All of which have one thing in common: the behavior of the victim of the theft vis-a-vis their willingness to let other people use the item or even for the thief to use the item on prior occasions is wholly irrelevant. Doors and windows wide open and unlocked? Irrelevant. Item left sitting out on the yard for any passerby to take? Irrelevant. The sole responsibility for the crime is placed upon the criminal.
Somehow kindergarteners get that you don’t put your hands on other people’s stuff but even adults will twist themselves into all sorts of pretzels of illogic to explain away someone putting their hands on other people’s bodies. It’s pretty sad.
Presumably, and giving the guy the benefit of the doubt to the guy that he has a smidgeon of self control and doesn’t go around regularly jamming his hands down chicks’* pants, there must have been something that led him to believe that this was ok.
Now if that something was actions a through f, that when put to a jury, they feel that yup, what he did was not out of keeping with what had been going on that night. Then while he should probably still get charged and punished, his punishment would be much lighter than if. For the sake of the argument, his justification really was just “she had been drinking and went to the toilet alone”.
If the woman really had been drinking, how do you now that this hadn’t been part of an ongoing theme for the night? (and no, her recollections are not the sole arbiter of fact for the night, sorry) Or that she hadn’t made a similiar action towards him earlier in the night and said “nyah nyah catch me if you can”? Of course this wouldn’t excuse him, but it would mitigate it.
Would it change your opinion at all if the guy in question had NOT been drinking (we don’t know) and had a well deserved reputation for being kind, considerate and thoughtful towards woman, while the woman in question had a reputation for easily getting the wrong end of the stick and being easily offended?
Again, this would not excuse sexual assualt, what it would do would give me pause. Well hold on, are things really as she said, or is there more to this story than meets the eye?
All I am trying to suggest is that perhaps we should look further into what happened that the 15 seconds of “grab, kiss, push, fuck off, shove hand in pants” because I would be pretty sure there IS more to the story than just that (or at least, I hope there is, if there isn’t, the guy deserves all that he gets)
*yeah, the word choice is deliberate - denoting the attitude of someone that would do that
Don’t worry, she seems to have an infinite supply—Hard to imagine that she is constantly butting heads with everyone she interacts with, both here on SDMB and apparently in real life as well…
Well yeah…except for the last one, and except that in each case the punishments applied are different. And the serverity of the crime are considered to be different - in other words, its a sliding scale of offending.
Just like there are different degrees of murder.
Hell, if I am involved in a car accident, there are even different degrees of culpability depending upon my behaviour - why shouldn’t there be different degrees of culpability depending on what else went on that night?
A couple thoughts about this story that are nagging me. I am conflicted because I am not blaming the victim. However, some details about the story bother me and I’m worried that I can’t articulate them without having people say I am blaming the victim, which I am not.
This woman invited a crowd of vast majority men to her hotel room for beer and beer pong. Then, she lets a guy pick her up and whirl her around. (“An excited Berliner who picked me up and whirled me around and somehow managed to avoid having me kick anyone in the head.”) Then she “lay across the bed, sat on laps, generally tried to squish in to any available space…” At the bar, “a few more beers. Squeezing everyone up so I could sit next to someone I wanted to talk to.” She also says, “I had been flirting with a couple of other boys at the party.”
The crowd was mostly men, and it sounds like she was eating up the male attention as the lone female in the crowd. Nothing wrong with that. I suppose I would probably feel the same way.
But, she is married (cite). I personally would not feel comfortable as a married woman getting drunk, sitting on laps, “flirting with boys,” inviting men to my hotel room for beer pong, etc. This just would not be something I would do, as a married woman (or as a single woman for that matter).
Myself, I have been known to enjoy getting drunk and party hard and maybe even be flirty, but never to the point of sitting on laps and laying across a hotel bed with a bunch of drunk guys in my hotel room. That just has never been something I would do. And if I woke up the next day after a drunken night where I did do that, I would be totally embarrassed and generally squicked out. Especially if it had been in front of people I work with in a professional field.
Of course, none of this necessarily has to do with her being sexually assaulted. It could have happened to her regardless of her party-girl behavior. And the dude who assaulted her is a scum bag, no doubt.
I also have to wonder, if this assault took place in a crowded bar, were there any witnesses to what happened? I hope so, because that would be key to proving her case.
