It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.
An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.
Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.
She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.
One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.
The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.
She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.
“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”
I’m sick and tired of men telling me that rape culture doesn’t exist, that rape victims should have done something different, they should have worn something different, they should have not gone out alone, I’m fucking sick of all of it.
We have a problem with misogyny and rape in this country. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum on its own.
Trump is merely a symptom of the rot.
I was listening to an excerpt of Jimmy Carr interview a few days ago in which he was arguing that one of best ways to combat toxic masculinity was to encourage young men to go down to the pub with the lads. That men in groups will keep checks on others within the group.
I respect Carr and his crusade against toxic masculinity, but I am a guy and a lifelong feminist (thanks mom) that grew up in an extremely misogynistic culture. Sure, my friends would have kept me in check, but that’s because we were always a mixed gender and sexuality group. Most “lads” crews I knew, once drunk and rowdy, were more likely to gang rape a girl than not if she told them off. Sorry Jimmy, humans are still way to close to close to chimp to be left unchecked.
Something tells me that Jimmy “Riyadh Comedy Festival” Carr doesn’t take ethics entirely seriously.
Tbh we also have a problem with misogyny on the threadiverse.
Why does this have downvotes? Someone got raped and OP is justifiably mad about the state of things, why do people here feel that’s something to take issue with?
We really like to feel progressive and like we’re fighting the good fight here, until someone posts a sexist meme and you see what the comment section looks like, and it becomes clear a lot of folks haven’t interrogated how they look at women or women’s issues even a little bit since leaving reddit
Some of the downvotes are because I am one of the few voices on the fediverse speaking out against those sexist memes and such. There are some people that don’t like outspoken women and I have a few stalkers that are very dedicated.
But as you can see from other comments, there is a problem with misogyny here. The kneejerk questioning of rape victims is just one sign of it.
You have (at least) a few fans too.
I have a deep respect and appreciation of your posts and commentary. We sure as shit don’t have enough people like you.
I really appreciate that, TaterTot :3
Hopefully with enough time and stubbornness, more people like us will feel more comfortable here in the Fediverse!
I think you’ve already had a decent impact on it here. Still a ways to go and all that, but it doesn’t feel as entirely focused on men’s perspective as it did before you and a handful of other very vocal women got here. That focus on men had me considering leaving for a while, something I no longer am considering.
Well this really made me feel good to read :) It’s really cool that you’re stickin around
❤️
Agreed! I love seeing velma’s posts. She always has something helpful to add to the conversation.
That is unsurprising and also upsetting. That shit makes me sad.
People love to pat themselves on the back for being one of the good guys until they actually have to do work to confront the things they’ve been taught and have internalized, and engage with the fact that they’ve allowed themseveled to be comfortable with some shit they shouldn’t be.
And its frustrating. I see casual sexism here more often than any other brand of bigotry.
I think it’s much more prevalent than people want to admit.
Otherwise, spontaneous gang rapes wouldn’t occur with such frequency. Why are there always so many men that are up for it randomly? What are the odds, yeah? Seriously, that wouldn’t be possible if it was a rarity.
They’ll rape animals and men, too, because they’re rapists. Women and children are smaller, so they are preyed on much more, but if all women disappeared tomorrow, they’d still rape whomever/whatever else they could.
Sure, this could be a political ploy in this case, I know nothing. But the reason such a ploy is believable is because it’s so common.
It’s way more prevalent than most men want to admit, that’s for sure.
Women have either been victims themselves or know someone who has been a victim. The rate is close to 1 in 3 women have been raped.
It’s 1 in 5, but it is still a lot and way too high.
It depends if you’re looking worldwide or at the US. It also depends if you’re looking at reported cases vs unreported.
But yes, it’s still way too high.
What the fucking shit… This makes me gag! God fucking damnit, I hate men… and I’m saying that as a man!
Republican women are some of the most vocal rape deniers. It’s not about hating genders, it’s about the people that promote a culture where these behaviors flourish.
It’s still men doing most of the rape and sexual assault, which is what P1nkman was referring with their outrage.
I hate this game we all have to play - avoiding saying which gender it is that perpetrates rape and sexual assault the most.
