In an emotionally charged Instagram Live session on Monday night, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the ordeal she underwent while hiding from marauding MAGAs during the January 6th Capitol attack. She explained that the trauma she felt that day was exacerbated because she was also, she revealed,
a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven’t told many people that in my life. … But when we go through trauma … whether you had a negligent parent, or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life small to large, these episodes can compound on each other.
She compared the calls she’s heard from Republicans and others to “move on” from the Capitol attack to the strategies of abusers trying to convince their victims to forget what they’ve endured.
And now there are some who are telling her to “move on” not only from the Capitol attack but also her sexual assault — if they’re even willing to believe it ever happened.
If you want to see a thick mass of men with this attitude, all you have to do is to take a look inside the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit at the moment, where there are several heavily-commented-upon threads devoted to the topic, full of men not only deriding AOC but also suggesting that the real victims of such charges are men.
“SURPRISE! AOC survived sexual assault,” declared a MGTOW called Magnolia1008. “i guess we all must survive her now.”
One commenter called ChadLadPronouns declared that
I just don’t believe women if they claim they were sexually assaulted. They use it for pity points and victimhood capital. We have reached the point in society where the weaker and more oppressed you are, the more powerful you become. It is a total clown world.
Mythrowxra seemed to suggest that AOC had fantasized the whole thing.
Don’t care. Being raped is so common now… not to mention women fantasies of rape and other deviant behavior. Unless you have a closed court case with undisputed evidence… I do not give a shit.
Last_Supermarket302 accused AOC of being the real “instigator” — of what exactly I don’t know.
A narcissistic instigator, who accuses others of her own crimes..
Every topic always results in AOC making it all about herself. And when it backfires, always blames someone else.
Some mocked her claims of sexual assault, suggesting that whatever had happened had been no big deal “Ask her to define sexual assault,” wrote silly_birb, “and you will discover it was a dog humping her leg.”
“What’s the sexual assault?” External-Can-7839 asked. “Ugly guy hit on her in front of her friends, thus lowering her social status and embarrassing her?”
Others imagined more detailed scenarios, with massy525 writing a virtual short short story from what he suggests is AOC’s point of view:
After my 37th mimosa I found myself once again in an alleyway with jizz leaking from my cervix. Dammit I thought. IDk if my insurance will cover another plan B pill this Saturday.
Anyway I was assaulted,raped and stuff, men are evil, women are wonderful, give me free stuff. Speaking of stuff, i’m off to go get stuffed.
He isn’t the only one to let his psychosexual fantasies of AOC spill out all over his screen:
“She is a functional lunatic,” wrote fractal97.
With that deviously pretty face covering the whole screen and staring at you with those fanatic eyes, you wonder whether you are watching a horror movie or having a nightmare. I cut any feed that mentions her name and avoid reading anything about her. Your peace of mind is too valuable to be polluted with such people.
Others took issue with his assessment of AOC’s looks, suggesting she wasn’t attractive enough to rape. “She looks like an anthropomorphic pineapple with Bell’s palsy,” sniffed Magx01. “Check out her eyes and their placement on her head,” added fredanderssen. “There are telltale signs of fetal alcohol syndrome there.”
“Who would sexually assault this woman?” sneered jeetz09 “Is it a necrophiliac?”
A commenter called willy65hog suggested that he and many others would jump at the chance of sex with AOC. “Who wouldn’t CornHole her?” he wrote.
Ugh.
There’s more awful stuff in all three threads but, frankly, I’ve had enough for today and so I’m just going to stop right here. These guys are second only to incels at being the fucking worst.
I hope the rest of your day goes better than theirs.
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Seems like an easy accusation to refute, just look at Twitter. Plenty of threats there
I don’t think the excuse of youngness could dissuade me from voting in favor of a harsh sentence for a rapist.
That being said, for a ton of other crimes (that don’t involve sex or wounds), it could. The prison system in France (and, AFAIK, in the USA) is absolutely horrible and will break people psychologically. My lack of confidence in the system to correctly rehabilitate people mean I want it only for the people that need to be more or less definitely locked away.
I don’t know what I would do for someone who do a minor sexual offense (minor in gravity I mean). Sending an exhibitionist in prison for five year mean probably a worse offender five years later, but they still very much warrant punishment.
@WWTH
I saw that as well. It’s infuriating.
@Bakunin
I get the feeling that if that were to be pointed out to them, they’d resort to the GamerGate classic “she sent death threats to herself.”
@Ohlmann
I think there needs to be a distinction for whether the perpetrator is a danger to the outside world. If someone does something comparatively minor (i.e. petty theft) and seems unlikely to do so again, a harsh sentence would be a very bad idea and a lighter sentence would be advisable. However, if they are violent and likely to reoffend and harm more people, then a long sentence may be warranted.
As for exhibition in particular, idk much about the crime and whether people are likely to reoffend.
Garbage boys are garbage; no film at 11.
I think it’d be interesting to have all sexual assault trials with a jury the same gender as the victim for a while.
@GSS ex-noob
This might be a good idea for trials of victims who are not men, but I feel like that might not work for trials where the victim is a man. Since many men seem to believe that men can’t be raped, that might lead to problems if the jury and victim are all male.
