"Predominantly" feels weird in that sentence. Oh well, it's permanent now.
Maybe if it read "predominantly to" instead of "to predominantly"?
Anyway, "Don't work on the obvious sexism until you've taken care of the astounding racism" may not be an ideal strategy.
I'm gonna go with "six months is absurdly short even if he was a transgendered African-American undocumented migrant" for this one.
Now to read the link.
Response 1: If judges are so stupid that they can't figure out why people are signing that recall petition, maybe they shouldn't be judges.
Response 2: Unfortunately, a lot of people signing on probably do just want across the board sentencing increases, even for those defendants who are already being dealt with pretty harshly.
That's how you can tell I'm a Gemini I guess.
Both parts of 5 are more right than wrong. Are there sentencing guidelines in the United States? Federally? In individual states? I personally don't regard sentencing guideline as an unalloyed positive (/irony) but what politico-legal environment is this guy working in?
I shared this story about a shorter-than-recommended sentence in the other place because the judge there is a relative of mine. My dad was reminiscing about walking through the two opposing protests where he was burned in effigy after, which unlike the Stanford case is perhaps a sign he was doing something right. This relative stepped down from being a full-time federal judge so he could choose not to take any case that might force him to apply mandatory minimums for drug crimes. I think we can complain about specific decisions without wanting to do away with judicial discretion completely!
But I also think it's not JUST racism at play here. It's a lot of biases all tied up in one conventionally attractive Stanford sportsbro package.
I've got to head to work but that article, aaaargh. It's a perfect liberal viral meme article with a couple context free references to the rates of incarceration by race, some cock stroking about his profession, and protest sign worthy lines like "keeping human beings in cages because we don't like how they've behaved." Thank god his byline told us how cool he is by noting he's not just a full time lawyer but also a part time DJ.
There's a real and productive conversation to be had about incarceration and sentencing, but not with that asshole.
7. As ever, where Americans mostly see race, Europeans mostly see class. I do understand that these considerations overlap massively, but...
You have conversations with the asshole you have.
9: I think class is a better proxy for the problem than race in this case, sure.
That link is infuriating, especially the part where he can't attribute the attack to Turner directly: "a young woman whose life was destroyed by an utterly senseless and selfish act because she happened to go to a party with her sister." With maximal lack of charity, I'm reading it as a continuation of Turner's defense, and an attempt to get people to talk about anything but that case, that judge, and that rapist.
This guy is a criminal defense attorney and is saying more or less what other defense attorneys I know are. To wit: "So you won't find defense lawyers like me cheering Brock Turner's escape from appropriate consequences. We see it as a grim reminder of the brokenness of the system. We recognize it as what makes the system impossible for many of our clients to trust or respect. And we know that when there's a backlash against mercy and lenient sentences - when cases like this or the "affluenza" kid inspire public appetite for longer sentences - it's not the rich who pay the price. It's the ones who never saw much mercy to begin with."
Oops, link didn't work: http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/brock-turner-the-sort-of-defendant-who-is-spared-severe-impact/10288
6 The federal sentencing guidelines are more rigid than most states. I don't know what California's system is like, but I'm not hearing that this sentence was impermissible under state law. (The ranchers sent to jail in Oregon which touched off the VanillaISIS thing earlier this year went back to jail after a successful government appeal of an impermissibly light federal sentence.)
"VanillaISIS" is still the best name ever.
oudemia's link is better, if I'm in the business of judging all links now.
Anyway, if I'm asked to sign a recall petition I'll probably sign it, and who knows maybe a campaign will prove he's a good judge who just made a momentary lapse in judgment.
My link did work the first time! What a dope I am!
I admit to a gut reaction that recalling judges for inappropriately short sentences is not a road you want to go down, though obviously this was a ridiculous sentence. The right recourse is to make wildly low sentences appealable bu the State (I'm still not sure whether this one is or not). And to fix the county's probation office, which recommended the sentence in the first place. The probation office is not a judicial office and can certainly be given some "don't recommend six months for comvicted rapists" guidelines.
I'd also be tempted to sign a petition for/vote to recall the judge, on the theory that this is something that California law (stupidly) allows so why not do it here. But a lousy sentencing decision, particularly a too-low one, feels like something I really wouldn't want to have to explain why I supported in one case but not another. Judges, even very good ones, make shitty horrible decisions that impact people's lives in bad ways all the time, and having a particular bad decision subject a judge to recall if but only if it goes viral on the internet seems ... bad.
My real worry with a recall is that whoever else goes up will be worse. Also, I think you'd need to show a pattern for the recalled judge to be convincing and I don't think anyone will do the research for that prior to putting out a petition.
There have been a couple of judges recalled* in Nebraska. I think it has generally resulted in a useful correction. I'm not finding anything on google about this, probably because my memory is going back to when the internet was barely a thing, but I think one guy lost for fixing a speeding ticket for his son and another guy for being part of a majority that forced the retrial for every second degree murderer in the state. There were a couple of other guys (racist utterance in open court, drunk driving followed by "do you know who I am?"), but I don't recall for certain if they lost.
* That is, failed to get a majority in a retention election.
I don't know what California's system is like, but I'm not hearing that this sentence was impermissible under state law.
I saw something somewhere saying that it was a downward deviation from a guideline; not a violation of law, but the judge had to find that there were exculpatory factors. But I'd have to look around to confirm that to be accurate.
The right recourse is to make wildly low sentences appealable by the State (I'm still not sure whether this one is or not). And to fix the county's probation office, which recommended the sentence in the first place.
Are either of these things practically possible? What steps would people need to take to bring them about?
Actually, the drunk driving one was far stupider than "Do you know who I am?" The arresting officer did know who he was and offered to drive the judge home rather than arrest him. The judge was only arrested after refusing the ride home and insisting he was going to continue driving on his own.
Also, I think you'd need to show a pattern for the recalled judge to be convincing
I know what you mean, but I think I'd want to look into his record and be upset if there wasn't a pattern. I would hate to recall a judge for being generally a big softy on sentencing: if what happened here is that this judge hands out eighteen-month sentences for first-degree murder... yeah, I guess it's a problem but I'm a little conflicted about locking anyone up for anything, and recalling someone for being too merciful bothers me.
OTOH, if the judge's sentencing practices are generally conventional, but the prospect of ruining a cute blond Stanford athlete's life over something as trivial as raping a woman who, after all, was drunk, was traumatic enough for him to justify a deviation from his general practices... then I want him off the bench.
24 - the first one may in fact be true in this case right now, and I could probably tell you if I weren't lazy. The second is something that (for real) could be done with strongly worded letters plus meetings from anti-rape activists in Santa Clara County to the probation office, probably best done with the support of a county supervisor. Boring regular advocacy politics.
25: That's amazing. Having been told by an agent of the state that his who-i-am-ness was powerful enough to get out of a DUI, he concluded it (alcohol is a hell of a drug) that it was also sufficient to get out of vehicular homicide.
Maybe he knew the officer was a shitty driver.
I'm not even a little bit of a criminal lawyer, but I think the California rule is that sentencing guidelines generally aren't mandatory, but a sentence is non-appealable if it falls within a statutorily-prescribed range. So judges have more discretion than in the federal system bit a strong incentive tonstay within guidelines. I'm not sure if this rule applies to this sentence and whether or not it varied from whatever set-by-law penalties existed for the crime. I know that prison overcrowding has put lots of pressure in the system to reduce the new inmate population and suspect that was at least part of what was driving the probation office here.
