Shit that Pissed me off – 10/12/18
Man who Strangled Woman and Then Ejaculated on Her Receives No Jail Time
So what this guy did was technically not sexual assault. He just strangled a woman until she was unconscious and then masturbated on her because that was the only way he could get off.
Now if you look at this scenario, you think “dude is going to do this shit again.”
And I realize the law has limits unless you are a black man convinced of marijuana possession. At which point we should put him into solitary confinement for twenty five years.
It’s what Jed Bartlett would do!
But it really does send a message that we don’t give a shit when the victim is a woman, doesn’t it?
And I know what you’re thinking. “Tim,” you think “isn’t it true that we don’t really give a shit when the victim is a woman.”
Well, random person on the internet, it shouldn’t be true but in a case like this where everyone involved seems more concerned about this fine upstanding family man who couldn’t get hard unless he strangled his victim unconscious than they do about the next woman he strangles.
“Innocent until proven guilty” seems to have given way for “innocent even if proven guilty.
Because there was no protocol for where a transgender girl should hide (with the boys or with the girls), teachers didn’t know what to do. The active shooter drill was held up for quite some time as a result of this messy “problem.”
I mean, the answer is pretty clear when you think about it. She is a girl so she should hide with the girls.
Done and done. Let’s move on to figuring out how to protect our kids from school shooters without spending any time on legislation, shall we?
But no, that isn’t what happened. The girl in question was told she would have to sit outside the holding areas for both the boys and girls, basically telling her that in the case of an active shooter, she would be out in the open and easy prey.
The rhetoric was all around how to protect the other students from the transgender student (who is far more at risk from them then they would ever be from her) as the most important issue. This in spite of overwhelming evidence that transgender men and women are far more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator of any kind of crime. Simply put, what were they protecting the children from?
Their own bigotry, maybe?
The school board says they are going to figure this whole thing out. One hopes they can do so before there is an actual shooter in the school. Especially given the solution is really fucking simple.
Trump corner: Trump Apologizes to Kavanaugh on Behalf of the Nation
For all the talk about presumption of innocence being so important, Trump seems unable to actually engage in such a presumption when it comes to the women accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Rather, he presumes they are guilty of lying because he’s a pompous douchebag.
I want to talk about “innocent until proven guilty” for a minute. Because it got a lot of traction in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings. It is a fundamental cornerstone of our legal system.
The only problem is when we are talking about cases of sexual assault. In these cases, the immediate assumption is that the victim is lying.
What about the perpetrator? Isn’t HE the real victim here?
Oh, I know that the right wants us to believe that isn’t true in the wake of the #MeToo movement but that’s bullshit. I’ve seen it happen with Christine Blasey Ford. The right immediately assumes she is lying, taking advantage of the #MeToo movement and doing it only for personal gain.
What about a presumption of her innocence? She doesn’t get that, does she? If she lied to congress, that is perjury. If she took a bribe to lie to congress, that’s also illegal.
But there is an assumption of guilt for her and for literally every woman who has ever accused a man of sexual assault. Even though the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of her telling the truth.
When over ten women say Donald Trump sexually assaulted them, the odds that they are all lying is almost nothing. Because the facts tell us that women don’t make false accusations for money. They just aren’t interested in going through that much trauma – even for a shit ton of money.
So while it may make sense that in a court, we must prove the guilt of the accused, that central assumption means that outside of the court, we presume the guilt of the accuser. Especially our President.
Unless they are accusing a Democrat. Then he believes the accuser every time. Why do you suppose that is?
Melania Trump Says Women are Only Telling The Truth if they have Evidence
I try to avoid saying things about Melania because while she made the horribly poor call to marry Donald Trump, she shouldn’t be automatically painted with the same brush as her buffoon of a husband. Yet when given the opportunity to take a stand for women, she completely blew the opportunity.
She must know full well that most women who are sexually assaulted have no evidence. I mean, what evidence can you really provide aside from your word? Even if there is evidence of sex, the man can just say it was consensual. Where is the evidence that is wasn’t? How would Melania propose to find that evidence?
When it is her word against his, as I mention above, the assumption is almost always that she is lying. The first lady just supported that point of view.
