Being the mother of two boys, I have made it my “mission in life” to raise two well-mannered young men who not only respect women, but treat everyone with respect. This article touches on a severe issue worldwide, something that each of us, as parents, need to address with our children.
One of the more upsetting phenomenons to take root in our society in recent years is the heinous acceptance and proliferation of rape culture. It’s no secret that sexual assault has repeatedly been used as the weapon of choice against women in war-torn African countries, the Middle East, and India. But recently, rape culture has (not so) quietly been thriving in developed, first world countries as well.
In America, countless college administrators are wringing their hands over what to do about the issue of date rape on their campuses. It’s difficult to browse the popular content aggregation site, Reddit, without coming across a “rape joke.” Western women are increasingly shying away from jobs in male-dominated industries like animation and video game design because of other online gamers telling them to “Go get raped” when they reveal their gender to their gaming community.
Now, rape culture in developed nations has reached new and disturbing heights this week after Jezebel reported on a story about a “rape club” made up of teenage boys in New Zealand. The mindset of these teens is so evil and horrific, it almost seems too f*#*ed up to be true. In the states it’s easy to learn if an adult has been arrested for committing a sex crime through online background services like Instant Checkmate, but when the offender is a minor, identifying dangerous individuals isn’t so easy.
Roast Busters
Believe it or not, these teenage boys actually had a public Facebook page for their gang called “Roast Buster’s Appreciation Page” (now shut down). Before Facebook shut down their page, Jezebel blogger, Erin Gloria Ryan, managed to pull some quotes from it first. Some of these are from YouTube videos the boys posted of themselves. Here are just a few. . .
- “My first actual roast for the Roast Busters was bad, it was fun, I felt like the man. I thought this is going to go big, everyone is going to know about the Roast Busters.”
- ”Go ahead, Call the cops, They can’t un-rape you.”
- “It’s not rape,. I had sex with one girl who is 13 when i was 16.. She wanted it and that’s all that matters”
- “We take what we do seriously, some of you think this is a joke, it’s not. You try and get with the amount of girls we do. This is hard, it’s a job, we don’t do this s@#* for pleasure.”
- “We make time out of our daily lives to find a girl to roast”
- “We don’t choose the roast, the roast chooses us. They know what we’re like. They know what they’re in for.”
So. . . if a rapist doesn’t “do this s@#* for pleasure” then why would he. . . never mind I really don’t want to even try to begin to understand the mind of a rapist after all.
Why Aren’t These M-Fers in Jail?!?
I know what you’re thinking, how could a bunch of self-proclaimed rapists who are posting a bunch of stuff all over the Internet about how they gang rape underage girls for fun still have their freedom (and all their limbs)? According to New Zealand detective, Bruce Scott, “None of the girls have been brave enough to make formal statements to us so that we can take them to a prosecution stage or even consider a prosecution stage. Clearly they’re traumatized by what’s happened.” He goes onto say, “We have spoken to the boys and warned them about their behavior and told them that their behavior is verging on criminal, if not criminal.”
The detective says that some of the boys they’ve spoken with have complied and quit the gang, but others haven’t. A New Zealand reporter says that new legislation is underway to allow police to press charges against people based on objectionable materials posted online.
For rape culture to finally die, we must face the fact that we’ve created the social conditions that allow for the normalization of sexual assault and violence against women. It’s not okay, and it needs to stop. Now.
About the Author: Angela DeLatoya is a “feminist” blogger and cultural critic from the Bay Area. She has a degree in gender studies from UC Santa Cruz and has been a featured commentator on a number of blogs, which focus on women’s health.
