Woman blogs about sexual assault at tech conference

[bengangmo]

@Lynn_Bodoni

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.

Uhmmm…where have I suggested that she was a drunken slut? Where have I suggested that she gets drunk and sleeps around, that she should change her name to margerine or that more people have ridden her than the town bike?

And I have not changed my stance. I have been saying the same thing over and over and over again. That perhaps, just maybe, something went on that night that led him to believe this was welcome. Maybe he is mistaken. Maybe she gave an impression that she did not mean to give. Maybe she gave an impression that she totally meant to give but then regrets. Maybe she gave an impression that she has now forgotten about.

None of the above would give him the right to do anything sexual that she said no to at the time.

What it might do is move him from the group “unmitigated sexual assailant who cannot be trusted with woman and has no respect” to the group “he did something foolish and uncalled for that he now severly regrets, has learnt from and is offering the most hearfelt apology”

How do we determine which group he should be in? I seriously don’t know - but I do know that looking at the night in its entirety rather than the 15 seconds of the assualt is a pretty good place to start.

For you Lynn do you think men only fall into one of three categories? Being

1. Would never assault anyone, and are sensitive to the signals women are sending
2. Don’t give two shits about women, and will do what they like, when they like, whether others are watching or not
3. Will try to get away with whatever they can when they think others aren’t watching, taking advantage of women at every opportunity?

There are no shades of grey for you that perhaps the guy genuinely meant no harm (yeah, well that’s a pretty stupid thing to type), that taking a second he would realise just what he has done?

Here he is being painted as “completely black”. I am just not so sure that is the case.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Lynn_Bodoni

That has been my impression in this thread. However, I’ll take your word that you are not trying to be a pig.

But I don’t think that this was an accident on his part. He MEANT to shove his hand in her pants.

IF he shoved his hand down her pants, he surely did mean to do it. The point is that you don’t know that it happened, only that she says it happened.

Or do you have video of the incident that the rest of us haven’t seen yet?

[bengangmo]

@Lynn_Bodoni

That has been my impression in this thread. However, I’ll take your word that you are not trying to be a pig.

But I don’t think that this was an accident on his part. He MEANT to shove his hand in her pants.

Of course he meant to. That has never been in doubt or at question.

What is at question (to my mind) is the very obvious mismatch (or what I sincerely hope is a mismatch) between what she said and what he heard.

Really, if it is as straight forward as she tells it, there is no two ways about it. The guy is a fuckwad.

But what if its not? Are you at least allowing for that possiblity?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@bengangmo

Of course he meant to. That has never been in doubt or at question.

What is at question (to my mind) is the very obvious mismatch (or what I sincerely hope is a mismatch) between what she said and what he heard.

Really, if it is as straight forward as she tells it, there is no two ways about it. The guy is a fuckwad.

But what if its not? Are you at least allowing for that possiblity?

I’ll answer for everyone else in the thread, possibly, except you and me: No, they are not even allowing that as a possibility.

[bengangmo]

@Snowboarder_Bo

I’ll answer for everyone else in the thread, possibly, except you and me: No, they are not even allowing that as a possibility.

I seriously don’t get it either. And perhaps it is a fault with my own perception.

I would never consider touching a woman in a way that she didn’t want to be touched, and would always stop once she said no. So I simply cannot conceive that someone, in the middle of a crowded room, would shove his hands down her pants after being told to fuck off. It does not compute. There must be more to the story.

The more to the story could be that the guy is a complete and utter pond scum, misandrist (yep, I learnt!) waste of space - in which case I say throw the book at him.

It called be that the lady in question did lead him on, and did not reject him in the way she says she did, in which case she deserves condemnation*

Or it could be somewhere in the middle, where both made poor decisions, both did and said things that built on each other culminating in a nasty, uncalled for assault that both regret. An assualt that the guy should still be called out for, but not in the manner of lock him up and throw away the key as seems to be implied by some responses here.

At the end of the day, we don’t have enough information to to decide where on the spectrum this case lies (lays?), so perhaps we should be reserving condemnation for the time being into more and fuller explanations come to hand from someone other than the blog owner?

• it could also be that she is a crazy twat out for revenge and is making up the allegation from whole cloth, but I don’t want to believe that anymore than I want to believe the guy is a complete psychopath.