It’s men. Men do it the most. Not all men rape, but overwhelmingly it’s men who rape others - women, children, and other men.
Understood.
“men” is not a fixable problem.
Republican culture is
Those men have been “fortunate” in their lives perhaps.
If a man has been homeless or in prison for any length of time, he knows you’re right, and perhaps even a little too optimistic.
I’d say half of men are predatory given the opportunity, easily, at least.
I’m reminded that there are some cultures where, if people want to reserve a seat in a restaurant or something, they’ll leave their purse or wallet there unguarded. And nobody steals it. That’s their culture.
So, I think when people claim rape culture doesn’t exist, they don’t understand what that means. If rape culture didn’t exist, then it would make no difference what a woman was wearing or what she was doing. She would be able to feel safe and feel confident that nothing would happen to her. That’s so far off of American culture right now that it’s not even debatable.
Yeah, or how they should not have been convicted of a crime they may or may not have committed and sentenced to the most concentrated and well documented rape culture in modern history, male prisons. Obviously rape cultures exist. I agree with you.
False rape allegations happen, but they’re much more rare than actual rape.
The amount of support prison rape has in society is a real part of our rape culture. When rape is celebrated as a valid punishment, it helps support the same rape culture that supports questioning victims’ stories. That they must have done something to deserve it.
It’s all tied together.
I was not refering to false rape allegations.
how they should not have been convicted of a crime they may or may not have committed and sentenced
Then you should be more clear.
Or you shouldn’t make assumptions.
You’re welcome to clarify your statement.
Which part do you need help understanding?
Every time rape culture comes into the limelight, I remember a party in college where a friend, well call her blue, was so drunk she was pants-off propositioning several people. All of us were like “Blue if you’re down tomorrow, that’s cool. But like, go to bed.”
Not Nick. Name not redacted. I went into their room and cock blocked. Straight to Nick “brother you’re way more cogent than her. This is rape, and everyone here knows it.”
Or, sorry to both sides here, but the time Jenna, name not redacted, came downstairs with a suggestive giggle and grin after we had all just helped our friend James (not his name) to bed, in his own home at his house for a graduation party. Jenna, that was rape. And I said it out loud to you in front of everyone. And you giggled like it was cute.
There’s a small percentage of humans among us that don’t respect others autonomy. They need to be outed. They need to be held accountable. We need them away from the rest of us.
Fuck you Nick. Fuck you Jenna.
Thanks for being the type of person to call that shit out in the moment.
I saved a friend of mine from a similar situation. I was living in a house with 5 people. She was shit faced. I came home and found her in the shower. Clothed. Passed out.
I got her changed (we were pretty close friends). And put her to bed.
Like a bit later I get up to check on her. Cause people can die from alcohol poisoning. I See her door is open. Go in and a fucking guy is in her bed.
Can you believe that !?
Some shit stain that was there for the party, from one of the other housemates was throwing.
I flipped out on him and cussed him out. He called me a bitch. Told me to mind my own fucking business. She was into it. …
He really wasn’t going to leave. I am pretty sure I threatened him with violence. (This was like 20 years ago).
Man, I was so angry. I’m still angry when I think about it.
I remember it was actually really hard to get him to leave. He didn’t think I had any right to tell him he couldn’t rape my friend. I do recall there being a lot of yelling.
I did finally get him to leave. And I told the housemate about it but she honestly didn’t care.
Next day I told my friend some shitty guy was in her bed but I chased him off. I tried to recall what he looked like. So she could figure out who he was. But I don’t think we figured it out for sure.
And cautioned her about Ashley’s “friends”.
She said she got in the shower because she realized how drunk she was and thought it would sober her up. And didn’t remember much after that.
Thank God I got off work in time.
A woman underestimates her alcohol consumption one fucking time and the vultures swoop in. In her own place.
Not safe anywhere.
The fucking nerve to argue over the right to keep raping someone blackout drunk!
Right?!
And he genuinely thought calling me a bitch and telling me to fuck off was going to work.
I wonder if such a tactic had worked for him in the past.
You know I was thinking about how back then we called it “taking advantage”. Not rape.
Like they just took an opportunity that presented itself. An opportunity that the victim created.
