What if he were white and she black and he instead said
“He: Face it, you’re a nigger whore just like all the others.”
Uttering that (single) word can get you spun out of a campus pretty quick, why shouldn’t the stuff he (aggressively) said (racist, whore, bitch) be considered just as much of a verbal assault?
The guy is a race baiter in sheep’s clothing, and he is one of the reasons race haters continue to despise each other: claiming you hate them so that they can have power of you can lead to you actually hating them.
This guy is an asshole, no matter what color his skin is.
I’m operating under the impression that one can file a report of harrassment without filing charges. I’m suggesting this as an alternative to crying “wolf.” I’ve know people who have pressed charges of harrasment or physical assault to see their attackers walk with light sentancing because they was no history of any previous behavior.
It’s a judgement call, and I can only go from the information presented here, so I should have made it clearer: only racinchikki (or someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation) can decide if his comments were significantly threatening to mention this to the police. Whether one wants to press charges or simply file a report to establish behavior, you’re still swearing a legal affidavit. Just because charges may not be filed today, doesn’t mean they won’t be tomorrow (and maybe not by you).
I do not wish to see frivolous reports filed on every little incident of name calling. I also don’t wish to see people living in fear, and unwilling to go to authorities because the words weren’t in the form of a direct threat.
Obviously a police officer or counselor would be better able to address these sorts of questions, and I apologize if I asserted a false authority on this subject. I still feel my suggestions are valid, and wanted to make things clearer.
inkblot
Thanks for the clarification, Inkblot. I can see your point of having the OP file a report to have documention on hand to build a case of harrassment if the race-baiting jerk accosted her again.
Using the word “nigger” shouldn’t get you expelled either.
(standard IANAL disclaimer)
While standards will vary by jurisdiction, in Wisconsin, words alone (including “fighting words”) generally do not legally constitute an assault, because words alone can’t create the necessary “reasonable apprehension of immediate harmful or offensive contact.”
Anyway, I agree with those who say that it’s no one’s decision but the OP whether to talk to the authorities about this guy. I’ll still encourage her to document it.
Well, in some places they can. In some jurisdictions, if, for example, I come up to you with a baseball bat, and say “Ender, I’m going to beat you silly with this bat.”, and you believe me, and have a reasonable fear for your safety, that’s assault. If I actually beat you silly with the bat, that’s battery.
He didn’t assault her. He didn’t threaten to hit her. He was a stupid jerk. What a wonderful world it would be if we could call the authorities every time someone acted like a stupid jerk.
The guy is an asshole. He needs to be called on it, but like someone else said, do you call the police every time somebody calls you a name? Hell, 3/4th of the Pitizens deserve to be in jail if we follow that criteria.
I realize not everyone is as loud and obnoxious as I am, so maybe outing him in class is not for you. But if he messes with you again, even a little bit-- then you must take some kind of action. If reporting him is all you feel you can do, then that’s what you should do, what I said above notwithstanding. Nobody says you have to suffer assholes forever.
Ender, I think you’ll find most definitions of assault include “reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily injury.” Pull a gun on someone and you’ve probably assaulted them.
That said, “you’re a ho” or words to that effect, without more, is not an assault.
First, alice in wonderland, I’ll accept your word on what law is in Canada because I don’t know it. But, if you do go up to someone and wack them with a bat, and they see you take the swing, it’s both assault and battery. Captain Amazing and Jodi, my example, and racin’s OP did not include a baseball bat or a gun. I’ll grant you that it’s assault in those instances if you have a reasonable fear of your safety.
Second, matt_mcl, I read your comment last night but I didn’t think too much about it until this morning in the shower (because that’s what I do, Matt, I think about you in the shower). Honestly, I don’t think you should be reading so much into the situation. Sure, they may have been looking at you “skeevier than usual,” but that, in itself, doesn’t say anything. You assumed they were looking at you strangely because you were singing in German. You then assumed that they were racists. Couldn’t it just be that they all hated cheesy '80s pop songs?
What!! Cheesy '80s pop song haters?!? Okay, that’s it, that’s the limit. These people need to be stopped NOW!
I think the assault debate going on here is pretty grey; he didn’t threaten her, so I guess legal assault wouldn’t fit, but what do you call it when someone calls you something that hits you like a punch in the stomach (cause that would be my response to being called a “racist whore”)? I guess it’s one of those areas where it isn’t illegal to do what he did, it’s just a really, really nasty thing to do.