26: I'm not conflicted about locking people up in general, but I take your point. The details of this case do not strike me as at all supportive of leniency.
I've signed.
The judge was captain of the Stanford lacrosse team in his day, and it seems pretty clear that he just doesn't think people in his demographic should end up in prison. After all, it might have a severe impact on them! His other comments strongly suggest that he doesn't really accept that the guy was guilty in any morally meaningful way, presumably again because being a Stanford athlete just excludes that a priori.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/stanford-sexual-assault-judge-recall?
So, Persky is only qualified to be a judge if the whole point of the system is not what we like to think (that whole 'justice' thing) but simply keeping as many young black males as possible under lockdown -- under the worst possible conditions, so that to send anyone else there would obviously be inhumane. Which I'm really starting to think is the case.
I agree that US prison sentences are mostly ludicrously long, but that's unlikely to change as long as middle class white people believe, correctly, that the system doesn't apply to them.
This judge needs to have his career utterly destroyed. I find it implausible that if he gets booted that other judges won't understand what he did wrong, but maybe they all eat lead paint chips in California.
That is a pretty damning article.
The judge also implied that because the swimmer was intoxicated at the time of the attack, he should be treated differently than a sober defendant.
"There is less moral culpability attached to the defendant who is ... intoxicated," the judge said. . . .
The judge seemed to show some sympathy to Turner's perspective. "I take him at his word that subjectively that's his version of his events. ... I'm not convinced that his lack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him," he said.
Dauber said she was further shocked to see Persky minimize the significance of the guilty verdicts, which came from a jury of eight men and four women. The judge said at sentencing: "A trial is a search for the truth. It's an imperfect process."
Persky also appeared to rely heavily on letters that Turner's friends and family sent and read an excerpt from a former classmate who told the judge she couldn't believe the assault allegations.
"To me that just rings true," the judge said. "It sort of corroborates the evidence of his character up until the night of this incident, which has been positive."
The letter in question, however, includes a lengthy rant that places blame on the woman for being attacked: "I'm sure she and Brock had been flirting at this party and decided to leave together ... I don't think it's fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn't remember anything but the amount she drank. ... Where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn't always because people are rapists."
"My client was driving while intoxicated, but because he was drunk, there is less moral culpability attached."
Although my first instinct was toward outrage, having thought about this matter for a few days I don't think I'm going to sign the recall petition. I agree that the sentence was way too light, and the judge's expressed reasoning was outrageous, but I am resistant to the idea of recalling judges that have acted within the perimeters of the law, especially when the result is greater leniency in sentencing. A not-insignificant percentage of judges I have been before have made decisions at some point during a case that I have considered totally wrong and sometimes pretty fucked up. I wouldn't advocate recalling them on that basis, especially if the decision doesn't result in greater harm to a party before the court.
I'm also uneasy about this because public shaming and internet freak-outs in general make me uncomfortable. We're all outraged by this one bad decision by this one judge, but the problem is not that this one kid got off easy, it's that the judicial system and people in general devalue the experiences and the lives of the poor, the disadvantaged, and minorities. Freaking out about a single judge who felt sorry for a privileged white Stanford athlete is understandable -- I freaked out, and it felt great -- but it doesn't address the problem and it lets everyone else off way too easy.
Aristotle has a firm way with that one in N.E. III.5.
I figured, but I left my copy at home.
I'm guessing he'd not apply the argument that chemically altered states reduce moral culpability to a black person that committed a murder while high on crack.
I figured, but I left my copy at home.
I wonder if the judge felt, either sincerely or cynically (I can picture the smirk), that the reduced moral culpability logically followed from the idea that an intoxicated victim can't consent. An intoxicated perpetrator can't violate consent! Everyone is equally incapacitated and it's all Carnival. I'm honestly more horrified by the "jurisprudence can't get us to perfect truth"/"but this obviously cockeyed bullshit letter by an idiot 'rings true'" part.
I'm just going to make the general point that: a system of harsh penalties that are ever only applied to those with no power is never going to change.
Seconding lurid at 43, but I bet there was no smirk. No, all judges make mistakes; and some mistakes are open only to judges so marinated in classism, sexism, and racism that to them it just looks like the natural moral order.
I signed the petition too. Letting rich privileged white male douchebags off easy has always been a feature of our messed up judicial system, and there's no positive trend toward lighter sentencing revealed when a former (white male) jock gives preferential treatment to a current (white male) jock.
I read the letter from the friend (http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turners-friend-pens-letter-of-support.html) and the father and both made me want to vomit. Anyone who finds those in any way truthful, compelling, or at minimum not morally repulsive does not have the necessary judgment or value system to serve as a judge.
26: I meant a pattern of leniency in exceptional cases, not across the board.
MADD used to sit in courtrooms, and write down whenever a judge found a defendant not guilty on a DUI charge, or when a sentence was too light.
Then, they would try to block the judges from reappointment.
Do you think that impacts a judge's decision in a close case?
Wasn't that in the newspaper, back when there were newspapers?
If this judge is recalled, the next judge is much more inclined to convict in close call cases and to err on the side of harsher sentences. As was point out above, the people who pay the price can less afford it.
I would prefer to be outraged at the harsh sentences to the black kid.
California's laws are crazy, but I don't think we've reached the point of out of jurisdiction signatures on online petitions triggering a recall.
Do we live in an alternative universe where rapists all routinely bear the consequences of their actions, except for the lamentable exception of this one Stanford guy? Because I wasn't paying attention when we crossed over.
50
I would be absolutely fine if wealthy frat boys were to get harsher sentences for crimes. Rape is horrendously under prosecuted and under sentenced, especially when committed by UMC white men.
As was point out above, the people who pay the price can less afford it.
These arguments are starting to annoy me because they're completely excising the seriousness of rape as a violent crime. I'd be upset if anyone got 6 months for violent sexual assault (which could have ended up much worse than it did, given that he was stopped in the middle), and that's pretty fundamental to this issue. Violent sex crimes need to be punished with sentences appropriate to the crime, regardless of the identity of anyone involved. It is not a progressive argument to argue a black man raping a white woman should also get 6 months. Inappropriately light sentences sends a chilling message to all women that, even if against all odds they can get a conviction, their rapist will basically walk free, and sends a message to men that they can get away with rape. If men are routinely getting 6 months for violent sexual assault, then damn right judges need to think harder about giving longer sentences.
It's not as if this sentence were somehow unrelated to disproportionate sentences for blacks, or just an awkward coincidence. The judge's comments make it very clear that he views the defendant as member of an in-group who are ex hypothesi just not really criminal, ever, and that he takes this to be a normal and obvious way of looking at things. (Remember, it might impact his life! Oh noes!) Good luck getting justice for the stipulatively criminal out-group with him on the bench.
54: This isn't "all rapists." He was caught in the act by third-party witnesses who had no connection to perpetrator or victim. That's not even remotely typical for any crime. I think it is reasonable to say that rapists caught in public by independent witnesses routinely are punished for their actions, yes.
