In keeping with the “women who hate women” theme we sort of had going last week, let’s take a quick look at Arizona Judge Jacqueline Hatch. Judge Hatch, you see, presided over a recent case involving a Flagstaff, Arizona police officer who was found guilty of sexually abusing a woman in a bar. According to the Arizona Daily Sun,
Prosecutors contended that he drank eight beers and then drove himself to the Green Room, where he flashed his badge in an attempt to get into a concert for free. While inside, he walked up behind the victim, who was a friend of a friend, put his hand up her skirt and then ran his fingers across her genitals.
When bouncers threw him out, Evans told them he was a cop and they would be arrested.
The cop faced up to two years in jail for his assault. But Hatch apparently felt the officer, who’d lost his job and served four whole days in jail, had already been punished enough for his crime, and let him off with two years of probation.
She also gave the victim a patronizing little lecture. Again, according to the Daily Sun,
Bad things can happen in bars, Hatch told the victim, adding that other people might be more intoxicated than she was.
“If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you,” Hatch said.
Hatch told the victim and the defendant that no one would be happy with the sentence she gave, but that finding an appropriate sentence was her duty.
“I hope you look at what you’ve been through and try to take something positive out of it,” Hatch said to the victim in court. “You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability.”
Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims.
“When you blame others, you give up your power to change,” Hatch said that her mother used to say.
Hatch has now offered a half-assed apology for her remarks, saying, in part:
As a Coconino County Superior Court judge, it is my responsibility to ensure that all victims and defendants are treated fairly and in a respectful manner in the courtroom. It’s a responsibility I take very seriously. I also believe victims should not be blamed for coming forward to report crimes.
In a recent case, my in-court comments to the victim at sentencing did not further these important tenets. My comments were poorly communicated and for that, I am truly sorry if they caused the victim further distress.
No, you communicated pretty clearly. The problem is what you communicated.
I commute by bus to and from work, and I am more likely to get harassed by tiny children wanting to play with/watch me play my DS. Seriously, this happens at least once a month. But I can only think of one time creepy guys tried to creep me on the bus. And one of them asked if I wanted to ‘hump’ him. Who even says that…
My best friend and I travelled around Europe together and were expecting to get harassed or hit on all the time, because we heard so many stories about female tourists getting yelled at/flirted with/pursued. But it rarely ever happened! And then there’s that stupid feeling that’s like, ‘what, are we not attractive enough for people to creep on us?’ Which is moronic. But still there in the back of the mind because of the idea that ‘attractive women have to beat off men with a stick!’ Jerky brain…
Ditto on the not-getting-harassed-much thing, but I think in my case, it’s not all the Bitchface Factor (though I have an excellent one), but also partly that I’m walking around in places I’ve known my entire life, so I usually appear to know where I’m going; that I walk very, very fast; and that I tend to shut out the world around me. So for all I know, people yell things at me all the bloody time, and I just never pick up on them.
From the point of view of ignoring/not noticing street harassment, portable music players and headphones are the best thing that ever happened.
I think ethnicity is a part of this too. I get harassed more, and in nastier ways, when people read me as Hispanic, which happens sometimes.
@Cassandra- the worst part about wearing headphones is the fact that if I wear them while riding my bike it’s technically illegal. So the cops could technically pull me over for it, even though they never have so far. And the other thing is that like in every “don’t get raped” email I’ve ever been sent, it’s always like number two on the list of things “not to do if you don’t want to be raped”- because apparently if you are wearing headphones and someone sneaks up behind you and assaults you, that makes it Your Fault.
I am rapidly running out of ways it could Not Be Your Fault when it comes to fucking rape culture bullshit. *sigh*
I totally agree with this, but I think there’s another source of the “women only call me creepy because I’m not a sex god” sentiment. Sometimes I think it’s about what happens after a man hits on a woman in a totally non-creepy way. Like, imagine there’s a woman at a bar hoping to find someone to go home with, and a man approaches her in a respectful, interesting way. Not creepy! Maybe she finds the guy attractive, and wants to talk to him a bit more, get to know him better. So they continue talking, share a drink. Still not creepy!
