Official seal of Steubenville, Ohio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In honor of April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are going to bring awareness to some cases concerning violence against women that have recently been in the media. We start with the Steubenville Rape Case.
In Steubenville, Ohio during December 2012, a young girl was publicly and repeatedly sexually violated by several high school football players. Though the young girl was passed out, the young men dragged her from room to room as well as from party to party while continuing to sexually violate and digitally rape her. As if that wasn’t enough, the young men then proceeded to post photos and videos of these horrendous actions to Facebook. Throughout a roughly six hour period, this young woman was repeatedly victimized. She was unconscious, undressed and taken to a separate party where she was photographed nude and semi-nude, assaulted in the car, and forced into the basement where one of the young men tried to force her to give him oral sex.
Just a few days ago on March 17, 2013, both of these young men were found guilty of raping the young woman digitally. The judge ruled that it would have been impossible for the young girl to have given consent considering she was unconscious at the time. The pictures that the young men posted to social media proved this. Also, the young woman said she remembered very little of the time that she was unconscious, other than throwing up on the side of the street. She said she woke up the next day in the basement with the two young men, missing her underwear as well as other clothing items. The judge set the minimum sentence of one year for one young man who was found guilty of using his fingers to penetrate the girl while she was unconscious. The other young man, who was found guilty of penetrating the girl while she was unconscious and disseminating pornographic pictures of her, was given the minimum sentence of two years.
Justice was served in this case. Both young men were punished for the acts of violence they committed against this young woman. However, this doesn’t address the bigger problem at large, the rape culture of our society. Maya at Feministing.com highlights the fact that throughout this case, the victim is barely mentioned while the media discuss the effects of a guilty verdict on the promising lives of the defendants. The media focus on how the defendants lives have already been ruined and this will haunt them for the rest of their lives. What about the victim? What about her promising life that is now ruined? Will she not be haunted for the rest of HER life by the actions of these young men? The young men involved tried to downplay the case, tried to get the victim to lie about what happened to her and also recruited a school coach to help develop a coverup.
As noted by Maya, it’s hard to reconcile the fact that a boy describes a girl as “like a dead body” yet still claims that the 
acts were consensual. It’s hard to reconcile a lot of the facts about the case. The fact that any young man would think that this is an acceptable thing to do to anybody is a sobering fact about the society we live in. One in which blames the victim and excuses the action of the rapist. Maya also highlights the fact that we live in a society where kids take pictures and videos of these actions instead of taking a stand and stopping it.
According to Valenti, there is a widespread cultural message here that cannot be clearer. Men’s sexual urges are uncontrollable and therefore anything that happens is not their responsibility. This view allows our culture to put the blame for men’s bad and criminal behavior on women’s shoulders. However, as highlighted by Valenti, making women responsible for men’s sexuality isn’t just about excusing rape and sexual harassment. It is a cultural rule that enforces the idea that this is a man’s world and women just live in it. Valenti suggests that there is a lot of work to be done to dismantle current rape culture, but a simple first step is to stop focusing on making the world more comfortable for men, and instead making it SAFER for women.
Women and Violence 