Well, I think I agree with leander on this one. It’s like this thread is a contest as to who can come up with the most colorful euphemism to show that they are more outraged than anyone else.
I don’t think the kids are pure evil, sure they did something repugnant, and I have no problem with them going away for a long long time, but the sensationalist bullshit going on in this thread like “I don’t want to compare them to animals because that would be an insult to the animal kingdom” is some of the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever heard, that’s the same to me as the woman slandering the victim. Animals rape all the time. Have you ever seen a dog chasing a bitch in heat, and her fighting him off until he finally subdues her. Or cats where the male cat sinks his fangs into the scruff of the female cat’s neck.
The rage reaction that is displayed here, is just as antithetical to good productive discussion, as blaming the victim. It’s just masturbation to prove what a good citizen you are by telling everyone that you’re more outraged than the average person.
I do think that it’s a problem with our society that people would defend this sort of thing, especially defending it with untruths such as “They are such good kids”, when they clearly are not.
When I was in HS, a kid got shot at school, he died and a couple days later there were kids flyering around my HS with pamphlets asking people to show support for the kid that shot him. I always found that somewhat odd.
So let’s face the fact that these kids aren’t monsters, they aren’t animals, (Though they acted like animals) and focus on the true horror of the story, and that is that these kids were the children of our friend’s and neighbors and that they WERE good kids at different points in their lives, and ask the questions that need to be asked, how can society enlighten itself to be able to head these problems off.
While we may be shocked and horrified by rape in this country, rape is far from uncommon in the world as a whole. In fact it’s downright common in the poorer edges of society. Hell it’s downright common here. I’d say at least one in ten women that I know has been raped. At least that I know of, and I know women who have been raped more than once. It’s far from uncommon and “HUMANS” rape other humans. They do it without relinquishing their humanity. They aren’t monsters, they aren’t animals, they are humans like you or I and they do something that we just cannot tolerate if we want this thing called society to work, but to end it, admitting that it’s part of the society that YOU belong to is one of the first steps to eradicating it.
I personally am into BDSM from time to time, and I make the joke that I would be a rapist or a pedophile if it weren’t for the massive psychological damage aspect. In otherwords, I enjoy the pure animal aspect of sex, I like it to be violent, I like for it to be slightly out of control, or at least to appear so, even if it really is very controlled. I have found that there is no shortage of girls who find this appealing. In the end what it comes down to is consent. Taking away consent from someone is where the crime lies, basically what I am trying to say is that in our society it is downright NORMAL to be able to commit one of these acts, and what keeps most of us from committing these acts is that we don’t want to cause permanent psychological harm to those around us. We don’t wish to make them victims in otherwords, it’s not conducive to the relationship that we all have called society.
So in the end I think that outdoing each other with colorful euphemisms is part of the problem, and is almost as far from the solution as the woman condemning the victim.
I think that Waverly’s parody had a lot of substance to it, in that many of us can trace our lineage back to a time and a place where this sort of thing went on, with a greater frequency, and the perpetrators were probably regarded as heroes by their own friend’s and families.
So let’s accept that these kids ARE us, they ARE our good kids, and maybe try and come up with something a little more constructive as to what you think is not being taught to them that should be, or what is being taught to them that shouldn’t be. As someone asked, “What makes boys like this hate a woman like that?”, I think that’s a very valid question, what generates that sort of hate toward a woman? What generates irrational hate at all?
Erek