Hierarchy of crime

According to Sports Illustrated, a newspaper reporter in Pittsburgh will no longer be invited to appear on a local sports panel TV show because he made a comment saying that Michael Vick would be better off right now if he had raped a woman.

I can understand why people are upset about that remark, because if you don't take the time to interpret it, it sounds off-colour. But on the other hand, I think he was right. And I think it's tragic that he was right.

One of the blogs I read regularly, Velvet in Dupont (who is, admittedly, a huge animal lover), has a post up saying that what Vick is accused of doing is much worse than what Kobe Bryant was accused of doing. The quote reads (and this will skyrocket my blog's rating from PG-13 to NC-17), "Whatever happened in Bryant’s hotel room remains unknown. Did a crime occur there? Was the girl raped or was she just a starfucker? Who knows. Who cares really. You go up to a guy’s hotel room you dumb cunt, and you’re asking for it. Women’s rights advocates be damned."

I'm not saying that dogfighting isn't a big deal. It is a big deal, it's a horrible, cruel, disgusting thing to do, and it should be treated as such. Michael Vick should be prosecuted for the laws that he has broken, and I'm glad that he has lost his endorsement deals.

But rape is an equally big deal. It also involves cruel mistreatment of living, feeling beings in a way that is beyond their control and that has long-lasting negative impacts. It is also a terrible crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

I recognize that Kobe Bryant was never convicted of rape or sexual assault against Katelyn Faber, and that nobody knows what happened there. Velvet in Dupont is right that it appears much more clear that Vick committed this crime than it was that Bryant committed that one (and I recognize the other point as well--that women are capable, to a certain extent, of avoiding dangerous situations, whereas dogs cannot avoid being brought into dogfighting situations). But the overall point stands. The public outrage over Michael Vick's alleged crimes is far stronger than the public response to the allegations against Kobe Bryant.

For some reason, alleged rape and sexual assault do not seem to elicit such strong, visceral responses. Is it that such allegations are so commonplace that people don't notice them anymore? Is it because there is some sort of societal prejudice toward alleged rape victims? Clearly, there is a stigma about coming forth and saying you were raped--many victims don't do it or choose not to press charges, many major news outlets don't release the names of victims of sexual assault in order to protect their privacy (which seems to me a tacit acknowledgment that unlike the victims of other crimes such as armed robbery, rape victims are not guaranteed to receive the support and sympathy of the general public), and now there are semantics debates about whether or not words like "rape," "victim," and "assault" should even be allowed to be used in court during rape trials. I find it crazy for a judge to rule that using the correct words to describe the alleged crimes is too "loaded" to be admissible in court.

Rape is a blurry line, and I think it's true that in many cases one person views as consensual what the other person views as forced. People are not always good at communicating with one another, at clearly stating what they do and do not want, and at interpreting each other's cues. I understand why it's such a blurry line with rape, and I understand why it's such a difficult crime to prove.

But when it does happen, it should be taken seriously. There is no need to weigh the crimes of rape and dogfighting against each other and declare that dogfighting is the worse crime. But that's what we have done, and now a reporter is being censured for pointing out the truth--that our society is meting out a worse punishment to a man accused of dogfighting than we would if he were accused of raping a woman. These are our societal priorities, and all Paul Zeise did was point that out. It's too bad that we chose to direct our ire over the issue of sexual assault toward people who make seemingly ill-judged comments about it rather than people who are accused of actually committing it.