Brock Is Not Alone

So much is circulating around the Stanford rapist--the star swimmer who blamed the "party culture" for his vicious assault on an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. His own father, of course, earned his time in the spotlight by verbally reducing his son's crime to a mere "20 minutes of action" that should not overshadow 20 years of comparative non-violence.

Our outrage is justified. We feel overwhelming empathy for the woman--Brock's brave, eloquent victim. But some troubling questions emerge. Aside from having no moral guidance whatsoever in his home, what other factors made Brock the way he is? It's possible--probable, even--that the young man fed upon a steady diet of pornography. And if that's the case, where should we draw the line between the violence hidden behind a dumpster and the violence quietly committed behind a computer screen?

Just recently I noticed (when my own access cut out) that a neighbour's internet link was called "BangBus." Huh, I thought. That can't be good. But it's clearly a term significant enough to this individual to merit honouring their internet access with that name.

So I googled it. "Bang Bus" (as I understand it) is reality pornography with a supposedly "humorous" twist. Victims (typically adult sex workers) are picked up by the bus, persuaded to have hard core sex (which is filmed), and then dumped off without pay at the wrong location (or left "half-naked" and "covered with cum," to use the description of one gleeful reviewer). Fortunately, only "fat, used-up, coke-shooting skanks" are used in the production of this material, as another reviewer of the site so eloquently puts it.

So how much difference is there between Brock and those who frequent this site for their entertainment? Isn't the mentality--the sense of entitlement--behind both actions pretty much the same? Sure, Brock's victim didn't give her "consent" because she was unconscious and unaware of what had transpired, at least until she uncovered the details of her assault in a newspaper. Victims of Bang Bus, in contrast, were expecting to be paid for their degradation and the assault on their human worth. But even if they did consent and were paid (if the scenes were, in fact, staged), does that make the whole premise of the website acceptable?

Really, is one victim more important than another? Is it a crime to denigrate one woman, and to label another fair game because she's "a used-up, coke-shooting skank" or a prostitute? Is assaulting a woman vicariously by viewing and celebrating her victimization really that much better than taking her behind a dumpster and brutally assaulting her? Aren't both of these actions rooted in a terribly destructive, corrosive impulse?        

I'll end with Dan Allender's short talk, "How Destructive Is Pornography to a Man?" Allender doesn't mince words, or accept excuses. "All pornography," he says, "moves toward more and greater demeaning of the face of a woman . . . The goal of pornography is not mere arousal. It is degradation. It is having power over, and being able to destroy the beauty in the other."