Brock Turner, the indisputable raper of an unconscious 23 year old female, has now been released 3 months early from his “harsh” sentence of 6 months. All I want to do right now is write cuss words, one repeated after another, but such a thing would be less meaningful than the entire courting process that allowed such a violent atrocity to be regarded negligible. Instead our country did what it does best, allowing privileged white men to continue overseeing acts of injustice setting precedence that rape is okay and sexual assault is not a big deal. She was drunk wasn’t she? She asked for it. She doesn’t have the right to drink in large quantities, especially since men can’t control their sexual tendencies, and can’t respect a woman who wants to enjoy herself as a  male counterpart would. That is the most insulting and completely sexist perception of instances of sexual assault. It is never justified to touch another person, taking advantage of their physical or emotional state of being, for one second, let alone 20 minutes without consent. I’m tired of the argument that because she was drunk she lost the opportunity to say no, because guess what, she wasn’t even asked the question. She was instead slammed to a dumpster, made to feel insignificant and worthless, while her raper is now able to walk freely and roam the grounds, under jurisdiction to live without slightest notion of his action. She learned what had happened to her through the news, as she didn’t even have memory of the event, yet is now haunted with how her body was left and the indignity of being completely degraded as a person with unequivocal rights. And when such a crime happens the last thing I could ever imagine is the parent of the abuser to justify the act, without apology, and attempt to humanize the perpetrator. That’s beyond disgusting. The Stanford rape victim released her statement a few months ago and in it she stated how she read in Brock’s statement that, “(she) liked it.” That she liked what was happening to her. She hadn’t even been a functional person during the action so my obvious question is how he could so conveniently assume that she enjoyed something she had no desire to participate in, let alone idea of what was occurring in that instance. If it were a perfect world we would finally punish those that choose to subject others to a life of misery, of unfathomable trauma, and one that is governed by a sole moment of losing control over their own body. She was freaking unconscious!!! How is it that this one case isn’t even representative of the three hundred thousand rape instances against women that occur every year. Instead of actually enforcing a legitimized consequence for hurting another human being, we are simply allowing cases to go unnoticed, as 54% of people don’t even go through the trouble of reporting their rape case. That’s the issue here, that people are inhibited with the unwelcoming statistics of rapers actually being penalized when such infractions of human rights occur. And I don’t mean just the ostracizing encountered by the media, I’m talking about something substantial that has implications of carrying the same severity of pain, and emotional detriments, that the person they decided to strip of their basic entitlements (aka your own freaking body) now has. We aren’t encouraging those who endure the worst abuse to speak out, and at least be given the slightest sanction that the criminal has been punished. It is time for us to take a stand against sexual assault. Whether it is a lifetime of imprisonment, or something much higher in severity, it is time for this country to recognize rape as a possible reality for one out of five women, living in the same country that is supposed to be safe for all. Having such unequal treatment for women and men regarding how they decide to drink alcohol and handle themselves in that manner, is inherently wrong. It cannot be accepted for a woman to have a constant prevailing fear that if she drinks one more shot, she is going to justifiably be the victim of assault by a male. Warranting another to engage in sexual behaviors is the mutuality of both parties, not the desires of one. I’m sick of old white judges disregarding the effect of sexual assault, or the validity of its occurrence. Because even if it is a few people out of six who may be making up a case, there is evidence that at least one of them are genuinely reporting an instance that has left a permanent scar. “I don’t want my body anymore,” said the victim of the rape (I love how articles are now just referring to it as sexual harassment, when it was a clear-cut rape case), that’s when you know the battle has been lost, as she doesn’t even want to be affiliated with her own self after knowing what was done to it. She had every right to her own body, and every right to drink, and every right to enjoy herself, yet evidently even those freedoms that this country is supposed to protect is limited by the actions of many who think they can go untouched. Legislation needs to start attacking the problem from the source, and stop blaming the situation, the victim, and those intangibles that are just used as excuses to elude to the issue at stake. We need to demand change, we need to protect every human being, and we need to stop accepting and begin enacting a difference in the way we treat sexual assault.