I find it hard to read about the Stanford rape case for more than a few minutes at a time. The whole thing is so grotesque and awful that I literally start twitching in anger and frustration and have to stop reading.
It took several tries for me to make it all the way through a three-and-a-half minute video from Buzzfeed in which a young woman read excerpts from the deeply unsettling letter the victim read to her attacker in court, and it left my stomach in knots.
Last night, a reader pointed me to what he said were some particularly egregious comments about the case he’d run across on Roosh V’s forum from a fellow who calls himself, perhaps appropriately, the Lizard of Oz. I finally forced myself to read them this morning, and found myself twitching again.
The Lizard is as angry about the case as I am. But he’s not angry at “poor wide-eyed fearful [Brock] Turner,” for violating an unconscious woman, or at the judge for giving Turner only a six month sentence (of which he will likely only serve half).
No, he’s angry at what he describes as “a society full of psychotic princesses and their despicable white-knight enablers which treats its young men as worthless roadkill.” And he’s angry at the woman who was violated for speaking up on her own behalf with what he sees as a suspicious eloquence.
Yes, that’s right. He’s mad at her in part because her letter is too well-written for his taste, complaining that the “emotionally dishonest” document “is a self-consciously literary text written in the hysterical tones of contemporary serious female fiction.” In another comment, he denounces her letter as “literary attention whoring from the first word to the last.”
His comments are worth looking at in some detail, if only as a sort of case study in the ways in which misogyny and rape culture can not only destroy a person’s basic human empathy but also their ability to see the facts right in front of them.
As The Lizard sees it, the only crime here is that a “drunk and confused teenage boy” had his “life …. destroyed” just because he failed to notice that his sex partner had passed out.
The idea that this is a “light sentence” is a tragically misplaced one. In reality, the guy’s life is ruined forever. He will be registered as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. He is an eternal pariah and outcast. All because this slut decided that a few moments of drunkenness were enough to destroy a man’s life for good.
The Lizard has somehow convinced himself, through a rather tortured reading of the victim’s letter, that she “liked” being violated by Turner.
This slut went to the party because she wanted to get drunk and cheat on her boyfriend. She obviously wanted this athlete guy to f**k her as she admits in this key passage from the “victim letter” which you need to parse correctly through its lawyerly wording.
Here’s the passage in question, in which she admits no such thing. (I’m putting quotes from her in blue to distinguish them clearly from his.)
And you’re right, maybe I was still fluttering my eyes and wasn’t completely limp yet, fine. His guilt did not depend on him knowing the exact second that I became unconscious, that is never what this was about. I was slurring, too drunk to consent way before I was on the ground. I should have never been touched in the first place
The meaning of the passage is pretty transparent. She’s not saying she consented. She’s saying that she was clearly, obviously, unquestionably “too drunk to consent.”
The Lizard has a somewhat different take.
In other words she’s admitting she was by no means unconscious when he started “fingering” her which she herself said she “liked”. This kid is now supposed to be a “rapist” because in his own drunkenness he could not figure out the exact moment when the equally drunk girl passed out? Really?
Yes, really. It doesn’t matter what “exact moment” she passed out, you stupid sack of garbage. If you stick your fingers into someone who is passed out, that is rape. If you stick your fingers into someone so drunk they’re on the verge of passing out, that is also rape.
The Lizard puts the word “liked” in quotes, as if it is a direct quote from the victim. It’s not. If you search her statement for the words “like” and “liked,” you won’t find her saying anywhere that she “liked” what Turner did to her.
Here are some of the things you will find. (I will put the words “like” and “liked” in italics.)
A paragraph in which she describes taking a shower in a hospital after several hours of being poked and prodded and examined for evidence of rape.
After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.
A paragraph in which she describes how she learned what happened to her that night in the time between her last memory of the party she was at and when she came to hours later on a hospital gurney.
This was how I learned what happened to me, sitting at my desk reading the news at work. I learned what happened to me the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened to me. That’s when the pine needles in my hair made sense, they didn’t fall from a tree. He had taken off my underwear, his fingers had been inside of me. I don’t even know this person. I still don’t know this person. When I read about me like this, I said, this can’t be me, this can’t be me. I could not digest or accept any of this information.
