I'm about to lose my shit on a bunch of stupid kids.
Every day now, we learn more about the bullying and threats aimed at the 16 year old victim in the Steubenville rape case. Today, there was news of a 13 year old girl being attacked by 18 year old football players in Connecticut. A couple of years ago, it was a 15 year old victims drugged and gang raped at a rave in Maple Ridge. In all of these cases (and many more, I'm sure), the victims have been subject to abuse from their peers who choose to blame the victim instead of put the blame on the attackers and their accomplices.
This issue has a particularly harsh spotlight shining on it currently, thanks to the utterly disgusting audacity of CNN presenterS (yes, multiple) who invoked feelings of pity for the two teenaged attackers in Steubenville.
And it's making me apoplectic.
Why the fuck would these bullies, and let's face it, criminals, not understand they are blaming the wrong person? Is it a lack of empathy? An abundance of stupidity? Poor understanding? Rebellion? Can someone please fucking explain it to me?
Because the best I can do in explaining it to myself is that communities and peers would rather pin the blame on the victim, a single, solitary individual who has been wronged, than accept that they have raised and nurtured boys and men who have committed these heinous criminal acts of violence.
It doesn't matter how much you like your friend...if your friend rapes, assaults, abuses or attacks a vulnerable person, then your friend has done something horribly wrong and criminal, and it is not your friend who deserves your sympathy and empathy, it is his victim(s). Plain and fucking simple.
You have no idea how much antipathy I have for victim-blamers.
A societal fucking re-think...
...Wish you were here.
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