I couldn’t agree more. And I don’t think I’m being hateful here, I just honestly believe that monsters like that should get locked up for good. If they prove that they’re a danger to other people (in this case, young, innocent women) and society by doing something so heinous, they should get jail for life, not writing essays…
Can we all agree on this?
But it was just one time (that they’ve been caught)! /s
Exactly. One (actually two) times it has been found out. That’s the important and depressing part cause I’m pretty sure this is a common occurrence 😔
Some decisions will follow you for your entire life. You don’t get a pass when you are drugged, fair or not it’s all on you. Life is not fair, what you did wasn’t fair, what will happen to you isn’t fair, and that’s the way of the world.
Based
Based? I would hope that this is the default for most people 😭
But I know better, of course, coming from a country that used to treat weed possession (now legal) much more harshly than people literally raping multiple CHILDREN for YEARS (they usually get probation for that for fuck’s sake…), so much so that it literally became a dark, fucked up meme among Czechs
I hate this place 😔
Castration may be in some cases more effective and cheaper for the community?
Testosterone isn’t what makes men rape people.
No it would not. Harvey Weinstein doesn’t have a working dick and still assaulted several women. Castration will do nothing.
I think calling it ruining their futures is an unfair framing. It’s applying justice blindly, rather than giving even more to those who’ve already been given everything.
I had a lot of sex and a fair bit of drugs and alcohol in college, but I never did anything remotely similar to these men because I’m not a rapist. These men made their choices, and if a preponderance of evidence can be obtained they’ll financially pay for what they probably did, and if the jury can be convinced they will face the penalties for what they did beyond a reasonable doubt. When all is said and done they’re free to rebuild their lives however they can and we should treat them as having paid their debts to society (barring any Brock Turner level punishment)
It’s not like they left the victim with an easy future.
I agree with you.
I just wanted to point out something I think a lot of people don’t want to confront when they say something like"I’ve never done anything remotely similar to these men"
You remember not having done anything like the men, and I assume you’re talking about the Cornell rapists, but the line is much more blurry than people want to admit.
You don’t remember making anyone uncomfortable and I’m not saying the following is true for you because I can’t know… But social interactions aren’t a flow chart and feedback isn’t always clear and this becomes even more true when it comes to sex and emotions.
Maybe you asked too many times and they gave in but to you it was once or twice. Maybe you misinterpreted a signal and they went with it half heartedly. Maybe they didn’t say stop or tell they didn’t want to because they were afraid it would ruin a good time. Etc. These are all things that could be labeled as sexual harassment and when sex is involved, rape.
Shit can be much more nuanced, awkward and unclear and especially to people who have trouble reading social cues. Women are often afraid to say no because of the potential for violence or more commonly, the social consequences.
It’s soothing to demand justice and see situations like that and feel superior to them but I would be willing to say that 90% or more of men have done something that goes right up to the line, especially in college when people are learning to be people and having their first sexual encounters and not having parents etc to hold them accountable.
None of this is to defend rapists and idk the solution outside of raising my son to know what consent is and how important communication is.
TL:DR nuance, personal accounts as a victim, and a call for better consent education, better communication of misunderstandings in all aspects of life, and a shift towards an attitude of restorative justice
I get that, and yeah I’m a woman who has been violated in such ways. Once by someone who I had slept with many times, but we were drifting apart as I met my wife and it was easier to have sex than to have the uncomfortable conversation I would’ve had to have had I given and held a firm no. That and a far less ambiguous incident between them and a friend of mine were both tied to their lack of emotional regulation from BPD. I definitely don’t think that person should face consequences for anything they’ve done to me, even if I would probably advise my younger self not to get involved with them in the first place, and absolutely to have the fight instead of the sex.
I also have another incident with a woman (who also had BPD) who kept negotiating away every no I gave, especially the ones that contained reasons (turns out it’s really hard to say “your face and personality are both very unattractive to me”). That one was much more obvious and serious to the point that by the time I was able to break away I was having nightmares of her. It was absolutely a form of violation and had we been in college together or something I would have deserved protection from having to interact with her, even if I personally don’t know if I think she should be arrested for it.
