Look, Steubenville, even the character named “the Feral Child” managed to keep it together (via dangerousuniverse.com)

This is pretty much the only conclusion I can reasonably reach, given all the talk about how the real lesson of the Steubenville rape case is the dangers of drinking too much. I’m not going to link to some of the more ridiculous commentaries, but the line of thinking amounts to: a girl got so drunk that she couldn’t control herself, and she got raped (see the Public Shaming Blog for a collection of tweets and other social media updates: 1, 2, 3.) Missing from this analysis is the moral agency of anyone else in town. All I can think is that the men and boys in this town are so lacking in self-control that they actually register below most members of the animal kingdom, because most animals have at least some concept of consequences for their actions.

Even the people who say that the boys are at fault, but so is the girl for getting drunk miss the point so much that it is doubtful they even know the point exists. All the girl is guilty of doing is getting drunk while underage. That barely registers on the scale of criminality next to the crime of rape. If you do not understand that, maybe you should not be allowed in public near drunk people.

This is such a ridiculously defamatory notion, that men cannot control themselves around a drunk/sexy/scantily-clad/female woman, and that the onus is entirely on the woman to protect herself. It has served as cover for men for a very, very long time, though, and it may only be recently that it occurred to men that this idea actually makes us look like idiots. I assume women have known this all along, and that privilege blinded the guys from seeing it. Some guys seem determined not to get it. Some women and girls go along with it, too.

Guys, we can do better than this. Have a little damn pride in yourselves, because if you really have such a serious problem with self-control, maybe we need to be the ones covering up all the time.