[you_with_the_face]

@bengangmo

Am I coming across as some sort of MCP Neanderthol? I don’t mean to.

Dude, the first post you made in this thread said this:

While “she asked for it” is never a valid defence,

At the same time if the behaviour she is complaining about is similiar to behaviour that was ok earlier in the night I think it should make a difference.

I would have less issue if you doubted the veracity of her claim and stuck with it. As it stands, you’ve been bouncing around all over the place, apparently looking for any and every argument one could possibly make against her. One minute you speak as though you accept her claim as essentially truthful but believe she provoked him by her flirting with other people. This is evident in the first post you made here. All the “ifs” in the world are immaterial if they don’t apply to the situation being discussed, but you keep dragging in “ifs” as if we have any reason to believe that they are true.

Another minute you doubt that she really knew what she was doing or acting around him because she may have been drunk, even though… wouldn’t that put her whole story in question then? You don’t seem to be doubting the parts that paint her in a bad light, only the part that paints Alleged Groper that way.

Then you assert that the guy must have had good reason to think his hands belong in her pants, if we give him the benefit of the doubt. But why must we give anyone the benefit of the doubt? I don’t see you doing that with her.

And then finally, you talk about how we should all recognize that if you have less than perfect judgement in a roomful of men…blah blah blah, you might end up regretting shit. Really? If I wake up and get in my car on a rainy day, I might end up regretting that too. But if I drive in the rain all the time and never get in an accident, am I suddenly being reckless the one day that I do get an accident? Partying like this may be a regular thing these people do during conferences. So she screwed up and let her guard down. This makes her as stupid or reckless as anyone who decides to get in their car and drive when the weather is less than perfect.

In other words, for someone who doesn’t believe in blaming the victim, you have done a great job giving the opposite impression. I can’t tell if you believe the assault took place but was “provoked” or if she led him to believe he could grope her like that but was too drunk to really know. I think you’re unsure of your own argument.

[Fionn]

@bengangmo

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”.

You keep saying there’s no excuse for sexual assault, and then coming up with them over and over. This is going to sound harsh, but do you realize how often sexual predators themselves take advantage of the middle ground you’re talking about in order to downplay or completely deny what they did?

[even_sven]

I never said the guy was pond scum or a horrible person. He’s probably a pretty normal guy, and otherwise usually pretty decent. A lot of the people who have pulled ridiculous stuff on me are otherwise pretty reasonable people. Even the blogger didn’t harshly condemn him- she just said he ruined her day, and she was sick of people doing that and getting away with it. Nobody is saying he should be pilloried.

But I don’t think you realize how common this sort of thing is, probably because it’s not something guys show off to their buddies.

I think a lot of the reason why this stuff happens is being illustrated in this thread. There is a general idea that a girl who a guy is horny for somehow owes him sexual gratification (she led him on…) There is an idea that a girl who acts like a “party girl” can be treated like public property. There is this societal idea that a woman should not speak up or name name when something sexual goes wrong. And these ideas become so ingrained that I think guys don’t even think about how something like shoving your hands down a girl’s pants is not all in good fun for the girl. They probably know it’s not the right thing, but figure it’s not that big of a deal. And they probably have gotten away with similar actions in the past, so they just figure it’s an okay thing to do.

Well, it’s not.

[leander]

So what should the proper consequences to his actions be (assuming they turn out to be true)? Prosecution? Loss of job? Sex offenders’ registry?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@even_sven

I never said the guy was pond scum or a horrible person. He’s probably a pretty normal guy, and otherwise usually pretty decent. A lot of the people who have pulled ridiculous stuff on me are otherwise pretty reasonable people. Even the blogger didn’t harshly condemn him- she just said he ruined her day, and she was sick of people doing that and getting away with it. Nobody is saying he should be pilloried.

But I don’t think you realize how common this sort of thing is, probably because it’s not something guys show off to their buddies.

I think a lot of the reason why this stuff happens is being illustrated in this thread. There is a general idea that a girl who a guy is horny for somehow owes him sexual gratification (she led him on…) There is an idea that a girl who acts like a “party girl” can be treated like public property. There is this societal idea that a woman should not speak up or name name when something sexual goes wrong. And these ideas become so ingrained that I think guys don’t even think about how something like shoving your hands down a girl’s pants is not all in good fun for the girl. They probably know it’s not the right thing, but figure it’s not that big of a deal. And they probably have gotten away with similar actions in the past, so they just figure it’s an okay thing to do.

