by Luke Nofsinger

Luke D. Nofsinger is an alumni of Goshen College, and currently a 2L at Michigan State University College of Law (E. Lansing, Mich.) focusing on juvenile and immigration law. For more thoughts from Luke, check out his blog.

This is the fourth post in the Steubenville Reflection Series featured on Our Stories Untold the week of March 24-29.

I am greatly troubled by Steubenville, but it offers a great opportunity to continue the work of eradicating sexualized violence.

I suggest we continue to think of Steubenville and strongly consider the almost inevitable sexual assaults that will occur in the years to come. The perpetrators could likely become victims of sexualized violence while in juvenile detention, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 12% of juveniles are victims of sexualized violence while in detention.

While sympathy seems undeserved for these two misguided youth, I think our ponderings should focus on how we, as a society, can so easily, in one instance feel such understandable contempt, but dismiss it unashamedly in another. I feel nothing for their “promising football careers,” as I feel nothing for Ted Kaczynski’s promising mathematics career, but, while it may stem from an irregular conviction to justice, I refuse to allow their transgression to strip them of the protections all people deserve; the right to live free from sexualized violence.

Sadly, conversations have tended to point fingers either towards the perpetrators or the victim and the solutions sometime ends with a broad accusation against men or boys. I think we are making a grave mistake if this discourse is intended to end sexualized violence.

As the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, intimate partner violence has declined by 64 percent from 1994 to 2010, but I believe gender-neutral language will be required to end it out right.

Additionally that same report states that 65 percent of incidents go unreported.  Of these, a gender-neutral dialogue will allow all victims to feel more able to come forward.

David P. Bryden & Sonja Lengnick document in their report titled “Rape in the Criminal Justice System” how victims of sexualized violence face many challenges: unwillingness to seek legal redress, the prosecution’s burden of proof in criminal cases, and jurors’ attitudes. Male victims may feel alienated having fallen victim to what could be construed as a crime against women, compounded with the aforementioned factors, may be unbearable.

This is not suggestive of a hierarchy of men and women, but recognizes that gender identity, on an individual level, can be offensive when an individual is parodied with another gender.

Why not?