Does the Brock Turner case prove or disprove the idea that we live in a 'rape culture’.

This is not an either/or but a both/and question - both detractors and proponents of the idea that we live in a ‘rape culture’ will look at Turner’s case and cite it as proof of their particular position.

Turner’s case appears to offer proof of many of the key points that ‘rape culture’ and feminism more broadly have been making for some time now:

• Turner is a young, white privileged male at an elite university - this could be taken as evidence that he enjoyed a sense of entitlement over others and especially over the bodies of women;

• Turner is said to have targeted the young woman because she was drunk - in what kind of society is it ‘normal’ for young men to target drunk women for sexual gratification without pausing to think of the immorality of what they are doing? In what kind of society is it ‘normal’ for Turner’s friends and other party goers to witness all this without intervening either on her behalf to prevent him from exploiting an obviously drunked woman?

• Turner was convicted because he was caught literally in the act by two alert passers-by - this raises questions about what would have happened to this case had Arndt and Jonsson not been on the scene: had the victim tried to bring a case for sexual assault against Turner without those witnesses, then the case would likely have been thrown out because of her drunken state. The defence would have used the fact that she had absolutely no recollection of the voicemail message that she left on her boyfriend’s phone of proof that she was black out drunk and not unconscious - i.e. they would have argued that if she had no recollection of leaving that voicemail message then how can she be certain that she didn’t consent to Turner’s advances when in the same state? Feminists have been insisting for a long time that incidents exactly like the one in Turner’s case are much more common than is recognised - but the alcohol factor means that many victims blame themselves or else do not trust the authorities to take their stories seriously.

• The sentence handed down by Judge Aaron Persky - yet another privileged white male in a position of power and authority - is felt to be unbelievably lenient - six months, which has apparently been reduced to four. This fact is felt to support the idea that the sexual assault of women is not taken seriously at all and one reason for that is that we live in a Patriarchal society that is incapable of understanding the experiences of anyone who is not also white, male and privileged - as it is alleged both Persky and Turner are.

• If you view society as a social system, then you can conclude that what is visible and knowable about Turner’s actions and Persky’s sentencing are representative of what is not visible or knowable through direct evidence - i.e. if this is how the system works, then events such as the one Turner and Persky are involved in will be replicated over and over throughout the whole population ergo Turner’s case is evidence that the theory of rape culture exists.