not justice, but vendetta." In an interview, Penn-Tracy, 48, said she understands Super's anger, "but attacking their business, trying to drive them out of business, is an aggression, and I don't think it's going to bring healing." Patricia Weaver Francisco, a Hamline University professor who has written a memoir of her own rape and recovery, said it's unfair to compare the Neals to the Stanford case, where the perpetrator's family seemed dismissive of the crime. In his most controversial remark, Turner's father stated that jail time would be a "steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action." The Neals, by contrast, are "deeply thoughtful and caring people" who were "devastated for Sarah," said Francisco. "I've literally never heard them say a thing about Sarah that is anything other than concern."

Here's real rape culture:

If You're Raped In A Muslim Country, You're Guilty Of "Adultery" This Dutch woman, a rape victim when she was in Qatar, made the mistake of reporting her rape to authorities, which means she confessed to committing a crime (under Islam). Yes, being raped is a crime under Islam -- unless you are a woman captured by Muslim soldiers, in which case, they get to do what they want with you.



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