Check out this story from the Washington Post, “‘A community on edge’: Town torn apart by sexual assault accusations against football players,” and the following two quotes:
“They’re 15-, 16-, 17-year-old boys who are doing what boys do,” said Hubert Shaw, who owns the town’s feed lot and whose daughter-in-law is Howard’s aunt.
“I would guarantee that those boys had no criminal intent to do anything or any harm to anyone,” Shaw said. “Boys are boys and sometimes they get carried away. . . . Have you ever been popped on the butt with a towel when you was in sports?”
This mentality is representative of rape culture. I don’t know what Shaw thinks a normal 15-, 16-, and 17-year old boy does, but I most certainly did not penetrate another boy’s anus with a coat hanger.
Moreover, there is quite the chasm between a towel bop to the butt and a coat hanger up the anus.
They’re dismissing and trivializing what is, indeed, a rape.
Milam's Musings 