Well, it’s not.

“Holy fucking leap over an imaginary chasm, Batman!”

Nothing in my posts could possibly be construed to mean any of what you just wrote, but somehow you found it okay to label me a worshipper of sexual assault? And you wonder why I doubt the unsupported word of one person about events that may or may not have transpired?

If the only thing that anyone read on this board was your previous post about me, they would come away “knowing” that not only do I condone rape, I consider it a “sacred” event. :eek:

[HazelNutCoffee]

@bengangmo

I would never consider touching a woman in a way that she didn’t want to be touched, and would always stop once she said no. So I simply cannot conceive that someone, in the middle of a crowded room, would shove his hands down her pants after being told to fuck off. It does not compute. There must be more to the story.

While I agree there is a possibility that something is being left out of the story, your insistence that because this man has behaved in a way that you can’t imagine yourself behaving there MUST be more to the story is weird. In a situation where people are drinking and generally going nuts, it’s NOT AT ALL strange for a situation of that sort to arise.

I used to go to clubs and bars every weekend with my girlfriends and lot of guys think that when a girl says no she’s just playing hard to get. I don’t see why it’s so hard to entertain the possibility that what you described above is exactly what happened. You seem to be seeking some sort of rhyme or reason to his actions. Well, he was drunk and at a party. People can do stupid things in those sorts of situations.

[even_sven]

Bo, none of my previous post had anything to do with you. These are general ideas in our society. Sometimes a harmful idea in society can lead otherwise reasonable people to do really bad things. I don’t think this guy is scum, I think he made a really bad choice, and these different social ideas probably contributed to him being able to make that really bad choice despite probably being an overall okay guy (although who knows, maybe he is a huge jerk.) But when our bad choices and lapses in judgement hurt others (even if it is just “ruining their day”) sometimes there are consequences.

@leander

So what should the proper consequences to his actions be (assuming they turn out to be true)? Prosecution? Loss of job? Sex offenders’ registry?

Probably his girlfriend leaving him, his friends saying “wow, that was a dick move” and some shame around the Thanksgiving table. I don’t think he should face jail time or be hung out to dry, but I do think he should have to own up to what he did, make a sincere apology, and act as an example to others as to why “no means no” even if you are only into mild forms of sexual assault.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@even_sven

Bo, none of my previous post had anything to do with you.

The FUCK they didn’t.

@even_sven

@Snowboarder Bo

Who wants to work with or be around someone who would attempt to destroy another person like that?

Wow. Posting a clear and truthful account of someone’s wildly inappropriate and mildly illegal actions is now “destroying another person?”

HE’S THE ONE THAT DID IT. He did the bad thing. All she did is report what happened (and no, I don’t buy that she’d randomly make this up- if she was doing a smear campaign she’d come up with something a bit more odious and would express more than the annoyance that she conveys on her blog). If his life is destroyed, he did it himself by feeling like he can shove his hands down a girl’s pants when she has said “no.”

Does that count for any other crime? If my workmate stole my iPod and for some reason I had no recourse, would posting about it on my blog be “destroying another person” I doubt it- it’d be calling out an asshole. What is it about sexually assaulting a woman that is sacred?

That’s post #94 in this thread. You posted that about 8 hours ago. That whole post is a reply and retort to a quote from a post by me that you deliberately and seemingly with malice took out of context. Apparently you missed my reply in post #100, where I called bullshit on you and your attempt to characterize me as someone who considers rape “sacred”.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@bengangmo

Uhmmm…where have I suggested that she was a drunken slut? Where have I suggested that she gets drunk and sleeps around, that she should change her name to margerine or that more people have ridden her than the town bike?

And I have not changed my stance. I have been saying the same thing over and over and over again. That perhaps, just maybe, something went on that night that led him to believe this was welcome. Maybe he is mistaken. Maybe she gave an impression that she did not mean to give. Maybe she gave an impression that she totally meant to give but then regrets. Maybe she gave an impression that she has now forgotten about.