Things like these are within the blurry part of the bad side of the line, and in many ways can be contrasted to the “fully enthusiastic and everyone is fully intoxicated” sex which is potentially in the blurry part of the good side of the line though if I am a firm believer in one’s right to get down while drunk/high. Sex is a messy topic and it often involves people being young and not displaying great judgment and having big feelings. Hell, I’ve even had sex where there was pain and regret through no fault of anyone.
I think we do need to be teaching that this all is messy, but we also need to be teaching how to ask for consent in a way that’s appropriate as well as teaching everyone the confidence to say no even if it means being a buzzkill or ruining someone’s mood or whatever else. I was taught abstinence only sex ed, and that didn’t prepare me for the “hey, I’m having a great time doing x, but you seem to be reaching for y, but I’m not up for it right now” type conversation or for people trying to pressure me because I keep blunting my "no"s to avoid hurting their feelings, especially with weaponized self depreciation. And with this some basic emotional regulation techniques would be good to teach people.
But yeah I get that young people are often bad at seeing the fact that communication that had seemed clear to everyone resulted in a miscommunication and I find that in all aspects of life that’s something we culturally need to work on being better about noticing when it becomes visible and starting a non-judgemental conversation to clear things up.
And all this with the fact that some people are going to keep going right up to the line, some people are going to not care about acting in good faith. Some people will pretend to be naive.
A carcereal attitude will assume all naivete malicious, and all grey areas blacker than the night. It will see my first story and aim to punish rather than to solve the problem. I think when we talk about consent we can easily fall into a carceral mindset. Especially when society encourages us to think that way about sex crimes and yet clearly is more concerned with using that attitude to reinforce existing hierarchies than to pursue justice or help victims.
This carceral mindset also leads to underreporting because most people don’t want to respond to what felt like a single minor violation with what feels like disproportionate force. This can be especially true when the violator is marginalized in a way that’s associated with disproportionate response or presumption of guilt in sexual violation (racialized people and transfeminized people especially) or when the appropriate response feels like it should be mental health based (the first person who hurt me just needed to continue DBT, the second probably should be kept away from society until she can get far enough along in some form of BPD treatment, but treatment is needed). And that’s to say nothing of when the victim is marginalized in a way where they’re presumed sexually aggressive against the violator.
I’m a believer in an attitude of restorative justice. First do right by the victim in proportion to the severity, then try to work to help the other party not do anything like it again. When approached naively it can very easily fail to the aforementioned malicious people, but when we prevent our communities from overly relying on any one person and we remain aware of the reality that some people aren’t acting in good faith we can create systems that strive to find a balance and actually minimize harm and maximize happiness. And I’ve seen at the very least the beginnings of something like that in a kink community and I hope it works and spreads.
Sorry about the rambling. I’m tired as hell from the weekend and had some thoughts which snowballed.
Yes ruin them
They made the choice to ruin their life. Anything else is them evading the consequences of their own actions.
Why don’t you just shorten their futures?
Hot take, this should not even have to be a question posed. This should be the default and there’s nothing you can say to convince me that a person doesn’t deserve the full brunt of the law being thrown down on them for these heinous acts. I don’t care who it is, how much money they have, or what position in government they hold.
The woman’s life is already ruined, so why not ruin theirs too?
(I know their life isn’t ruined forever, but it might as well be for the foreseeable future)
Oh no, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions
Much like their victim it’ll take a lot of work to unruin their futures
The woman’s life is already ruined, so why not ruin theirs too?
I don’t think defining the entire lives of sexual assault victims by their assault, and painting them as foreseeably “ruined”, is the cool rad feminist take that you seem to think it is
The woman’s life is already ruined
I think we should leave this to the survivor to decide. I don’t want to label her as having a ruined life because this horrible thing happened to her. She’s young and they can still have a good fulfilling life, right?
She’s young and they can still have a good fulfilling life, right?
You know that middle aged and older women are also sexually assaulted. Just because there have been lots of news stories about SA on campuses recently, doesn’t mean that only young women are being assaulted.
