Stanford Rape Case: Irish males’ reaction to victim impact statement goes viral
Screenwriter David Keeling posted a short essay on Twitter that subsequently went viral.
“Rape culture is a difficult thing to get your head around,” he wrote. “It really is. Especially when you’ve lived the majority of your life completely oblivious to it. This is something that many men just weren’t aware of until recently. Many men still aren’t. The extent of it. How ingrained and ubiquitous it is.
“Even now — having read a lot about it over the past few years — I still can’t fully process it.
“Reading articles by women about how they’re constantly aware of threat levels in everyday life, constantly keeping watch, constantly afraid... It’s something I find really hard to fathom.
“And it’s not that I doubt it for a second, or think they’re exaggerating — it’s just that it’s so difficult to imagine being in that mindset all the time. It’s horrifying frankly. It’s something that men just don’t have to deal with.”
He then went on to address the stereotyping of women and the importance of empathy in trying to understand the position of another human being.
“We’ve been conditioned to distrust women, to presume they’re overreacting or hysterical,” he said.
“Every day, women are dismissed, accused of lying, told to calm down and shut up. It’s in the media we consume, the things we read and watch.
“So when a woman speaks up about sexual violence, no matter how enlightened you are, there’s always a part of your brain that jumps to doubt and disbelieve.
“But it’s our duty to believe. It’s our responsibility to listen when women speak out about this, and even if you can’t fully get your head around it, to respect the fact that other people have very different life experiences to you.
“So it’s important to be aware that, though you may not be able to fully comprehend another’s experiences, you can still, at the very least, not belittle or doubt or dismiss or negate those experiences. Do this, and if you can, help others to do it too.”
Echoing David’s comment was Shane Doyle who posted a much-read post to his blog, Screaming Into the Void, entitled ‘What a Bunch of Bastards.’
“Take a seat at this table,” he wrote. “This table of men. This is a man’s table, built for men. We built it to be the only table that matters. Front of stage, top of the house. This is the table where we laugh and we drink and we decide, us men. You know men like us. We all look like us, like men.
“‘Brock Turner,’ I say instead. A bastard, they agree. They have to agree. But. Watch for the ones who say ‘But’. Watch us all. We perform our ritual of distancing. We exorcise Turner from our conscience.”
Shane then referred to the victim statement, encouraging other men to read it.
“But it is time to read her words,” he wrote. “It is time that we allowed her to be a voice, to be a person, to be more than an object into which we pour. We build an image from dreams and wants and desires and make it her.
“And we want her hollow so we can fill her up with all our yeses and our needs. And she is not this.
“She is talking to Brock Turner. She is talking to men, to me. To you.”