No, it didn’t matter what she did with other guys. THAT guy (I’ll call him Man Z) was not invited to grab her. It doesn’t matter if she was banging Man A through Man Y on the pool table, in public view. Man Z wasn’t invited to so much as kiss her hand. Man Z felt entitled to grope her, when he had no such right. If what she related is the truth, this guy did indeed think it was OK to jam his hand down her pants. And apparently you think that he was somewhat justified, or at least not as culpable, because of her actions. If she pushed him away and told him to leave her alone when he was kissing her, why on earth should he be excused for his subsequent behavior? He had absolutely NO justification for his behavior when she had indicated that she didn’t want to even kiss him. NO EXCUSE. He just thought that he could get away with it. He was probably pissed that she didn’t seem interested in making out with him, and he figured that he’d put her in her place. Apparently he was a speaker at the gathering. That STILL doesn’t entitle him to play grabass with any female.
Your attitude that she had somehow led him on by her behavior is part of the problem. Men don’t have any right to have sex with women who are not agreeable to their attentions. They don’t have any right to force ANY contact upon a woman (or another man). It doesn’t matter what the other person has done. No means no. And no means no excuses, no blaming the victim, either.
You’re right. I didn’t see that before. For some reason when I clicked on your link, it wasn’t working (just took me back to the assault post), but I clicked around on her blog and found her post about her marriage breaking up (posted on Aug. 15, 2010).
So she’s newly single. Maybe that was the reason for her being so flirty and touchy-feely, but perhaps the exactly the reason she should NOT have been behaving so…
A woman freshly out of a relationship, surrounded by beer and lots of drunk guys = a vulnerable drunk woman newly single woman with a bunch of drunk male sharks circling. Even if you don’t end up sexually assaulted, you may wake up the next day with regrets.
Uhmmm…no, that’s not at all what I am saying, its a little more nuanced than that.
What I am saying, is that IF she did something that made him think it was ok, and IF most people would also have been led to the same conclusion then MAYBE he is less culpable.
Seriously I don’t get it. Sexual assault is NOT ok. Women have every right to control who does and does not touch their body. If this guy did what she says, he IS guilty of sexual assault and should have the book thrown at him.
What I don’t quite get, and perhaps its because I have never met a guy that would do such a thing, is that nobody I know would just suddenly decide to jam his hands down somebody’s pants. SOMETHING must have made him think it was ok. So what needs to be done is to take a look at what made him think it was ok, and then mete out the appropriate punishment.
Quick question, if you find a wallet, with no ID in the street and keep it - isn’t that a different crime to breaking into someone’s house with a gun and violently taking their wallet?
Yes both are crimes, and both should be punished, but isn’t one far worse than the other? Why can’t it be the case here?
Short answer - he shouldn’t
And you know this because? Again, you really think that guys would go around raping a woman every time they “thought they could get away with it”? Really? Men in general behave this way? In his mind I am very sure there was a justification, and I am also sure that it’s not “this is a good chance to get away with it”. What I am not sure of is what that justification was, if it’s in anyway logical, explainable or even slightly understandable.
Well that’s an interesting thought, so now some proportion of professional men, that are good enough at their jobs to speak at conferences go around jamming their hands down someone’s pants because they are jealous? Again, I’m just not getting it. I have never met someone that would do this sort of thing as “punishment”. Or at least, if someone does behave that way, it’s something that is very very clear from the way he treats people in general and interacts with others in the workplace.
So you’re suggesting that guys have to take full and complete responsibility and are always 100% culpable for a poor decision, perhaps made in a fog of alcohol and partying, but a woman has absolutely no responsiblity at all? None? That no matter what she does, how she behaves, what she says she needs to be treated like a tender innocent virgin made of crystal?
I am not excusing his actions or saying they weren’t assault, or that he shouldn’t be punished.
But I am suggesting that MAYBE her account isn’t the full story, and that maybe there are contributing factors, or some other actions during the night that will reduce the severity of what he did. Or that will put the actions into some form of context.
For me, I simply don’t know, and I am not willing to pillory the guy just yet, based solely on the account of someone who very obviously has a vested interest in showing him and his actions in the worst possible light.
Recognising that if you put yourself into a room full of men with less than perfect judegement. That if you then imbibe substances that lead to lowered inhibitions and impaired judgement that you might wake up in the morning regretting some of your actions is not victim blaming.
It is called taking responsibility for your actions, and managing your exposure to risk and danger.
Why should she “regret” some guy shoving his hand in his pants? He should be the one regretting it, since his bet that he wouldn’t get called on his assholeness didn’t pay off, and now everyone knows that he is the kind of guy likely to corner a woman on her way to the bathroom and touch her against her will.
I am not saying she should regret having someone assualt her. There is nothing there at all that she should regret.
I have been drunk at parties, and done things that when I look back the next day think “my god, what was I thinking” as I am sure have most people. This is what I am suggesting. I was in no way referring to the assualt part. What I was referring to was the general idea that if you get drunk with a bunch of other drunk people perhaps you will do things that you would not do if you were sober, and perhaps some of those things you will be embarrassed about, will regret and will wish you had not done.