You know that middle aged and older women are also sexually assaulted.
Yes. For some reason I thought we were talking about the Cornell case but I guess my brain short circuited?
I can’t say I’ve known a sexual assault survivor whose life wasn’t wrecked for the immediate future as they came to terms with the assault and having to see their abuser walk around free.
Call it what you will, but I’ve helped more than one friend through it, so I’ll keep it as is.
Maybe it would help if I understood what you meant by ruined? Are you talking overall or only focusing on the immediate future?
Maybe it would help if I understood what you meant by ruined?
Social impact (both negative attention from peers, along with recurring trauma of seeing your abuser get away with minimal punishment), emotional trauma, swlf-harm, loss of ability to trust (especially bad when it was someone you knew and thought was safe), and even impacts to job/school due to the event, to name a handful I’ve witnessed.
Are you talking overall or only focusing on the immediate future?
Sorry, I thought my parenthetical made it clear I was talking about the immediate future
We aren’t ruining their future; they are.
They ruined their own lives. They had a choice.
Well on the one hand if you have an official judgement it should not be reduced just because this will negatively impact the perpetrators life. On the other hand we always need a way to resocialise perpetrators or they will just don’t care when they get out of jail. Further we life in a world where judgements are used against minorities or as a political weapon.
The judical system in the US is fucked.
I hate this timeline :((((
Back in the 90’s our country (BE) dealt with a case of someone who kidnapped young girls and …I’ll spare you from having to read the rest.
He was jailed, to this day still is. And he probably will be for life. Good. (He’d probably be lynched if he did get out)
It has ALWAYS been the case that this man was regarded as a deep shame upon our country. That he is beyond redemption has ALWAYS been set in stone.
Seeing how discourse has changed globally I’m not so sure that a similar case would get the same propper justice today. I hope/trust the justice system would do it’s thing. But the morality of public discourse is slowly eroding.
Diff case more recently: some celeb gets caught harassing women through txt. Half the country just shrugged. Now they even celebrate his return. Wtf.
BE… what country… Belgium?
Yes. Waffles, beer, saxophone, fries and chocolate. A goverment that has more layers than inhabitants. Only half as loud as our neighbours to the north but we’re twice as stuck up and repressed about our emotions. Our history is rich and filled with bloodshed (and some dark shame). And our roads are holy. I mean they have a lot of holes in them.
Huzzah, Belgium.
Reporting to the police does not guarantee justice.
FBI crime data shows that law enforcement clears 26% of reported rape cases. In this data, “cleared” may mean someone was arrested or even that the suspect was deceased; it does not necessarily mean the perpetrator was charged, convicted, incarcerated, or otherwise held accountable.
The clearance rate directs our attention to the 74% of survivors of rape whose cases remain unresolved every year. That’s at least 125,274 people who reached out for justice they may never receive.
4 in 5 reported perpetrators are never charged with a crime.
For many survivors, reporting sexual violence means entering a system where the outcome is uncertain. A report may be investigated, cleared, closed, declined, or moved forward—but only a fraction of reported cases lead to criminal charges.
A 20-year review of sexual assault case outcomes found that just under 20% of reported rape and sexual assault cases are criminally charged.
This number points to one reality: many survivors report sexual violence without seeing the person who harmed them formally charged with a crime.
Being believed by police does not ensure accountability.
A 20-year review of reported rape and sexual assault cases found that 89% were “founded” by law enforcement, meaning police determined that the crime more than likely occurred.
But only 8% of reported rape and sexual assault cases ended in conviction.
In other words, police believed most reports, but very few cases led to the perpetrator’s conviction. Survivors can be believed and still not get the legal outcome they seek.
Justice requires more than recognizing harm. It requires systems prepared to move cases forward and support survivors through what comes next.
