It troubles me to see reports of rape — which have become startlingly ubiquitous lately — buried under the other university crime fodder.
There’s a carjacking, a stolen laptop and then a rape, which is mentioned as if it’s equal in gravity to someone leaving their MacBook in the library and — surprise! — it’s gone when the owner returns.
How can arguably the most dehumanizing crime in existence be equated to petty theft?
It shows an inverted rank of values, which is certainly not exclusive to the Loyola community.
Rape is something largely trivialized, and is something taken with incredulity when it happens.
It is taken with incredulity in how the burden of proof in this crime lies on the victim.
A girl is kidnapped, beaten into submission and then brutally raped in the back of a car, and law enforcement dares to ask: “So, how can you prove that this actually happened? What were you wearing?”
Taken even more lightly are incidents of acquaintance rape, which are incidentally the most common.
These widely accepted myths prove that although rape laws have changed over the years to encompass much more than they once did, the problem lies within the attitudes prevalent in society and on our campus, the main attitude being that victims somehow attract or deserve what comes to them in how they dress, who they have sex with or what they do in their spare time.
Attitudes about rape are rooted in society’s attitudes about violence against women in general.
The fact that Rihanna can suffer a very publicized violent attack by her boyfriend Chris Brown and fans react by thinking that maybe she had it coming, or that Brown was somehow justified in his actions, is a testament to these attitudes.
And in everyday instances in our lives, our attitudes about rape and violence are manifest in our language.
Students frequently proclaimed that they “raped” a mid-term.
I recently overheard a college-aged male jokingly say — at a normal volume, in a public place — that he would “rape a white woman” while talking big over a round of beer pong.
Until these attitudes change, violence and rape affects all women — even if it doesn’t affect us personally.
For a woman, threat of rape precludes walking anywhere by herself, not locking her doors, not returning to her car with her keys clutched in her hand, anticipating an attack.
I heard someone recently liken rape to “getting struck by lightening,” I guess in saying that it is something terrible but rare, and likely only to happen once.
But rape happens all around us — it happens to our friends, our sorority sisters and our classmates.
The only way to stop it is through our attitudes.
We need to support victims of violence and of rape to show that these crimes aren’t acceptable — even if the biggest pop star openly dates a man who beats, bites and punches her.
Lauren LaBorde is a mass communication senior. She can be reached at [email protected]