I think we are now starting to get to the heart of the problem.
We know that the blog writer SAYS he is that kind of guy. We know that to HER he is that kind of guy. And I can also see that if you ever met him you would treat him as that sort of guy, based solely on what she has written.
What we still don’t know if that is a true representation of who he is. Or if what she wrote is a full reflection of what happened that night. There could be all sorts of factors that change rather substanially our perceptions of what happened.
I am also saying that it’s unfair to pillory him on the basis of what she wrote about an event that happened while she was inebriated.
NOW, her being inebriated DOES NOT excuse sexual assualt. What it does do however is affect her perception and memory. Had she had that much to drink? I don’t know, and neither do you. She may very genuninely believe what she wrote. What the other’s at the party saw may well be a different thing.
I am not trying to excuse sexual assualt. As a bald statement of facts:
He grabbed me
I pushed him
He shoved hands down pants
the guy does deserve to hang, and all of the public condemnation he is going to receive.
But is that really what happened? Does it explain accurately her actions and his?
As a quy it is scary to see people fully side with her, before they know the full facts and circumstances. I always thought the idea was innocent until proven guilty.
Here you are declaring him guilty and pond scum before you even have a balanced account of what happened.
First, no one has “perfect judgement”, not even when sober, so that’s a bullshit thing to say. Second, she put herself in a room full of coworkers and colleagues. They happened to be men. I guess she should have retired to bed at 9 pm like a good girl and let the boys party it up by themselves as is their privilege, but she probably trusted them to act like semi-decent people. Stupid her for thinking that, I know!
I understand not taking her at 100% at her word, but WTF?, some of yall don’t know when to quit. Fine, suspend judgement. Don’t believe her when she claims that the dude tried to finger-rape her. But I don’t get all this talk about how she bears some responsibility for what happened. Being flirty and tipsy around male acquantainces doesn’t strike me as reckless behavior of the nature that warrants all the tsk-tsking going on here. The night could have easily gone fine and for any of us know, she’s done this before with the same cast of characters and everything was fine. Maybe she had no reason to believe it wouldn’t this time.
I know if I’d been fondled like this guy reportedly did to her, I would not blog about it. There are more discrete ways to get the word out that don’t open you up to the amount of judgemental scrutiny she invited upon herself.
What men do to women in front of other men, and what men do to women when they think nobody else is watching are quite often two different things. I’ve had men grope me when I was alone in an elevator with them, for instance, despite me trying to stand on the other side of the enclosed space. Sometimes it was grabby grabby, sometimes they’d just “accidentally” brush my tit or butt while they were standing too close to me. But most of these guys wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that where other people could see them. And really, I needed to take those elevators, and no, I couldn’t wait for another elevator, that was the only one in the building, usually.
And you’re changing your stance. You were saying that if she acted in one way, that his grabbing her was less offensive than if she’d acted another way. I say that it doesn’t matter how she was acting previously.
Sexual assailants usually do a lot of this stuff and get away with it. The only thing different is that one woman has spoken up (and been called a drunken slut) and let the world know her side of the story. Before the internet, this would likely have been hushed up as quickly as possible, since after all he seems to be pretty well respected, professionally. But just because someone is very good at his job doesn’t mean that he’s not a perv who forces himself on women if he thinks he can get away with it.
As a woman, it’s scary to see people say that she was partially responsible for being assaulted.
And on the subject of offensive behavior that men don’t see…look up some of the previous threads on catcalls. Women usually get catcalls when they’re alone, or with one other female. Men don’t catcall women when there’s a male escort for those women, so many men who DON’T do catcalls and who don’t hang out with guys who do catcalls don’t see this behavior.
Second of all, no one is suggesting that she has anything less than a full right to party anyway she wants, with anyone she wants.
Any ideas otherwise are archiac and stupid.
Am I coming across as some sort of MCP Neanderthol? I don’t mean to.
And I don’t mean to suggest that there is ever any excuse for sexual assault.
What I am trying to suggest is that there may be some middle ground here. Much like there is middle ground between “tragic accident” and “culpable homicide” there may be middle ground between “he violently mauled me out of the blue in a professional situation” and “what he did was fully welcome, expected and enjoyed”.
Where this particular act would fall on such a spectrum I don’t yet know, as I don’t feel all the facts are in. I do feel what she did throughout the night has a bearing on it.
Now, assuming that she has presented a full and accurate picture there can be no defence. But there seems to be gaps, those gaps may or may not be relevant.