The judge's comment that he was unlikely to offend again was the most chilling part of all of this, given that studies show that on college campuses, rapists have an average of 6 victims. Brock may not rape another woman now, but if he hasn't raped other women in the past, he very likely would have continued to assault unconscious women at his frat. The horrible victim blaming statements by the father and friend make abundantly clear that they think assaulting an unconscious woman is the woman's fault for being a slutty drunk whore, and I imagine Brock had a similar mindset.
You don't have to imagine. His statement is online now. He says he's sorry, says he's been punished already (no scholarship, sads), and then blames "party culture."
If men are routinely getting 6 months for violent sexual assault, then damn right judges need to think harder about giving longer sentences.
So how much time should a rapist get?
Havent we learned that the idea that incredibly long prison sentences dont really deter crime? (Other than prevent that particular person from raping again.)
In Virginia, if you have a trial by a jury, the mandatory minimum for rape is 5 years. So a jury has to give at least five years.
I will also play the asshole lawyer and point out that he wasn't convicted of rape. His convictions: assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. (Obviously all bad things.)
His convictions: assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.
I'm having a hard time understanding how those things, taken together, don't add up to rape.
Are either of these things practically possible? What steps would people need to take to bring them about?
I assume here in the kingdom of the ballot initiative, all is possible. Don't want to pay taxes? Ballot initiative! Want to change sentencing? Ballot initiative!
It's obviously rape, in the standard, non-technical sense of the word. Does California law have a particularly restrictive definition of the word "rape", perhaps limiting it to PiV?
Per the victim's statement, the foreign object was pine needles. That party culture again.
He was not convicted of the crime of rape. I suspect California, like most laws limits it to PiV.
Those are all violent felonies, but also I suspect do not carry as lengthy sentences (or sentencing guidelines) as the crime of rape. Just wanted to point it out when we compare convictions.
I find myself going back and forth between the gut response of "this is an egregious inequity so throw away the key" and "this is an egregious inequity but [giant mass of half-formed, conflicted stuff about punishment, rehabilitation, blah, etc]" but FWIW, registering as a sex offended really will fuck the rest of his life in a way that should be of some solace to those more on the throw away the key side. His rich family will shield him from the worst things registering does to people, like becoming homeless when all the section 8 housing is too close to a school, but he's not going to have the life he was going to before he did this.
I generally lean toward the idea that recall campaigns are unlikely to succeed and primarily valuable as signaling. I think both are true in this case. Yes, it's a crude signal but in this case there has been enough publicity that I think on balance the message to other judges is a semi-accurate one.
On a semi-related note, our conservative state legislature did something good (House overwhelmingly passed a bill expanding statue of limitations for clergy sex-abuse victims; Senate looks somewhat likely to support) and the church has hit back hard:
Legislators expressed outrage this week after they said they had been named by priests at Mass, in church bulletins or in some other way rebuked by the Catholic Church for supporting a bill that would let child sex-abuse victims sue individuals and private institutions decades after the abuse occurred.
Worth reading the full article. The "best" is when the Church spokesman says that parishioners are concerned about the new law. I so wish the reporter had asked him about parishioners who were relieved/excited about it. Dude, you have people sitting in your pews today who were abused in your name. Nice job continuing to erase their experiences.
The judge's comment that he was unlikely to offend again was the most chilling part of all of this, given that studies show that on college campuses, rapists have an average of 6 victims.
Yeah, I had this same thought -- that this guy, demographically, is precisely who I'd expect to be a serial rapist if he was a rapist at all. Six months and on the sex offender registry might be enough to scare him straight, but if I heard about a college athlete who raped a drunk woman at a party, my assumption would be that he'd do the same thing again any time he had the opportunity, and would be actively seeking out opportunities.
Which really made me think ill of the judge: if he's looking at this kid, and thinking "Oh, sure, maybe he had sex with this one woman when she wasn't exactly conscious, but he's not the kind of person who'd rape someone on purpose," he seems to me to be thinking in a culpably stupid way about the rapist.
69:
Didn't we have some discussion on the topic of are these rapists sociopaths for whom the only prevention is preventing their opportunity or are they otherwise "normal" guys who simply need to watch the video on how consent is like tea?
Also "Don't have sex with unconscious women!" seems to miss the mark. WTF!!?!? Do we need to tell people "Don't murder people!"???
Perhaps better is "having sex with a really drunk woman is a very bad idea!" (As an aside, a female friend told me today that her husband would never have sex if he didn't have sex with a drunk woman.
68: You probably saw this already. Disgusting.
We've certainly had this conversation lots. I'm not going to diagnose anyone with a mental illness, particularly one I don't understand much at all, so who knows about sociopath. But I don't believe in the existence of any substantial number of men who would honestly believe that having sex with a passed-out woman on the ground behind a dumpster was not an objectionable thing to do, and given that this guy knew to take off running when he was interrupted by Swedes on bicycles, I'm sure that he didn't have that belief.
Also "Don't have sex with unconscious women!" seems to miss the mark. WTF!!?!? Do we need to tell people "Don't murder people!"???
That's what this guy did; she was passed out, if I understand the story correctly, when the Swedes interrupted. I feel pretty comfortable saying that the rapist knew what he was doing was raping her, and that he was not confused about consent.
And the trolling about how your female friend prefers to have sex when she's tipsy seems out of place.
So he both gets to benefit from the testimony of character witnesses like his father and a high school friend about how he'd never done anything like this (in high school? that's for hardcore sociopaths), AND he gets points for being young and having his whole life before him. Excellent timing, bro.
For the record, I haven't signed any petitions because I don't feel entitled to slacktivist warm fuzzies when there are arguably real and solid things I could do, AND it doesn't seem like it will be more than symboiic. I am in favor of this judge's idiocy being widely publicized, though. I am also in favor of Stanford cleaning house, although not sure if I can do much to help that effort at this point.
Some enterprising journalist should look into this judge's time at college. Given how much sympathy he seems to have for college athlete rapists, and that he was captain of the Lacrosse team at Stanford, you gotta figure one of his college buddies was a rapist.
76.1 was in conversation with 69-70, roughly speaking.
I don't know if we need to guess about full-blown sociopathy, given how much Turner's circle of intimates seems to believe that sexual assault just isn't possible in the presence of alcohol. I'm sure he has long since convinced himself that he didn't do the things he really did, and that his cover story is true.
will, I can't figure out if you're trolling or not. If you have a coherent point beyond trying to draw people out (or, I guess, beyond maintaining that sexual assault is a legal and ethical minefield, which I assure you we all know), I'm not seeing it.
That's what this guy did; she was passed out, if I understand the story correctly, when the Swedes interrupted. I feel pretty comfortable saying that the rapist knew what he was doing was raping her, and that he was not confused about consent.
And the trolling about how your female friend prefers to have sex when she's tipsy seems out of place.
LB: I think you are misreading me.
Ive seen a bunch of responses from people saying "Don't have sex with unconscious people." My point is that is a stupid thing to say as nobody should think that is ok. aka we dont need to educate anyone for them to know that it absolutely wrong.
On the other hand, we do need to educate people about the spectrum of having sex with a tipsy/drunk person to having sex with someone incapable of consent.
That line can shift quickly so it is REALLY important to stay far away from that line.
And to be clear, in this case, she was unconscious so I am not referring to this particular case.