A paragraph in which she addresses Turner for trying to excuse his actions by claiming he was too drunk to know what he was doing. An excerpt:
Sipping fireball is not your crime. Peeling off and discarding my underwear like a candy wrapper to insert your finger into my body, is where you went wrong. Why am I still explaining this.
A paragraph in which she discusses one way in which the sexual assault has affected her:
I can’t sleep alone at night without having a light on, like a five year old, because I have nightmares of being touched where I cannot wake up, I did this thing where I waited until the sun came up and I felt safe enough to sleep. For three months, I went to bed at six o’clock in the morning.
So where does the idea she “liked it” come from? Not from her, but from Turner. In her letter, she recalls reading a news account of the evening’s events:
In the next paragraph, I read something that I will never forgive; I read that according to him, I liked it. I liked it. Again, I do not have words for these feelings.
Speaking of the word “like,” The Lizard’s comment received fifty “likes” from Roosh V forum users. Here they all are:
MiscBrah, Horus, n/a, BallsDeep, GlobalMan, KidA, Samseau, Captainstabbin, spokepoker, Genghis Khan, RoastBeefCurtains4Me, Burt Gummer, Tokyo Joe, bigrich, gajf77, Comte De St. Germain, Mr. Scumbag, getdownonit, Renton1875, H1N1, Benoit, Chevalier De Seingalt, J. Spice, DJ-Matt, debeguiled, Neo2, Grodin, PUA_Rachacha, VincentVinturi, arafat scarf, Professor Fox, godzilla, Roadrunner, UroboricForms, B TAHKE, MMX2010, yfc4, Grizzles, Ocelot, TooFineAPoint, Polo, DeltaSmelt, Dismal Operator, Gmac, Geomann180, mpr, tradman, Avarence, dies irae, Matrixdude
In a followup comment, The Lizard begs a fellow forum member who actually sees the incident as”obviously a real case of rape” to have some empathy — for Turner.
Please try to think about this in actual human terms and understand what happened here. The idea that a young kid’s life should be ruined forever because of this incident is disgraceful.
It’s not long before The Lizard sets forth a conspiracy theory to explain just why the victim’s letter went viral. Weirdly, it involves Donald Trump.
I can tell you why it went viral:
1. They need this to make up for the loss they took on lyin’ Jackie [last name redacted –DF] in the UVa case — a loss they’re still smarting from.
2. It’s needed as payback for TRUMP — pretty much the fact that he still dares to exist.
Unbelievable. The Lizard concludes:
There is serious evil afoot here. But it’s not in the actions of one drunk confused kid — the evil is in our society and the hysterical extremes it has reached in pandering to female lies.
In a series of followup comments, The Lizard informs us that white men can’t rape:
“Rape” victims are few and far between, and real rapes, violent drag into the bushes rapes, are vanishingly rare on college campuses, and not committed by young white male college students.
That women apparently love — no, LOVE — having sex behind dumpsters:
What I know for sure is that women go to parties and get drunk because they want to f**k; and women, especially when they are drunk and horny, LOVE the idea and the excitement of having sex in public locations to an extent that most prudish men and white-knights can never understand.
That he’s pretty sure the victim didn’t write her letter, because reasons:
I did not believe when I saw it, and I believe less now, that it was written in full by “Emily Doe”. It bears all the marks of a far more experienced, ideological, and nastier hand.
I cannot prove, but strongly suspect, that this document was written in part or in full by Michele Dauber, the Stanford Law professor who has been primarily responsible for coordinating the propaganda campaign in this case.
Several commenters on Roosh’s forum, to their credit, take issue with The Lizard’s arguments, such as they are.
And then there is the odious piece of human garbage who calls himself GlobalMan — who may be a man we have met many times before, since“GlobalMan” was for years the internet moniker used by the extremely odd and terrible person better known as Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c).
Here is his take on the situation:
Wow. If [Turner’s] account is indeed accurate and true, not only is this the furthest thing from rape there could ever be, but it is also quite scary that men have to now worry about roving pairs of violent white knights intruding on any public lustful escapades with a willing and enthusiastic lover because they’ve been trained to view all males with natural virility as a threat to public safety.
