I’m going to come across as a one-note bird here. There’s no getting around that.
I just wish that my one note wasn’t this particular one note.
This week’s news made me sick to my stomach. As a cynical, hardened newspaper columnist, it takes a lot to make this bird queasy, but the headlines this week did just that and then some:
“PVHS teacher arrested on suspicion of having sex with a minor,” wrote one of the Sun’s own reporters in our breaking news section online.
“UCSB student beaten and raped,” read a press release from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.
And then there’s the seemingly despicable case of Anthony Murillo, the Orcutt man who allegedly threatened the two survivors of the Shane Villalpando sex-assault case in a rap song because he thought it was cool.
Once again, let me be clear on this: Sexually assaulting someone is not cool. It doesn’t make someone more of a man or, in some cases, more of a woman. In fact, it does the exact opposite—it makes the perpetrator less human, and it robs the victim of his or her humanity as well.
There is nothing to glorify in these cases. No accolades. No heroes.
Now some of you faithful readers out there might be thinking, “OK, Canary, we get it: Rape is bad.” But while those of you who take the time to read my column each week might be aware of that, there are obviously many people in our local community and the rest of the world who don’t.
I looked around online—and believe me, you shouldn’t because I did it for you—and found pages devoted to rape jokes. Pages filled with smug one-liners and back-and-forth discussions intended to generate laughs by portraying rape as funny.
It’s because of garbage like that that I write what I do, that I’ve been stuck on this one note for as long as I have.
And while headlines like the ones listed above make me sick to my stomach and, frankly, sick to my heart, I will continue powering through those uncomfortable feelings to stand up for the victims of these atrocities.
I will stand up and say—shout and scream—that rape, molestation, and any other form of sexual assault is absolutely, positively wrong, whether the victim is 2 years old or 70 years old, married or single, straight or gay.
It’s time that we as a society made this abundantly clear through our thoughts and actions toward the people responsible for these horrendous crimes: the rapists and the moleste-rs.
So the next time you hear someone laughing at a “rape joke” or badmouthing a potential victim because of the way she dresses—stand up and say something. And if someone, God forbid, tells you she’s been raped, don’t turn her away because it makes you uncomfortable—be the friend you wish you’d have if you were the one reporting the crime.
That’s how we can get some other notes going here, notes that aren’t so melancholy and sad. It’s not enough to sit back and passively condemn—to tsk-tsk at pop culture that praises rapists for, I don’t know, raping people. We have to be actively stamping out this sort of culture. And maybe, in doing that, we’ll be able to stamp out the practice that drives it.
It’s a start, anyway.
The Canary says enough is enough. Send comments or ideas to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 6, 2014.