Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich recently announced during Kesha’s trial against Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald) that “every rape is not a gender-motivated hate crime.” Now, Kornreich is an NYU graduate. I’m writing this so I hopefully don’t have to be associated with another idiotic and apathetic disgrace. For a moment, just imagine getting raped. Imagine all the details and feelings that it must entail. Someone puts their hand on your ass and squeezes. Whispers a slur in your ear while they do. Maybe slides their hand over to your arm and grabs it tight so you can’t run away. Erase that image of the stranger you ran into in a dark alleyway late at night. 80% of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. The most likely scenario is having someone that you know, and probably trust, do this to you. Erase that image that you have of you at your current age and replace it with the younger version of yourself. Nearly half of the victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18. The you as a child in elementary school taking a spelling test. The you driving a car for the first time and feeling like the world was at your fingertips. Then, imagine someone you know unbuttoning your jeans, pulling down the elastic waistband of your underwear, and forcibly assaulting you. So, now think of all of the women in your life. In the UK, 20% of women from 16-59 have experienced some form of sexual violence (90% of women raped in the UK knew their rapist). Accept the fact that something similar has happened to approximately 20% of all the women you know (some statistics show it may be 25%). Go through your Facebook friends, and look at all the women. Then, accept the fact that even though they may be under the age of 18, statistically one in every five of them have been victims. All of the women that you know and love and trust. One in five. Your sister, your mother, your professor, your best friend, your boss - pick one. One of them has experienced some form of sexual violence. Rape is “the crime of using force or the threat of force to compel a person to submit to sexual intercourse”, “the crime of using force or threat of force to compel a person to submit to some other sexual penetration”, “other unlawful sexual intercourse or penetration, as with an unconscious person or person below the age of or incapable of consent,” or “an instance of any of these crimes”. Rape is a crime. It is not sex.So, let’s take apart Kornreich’s ridiculous statement that “every rape is not a gender-motivated hate crime”. Now, first, I would like to commend her (yes, she’s a woman - I know, I was relieved that it wasn’t a white male too) for using the word every. It makes her statement pretty hard to argue against. But, don’t worry. I’m infuriated enough from the aforementioned imagined situation and scrolling through my Facebook friends that I believe I have come up with a pretty convincing argument. So, we’ve established rape is a crime - but is it a hate crime? The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Luckily, there has been research done on the motivations behind a rapist’s actions. "Forced sexual contact in the name of passion or personality may support rather than refute a claim of gender-motivation because it shows a disrespect for women,” a Harvard Law paper found, along with “research indicating that acquaintance rapes frequently are premeditated and are predicated on discriminatory biases about male entitlement to coerce sexual relations with women against their will.” So, if we look at the fact that 80% of rapes are ‘acquaintance rapes’, combined with the fact that those are linked to ‘discriminatory biases’, we can say that generally rape is a gender-motivated crime.Sure, there are arguments against that. Perhaps Kornreich believes that rapists really do respect the women they rape. I’m sure Dr. Luke respected Kesha when he drugged her to incapacitate her. I commonly drug my friends to prove to them that I respect them. I cannot think of something that would illustrate someone’s utter respect for me besides ignoring my right to consent to their use of my body. My body. The act of raping me is another person using my body for their own benefit. At the heart of rape, whether it is a male or female rapist, it is the perpetrator taking control away from the victim. I believe it is gender-motivated, due to the sexual nature, without conflating sexual identity and gender. Regardless of your sexual orientation (and sometimes because of it), you are raped because of how rapists perceive your gender, the societal construct of your sexual orientation. Rape is not about sex - it’s about power. I view rape as the rapist taking control of your sexual orientation and your right to choose your sexual partners (or just whether or not to engage in sex). That seems to be only motivated by the way that you perceive another gender, therefore gender-motivated. Whether it is a male staring a little too long, feeling insulted when we do not strike up a flirty conversation on the street or in the hallways, or believing that women exist as sexual creatures to serve men, this gender-based sense of control is terrifying for females.I was raised with two brothers and believe that having a twin brother is the best thing that can happen to a girl in her life. He fulfills all those cliches: offering to beat up boyfriends, driving me to go and get ice cream, teaching me how to play sports. More importantly, in my family, I have always been treated as equal to him. Sure, he’s a lot stronger than I am, but that has always been attributed to my lack of motivation to go to the gym rather than an insurmountable level of physical ability that he holds over me. Never, not even once, has he been given power over me or has anyone led me to believe that he is worth more than I am.However, this knowledge does not protect me. Every 107 seconds, another American is sexually assaulted. Every 107 seconds, I am incredibly lucky that I am not part of that statistic. You can look at that on the flip side: every 107 seconds, someone commits a sexual assault (only in America, so broaden that to the international community and whoa). 98% of those people don’t end up in jail. They are put back on the streets, back in their houses or dorms or companies. The reason this court case is so important is that very few people doubt whether or not Lukasz Gottwald raped Kesha Sebert. However, Dr. Luke will most likely never see the inside of a jail cell. He will continue to make more money, continue to collect money from the work he has already done with Kesha, and continue to feel as if he is in power. The rape cases I have seen get the most media attention in the past few years have been those on college campuses, with the always present ‘boys will be boys’ attitude. When a rape case finally comes to light without questions regarding the victim’s clothing or actions or alcohol imbibement, it is shameful that Kornreich would respond in a way that diminishes the severity of the crime. At the heart of the matter, by denying Kesha’s claim of a hate crime, Kornreich has made it a case of a shunned Dr. Luke who only wanted to have sex with his colleague, rather than the disastrous hateful and disgusting act that was committed. I had certainly hoped for more from a fellow NYU graduate. This article was written by Allison Chesky. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Becky Sullivan via Flickr