Perhaps he’s being instructed to do this by his high-priced lawyers; I’ve heard he’s going to appeal (unsure if it’s the sentence or judgement). At the same time, lawyers are bound to a client’s wishes. If he were to say “okay, I’m done” he could very well be externally remorseful. In my code of ethics he should have done that from square one; but according to my code of ethics he’s externally bankrupt.
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He’s a fucking rapist.
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I think if he can own up to what he did, and maybe come to terms with it and feel some contrition for the pain he caused, then he can be possibly be rehabilitated. So far, not a damn thing he or the people talking on his behalf have said reflect that. He can’t be rehabilitated as long as he continues to think it’s all about him and the damage done to his life.
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He led her out of the party, then attacked her when she passed out.
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Yes, I have heard the 1 in 4 statistic. Of course it is horrific, but it doesn’t mean exactly what you think it does. Rapists are well known for being repeat offenders if they aren’t caught; the other half of the equation is the average number of women raped per rapist. A quick googling suggests about 6 (that they admit to), with a few percent raping over 400 women apiece. Other studies estimate about 6% of men are rapists or attempted rapists. Easily 6% of men are violent, antisocial assholes at least part of the time, so that sounds reasonable. Analogously, the burglary rate is about 670/100,000/year. Multiply by a lifespan of ~85 years and about 57% of people will be burglarized in their lifetime. That doesn’t mean that most people are burglars, it means that a few burglars burgle a lot of houses.
Perhaps… or perhaps the actual point was to be intentionally obtuse.
I don’t know, and I honestly don’t care.
I’m much more concerned about the tendency of some people in our society who will try to justify or rationalize indefensible things which have no rationality.
But that’s another, more complex conversation for another time.
To address your own valid points:
Agreed.
Unfaltering belief in one’s own “personal mythology”, yes; that’s a highly problematic factor in many of society’s failings.
But as for that interesting part about ‘monsters’:
I can recall an old Vincent Price B-movie that was a vignette of horror stories, where all the tales were relayed via a sort of ‘monster’s bragging contest’; with different types of creatures claiming that they were each ‘the most horrific monster.’
While I don’t remember much about any of the individual stories, what did stick with me was the ending, where Vincent Price declares that the most horrific monster of all is mankind:
As campy as the dashing old gent may have been in his delivery, he made a damn good point.
You are quite correct in that when most of us think of “monsters,” we often pair the idea with a big dose of ‘othering’; even when it’s in a fictional capacity.
Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolfman; what are these but psychological metaphors for the darker side of human nature, and the potential monsters that could lurk in any one of us?
Our fear of our own innate sexuality and the impossible desire to remain youthful and/or to be immortal?
That’s Dracula, in a nutshell.
Fear of our own creations/inventions going horribly awry and turning against us?
The Frankenstein Monster encompasses that particular anxiety perfectly.
Our fear of our primitive baser nature overcoming all our evolutionary progress as a species, and reverting us back into uncontrollable savagery?
Thy name is the Wolfman.
There’s a school of thought which posits that practically every fictional monster you can think of is merely a subconscious reflection or representation of the very worst aspects of human behavior, made slightly more ‘manageable’ by othering them into some sort of abstract which bears little resemblance to the “ideal” image that we have of ourselves.
But I digress.
Agreed.
I contend that by that point it’s too late, but it does beg another pertinent question:
What can you do to turn a human being into a monster?
The answer would seem to be many things, including physical and emotional abuse, torture and psychological manipulation.
Perhaps some people see it that way, but if they do then they are engaging in flagrant logical fallacy.
Monsters are not born, they are made.
Agreed, and like most people, I have no real idea why that is.
I have lots of theories, such as severe mental illness and the vicious cycle of abuse, but nothing concrete.
Or perhaps it’s the other way around, and people are just potential monsters given the right set of ‘extenuating circumstances.’
Bottom line, I agree with you that there is no set phenotype to ‘be on the lookout for’; you cant tell who is ‘good and decent’ from those who are ‘malignant and reprehensible’ just by looking.
Because individual human behavior is too complex to be reduced down to a binary construct of “good” or ‘bad’; as we all possess elements of both.
The questions posed in your comment were spot on; I only wish I had some viable answers to offer.
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My point was very much like the things you and @PhasmaFelis are writing - so I’m glad that we ended up on the same page, even if my approach was frustrating. 
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That they are but you know the most horrific movie I have seen wasn’t even a horror film. Titus Andronicus. That was just oh my freaking god that is just messed up.
I have seen some truly scary movies but nothing has made me go NOPE NOPE NOPE like the good ol Shakespeare. Or some of the Dan Carlin’s history podcasts where he does not pull punches about the stuff people would do to each other it makes me think you know in a lot of ways as nice as things are here in western civilization we are not that far removed yet.
