I don’t think there is a single poster since the original post who has reservations about Mr. Turner’s guilt. Lots of opinions on the sentencing and lots of good information about how the criminal justice system actually works.
I was just reading that a majority of African Americans now believe OJ is a murderer. Maybe you read that?
Some things take time. 
Edit: I love your post.
I don’t understand why some people try to divert the rape culture issue to an alcohol issue. Why are some people so scared about talking about the rape culture?
I would love to know the answer to this question.
Brock was going to rape. It’s pretty clear from reading the documents.
Anyway, here is the SF Chronicle link.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Rage-over-Stanford-sex-assault-case-shows-8053437.php
I don’t believe in rape “culture.” The word culture implies something that I don’t think exists as a permeating factor in our society and says nothing about the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who exist on college campuses and in our towns and villages. I do believe that alcohol, among young people aged 17 to about 27 or 28 is being abused and I do believe there is a cause and affect correlation with sexual abuse. There are probably other factors, but I’m convinced this is one of the biggest factors. I’m more on the side of RAINN’s position than the new-wave feminist blogosphere.
Does anyone want to take a stab at this? I’ve tried …
Waste of breath/typing…
Rape culture doesn’t mean everybody is raping or even many people are raping.
How society deals with rapes, tolerates rapes, how we look at rapists and victims are part of the rape culture.
The changing of the discussion from raping to drinking is part of our rape culture.
@momofthreeboys:
I am not a fan of the whole rape culture thing, either, that to me is the same drivel that people like Andrea Dworkin put out there, that in effect because men are bigger and stronger than women that any sexual encounter could be considered rape. The attitude was almost Victorian , that women were these frail creatures and men these predators and so forth, which to me was an insult to women and men.
That said, I think there is a fundamental problem out there, and that is there is still a lot of the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude about sex that needs to be changed. Turner’s father displayed a lot of that, he turned what was a vicious sexual assault into “one of those things”. There are still a lot of people, especially boys/men, who have the attitude that if they are with someone, that the assumption is they have the right to have sex, that basically assume it is green light unless there is an overwhelming no. Then there are those around it, who see these cases, rather than as sexual assault, as just something that happens. Baylor university covered up for athletes doing horrible things, led by someone who portrayed himself as a traditional values person (Starr), and is a religious university and prides itself on that, yet it covered these up. The military is still covering these up, despite all the promises to do so.
Alcohol might be a contributing factor, but speaking from my own experiences, a lot of men still have the old attitude that they are entitled or whatnot, or see it as buyers regret on the part of the women. Alcohol might be a contributing factor, and often is (both the victim being drunk or out of it, the perp drinking) , but it isn’t the cause. Would some would be sexual assaulters not do what they did if they hadn’t been drinking? Likely, but the real problem is that when they get drunk the dark side that is there already is allowed to come out. Put it this way, I and other people who are men or grew up as men, have gotten drunk, been around friends who got drunk, and the last thing any of us would do is want to have sex with someone who is out of it, or force them to have sex, and that is true of most men I have known. On the other hand, some of those otherwise decent men when they see something like this, would assume Turner didn’t do anything all that big (the judge comes to mind, with his obvious assumption that because Turner was an upper middle income ‘Stanford Man’, could not be a threat to others, was a good kid who ‘made a mistake’). I really can’t understand how a judge who had prosecuted sex crimes could even think that, totally blowing off the victim’s statement, and giving the kid a sentence that didn’t fit the crime, my only assumption was he assumed, like too many do, that this was a mistake, an accident, driven by alcohol, rather than someone who had really bad attitudes and ideas, drunk or not. Blaming alcohol for these things is like blaming drunk driving deaths and accidents on driving, if people couldn’t drive, after all, then drunk driving wouldn’t happen, that is a mirror of "if kids on campus didn’t drink, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen’, it assumes that the carelessness and lack of caring that allows someone to drive drunk is not responsible, same way that someone who assaults someone who is out of it isn’t responsible because he was drinking, rather than being he is the type of person who would assault an unconscious woman because he basically didn’t care.
