Taking it from the top:
First of all, if there was any victimizing going on here, directly or by proxy, there's only one true victim, and that would be yathrib's thread,
The Price of Making a Mistake in America, which is a very compelling piece of writing by Jeff Bageant, that is, in fact, about a poor white man who's basically so marginalized he's not just not a participant in any part of the social contract, he is all but invisible. And better off that way, in a sense, because the odds are high that when society does briefly exert itself for long enough to notice him -- as I read and understood it -- they feel obligated to exact the pound of flesh he owes them for being a member of the white underclass, which is not supposed to contradict American mythology by existing.
Others might read it another way. In any event, I highly recommend it. And while I'm willing to take 100 percent of the responsibility for my share of derailing it, frankly, I don't think I'm so incredibly culpable that I'm, like, going to get out the scourge and go all Opus Dei on myself. I made an error in judgment, which I regret. It was as follows:
Within the narrative framework in which Bageant sets his subject's story, the "original sin" from which all the rest of the injustices proceed is his wrongful conviction for rape:
A dozen or so years ago Stokes, now 66 with a gray ponytail, an altogether gentle soul who labors under the illusion he looks like Willie Nelson, (and even has a framed photo of Willie on his wall to invite comparison). Got caught by police in a, shall we say, "a vehicular sexual incident" with a married woman. They were both drunk, big deal. That happens in beer joints. To make a long story short, by the time they got to court, the lady's testimony was that it was all against her will, which being a married woman, solved a lot of problems for her. That resulted in Stokes being convicted as a sex offender, while his public defender all but slept through the trial.
To make matters worse, Stokes had an unregistered handgun stashed in his car. Stupid, I know, but rednecks are often like that, and I'd be willing to bet there are more unregistered handguns than registered ones around here.
I was looking forward to discussing the story, because how fucked indigent defendants are across the board is a subject that's close to my heart. I had a minor problem with the reporting in the passage just quoted, and I wanted to mention it, because it also represents a bias that people are so used to seeing, they don't even notice it as having much meaning at all. It's just there. Sort of like wallpaper. So I posted this highly controversial, strident, rage-filled, self-pitying, man-hating, shrill, finger-pointing comment:
compared2what? wrote:This is 99.9 percent great and powerful and I'm glad it was written, published and posted here.
I do have one small pro forma objection: If Bageant asserts that Stokes was wrongfully convicted because a self-interested woman lied, he should back it up with something other than his say-so. It's true that lots of couples get drunk and have sex in cars, that lots of people own unregistered guns, and that lots of cops abuse their authority, in the sense that there's lots and lots of data to support of those truths. So what he says happened may well have happened.
But it's also true, in the same sense, that lots of rapists claim the sex was consensual and that lots of women who report rape are discredited on the grounds that they're just doing it because they're predatory, dishonest and devious whores.
The only world in which that part of the story speaks for itself so well that no further explanation is necessary is one that holds the proposition that lots of women are predatory, dishonest and devious whores to be true, as supported by so much data that it amounts to common knowledge.
I have a problem with that. I assume he bases his conclusion about the woman's actions in Stokes's case on more than the unexamined belief that that's how women in those circumstances commonly act. Because I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, based on the high standard of the rest of the story. But it's still more than a little slip-up to leave the issue open for whatever assumptions the reader might bring to it.
Be it so noted.
My error in judgment was not to realize that you can't fucking say a single goddamn thing that comes within one million miles of sex or sexism without completely derailing the thread.
That was stupid of me, but not hateful.
I'd now like to point out, repeatedly, so that there can be no mistake about it, that I did not say or suggest Stokes was guilty. On the contrary, I said that if Bageant said he's innocent, his reporting is good enough overall that I assumed he had a better reason to say so than he states.
My point was simply that it emphatically
doesn't go without saying that it's totally normal for a woman (or a man, or any human being) to blithely and wittingly send an innocent man (or woman, or any other human being) to jail for ten years without more of a motivation than wanting to preserve her moral reputation. Because that's not normal for the vast majority of people of any gender. Most people, irrespective of gender, aren't tough enough to do that much damage to someone they know well enough to have fucked in a car, unless they're either very fucked up people or they have more at stake than their reputations.
And either of those explanations is (or would be) A-OK with me. As would many others. The woman might have a history of dishonesty or other instability. She too might have been very poor, and maybe had children and no way to support them. She might have had a reason to be frightened of reprisal by her relatives or husband or the community or her employer. Whatever. It needs to be said. Because without it, the implication is: "Oh, of course. If they can falsely claim rape, those women'll ruin man's life in order to evade the casual negative consequences of their own actions, as sure as they'll look at ya."
Rape is a subject to which men and women both bring a lot of highly charged assumptions. One of them is that lying women regularly put themselves through really, really fun rape trials and all the exposure that goes along with them out of nothing more than self-interest. As already conceded, a very fucked up or very highly motivated woman might do that, as evidenced by a few highly publicized cases in which either courts or the court of public opinion have found that's what they did. (In some of which, I concur with the ruling, fwiw. In others, I'm not so sure.)
But whatever. It happens. But I don't know of any evidence that it's so normal and frequent that any woman can be presumed to be lying, a priori, no explanation necessary. Nevertheless, that presumption is commonplace enough. As some of the response demonstrated. In my carefully and thoroughly considered opinion, which is based on the best information available to me, it's also pernicious enough to make perpetuating it irresponsible, and objecting to its perpetuation in measured terms, a reasonable act. So I went on record as regarding it as a reportorial fuck-up, that in full context detracted .01% of the story's value.
I did forget to go back and put in:
compared2what? wrote:ON EDIT: PS -- all women are victims all the time and any man who doesn't agree with me is never gonna get any pussy from me, or if I can help it, any other woman, plus I'm going to menace you all with rolling pins, because I'm a single-issue harpie, who only knows one song. Get on your knees, slave. I want to sing. There's no pity, like self-pity, there's no pity I kno-o-o-w...Excuse me? Did you say "Thank you"? That should be: "Thank you, MISTRESS," you balless little worm. Fetch the paddle. And I didn't say you could stand up, you pathetic baby-ass piece of shit.
Happily, that was no problem, because some of you are smart enough to see right through my reasonable and measured facade, so we got to have fireworks anyway. And....To be continued. Though I'm probably going to regret that last piece of stylistic self-indulgence.
But I wanted to start by being very clear about what I actually said. In part, because I want to ask anyone who responded with comments about the characteristics of women and feminism in general before any feminist spoke further to think about whether they might have been bringing some assumptions of their own about what feminist women stand for to the feast.
I don't want, am not asking for, and don't care if you make any concessions. They're your assumptions, and you should base them on whatever makes you happy. I'm just requesting a moment's thought on the subject. Please feel free not to comply.
