Trigger warning: Rape, sexual assault

In the wake of the helicopter crash which took Kobe Bryant’s life this morning, I find it difficult to focus on anything else. Not for my own relationship with a man who, to my knowledge, was exceptionally good at throwing a basketball, but largely due to a social media feed filled with his image. Human beings are nothing if not fragile, our machines often flawed, and life truly unpredictable. I’ll admit I’ve never been a sports super fan — my Salvadoran father could only be bothered to watch a good fight or two — and I didn’t know much about Kobe before today. With his life on my mind, I decided to take an admittedly controversial move in light of his passing: a quick Google search. “Kobe Bryant rape”. Disappointed but not surprised, I looked into the following headlines.

“Kobe Bryant had an illustrious NBA career but faced controversies off the court”

“Kobe Bryant Talks Reaction to Colorado Rape Case in Washington Post Interview“

“Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession“

I’ll be the first to admit, in the immediate wake of someone’s passing, discussing negative moments in their lives would generally be considered poor taste. That being said, I’ve never been particularly concerned with being tasteful.

As I looked into the above headlines, the details of the sexual assault case were chillingly predictable. A married superstar athlete not only cheated on his wife, but was so convinced the young woman he assaulted would want him he failed to see all the ways she tried to get away. She reported the assault immediately thereafter, transcribed in the above articles in details that felt all-too-familiar to someone like myself who has had more than one “superstar” assert themselves on me, granting me (what I assume to be) the privilege of their physical affection. Maybe that’s why I’m comfortable writing this even as the world mourns the basketball legend: this sh*t is personal.

Kobe Bryant was a talking point of the #MeToo movement as well after his 2017 Grammy award win for his short film, “Dear Basketball”. The frustration lied in the “moral confusion” of the Academy, explained in the words of journalist Robin Abcarian: “Why are the sexual misdeeds of some men forgivable, while others are not?”

Therein lies the age-old question: Why are we comfortable forgiving some men for their sexual misconduct while others are “cancelled” and condemned? What made Kobe Bryant forgivable in a way other men weren’t?

The first response anyone would give me is probably the following: “Well, the case was dropped”. You’re not wrong. After a year of media beratement, the young woman refused to testify in court resulting in the charges being dropped. Kobe would later settle a civil lawsuit with the young woman after issuing a half-apology:

“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”

I can’t help but notice the underlying removal of responsibility this “apology” conveys, hinting that it was not Bryant who behaved in a misguided way, but rather a simple misunderstanding on his part. A lot of my closest friends happen to be male athletes. It was the somewhat inevitable outcome of being a low-income girl with a bit of an edge at an elite institution: they are often the only ones who can relate to the world I grew up in, and getting the opportunity to put down the heavily curated Rice-front is invaluable to me. That being said, the issue of rape accusations — never rape, mind you — is a sensitive topic with “the boys”. The focus is always on the way “accusations” can ruin someone’s entire career, somehow forgetting the emotional impact a single moment can have on someone’s psyche for the rest of their lives. I’ll never forget the day one of Rice’s own football players physically yanked a pillow away from me as I tried to cover up my face and body, telling me “I knew I wanted it” since we’d been intimate before.

What is it about masculinity that makes men like this — by all means intelligent and thoughtful individuals — so comfortable deciding someone else’s position? That was the theme that emerged in the young woman’s retelling of her evening with Kobe as well. There is a startling theme in rape-that-maybe-wasn’t-rape of men convincing themselves the women they are with must want it, or at the very least they will eventually want it with a bit of nudging. It is especially true of men who perceive themselves to be “everything a woman should want”, be it physically fit, intelligent, wealthy, famous, powerful, or some combination thereof. I can’t help but connect these sentiments to the very same ones that inspired the “incel” movement, or the group of men who consider themselves “involuntarily celibate” due to their “inability” to find a sexual partner.

Of course, the incel movement is an example of these sentiments taken to the extreme, where men feel they have a “right” to take women and use violence to do so, but isn’t this underlying theme of masculinity the same one that allows affluent men to convince themselves that their encounters are consensual? Above all else, what are we doing as a society that allows men to begin sexual encounters without focusing on their partners’ wants and needs?

Kobe Bryant argued that he felt his encounter was consensual, and many would cite that the pair were kissing for a while beforehand. As a woman on the other side, who has been kissed by a man she did not want to be kissed by and told “you know you want this” by yet another football player  — one I perceived to be one of my closest friends at the time — I can attest the following: when a “big strong man” kisses you out of the blue, a man society would have you believe you should want, the mind goes blank. When that man is physically aggressive in the way Bryant was… I wish I could say I can hardly imagine the fear, but I know that fear. I know the moment of acceptance when you’re not in control of an intimate situation, and every story of a woman being beaten or worse for saying no is rushing through your mind.

So my final question is this: In light of his death, why do we forgive Kobe Bryant? What part of him as a man makes him worthy of glorification, while Weinstein counterparts are cancelled and damned?

I wish I knew.