Salon.com > Zerlina Maxwell

Why are we supposed to have sympathy for rapists?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:20:00 +0000

It's a case that's shown the world that an outpouring of public compassion and sympathy is possible in the wake of a sexual assault. But not for the victim. Behold, if you will, the abundance of it directed at its now-convicted assailants.

Long before 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond were declared guilty in juvenile court on Sunday of raping a Steubenville, Ohio, classmate, they were already being cast as the story's victims. Those poor boys – young athletes with their whole lives ahead of them – until one fateful night changed everything. Just last week, ABC News declared that "the juvenile trial set to begin there is every parent's nightmare" -- because having your child on trial, not being raped and abused, is a parental nightmare. The story's final line? Not about the victim, but about the boys, "who face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football." And this weekend, when the verdict was handed down, CNN's Poppy Harlow lamented to Candy Crowley, "I've never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional — incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart." Crowley seemed to agree, pondering "the lasting effect of two young men being guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially." You know, essentially.

Patrick Stewart: Men need to help end abuse

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:40:00 +0000

Thank you, Captain Picard. Speaking over the weekend at an event he hosted for Breakthrough's Ring the Bell anti-violence campaign, the actor issued a challenge -- and sounded an important call for 1 million men to make 1 million "concrete, actionable promises" to end abuse against women, the "single greatest human rights violation of our generation."

Stewart's remarks were a well-timed and much-needed statement about the nature of violence against women, the environments in which it blooms and the ways we must recalibrate our expectations to change things. In his speech, Stewart spoke movingly of growing up with a father who was "an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions — or his hands" and he made a plea for action -- "not an action that will make things better in six months' time or a year's time but action that might save someone's life and someone's future this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning." That's a strategy that's tough for a lot of people to get their heads around. We live in a quick-fix world. Change the culture by just making a promise? By speaking out? Come on, can't everybody just get a gun instead?

Can men be taught not to rape?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:29:00 +0000

If you want to know why we need to educate men not to be sexually aggressive, look no further than what happened when Zerlina Maxwell went on television to say that we need to educate men how not to be sexually aggressive.

Maxwell was on Fox's "Hannity" this week to discuss guns, rape and college students. The issues have been especially hot button in recent days, after Democratic Colorado state Sen. Evie Hudak delivered a tone-deaf response to a rape survivor, saying that "Statistics are not on your side even if you had a gun. And, chances are that if you would have had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you."

As Maxwell, a rape survivor herself, told Salon on Friday, "I don't think we need to be telling a rape survivor that statistics are not on your side. That's insensitive." But where she drew outrage was in her suggestion to Hannity that "I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there." She told Hannity, "You're talking about this as if it's some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it's someone you know and trust," adding, "If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape."