You only thought rape was a non-negotiable

What would Gloria say?

So Law & Order.  I saw this mentioned on a few sites and more or less ignored it.  It's Law & Order after all.  One of those 'issue dramas' that have all the objectivity of a Branch Davidian Bible study. 

But I kept seeing people jump on this, even in a national press outlet or two (like Newsweek), so I thought I would look into it.  Yes, the initial 'hysteria' was correct.  The gist of the episode is that a white woman is raped by a black teen, but is praised for realizing she still has the privilege and the black man, a victim in his own right, will pay for life while she'll be free with her privilege.  

Eventually, the woman's lesbian lover explains she's inconsolable over the racism of our criminal justice system, knowing  that the black man will never get a fair trial.  Because she is white, she realizes that a little therapy on her part - therapy for the whole violently raped thing - will be all she needs. Then back to being okay with her white privilege.  But the victimized black man will forever be a victim of our racist system of racist justice in our racist country. In the end, she does identify the man, but a plea deal is reached and the DA commends the man for taking responsibility for his actions after he apologizes for the little rape thing.   

FWIW, it's the  'she'll more or less get over it with some therapy' that appears to be the source of the outrage.  We have, after all, accepted that all such 'sexual crimes' are unforgivable on this side of heaven.  That to be raped or sexually abused is a life changing, permanent wound that will never truly heal.  Oh, with therapy and counseling you can manage the trauma, but you will carry the scars for life.  But now?  Eh.  Apparently it depends on your skin color. 

The Leftist dichotomy of oppressed versus oppressor is almost the civil religion of 21st Century America.  In the 1970s, there were no real criminals, only victims of our oppressive and unjust society.  Then feminists  said no way. Maybe muggers and mass murderers are victims, but show me a rapist and I'll show you someone who should be branded for life as a sex pervert.  Eventually, any sex crimes were added to the list, and we accepted that there could be a never ending list of sex based crimes that are worthy of a lifetime of being branded human scum.

But since the Obama years, the Left did a hard turn and tweaked that little standard and has now, effectively, made unforgivable sins only apply based on group identity (see the leftwing reaction to the October 7 massacre of Israeli Jews for a non-sex based example).  With almost no pushback, a not insignificant part of our nation - Christian leaders included - have accepted that the importance of all culpability and absolution, and apparently even suffering, derives from one's group identity.    

The Left isn't giving up, as this episode makes clear.  The message is as obvious as you can get it - if you're a white woman raped by a black man, then lying there on your back being raped, you still have the privilege.  Go get some therapy and fuhgeddaboudit.

In 2020, during the BLM protests, my sons were in college.  In one of the college forums, apparently some professor somewhere in Ohio stepped in it.  At the time, the case of Reagan Tokes came up.  She was a beautiful young college girl who was kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered.  The man who allegedly killed her was a convict who should have been behind bars, but owing to the injustices of our system, was put on a dumbed down house arrest style setup shoddily enforced.    

For some reason, that case came up during the peaceful protests of 2020. And the professor - who I cannot remember - said that the word 'rape' should not be used when describing such an action by a black man against a white woman.  Not that it was good what he did to Miss Tokes.  It was horrible.  It was tragic.  But the fact is, she still had the privilege owing to her skin color, even as her last breaths were being choked out of her. 

Let's just say the forum conversations were pretty intense, with almost all expressing outrage at such a notion.  I don't know if the professor ever apologized or not.  There were many things to think of back then.  So universal was the outrage, however, that I didn't really bother with it.  Just some wacked out professor being a modern professor on the internet, and everyone was rightly upset.  All was right with the world. 

But that was so 2020.  Now, we have a major Hollywood production saying basically the same thing.  White women gotta take it because privilege and systemic racist injustice and all.  Group A - you get what you have coming.  Group B?  Anything you do is excusable because of oppression or freedom fighting.  And note, the actress is quite white.   Remember that every totalitarian revolution has to have its fair share of Boxers willing to head off to the glue factory for the cause. 

If you think it won't get worse, consider the LGBTQ community and Chik fil A.  Over a decade ago, some local politicians in Boston and Chicago floated banning the restaurant from their jurisdictions because of the owner's views on homosexuality.  Yet LGBTQ activists roared in protest.  No way.  That's not what they are about!   I remember even the Huffpost jumped up and down and threw a yellow flag on the idea of government actors punishing a business because of religious beliefs.  

A decade later, however, and it was LGBTQ protesters calling for various agencies, government or otherwise, to ban. punish, censor or in any way ruin  Chik fil A over its previous owner's beliefs (and with plenty of the national press's help by way of being free advertisers for Popeye's Chicken, CfA's chief competitor).  And what of those lofty principles of religious freedom only a few years earlier?  The joy of progress.  That was so yesterday's principles.   

Things progress and devolve in history.  If you think this development regarding white women and rape will be confined to a TV show, think again.  Four years ago the overwhelming response to a professor's notion that white women can't be "raped" by black men, because the white woman still has the power, was overwhelming outrage from all sides that I saw.  Now it's Hollywood getting in on the act and saying 'not so fast'. In another dozen years, white women being told to deal with it if they're raped by a black man might just be the nicest thing that will apply to the situation.