A Note: The following article discusses rape. It may be upsetting to some people.

On October 24th, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, California was gang raped after leaving her high school homecoming dance. A group of men, minors and adults, called her over and she started drinking with them. The news reports say ten men participated in the rape, and at least a dozen more watched, for over two hours. No one called the police. The authorities didn’t learn about the crime until someone was overheard ‘reminiscing’ about it. Since then, six suspects are now in custody.

There are some psychological theories about why bystanders don’t call the police, but those theories are more applicable to people who hear a crime being committed and think: ‘someone else will call.’ Maybe the attackers, including the ones who just stood there, were wondering: ‘when is someone going to put a stop to this?’, but the fact that someone bragged about it afterwards leads me to believe that they were complicit in the assault. I probably should be surprised, but I’m not. One of the most chilling things I ever heard was a study that revealed that about 30 percent of college-aged men would commit rape under certain circumstances. After hearing about the girl in Richmond, I checked the literature− that 30 percent statistic is still true.

I’m not arguing that all men would commit rape if they could get away with it. But, there is something in this culture, sometimes it is so insidious that it appears automatic and natural, that says: women are objects. If you look closely, you can see it everywhere. I see it in the way men will call you a bitch when you won’t acquiesce to them. I see it in the way men will subtly direct their wives/girlfriends’ movements. I see it in the way men take up space on the bus, or invade your space when you’re waiting in line. All of these examples seem annoying, but they fall on the banal end of the male domination and privilege continuum, rape and murder being on the extreme end.

When we add stereotypes about female sexuality to the male domination continuum, we get the ‘she was asking for it/she was careless’ excuses. These excuses play on the myth that all women are either frigid or insatiable. The girl in California will be accused of asking for it. She didn’t have to go over to them when they called her, did she? And she didn’t have to start drinking with them, either. It is no accident that so many women stay silent after an assault, but as the great Audre Lorde said: your silence will not protect you. There are people you can talk to. The SMU Women’s Centre can refer women to the appropriate resources. But men need to recognize the ways in which they benefit from sexism, and are hurt by it as well.

Check out www.mencanstoprape.org for more information.