But she was drinking

Dig free rape porn? The Joplin Globe endeavors to give satisfaction. The Missouri paper, whose motto is apparently “It’s your girl. We deliver it,” titillated readers on May 10 (and for all I know it may do this all the time) with a graphic and truly gnarly description of a sexual assault. The Globe stringer was reporting on a court proceeding, but he might as well have been writing a rape fantasy scene for one of those ‘gritty’ dude-crime novels that always end up on the NY Times Bestseller List.

Although the perp in the case, who is accused of molesting and photographing an unconscious woman, was bound over for trial, Globe reporter Jeff Lehr was determined (a) to omit no lurid detail, and (b) to intimate that the 23-year-old victim had it coming to her. Lehr trots out the same tired old subtext: a chick who has a few drinks in public “of her own free will” should then expect to be “taken advantage of” while passed out drunk. If you’re a woman, drinking of your own ‘free will’ = “I consent to whatever abuse strikes your dudely fancy.” Of course the “but she was drinking” gambit is just a bit of shaming to rationalize male use of women. It works, not because it is logical, but because it is consistent with cultural narrative; a priori consent to male abuse, as we have seen, is implicit in the cultural construct “woman.”

Which is why our victim should also expect to have the graphic, humiliating details of her assault printed in the local paper.

Because rape is so hilarious, Globe reader Rick Tiberio was pleased as punch at the opportunity to read this crap. He sent in a grateful letter to the editor, confessing that he had to have a cigarette after reading it. Hilarious old Rick Tiberio should check out the online version; it comes with a handy ad for a casino depicting women as cleavage delivery devices. Nice.