This Scottish PSA (down at the bottom because I'm terrible at formatting) showed up on Broadsheet today, and although I know I've got approximately 3 people who read this blog I wanted to share it because I think it's really pertinent for college students. Something that really, really bugs me-- and not the way American Apparel or even Sarah Palin bugs me--is the attitude that college students, male and female, have towards rape. Because the fact is that even girls have an insanely blase attitude about it. Sure, not about armed, violent, To Catch a Predator stuff--everybody knows that's wrong. But--and this is just my perception as a college-age woman--there's a disgustingly passive feeling about date rape.
I'm not going to lay into fraternities...we all know that they're not exactly the safest place in the world for a drunk girl. The group I want to address is my peers: the nice girls. We are nice. We come from nice families, nice neighborhoods, nice high schools. We have nice friends and maybe nice boyfriends. And some of us are the worst rape apologists since everyone who signed that bullshit Roman Polanski petition. It has to stop.Here's the way the thinking goes. Those girls who get raped get too wasted, dress too slutty, do stupid things, get themselves into bad situations and probably deserve it. If they let themselves get too drunk to say no, they probably deserve it. If they walk home alone, they probably deserve it. We are nice girls, so we're smart. We walk in groups, don't get too drunk, don't dress too slutty. So that could never happen to us.
Yeah, right.
It can happen to anyone, chickadees. Sure, don't be a moron. But don't go around saying that a woman who's gone through one of the most traumatic things the human psyche can experience was asking for it. Have a little goddamn empathy. I mean, whatever happened to sisterhood?The idea that anyone "deserves" or is "asking for" rape is so disgusting, so morally out-of-whack that I have a hard time even writing something coherent about it--and the notion that women are talking this way about other women is even worse. The idea that women have to dress a behave a certain way in order to avoid rape basically excuses all the dudes who are actually, uh, going around raping people. This nice girl is calling bullshit.
Sarah. Oh, Sarah. You have your reality show, your designer clothes and your sexy spread in Runner's World. Bristol is even getting a cameo on the Secret Life of the American Teenager, that bastion of right-wing sexual politics masquerading as an after-school special. Isn't that enough? You've achieved the American dream: you've capitalized on being a quitter. Sure, you were a successful pageant queen, but you switched colleges approximately 17 times, brought down any hope McCain had of earning moderate votes, and then quit being governor of a state where your pet project was slaughtering wolves from helicopters. But apparently your cushy speaking engagements and the book deals, which induce hysterical sobbing fits in rejection-ragged writers, are not enough. You are shooting higher. You aren't saying that you're running for president, but you are hinting that you are both a Mama Grizzly and a pink elephant, and I think we all know what that means.
You've created something called Sarah PAC, which is kicking off its fundraising efforts with this video. Inevitably, you're going to quit this too and use the money to buy more Barbie-goes-to-Washington outfits and maybe a new jogging stroller for Tripod and Tripplehorn, but you're going to milk this thing for all it's worth. Here you are giving flowers to little girls! Here you are taking photos with working class citizens of the "real America"--who despite all their bootstrappyness are of course sufficiently clean-cut and white! Here you are blathering about being a grizzly bear!
OK ready?
Video Scorecard Times Sarah says "women" : 6 Hugs: 3 Babies: 4 Black people: 1 Grammatical mistakes on Tea Party signs: 3 Instances where Sarah stares dreamily into soft flattering light: 2
Grizzly bears are defensive, irrational, somewhat dim animals. So are you, Sarah. It's not that I begrudge you the comparison. It's just that suggesting that we want one running the country is kind of insulting, even to people who can't operate quotation marks. See, I don't really want any sort of bear--polar, kodiak, gummi--running my country. I'm pretty okay with the fact that we've got a Harvard law professor in the White House. But then again, I live in fake America, where we want actual smart people running the country. Real America seems to be eating this shit up-- so snaps for you, Sarahcuda.
My real problem is your insinuation that so-called "women's issues" are also Conservative issues. Because you know what I'm a grizzly bear about? Accessible health care, reproductive rights, human rights, conservation, education, gay marriage...and I don't know, not killing everything. In your world it's cool to kill almost anything--wolves, polar bears, illegal immigrants--but if you want a morning after pill you're shit out of luck. In your world, it's fine for your daughter to (almost) marry into a family of meth dealers, but a couple of tax-paying law-abiding citizens, both of whom happen to have penises, can't get married. You envision a world where we all drive to hockey practice in military grade vehicles called things like "Denali" and "Tundra", conveniently named after the places we raped to get the oil to run them. That's not the world I want to live in, Sarah--and as a woman I'd appreciate it if you stopped speaking for me.
