[Writer’s note: This piece was originally published in 2016 but in light of the discourse surrounding Deshaun Watson’s punishment – or lack thereof — for multiple instances of sexual assault, a lot of what I felt back then hasn’t wavered since. ]
I can’t find the strength to yell. Type-yell, at least.
It’s been a few weeks since the internet discovered and subsequently exploded over the case of Brock Turner, the former Stanford University swimmer who was sentenced to a mere six months for raping a a behind a dumpster. Hot takes are flying, thinkpieces are churning out. About everything rape: race, class, college.
I sit there, watch my timeline fly by in record speed. Every time I think of something to tweet, I stop. I don’t have the energy. Everything has been said, I think. But yet I feel like perspectives are missing. Not mine, though. At least in my mind. There’s nothing that I can say that would add anything to the conversation other than drowning in echo chambers and Group Think.
Everything being said is correct: rape culture is extremely pervasive. College campuses have a problem addressing rape culture. In 2016, Title IX is now more associated with rape and sexual assault than women’s athletics. Privilege played a role; it pays to be a White male. We knew all this.
Sports trump women at major college campuses. See Baylor, Florida State and Vanderbilt. We’ve built a sense of entitlement within student-athletes that they feel invincible. But again, tell me something that you and I don’t already know. It bears repeating for what?
Sports culture is morally bankrupt. Yet we try to attach inconsistent platitudes to a culture that consistently rejects it. And we don’t stop. Nor do we want to.
ciara roslyn-james 