Anthracite: I hope you know how much I respect you. A whole lot, in case you didn’t. But I just have to say, I think your response to Otto was way off base. Not up to your usual standards. I cannot see at all how he was apologizing for or defending that guy or what he did (and please note that I certainly am not either, I find that behavior repulsive). I don’t think you were justified in comparing him to people who call bin Laden a “hottie”, etc. And the passage of yours for which he requested a cite was this: “He probably won’t stalk or assault you, but the fact that he talked to you like that increases the probability that someday he will commit some kind of sex/race crime.” Not the part you quoted. I honestly don’t think I 've ever seen you make that kind of mistake before.
So I really don’t think he deserved the response you made. Although I will testify that you are quite strongly literate, much more so than myself.
I personally hold a pretty dim view of campus speech codes, although I will admit that it is not a black and white (no pun intended) issue, there are plenty of shades of grey there. In a case like this, I perhaps wouldn’t object to, I don’t know, some record of it being made. It’s a can of worms though, in my opinion.
I also just want to say for the record, I agree very much with Otto when he says: “‘I feel assaulted’ is not the same thing as ‘I was assaulted.’” I also agree with:
featherlou, who said “Actually, if there were a list like that, it would make dating a lot easier for women.” I agree with the sentiment anyway. It would also make dating easier for guys like me who wouldn’t be on it.
matt_mcl about the song “99 Luftballons”, which I liked in spite of it being an anti-war song.
llamasex about another song. I think that by the standards of many “gangsta” rappers, Positive K is being an absolute gentleman :p.
What I’m going to do is expand my second post in this thread. Let’s re-read it.
I said she should report it. That’s all I said she should do. I did say that would get people looking at him, and talking to him. How does one justify not reporting an event like this?
If the campus has a policy against it, then, well, I guess then maybe it is against their rules of conduct, and therefore is considered to be serious. And if someone is violating the rules of conduct by approaching in a threatening way, and acting this way even in public, why would one not report him? This baffles me.
I guess the way in which one justifies not reporting it in this case is by assuming or claiming that the campus rules are “unfair” or “unconstitutional” or something, and thus should be ignored.
AND - if the campus does not have a policy against this sort of thing, and do not feel it is a violation of racinchikki’s right to not being harassed, then…what? Nothing will happen to the guy if he is reported. Because…it obviously would not be against their rules of conduct. And THEN, obviously, no one is going to be “looking at him” and “talking to him”.
And the argument against doing this is that it would cause trouble for this creep in a way that was not appropriate or equivalent to his offence. But, if the school has no policy against it, the only way that this happens is by some sort of unfair means of punishing him by going “outside the rules”.
And yet…Otto came in and tried to say that she should not even do the simple step of reporting it.
Look - I will repeat. This is very simple:
If he broke the policy, then reporting it is the right thing to do.
If he did not break the policy, then reporting it causes no harm to the person, unless one is now going to make the specious step of claiming that her University has a secret “enemies list”.
Think a bit about the professional workplace. The truth is - if someone propositioned me and called me a “racist whore” when I turned them down, and I had a witness, they would be led out the door by security within 10 minutes carrying a box of their possessions. I’ve seen it done for less.
Wasn’t Otto’s initial response to me and others a bit crude and dismissive? Did that not disappoint anyone? I called him an apologist, and he called me illiterate. The truth is, by the definition in my dictionary here, and apologist is one who “writes or speaks in defense or justification of a person, doctrine, faith, or action”. He was defending the person’s actions by saying that the person did not deserve to be “put on a list somewhere”. And even though he said
Well, by telling someone not to “run to the authorities”, you are defending the person - you are trying to keep them from getting in trouble from being turned in.
But, of course, this would only happen if the University had a policy against his actions and behavior. And, if they have a policy against it…maybe they would have a policy against it because it is something that that University does not want to see on its property and it creates an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe learning and growing environment? So, by trying to speak in defense of this person by preventing them being turned in to the authorities, one is defending them, and one is acting as an apologist. At least I have some justification for my term.
However, I was called “illiterate”. And when someone starts off their response like that, I don’t even have the respect for them anymore on this Board to even answer them anymore.
Am I really so far off base here in daring to suggest that she report harassment? I didn’t say she should shoot him, draw down on him, kick him, give him the finger, stalk him, or get someone else to harass him. I said she should report the incident to the appropriate people.
If I’m off-base for suggesting that, then I fail to see why I should even respond meaningfully to comments in this thread. Because I will never convince someone who feels otherwise. And if Otto wants to go hammer and tongs with me via insults for 5 pages or so, well, he’s not going to get that either.
And why was this rant ignored?
What “excruciating standard”? That women not be sexually propositioned crudely and called a ‘racist whore’ when they refuse? What other ‘excruciating standard’ did I set forth? Please tell me, with quotes, exactly how I set an ‘excruciating standard’?
Did I say anything at all about expulsion? Where did I say anything about punishment? Is it that in the Otto’s opinion reporting == punishment? I guess I would not know, as I am illiterate.
