Aerial Circus

Today in Rape Culture

linzo:

sisterhoodispowerful:

Rah, rah, sis boom bah: Silsbee High School in Texas wants their cheerleaders smiling, energetic, and willing to cheer for their rapists by name. Go team!

H.S., a Silsbee student, reported being raped by Rakheem Bolton with the help of two of his friends, a fellow student and athletic star. In the end, Bolton ended up getting off without serving any jail time by pleading guilty to a lesser assault charge, spending two years on probation, doing community service, paying a fine, and attending anger management courses. Hardly seems like an adequate punishment, but it’s unfortunately not uncommon for attackers to bargain down their charges. What really gets the blood boiling is how the students’ high school treated the victim.

Bolton was set to be on the school’s varsity basketball team, and they couldn’t risk losing by barring him from playing for a silly thing like a rape charge. That could impact their chances at winning. Who cares about the traumatic impact it would have an a cheerleader who needed to vocally support a team including her rapist?

But H.S. fulfilled her role as a cheerleader, participating in all the cheers for the team as a group. She simply refused to shout the first name of the man who assaulted her when he stood up alone to make free throws. It seems like she was being more than accommodating, when an student athlete facing trial on rape charges most likely should have been suspended from the team, even if his presence wasn’t a source of immediate distress to his victim in her position as cheerleader. In a display of extreme disrespect for a rape survivor and disregard for her well-being, school officials insisted that H.S. had to scream “Rakheem” with the rest of the cheerleaders, or she’d be kicked off the squad.

Not only that, Caroline Heldman reports on Ms. Magazine’s blog that school officials pushed H.S. “to keep a low profile, such as avoiding the school cafeteria and not taking part in homecoming activities.” As though she should somehow be ashamed for having been raped and brought charges against her attacker. Where exactly was she supposed to eat so as to not cause discomfort to the star athlete? H.S. also refused to take this offensive “advice.”

H.S. sued her school district for removing her from the cheerleading squad. In an absurd court ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals decided to uphold the school’s decision, claiming that a cheerleader was but a “mouthpiece” for a school to use to “disseminate speech — namely, support for its athletic teams.” Her silence apparently “constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, H.S. was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily.” Well, I’m sure H.S. never expected to be “volunteering” to cheer for someone who had assaulted her. And the idea that by just being silent during Bolton’s free throws, a barely noticeable act, was “substantial interference with the work of the school” — um, we’re talking extracurricular sports, not classroom disruption — makes little sense.

(via change.org)

Please pass this on and write to this scumbag superintendent RIGHT NOW, I just did. Since he’s a city official, his email is public; and it only takes 2 seconds to tap out a few statements of utter fucking disgust, which will no doubt come easily after you’ve read this article. The principal has already resigned; can we please make sure the door hits Richard Bain, Jr. on his vile, worthless ass on his way out, too? Even if this woman never gets the justice she deserves from our court system, we can still remind this hideous backwards bag of shit what a fucking piece of foul repugnant waste he is.

Richard Bain Jr., Superintendent, Silsbee Independent School District, 415 Highway 327 West, Silsbee, TX, 77656; rbain@silsbeeisd.org; (409) 980-7800

This website also has a form letter you can copy/paste, in case all you can formulate are four letter words.

(Source: gordon-crisp)