Image courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Editor’s note — this subject matter calls for some form of coping mechanism. Mine is flippancy and course language. I’m fucking serious. If you continue to read this, it’ll ruin your night. Graphic content warning.
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The U.S. as a culture, from top to bottom, doesn’t have the first fucking clue how to handle rape.
First off, we don’t even know what rape is. On a legal level, the definition of what is or is not sexual assault varies from state to state, with some states being pretty alarmingly lax, and on a personal level, it feels like every year a new study comes out about all the incoming college students who don’t know or care what consent is. There are no end of horror stories about police shaming victims who come forward or simply not pursuing their cases. If they do, courts still have no idea how to treat the victim with dignity while still having a fair trial, which they do still need to have. And if all that goes right, the judge could still hand out a six month sentence at his discretion.
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