Morally gray. But not the same as rape. Which is only defined as when a sober woman is physically attacked and held down with force by a man. the term wasn’t really applied to many other scenarios.
No one used the word “rape” to describe assaulting an intoxicated person.
It was always “someone took advantage of them”.
And I think describing it that way was part of why it was pervasive. Acceptable. Common.
And even now it’s hard to get people prosecuted for rape when the victim is intoxicated.
Like somehow , them being incapable of escaping or resisting makes them willing and accepting by default.
I think in some ways , the rapist who physically attacks a sober woman is at least unashamedly acknowledging what they are doing.
Whereas the rapist who waits until his would-be victim is incapacitated and can’t fight back , and tells himself they wanted it, is a delusional sociopath. These are the types who go after children and teens too. The kind who groom. These predator types are more insidious.
I don’t remember it being called “taking advantage” except maybe when I was a kid and too young to really get it, but it’s really gross that people used to say that. Taking advantage of someone should mean overstaying your welcome or not picking up your fair share of the checks when you go out to eat, not raping someone too drunk to consent.
And I think you’ve got a great point there about the psychology of these people. I’m particularly aware of and concerned with sexual violence stemming from self delusion due to ways in which I’ve been victimized. These people seem to be the sort unable to handle a no or to do the flirtatious dance of figuring out that it’ll probably be a yes before they ask. So rather than finding someone who would say yes or becoming someone more people would say yes to, they find a person too drunk to consent, or someone too inexperienced to know better (especially minors), or they try to manipulate/pressure a no into a yes, or whatever other way that isn’t just straightforward finding someone who actually wants you.
Apparently plenty of people have no Idea that having sex with someone under influence of substances is rape. I’ve had this conversation with someone, who openly said the point of going to parties is to score with drunk girls.
We’re younger back then, I feel like he’s a better person now.
Completely insane that there are comments here assigning any degree of blame to her for this situation. The fact that it was 2 in the morning isn’t an invitation to rape or be otherwise assaulted.
Hell, I don’t care if someone were nude and fixing a sign that advertised their services as a prostitute. Still not “asking for it”.
I’ve been shocked and disgusted to learn the mundane activities that my wife considers too unsafe to risk. Not just being out alone at 2am, not just being out alone at night, but being out alone at all. I go for solitary hikes in the woods to restore myself but she won’t even walk her German shepherd in an area where she can’t see other people at all times.
I mention all this not to say “these are the rules - women should know to follow them.”
I mention all this with outrage that anyone anywhere should ever feel like they need to live this way. These are completely unreasonable limits for any human being. It truly breaks my heart that my loved one will never know the joy of sitting meditative at a mountain peak looking out over the valley where we live, or know the pleasure of walking her dog under the stars.
Same. My wife has told me there is a massive difference between going shopping and I just tag along and going by herself. Even in public areas, she just notices less stares and gets less random comments from men.
Once, long ago, I dated a woman with really flashy good looks. Pale blond hair, big tits, beautiful face, the works. She got so much attention that even when I was with her I could sense it myself. In fact I got a special form of the “male gaze” which was reserved just for me: these sneering looks like “who’s that piece of shit with her?” It wasn’t an all day every day kind of thing but if we went out to bars it was palpable. It was very interesting to actually get a personal taste of that kind of attention. As a dude you typically just have no idea.
This is horrific, and sounds like actual terrorism in that it is a violent act with an apparent political motive. I hope she is safe and gets justice for what was done to her.
It’s 100% terrorism and it’s exactly what all these misogynistic billionaires are funding with their money. All of these manosphere bullshit podcasters keep pushing men into misogyny and violence and social media giants enable them. They are not the root cause of the problem but they’re intentionally making it worse.
We’re seeing a very deliberate campaign targeting half our population with vitriol and violence. This isn’t free speech anymore, it’s terrorism.
After I posted my comment it occurred to me that people threatening women with rape in internet comments and DMs is definitely part of this story. If those threats are normalized, you don’t need to direct a specific person to attack another specific person, you can just trust that it will happen eventually, like other varieties of stochastic terror.
