Men's Group

When those parents were teenagers, the drinking age then was probably 18, and parents would have had supervised parties. I hate to say they probably had a few friends who were killed drunk driving, and that didn't stop them from partying. It was the '70s.

So, yes, that's a cultural thing. It came about in that innocent age when, if you killed somebody driving, your excuse was that you were drunk.

They're both a matter of culture, but Steubenville's case, involves a further step. It involves cultural enforcement, and rape like this is actually part of the bullying issue.

As remember being bullied, many times parents, consciously or not, strongly influence who got bullied. Such as in my Catholic school, the worst thing you could be called was fag, or some other homosexual slur. Both the parents and the church endorsed that. Boys in grade school would test out their gaydar and spot guys who were showing homosexual mannerisms (since before puberty, having sex with other guys was a few years off). They sucked at it, and they usually mistook me for being gay, and the bullying would start and would be joined.

The second worse thing you could be called was a n*gg*r-lover. That came from the parents, too. It was a segregated neighborhood, the African-Americans were all on the North Side, but to keep the racism edge, kids would tell racists jokes, and if you didn't laugh enough, you could then be bullied.

Kids are trying to develop their own sense of status and justice, and they learn the system from their parents, and the bullies will support that moral system/status ladder, while trying to put themselves at the top.

These are cultural things that the adults had an interest in having enforced. That's the reason why parents usually didn't stop the bullying, or if they did, they would make sure the bullied kid would know he was just as responsible.

In Steubenville, Jane Doe was called a slut, and label stuck, so she scored negative status. There were girls who were in on this witnessed at least part of the attack, or were accessories in some way.

This was a brutal act of bullying and a terrifying message to the rest of the girls to sexually behave themselves. The message is meant to be carried through the rumor mill and talked about in hushed tones. The Internet age has changed that. Now rapists get to have their own show, and they can't resist.

Moreover, lot of girls and women would endorse what happened to Jane Doe. Many of the women at the school would probably try to have it both ways and say they want the guys must be punished, but they were glad that happened to Jane Doe because she was a slut.

That's cultural through and through, more so than with your drunk driving example, which doesn't involve cultural enforcement.