Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sort of like turning a stone over to see the squiggly worms

Abyss2hope fisks a comment by a rape apologist. It is sort of fascinating and horrifying to see how the mentality works. Thanks for doing it, A2H. Honestly, I got as far as

In my personal opinion, being accused of a crime when one is innocent is worse than being the victim of that crime. That is why we have this "innocent until proven guilty" principle.


and couldn't even get past WTF??! WTF??!?@?# -dissolve into incoherent sputtering-

anyway, though, the rest is equally enlightening in its fucked up way, so, if you're in the sort of mood where you can process that sort of thing: worth a full read.

ETA: oh, wait, here's a lower place.

8 comments:

Námo Mandos said...

My well-known inner quibbler wants to quibble with the beginning part of the rebuttal. I suggest that I would probably prefer to be murdered than convicted of a murder I didn't commit, but it's a hypothetical point.

Also, my late grandfather (a judge in India) was apparently of the opinion that he would rather let all the murderers go free than convict an innocent man. I was too young (and in Canada where he only occasionally visited) to hear it from his mouth.

It was all besides the point anyway, since the dude plays his hand a few paragraphs later. But some people do genuinely have the sense of justice re murder than Marcella uses as a reductio ad absurdum.

EthylBenzene said...

Ugh. I have nothing really to say except I am surprised I didn't puke out of my eyeballs. Oh and I despair ever making some of my well-intentioned male friends really understand what I put up with every day.

That desert island is sounding better and better.

Unknown said...

Well, innocent until proven guilty isn't "don't accuse someone of a crime until it's been proven in court." After all, it's pretty much impossible to get to the "proof" stage without going through an unproven accusation stage first. And if you follow a rule of "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to convictions and sending people to jail - as indeed we should - then it's inevitable that at least some of the accusations that never get proven will be against people who actually were guilty.

Anonymous said...

I think I'm going to try offering a stranger a $5 bill today, with no explanation, and then when he doesn't show up later to clean my kitchen, I'll track him down and punch him in the face. Hey, I'm entitled, right?

This is an interesting slip on the (otherwise very by-the-book) apologist's part:

Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, they say. You can look at it either way... as men exploiting women or women exploiting the weakness of men to earn money without working for it.

Sex work isn't work. What is it, then?

Lisa said...

If I ever do another vlog about comments that stun the brain, I will have to use that one.

It's so stunning though, I really don't know if I'd be able to act it out.

Anonymous said...

Warning: this comment may be triggering. I apologize, but couldn't think of a non-triggering way to say it.

Hrrm. Is the contention so crazy? Assume a hypothetical situation where you have a choice: you can be raped (and physically survive the encounter), or you can be falsely accused of rape and sent to jail for a few years.

I have to say that while I think I would choose the false accusation and its consequences, it's a near thing and I wouldn't think someone crazy for taking the opposite choice.

Unknown said...

anonyrapeapologistmous: i'm a rape survivor, and i don't need to hear this shit. it's not triggering, it's rank rape apologism. foad, dude.

belledame222 said...

You can hypothetically be falsely accused of rape and sent to jail for it, where the punishment could de facto include a bunch of rapes. If you are saying that you, the putative "rapist" would prefer the experience of being raped once outside of jail to being raped multiple times in jail, of itself, whatever;

however:

1) as noted just above, a number of rape survivors don't appreciate having their real traumatic experiences reduced to this kind of "well, if you had a brother, would -he- like herring?" armchair speculation

2) statistically, the odds of being falsely convicted of rape much less doing jail time for it are pretty slim compared to the odds of being raped and nothing whatsoever happening to the perpetrator, much less actual jail time. See.