The having the presence of mind to run away when spotted bit really does seem to clinch it, in terms whether he knew that he was doing something wrong.
A creative lawyer would have claimed that he had a pathological phobia of Swedes.
What threw me was your characterization of the topic as 'these rapists', which I took to include Brock Turner. Educating people about subtleties of when apparent consent is invalid in the presence of intoxication seems inapplicable to what he did, given that he was raping an unconscious woman. She got that way by drinking, but there wasn't anything to have educated Turner about beyond "Don't rape unconscious people."
And I do think that it's still a necessary message to send, because the judge doesn't seem to have really internalized it; he seems to have treated the rape as less severe because the victim's unconsciousness was brought about by drinking.
I don't know if we need to guess about full-blown sociopathy, given how much Turner's circle of intimates seems to believe that sexual assault just isn't possible in the presence of alcohol.
Im a fan of those consent/tea videos. I think the mindset shift is still important that super-tipsy = incapable of consent. That was the point I was trying to make. The line isn't unconscious. It is at super drunk.
Also! Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol. Yeah there's no alcohol or drugs in the midwest.
83:
His defense was "she shifted from super drunk (aka capable of consent) to unconscious during this "sex act."
My point is that is a bad framing. (Good for lawyer, but wrong place to put the line.)
Super drunk was already beyond the line where consent could be had so we don't really care when she passed out.
So the talk about "Don't have sex with the unconsciousness" is counterproductive and places the line way too far away. That shouldnt even need to be said.
But addressing what you said with the understanding that you didn't mean it to have anything to do with the crime Brock Turner committed: eh. I think there is actually an overemphasis on rape as a problem of confusing, blurry situations where decent people make tragic mistakes. Most decent people, as far as I'm aware, don't think of 'not raping anyone' as a difficult or confusing problem -- it's not that confusing situations don't arise, but what's confusing about them is more 'can you be absolutely certain the rapist was acting with bad intent' rather than 'can you imagine an ordinarily decent person making that kind of mistake without knowing they were acting wrongly.'
I think the vast majority of rapes are committed by people who meant to do exactly what they did: I'm not saying there's no one ever who believed that they were having sex with a consenting partner and found out after the fact that they were wrong, but I don't think that situation is common enough to deserve the amount of attention it gets.
I had not seen the flyer linked in 73. Beyond revolting, although that Twitter thread is doing yeoman's work in really spelling out all of its disgusting implications.
I raised the sociopath issue bc if they are simply looking for helplessness then no education of them will ever help. We need to focus on educating others to watch for predatory behavior. Looking out for people preying on the drunk. "Hey get away from her." the peer pressure/peer protection. And recognition that your friend preying on the drunk is a sociopath, not just a good guy who made a "20 minute error in judgment."
87: I agree mostly with what you say.
"I think the vast majority of rapes are committed by people who meant to do exactly what they did"
Totally agree. That is where I think the dont rape the unconscious is counter productive.
These are intentional acts preying on alcohol fueled helplessness. We need to educate others to recognize that.
86: Certainly, 'don't rape someone who, although still in a sense conscious, is so drunk that they can't protect themselves from you' is a message that should also be out there, but it's not really any more confusing or arcane than 'don't rape unconscious people.' I genuinely don't think this is an education problem, I think people like Turner are rapists intentionally, and people who think what he did wasn't that bad believe that it's okay to rape a woman if she voluntarily put herself in a position of vulnerability by getting drunk. It's not honest confusion about whether the victim consented.
But addressing what you said with the understanding that you didn't mean it to have anything to do with the crime Brock Turner committed
I was trying to address the erroneous responses to what he did. His actions are clearly wrong.
people who think what he did wasn't that bad believe that it's okay to rape a woman if she voluntarily put herself in a position of vulnerability by getting drunk. It's not honest confusion about whether the victim consented.
I dont agree. Sure, some people might think that.
But I suspect the bigger issue is people thinking she kind of sort of maybe consented or lead him to believe that there was some kind of agreement. That is where I think the biggest pushback and education needs to take place. Blurry and fuzzy = no consent.
What I'm getting huffy at you over is calling it education about consent, as if the people who support Turner honestly believe that it's plausible she actually consented and that he therefore believed he wasn't raping her. The people who support him (mostly. It's a big world, and there's going to be someone confused about anything possible) don't think she consented to the sex in the sense that they actually believe she wanted him to do the things he did to her as he was doing them. They just think that it's okay to rape a woman who's drunk enough that she can't get away from the guy who's raping her; if she cared about not getting raped, she wouldn't have gotten that drunk.
I mean, I suppose you could call the process of changing people's minds about that 'education', but it's more like converting someone from one political position to another. In this case, people mostly have all the information they need.
I'm going to bet that far more people think it is a little fuzzy confusing line than people who think it's OK to rape a woman because she's voluntarily incapacitated
I'm huffy about bringing up education because that's what the rapist and his dad said the rapist was going to educate kids so they don't have the problem he did.
So the people that saw them walk out of the party all thought she deserves whatever she got ? I don't believe that for a second . I call it education because not enough people saw them walk out and said " The guy walking out of the party with that super drunk girl is going to intentionally Rape her "
That's what I want people to ask about. I want people to stop that when they see it Because they know that he's not just a little confused about whether she can consent
I'd say that far more people will say that it's confusing than will say that drunk women are fair game for rape. But what makes me convinced that that position is insincere is exactly cases like this. He was raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, and was aware of what he was doing enough to run when he got caught. And his friends, and his father, and the judge, still pulled out the same blurred lines crappy argument.
You think there's a sharp distinction between unconscious=everyone knows that's rape, and merely on the brink of passing out=hard problem that requires education. But in real life, the same people who will defend a rapist who raped a woman who was conscious but too drunk to resist, will also defend Brock Turner. The people who think there's plausibly consent in the first case, think that literally being passed out drunk is plausibly consent. They don't need to be educated about facts, they need to change their minds about whether it's permissible to rape drunk women.
I expect (still) that Bernie will endorse and will do so immediately following the meeting with Obama, but if he doesn't there's not really a parallel with 2008, and he will be actively hurting both the party, its downticket races, and the Presidential campaign. That's already happened to date with coordinated campaigns, which is why Obama wants him out (which, again, I think he will do). Money and time and volunteers are key in politics and Bernie is costing the party all of those right now. How big a deal is this? Hard to say, right now, not much of one, if it keeps going for weeks or longer and the convention is disrupted, it's a bigger deal. The prize here is Congress, not just the Presidency.
In 2008 Clinton endorsed Obama enthusiastically (not just perfunctorily) within 4 days of it being clear that she'd lost the superdelegate+pledged delegate count, and in a much closer primary, where she had won the majority of the "popular" primary vote and there was at least some question about the way in which the rules for the Florida/Michigan primaries were working. It's reasonably to expect that as a bare minimum of cooperation, and to call the guy as an asshole if he doesn't play along. But, as expected, the usual sources are sticking with their guy, because emotional investment.
Certainly, though, I totally agree that educating bystanders to intervene is a great idea. If all the people whose views on rape are sane were aware and willing to intervene when they saw something disturbing going on, like a guy walking a staggering-drunk woman out of a party, that'd be a huge help.
