Want to Celebrate Rape? Don’t Do It In My Comments.

My settings require the first comment by any commenter to be approved, regardless of content. I approve most of the comments that reach me, and then folks’ comments are almost always automatically approved thereafter unless they trip the spam trap. The exceptions are rare, and so far they’ve always end up approved after I read them. Because of that, I’ve never yet needed to create a specific comment policy. Today though, in response to the Aaron Persky post, someone decided to wish rape on someone else in a comment:

guilty in a forcible rape for which he served 3 months? i devoutly hope his white ass is no longer virgin. and the judge should be deeply deeply ashamed. i wonder how he can look his daughter or grand daughters in the eye. for shame. for you too. the job is bad at his job. he needs to be fired, which in an instance like this, is a recall. bye felicia! [emphasis added – cd]

I understand the outrage. I obviously share it. Here at Pervert Justice, though, wishing rape on someone will get your comments circular-filed every single time.

 

Kelly Marie Tran Harassed Out Of The Galaxy

You want to talk intersectionality? Kelly Marie Tran, someone who created an exceptional portrayal in a popular movie, has been harassed off the internet for no other reason than the intersection of her race, gender, and prominence.

NME has more details of the story, but the details don’t matter for most purposes. This is enough:

Tran was the first woman of colour to play a leading role in the franchise and it was reported back in December that she faced sexist and racist comments after her appearance in the film.

The Rose Tico description on the Star Wars ‘Wookieepedia’ website was altered to feature offensive, racist language while alt-right internet personality Paul Ray Ramsey took aim at Tran’s appearance.

According to Star Wars Facts, she has now deleted all posts from her Instagram account due to the harassment.

By all accounts, Tran was a Star Wars fan and on top of the excitement any actor would have to score a large role in any major motion picture she was particularly excited to be involved in creating a Star Wars film.

Way to fucking ruin the universe, sexists and racists!

Kid Gets 5 Years For Friend’s Gun, Being Black

A teenager who was 15 years old when he ran off with some sneakers being sold on Facebook after trying them on, Dayonn Davis (who is 18 now) was tried as an adult and sentenced to 5 years in prison and 10 more on probation because the friend who accompanied him on this try-and-run shoe theft pulled a gun to cover Davis’ retreat. From CBS News:

Defense attorney Susan Henderson told Muscogee County Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters her client just wants to put the whole thing behind him and move on, the Ledger-Enquirer reported.

“He’s been extremely remorseful,” she said. “He’s got his life on track now.”

She insisted Davis didn’t know the other person would pull a gun. But the judge says that makes little difference in the eyes of the law.

If he wanted to commit non-violent violent crime as a “youth” and get away with less than 5 years, he should have joined the Stanford swim team. Not that there’s, y’know, anything significant about a Black kid getting 5 years in prison for running off with shoes while a juvenile when a white adult serves 90 days for rape. Just another day in the post-racial USA.

The Real Victim in the Brock Turner Rape Case: Aaron Persky

Aaron Persky, the judge who gave Stanford athlete Brock Turner 6 months after Turner was convicted of rape in a trial before Persky’s court, is facing a recall election today. As someone who cares deeply about the rule of law, I hope to fuck California voters throw him the hell off the bench. And while he deserved to be removed for his behavior from the bench, behavior dating back years, I couldn’t wait to comment until after the election because of the new interview in which he paints himself as the victim of uninformed masses who advocate mob rule in place of justice, starting with his own recall.

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Justice For Sale: Reality Winner, National Security, and Constitutional Rights

Reality Winner stands accused of illegally leaking a document written by the US intelligence community which assesses an important part of Russia’s efforts to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The document leaked became the basis for a tremendous amount of reporting that, the Senate concluded, ultimately increased national security because internal warnings by the Intelligence community were getting insufficient attention at the policy level. Nonetheless, she’s being pursued with particular relentlessness and with an almost malicious indifference to justice. A year after her arrest, it’s time to look again at her case in its context.

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Why Don’t Victims Report Rape? (Part Eleventy-Eight)

The Charlotte Observer can help answer this! They have a story up about the experience of a woman named Leah McGuirk (who appears to be quite the bad-ass). Less than a month ago, McGuirk went to a bar at a mall-type thing with lots of bars/restaurants called the EpiCentre (yes, spelled like that even though it’s in the States). How did that go for her? Let’s read!

she suffered seizure-like symptoms, blurred vision and had trouble standing up after consuming two-thirds of one drink

Like any normal young woman in the US, she came to the most logical conclusion and evidence-supported conclusion available:

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Lycée Arago Arrests Reminiscent of Rampant Illegality in Trump Inauguration Arrests & Prosecutions

Nearing a year and a half ago now protestors in DC demonstrating against Trump’s inauguration were subjected to mass arrest, in many cases without probable cause. The treatment they received was shameful and illegal (though it is unlikely that any court will ever punish the officers involved), and the prosecutions that followed have been worse. The occupation of a high school in Paris, France on the 22nd of May (coincident with a larger protest march nearby) is now granting the French legal establishment to fuck things up just as badly as we have in the US.

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Unclear on the Concept: No-Platforming at Stanford and the Right Wing

Some time back clinically-diagnosed dumbfuck Charles Murray was invited to participate in a media program at Stanford known as Cardinal Conversations. Lefty folks, mostly students, at Stanford organized a “Take Back the Mic” rally with counter-programming.

Naturally, Niall Fergusson, a member of Stanford’s Hoover Institute, prominent Republican and eminent jerkface, and a small group of conservative students responded with the typical concern for free speech that anyone might have when their preferred speaker is getting campus support for their speech while others say different stuff nearby. The Stanford Daily has the low-down on all this, including this particularly freedom-loving quote:

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Switzerland’s Pension Funds: Kill Your Spouse, Get Free Money!

Oh, look, another way that old attitudes towards domestic violence persist: Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger (the Daily Anzeiger?*1) is reporting in German that despite Swiss law requiring that spouse-murderers not benefit financially from their crimes, the laws of Switzerland (presumably Vital Records laws or similar) are not structured in a way that pension funds are informed whether a death is from natural causes or not. RTS amplified the Tages-Anzeiger in a small french-language article. (Content Warning: if you play the accompanying news video, they have a portrayal of a fictional domestic-violence murder. I have no idea why.)

Le droit suisse prévoit qu’une personne puisse être déshéritée si elle a intentionnellement tenté de provoquer la mort du légataire.

Pourtant, les caisses de pension ignorent souvent si la mort est naturelle ou non. “Ces cas non signalés sont difficiles à découvrir”, affirme le secrétaire général de l’Association prévoyance suisse Emmanuel Ullman pour expliquer cette situation.

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