But maybe she doesn’t find him attractive and turns down advances. If he walks away at this point, he’s not creepy; but if he hangs around, tries to keep talking to her, buys her a drink she doesn’t want, that shit is creeperific. I figure, the creepy guy thinks: “This is exactly what the hypothetical attractive guy is doing. He gets to keep talking to her, gets to share a drink, and he’s not creepy for doing it. But I get called creepy? Just because I’m not as good looking?” But the creepy thing isn’t talking or drinking, it’s ignoring boundaries. What the creepy guys are upset about is the fact that women get to decide who they want to interact with, by the criteria they choose.
/lots of speculation
Illegal? Seriously?
I love both headphones and cell phones because using them is the international symbol for “don’t talk to me right now unless its an emergency”. Which of course some people ignore, because they’re rude.
@Viscaria
Yep, agreed. What differentiates creep from not a creep is being willing to accept other people’s boundaries, when you come right down to it. I think there’s some genuine cluelessness there in terms of how some of these guys interpret things, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem if they’d accept the fact that women are allowed to say no for whatever reason they please, even if it’s a reason that seems stupid to other people.
@dualityheart – OMG that crocheted bowel disruptor is the best!
I wear earplugs on the train. On the odd occasions I want to listen to a CD, I use noise-reducing headphones, big ones that block the ambient and don’t ‘leak’ noise. My main thing is blocking out other people’s incredibly noisy headphones. Seriously, if they want to give themselves tinnitus and go deaf, that’s fine by me, but I really, really do NOT want to be made to listen to their choice of music!
LOL, I would drive you nuts. I’m the person listening to screaming heavy metal and industrial to wake myself up first thing in the morning. Plus years of going to shows and standing right in front of the speakers to take pictures can’t have done my hearing any good.
::shudders::
😀
I’m actually really sensitive to loud music, to the point of developing IBS from the stress of years of loud neighbours. Makes me uncomfortable just writing about those years, and I’m a lot less tense about it than I was.
Aw, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t make you listen to the loud screamy music.
Thank ‘ee! 🙂
>Melvin totally thinks you made a good call with the public masturbator, but are you perfectly sure your judgement is always so good?
now what happened to us when we were in Rome with our class for a week is that some dude in business attire wiped out his dick and started wanking off in front of the tiny, conventionally unattractive girl in our group.
On a public bus as packed as the Tokyo Subway during Rush Hour, mind you. none of us noticed in the jam and she only told us after we got off. So nah, I don’t think that the majority of those masturbator suffer from mental illnesses.
Speaking of the subway in Tokyo, there’s a reason creepy dudes do their groping their rather than, say, in the middle of a department store where there’s space for other people to see what they’re up to and security cameras, and that reason is that they are not mentally ill, or stupid, they are just bad people. If they really were acting out of some kind of uncontrollable compulsion they’d be doing their groping anywhere and everywhere, but nope, they quite deliberately choose to do it in the situations where they’re least likely to get caught.
@VIscaria: I think you’re totally on to something. Lots of guys probably think that “Me and Mr Hot did exactly the same thing, because we both bought two drinks for a woman and talked to her and asked her out. Then I’m labelled a creep but he’s not. The only difference is in our appearance”.
When in fact their behaviour was NOT the same, because Mr Hot bought two drinks and talked to and asked out a woman who was continuously flirting back with him, while Labelled Creep just kept following a woman after she had turned him down and tried to get away from him.
Nanasha, you get extra points for making a Spider Jerusalem reference!
Blue gun thugs get away with everything. They are the enforced for the feminist state so they will never be condemned by feminists.
what
but
this is literally us condemning a cop for doing a thing
what
Troll broke MorkaisChosen! Apply puppy in ball pit stat!
d’awwwwww
I have been fairly lucky in not getting street harassed but I have no idea why. I do read while walking so that may have something to do with it.
I’m not sure it is really a woman’s physical diminutiveness that accounts for harassment, to respond to some earlier speculations. I’m quite tall, and though I’ve never been fat, I don’t have a weak or flimsy build. I have been harassed endlessly, and, as far as I know, considerably more than most of my petite friends. Being tall makes one visible, obvious, and I also have what is considered a “sexy” body type: large breasts, small waist, full hips. But, whatever it is, (some) men have felt free to say things to me and to touch me since I was in my teens.
I’ve learned my lesson. I will never run my hands across the genitals of a female in the green room or any other place in Arizona. I’ve had many a woman run her hand across my genitals in similar venues, but Arizona and any room that is green is off limits as far as I’m concerned. Green is a bad color anyway.
Congratulations Brian!