What you have is in fact actually a sweet and beautiful scene, two young drunk kids slipping and falling and going at it right where they fell. Not too long ago in history someone would have walked by these kids and smirked, passing by with a smile at the thought of young lust. Now such a scene is cause to use violence to restrain the male and send him off to the gulag for societal castration.
A disgusting and sad outcome if there ever was one.
A “sweet and beautiful scene.” That comment got more than a dozen “likes” from the Roosh V Forum crowd.
I’m twitching again.
@theseventhguest & Zatar:
I’d guess that they meant the witnesses. Think about it – the whole family seems to be treating the victim as a nonentity in this. If the witnesses had kept their traps shut, there might not have been any prosecution, given how hard rapes are to prove. Thus, by “irresponsibly” stopping the rape and telling people about it later, his life probably wouldn’t have been ruined.
@Laserqueen
Since the scumbag went to Oakwood for HS, I assume you live near the Oakwood/Dayton area? I live in one of the Dayton suburbs, about 20 minutes from Dayton proper and 25 minutes to a half hour from Kettering/Oakwood. I wish shit like this wasn’t the main/only reason this area makes the news.
Oh, and this:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/06/10/3786949/brock-turner-lied-probation
Corrupted by a “party culture” which was unlike anything he’d experienced back in Ohio? His pants appear to be emitting smoke.
I think I can help these grandparents out. We have a fairly large group of available adults with varying degrees of responsibility that night.
6. Hospital staff who did their jobs.
5. Cops who did their jobs.
4. All the adults at the party who served and drank alcohol and danced and partied and maybe hooked up – without raping anyone.
3. Two responsible young men who took all the necessary actions when they saw something amiss.
2. An unconscious woman, no responsibility at all once her alcohol intake exceeded her capacity.
1. Brock himself. Conscious, active, capable … responsible. Just like everyone except the unconscious woman, he had choices.
Responsible choices when faced with a clearly incapacitated woman would have been to
return her to the party and ask for help for her,
find other help for her,
wrap her up to keep her warm,
protect her from any possible thieves, muggers or rapists, … or
he could have been a bit irresponsible and just walked away and left her alone.
Being intoxicated himself, he might have been a bit clumsy or stupid in doing any one or more of these things, but he would not have been choosing to commit a crime.
Perhaps it’s too much to ask for them to consider being the family of the woman who was raped. However, they should consider how they would react if they were in the position of the families of the two men who intervened when they saw a woman being assaulted. Supportive of the distress they feel, sorry that they were put in that position, proud that their responsible sons acted unhesitatingly in doing exactly the right thing.
Now there are a couple of family photos any mother would be proud to hang on her newly decorated wall.
This brings back a pretty distressing moment from my life. About 20 years ago one of my brother’s friends raped a girl in a situation a lot like this, except they weren’t strangers who met in a party and it wasn’t by a dumpster but at her house. Her guardian returned and found her charge passed out, raped and IIRC wth marker drawn on her. The guardian (who I think was maybe her older sister?) called the police.
My mom and step-father made it their personal MISSION to defend this little fucker. I knew the rapist and my mother at first made it out to be a case of statutory rape where he was 18 and she was 17 but it was all consensual but the charges had been brought because he was hispanic and she was white and her guardian had overreacted because she was racist. Of course, I was outraged on his behalf, because I don’t think that kind of scenario is wrong. Yes, he deserved a decent defense, etc. etc. But then gradually more little details emerged and I thought “Woah, this doesn’t sound like two teenagers who are both consenting but are in technical violation of the law in my state but not in other states, this sounds like rape.”
I pressed for more details and finally my mother gave me a copy of a deposition (not sure why she had it, but small town, etc) and told me to read for myself. I did, in growing horror. WTF!? It was a guy RAPING a passed out girl while two other friends cheered him on and then he’s essentially caught in the act.
My family blamed everyone but the rapist.
-SHE was drunk. (But yet HE was drunk was used an excuse for his behaviour).
-The guardian shouldn’t have left late teens at home alone.
-Boys will be boys (my mom didn’t actually say this, but it was heavily implied)
-She had consented to have sex with him in the past, so… implied consent on this occasion.
-He came from a poor and unsettled family who had essentially failed in their parenting duties (this was true from what I knew but not an excuse).