She also called herself the “most bullied person on the World,” and I don’t want to dismiss this so quickly because I’ll bet that Melania, like many women in the public eye, faces nearly constant rape and death threats because men can be fucking assholes regardless of their political persuasion.
But I honestly don’t expect she is the most bullied person in the world. I’m going to bet that Christine Blasey Ford is currently more bullied than Trump. And the way Trump said it was so flip. Kind of like “hey – if I can take it so can every other woman out there.”
Melania probably is bullied and if you are doing it, cut that shit out. The fact she is Donald Trump’s wife is more punishment than any woman on Earth should have to bear.
But she doesn’t get a free pass when she claims she is more of a target than anyone else in the world. And she definitely doesn’t get a free pass when she tells women that they shouldn’t report sexual assault unless they can prove it. Because she knows damn well that a fucking impossible standard.
Maybe we can’t send every single one of these fucksticks to prison. Hell, we clearly can’t keep them out of the White House or the Supreme Court.
We could start, though, by just fucking believing them.
Republican House Candidate Says We Can Stop Rape by “Educating Females”
Denver Riggleman was participating in a debate with his opponent and they were both asked what needs to be done to cut down on sexual assault.
Riggleman, being a man who clearly understands these sort of things, said the best option would be to educate “females” (yes he used that word) on college campuses. Particularly in the fraternities* and sororities they are a part of.
Basically, he said the problem was with women who didn’t understand how to not get sexually assaulted. And that sororities should fix that. Also fraternities. Which is actually accurate since the people in fraternities are the ones more likely to commit assault.
The odds strongly favor that NONE of these young men will ever be falsely accuse of sexual assault.
And he’s in a heavily gerrymandered district so he’ll probably win. The race currently leans Republican.
You can hope that his comments might have reduced the number of Republican females women who vote for him. But it probably won’t. Because if President Trump has taught us anything, it is that (mostly white) Republican women seem to have a rather amazing capacity for self delusion when it comes to men who don’t actually represent their interests.
*This could sound like a mistake but since most honorary fraternities are co-ed, it really isn’t.
Supreme Court Upholds Voter Suppression Law in North Dakota
Two things piss me off about this. First: Voter suppression is the tool of cowards. Statistics show that voter fraud is hardly a problem and yet the Republican party (and only the Republican party) continues to push laws designed to disenfranchise voters. Especially People of Color and Native Americans who tend to vote more heavily Democratic.
So the law that was upheld pisses me off. Because the Republican party apparently can’t earn enough votes unless they make sure that their opposition can’t show up.
The law in question requires that voters have a street address. Most Native Americans in North Dakota don’t have a street address because the post office won’t deliver to their homes. So they have Post Office boxes.
Not good enough.
Fuck you, Native Americans. You’d probably just vote for a Democrat anyway. I mean hey – their record when it comes to indigenous isn’t great but on the other hand, they’d probably actually let you vote.
Second reason this pisses me off? I’ve seen at least one news report indicating this is Brett Kavanaugh’s first decision. And yeah it was from a super biased left wing site.
But the guy hasn’t been on the court a week. There is no way he could have heard this case, let alone ruled on it. Would he have supported the majority decision?
Almost certainly yes.
But can we just blame him for being a sexual predator for right now? It doesn’t do us a lot of good to blame him for stuff he hasn’t actually done yet. It just makes us look like alarmist idiots. I’m all for being alarmed. Not so supportive of being idiots.
School Board Candidate Says there are “No Indigenous People”
A little closer to my home, we have this racist.
Andrew Lindeman says that since we all descended from Africans, there are no indigenous people anywhere. He also says he doesn’t see color. Which is another way of saying he’s racist.
Please note that this guy is running for a seat on the school board.
I’m totally not making this up
He also says that the subjugation of Native Americans (not that there are any) is basically their fault because they lost. He says he’d believe the same thing if we Americans eventually got subjugated by some other group of people.
It feels like he is, in his own subtle way, saying that slavery was totally OK because the Africans who were brought over to America deserved it. If they’d won, then slavery would be wrong? Maybe?
So I’m not voting for school board ins Sauk Rapids-Rice and I can only hope the folks voting there don’t vote this guy in. Because I feel like the lowest possible bar for members of the school board should be “not racist.”
Grail Diary 