SCREAMING

A little while I opened up my Bloglines notifier and started to go through my blogs for the day. Then I got to this one. That screaming was literal. I made my dogs howl. I frightened the elderly couple walking down the street in front of my house. It was the only appropriate reaction. I am so angry I can taste bile. I want my fingernails to turn into talons and rip somebody to shreds.

A 24 year old Englishman was sentenced to two concurrent sentences, each of less than two years, for raping a 10 year old girl. The judge decided since she looked older and was attired in a way he considered provocative that this pervert wasn't really all that guilty. With the time he's already served, he'll be out of of prison in roughly two months.

As if it's not enough that some people think that women are "asking for it" by dressing how they choose, little girls are too.

This one hits close to home for me. I wasn't raped when I was a child, but when I was ten years old, I hit my adult height of 5' 8". Pubescent development hit, and suddenly I had not a training bra, but a D cup. I had the maturity of a ten year old. I was still playing with Barbie dolls (It wasn't uncommon in 1970. Girls did that at that age back then.), swinging on swing sets and playing kick the can in the cove down the street at twilight. I was a sheltered and protected child with no clue about my own body functions, the lurking maelstrom of adolescence, the mechanics of sex or even male anatomy. I knew guys were different from us girls. I just had no idea how. I also dressed like a child of the seventies in halter tops, cut off shorts and mini-skirts, conservative by the standards of the day, but they could still have been considered provocative by some people. My genetics formed my body into a woman's shape at a young age, but they never gave anyone permission to rape me.

Kids can't help the rate at which they grow and develop. Just because some pervert can't control himself, a child is still a child regardless of her physical maturation or the fashions of the day. Judicial opinions like this piece of garbage can only exist when females are objectified, and any male behavior towards females, regardless of how egregious, is deemed as naturally given right. That the victim of this attack was a child did not matter. She was a developing female who looked old enough for sex in his eyes, and that, according to the judge, was enough to say that her being raped should have been understandable.

IT'S NOT.

I have no clue how the judicial system in England works, but I sincerely hope that there's soon to be judge who has found himself redundant.

rape, judicial system, feminism