-His life would be ruined. (Turns out he managed a fine job of that by himself)
-He might be RAPED in prison.
I was getting married around then and I said he wasn’t welcome at my wedding. I was made out to be the bad guy. ??!
It was eventually dismissed because the victim dropped the charges. I’m quite sure that she was also the victim of a lot of bullying and harassment and eventually gave into the pressure. I hope my brother wasn’t part of that, but I would say there’s a reasonable probability that he was. I don’t really want to know. I love my brother.
This case has made me determined that if I’m ever asked by someone in similar circumstances if they should press charges, I would say no – don’t bother. Why get raped twice?
About ten years ago, I was back at my mom’s for a rare Christmas visit. He turned up on Christmas day just before we were to sit down and eat and he was welcomed like the prodigal son. I left the house. I said – make your choice – him or me. But I won’t eat with him.
I got a lecture about forgiveness. FORGIVENESS. See what my mom didn’t get is that I wasn’t angry at him, he didn’t do anything to me, he didn’t rape me. The rape had nothing to do with me. And though I was disappointed with him, saddened for her, I’d never been really that angry at HIM. What she didn’t get is that I had been working on forgiving THEM for defending a rapist – but if they continued to rub it in my face that made it very hard.
And it also makes me a bit cross when I see people saying this Brock Turner thing is a case of white privilege. Well, it is for sure, a bit. She was white (I assume) and it probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted if she weren’t. Yes, he enjoys race and class privilege. But my brother’s friend certainly did NOT enjoy either race, wealth or class privilege or even the benefit of parents who would support him. But what he sure as hell had was male privilege.
Hugs, rugbyyogi. Making him unwelcome at your wedding was the right thing to do. Even if everybody else thinks that rape is acceptable, you shouldn’t break bread with the asshole; and well done on sticking to the hard line on the matter.
@rugbyyogi
I know how endlessly frustrating and saddening it is when your family rallies behind an abuser. I’m sorry you went through that.
This kind of protection does tend to extend through the entire family. That’s why the people saying “if it was his daughter who was in that situation” about the rapist’s father don’t quite get it. If it was their daughter in that situation, they would have likely told her to keep it quiet and genuinely considered the rape her fault for having 1) attended a party in the first place and 2) drank too much while being female. Boys will be boys in WASP culture, but girls must be pristine examples of demure womanhood who would make attractive wives.
We consider this a situation that everyone can agree is a clear-cut example of rape, but families that are basically structured around a generations-old cycle of abuse are very dismissive of what any caring human being would consider an atrocity. My stepdad legitimately almost killed me–he nearly broke my neck while holding me down by it–and my family’s first question was what I had done to provoke him. These are people who value image above everything else. It would have been “bad” for the Turner family’s “image” for their daughter to have been raped, so it simply wouldn’t have happened.
Families like mine and the rapist’s aren’t so much free range asshole ranches as asshole cults. The traditions must be continued and zealously defended, even if the traditions are covering up crimes for the sons whose entitlement they encourage or beating their children nearly to death and expecting them to “take their licks” and keep quiet about it.
[Content Warning for all the stuff you’d expect given this topic]
Thing I can understand: The family rallying around Brock because they love him, pleading for a sentence that they believe will enable him to do something productive, positive, and non-rapey with his remaining 60+ years on this earth. They want him to eventually be okay. I get that, and I don’t resent that.
Things I cannot understand: The persistent, stubborn refusal to admit that he did anything wrong. The idea that he is himself a victim. The repeated implications of guilt on the part of the actual victim, who was freaking unconscious during the crime committed against her. The suggestion that this was something that happened to Brock, rather than something that he did.
Family can do incredibly harmful things, and you still love them. You can still desperately fight to secure some kind of hope for them to eventually recover from whatever disaster they have created. I don’t think it is necessary or realistic to expect Brock’s family to all round on him, disown him, and give up on him ever being a productive member of society.
But none of that precludes admitting that he raped another human being. If his life is ruined, it is because of actions that he made. It is too early to yet tell the full extent of the damage he has done to his victim’s life, but he did it, and there is no excuse for him doing it. No matter how good of a kid he was until that point, he grievously wronged another human being in a way that cannot be defended or dismissed.
