The River Wanders...

Think dehumanizing women in the public sphere, portraying them as sex objects and victims of men and simply vessels to be fucked or abused or turned into a great big joke is completely harmless? Tell it to the office worker whose boss referred to her by asking a colleague “if big tits has come in yet”. Tell it to the woman who was asked by her boss in front of 30 colleagues “If I ‘wax my crack’”. Tell it to the girl of 10 who was walking home from school when “two older boys said ‘show us your tits’”. Tell it to the child of 13 who didn’t even understand when two men in a white van asked her if she had “a tight pussy”. Tell it to the woman who reported being groped by strangers “at least once a week and often much more, regardless of what I wear, where I am, how I behave.” Tell it to the woman who declined to talk to a group of men and was pursued down the street by them, shouting “rape!” Tell it to schoolgirl who was “beaten by her boyfriend” and whose “friends asked her if she was going to stay with him until after the prom so she’d have a date”.

All girls continue to be taught when they are young, if not by their parents then by the culture around them, that they must earn the right to be loved — that “femaleness” is not good enough. This is a female’s first lesson in the school of patriarchal thinking and values. She must earn love. She is not entitled. She must be good enough to be loved. And good is always defined by someone else, someone on the outside.

Here’s an idea: Construct a society where child-rearing isn’t a massive sacrifice. Construct a society where people without children aren’t stigmatized as indulgent or selfish. Construct a society where having a kid is just one decision among many — but one that is supported, and doesn’t (at least for women) tie to career stagnation and financial insecurity. The truth is that when women can control their fertility, they do. Some women want to have a lot of kids, and that’s great and should be supported. But most women want one or two, and that should be supported as well. Some want zero. Right now, the incentives to have children are largely social and biological — “family” still largely hinges on having kids, and most people in America grow up with the basic assumption that you’ll grow up and have a baby or two (I certainly did). There are very few economic incentives beyond the long game (Social Security, pension pay-ins, etc) and, at least for women, almost no individual economic incentives.

By most accounts, hundreds of thousands of these untested kits are stacked up around the country. In Illinois, 80 percent of rape kits were going untested as of 2010, Human Rights Watch reported at the time — embarrassing the state to begin a push to test all rape kits. In Michigan, the Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, said she was shocked to discover more than 11,000 rape kits lying around untested — some dating to the 1980s. Worthy said that her office is now going through the backlog and testing those that are running into statute of limitations deadlines. So far, of 153 kits tested, 21 match evidence in a criminal database and may involve serial rapists. But Worthy, who herself was raped while she was in law school, says the broader problem is indifference to sex crimes. “Sexual assault is the stepchild of the law enforcement system,” she said. “When rape victims come into the criminal justice system, they are often treated poorly. They may be talked out of pursuing the case.” The bottom line, Worthy said, is that “sexual assault is not taken as seriously as other crimes.” That — more than any offensive words — is the real scandal. Kamala Harris, the attorney general of California, eliminated the rape kit backlog in state crime labs after she took office. “If you don’t test it, you’ve got a victim who is absolutely petrified, and you’ve got a rapist who thinks he got away with it,” she said. “There could be nothing worse as a continuing threat to public safety.