Rule: Stop before the Comments
In online media sites, it is often wise to stop at the comments. In some cases, the comments can be quite engaging and add to the content.
Today, I was angry about an article in the Indiana Daily Student (I did my undergrad/grad work at IU) which profiled a van-wilder type party dude and proceeded to explain him sexually assaulting two women during a pudding wrestling contest. Here’s an excerpt:
Kaelan announces the only rule, the same rule they had last year: The first girl to get the other’s top off wins. They stare at each other open-mouthed, laughing in shock.
“Or if you make out or have sex, you both win,” Kaelan jokes.
Even though they know the rule, the girls stay in. They gingerly start trying to pull each other down, but they never attempt to de-clothe one another. The crowd gets bored, so the two get out to pull in Kaelan. He obliges, and steps in the pool with them.
All three of them stand there for a second, and Kaelan looks around at the crowd like he isn’t sure what to do. Then in one sudden motion, he reaches out and claws at both girls’ tops, exposing them for a split-second before they recover. The crowd erupts.
One of the girls immediately leaves, but the other stays in with him for a few more minutes. Kaelan makes a few slow attempts at her bathing suit again to please the onlookers, but she sits down and covers up every time. He finally succeeds in pulling her top off all the way to end the fight, throwing it toward the people. She gives up and walks away, with her hands over her breasts. Kaelan collapses against the side of the pool, arms thrown over the sides, smiling.
See why I find this problematic? Besides Kaelen being a complete “class act” (sarcasm here), he continues to expose the woman’s breasts, despite her continuing to cover herself. From my lens, she did not consent to this.
(I also have a slight issue with the reporter using the world “girls” in this story instead of calling them women, but that’s smaller fish.)
It’s the comments that really had me getting angry. I was relieved to see that the first post drew attention to the consent issue – but the comments defending this character were so frustrating. Here are a few of my “favorites.”
“New Rule: If you sign up (let alone show up) for a pudding wrestling event at Indiana University, an institution nationally known for its wild girls and crazy party reputation, during little five week… you are “consenting” to being minutely exposed and coincidently embarrassed. ….I’m simply saying—these girls knew what they were getting into and if they didn’t—that’s their own fault. Being naïve is not a surmountable excuse.” Consent can be revoked at anytime. People continue to fail to understand this. Also, don’t tie this to IU – the institution has NOTHING to do with bullshit debauchery and to imply that it is school sanctioned is completely wrong.
“And as far as the IDS reporter standing “idly by”… Lauren. How dare you? As an IDS reporter don’t you know that it is your duty to intervene when you’re covering pudding wrestling and a girls top comes off? I mean, damn. The least you could have done was put your notebook in front of her exposed boobs while dodging objects fiercely thrown at you by the angered audience. Or you could have tried to take down Kaelen, although he does have a few pounds on you… If you didn’t pick up on the sarcasm in this last paragraph… just give up now.” The statement “while dodging objects fiercely thrown at you by the angered audience” is just awful – and implies that the mob mentality makes this situation Okay and acceptable – and creates an environment where it is just that much more difficult for someone to step in and stop incidents of oppression.
There are many things about this whole thing that have left me frustrated and my heart sad:
- That there is so much work to do in our rape culture – in our world where (some) people continue to think that they can do what they want to someone else’s body.
- That this comes from IU. Yes, no school is perfect – but I hate seeing my alma mater represented as such.
- That inevitably, people are going to see this as “not a big deal” or a part of that gray area (“Is it really sexual assault?”) and that these small little things happen everyday without anyone caring or noticing.