Yep! It’s also a stage of the radicalization pathway that the alt right pioneered. Each step primes people for the next as well as making them sympathetic to those even further down the line. While the person who’s only involved in light misogyny spaces may in theory oppose rape threats and rape, they may very well find themselves talking about false accusations or how you can’t control people on the internet or rapists. By having those reactions they’re already priming themselves to maybe be interested in communities where among other things some members make fun of rape victims that the community has decided are liars.
I wish I could upvote your comment more than once.
I’m sure the cops will definitely use the flock cameras to identify her attackers.
/s
Wouldnt you know it, it happened in a gap of camera coverage. This wouldnt have happened of the liberals hadnt been pro-rape and forced us to get rid of the cameras that would have caught this! We should get 30,000,000 dollars in new funding to expand AI cameras across the area!
/s
I feel so sorry for this poor woman having to endure this, It is a terrible violation and tragedy… but if it happened specifically because of her politics, then that opens a very very dark door for our future, and thats saying something considering rape is already a dark door in and of itself.
It likely was politically motivated the rapist said “-ic bitch” to her and I think she was right that the full word was democratic. She was also attacked while fixing a political sign which probably wasn’t a coincidence. This is disgusting.
The same cops whose body cams conveniently malfunction every single time they’re accused of malfeasance or gross abuse of of excessive force? Color me not-even-mildly-shocked
The police: “are you sure it wasn’t just some sort of misunderstanding?”
why would the cops investigate themselves
“We investigated ourselves and determined we didn’t do anything wrong. Case closed.”
This is a horrific story. We need stronger laws surrounding rape. I guarantee you, that if republican men were being raped, we would have death penalty laws against rape.
What’s needed is not stronger laws so much as consistent and motivated enforcement of the existing laws. If nobody is bothering to investigate the crimes that are reported, fewer victims are going to report crimes, and the perpetrators are going to be emboldened.
Exactly. Ask any cop about their untested rape kits.
They get them and then they don’t do shit with them.
If it’s not murder, it didn’t happen on camera, and it didn’t happen in a car cops couldn’t care less unless it’s really easy. Like easier than testing a rape kit and matching it to a database of sex offenders and other rape kits (which should be pretty damn easy). Speaking as a victim, I knew cops were fucking useless, but I’m very vocal since my experience about how brazenly they don’t care. Like, to the point they didn’t notice the footprint under a window with a cut screen and insisted we must’ve left the door unlocked.
I have no doubt that there are serial rapists out there with many samples of their DNA sitting in police offices untested with none of the victims knowing that the rapist has targeted a lot of people already.
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The sentence in the middle of your comment is technically true, but the surrounding joviality of lol and stupid emojis is horrible.
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citation needed
There are literally over a dozen people on Lemmy. There may even be more than twice that. Don’t expect a single, cohesive view on anything. It’s rare enough for even a single person to have cohesive views. If you expect a single, cohesive view from a group of multiple people, that’s about as realistic as expecting your romantic relationships to work like ones in Disney movies. The person calling for the death penalty as a comment on one post is probably not the same one calling for care in handling a homeless man’s issues. This is a collection of individuals, not a collective hivemind.
Laws don’t prevent rape because they’re not enforced. As we’ve seen with the Cornell case.
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The laugh emojis are a weird thing to add.
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Hate cops but now expect them to help you?
So you admit that they can’t be expected to do their jobs? Weird take from someone who supports the police. Maybe if they actually did their jobs they wouldn’t be so hated.
Expect the harshest punishment for rapists, but homeless criminals should be excused at all cost no matter what they do
Oh, you’re here to strawman. No surprise there.
- Expect the peeps to be caught ASAP but hate flock cameras
Is that not what they’re for? Why would you be against them being used for what they’re allegedly for?
Fucking HYPOCRITES
If you were smart enough to know how dumb you are you’d be embarrassed.
So you want police to stop brutalizing marginalized communities but also don’t want to be randomly assaulted and raped?
Like most things in life, it’s a binary choice and you can’t possibly have both
It’s hard to read sarcasm on the internet, let alone in a thread with an already-established troll on the loose.
Ok fair enough, I thought it was clear but I see your point
So you want police to stop brutalizing marginalized communities
Yes?
but also don’t want to be randomly assaulted and raped?
Also yes?