I am a big believer in the idea that people can be rehabilitated and reformed, and that someone can stop being a horrible person and become a better one. But in order to reform–for Brock to have a future even vaguely resembling his supposed great potential–it has to start with the admission that he did wrong. He selfishly treated a woman like a thing and violated her, both physically and emotionally. That was not childish error. That was not a drunken mistake. That was a choice, and it was a terrible choice, and if he is going to declare “never again” with any kind of conviction, he has to own up to having done it in the first place. If all he’s willing to promise–and all his family is willing to hold him to–is to give up binge drinking, then no one has any reason to believe that he won’t rape someone else down the road.
It is completely possible to love and refuse to give up on a family member, even a criminal one, without pretending like they’re not a criminal. It is profoundly upsetting to see Brock’s family refuse to get this–especially where there is an identifiable, deeply affected victim of his crime.
@ryeash
WASP culture, now there’s a thing. I was wondering whether Turner’s family might be Christian Fundamentalists, or at least influenced by their way of thinking. Purity Culture, and the sex bogeyman creates monsters, look at Josh Duggar for a great example. It also creates victim blaming, as they believe that even wearing a skirt above the knee or a plunged neckline is sexually ‘defrauding’ men, – putting the goods on show induces sexual impulses in the male which he is unable to control, (being an animalistic, uncontrollable ‘beast’) and putting the woman at physical risk. They do not seem to realise that this belief is extremely insulting to men who are self controlled and empathic, they see manhood as strength as well as unbridled lust. Josh Duggar, like Turner was a coward, who was unable to have a natural, respectful, adult relationship. Turner’s assault on a drunk woman is really no different to Duggar’s fingering of toddlers in diapers.
Re : family members of criminals
Wow, Turner’s family are pretty oblivious aren’t they?
The thing is though, family members can stand by their criminal relatives; but still show empathy for the victims. There’s practically a formula for it. One particular example still sticks in my mind.
The brother of a guy who’d committed the crimes was interviewed and the reporter dropped the question of what he felt about his brother. He handled it perfectly (and I think his response was genuine not scripted). He said that *He* would always love his brother, but that the only people who deserved any sympathy were his brother’s victims and he could complete understand if people hated not only his brother but him also.
Everyone I know who saw that had a “fair enough” attitude about it. Interestingly people did sympathise with the brother also about how horrible it must be to be put in that position where you’d still feel natural affection for a family member and also that there’d be guilt by association.
I think people can be understanding and forgiving so long as people take ownership of their actions or acknowledge the wrong doing of their kin.
@alan
I understand the family being angry and frustrated, after all they had high hopes for their son. But they should really be angry with themselves for being permissive, not the victim. As I said in my previous post, even religion breeds rape culture. It’s everywhere.
@rugby
Damn
@bike on page 2
You’re brave too. Oh, and your current guy sounds splendiferous 🙂
“20 minutes of action”
“20 minutes of action”
This disgusts me on so many levels.
I was on another site, debating this, and the person I was debating with framed every one of his arguments in how it affected the defendant. Because he was appalled that we were calling Turner a rapist, when he was convicted of the lesser charges, and he felt that it was unhelpful to the victim to call Turner that.
And he further stated that since the victim was “merely fingered”, it wouldn’t affect her as much psychologically as if she had been raped with a penis.
Then he got angry when I said rape apologia is reprehensible.
Yeah.
An up-and-coming pop artist who starred on NBC’s The Voice, Christina Grimmie, has passed away after being shot by a guy while signing autographs in Orlando, Florida.
Posting that here rather than in the kitty thread because I’d rather not soil the brain bleach.
Of course, apparently the first response from the police spokesperson was talking about how we just don’t know if it was just a “crazy fan” who followed her on Twitter or not.
Boyfriend and I had a talk last night about how we hope we would behave if we had a child who committed sexual assault. I really hope I wouldn’t be willing to do anything to keep my son from facing his guilt. I hope I wouldn’t stand by and support it as a defense lawyer tore the victim’s sexual history apart, revictimizing her on the stand.