I sure hope Otto is not trying to plant the “assaulted” argument to me, because I don’ recall using that word. But then, I’m just a cavewoman. His words and funny scratches on paper confuse me. I still wonder why the big box in my eating space is so cold, how fire can light and yet not burn, and how people ride metal animals to work every day…
In any event - I don’t plan on coming back here. I know with 100% certainty I will not sway anyone to my side (certainly not Otto), and I also firmly believe that I am right and I’m not ever going to be convinced that a person who does the actions reported in the OP should not be reported, so I’m not going to continue this. Have the last word, Otto.
Weird_Al, I really wish that you of all people, my friend, would have given me the benefit of the doubt and looked closer at what I was saying to Otto. And looked harder at what he said to me. I don’t think my position, reasoning, and conclusion of action was off-base at all.
I also hope you don’t forget to set your VCR tomorrow too for the Show Which Shall Not Be Named - I’m going to go home and do that right now myself. Just add those 5 minutes on.
Anthracite, whether you read this or not, you’re still over-reacting, and you’re not being very honest about what happened in this thread.
No, what you said was that she should report him and you gave some pretty screwed up reasons why: he engaged in “hate speech;” and that he could be thinking that white women need to be raped. Which, by the way, is ridiculous on its face. And why should anyone be “looking at him” or “talking to him” in the first place?
I never asked you for a cite for anything. I asked jack@ss for a cite for the statement “He probably won’t stalk or assault you, but the fact that he talked to you like that increases the probability that someday he will commit some kind of sex/race crime.”
I said that you were over-reacting. Your response to that was to claim that I was defending this dipshit and his actions. Which is either a grievous error on your part or a flat-out lie. I’ll assume the former.
No, the way one “justifies” not reporting it is that it’s at this point an isolated incident which the target herself finds laughable. And if you bothered to re-read my initial post you would see that I suggested that the OP document the incident so that if it ever happens again she can then turn him in since there would then be a pattern of harassment.
Wow. maybe I was right after all with the whole “illiterate” idea. Quote the exact words in which I defended or justified the person, the doctrine, the faith or the action. Saying that the guy doesn’t deserve to be investigated for a temper tantrum doesn’t mean that I think what the guy did was all right.
The excruciating standard to which I referred is the one by which you suggest that on the basis of a single incident that it would be reasonable for this person to be expelled. And I quote:
"On my campus, even 10 long years ago, it would not only have been considered “hate speech”, it would have been grounds for consideration of expulsion."
So what you’re saying is, on the basis of this guy losing his temper one time, you think it would be reasonable not only to report him but to expel him. And you don’t think that expulsion on the basis of three words (“bitch,” “racist” and “whore”) is a bit extreme?
I sure hope Anthracite isn’t trying to make false claims about me, since I clearly was responding to featherlou, who is the person who raised the “I feel assaulted” issue.
All in all, it makes me glad I’m gay so that I will never make the mistake of making a crude advance toward Anthracite. I might find myself with a record.
Tell you what, Otto - make a post that doesn’t have a slur against the person you are trying to debate with, and apologize for the previous ones, and I’ll answer you. I looked over my post, and not only did I not slur you, but I tried to explain why I felt like you were in fact defending the person - and that I thought the definition applied to your post, and you in making it.
However, you seem to be unable to respond to me without getting a little slur in or two. Why is that? Why couldn’t you have made your post without the “not very honest” and the “illiterate” comments (for the second time, I might add)?
Why, Otto?
Isn’t that similar to the same sort of speculation you tried to chastise me for?
That’s a crude little dig at the end here. Where did all the hate come from, I wonder?
I know I’m quoting celestina here, but this is directed to Otto.
You know what, Otto? Here I am jumping back all over you, and along comes celestina to remind me what the point of this whole thread really was. Which I lost somewhere on the first page.
The point is that racinchikki felt somewhat threatened and put-upon (my words) by this ass goblin, and we all agreed he was an ass. You and I can quibble over things further, but I’d rather end the argument and let this go. I did see your point, believe it or not, but I felt like your initial response to me was rude, and your follow-on’s of “illiterate” really are a rude slap directly at me.
Obviously you disagree with my point, or I didn’t get it aross well enough for you to have a chance to see I had a point. Whatever the case, I’m sorry and I apologize if the term “apologist” offended you. I still think you really are way over the line with your continued “illiterate” slurs, but I don’t care any more to come after you here.
Oh my god, Anthracite, big ol’ whatever to you. If it somehow comforts you to think that I “hate” you, then have at it. Me, I’ve already expressed my sorrow at what the OP went through and the thread had sort of moved on from there. So, again, whatever.