Can only read first sentence of SF Chronicle article. To read the rest, must be a subscriber.
The primary message should be: don’t rape and taking advantage of someone who is intoxicated or impaired is rape. If the primary message to women is: watch your drink, don’t dress provocatively, stay in groups, don’t drink too much, that is as much as saying: if a woman drinks too much or is dressed probatively, etc… It is OK to take advantage of her.
“I honestly do not understand why some people in this thread have any reservations about punishing Brock Turner. The 3 month sentence is ridiculous.”
No one on this thread has any reservations about punishing him. His guilt is not in question and everyone thinks the sentence is too light.
Exactly, dstark. Until we, as a society and as individuals, acknowledge that rape is rape–regardless of whether someone or both have been drinking-- and responsibility assign as such, there will continue to be a miscarriage of justice at the expense of (primarily young women).
It is abundantly clear, after reading the letters, probation report, and the sentencing excerpts, that neither Brock Turner nor his friends and family understand that what this young man did was rape. They all consider it a misdeed, perhaps even a really bad misdeed, that was the result of him drinking to excess. To me, as the mother of two girls this age, that disgusts me.
The light (insulting sentence) seems to have been considered appropriate by the probation officer and judge because there was excessive alcohol involved and thus "diminished culpability’ on Turner’s part. ( I would quote the actual probation report language, but my mobile device makes it rather difficult and ther’d probably be a hundred intervening posts before I actually got this post up).
Until we get past the “alcohol is the real culprit” mentality, I don’t see this travesty and danger to our daughters getting under control.
Until we get past the penchant for seeing our sons or our sons’ friends ion Brock Turner’s shoes, I don’t see this danger getting under control.
It wasn’t until we quit seeing ourselves in the drunk driver that appropriate penalties were given in those cases.
We must get past the " but for the grace of God, go I ( or my son).
I think that was part of what might have been at play in the preparation of the probation report and the sentencing.
As this op-Ed opines, this is a light sentence, but it IS at least a sentence: Read This: “The Most Shocking Thing About the Stanford Verdict Isn’t The Light Sentence” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/11/the-most-shocking-thing-about-the-stanford-verdict-isn-t-the-light-sentence.html?via=ios
Hopefully, we will now move to appropriate sentencing and not have to be happy with a mere sentence.
Rape culture is a pervasive, subconscious, all-powerful ideology that rapists are not entirely 100% responsible for their actions and that their victims must be in some way responsible for what the rapists did. It is a way that culture continues to control female or feminized bodies and excuse rapists from complete accountability. Claiming that she doesn’t believe in rape culture, as @momofthreeboys does, in the middle of this particular discussion is laughable. Every bit of BT’s father’s statement is evidence of rape culture. Especially if @momofthreeboys is indeed the mother of three boys, her attitude about rape, alcohol, etc., contributes to the problem of rape culture. Sincerely signed, the mother of boys and girls.
And I happen to think the feminist blogosphere is missing the boat if they don’t think alcohol is a contributing factor and if they can’t bring themselves to talk about it with regard to both men AND women they are missing the boat. Screaming at men on campuses is not going to solve the problem. Take it from someone that lives with 4 men…screaming at men never works - they tune you out. Saying that it is OK for women to drink to excess but not men is as bad as saying boys will be boys…to say that all the responsibility lies with men in determining consent is appalling to my feminist beliefs. The new wave feminist rhetoric killed the ability to even discuss rape culture in any progressive way IMO. To each his own…
If chemical castration were the automatic sentence for rape, it would put the lie to the idea that alcohol is to blame. Drinking would continue, but rates of rape would drop precipitously. Anyone who does not believe societally sanctioned misogyny influences rape is blind.
^^what on earth are you trying to say?
I am illustrating that rape is a choice, with or without alcohol.
dstark #1165
Ditto.
SF Chronicle article:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Rage-over-Stanford-sex-assault-case-shows-8053437.php
Can’t read the SF Chronicle article without subscribing. Wish there was a way to just pay to read one article. I don’t want to subscribe to every newspaper/magazine that has a few interesting articles that I would like to see.
I like the sites that let you read a few articles a month for free.