Like most things in life, it’s a binary choice and you can’t possibly have both
Why the hell not? Where is that written down?
Sorry I was trying to be sarcastic and the point i was trying to make was essentially the opposite of what I said, which I recognize could be confusing.
Most things are not a binary choice, and if we were going to have real police reform we would need to have difficult conversations about how much policing snd what type is the best to ensure public safety without having the policing itself become a public safety concern. But that reform isn’t coming, so we probably don’t need to have those conversations
You want both? How about neither. Don’t worry you still wouldn’t have gotten either had you picked just one. Anyways, we’ve decided to do a bunch of overtime not doing anything beneficial and massively outspent our budget. Anyways you don’t really need those libraries, sidewalks, or schools.
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No they are untouchable victims to you fucking hypocrites
Lol. Who told you that?
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Are the leftists who think these things in the room with us now?
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I believe that you do.
Aren’t you American?
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Expecting cops to do their jobs is hypocrisy?
What is even happening…
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I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Uhhh surveillance definitely doesn’t prevent a thing
No one here is calling for more surveillance to curb this.
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I understand the memory block the trauma of rape can cause. My ex drugged and raped me in my own home, in my own bedroom, during my own goddamn birthday party with family and friends just a shout away. Everyone thought I was just super fucking drunk, as I had turned 21 and was drinking heavily. I was drunk, but the drugs I was given in the last drinky ex gave me had me unable to stand within minutes. My ex told everyone he’d go tuck me in so I could rest and everyone thought the last of the alcohol I’d had hit me all at once. He essentially dragged me to my bed and tossed me onto it like a sack of potatoes. I didn’t pass out as quickly as I would have liked. The drugs paralyzed me and I was very much aware of the things my ex was doing, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Thankfully I passed out before he started the penetrative part of the rape. I woke up naked and in awful pain all over, but especially down there. I often sleep nude or nearly nude because I get overheated easily, so I didn’t think anything of it and figured the pain was just a hangover.
I blocked out all memory for five years as a survival mechanism and my mental health tanked when the memories came back. It took another three years for me to seek therapy. All of the evidence is circumstantial, as he wore protection or was just unable to cum. There were no witnesses and no concrete evidence other than my memories that resurfaced, me waking up naked, and the pain.
The mental healing has been so rough. I can’t imagine what this woman is going through. Her experience sounds far more traumatic than mine was. I hope she can get the help she deserves and needs and that the bastards who hurt her get what’s coming to them. I will never get justice for what happened to me, but I hope every other victim can.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sorry you had to endure it and I’m sending warm healing thoughts your way <3
I can already hear the Republicans making fucked up jokes about this.
Don’t worry, we have proclaimed leftists claiming she’s making this all up for attention right here.
well, there’s the whole Kirk dance on the grave thing and he deserved it…
to be clear, what happened to her is beyond atrocious and I have zero ideas on fixing it and like climate change, I don’t think there is anyway to fix it.
Well, they thought Nancy Pelosi’s husband getting assaulted was a real hoot, so it’s all too predictable.
Also, they started crafting a narrative in which it wasn’t home invasion or anything, but because he’s actually sooper dooper gay or something and it was a lover’s quarrel. Tee hee, aren’t the conservatives so funny? Why won’t the libs make comedy legal again?
Charlie Kirk said a patriot should “Pay his bail”
Oh, Paul’s assailant. Jeez, I didn’t know that.
We should totally be naming things after Kirk. 🤮
You can read them too, right under this story in the comments.
Thankfully no jokes, just conservative men doing what conservative men do when they hear a woman has been raped, calling her a liar.
The fact that they do this shit is why no one should believe them when they say they wanna “Protect women” from trans people.
Fellow men:
Believe women. Do not allow mysogyny in your circles. Don’t even laugh at the jokes. Speak out. When you hear people talk about having harmed a woman or planning to, report it. Don’t just go on the internet and say you’re a feminist or support women - actually do it, every day.
100%. All the women I’ve been close to have been attacked, stalked, or harassed by men. I’m not letting these fucking assholes get away with it.
I hope she succeeds in life, and that those two men are killed. Rapists, just like unjustifiable killers, have no place among humanity.
