I feel a great and terrible rage, so I have taken to jogging. Very addictive is jogging. For while jogging I dream of nothing more then the next breath or the next footstep. It allows me to escape the often harsh realities I must face each day. My reality this day, and most days in recent memory, is focused on the injustice of rape.
Recently, my friend informed me she had been raped. Her former boyfriend took advantage of her, at a moment when she was particularly weak, to fulfill his own desires. No charges were filed, no sirens sounded and no one was punished for the crime. In truth, she was drunk, and his word versus hers left little to litigate. So she did not report it.
As a man concerned with the tenets of truth and justice, this puts me out of sorts. For if she does not report the crime, how can the perpetrator be found guilty? How can he be tried? How can he be grabbed by the mob and beaten until he has paid with pain and his destruction, either physically or socially?
I would gladly tie that rapist-in fact, I would tie every rapist-to the chair and flip the switch. Those who simply took sex, whether it was by force or simply by not asking to see if the individual they had sex with was conscious enough to consent, are equally deserving of corporal punishment.
What sort of a man finds pleasure in the unconscious or unwilling anyway? What desperate fool forces himself upon the unwilling? The law for these questions has no answers of any worth. For the law can only deal with the deviant and desperate. It cannot offer true understanding or a future solution. Rape cases are horribly hard in any forum and no trier of fact wishes to make a mistake on either side. Yet I would wish for some magic wand to find those truly guilty, separate them from the innocent, and flamb?? them alive.
It might be that in my unthinking anger and pain over my friend, I have exceeded common decency, but I cannot help but be outraged-not only at what happened to my friend but at what has happened to us as a society that such atrocities may occur.
What ever happened to manhood? What happened to the belief and ideal that men serve, protect and defend the helpless in society? Anyone who truly called themselves a man could not due such a thing, nor allow such a thing to occur.
To me, every rape is a failure for men as well as for women. It means that one of us has fallen below any standard of sanity and that the societal mindset that would prevent such action either does not exist in him or was flawed. Men have a duty to protect women and society, feminism be damned on this point. For rape is such a taint upon the soul of the victim that those with the capability or cognizance have a duty to prevent it.
Despite my desire for some magic shield to prevent rape from ever occurring, I know as I walk across campus that victims surround me. Women, whether they heavily overindulge or do not take a single drink, could have something horrible happen to them. Women who pass me by may have been the victim of a sexual assault or a rape they never reported. There are male victims in the crowd as well, those of us who failed in stopping or preventing such things, and who have to live with that burden. And there are the occasional tainted sinners who would commit such a deed. All in all, it leaves me with a great and terrible rage with life and our society.
But I've taken to jogging, and can thus forget about the reality of what has happened. I will survive, so long as I never stop.
Harlen L. Johnston is a third-year law student.
