No Rapist is a Brother of Mine

Eduardo García explains the danger of the “bros before hoes” mentality, and fights against the label of “White Knight”. 

Trigger warning for sexual violence.

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Guys, if you could indulge me for a bit. Let’s play a little role-play.

It’s been a long week, full of work, studies, or simply life in general; so you head out to blow off some steam and meet up with some friends at the local bar. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? You do this every once in a while, go out and have a few drinks, or maybe more than a few. Music’s blaring, beer’s flowing, and life is good. A few drinks and a few laughs later, you realize you can barely walk in a straight line, much less drive safely, so some of the guys offer you a place to crash. What cool guys, right?

You’re not really sure what happened next, since you kind of blacked out for a bit. Next thing you know, you’re being groped by one of them. You try to fight back, but you’re still too dazed from the alcohol and too shocked from the situation to react. You keep hearing things like “relax, you’ll enjoy it” or “you know you want it.” Around him you could swear the others stood there, cheering him on.

By the time he finishes, he simply stands there, triumphantly looking down on you. “Get dressed and get out. Don’t bother telling anyone. Nobody’s going to believe you,” and walks off, leaving you discarded on the floor.

Are you angry yet?

And there you are. You just got raped by a guy with whom you were sharing jokes and beers a couple hours earlier, a guy everyone thinks is the coolest guy ever. And now you had to compose yourself, get dressed and get home. You simply want to wash up, throw up, and just try to clean the night off of your body.

But you can forget about washing it off. You have to head out to a hospital or the cops or whatever authority you can find if you want to report what just happened. They will need the DNA evidence to make a case. So you have to walk around with his body fluids all over you.

You  sit around while some cop starts asking questions, assuming you are lying, insinuating it was your fault, asking about what YOU did to lead him on. You are probed and checked and examined like some lab rat when all you want to do is wash this whole night away. And when you finally are able to take a shower, you realize that no amount of soap, water, and scrubbing will ever make this experience go away.

But wait, it’s not over yet.

For the next few hours, days, months or years, you will torment yourself, wondering what you could have done differently, how you could have stopped it, questioning yourself if it was really your fault. And if the story goes public, you will see the world turns against you. You are accused of being an attention whore, a liar, and an instigator. People will accuse you of trying to destroy a nice guy with a future, just because your own life sucks.

If you are really lucky, the authorities are able to prove he at least had sex with you. And what does he get for breaking you that night? A penalty lower than if he had a DUI!

Congratulations, you just became part of the statistics. 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men will be forced to have nonconsensual sex and in most cases the rapist gets little more than a slap on the wrist, especially if he has a future as an athlete or comes from a well-connected family. We, as a society, have absolutely no problem in applauding the rapist, cheering him on as he becomes a role model for our children and an example to our teens. Way too often we find out about some pro-athlete with a criminal record of sexual assault becoming famous or some college jock getting away with rape simply because they have a future at going pro. We see people defending them in the social media and attacking the victims.

And that’s where I can no longer keep my composure.

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Every once in a while I have been accused of “White Knighting”. For those not familiar with the concept, “White Knighting” is when men openly looks for a “Damsel in distress to save” assuming that she can’t save herself. This is not one of those cases. A Good Man, a Gentleman, will fight against any and all injustice he is confronted with. Sexual assault and  attacks a victim of sexual assault are the ones that draw out my greatest anger and challenge my temperament.

Have we become as complacent a society to accept rape? Are we so willing to look the other way just to avoid feeling unconformtable? Are we willing to ignore the fact that a man is a rapist simply because he is an athlete or a celebrity, because they entertain us? Do we do it so we don’t feel bad that we are entertained by a rapist?

“People feeling the need to be superior by pointing out Josh Lueke is a rapist every five minutes”

That was the general mentality of most tweets regarding a professional athlete who has been found guilty of rape before he went pro. Do I actually feel superior? No, I feel inferior and ashamed that society allowed a rapist to become a public figure to begin with! I feel less of a man when this is the role model of what a “man” is supposed to be.

Every time an athlete comes out as gay, social media bursts with complaints about what message are we telling our kids, about what kind of role model he will be. People seem to be seriously concerned about the morality of consenting adults having sex if they are of the same gender. But rapists? Nah, that’s ok. No wonder so many college athletes show up in the news in sexual assault cases. No wonder Rape Guides pop up in colleges so often. They seem to be following their role models, so I guess it’s ok?

NO IT IS NOT! 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men is not just a simple social problem. That is an epidemic!

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I remember a time when men didn’t complain about gender equality as an excuse not to make sure their female friends could get home safe. 99% of all date rapes are done by men. Of those, 55% of gang rapes on college campuses are committed by fraternities and 40% by sports teams. I remember a time when men would keep each other in check and a rapist was viewed as a monster that needed to be put down. Isn’t it time to confront rape for the horrible act it is, even if it means taking an unpopular stance?

Very few people have a problem with the “one bullet” solution for pedophiles because they can only imagine if it where their child. So why is raping an adult taken so casual? What if it were your daughter, your son, your brother, your sister, your wife, or even yourself? How would you act then?

Every time I hear about a college rape case, I wonder where were the friends who make sure a person gets home safe, where are they after they found out who the rapist was, and what kind of friends does the victim have when the rapist can walk down the street without fearing for his own life. What about the rapist’s friends? How are they willing to condone their friend so easily because, you know, “Bros before Hoes”? I am sorry; no rapist is a brother of mine.

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We have to remember a simple and usually overlooked fact here. The rapist chose to be a rapist; the victim didn’t choose to be the victim. Yet we expect the victim to be ok with the rapist to show up in the news, to be celebrated for his “successes”, to be even viewed with sympathy for overcoming “darker days” and learning from “mistakes”. And the victim is simply told to “forget about it”, to “deal with it”, to “move on”.

No rapist should be celebrated. No rapist should be applauded. No rapist should be viewed with anything other than for what they are—a rapist. Every time we do so, we diminish the horror of rape. Do we go around pardoning and celebrating pedophiles? Do we go around feeling sympathy for cold blooded murderers? Then why do we have to have any sympathy for rapist?

Maybe it’s time us men to stop being so offended when we are told we have a responsibility to stop rape and it is high time to view rape for the horrible act it is. It’s ironic how most men fear going to prison, because they are afraid of being raped. Yet it’s excusable for a man to rape a woman and simply say it “a freak accident kind of thing.” There is no excusing rape and there should be no sympathy for rapists. If you are not “man” enough to keep your penis in check, you are not “man” enough to have one.

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Photo: Flickr/DeusXFlorida