I think that shoving him away and telling him “no” overrides any “impression” that he might have been under. See, he didn’t stop at “no”, instead, he escalated the assault.

None of the above would give him the right to do anything sexual that she said no to at the time.

What it might do is move him from the group “unmitigated sexual assailant who cannot be trusted with woman and has no respect” to the group “he did something foolish and uncalled for that he now severly regrets, has learnt from and is offering the most hearfelt apology”

How do we determine which group he should be in? I seriously don’t know - but I do know that looking at the night in its entirety rather than the 15 seconds of the assualt is a pretty good place to start.

For you Lynn do you think men only fall into one of three categories? Being

1. Would never assault anyone, and are sensitive to the signals women are sending
2. Don’t give two shits about women, and will do what they like, when they like, whether others are watching or not
3. Will try to get away with whatever they can when they think others aren’t watching, taking advantage of women at every opportunity?

There are no shades of grey for you that perhaps the guy genuinely meant no harm (yeah, well that’s a pretty stupid thing to type), that taking a second he would realise just what he has done?

Here he is being painted as “completely black”. I am just not so sure that is the case.

No, I don’t think that men fall into only three categories. However, there are far more men in groups 2 and 3 than many men believe. And this is to the credit of most men, that they wouldn’t dream of acting like this. But I assure you, there’s a significant portion of men who fall into the last two groups.

I’d add at least one more group…men who believe that women are madonnas or whores. They’ll treat the madonnas with respect, and treat the whores like public conveniences.

@bengangmo

Of course he meant to. That has never been in doubt or at question.

What is at question (to my mind) is the very obvious mismatch (or what I sincerely hope is a mismatch) between what she said and what he heard.

Really, if it is as straight forward as she tells it, there is no two ways about it. The guy is a fuckwad.

But what if its not? Are you at least allowing for that possiblity?

Sure, she might be making some or all of it up. She might be delusional, she might be going through the “all men (or women) are scum” phase that many newly divorced people go through.

However, I consider this to be unlikely. In my experience, if a woman says that she was sexually assaulted or raped, the odds are that it happened. Maybe her assailant doesn’t even consider it assault or rape, but aggressive seduction, and “she really wanted it”. They say “women don’t know what they really want”. They will admit that they forced a woman to have sex with them, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used.

I would never consider touching a woman in a way that she didn’t want to be touched, and would always stop once she said no. So I simply cannot conceive that someone, in the middle of a crowded room, would shove his hands down her pants after being told to fuck off. It does not compute. There must be more to the story.

No, there doesn’t have to be more to this story. Some guys think that they’re entitled to sexual activity from any woman they want. I’m glad to hear that YOU can’t consider this. However, it happens.

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/21/original-essay-the-not-rape-epidemic/

[Broomstick]

@bengangmo

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.

Emphasis added.

In fact, you probably DO know some guy(s) would do such a thing, but you don’t realize that they’d do it because 1) they certainly won’t do it to you and 2) you don’t see them doing it.

Let me assure you that there ARE that sort of men around. MOST men, the majority of men, know that shoving their hands down a woman’s panties under the circumstances described is not acceptable. Most men - not ALL men. There is a subset of men who would do that, and have done that.

Only one time that I can recall have I been the recipient of a man grabbing me, hauling me in close, and kissing me - the man was unknown to me, smelled of booze, and clearly was trying to share his happiness with me BUT his intentions were entirely unwanted by me and I had to physically shove him away, with great effort, to get him to let me go. His excuse? “Hey, I was just being friendly!” Didn’t I want to be a friendly? Didn’t I want to be a nice girl? This, by the way, was in a very public place and several other people standing nearby took him to task and told him to back off.

But I have often seen, in crowds, in bars, at conferences, at many public places men holding onto women who were squirming and pulling away from them, clearly trying to get away, doing the “C’mon baby, gimme a kiss, don’t be like that, be nice to me” routine, so caught up in their own greed for physical contact that they just can’t see that their actions no matter their motivation or intention are causing great distress, even outright fear or panic, in the women they have their hands on. And yes, I have seen it progress past kissing into touching of tits, ass, or crotch, either over or under clothing.

Yes, I think a lot of it is about miscommunication rather than outright malice. That doesn’t make it OK. Alcohol makes these things far more likely to happen because it impairs thinking.