Holy shit…
Thanks for the data girlie, but also that is depressing…and scary. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if that happened to me. This country’s judicial system is known for giving people who rape CHILDREN, MULTIPLE TIMES just simply…probation. And it makes my fucking blood boil, cause I know I wouldn’t get justice. Never mind me, the real victims don’t. And that disgusts me…
Thanks Velma 💜It is depressing, I know and I’m sorry :/
I do strongly believe that more knowledge, more discussion, more visibility will help bring these numbers down. More outrage. More calling out rape culture. More of us saying “What the Actual Fuck” each time a rapist is protected by those in power.
We have strength together.
Specially now that those on the power are the fucking rapists. It’s vomitive.
Don’t apologize at all, you’re right: talking and discussing these issues is a good thing. I believe outrage is justified, needed and good here honestly. Rape culture is just the worst.
Thanks girlie <3
As someone who didn’t get justice I appreciate so much how hard you keep talking about this. I try to be somewhat open about my experiences (both on here and IRL) to break the collective illusion that the police bother investigating sex crimes that aren’t easy to prosecute, but the numbers are so important.
Also, I was going to say something about the rape kit backlog, but apparently it’s being resolved and multiple states have cleared theirs.
I really appreciate you as well, your comments are always thoughtful and kind. I’m so sorry that you didn’t get justice.
Also, I was going to say something about the rape kit backlog, but apparently it’s being resolved and multiple states have cleared theirs.
Thanks for spreading the good news! I hadn’t heard of this yet :)
I like to characterize this as a direct consequence of their own bad decisions, and not something other people are doing to them. They chose to be shit and it only works out for them as long as other shits are there to protect them. Take away that privilege and they whine that they’re being victimized when the consequences are no longer deferred.
it’s the social contract solution to the paradox of tolerance all over again: you break the contract, you’re no longer part of it.
I don’t like social contract theory.
no? is there a better way to look at it?
Well the notion of a social contract arose concurrently with the rise of capitalism, and renewed campaigns to force women into spheres of domestic and reproductive labor.
So when talking about women’s issues, I don’t think Social Contract theory is exactly the gold standard
…that feels pedantic. call it an agreement or a covenant then. point being if you break the rules of society you can’t be protected by them.
I don’t think that’s pedantic at all. Social Contract Theory arose in a particular place and time, under specific conditions.
Conditions which also involved a renewed subjugation of women in the name of that social contract.
The Hobbesian origins of the social contract are, notably, not merely an agreement, but an arrangement entered into by citizens, with a Sovereign who will protect them from themselves. Without a powerful state apparatus to create security, people exist in a state of nature where life is “nasty, brutish, and short”.
This is historically inaccurate, and Hobbes was formulating his theories as a reaction to the English Civil War, which he was living through. But maybe you can see the parallels to this thread, which unnerve me.
People in this thread, in the same of an ostensible social contract, are desiring that state power be utilized to punish perpetrators of sexual violence in ways that are themselves also quite violent.
This feels emotionally satisfying, but it’s an instinct that can hardly be trusted to protect the rights of women. When the social contract this violence is meant to enforce is being carried out by men, by a state populated by men, especially wealthy men, who run that state in their interests as wealthy men, I’m not sure it can be trusted to do what it claims to do.
That said, I don’t think the solution is is to simply have more women cops, or what have you. Rather that any reasonable justice system ought to be rooted in genuine rehabilitation rather than the spectacle of punishment, and that this rehabilitative justice system he attached to a state project which is rooted, not in principles of bourgeois contracts, but in principles of solidarity, and providing all citizens with their basic needs.
Not only does this cut down on violence against women insofar as the material instigators of that violence are less common, but that it would ideally lift up women to leave abusive situations, and to speak up about them more readily.
Punitive ‘justice’ often prevents victims from coming forward because the abuser is often someone the victim also knows and loves on some level.
So long story short, social contract theory encourages punitive solutions to problems where punitive punishment is often a hindrance to real justice.
well today i learned that it’s an actual theory. i was rather looking at it from the paradox of tolerance perspective.
Yeah I was gonna say, they ruined their own futures
![Rule the futures of monsters [CW: mentions of SA]](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/8bf0e836-205a-4ea4-ba12-37c1b50481e3.webp){kind=link}