Also, it may be my puritanism, but the link in 85 (in concert with everything else) convinced me that Turner is a brazen lying shit who enjoys getting away with whatever he can get away with. Something about the wealth of detail, and the jaw-dropping shamelessness of lying about drinking when one of his character witnesses pointed out that he was always nice when he was drunk as a teenager.
From what I know the main benefit of education in these sorts of cases is that it's a straightforward way to send a message to rapists that they really can't assume that everyone will cover for them anymore, and that if they do cross that line they'll have done it in a way people do recognize as unambiguous rather than 'blurred lines' or whatever nonsense people use to excuse men they know who do stuff like that ("...but don't, like, jump out of bushes at strangers I mean so..").
So it has more to do with closing off (supposed) loopholes or escape routes than actually educating people in any real way. It's the "no actually those jokes are not funny" education as opposed to the "here's information you didn't have before" kind. (But it's pretending to be the latter which makes it a better sell to people and probably they'll end up less defensive than they would have with the other ones.)
I will happily agree that the term closing off loopholes is better than education.
I am in favor of this judge's idiocy being widely publicized, though.
This seems 100% legit, if not necessary. I only balk a bit at the recall idea. Part of it is socialization as a lawyer, part of it is that at some point internet mobs will move from being mad at lenient sentences to scary Stanford rapists to being mad at apparently lenient sentences given to scary black men, or cases where the facts are less clearly outrageous, or whatever. We do have the power to recall judges but there's a norm of using it very sparingly, even though the requirements are fairly low -- you just need signatures equal to 20% of the number of votes cast for that judge in the last election. Since a lot of people don't vote for judges at all, that number can be quite low. Maybe recalling this guy wouldn't change that norm, but things could get really ugly if judges were routinely being recalled for unpopular decisions.
(As an aside, a female friend told me today that her husband would never have sex if he didn't have sex with a drunk woman.
More being huffy with Will: this type of joke seems to me to be a really bad idea in the context of actually talking about rape. That is, to pick it apart in a completely humorless™ fashion, the point of it is "Hey, having sex with drunk women isn't always rape! Here's a friend of mine who says that her non-rape marital sex always involves her being drunk. Boy, this whole drunken consent thing is really blurry and super confusing!"
And reinforcing the idea that it is super confusing and difficult is the reverse of the sort of education that needs to be done. I mean, there is a somewhat complicated question about whether actively expressed consent to sexual activity from an intoxicated person should be regarded as valid, and if that's the case, how intoxicated does someone have to be before their actively expressed consent isn't valid.
But there's a really, really easy question that shouldn't be confused with the complicated one. Having sex with someone who is not clearly communicating that they consent to the sex is rape, and if someone's too drunk to clearly communicate their intentions, which people on the verge of passing out will generally be, having sex with them is rape even if they're too drunk to communicate their non-consent or defend themselves. This isn't something that I think it's possible to be confused about in good faith.
Will, I don't mean to suggest you don't know all that. But the joke you told was precisely about how sometimes sex with 'drunk' women is absolutely fine, and so by implication that figuring out when it's not fine is confusing, amirite? And while I'm being humorless™, that's not funny.
Not to stir the pot, but the point that may need reinforcing with Turner's defenders and other douchebags is that consent, even if given, does not convey a property interest in someone else's body. I take some of Turner's defenders to be inferring that the victim must have been willing to engage in sexual activity with him or she wouldn't have been with him, that it was her responsibility to be clear with him if there were limits to that consent, and that it was just too complicated for poor little drunk him to figure out that she wasn't consenting to anything after she became incapacitated. That's obviously wrong and horrible, but there are a lot of poorly socialized people running around, and it's probably worth unpacking for them exactly what's wrong with every step of what Turner and his defenders have done and said.
You apparently need only 600 signatures to get the judge on a ballot with write-in opposition. More to force a special election, which would probably be a huge undertaking given I don't think there's any off year county election next year.
Also, I saw somewhere that the judge refused to talk about the case because the sentence is under appeal, so maybe there's some hope for that.
The link in 85 makes me want to give this guy the electric chair. But he's still young and stupid, so that would be wrong. He should instead spend 10 years in prison, after which he's given the opportunity to repudiate his lies and properly express remorse. If he doesn't, then it's time for the chair.
And I have zero qualms about recalling this asshole rapist judge, either.
That's "asshole, rapist", not "asshole-rapist". Probably.
I saw somewhere that the judge refused to talk about the case because the sentence is under appeal, so maybe there's some hope for that.
IIRC it's Turner rather than the state who's appealing the sentence, presumably still arguing that he shouldn't have to go to jail at all.
Huh. I wonder if that can backfire on him.
109 -- Surely judges should avoid speaking about any case they ruled on other than in the judgement itself anyway? It can't be appropriate to discuss a decision in the media.
Crazy talk. Next you'll be saying judges shouldn't be elected.
Will, I don't mean to suggest you don't know all that. But the joke you told was precisely about how sometimes sex with 'drunk' women is absolutely fine, and so by implication that figuring out when it's not fine is confusing, amirite? And while I'm being humorless™, that's not funny.
You can be huffy with me all you want. It wasn't my "joke." It was a statement made by someone who absolutely would be horribly offended by your statement that "They just think that it's okay to rape a woman who's drunk enough that she can't get away from the guy who's raping her; if she cared about not getting raped, she wouldn't have gotten that drunk."
That is a ridiculous statement that you made if you really think they think it is "okay." Of course they dont.
You paint them all with some broad brush as people who intentionally condone raping drunk women.
I was making the point that is an area where work needs to be done. But, huff away.
That was a statement I made explicitly about people who support Brock Turner. You hadn't identified your friend as one of his supporters. She is?
No time to read the thread, but has someone linked the article that says he'd been acting like a handsy creep prior to this incident?
Nope. On the night of, or that he had a general reputation that way?
I'm pretty sure I'm on Team LB here--although I've skimmed a bit to catch up--but I feel like clarifying that it's not 100% clear that "unconscious" is the right descriptor. She was blackout drunk, but blackout drunks, while obviously and clearly incapacitated, are capable of speech, walking, etc.
Maybe the Swedes testified that she was, in fact, literally unconscious*, in which case I apologize for even bringing it up, but just because she has no memory of the incident doesn't mean that she was unconscious at the time.
To be clear, this isn't in any way exculpatory: she was obviously incapable of consent, and he obviously understood that he was taking advantage of her condition. Totally a rapist, and needs to go to hell. But "unconscious" rankles in part because it suggests that, as long as the other party is talking and moving her limbs, you're in a gray zone, when in fact the line is way, way before that.
*which, am I wrong to think that means effectively in an unwakeable sleep? I.e. passed out?
Whatever she was doing clearly looked like something was wrong to the Swedes. Either passed out and lying still (which I feel like they described) or struggling.
The coverage in this case says that she was literally unconscious when the Swedes intervened -- not her recollection, obviously, but the witnesses. That's part of what's so creepy about Turner's supporters: that they're still talking about gray areas and promiscuity when there are witnesses who saw him raping a literally unconscious woman.
It's as if somebody tried to come up with the most obviously black and white case possible just to show that "+alcohol" doesn't necessarily make a case morally complicated and then nobody listened anyway.
IIRC the Swedes said she was not moving, and appeared to be unconscious.
Link to the article mentioned in 119?