There are many sleeping soundly at the whitehouse right now, on a comfortable taxpaid pillow.
Well, even if this was politically motivated, she’s not a conservative and doesn’t have the name Charlie Kirk, so Republicans won’t give a flying fuck.
I fucking hate rapists with every fiber of my being. I’d skin god alive if it meant I could torture every single rapists that has ever walked this forsaken planet. The soulless, mindless, evil you have to have in you to force yourself on someone .
My partner is a survivor, and I swear on any god that is listening if I ever get the chance, god have mercy on my soul the things I would do to them.
Fucking sick motherfuckers.
Wow. Top Ten Incels of Lemmy are all here, and I know I’m not even seeing all of the comments because some are already blocked.
wow, I don’t think people like this can be repaired. They should be locked away for life (with minimal comforts, basically a monk like life) and that energy should be spent on their kids and younger generation. Except ofcourse we are talking about the Trump administration, Trump probably thinks she got what she deserved. So yeah, quite hopeless.
I don’t think they should be in prison; wood chipper.
while I would agree for this particular crime, in general death sentence is very problematic. I have read somewhere that during certain periods as high as 1/20 death sentences can be wrongfully given. So I am ok if they live like monks in some tiny cell for the rest of their lives while wrongfully accused people at least get some chance for getting out and compensation (which is not ideal but way better than death I would assume).
I’m not a fan of giving the government the power to execute people either, but man I understand why people want it when stuff like this happens. I still think it’s the wrong decision but I can’t get mad at people who support the death penalty.
The solution to that is death penalty for the people who decide on it but are wrong, but this needs to come along with a robust all encompassing government whistleblower program as well as stricter rules on government officials and more forced transparency.
In the day an age of being able to deep fake convincing evidence on a whim, I dont think the government should have the power to kill anyone. Period.
Plus, death is too easy. Watching the world move without you in it though…
Reread the second half of my comment, those parts are necessary for the first part to even be imagined as remotely functional. Full forced transparency, no classified information, absolutely nothing can be hidden from the civilians (a necessary yet ALWAYS ignored part of democracy btw) on top of extreme protections for whistleblowers and a massive payout system for anybody who catches any wrongdoings by the government.
And you missed mine.
That its impossible to hold anyone to the standard you propose, because to allow it all, means it can be manipulated for others purpose.
Why give the execution power to someone else?
That’s such a wildly disingenuous question. You know the answer but just in case you are being serious then consider “Why give the incarceration power to someone else”. Surely you aren’t arguing for absolute anarchism and rampant vigilantism, right?
Anyway, back to the original point…it’s not impossible if all government correspondence and data is fully public and never hidden along with a robust whistleblower system. We have to do something with the Epsteins,Trumps, Netanyahus, and Putins of the world…why continue allowing them to take more from us all by incarcerating them where they also have the chance to return to their old heinous lives or even to just move the entire operation into their “prison cell”.
So who? The jury? The judge? The prosecutor? You would simply have no one attempt to give the death penalty in the case they could be wrong, which is almost always technically a possibility. Which is mostly just the same as not having it.
Easy out, labour camps.
Forced labor is slavery, and that’s not ok even for prisoners. Besides being a human rights violation, it incentivizes governments to convict more people of crimes and to impose longer sentences (I agree that sexual assault crimes are under-prosecuted, but that is one of the only categories of crime for which that is true, at least in the US). It also does nothing to promote rehabilitation.
Very good points. My comment was thoughtless.
This is the way.
May I offer a compromise? Send their genitals to the wood chipper and put the rest of their body in prison.
in the name of efficicacy, we should use the woodchipper to remove the aforementioned genitalia.
I believe in rehabilitative and restorative justice. But a necessary prerequisite for them to work is that the guilty understand what they did was wrong and want to change. Rapists, much like domestic abusers, in our society very rarely feel that desire.
Someone who would do something like this has something seriously wrong with him, but it seems to me like it may be more likely to be an illness of society that he’s symptomatic of rather than an individual mental illness. He needs to be kept under control for the safety of others until we can find a way to make people like him eligible for restorative justice, which I doubt he will live to see.