One if the reasons the women in this thread are so ready to side with the woman in this incident is that these events are so damn common! It doesn’t happen to every woman, it doesn’t happen all the time to any woman, but it happens, and every woman I know has either had it happen to her, or it has happened to someone close to her.

Assuming things happened as described in the blog do I think the man should be hauled into court and put on a sex offender list? No, I don’t. I don’t think he should get a free pass, though. What he did was wrong.

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

[quote=“bengangmo, post:111, topic:559766”]

The whole thing?

Recognising that if you put yourself into a room full of men with less than perfect judegement. QUOTE]

What on earth is this supposed to mean?

[tumbleddown]

@bengangmo

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.

@bengangmo

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.

It speaks well to your character that you cannot even fathom touching a woman against her will. It speaks, however, to either a stunning naivete or a sad but typical absorption of our rape apologist culture that you believe that whatever the impetus was for this behavior, it must have come from the victim, and not just the sick mind of the perpetrator.

There are, in fact, men who will accost and assault women without any hint of interest from that woman whatsoever. They do it because they can.

They do it because they enjoy having that power over a woman. They do it because they know that it will leave a lasting mark on that woman’s life, and they enjoy having that hold on her.

They do it because they think that they’re entitled to whatever they want, whenever they want it. They do it because as a culture that’s the message that we give men from the time that they’re small boys: “you’re entitled to the things that you want.”

They do it because as a culture we’ve made it clear that they can get away with it, and get away with it, repeatedly.

They do it because as a culture we have insulated sexual predators of adult women by virtue of our insistence that upon any accusation that can be disputed in any way, we will, as a matter of course, expend the vast majority of our energies in dissecting the victim’s actions, her attitudes, her level of intoxication, her manner of behavior, what she was wearing, who was in the room with her, her marital status, her mental health status, her body, her level of attractiveness and everything about her, in order to give the perpetrator the benefit of the doubt.

This is why fewer than 1/3 of sexual assault cases reported to the police end up going to trial and only ~13% of of those end up with any sort of conviction, and for the first time in three decades, sexual assault victims’ advocacy programs are noting that the majority of victims who come to them for help aren’t bothering to report the crime to law enforcement at all.

[Deeg]

@even_sven

She is not totally innocent because…? Why? She flirted with some guys (who weren’t even this guy?!) She drank? She went to the bathroom unattended?

Say we get into a raging argument and you pull out a gun and kill me. Our legal system treats that differently from you randomly shooting me on the street. The idea is (I believe) that if we get into a raging argument then I am somewhat culpable for what transpires. You are still guilty of murder and you’ll still do time but it will be less than it otherwise could be because I wasn’t 100% innocent.

In rape or sexual assault I believe we should likewise have different levels. The guy in the original situation is guilty of assault (assuming her facts are correct) but his punishment should be somewhat mitigated by her actions leading up to the assault, just like the punishment in the murder example is lessened.

If I understand it correctly she invited men to her room and encouraged them to get drunk (by playing beer pong). It seems to me that she should be somewhat responsible for what happened afterwards.

[even_sven]

The degrees of murder are about the intentions of the killer, not the actions of the victim. It doesn’t matter if the victim was busy saving kittens, or yelling “shoot me, I dare you”- if the murder was premeditated it is 1st degree, if it is not, then it is 2nd degree. The difference has nothing to do with assigning a degree of responsibility to the victim. We do not have this same concept for assault, which is an obviously more analogous crime. The “degrees” of assault describe the amount of bodily damage inflicted.

@Deeg

If I understand it correctly she invited men to her room and encouraged them to get drunk (by playing beer pong). It seems to me that she should be somewhat responsible for what happened afterwards.

You are just not ever going to convince me that having a party in my room would make me “partially responsible” for any subsequent sexual assault. By this thinking, I’d have been raped a hundred times. The thought is chilling.

[lexi]

@Deeg

If I understand it correctly she invited men to her room and encouraged them to get drunk (by playing beer pong). It seems to me that she should be somewhat responsible for what happened afterwards.

At conferences, often there are room parties and hospitality suites. Even if this was not a normal part of a conference, inviting someone to your room is not an invitation to grab a woman’s crotch.