Stop Calling Him The Stanford Swimmer.

It is September 2nd, 2016. It's a Friday. My library books are due today. The weather outside my house is warm and sunny.

And today, Brock Turner, a convicted rapist of an unconscious woman has waltzed out of prison a free man after spending only three months behind bars. Three months ago, the world was in an uproar after Judge Aaron Persky, "concerned about the effect that prison would have on Turner", sentenced the rapist to only six months in prison.

And now, due to good behavior, that sentence has been sliced in half. Time, it seems, is something the media has continued to associate with Turner, as if it could shed favorable light on him. Multiple newspapers printed his exceptional swim times in articles about the brutal rape he committed. His father lamented in a letter to the judge about the time his son wouldn't be able to enjoy the simple things in life, like steak, his boy's favorite food, because of, and I quote him here,"twenty minutes of action."

Yes, you read that right. Mr. Turner referred to a rape, perpetrated by his own son, as "twenty minutes of action."  If you need to go vomit, this post will be here when you return. It's okay.

This entire case was bizarrely and disgustingly focused on Brock's well-being, and his precious swim career was hanging in jeopardy. In that same letter, his father spoke about how Turner would never be the same after this trial, as if his son's victim bounced right back after waking up to her body brutalized and violated, pine needles shoved into her hair and her body, listening in a lengthy trial about how her rape was her fault because she had been drinking. Having to sit in the same room as her rapist and listen to details about his swim career, about how it wasn't a problem what he did, about how raping a person was as small of a mistake as tugging on a girl's pigtails.  This strong woman gave an incredible speech at the close of the trial, addressing how, in spite of physical evidence and eye-witnesses, it was his word against hers, and how, due to the disgusting rape culture we live in, his was widely accepted over hers. Here's a link to a transcription of that speech. Warning: it's slightly graphic, as she does not shy away from letting her audience know what horrors she suffered, post-rape included as she endured invasive testing to gather proof against her rapist. (https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.jyAeO0qjR#.coW3BagqR.)

As if the two Swedish visitors who found Turner on top of his unresponsive victim, who chased him off, and were brought to tears telling police what they had witnessed, will be fine and forget this horrific memory in a little while. Because, after all, it was just twenty minutes of action, right?

And today, after he has been convicted, after all of the uproar about his sentencing, as it is trending on Facebook today that he has been released early, the headline on that site refers to Brock Turner not as "Convicted Rapist", but as "Stanford Swimmer."

I have heard him addressed in this ridiculous, asinine way on multiple platforms. Not only does it focus on an aspect of Turner that is completely irrelevant to this issue, but it is a thinly veiled attempt to draw focus on his athletic career, as if that alone with exonerate him from his actions. As I've just been extremely troubled to find out as I was looking for Brock Turner's mug shot, when you google his name, the dropdown selection of suggestions to pair up with it is deeply unsettling, to say the least. Remember that these come from what is googled about Turner most often.

Not once, not once on the ten most googled phrases about Brock Turner is the word Rapist attached to his name. But the number one suggestion? Swimming.

This is a huge issue, huge in the protection of our women, on college campuses or walking alone on the street or generally existing. Nowhere is safe for us, and the blame of what may happen to us is always ours to bear. So often are rape cases thrown out because of insufficient evidence, and here we have a case laden with irrefutable proof, and still it is "debatable" because there was alcohol in her system, because apparently, being unconscious equals giving consent somehow in the twisted brains behind Turner's ludicrous sentencing. And because, somehow, being an athlete means you are incapable of any wrongdoing. We need to stop blaming the victims of rape, and stop putting the magnifying glass on them, and put it on their attackers.

It is my fondest wish that Brock Turner will somehow pay for what he did, that his victim will somehow receive her justice. But a person cannot be unraped, and a trial cannot be redone under the United States Bill of Rights.

What I suggest we, as a society who is tired of living in this rape culture, do about this particular case, about the case of the "Stanford Swimmer", is to eradicate that phrase from our vocabulary concerning him. We focus on what's important. We focus on what is vital history remembers about this man.

His name is Brock Turner.

And he is a rapist.