GuitarBizarre

The Steubenville case was:

1 - A bunch of football players were given an environment wherein they were allowed to exercise power, and be favoured by the system, for a variety of illegal or just horrible, things.

2 - The football players abused this environment in order to rape an underaged girl.

3 - The girl reported this, yet the people who supported the football players excesses, used their authority and power in order to try and cover up the case, including the local sheriff, and many educational authority figures, who attempted to conspire together to get the rapists off scot-free.

4 - The internet finds out and conducts a campaign (With Anonymous involved), to get these people brought to justice.

5 - While this campaign is going on and the scandal is blowing up, lots of people on twitter end up victim blaming, and trying to claim that the victim "deserved" it, or was "Slutty". I recall many tweets that said words to the effect of "If you don't want to get raped don't go to a party and get drunk underaged".

6 - A slew of newspapers, after some of the rapists were successfully convicted, ran sympathetic stories about how the rapists lives were now ruined, framing them as "Promising young athletes" and trying to downplay how horrible their crime was.

Obviously the above is reprehensible and horrible. This is victim blaming and this is how it comes to light in society.









I am fully with Tore and Lateralus here - The idea that someone can be responsible for their own rape is ridiculous and stupid. The rapist bears full responsibility.

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Scarlett O'Hara

That's bloody awful. We have that happen a lot more often than is necessary (including Auzzie). Our top Rugby stars often end up forcing women who are interested in them to have sex with a group of them (while they are date raped/intoxicated) and then the girl wakes up the next day realising she had no interest in getting raped by 10 men and merely wanted attention from just one player. I've noticed the reaction when this happens in Australia is people often blame the victim and say because she went back to their hotel she was "asking for it". Luckily over here the Ruby Associations usually say that they will discipline and investigate the players involved. The media here usually sides with the victim because they love a shocking story to sell more papers. Sad but true.

Anyway, I'm am of the opinion that it's definitely not the victim's fault, whether they were raped by their own partner, a Rugby player, a politician or John Doe from down the the road.

From the sounds of it you are disagreeing with our opinions that are "circle jerking"?

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Astronomer

A 16 year old apparently "consenting" to sex with someone a few years older than them is actually considered pedophilia in many instances...

The point is that in many cases 16 year old children are not old enough to make appropriate and safe decisions for themselves, and that someone older than them may take advantage of this. That is why the laws are there to protect these children. Anyone older than 18 should be aware of this and be smart enough to not have sex with anyone 16 and under even if they say they consent to the sexual act.

If a 10 year old consented to having sex with someone older would that be considered rape? Or consensual? Where do you draw the line? If a 16 year old can make decisions for themselves, why can't a 10 year old?

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