An Instance Where Saying “Rape Is Hilarious” Is OK, And More

This week, my lady-column is all about the dudes.

We’ve got a dude who elicited some very strong feelings from me by posting a video called “Rape is Hilarious.” Never have I been so prepared to hate a total stranger, but it was actually one of the more teachable moments in my week.

Then, shock abounds not only on the internet, but in the courtroom as well, where an heir in Delaware raped his two babies and was let clean off the hook. Apparently raping babies isn’t really a crime in Delaware?

Oh, and a couple of male RCMP officers have revealed themselves to be the kind of guys who think domestic abuse is funny, after they accidentally left a mocking voicemail for an alleged victim in Nova Scotia.

Screencap via YouTube. 

Rich Delaware Man Rapes His Two Toddlers, Gets No Prison Time

This week in shit is fucked, because ladies and children don’t matter in the courtroom: Robert Richards IV, also known as the Du Pont heir, was given mere probation after raping his own three-year-old daughter. You heard right: not a day of prison. He got out on $60,000 bail.

The female judge’s reasoning? The six-foot-four, 250-280 lb man wouldn’t “fare well” in prison. Jan Jurden ruled he should receive treatment instead, and he now has to stay away from all children under 16. In what kind of evil being’s mind is this adequate?

Allow me a brief aside: For the record, I do think we could come up with a more effective way to treat criminals, even ones who commit heinous crimes like Richards. Treatment is probably much closer to the answer than incarceration.

But Delaware is hardly a state that makes a habit of treatment as prescription for crime. Rather, the state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the U.S. This guy clearly got off with nary a slap on the wrist, because he is a filthily loaded white guy.

In Delaware, white people constitute 56 percent of those arrested, but when you look at the amount of those arrestees who actually get sentenced, 64 percent of them are black. Out of those black criminals, 86 percent of them have been put away for drug offences—which is extra rich, given that black people only make up for 20 percent of Delaware’s total population.

Lucky for Richards, he didn’t commit a serious crime (like being black and/or carrying around a baggie of pot), he just sexually violated two toddlers.

Who gets to be a judge? How much privilege must one have in this world to climb to a position of lording over others? What are the systems in place that ready that person for their position to do so? And who do those systems benefit?

We need to change the answers to all of these questions in order to make the punishment fit the crime.

Screencap via YouTube.

Rape Is Hilarious

Okay, rape is not hilarious. But this man says it is, and takes time to tell us in this video: “Why Rape Is Sincerely Hilarious.”

As much as I try to love humans, sometimes it is just so goddamned hard. But I adore this man, Andrew Bailey, very much. He’s one of the only men I’ve ever heard speak of sexual assault against men in a way that didn’t involve a fangs-bared, frothing retaliation against the fact that the vast majority of people who are raped are women.

“Men are raped too!!” they cry. Not Andrew.

“I myself was violated by my grade 8 socials teacher… At first it felt really good, and then it felt like the worst thing that could happen to me. Like I was less than human.”

He introduced himself as “Will” in the video, but whether it’s his lived story or not, I don’t care. He’s a beautiful person for posting this.

Hope you enjoy.

Screencap via the CBC.

Nova Scotia RCMP Discredited a Woman’s Tale of Abuse

You know when you start talking shit about someone and then get paranoid, stop, and check your phone to make sure you haven’t accidentally pocket-dialed the subject of your hatred? Yeah, well, the RCMP could stand to do a little more of that. This week, RCMP officers in Nova Scotia were outed as abuser apologists and sexist pricks after leaving an accidental voicemail on the phone of a woman who filed a domestic assault complaint.

In the voicemail message, one cop says the woman “seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing.”

“So did she deserve to get hit?” another wonders, later on, and laughs.

The woman, who lives in Parrsboro, a tiny, rural Nova Scotia town, reported to police that she went to her partner’s house to get a cell phone that he had taken from her. She said her partner forced her to leave the house and assaulted her.

“She’s like, ‘well you know, I was on the floor, and I was scared for my life!’” the first officer goes on to say. He repeats her words in a light, silly tone.

“Like, you don’t sound very scared.”

So, because she’s not bawling her eyes out in hysterics, her allegation aren’t credible? I bet if she was that emotional, the cops might be inclined to dismiss her for being too emotional, and having disparities in her story as a result of her human reaction.

Former female Mounties have made no secret of harassment of women being ingrained in the RCMP’s culture. It’s been going on for a long time within the ranks of such a powerful old boys club, and it will continue unless we speak against it.

Cops need better, mandatory, rigorous training on how to treat women like human beings. And yes, this is a message I’m okay with leaving to the public, unlike the accidentally published, derogatory comments from two choice members of the RCMP.

@sarratch