This is the kind of rape which coldly reminds you that there are levels even within this kind of monstrosity. And as you yourself alluded in other posts, this particular person seems to be on the worst level of it, or close to. I do agree that it might have a perfectly reasonable and even sympathizable explanation, for instance perhaps he was regularly sexually abused by a parent when he was a kid and thinks that rape is some sort of punishment (which also counts as a societial source too). But unfortunately I find it hard to believe that there is a turning point from this sort of mental ilness/character once you are elbow deep in it. The only reasonable way forward for me is to change the society by conditioning younger generations and saving them from abuse, not spending time and energy on individuals that are too deep in such a pit.
I want to be clear about what I meant by social illness. It is an illness of the society which manifests in the behaviors and values of people, fascism being the prime example. I think these men (read the article and it’s actually two men) have been radicalized to the point where they are acting in a complete incongruity with near universal understanding of right and wrong. And in that vein the systems to rehabilitate them are ones that we need to build for the people less radicalized than them. The same applies for dealing with rape culture in general. The difference between these men and your everyday rapist or everyday far right chud engaging in stochastic terrorism seem to me to be ones of magnitude, not kind.
I agree with your perspective, my problem has always been that people can be very deceptive. How would this system potentially deal with that? Asking because I like your idea and just haven’t been able to head-solve that part.
I don’t know. Even communities committed to restorative justice have broken stairs. But just because there are still issues doesn’t mean we should give up the pursuit of a better and more just system. Issues like this are part of why it’d be stupid for a large government to just adopt what some communes and anarchists are trying, but taking elements, working towards similar aims, and encouraging such radical and voluntary groups to keep trying to innovate and find solutions are things we can do now
Agreed, even a half step is better than none in the right direction. It’s a worthwhile pursuit to spend time figuring it out. I don’t see any benefit in inflicting pain and suffering on someone as retribution or “teaching”. The system is deeply flawed as it stands now, there’s an endless number of things to be fixed. I have no idea what an ultimate solution might look like (not as a monolith but a process over time) but I have faith it can exist. I’ll take being proven wrong over giving up.
You have hope and it’s a bit infectious. Kinda need as much of that as I can get these days. Thank you for responding, I appreciate it
Even if our pursuit is doomed I believe we still owe it to ourselves and each other to work for a better world. It’s both a matter of practicality and a matter of character. Surely things can be done better, but also we must every day choose who we will be, we choose the contents of our souls continually, and since we choose we can choose better, and when we don’t know what choice is better we can do our best and try to learn where we can.
I choose hope because we are people, even when things are bleak, and people can change. We can innovate. We can reorganize. We can learn and choose better. Perfect is impossible, but better always is possible.
Two books I recommend for hope are The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow, which show that society has been organized wildly differently in the past in ways most people don’t know because it’s relatively recent archeological and anthropological knowledge, but also it goes against the two competing “common knowledge” accounts of how civilization got to be this way. And The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuinn (cw the protagonist does rape someone), which imagines an anarchic society, struggles and all, which feels very real and like it may someday be possible, especially to those who’ve had plenty of experience in anarchy adjacent communities, spaces, and projects.
I have no idea what an ultimate solution might look like (not as a monolith but a process over time) but I have faith it can exist. I’ll take being proven wrong over giving up.
I strongly believe it lies in education. Sex education, reading from different perspectives, understanding what consent is and is not, understanding empathy. We need to be teaching our youth the value of respect and consent. They need to read books written by women from the perspective of women. We need to teach them that women deserve a place in our government, our universities, everywhere.
There’s proof there that we can create a better society for everyone this way.
While I’ve seen my fair share of rapist who got rehabilitated, I do not think this one will be able to, especially as those who do it as a form of punishment (which it was from the limited details) are really hard to cooperate with.
Fundamentally rehabilitation is a two way street. Society has to provide the tools and resources to help change, but the criminal has to want to change and choose to do so. I highly doubt this man will ever want to change.
I hate calling everything terrorism, but raping a political candidate over her party sure fits my understanding of terrorism, same as last year’s political assassination.
Terrorist states love using rape as terror. There’s at least two at this moment, Israel and Russia.
I went to Fox News to read the comment section about this. It’s as expected - vile and calling her a liar.
