I have a problem with the idea of 'rape culture.' It isn't that something like they're describing doesn't exist. It does. The problem I have is it's not just about rape. It's about doing all kinds of things to protect the income and institution -- and that includes the predators inside those. As I often say, "Deep sixing rapes is just one of the many services they offer."
I'm talking all kinds of felonies - up to and including murder -- being swept under the rug.
Part of my concern about screaming rape culture, sexual assault and harassment every thirty seconds is it desensitizes people to a very real fact. When there is an attitude of ‘protect the machine at all costs’ -- literally -- the only thing that can blow hole in the stonewalling is rape. That has been -- until now -- the one thing that can bring down corrupt and rotten systems.
I live not too far from CU Boulder. When I first rolled into town it was an open secret that CU was a fast track 'farm' for the NFL. That's a whole lot of money. Now I want to ask you, how much money is involved for the president of the university to argue cunt isn't necessarily a derogatory term? And I quote,“It can be used as a term of endearment."
Oh and BTW, the president was a woman.
Backstory: A female athlete had been raped by a fast tracked football player. She was basically told by the athletic department, the campus police and by the administration to let it go. She didn't, she went to the Denver press. The U made the appropriate noises and swore they hadn't pressured her and that they were doing proper investigations.
And then another woman came forward and said, they'd buffaloed her into silence about her rape by a foot ball player too. Then another... then another...
The coach had just given a press conference about how they were taking these issues oh-so-seriously when a reporter saw him walking down the corridor with an assistant coach (without being seen himself). The reporter clicked on the tape recorder and got the head coach saying "This cunt just won't go away."
Yeeeeeah, when that one hit the news things started going real bad for CU athletic department. That was the end of the coach and his staff. In an attempt at damage control president Elizabeth Hoffman uttered that term-of-endearment statement. Oh and guess what? Some months later President Hoffman would step down because of financial misconduct. What they were certain of was about $10 million.
This crap had been going on for a long time. And gawds know all the things they'd successfully covered up and gotten away with. But it was rape that finally torpedoed that well armored battleship.
The Title IX tribunals, the reduction of proof, the media frenzies, the constant barrages, decades old allegations, the entire-lifetime hysteria, the , the 'instead of convict, let's destroy careers,' 'let's make the punishment life-long' and "we don't need no stinkin' legal system to get justice' lynchmob mentality scares the shit out of me.
But it concerns me in a different way too.
The excessive cries of 'rape culture' are having a bad set of unintended consequences. Consequences that are both boon to predators and takes away the one thing that works.
The problem is accusations have been so overblown, abused, politically weaponized and turned into witch hunts, that it's all losing power. While the small perma-mob isn't slowing down, much of the public is getting burned out.
Rape, sexual assault, abuse an harassment have been so conflated, so over-hyped, and so politicized that the public is going past numb to they don't care about sexual misconduct. On a smaller scale... “whatever.” On a larger scale, they're going to elect the guy anyway OR it becomes entertainment watching the self-righteous cannibalize themselves.
Until now, these kinds of 'scandals' have been the only thing that could bring down those stonewalls. Stonewalls that so often protect actual predators and unimaginable levels of corruption. Like I said, losing that scares the hell out of me. Not only because it entrenches this corruption, but that predators (and there are real monsters out there) swim safely behind the protection of -- now -- impenetrable walls. Walls made impenetrable by politics, hysteria and lynch mobs.
