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There are so many things wrong in Steubenville, Ohio that I don't even know where to begin to put down into words the things I think lately. Obviously, I don't know the boys or the girls. There's certainly a lot of slander of both sides. The girl, the victim, is getting death threats. Naturally, authorities are going to have to push for the stiffest punishments possible against those making threats just to protect her. To do anything less would be declaring open season on her for anyone who thinks the boys are the victims.
And hoo, boy, there seem to be a lot of people who think the boys are the real victims here.
Well, they are. You see, their families, their community, their schools and their churches let them down. They're victims of our ridiculous society that can't bother to teach its teenagers how to be adults. Instead, we let our children continue to be and act like children well into the time when they need to be acting like adults. In today's world -- especially in today's world -- kids have a ridiculous amount of power. On the internet, words can be broadcast with minimal effort. And in high school, the coin of the realm is reputation. And that's just the start of it. After words there are deeds. There are acts of strength and acts of violence and also acts of dominance.
And we don't teach them how to be responsible. We don't teach them how NOT to use their power.
Instead, we try to isolate them from it. We have to protect their innocence, our culture says. A significant part of our society thinks we should have abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only! That's right. Let's tell our kids "Hey don't have sex," and then pray to God that they'll listen to us and not their hormones. Clearly that's working out so well, too. Oh, and did you know that by not using their penises, they didn't actually have SEX with that girl? Or so they believed. (Which makes you wonder how two girls can have sex at all, without a penis...no don't think about that too much, it's much more pleasant than what I'm talking about and will just distract you.)
Our legal drinking age is 21. At 21, most people are capable of being on their own, doing taxes, fighting for their country, holding down jobs, or pursuing life goals. They can get and often are married. It's not that uncommon to see parents -- legitimate parents, not JUST the unwanted "oops" pregnancies -- at that age. But we're only just now letting them legally figure out what this alcohol thing is all about. And we realized a hundred years ago that we can't actually take alcohol away.
What's funny is that kids in Europe, while they are still kids and they still have their problems, it seems to me that one problem they have a whole lot less of is binge drinking. I have a theory: it's because they learn how to drink when they're younger. And I don't mean learn how to chug and get DRUNK. They learn what alcohol is and how to be responsible. It isn't some secret thing that they aren't allowed to have (because, you know, telling a kid he or she can't have something is so effective at making the kid not want it); instead it's something that parents actually get to teach their kids how to consume. By the time kids are old enough to be able to really exercise power over other people, a lot more of them have already learned some valuable lessons.
Here in America? If I try to teach my kids to enjoy alcohol responsibly when they're teenagers, I can be sent to jail.
Do you know why those kids don't believe they raped that girl? Because they were never taught how to be adults. Kids think they're immortal until they learn otherwise. We keep kids so protected, so carefully wrapped and insulated from life, from danger, from all the terrible things that can happen, that they haven't yet learned they aren't immortal. Well, those two kids know they're not immortal now, but it's a little late. Instead, two boys exercised power over a girl who had absolutely no ability to say no, and they thought it was normal and it was okay. Because that's what high school is, every single day. Several hundred kids are put into one place, five days a week. They figure out which ones have power and which ones don't. And they figure out how to use that power. And we, as a society, are terrible at teaching them that utlizing that power can have consequences. Until it's too late.
Conservatives are going to blame the media. They're going to blame violent video games. They're going to blame the sexualization of everything on TV (while they go home and they, too, click on the links or watch shows with pretty eyes, or nice boobs, or whatever it is they're drawn to. Because they're drawn to it. That's part of being human.). Liberals are going to say they're bad kids with evil intentions and we ought to watch them better.
I say we have to shatter the glass bubbles we put our kids in, and teach them that the shit they do has consequences. We need to teach them that other people matter. That a drunken girl isn't a toy for their amusement. I wonder if a single one of the kids or male witnesses that didn't do anything thought to themselves, "Gosh, if I were drunk and some guy came and stuck his finger in my asshole, I'd consider than an assault." I suppose they MIGHT have considered it, but then they'd just assume they'd beat the shit out of the guy and it'd be okay.
Do you know what might, just MIGHT have stopped that crime from happening? If one of the many, many friends of those kids had gone up to one or both of those boys and said "Hey, you're doing something wrong." Not to defend the girl -- not that defendiing the girl is a bad reason but it's the harder reason -- but to defend their friends. Of course, chances, are, we didn't teach any of their friends how not to do bad things either. But what if we had? What if just one friend had thought to himself, "Man, my friend is going to be less of a person if he does that to someone else. I better stop this."
It's no different from watching your friend get drunk and reach for his keys while heading to the door. If you say, "hey bro, you're toasted. Put those keys away, let's find another way home,", you just might save someone's life. But you don't know that life you're saving, so that's not the real motivation. You're doing it to save your friend's life. If only that could've happened here. Somewhere, there's a hero who could've saved 3 lives, but either didn't know enough to know it. Or didn't have the guts to do it.