Recall the fucking judge. And for all the many good reasons stated above.
Also "Don't have sex with unconscious women!" seems to miss the mark. WTF!!?!? Do we need to tell people "Don't murder people!"???
LB quoted this comment of mine and reacted.
I was fairly clearly expressing my frustration with people who felt that the message needed to get out to people that you shouldn't rape unconscious people.
There are certainly other messages that need to get out as well. But anyone who's supporting Brock Turner in this case needs to learn that it's wrong to rape unconscious people no matter how they got that way.
122-25: OK, thanks. I mostly read her statement, which obviously didn't speak to that.
It's as if somebody tried to come up with the most obviously black and white case possible just to show that "+alcohol" doesn't necessarily make a case morally complicated and then nobody listened anyway.
Yup.
But there's a really, really easy question that shouldn't be confused with the complicated one. Having sex with someone who is not clearly communicating that they consent to the sex is rape, and if someone's too drunk to clearly communicate their intentions, which people on the verge of passing out will generally be, having sex with them is rape even if they're too drunk to communicate their non-consent or defend themselves. This isn't something that I think it's possible to be confused about in good faith.
Will, I don't mean to suggest you don't know all that. But the joke you told was precisely about how sometimes sex with 'drunk' women is absolutely fine, and so by implication that figuring out when it's not fine is confusing, amirite? And while I'm being humorless™, that's not funny.
You are starting with the conclusion "She is incapable of consent" and acting as if there are many people who will reach that conclusion and say "sure, you should totally have sex with her."
Do you think there are many people who would agree with that? Of course not.
The problem is that far too many people view the line as blurry. That the situation was moving on a continuum. As I said upthread, I think it is a good idea to be reinforcing the notion that 1. the unacceptable line is "unconscious." It is super drunk. 2. the guy circling around the super drunk girl isn't operating in good faith.
127:
Do you know anyone who is supporting Brock Turner other than his friends/family who are thinking "Gosh, he treated me well so he clearly can't be a rapist!" Those people need to be roundly mocked.
Do you know anyone personally who would say "I stand with Brock"? You keep acting like I am trying to support him.
The judge, mostly, who seems to have treated the case as if the circumstances were exculpatory. His family and friends as well, in that they wrote letters that didn't just address his character generally, but talked about the circumstances of the crime as if alcohol and promiscuity made it confusing. Anyone who agrees that this case was in a grey area because of the alcohol (you can find some in a comment thread at Crooked Timber, and in other threads all over the web.)
I wish that everyone understood LB's oft made (factual) statement that false allegations are super rare. (at one people LB was discussing shifting the burden in criminal rape case.)
But. let's conduct a poll of your averaged non-Unfoggeder and then tell me that we shouldn't be loudly pushing back on the notion that this is about whether she was unconscious. Bc that is what many people think is the issue: whether she was conscious or unconscious. That is bull.
Agree or disagree:
1. You can have sex with a girl who is unconscious.
2. Sometimes both people are super drunk and have sex.
3. Sometimes both people are super drunk and have sex, and the girl falsely accuses the guy of rape.
4. When two people are both super drunk, they are equally responsible if they have sex.
5. If you get the girl drunk, she is more likely to have sex with you.
6. It is totally cool to try to get a girl drunk with you to get her to agree to sex.
7. The guy circling around the super drunk girl wants to rape her.
8. If they are both black out drunk, the man is more responsible for their actions than the woman.
The judge, mostly, who seems to have treated the case as if the circumstances were exculpatory.
Yep. That is why I asked the question about sociopaths. The presumption should be that the guy circling the drunk girl isn't acting in good faith.
To the extent that you're running into people who are saying "Sex with an unconscious person is rape. Sex with anyone who's conscious, regardless of intoxication or capacity to consent, is always fine," that's a bad message to send and they should stop. Just like you don't see people supporting Turner, however, I don't see people making that sort of statement.
You're going to have to separate out "super drunk" meaning "wow I really went wild last night oh shit is that a police radio?" and "super drunk" meaning "can't speak intelligibly or move around in a generally directed way". Because those are two very different things, and there are an awful lot of people who casually treat them as the same thing for the purposes of excusing someone who they know really is a great guy and it was all a misunderstanding you know. (And not making it is part of where the 'it's just false accusations from someone who regrets what they did' line depends on to ever get taken seriously at all).
I don't think the issue is that people think the issue is that she was unconscious. I think the issue is that even thought she was unconscious, people are still raising all of these other issues in an attempt to get or justify a lighter sentence for Turner.
136 not to will personally, but he is quite literally raising the exact same issues as the people writing letters to get Turner off are raising.
(at one people LB was discussing shifting the burden in criminal rape case.)
Without seeing the conversation, I can't be certain this is false, but if discussing means advocating, I don't think it's the sort of thing I'd be likely to have said, and I certainly don't think it's a good idea.
(you can find some in a comment thread at Crooked Timber...
At least we don't have a 30 fucking plus comment thread derailment on whether the victim has read Andrea Dworkin. Holy hell.
139: I chose not to read that particular thread. Apparently that was a wise move.
130
Do you know anyone personally who would say "I stand with Brock"? You keep acting like I am trying to support him.
I've wrote and deleted an exhaustive list of ways in which your comments look like, if you don't want to call it support, how about "acting like a defense attorney"?
That being said, when I read 132, I began thinking about my answers to those questions (I flatly disagree with 6 and agree with 7, and on the rest, I'd agree or disagree narrowly or rephrase it more carefully first, and wouldn't be at all surprised if a reasonable person read something into the question that I didn't, or vice versa...) and decided that they're bad questions. I think 124 is a good response to it. Almost anyone can make anything complicated if they want to, but that doesn't mean they should.
Yeah. That's the sort of thing that I assumed was the case from the facts of the actual rape, combined with his being a college athlete. And that makes the judge's comment that he's a low risk for reoffending so maddening.
143: I think what he meant was that he's unlikely to get caught again.
if you don't want to call it support, how about "acting like a defense attorney"?
I haven't said a single thing defending him. Ive said the opposite. But my point with the questions is that a whole lot of people make this complicated. If you phrased those questions in those ways, they think of it as blurry. We shouldn't want that.
So, in this thread, I have repeatedly suggested simplifying this in people's minds.
But, somehow I get accused of providing cover for Brock.
Also, you flatly disagree with "It is totally cool to try to get a girl drunk with you to get her to agree to sex."
What percentage of the population agrees with you?
I don't think you've been providing cover for Brock, exactly: while I've been huffy about your comments, your rhetorical goal with them seems confusing to me.
Where I've been coming down hard is that this particular case, Brock Turner, is easy and clear cut: she was unconscious, and his state of mind was clear enough about the wrongness of what he was doing that he fled from the intervening bystanders. Anyone who's bringing up how alcohol makes everything so confusing and hookup culture and promiscuity and it's all a gray area, in response to this case specifically, is either really confused about the facts of this case, or is arguing in bad faith because there is some level on which they believe, even if they won't say it out straight, that raping someone is all right if the reason they can't stop you is because they got voluntarily drunk.
I've definitely met people who view drunkenness not as a grey area but as a...a legitimately exploitable thing? Like even if you know that someone is too drunk to be able to consent, or too drunk for consent to be anything more than a drooly, slurred "yeah", well....they consented! Like "consent" is a magic phrase that you can trick out of someone and once you've tricked it out of them you can do whatever you want.
