Rape and Culture

I read an article in the Times magazine entitled Rape and Culture. After reading it, I wanted to join the women who picketed in front of the courts and let judge Archie Simonson feel my rage. Very few things make me take action but this was ridiculous. Here is the first paragraph:

Two judges raise the question of the victim's responsibility "I'm trying to say to women stop teasing. There should be a restoration of modesty in dress and elimination from the community of sexual-gratification businesses," declared Dane County Judge Archie Simonson, 52. "Whether women like it or not they are sex objects. Are we supposed to take an impressionable person 15 or 16 years of age and punish that person severely because they react to it normally?" Voicing such sentiments, Judge Simonson let a convicted 15-year-old Madison, Wis., defendant off last May with a wrist-tapping probated sentence in the rape of a 16-year-old coed in a high z school stairwell. As a result, Simonson this week is running against five other candidates in the first judicial-recall election in the U.S. in three decades.

To his supporters, Simonson's remarks reflected a troubled quest for proper justice in an era notable both for its sexual liberation and the use of sex as a sales device. But feminists were outraged.

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The way our culture sees women now has inarguably changed. Here is an example of how our gender has to be forced to watch themselves in case they might give off the wrong message, where if they happen to do so and get raped, it's there fault. Apparently rape is not the issue, the woman is. Furthermore, WE ARE SEX OBJECTS?! This is a judge. A person who guides our laws and sets precedents. This is the precedent for our future, this is a legal definition of women's gender role in our current society; Sex Objects.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915435,00.html