Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

There's a movement afoot to ban the word "rape" from rape trials. For example, an alleged victim might be forced to refer to the act between her and an alleged rapist simply as "sexual intercourse." Your thoughts?

A Memphis high school is under press scrutiny after a video entitled "Mitchell High School Memphis … Rape Dat Ho" turned up on YouTube. In the clip, several teenagers simulate rough sex while peers cheer them on. Although the clip was flagged as offensive and then removed from the video sharing site, another soon took its place, this one featuring teens humping the floor a la Peer Pressure, all the while in full view of adults.

Mitchell High School administrators have confirmed that both incidents took place inside the school's gymnasium, but, as you might expect, they are hesitant to take the blame for the act. According to a statement released by Memphis City Schools, it's THE MEDIA that's making these children play rape:

Pop-culture, the Internet and mainstream media greatly influence the activity and behavior of today's youth. We trust that our partners in education — parents, guardians and school families will continue to reinforce to children the appropriate way to conduct themselves before, during and after school hours.

Clearly, "Accepting Responsibility 101" is not part of the Mitchell High School curriculum.

Last year, the New York Times published a story that described the rape-as-warfare epidemic in the Congo in horrific detail. Here's an exerpt:

Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women…”

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

An award-winning documentary on the subject premieres on HBO tonight at 10pm. The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo features first-hand accounts of women and men who have born witness to the horrors. It's definitely not something I'm dying to watch, but it's something that's important to see.

For information about how to help, click here.

I might find some way to make fun of a band of dreadlocked outlaws in shiny track suits and Laker's jerseys eluding capture on the Congo countryside if it weren't for the fact that the gang, called the Rastas, is responsible for some of the most horrifying, disgusting acts against women and children I could ever imagine.

There's a rape epidemic in the Congo, and its a horror that has gone from being a weapon of war to what researchers call a widespread "social phenomenon."

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