I hate how easily we contextualize an event as tragic as the Duke rape incident along the familiar ideological lines. The conservative instantly opines that the female is at fault for being a stripper. She should have known better than to take off her clothes in front of aroused drunk athletes. As a result, she got what was coming to her. Call it "Survivor: Natural Selection." The liberal -- whatever that means these days -- retorts that our social construction objectifies women and restricts their freedom. Oh, if only there were some radical revolution that would change, nay, liberate societal conceptions! And let us not forget, the liberal would remind, that all men are evil. After all, a society ruled by women would have no wars (or urinals).
Enough! Here is an objective middle ground that sends neither women nor urinals packing.
Men drink. Men also think objectifying thoughts about women. Is that bad? Sure. And I am sorry, but you, Mr. Liberal, are not going to change that. You are neither God, nor a good writer. Divine intervention and re-conceptualization through literature are both lost on you. Men will always drink and will always succumb to groupthink when in groups. You might be able to start up a revolution. But, most likely, you will "Take Back the Night" in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong message. And if you do succeed, only God knows what successful suppression on an age-old desire to objectify would do to our culture.
My middle ground also excludes the conservative take on the Duke situation. This girl is black, and she is a stripper. Yes, she might have chosen her job. Yes, she might have chosen to be on call that day. But getting raped (if she was: The trial is ongoing) is not inherent to her profession. The Duke lacrosse players requested her services. They made their own decisions and they are responsible for all their words and all their actions. And the only illegal actions committed (if any) were by them, not by her.
Have you thought, Mr. Conservative, that she might have self-selected into that form of labor because she needed to pay the bills or go to college, and that stripping is probably a high income vocation? And yes, it might be an immoral one, but so is their purchase of her time. Some men and women choose to become strippers, and some are probably mentally unstable enough to want to be raped and sodomized. But some does not imply all, and the generalization of blame is both dangerous and wrong. Some beggars cannot afford to be choosers and, sometimes, there is Lot in Gomorrah, and you have to account for that.
This is one of those issues where it's important to return back to square one. We are not blaming all men for being the drunks they sometimes are, or all women for being out of the kitchen. Let's stop debating the impact of sports culture on our society, because sports are here to stay and nothing we can do will change that. Accepting the facts of life is practical, not defeatist. Rapes will happen, and sometimes the underlying factors of the motivations of various individuals are impossible to pinpoint. If we generalize and abstract away from reality, we will take away the wrong lessons from a very simple situation. No, we should not burn down all strip clubs; that would just put people out of work and, perhaps, on the street. No, we should not disband Duke's lacrosse team; blanket punishments create more problems than they solve. And we should never, ever look at rape through partisan perspectives.
Stripped of its ideological baggage, this issue becomes simply a crime, the solution to which lies with the judicial system, and not with the legislature.
