The Web is crackling this week with opinions on the conviction and sentencing of Brock Allen Turner for the rape of a young woman.
Everyone who reads news on the Internet knows the story, so I will not rehash it here. This post is about a way we can chip away at Rape Culture, and try to prevent situations where the criminal's needs are elevated above the victim/survivor's. {My personal opinion is that if you have ruined a person's life by raping them, your needs don't count anymore, Jack.}
Language is important, and powerful: this case has already shown how language is used to paint a criminal as a victim. How it's used to downplay the horror of being violated, and how it's used to question a young woman after the fact, to determine if she 'deserved' to be raped.
As with many notable historic events, a visual icon is normally generated, which encapsulates the event in a kind of visual shorthand for the event itself. The most famous examples are the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, the image of the young woman kneeling over the shooting victim at Kent State, and the image of Neil Armstrong stepping off the Lunar Lander. One glance at these images gives instant recall of an event that would fill pages worth of explanation.
The image currently associated with Turner is a picture of him with the title: I am Brock Allen Turner. I Am a Rapist. It's a powerful countercall to the press' constant description of him in terms like "Stanford Student", "Stanford Swimmer", "Olympic Aspirant". No. He's been convicted, sentenced (lightly, to many peoples' disgust), and will do time. He is a criminal.
The only problem I have with the movement is the descriptive word that is being used -- rapist. I feel that this word, as much as any other factor in Rape Culture, helps to perpetuate the notion that the person raping another is somehow special.
It's the suffix "--ist". It normally denotes a specialty of some importance or celebrity, such as in the words Artist, Pianist, Cellist, Economist, Anesthesiologist.
The suffix also applies to adherents of a moment, political body, or cause, such as in the words Communist, Capitalist, Nihilist, Feminist or Humanist.
Brock Turner, and those like him, are not craftspeople, or adherents to a movement. They are simply people who rape. They are rapers.
Let's remove the label of achievement for these people and call them what they really are -- a brute, a person who destroys lives. A blunt, unyielding, uncaring force of hatred. A person that must be stopped, not a "talented young man with a bright future".
Let's start with the word. --JB