@dslucia
You know I was here to post the same thing. I wasn’t a fan of hers and I don’t watch The Voice or anything but this is always absolutely shocking when it happens. Not that violence against women itself is surprising but the boldness of the perpetrator here to just murder someone in public. My first thoughts were “stalker” as well, but we’ll see if the police can turn up any clues as to motivation since the killer died by suicide during the ensuing scuffle.
Best piece I’ve seen on this disgusting case, coming right up.
http://www.rebellesociety.com/2016/06/11/estherdelaford-boys-will-be-boys/
@Eyes on the Right:
I’ll admit, after the past nearly-two-years reading this blog my first thought is, perhaps cynically, male entitlement. I’d never heard of Grimmie before, but the question that immediately came to mind was, “how many women need to be murdered by men before we stop saying they’re just “some random crazy guy *shrug*””.
Ironically Brock Turner’s own family are the authors of his wrecked future. GIven he is who he is, he was likely to receive a pretty diminished sentence and they could have done it in a much less tone deaf kind of way (maybe?). But the very fact that they were so shockingly oblivious to the victim, who unfortunately for them turned out to be so articulate and then that whole “20 minutes of action” thing. Well, the internet outrage is pretty high and now Brock Turner is famous, well, infamous.
There’s a really, really good chance that if they’d been more contrite this would have gone down quietly and he’d have done his time and then gone to a different university, perhaps swam again (that’s over now) and he’d have been able to explain away his time inside as a gap year. OK, he wouldn’t be able to coach kids swimming – but I think volunteer coaching is the only place where I’ve ever had to undergo a criminal records check. (Clean btw).
As a professional I’ve not been asked about my criminal past as a check on any of my recent employment that I can remember (I have been asked about it for shit jobs – go figure.) All he would have needed is a bit of help with his first couple of jobs which I’m sure his family would have done.
But now…now none of that is possible.
Regarding Grimmie’s death, I think that the angle that we have now (stalker linked to folk psychology) is as much as we will get from LCD mass media.
Maybe a few broadsheets will take it from the toxic masculinity once or twice, but it will never permeate into the general media story.
Really depressing.
Even our Republican party needs to get some help on the subject of rape
http://goprapeadvisorychart.com/
Skip sounds a lot like Tim.
First, I owe you a thank-you for education. I read the comments policy, and that led me to look up and read about all the acronyms, (I hadn’t noticed the glossary), all about MRA and MGTOW and mansplainers and all that. The last one led to a seven-page article at tumblr entitled “Taxonomy of mansplainers”, and reading that in turn led to a certain amount of cringing. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve been guilty of a few of those.
Then I found myself wondering, WTF is a Roosh V? Half an hour of reading later, I can answer that; it means “horrible misogynistic sociopath dirtbag”.
So, after all that reading, I have one question. How did we arrive at this state of affairs? How on earth did relations between men and women get so screwed up? And perhaps of equal importance, cui bono? Did this just randomly happen, or is it social engineering?
Meh, on to Brock Turner. I read the victim’s statement yesterday. It was heart-breaking. Turner’s defense, if you can call it that, was nauseating and infuriating. And the sentence, ugh. Three months? Seriously?
Kootiepatra wrote a post a bit below in a very forgiving and enlightened tone. I wish I could be like that. It said “I am a big believer in the idea that people can be rehabilitated and reformed, and that someone can stop being a horrible person and become a better one”. Sadly, I disagree. There are people who do such things, and people who do not. And people never really change. The rate of recidivism among sex offenders runs around 75-80%, as far as I can tell. Lock him up for life, cut his head off, or cut his dick off, but don’t pretend that he can be rehabilitated.
I’m no longer a young man. I grew up in an America that no longer exists. But when I was young I was taught that if you’re a guy, you’re supposed to be *nice* to girls, (women, ladies, females, insert any word you like). That a man has some obligation to be decent toward women, or he is not truly a man. Yeah, I know, it’s a sexist attitude, but one that a large part of a whole generation of young American men seems to be totally without. And I think that makes the world a sadder place.
If I didn’t hate Roosh V already, I sure as hell would now.
Brock Turner is a despicable, subhuman rapist and his family are apologist scum. I am absolutely disgusted by both his actions and his family’s reaction. I can’t feel sorry enough for that poor girl and what this must have done to her. Justice needs to be served.