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With Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Jessica Lange?
I can agree; watching that film was way harsh, damn near depressing.
Titus, Aaron the Moor and Tamora were all indubitably horrific monsters.
ETA:
Good to know.
Your phrasing was a wee bit ill-chosen, in regards to clarity of intent.
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Jeopardy has attached. The prosecutor can’t bring up charges for any crime containing any of the same elements. So third degree murder, assault, etc. are straight up out of the question.
Failure to call an ambulance (duty to rescue) is usually not a crime and not likely to become one in the future. It requires people to effectively report their crimes to the government and wouldn’t likely survive fifth amendment scrutiny in a lot of cases. The reporting requirements for professions get around that because they are regulated by the state, but placing that kind of a requirement on every Joe and Jane Schmoe gets hairy fast.
Good Samaritan laws don’t apply here. They only protect the rights of people who attempt first aid and have no medical qualifications. They don’t obligate people to practice first-aid. (Nor do they keep doctors for sending you a bill if they save your life- contrary to common belief).
You mean, to finally have an example where two men witnessed the crime, so it actually gets prosecuted.
Colleges and universities are filled with upper-middle-class white boys. And rape. That’s not a coincidence.
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This is what it is to me:
“I’m a rich white dude who may or may not have ties to the highest bankers in the world, so it’s of your best interest that you give me a reduced sentence; otherwise I could get the bankers to destroy your fucking life.”
Something tells me that His parents pulled some strings to get a reduced sentence.
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I’m sorry for being so blunt, but you are either remarkably sheltered, utterly insensitive, or dishonest. I am not incredibly well-traveled, and I don’t get invited to the best parties, nor do I habituate many dens of iniquity. I’ve largely led a quiet, retiring life in Southern California. I’ve never been drunk (don’t like the taste of alcohol), been married twice and divorced once, and I have friends and family all over the philosophical and political spectrum. And ever since grade school, over the last forty years, whenever I have spent extended periods of time among other male humans, when the female ones aren’t around… sooner or later some steaming clot of misogyny gets vomited up and sniggered over. Not all the guys do this, it is true, and not all of them tolerate it. But most of them do, in fact, tolerate it. The competence and agency and value and dignity and intelligence and strength and integrity and judgment of women is constantly called into question and downright insulted, and “jokes” about rape and other forms of violence against women are cracked with downright alarming frequency, even when the sincerity behind such vitriol is mostly absent… but of course if it were really mostly absent, the jokes wouldn’t be cracked at all, would they?
Those jokes get made… and then laughed at by the other dudes. It’s a shared culture, just as you describe, and one that is widely considered (by men) as a harmless blowing-off of steam. And this culture has the effect of normalizing such attacks on women, from the microaggression level to the lethal level. Overall there results a societal sense that women “have it coming” in many ways, since so very many men share a general disdain for women that they are loath to display in mixed company, for fear of scaring off their next piece of tail.
“Rape culture” means something far more pervasive and insidious and (sometimes) subtle than the strawman definition you imply, which sounds like it has to be a society of dudes who ask each other, in all seriousness, “Who you feel like rapin’ tonight, Stan?”
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As I said, I hold him completely responsible for his actions. That doesn’t negate my other point, does it? That alcohol awareness training needs to include warning that it can contribute to perpetratorhood, and not just victimhood. I think it’s a point that we’d do well to remind young men. It may drive some to think a little harder about how much they drink. And thus, we’ll bring down the number of rapes, maybe.
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No. no one is hung up on that question because it is fucking stupid. rapist simply means someone who has committed rape, like murder is someone who has committed murder. he wasn’t a rapist until he made the super awful decision to become one. period.
plenty of people party, drink, have promiscuous sex, without becoming rapists, in fact most of the people that do those things never commit rape. those things are not to blame, nor the cause. the blame lies solely on the perpetrator of the heinous act.
this specific shithead keeps victim blaming and trying to play the victim, so clearly he is the lowest kind of shithead that exists.
i do think education helps reduce number of incidents, but i also feel fucking depressed that people need to be “educated” that things like this are wrong. sighs
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Does that mean you’re both sleepy?
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I’ve never liked that facile truism. If rape weren’t at least partially about sex, it wouldn’t by definition involve sexual organs, and it wouldn’t be considered worse than simply punching someone in the face.
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That assumes that the population of rapists is evenly distributed across demographics. If you hang around with fratboys and jocks then you’re probably more likely to have a rapist in your social circle than if you hang out with…
Hm. As I was in the middle of writing that sentence I found myself struggling to think of any markedly non-rapey demographic. Unitarians maybe? Quakers? Quadriplegics?
I guess I retract the point I was starting to make.
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