Someday, when I meet Brock Turner, I will tell him how he contributed to our family. I will tell the Stanford freshman who raped an unconscious woman about our dinner discussion last night, when my daughter – just past puberty, wide-eyed and embracing of life – talked about the dangers she will face. I will tell Turner how he (and others like him) tarnished so much of what my daughter’s grandfather and father, uncles and our male friends – men who are among the most admirable human beings I know – worked her whole life to teach her. I will tell the champion swimmer about the look on her face when the idea of men as kind givers of support and protection got mixed with fear. I will tell him how I let the conversation be, since that fear might someday save her greater hurt.
And I will tell Turner how someday soon I will have to teach my daughter how to maim another human being, or at least try to, in a few quick blows of the arms and legs – the way my father taught me when I was even younger than she is now. Twenty years after that lesson, on a deserted street in Washington DC, I would thank my father, when I was attacked by two men and had, quite literally, a fighting chance.
So, I will thank Turner for adding to the legacy of fear and violence, and for contributing to the long history in which parenting girls has to be, in part, about teaching them to be vigilant and capable of violence in return.
The letter from the woman Turner raped (I refuse to call her “his victim” – the possessive pronoun and the noun, both, make me sick) made me want to weep. The part about the sketch of the two bicycles, hanging above her bed so she can remember the two men who saved her; a sketch she sees every night when she cannot turn out the lights because she wakes in a panic remembering what happens when and if you lose consciousness – that part, did make me weep. It made me weep like one of the Swedish men who saved her did after he ran Brock down and called the police. He wept for what he had seen.
Patriarchy and privilege
Violence and violation of the sacred – of bodies, of trust – is like shredded promises. Those who believe in the promises, will weep. Each time. And heaven help us when we stop weeping.
So, the judge’s ruling, sentencing Brock to six months in jail, is just the last reason to weep.
Clearly, what happened isn’t justice, not really. It is another case of patriarchy and privilege. It is also, while we are at it, partly the result of a culture that regularly forgets that athletics is, in the end, just a pastime.
For what it is worth, I went to Stanford. And I played sports while I was there: PAC-10 women’s foil fencing champion one year; Oxford University volleyball team: Magdalen College first eight. I get it. Sports can be a powerful vehicle for building character. The pushing of the limits of human abilities, mentally and physically, that athletes accomplish is a marvel to watch and be part of. And the contests we watch in the arena so often stand, for us, as metaphors for heroic battles of all kinds.
But let’s keep it in perspective – keep it in our pants, if you will – even all of this does not make athletics a realm of protected privilege.
Because what happened in 2015 behind the dumpster at Stanford that night was about the worst of athletic virtues and values. What happened there was about the most despicable pieces of human character having taken root. The events behind the dumpster that night are about a man of amazing physical abilities misusing all of his well-honed strength. And the one who was hurt that night had not even a chance of a heroic battle – so shame on her opponent.
Some gladiators need to get fed to the lions.
And some judges too.
And someday maybe we won’t have to teach our girls – on the brink of womanhood, wide-eyed and alive – that vigilance and violence is forever some of what they must carry with them across this threshold.
In case you haven’t read it, the letter written by the woman Turner attacked.
This article first appeared on Medium.com.
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