Image: Just 20

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Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, dominated social media in June. Everyone, even people who spend a lot of time mocking trigger warnings and complaining about “PC culture,” were sharing the statement the victim read at court.

Turner’s father famously expressed his frustration by saying that his son shouldn’t be punished for “20 minutes of action.” Infuriated, Gavin Michael Booth, a Canadian filmmaker, decided to make a film titled Just 20 in response to show “what 20 minutes of action really looks like.”

A believer in “believing is seeing,” Booth says in an interview, that if Turner’s father had simply seen what rape looks like, “he probably would have a very different thought.” So Booth made a movie of just that — an unconscious woman getting raped on a couch during a party. Sixteen minutes of the movie shows the partiers and the immediate before and aftermath of rape.

Approximately four minutes of the movie is a depiction of a woman getting raped. Brutally raped. With her legs dangling around, helpless, lifeless, like a human-sized doll, like a corpse.

When I was raped two years ago, I wasn’t unconscious. But I was drunk enough to just lay there, for hours, and watch my limbs being maneuvered around to be placed in different penetrative positions. In Just 20, the unnamed woman’s legs are shown oscillating as the rapist thrusts against her. From the angle of somebody watching my rape, my legs probably would have looked liked that.

I must have also looked like a piece of meat. By this logic, if my university administrators would have seen me in that position, they would have had more decency than Turner’s father and would have supported me instead of blaming me, shaming me and lying to me. I’m somehow skeptical.

If anyone really wants to know what the aftermath of “20 minutes of action” looks like, I can tell you right now. It’s like waking up in the middle of the night to check if the door is locked. It’s keeping an extra pregnancy test just in case you get raped again. It’s nervously identifying all emergency exits the moment you step into any building. It’s having your family spend tens of thousands of dollars on failed or withdrawn courses, on therapist and medication bills, on trips to the ER, on lost income, on lawyer fees, on Uber rides you had to take because you pass out in public transit too often.

It’s looking in the mirror every morning, desperately searching for some spark in your eyes. But I shouldn’t have to tell anyone, or worse, show anyone any of this to convince them to not rape. Because if you can’t judge for yourself that rape is bad, you aren’t any better than Brock Turner.

Just 20 shows exactly what rapists are after: power. Rapists don’t rape because they are just horny, they rape because they get off on taking full control of another human being’s body. And Booth’s movie is a clear glorification of that. It is trauma porn, plain and simple — an exploitation of a suffering cis, heterosexual men simply do not understand.

Sexual assault tropes are in every TV show and in every movie. If showing potential rapists what rape looks like could change anything, believe me, sexual violence would have been eliminated long ago. Rape is not a trope for giving moral anti-rape lessons to rape apologists. Our trauma is not a filmmaker’s hock value and our bodies are not a site of entertainment. Our suffering does not need to be dramatized for anybody’s “awareness.”

Furthermore, Just 20 shows a rape scenario that has been exhausted by the likes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.  A white girl, a white boy, they start making out at a party. She passes out. He rapes.

I have to wonder: do those that find trauma porn “moving” and “eye-opening” also support survivors who were fully conscious when they were raped? Those that didn’t say no? Those that didn’t name their experience as assault until much later? Those that weren’t white, size-conforming, straight and cis? Those that orgasmed during rape? Those that loved, or still love, their assailants? By perpetuating the myth that alcohol, parties and unconsciousness are the only recipe for rape, Just 20 silences those who aren’t “perfect victims” as Brock Turner’s victim and the unnamed woman in your movie were.

Sexual violence is disproportionately experienced by women and trans people. Without lived experience and any background in activism, anyone who wants to tell our story has to resort to dramatizing a mediocre amalgamation of stolen stories. Our stories.  We get raped. We turn against our universities. We get sanctioned by our universities. We get rape threats. We get death threats. We become “the rape girl” on our campus. We get accused of faking rape for fame.

The most traumatic minutes of our lives become hotbeds of discussion and denial for acquaintances, professors, deans, advisors, provosts, strangers, for the lowest of trolls on the internet. But white men get to make the movie. They get to have thousands of views on the movie. They get national media coverage. They get the fame. They get the money. (And, no, having friends that were raped or watching The Hunting Ground don’t qualify anyone to speak on the topic.)  

To any male ally that is outraged by rape culture: spend your time reading our stories instead of making your own. Donate your money to survivors’ legal funds. Shut down rape jokes. But most importantly, don’t make this about you.

As survivors, we aren’t just unconscious women at frat parties, we don’t need to watch our worst moments on screen, and we certainly don’t need your help. We are strong enough to challenge our universities and the justice system single-handedly. We are resilient enough to undergo getting labeled as “the girl who cried rape” if that’s what it takes to demand accountability. We are outspoken enough to pen articles, speak on panels, testify in hearings about what we’ve been through.

Survivors have been telling their stories for a long time. Have you been listening?

Paniz Khosroshahy is a women’s studies major at McGill University interested in exploring diaspora, homonationalism and orientalism. She also enjoys biking in a sundress, rolling her eyes at edgy white liberals and making Iranian food. Follow her on Twitter @panizkoochooloo.

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Image: Just 20