End Rapism

 That bank was just asking to be robbed. It was filled with all that money, and they let people in the doors like they could be close to it and all but never touch it. And get this: sometimes they made arrangements for some people to get money out that wasn't even theirs. They just had to "promise" to pay it back. 

If this was the defense put on by the defense for someone accused of robbing a bank, they would be laughed right out of court and into a cell. 

And yet, here we are in the early part of the twenty-first century still blaming women for getting raped. According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly eighty percent of rapes and sexual assaults never get reported. 

Why?

Twenty percent, according to a Department of Justice report, worry about retaliation. Not just from their attacker, but from society at large. Thirteen percent said they did not expect the police would not do anything to help. Eight percent said they didn’t think the rape or sexual assault was important enough to report.

"Oh sure," say the idjits with an X and a Y chromosome, "They just hung around until that guy got famous, or was looking for a seat on the Supreme Court and then start whining about how they 'didn't want it.' They all want it."

It may sound as if I have mischaracterized the bulk of the male population, but if that sort of rhetoric wasn't so readily available in our society, I wouldn't be able to launch into it so easily. Thanks to a college student from the 1990s. we even have a term that "justifies" this mindset: incel. Originally intended to describe people experiencing social awkwardness and late-blooming romantic relationships, by the dawn of the twenty-first century, the meaning shifted away from a general support space and transformed into a distinct online subculture. This community hardened into a male supremacist and misogynistic movement.

Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured others near UC Santa Barbara, leaving behind a manifesto and video blaming women. His example was followed by others, including Alex Minassian who used a rented van to run down innocent victims, fueled by the rage of the so-called "manosphere."

Freshly convicted rapist Russell Brand cozied up to these folks right up until the time came for him to face his accusers in court. How many others might have come forward if there wasn't such a stigma placed on women who report crimes against them? One imagines that there would have been dozens more. 

The current resident of the gold-flecked ruins of the White House has dozens of sexual assault claims currently against him, and has been convicted as an adjudicated rapist. Two of the sitting Supreme Court Justices have dodged sexual harassment and assault allegations on their path to being the ultimate justice in our country. 

How many more? I don't know, but isn't it about time that we found out?