Cook: Are our double standards showing?

photo David Cook

Six days ago a man was raped while running in a North Shore neighborhood, Chattanooga police said. It happened in the most pedestrian of times -- just before morning rush hour.

When the news broke, the city gasped.

"Lord have mercy," one reader said.

"This is heartbreaking," said another.

Many began to wonder: How safe are our streets? Should we only run in groups? How could such nice-neighborhood, broad-daylight violence happen?

But as Chattanooga pondered and prayed in the days following the rape, some questions went unasked.

Nobody asked what kind of clothes the man was wearing.

Or how he was behaving. Whether he was flirting. Or if he was, you know, asking for it.

Nobody asked if he'd been drinking. Or smoking pot. Or how much alcohol, how much pot.

Nobody has questioned his sexual history, or how many people he slept with in college.

Nobody is putting the burden on him -- why did he make such a poor decision to run alone? Why wasn't he carrying his cellphone or mace so he could protect himself?

In other words: Nobody began blaming the man for being raped, because doing so would be atrociously and offensively insulting, like a crime on top of a crime.

So why do we blame women?

"It was like being raped again," Katie Hnida said in an interview last year.

In 2003, Hnida, a kicker, became the first woman to play and score points in an NCAA Division 1 football game. She was also raped by a teammate.

It was at the University of Colorado. She reported the crime. The news broke, and the sports community gasped.

And cursed.

"They slam you. Call you names. Call you a slut, no matter what," Hnida said. "Hate mail. Death threats."

No other crime in our society is so layered with double standards. When your home is burglarized, no one wonders what you were wearing. When your car is stolen, no one raises an eyebrow about how many times you had sex in college.

No one argues it was consensual carjacking.

It all serves as a silencer. Who would come forward to report rape when such criticism is sure to follow?

"That's why many rape victims don't," said Hnida.

Earlier this year, three high school students were charged with sexually assaulting a female classmate during an after-prom party in Gilmer County, Ga.

The details are obscene: Sexual battery. Tearing and severe trauma. Hospitalization. Substantial injuries, the sheriff said. Some of the worst he'd ever seen.

The city gasped.

Others didn't.

"One drunk girl accuses, and ya'll are ready to kill these three?" one reader said.

"Remember the Duke lacrosse team," said another.

In 2006, members of Duke University's lacrosse team were accused of rape. The accusations turned out to be empty, and the charges dropped.

It is the outlier, the rare case (one in five women is sexually assaulted on college campuses, the White House says) of false rape accusation, yet in our male-dominant culture, we've learned to parade out the incident as a default response when women are assaulted.

Raped?

Remember Duke!

"Give the boys a break," one reader said. "Put them on trial. Let the truth come out."

Of course, due process matters. But to exaggerate and substitute the few times rape charges are false against the thousands of times they're true is not only flimsy logic, it's a fuel for the fire that encourages rape.

And if many of us are willing to suspend our judgment of the three white high schoolers in Georgia, shouldn't we also for the black teenager police arrested in last week's rape?

Why is no one rushing to the defense -- Remember Duke! -- of that black kid?

Sure, the circumstances are different: a late-night party compared to Mississippi Avenue in the morning. Male-to-female violence versus male-to-male assault. A teenager. A 69-year-old man.

So what.

Rape is rape just like arson is arson just like murder is murder.

Yet in our society, we blur the lines (here's to you, Robin Thicke), confusing our responses to rape because we've confused women with sex objects.

It's the fog of rape culture: When women are sexually assaulted, we can't see clearly enough to realize it is never, ever, not once their fault.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.

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