There was one particular article I came across in my last semesters English 301 class. It was an especially disturbing case of rape in which a younger girl in middle school was raper repeatedly by 5 twenty year old boys. After reading the article I felt disgusted in humanity, and asked myself what the reason for going over this in class could be? Well, the article and the way in which it was written had a very disturbing message. The class went through each section line by line, and really pulled apart the rhetoric of the article. The article would not state the young girls name. In fact she was De - personalized in a way that seemed cruel and unimportant. The reporter included that she was wearing a tank top and makeup. It also went over the fact of all the speculations this town had about the incident. They could not believe such an act could happen in their perfect small town. The article became more or less about the poor town, and how will they recover from it? What was disturbing was the fact that no one seemed to care about how could this act of aggression be taken out on a young innocent girl. Today, in the media especially there is a lot of speculation over rage cases. There is a sort of culture centered around these acts. For one, the women who have been violated often never truly get justice. Even if they win a short appeal, they will still have to deal with this sort of trauma for the rest of her life.
The rape culture we live in is so normalized that a reporter can be able to say "the young girl was wearing makeup, etc." and make it as though it is the girl's fault that this happened. I was so horrified that this piece of crap could have even gotten published in the first place, yet in our society it is not uncommon.
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