It is for this reason that I am somewhat skeptical about the "grey area" logic. I think it's often not so much a "well, we're both tipsy, she seems into it but on the other hand people are often into things when they are tipsy that they would not be into when they are sober, what to do" as a situation where the the drunknenness is an opportunity to get a grey-area yes. Someone who would say that it's wrong to have sex with a woman who is passed out and who fears getting turned down by a sober woman will maintain that drunkenness is a grey area not because it's confusing but because it's an opportunity for arbitrage.
Yes, exactly, and better put than I have been putting it.
With the addition that people will take that position on behalf of third-parties as well; that a possibly-extracted slurred "Yeah" (no way to prove it wasn't said, or that the guy didn't believe it was said) from someone too drunk to function is legitimate consent because a voluntarily drunk person is fair game.
drunkenness is a grey area not because it's confusing but because it's an opportunity for arbitrage.
"Buy when high, sell when low."
Stupid joke not meant to imply any disagreement with Frowner. IMO the whole "grey area" thing is such bullshit. It's perfectly obvious when someone is drunk and into what's happening, and when someone is drunk and not really into what's happening. Crystal clear to any moderately sensitive observer. The notion that there's a grey area just gives license to date rapists to err on the side of rape, particularly youngish teen or college ones who can sort of plausibly claim that they didn't know what was going on.
Flipflopping merrily, there is a weird area, at least in terms of how we talk about these things, in terms of what Frowner called and I did too, further above, 'tipsiness'. Like, there's some well-meant anti-rape rhetoric that says that it's impossible to validly consent to sex if you're affected by alcohol at all, and I do think that rhetoric confuses people, because there's certainly a level of having had a few drinks where people very commonly have consensual sex, and everyone, although maybe in some sense drunk, is capable of consenting and communicating consent. And you're right, at that level, it's no harder to tell the difference between consent and non-consent than it is if everyone's sober.
That rhetoric is, I think, confusing, and terrible people exploit it in bad faith to claim that they can't tell the difference between someone who is drunk enough to be singing all the verses of "The Bold Fenian Men", but sober enough to remember the words, and someone who's slurring and can't keep their eyes open or control their movements. Everyone does successfully distinguish between those two levels of drunkenness in practice, but people often fail to when talking about the issue.
Right, totally agree with 152. It doesn't take anything more than 100% standard reasonable powers of human observation to distinguish between someone who is tipsy and maybe making an objectively bad decision but with full consciousness of it and someone who is so drunk to be incapable of consent (or who is drunk and actually not consenting).
It seems prospective jurors in the judge's next trial are expressing an unwillingness to serve in his court. Given that his sentencing pretty severely undercut the prior jury's multiple convictions I can understand their reluctance to make a personal investment of time and effort in a trial with him presiding. Also was heartened to see that the friend who victim-blamed in a letter supporting leniency is seeing bookings yanked for her band.
Hopefully we are living through a significant shift in collective understanding on the consent issues ably elucidated by LB, frowner and others here, and I've got a pretty high tolerance for some of the personal and professional ramifications being suffered by the judge, victim-blaming friend, etc.
Sounds like the judge has some history of being very lenient towards men committing violent crimes against women. Another anecdote obviously doesn't make a full sample, and maybe this guy's got some good rulings, too, but really I'm not a bit sorry to see him suffer some consequences.
I guess Smearcase wasn't kidding in 62: overturning Citizens United ("this measure has no binding legal force") is going on the ballot this fall. I'm sorry to all of you in advance if it fails and you're still stuck with Citizens United. We try our level best.
I was pissed that Jerry let that nonbinding nonsense on the ballot. Now the whole state can act like the Berkeley City Council. Maybe we also have some nonbinding views on East Timor, Honduras, or Bolivia we can share.
Now the whole state can act like the Berkeley City Council.
Just about my initial reaction verbatim. Maybe everyone's reaction. Coastal enclave hive mind.
The judge does sort of look like Vizzini so maybe this is all some higher order logic he's using to generate a nationwide conversation about rape culture and thus prevent future rapes.
Anyway, if Brock does re-offend I know that legally the judge has no culpability but he should really feel like a dick if it does happen.
Hey, now, the Berkeley City Council got the styrofoam ban right, so there's that. I never really understood why they had a foreign policy, though.
155 really does put a different perspective on the recall question, though.
A thing that makes 152 trickier for me personally is that it's essentially impossible for me to get to the latter kind of drunk (that makes consent impossible) because I'd puke long long before (which would sober me up). So that makes it harder for me to understand what the latter state is like. Now I still don't think I'd have too much actual trouble telling the difference between those levels of drunk in other people in practice, but I'm not totally sure since I really don't know much at all about the latter type. That's especially true when you start factoring in blacking out (i.e. conscious, but also not remembering in the morning), which I again can't do, but some people can. And blacked out but only moderately impaired really is a genuinely weird gray area. And all of these things (serious impairment, blackout) I only vaguely understand because they don't happen to me, so I'm not all that confident in my ability to really understand them in other people.
re: 152/153
As per the 'tea' illustration of consent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ
I'm not an doctor, but I'm pretty sure blacking out while only moderately impaired is a bad sign. Blacking out while wildly impaired isn't a good sign as far as indicating that you're drinking too much, of course. But you'll be sober in the morning or early afternoon. However, if you blackout without drinking that much, your brain might have just decided to give up because fuck you for sending in too much alcohol too often.
162 was me, commenting through my RSS reader, where I'm apparently not logged in.
I think 162 depends on what you drink.
I drink beer or wine, so yeah, usually I'll start feeling nauseous long before I get really heavily drunk. I'll certainly talk a lot of crap, and may have slightly lower inhibitions or be capable of doing slightly more stupid things than sober, but I won't basically ever be drunk enough that my movement would be noticeably altered, or I'd be in danger of passing out.*
But I think it'd be pretty easy to get much drunker than expected if you were drinking cocktails or spirits, where you might have a couple of moderate sized fairly sugary drinks, and have consumed a TON of units of alcohol.
* where by passing out, I don't just mean falling asleep because I'm chronically sleep deprived.
164: Didn't we have a thread in TFA where we discussed our personal ordering of severe impairment, memory loss, and puking, and people had almost all orderings?
I don't recall that. As for puking and severe impairment, I agree with 166.2. I've only been blackout drunk once in my life, as far as I can recall not recalling.
Well, I get drunk enough that my movement is noticeably altered pretty easily, but that's because I'm really clumsy and have a bad limp that requires continual concentration to avoid showing. But I won't pass out or come close.
I don't recall that
I guess memory loss was first on the list for you.
falling asleep because I'm chronically sleep deprived.
I've been running into this one even sober. Yeesh.
re: 171
I was in the pub a couple of months back with a few friends, and we met a bunch of other local people they knew through parent networking. Was sitting talking to a guy whose daughter is in xelA's nursery class, and I fell asleep, mid sentence. I imagine he thought I was drunk, but I think I was only mid way through my second beer.