A lot of people want to blame football culture. I'm sure there's some of that, but it ain't got nothin' to do with a sport. It's got everything to do with the powerful kids of powerful parents with a lot of money and a lot of privilege having absolutely no idea what the limits of their privilege actually are until they got caught because they were idiotic enough to actually put the pictures on the internet. They really, truly and honestly didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
Sure, I don't know the kids, and I'm just playing armchair shrink here, but I knew those kids when I grew up. Or kids just like them. And I know exactly how good ol' boys think. And that's how a Good Ol' Boy thinks. It's easy to not mean any harm when you honestly believe that the people you're harming are worth less than you are.
That is the travesty. They were proud that they had violated this girl. She was a thing to them, and they advertised to all their friends that they had reduced her to a toy. One of the kid's parents told him to 'be strong'. Maybe that parent should take a good, long, hard look in the mirror and say "I did this to my son. I did this to that girl by not teaching my son how to be a decent person."
How many victims are out there where the perpetrators were JUST smart enough to only share the pictures with people they trust? How many kids grow up, realizing they can get away with this, and then slowly become serial rapists, because once they've tasted power, they want more? And they've learned how to get the girls into positions where they can't say no, but won't report them. Because they're scared. That's an awful way to learn the value of a human life.
And everyone in that kid's family and life that didn't step up and help that kid be a man.
Because every year, we try to keep our children children until the last possible moment.
And when people with adult bodies and adult minds act like children? They hurt other people. We're programmed to do it. At some level, we are competetive killers, programmed to make sure our tribe beats the other tribe because at some point, there won't be enough food for both tribes. We can grow past it, but once we're adults, once we're capable of inflicting ourselves on others. Then it just might be too late to learn.
But also? I have a pretty liberal twitter feed. I see a lot of people talking about 'rape culture' and all that. And trying to put out messages about "Don't rape people." Well, it won't help, because it's not about rape. Those kids don't think they're rapists. Walking up to that kid and going "Don't rape someone" and he'd say "I'd never do that, bro! I'm not a rapist!" And he'd mean it and he'd believe it.
That's because he doesn't know what rape IS. And that's because he doesn't know the value of a human life. Or maybe didn't. Now he knows it's a couple of the best years of his life locked away and a stigma that he'll never be able to erase, whether or not he learns the real lesson.
All in all, they got a pretty good deal. What they took from their victim will cost her a lot more than it's going to cost them.
And hoo, boy, there seem to be a lot of people who think the boys are the real victims here.
Well, they are. You see, their families, their community, their schools and their churches let them down. They're victims of our ridiculous society that can't bother to teach its teenagers how to be adults. Instead, we let our children continue to be and act like children well into the time when they need to be acting like adults. In today's world -- especially in today's world -- kids have a ridiculous amount of power. On the internet, words can be broadcast with minimal effort. And in high school, the coin of the realm is reputation. And that's just the start of it. After words there are deeds. There are acts of strength and acts of violence and also acts of dominance.
And we don't teach them how to be responsible. We don't teach them how NOT to use their power.
Instead, we try to isolate them from it. We have to protect their innocence, our culture says. A significant part of our society thinks we should have abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only! That's right. Let's tell our kids "Hey don't have sex," and then pray to God that they'll listen to us and not their hormones. Clearly that's working out so well, too. Oh, and did you know that by not using their penises, they didn't actually have SEX with that girl? Or so they believed. (Which makes you wonder how two girls can have sex at all, without a penis...no don't think about that too much, it's much more pleasant than what I'm talking about and will just distract you.)
Our legal drinking age is 21. At 21, most people are capable of being on their own, doing taxes, fighting for their country, holding down jobs, or pursuing life goals. They can get and often are married. It's not that uncommon to see parents -- legitimate parents, not JUST the unwanted "oops" pregnancies -- at that age. But we're only just now letting them legally figure out what this alcohol thing is all about. And we realized a hundred years ago that we can't actually take alcohol away.
What's funny is that kids in Europe, while they are still kids and they still have their problems, it seems to me that one problem they have a whole lot less of is binge drinking. I have a theory: it's because they learn how to drink when they're younger. And I don't mean learn how to chug and get DRUNK. They learn what alcohol is and how to be responsible. It isn't some secret thing that they aren't allowed to have (because, you know, telling a kid he or she can't have something is so effective at making the kid not want it); instead it's something that parents actually get to teach their kids how to consume. By the time kids are old enough to be able to really exercise power over other people, a lot more of them have already learned some valuable lessons.
Here in America? If I try to teach my kids to enjoy alcohol responsibly when they're teenagers, I can be sent to jail.
