Right, all of this. Regulating people to death is not the way to go. Can we throw him into consoling?
He was probably gonna learn it at daycare anyway! 
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I was thinking on how in six months, we’ll probably have all forgotten about all this.
So I took out my phone and set myself a reminder.
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true, those daycare kids are a rough crowd. It’s like Deadwood over there. 
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Dumbass forgot rule #5 from the rape prevention tips that Sarah Silverman circulated on Twitter:
It’s so sad/not funny that this shit seems so fucking obvious.
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5 to 10 years in prison would be appropriate. Don’t overcomplicate it.
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Lots of people seem to be hung up on this question: does committing a rape make someone a particular type of person called a “rapist”, and is it only these “rapists” who commit rape?
Leslie Rasmussen seems to disagree with that notion, but @xeni defends it, going so far as to slap down Turner’s talk of of “campus culture of excessive alcohol consumption, peer pressure, and sexual promiscuity” in favor of the simpler “he’s a fucking rapist”.
Certainly any argument made to prevent someone being held accountable for a rape is bullshit. Rape is never excusable, and those who do it should be forced to take responsibility for the full effects of what they did. Explanations are not excuses.
But there’s an alternate way of understanding Turner’s explanation, not as a sniveling excuse but an observation that it wasn’t some essential characteristic of his which caused this rape, it was in fact a combination of a lot of factors, which are also influencing a lot of other men.
The point isn’t that Turner is innocent (he is not), but that many other men can and will end up doing as he has. And it’s not because they all have the same inherent “rapist gene”, it’s because patriarchal culture creates situations where very many men end up committing rape.
This is key for me to understand as a man and someone with male friends: This culture is pressuring me and my friends to commit rape. I cannot rest easy with the assurance that me and my friends are “not rapists”. I have an obligation to resist that pressure everywhere it manifests, because we are all vulnerable to it.
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Trying. Trying really, really hard. I think I can, I think I can.
Nope. Still no fucks given for the defendant.
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I am going to preface this comment by stating clearly that I hold this guy fully responsible for his actions that night, and his letter and sentence seem very “off” to me.
I do want to add to the discussion, however, the following:
We often discuss how the victims of these crimes are typically inebriated beyond coherence. I think it’s also important to look at how the perpetrators are also operating at this level when they commit these crimes. Do we think that this guy would likely rape a woman if he wasn’t REALLY wasted? Yes, of course, the answer is too commonly that yes, sober, cogent individuals can commit these types of crimes. But being blackout drunk or close to can also lead people to behaviors that their sober mind would never, ever contemplate. I would hope that alcohol awareness education would emphasize that getting incoherently drunk not only opens you up to being a victim of such crimes, but also to being a perpetrator, even if that seems a million miles away from how a person might operate if sober.
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Is a person who commits murder a murderer?
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All I can say is, you live in a culture that I have never encountered, regardless of possible geographic proximity. Perhaps you are associating with the wrong people.
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I mean, if you define “murderer” as “someone who has committed murder”, then yeah. But it would be tautological (or something?) to say “Why did he commit that murder? Well, because he’s a fucking murderer.”
In this case, “rapist” is being used in a way that suggests an essential characteristic, rather than a retroactive label.
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This is exactly my point! You believe that since you are not among “rapists”, that there is no sexual violence around you. You believe there’s a particular type of person who commits these acts, and that you have successfully avoided all of them. And you are wrong.
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Really? I don’t know many people at all hung up on that question. Everyone I know calls people who commit rape “rapists.” It’s pretty straightforward really.
I see where you’re going with this and it’s not necessarily a bad place to go, but please don’t write it as if you’re pointing out something new. The term “rape culture” has been around for a long time now. Maybe even you have heard it.
This discussion you’re trying to prompt isn’t necessary in this case. The problem with Brock Turner isn’t that he was influenced by campus rape culture (although to some degree he may have been). it’s that he’s putting the blame for what he did primarily on that culture, instead of where it belongs – on himself.
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Alcohol removes inhibitions, it doesn’t give you crazy new ideas. Some people secretly want to do terrible things but are too afraid of the consequences to do them while sober. In vino veritas as the Romans would say.
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“May you have a house filled with a hundred rooms, and may each room have a hundred beds. Every night, may you roam from room to room, and from bed to bed, never knowing a moment’s peace.”
I don’t know the actual Yiddish phrasing, but that one always tickled me.
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A few years back, NPR did a series of short documentaries called The Yiddish Radio Project. One of them had a whole section devoted to Yiddish insults and curses, read in translation by Eli Wallach. It’s magical.
(I know it’s available on Audible, among other places.)
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If sexual violence is occurring around me, it must be happening quietly behind my neighbor’s closed doors. But then I never joined a frat in college and I don’t go to parties where people leave their passed out comrades lying behind dumpsters. That displays not only a lack of empathy but a failure to understand how favors may be reciprocated in the future; very basic social skills.
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For pete’s sake, how fucking hard is this to understand?!?!
If you steal a car, that makes you a car thief; even if “it only ever happened once.”
If you murder “just one” person, that still makes you a murderer.
And if you stick anything inside anyone else’s bodily orifices without their permission, you are a fucking rapist.
No matter what other factors are at play; not drinking, not drugs, not “hookup culture”, not alleged promiscuity or sexual history; if you don’t have prior consent, it’s still fucking rape.
ETA:
Holy fucksocks; I cannot believe it that you actually just echoed the dumbest statement I have ever read on the internet.
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I just had this show up.
You do realize that if he admits any remorse that that ruins his chance of asserting his rights? The judge even reminded the prosecution of that when he handed down the sentence.
So in his situation if he admitted any guilt beyond the ruling it’s not in his best interests?
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