Written By : Tabitha Hale

Crossposted at TabithaHale.com

According a recent conversation on The View, there are apparently varying degrees of rape. And Whoopi Goldberg doesn’t think that oral, anal, and vaginal pentration, despite being told no (several times), was actually rape.

So here’s the thing, Whoopi. Rape is rape. As AllahPundit pointed out, Samantha Geimer’s testimony claims that it was, in fact, a “rape-rape”. And really, the only other person involved admitted to giving quaaludes and champaigne to a child before sodomizing her, so who do you trust?

Tommy Christopher sums up my thoughts exactly.

Whoopi floats the notion that rape “wasn’t the allegation,” and that the victim “was aware,” and Melissa Gilbert thinks it makes a difference that “Mom was in the building.”

What the EFF? I hate to even point out the sickeningly obvious here. First of all, “rape-rape” was the allegation. Samantha Geimer testified that she told Polanski “No!” While Polanski denies this, he loses a couple of credibility points by drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old girl. I’d say she gets the benefit of the doubt here.

Notwithstanding that, though, is that the standard of consent now, “She was aware?” Keep an eye on your drinks, ladies, because in Whoopi’s world, the right dose of rohypnol will leave you just conscious enough to have deserved it.

The clip on Jezebel disturbed me even more than the first one I watched in Tommy Christopher’s post. Whoopi’s pseudo-logical rant about defining what it actually was that he did about sent me over the edge.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Joy Behar actually said something I absolutely agree with. You can’t have sex with a 13 year old kid without it being rape. There is no such thing as consensual, it is always rape according to the law. Hence the term “statutory rape”. Even if they do it in Europe, Whoopi.

Apparently the fact that there were drugs and alcohol involved complicates the issue for Whoopi and the girls. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. If she said no, which she did, it’s rape. There is no such thing as “gray area” in the real world. Rape is rape. When someone says no, and they are then pushed into sexual acts, it becomes “rape-rape”.

I know what it looks from Samantha’s side. People default to “blame the victim” mode when there is any questionable behavior on the part of the victim. I suppose it just makes it easier for them to handle the idea that it could happen to them, or someone they love. The logic behind this just blows my mind. Essentially, what’s being said is that because a girl has a few drinks, stays out too late, wears the wrong clothes, etc., guys have the right to her body.

In this case, the girls on The View start asking where mama was in a warped version of the same game. When it happened to me, the backlash was “well, you were drinking…” or “there was someone down the hall, why didn’t you do anything?”… which compounds the problem. Women struggle enough with guilt after a rape, and they shouldn’t.

Maybe that’s part of the “rape culture” that feminists are always talking about. Which beings us back to Whoopi’s weird “it’s okay in Europe so it should be okay here” mentality. One of the tenets of feminism is that the US is a horrible patriarchy that we need to fight. But we’re supposed to accept it in other countries? It seems to be a battle that they choose to fight when it suits their purpose.

Regardless, this is not okay. You can’t categorize rape. You can’t pretend that it’s not really rape because one of your friends did it. And you certainly can’t downplay the significance of the rape of a child.

Stop trying to drown out the issue with legalese, Whoopi.

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