Do you know why those kids don't believe they raped that girl? Because they were never taught how to be adults. Kids think they're immortal until they learn otherwise. We keep kids so protected, so carefully wrapped and insulated from life, from danger, from all the terrible things that can happen, that they haven't yet learned they aren't immortal. Well, those two kids know they're not immortal now, but it's a little late. Instead, two boys exercised power over a girl who had absolutely no ability to say no, and they thought it was normal and it was okay. Because that's what high school is, every single day. Several hundred kids are put into one place, five days a week. They figure out which ones have power and which ones don't. And they figure out how to use that power. And we, as a society, are terrible at teaching them that utlizing that power can have consequences. Until it's too late.
Conservatives are going to blame the media. They're going to blame violent video games. They're going to blame the sexualization of everything on TV (while they go home and they, too, click on the links or watch shows with pretty eyes, or nice boobs, or whatever it is they're drawn to. Because they're drawn to it. That's part of being human.). Liberals are going to say they're bad kids with evil intentions and we ought to watch them better.
I say we have to shatter the glass bubbles we put our kids in, and teach them that the shit they do has consequences. We need to teach them that other people matter. That a drunken girl isn't a toy for their amusement. I wonder if a single one of the kids or male witnesses that didn't do anything thought to themselves, "Gosh, if I were drunk and some guy came and stuck his finger in my asshole, I'd consider than an assault." I suppose they MIGHT have considered it, but then they'd just assume they'd beat the shit out of the guy and it'd be okay.
Do you know what might, just MIGHT have stopped that crime from happening? If one of the many, many friends of those kids had gone up to one or both of those boys and said "Hey, you're doing something wrong." Not to defend the girl -- not that defendiing the girl is a bad reason but it's the harder reason -- but to defend their friends. Of course, chances, are, we didn't teach any of their friends how not to do bad things either. But what if we had? What if just one friend had thought to himself, "Man, my friend is going to be less of a person if he does that to someone else. I better stop this."
It's no different from watching your friend get drunk and reach for his keys while heading to the door. If you say, "hey bro, you're toasted. Put those keys away, let's find another way home,", you just might save someone's life. But you don't know that life you're saving, so that's not the real motivation. You're doing it to save your friend's life. If only that could've happened here. Somewhere, there's a hero who could've saved 3 lives, but either didn't know enough to know it. Or didn't have the guts to do it.
A lot of people want to blame football culture. I'm sure there's some of that, but it ain't got nothin' to do with a sport. It's got everything to do with the powerful kids of powerful parents with a lot of money and a lot of privilege having absolutely no idea what the limits of their privilege actually are until they got caught because they were idiotic enough to actually put the pictures on the internet. They really, truly and honestly didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
Sure, I don't know the kids, and I'm just playing armchair shrink here, but I knew those kids when I grew up. Or kids just like them. And I know exactly how good ol' boys think. And that's how a Good Ol' Boy thinks. It's easy to not mean any harm when you honestly believe that the people you're harming are worth less than you are.
That is the travesty. They were proud that they had violated this girl. She was a thing to them, and they advertised to all their friends that they had reduced her to a toy. One of the kid's parents told him to 'be strong'. Maybe that parent should take a good, long, hard look in the mirror and say "I did this to my son. I did this to that girl by not teaching my son how to be a decent person."
How many victims are out there where the perpetrators were JUST smart enough to only share the pictures with people they trust? How many kids grow up, realizing they can get away with this, and then slowly become serial rapists, because once they've tasted power, they want more? And they've learned how to get the girls into positions where they can't say no, but won't report them. Because they're scared. That's an awful way to learn the value of a human life.
And everyone in that kid's family and life that didn't step up and help that kid be a man.
Because every year, we try to keep our children children until the last possible moment.
And when people with adult bodies and adult minds act like children? They hurt other people. We're programmed to do it. At some level, we are competetive killers, programmed to make sure our tribe beats the other tribe because at some point, there won't be enough food for both tribes. We can grow past it, but once we're adults, once we're capable of inflicting ourselves on others. Then it just might be too late to learn.
But also? I have a pretty liberal twitter feed. I see a lot of people talking about 'rape culture' and all that. And trying to put out messages about "Don't rape people." Well, it won't help, because it's not about rape. Those kids don't think they're rapists. Walking up to that kid and going "Don't rape someone" and he'd say "I'd never do that, bro! I'm not a rapist!" And he'd mean it and he'd believe it.
That's because he doesn't know what rape IS. And that's because he doesn't know the value of a human life. Or maybe didn't. Now he knows it's a couple of the best years of his life locked away and a stigma that he'll never be able to erase, whether or not he learns the real lesson.
All in all, they got a pretty good deal. What they took from their victim will cost her a lot more than it's going to cost them.
