Plato’s Tripartite

Drew and I like to watch Dr. Phil in the mornings. This morning, we watched one in which Dr. Phil was keeping it real with the parents of a drug addict. We like to comment throughout the episode, and discuss Dr. Phil’s technique. (I know. We’re geeks).

The episode that came on after was about Steubenville High School rape case. You can view the gruesome details on Wikipedia (Click the name of the school), as it makes me sick to even think about it, much less describe it. Suffice it to say, a girl was raped but her rapists were called “victims.”

I am not in a good place to watch something like that, right now, and I’d seen that episode before, anyway. So I asked Drew if we could please turn it, and I’d tell him how it played out. That’s why I looked up Wikipedia.

And it was on Wikipedia that I learned of a band called Protest the Hero, and their song, “Plato’s Tripartite.”

The song was written directly referencing this case, in which a 16-year-old was raped by popular members of the high school football team. It is a sarcastic and excruciating commentary on how the media and the public twisted their sympathy to those who performed the rape, and ostracized the victim instead.

The song is heavy metal… or at least that’s what it was called when I was still paying attention to the various sects of rock music. I’ve included a link to the song below. It’s a lot of drums and distortion. The lyrics, however, are breath taking! I have included an annotated edition with my commentary.

Some men actually get it. This gives me hope.

Jodie

I have always wanted to see anyone who is a rapist get their private parts cut off very slowly so they bleed out……And the one who is being raped or abused is the victim, not the other way around….

Snarkle

I can’t even address this because the venom rises as does the vomit… it hits too close to home for me… thank you for sharing it… now I need to go be sick

2 replies

@snarkle 😥

@oniongirl hugs

Heffay

I remember this. What I remember most about it is that the outrage from it got the group Anonymous to do something. I don’t remember what they did. I think they were trying to expose the bullshit that went on.

This is not the same, but a few years ago, the Colorado Avalanche’s goalie Semyon Varlamov was accused of getting violent with his girlfriend. I deal with a lot of the fans, so I lot of the arguing over it. Ultimately, the case was dropped against him and then the girlfriend did a civil case and she lost. There were people covering the civil trial and I was following it closely. I realized the big problem is that the Semyon and his then-girlfriend are both Russian. So they only come here for hockey season. The then-girlfriend doesn’t speak any English. She lost the civil case. People took that as this sign that he was cleared. I just never was sold. My issue is that she didn’t speak English, she isn’t that familiar with how things work here and it sure seemed like the first people who tried to help her gave her terrible advice. Like the first lawyer she contacted told her to do interviews and demand to be paid for the interviews. So the lawyer was getting money from the interviews. That lawyer got fired. After that, the new lawyer was fighting this uphill battle. My feelings for this goalie never were the same because I wasn’t sold that he was innocent. Her story had problems, but I have no clue if it was because of translation problems or she was getting bad advice.

I am mentioning this because so many fans were happy to celebrate and they took all of it as sign that he didn’t do anything wrong. I still have questions. I have no clue what happened. I think the girlfriend got bad advice, I think there were translation problems. Like there were times when they said she was lying. Was she lying or was it a translation issue?

I’m rambling, but your entry made me think of this. Just because of how easily people were ready to find him innocent. That’s what they cared about. If he had been found guilty in civil court, some wouldn’t have been able to cheer for him. Some wouldn’t have cared. Once he won in civil court, everyone was ready to celebrate him again. I just never saw him the same way because I was never sold. I am aware of the problems in these cases that make them very hard to win.

@heffay And now you’re reminding me of the recent death of Kobe Bryant, who admitted that he had raped a woman, though he claims he believed that she was consenting at the time. I specifically remember an activist lawyer that I follow calling out “White women,” for being outraged by the outpouring of love for him.
Every day, I see more and more ways in which we live in a society that normalizes rape and abuse.

@oniongirl Oh yeah, that’s another horrible one. I’m sorry for reminding you of that.

thebusinessanalyst

May 11, 2020

That’s absolutely disgusting that something like that would go on at a high school and that adults would go through such great lengths to cover it up, rather than let these teenagers face the consequences of their actions.