The Slut-Or-Madonna Culture: Who Is The Goalkeeper?

Contents:  Sexual violence.

The story I link to from here is a distressing one, about child molestation and alleged rape and what the consequences of it are for a young pregnant girl:

Now, a 14-year-old in Elwood, Indiana who is eight months pregnant faces ongoing harassment simply because her neighborhood sees her as a very young pregnant girl. But a reporter at the Indianapolis Star writes that her town does not know the full story of the 17-year-old boy who physically overpowered her after she told him “no.” On Tuesday, he faces sentencing for three counts of child molestation.
At the same time the girl has encountered vicious public shaming from her community, she and her mother Kristy Green have spoken out because they worry her assailant will walk free in juvenile court:
“I can’t walk out the door without someone calling me a whore or slut,” the girl said. “I used to have a lot of friends, or people I thought were my friends, but as soon as this happened I just isolated myself.”

The repeated vandalism incidents at the family’s home — including the words “whore” and “slut” scrawled on the garage doors — were reported to police. But Green said no charges were filed because there were no witnesses to the acts.

I don't know enough about this particular incident to tell whether the vandals are supporters of the boy who is accused of having raped the girl or whether the vandals are from the community in general.  Though the latter seems more likely, given that the court case is not common knowledge in the town.

If it is the latter, what we see here is the gatekeeper methodology in full action:  Women and girls are supposed to be the goalkeepers.  Men and boys are supposed to try to score.  The game is cruel, as we can see, and it is also illogical, both in assigning  the responsibility to stop the goals to young girls but not the power to do so, and also in its underlying assumption that the game is supposed to be adversarial, that the women and girls should not want to score at all and if they do, well, then they are sluts and whores.  The cruelty is at its apex when the girl tried to keep the goal but the puck was rammed through.  As seems to be the case here.

It's that game we need to change.  Sex and love and so on are not a game of hockey or football.  Scoring in such a game is not winning, and encouraging the game scenario is one way of creating rape cultures.