@naglfar
From what I’ve seen almost all men do believe a man can be raped but it has to be a very specific situation. It has to be a straight man, who was violently attacked by another man and taken violently against his will that he tried to fight off. Obviously that’s going to be either a small portion of male rape victims or no actual rape victim. I think it goes back to that “perfect victim” thing. meanwhile what actually happens is both straight and gay men are victims of sexual assault. then get drugged, drunk, freeze up, or go into shock just like women do when they are attacked. I dare say most men know less of what to do then a woman does when they get attacked because most men are not taught to watch out for these kinds of things.
I remember my mom told me once that my dad was shocked that my mom was teaching my brother the same safety things to look out for molestation that she was teaching me. My mom is a firm believer that the reason so many kids get molested and stay quite is because they don’t have the proper vocabulary and they don’t think anyone will believe them so she taught us both that. my dad for a while there truly didn’t think my brother was in the same type of risk of getting molested like I was just because my brother was a boy.
@Full Metal Ox
Or the issue of the victim potentially being outed if they are trans or non-binary but not publicly out. Or the fact that non-binary is an umbrella term that contains many different identities, which would present the question of how to handle those. If the victim is a demiboy, for example, would the jury need to consist of demiboys, or would any non-binary masculine gender be suitable?
Point taken.
Maybe just keep men off the rape trial juries — women (trans and cis), enby or queer of any ID can be on them. We might thusly eliminate transmen from juries that way, but they might would be okay with it to help out women — especially since society probably wrongly considered them to be women for a while.
Just no cis men.
It’d give the MGTOW something new to whine about.
As a conventionally unattractive and overweight person I’ve been told numerous times nobody would assault me, but they have.
Because of course that’s how what these festering dirt-buckets have for thought processes function.
@Alan, regarding the list of terrorist groups:
Yes… that particular decision has been bounced around the news for a while up here, well before it was actually formally decided. Partly because the evidence it needed to be done had been building up for years, and partly because groups like Rebel Media are pretty much in permanent hissy-fit mode over the very possibility that their ‘very good’ people would be treated like those other people.
It’s been a long time coming. Especially as the primary founder of the group is, sadly, Canadian. (And a long-time contributor to the aforementioned Rebel Media, of course.)
@mouse : yes, real-world rape is very different from pop culture rape. And a lot of people confidently think it happen like in movies or pornos.
It’s another byproduct of the patriarchy.The mythified rape is derived from the idea that sex is only as valuable as the attractivness of the partner and the idea that women cannot resist anything.
While in real world, rape is often or even mostly used as a way to assert dominance or humiliate someone, and the victim is manipulated into not resisting too much in a lot of different way. Because nobody want to take the risk of dying or losing an eye or digit, and all three are very realistic outcome of taking a fight even against a smaller, weaker individual.
From “I find her attractive & therefore she can’t be believed, so must be lying about sexual assault,” to “I don’t find her attractive, so she must be lying about sexual assault” via “no woman is ever sexually assaulted” & “la la la I’m not listening!”
The full gamut of the MRA denial of women’s experience playbook, from A to B.
Sort of related: unfortunately, it looks like someone has incorporated the “dogpill” into their attacks on AOC.
Of course they do. Because they’re idiots. ??
@numerobis:
When they’re not just showing the right’s much-vaunted respect for the working class by calling her “that bartender,” as if holding such a job were somehow shameful, at least.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
I’ve been watching that with increasing horrified disgust. Seriously: their rationale is…bizarre. And self-contradictory along with going counter to accounts corroborating hers. And based a lot on subjectives (i.e. denying that she was afraid for her life due to having been personally targeted, was uncertain of how close the insurrectionists were to her position, and so on).
Plus: two of the biggest names pushing that script? Candace Owens (who coined that little hashtag) and Andy “Cement Milkshake” Ngo. Oh, the irony.
@Elaine The Witch:
And if that’s not the scenario, the poor bastard is a punchline in their book.
Is it wrong of me to hope that Candace Owens gets abducted by aliens and never brought back? I don’t want anything terrible to happen to her, I just want her to be a few lightyears away.
@Lindsayirene:
Alien: We have taken storyteller humanentity name translate Ruler Ofnoble. Will return when study of venality in humanspecies is complete.
Me: You mean Candace Owens? Please don’t return her.
Trigger warning. Mention of sex crimes.
I probably should be more careful with my reading. This thread brought back the time I was indecently assaulted at high school in the 1970s. I won’t go into details, others have had far worse, and in a 1,000 student all boys school, working out who the perps were would have been difficult as they were not known to me. It does remind me that the kind of bozos this thread deals with definitely wouldn’t know what danger signs to look for. Reynhard Sinhaga is thought to have been the most prolific rapist to have operated in the UK. His perfect victim would be someone who’d had too much to drink and needed somewhere to sleep it off. He would, by being small, polite and seemingly harmless, take them to his home where he would drug and assault them. His crimes only came to light when one of his victims came round and beat him so severely that Sinhaga was admitted to hospital.
@Kevin
I’m sorry that happened to you.