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A Letter to Brock Turner


You do not know me personally, but there are many of us out there. Watching, contemplating, breaking. Watching, because we cannot look away. Contemplating, because we can’t get it out of our minds. Breaking, because that’s what it physically feels like. We are not the collective voice of the woman you raped that January night, or the judge who placed five charges on you, all of which you were able to so easily side- step with just three months of a ‘jail sentence’. No, we are the delicate- looking bodies you see on the street, with skirts hitched up past the knee because we think it looks stylish, because it gives you free reign to sexualise those long, smooth legs of ours. I mean, it was what she was wearing right? She was definitely asking for it.

There are many names for you out there right now- Sexual offender, abductor, attacker- take your pick. But the one you see less often, the word that few news channels and news articles dare call you, is a rapist. Because that word, is too powerful, too damaging to that squeaky clean, baby- faced, white- privileged, ’all- American’ top league athlete reputation of yours. This may be evidence to the world that not all seven billion human beings on this earth have accepted the truth behind your actions just yet, but they will soon, and we are setting out to do it. But in the mean time, congratulations! You have become the most famous rapist in modern history, you have shaken the minds of the young and impressionable generation to come, and for that we will use it against you.

As the victim of your rape- Emily Doe said, we do not wish to see you rot away in prison. You are still young, just like us, and deserve a full life ahead of you. However, we wish to see change. One out of five us are raped when we are at university, and that number is rising. Currently, you are not helping. In your letter to the judge, you said you were in the process of creating a campaign for high school and university students to “speak out against the college campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that.” What does this mean? Are you apologising to the woman you so violently mortified, that made her wish that her body did not belong to her? Or are you telling the world that you are the victim here, that under the influence of alcohol, all your actions are justifiable? According to your statement, the woman you raped only said three words- “yes, yes yes” that night. “Yes, dance with me”, “yes, take me back to your dorm”, “yes, stick your fingers inside of me,” and according to you, this was ‘consent’. This, in reality, is a disgrace. A disgrace to women, a disgrace to humanity as a whole. At age ten, we did not sit through our first sex education class learning about our developing bodies to have you violate it five years later. At twelve, we did not listen to the science teacher explain to us the anatomy of how a man sticks his penis into a woman’s vagina so naturally to have you show us you could do it so violently and forcibly, and finally at fifteen, when we discover that the human species have sex more for pleasure than reproduction, that there should be an emotional connection, and most importantly, that there should be consent. Instead, you raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, who could not speak, who didn't even know it was happening to her, and left her exposed in the freezing winter air for two Swedish bicyclists to find.

For this, you deserve the signs that read ‘castrate rapists’ and ‘shoot your local rapist’ displayed outside your home in Ohio. As long as you do not change your way of thought like many of us have already done, you do not only deserve your name to be in the United States Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Registry. No, you also deserve that word, that despicable word, rapist, to belong to you. Have it tattooed on your forehead! Wherever you look, the name Brock Turner will always be associated with ‘rapist’.

Let this letter be blatant proof to you that we cannot be silenced. Decades of feminism have allowed us the right to speak, and we will take this with us to our graves. Let this small letter of justice be evidence that we will always stand with each other, and as long as we do that, you will not hurt us.


#publicopinion #Letters