162 et seq.: This is a little odd sounding to me -- I get that you've never been terribly drunk yourself, but have you never been around people who were terribly drunk? I'm not going to say always and everyone, but pretty reliably, someone who is drunk enough to be close to passing out is fairly obvious to an outside observer, even one who's pretty drunk themselves. They're incoherent -- might respond appropriately to being spoken to if you made an effort to attract their attention, but can't sustain a conversation. They're not in normal control of body movements -- eyes aren't tracking normally, body posture is slumped, they're clumsy when they are moving. They're probably falling asleep off and on, and needing to be awakened. Someone in a state like that, you might not know what it feels like from inside if you haven't been that drunk, but it's pretty grossly apparent that they're not functioning properly. College parties, I tended to be a more alert and functional drunk than than average, and there was definitely an end of party stage that involved identifying people who needed help getting to bed, and hauling the bodies (not yet passed out, but heading their) off to someplace they'd wake up reasonably comfortably (that is, their own rooms for people who lived where the party was, or empty couches otherwise).
Blacking out is more complicated, certainly. In my heaviest-drinking years, college and the Peace Corps, I probably didn't ever get drunk more than a couple of times a month (that is, one weekend night only, and not every weekend.) But contra Moby in 164, I definitely had memory loss on nights where I was drunk, but not passing out -- never quite figured out the difference between getting drunk and remembering the whole night, and getting drunk and losing the last half of it. It didn't seem to be about being significantly drunker, but I never identified a trigger. But I do get concerned about people saying that being blackout drunk should be obvious to a bystander, because I don't think it necessarily was on me.
re: 173.last
Reminds me that I have in fact had a couple of episodes of memory loss while drunk. Once when I'd only had a couple of beers, but I was extremely tired. That was fairly recently (when xelA was a baby).
As a general rule, though, my memory of the night before gets hazier and hazier as I try to recall later and more drunken parts of the evening, but it never goes completely absent.
I'm sure exhaustion affects memory formation. It's the only reason I can think of for how people have more than one child.
Yeah, I've had, for example, memory dropping out and kicking back in again -- no accessible recollection of something that definitely happened and would have been memorable, but clear memories of later events. (And I know that happened at least once, because of the aforementioned memorable event, but it's obviously the sort of thing that could have happened more often than that but would be hard to spot internally -- if the missing chunk of time was uneventful conversation, or dancing, or something, it'd be hard to notice it was gone.)
So, a dead guy and "I don't remember".
That sort of thing, yeah. Except more waking up the next morning with clear memories of participating in digging the grave with clear understanding at the time of what was going on, but no retrievable memory of where the corpse came from.
I definitely had memory loss like LB during periods of heaviest drinking, mostly college. But I dunno that being "blackout drunk" is by itself an indicator of whether or not you're capable of consenting to anything. I mean I have no memory of organizing people to steal some fraternity's microwave and throw it off a bridge but obviously that's something I "wanted" to do even if my sober superego ordinarily would prevent me from doing so.
I get "blackout drunk" almost every time I drink very heavily. Not "no memory" of the night before, but very scattered memories of the night before. Sometimes, when people remind me of what happened, I'll remember some of it. Sometimes I remember none of it and find it very difficult to believe, even though multiple witnesses swear it's true.
That's only true for spirits, not wine or beer.
I'm in the LB camp, as I probably said on the previous thread, which of course I can't remember. I'm quite likely to forget sizeable (30 mins say) chunks of a night at a stage long before l'm approaching 173.1 levels of drunkenness.
180: I don't know if you've noticed, but sometimes you put up nearly incomprehensible comments here.
Possibly the difference is I rarely drink spirits, beyond like maybe two or three. Then beer.
I had a friend who was a high-functioning alcoholic. She would drink vast amounts and seem ok -- able to carry on conversations perfectly well - but I would find out later she would have no memory of our conversations. She'd say things like, "You never told me that! I would remember that!" -- around the 3rd time this happened I figured out what was going on.
"And we know that when there's a backlash against mercy and lenient sentences - when cases like this or the "affluenza" kid inspire public appetite for longer sentences - it's not the rich who pay the price. It's the ones who never saw much mercy to begin with."
Late to the thread, but weighing in to note the obvious: the proposed recall of Judge Persky isn't "a backlash against mercy and lenient sentences." There is no "public appetite for longer sentences" in play. There is a public appetite for sentences being evenly applied, and a backlash against a certain segment of the population being effectively exempted from the standards that apply to everyone else. I suppose I can't say for sure that judges won't punish poor and/or minority kids more harshly in response to a Persky recall. But if that's the case, let's recognize the argument for what it really is: a threat that if you mess with the privileges afforded the elites, we will make you pay.
173.1: Yes I've seen it a few times, which is why I think I'd probably know the difference. But I'm not that confident because I have no direct experience and have relatively little indirect experience. (I hated parties in college and by grad school most parties have zero or one person hitting that level.)
Not that it comes up often for most people once they're grownups, and it's probably never going to come up for you. But if it's worrying you at all, I'd be pretty confident that you'd be able to identify someone close to passing out as obviously not okay. Lack of experience with people who are that drunk might mean that you were confused about what was wrong with them, if there weren't contextual clues like their holding a half-empty fifth of vodka. But you'd know they weren't in a normally functional state.
190: With the exception of people like peep describes in 186. I have a friend like that who, after a night out drinking, we were having a perfectly lucid conversation before she suddenly passed out cold. It was surreal.
Yes, but the "seeming perfectly rational until passing out" people actually are capable of behaving and seeming rational (including manifesting consent, or not, to do things like having sex), until passing out, so the problem's not a problem. What I thought UPETGI was worried about was that he wouldn't be able to recognize someone who was drunk beyond the point of being able to obviously signal what their decisions were, and that's just not an issue. Anyone with half a brain can tell when someone who is really drunk doesn't want to do something, including, e.g., having sex, or is too drunk to be capable of making a decision.
193. The problem arises when the rapist refuses to accept that consent having been given their partner during the "seeming rational" phase is immediately cancelled by them passing out. This isn't a difficulty for anybody here, but I can imagine it being used as a defence by an unscrupulous rapist and his lawyer.
Right, agreed, that's exactly the problem I was (at least trying) to identify. Rapists and their apologists will claim that there is some "grey area" in the 195 situation, because hey it seemed like consent so how am I supposed to know that this passed out woman doesn't want to have sex with me?
You'd think putting it that way, the argument would be self-refuting, but the notion that there's some kind of drunken "grey area" of consent that no one can figure out keeps potential rapists hopeful that somehow their rapey actions are within social norms.
Yeah, it's not actively worrying to me now (and won't come up anyway). But I think it took some combination of education, experience, and empathy (beyond just normal decency) to understand what the difference was between tipsy-but-still-capable-of-judgement and so-drunk-as-to-lose-judgement, given that I only understand the former through listening to other people. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was less about whether I can distinguish them, but more that it's a more intellectual and less visceral kind of understanding.
Er, former was supposed to be latter.
Yeah, I dunno. Maybe I'm just projecting the discernment of present-me onto past-me, but I remember in high school, before I'd ever been pass-out drunk, seeing girls in pass-out or obviously incapable of making a decision states.
It seemed totally and completely obviously different from people who were just drunk but still fully decision-capable, and also totally obvious that any guy trying to have sex with someone out of it in that way would be absolutely for sure a total rapist. Not even close to a grey zone.
