My friend
Big K and I were talking last week about how we lost The Nation. I repeat the progressive cause has lost The Nation. It looks like we’re also
loosing RAINN.
RAINN sent
a
brief to the White House Task Force, and it is bad. It begins ok:
“The federal government should push colleges to improve the criminal justice response to rape, de-emphasize internal judicial boards, put in place bystander intervention and risk reduction programs, and ensure comprehensive care for victims; RAINN advised a new White House task force charged with creating a plan to reduce rape on college campuses.”
But then
it goes bad: “In 16 pages of recommendations, RAINN urged the task force to
remain focused on the true cause of the problem. ‘In the last few years, there
has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming ‘rape culture’ for the extensive
problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the
systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight
of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious
decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime,’
said the letter to the task force from RAINN’s president, Scott Berkowitz, and
vice president for public policy, Rebecca O’Connor.”
Oh no.
First, while rape is committed by individual people, it is enabled by the
community and culture. Secondly, to end rape, we have to end rape culture otherwise;
we’re going to continue having boys who don’t consider what they are doing is
rape. Culture allows people to abuse one another and think nothing of it;
culture devalues women; culture devalues people of color; etc. This is so not
ok. I’m not really sure where to start. It feels very short sighted; just focus
on the aftermath of rape instead of real prevention.
The brief
continues to lay out RAINN’s recommendation and presents statistics about how
90% of college rapes are committed by 3% of the population (information on
female perpetrators is less available). Then it continues to explain why
college internal judicial boards need to be de-emphasized.
