Reckoning

Brock Turner's lawyers are trying to overturn his conviction, but their claims are very confusing and upsetting. They harp on the fact that the assault took place "out in the open" instead of behind a dumpster, then they claim "it happened" but that it was "not a crime." What the fuck? They think it was consensual? She was fucking unconscious, and they have witnesses who saw it happen. If she was unconscious, then by definition, it was not consensual, and it was a crime. What kind of goddamn lawyers are these? This on top of the fact that Brock Turner's original sentence was way too short.

This shitty rape culture is the reason why we're having this "reckoning" about sexual harassment and assault. I see a lot of defensive people saying that all this is just "distraction" and that we should pay attention to other shit like the tax bill. (Just like how Bernie Sanders tried to minimize abortion rights and social justice by insisting that economic stuff and Medicare for all would be the cure to all ills.) No, it's not a zero-sum game. It's not either/or. The world is complex, and so are people. We can concentrate on multiple crises at a time. You might as well say that the tax shit and Russia is an irrelevant distraction to the citizens in Puerto Rico still trying to recover. Don't fucking say that it's not important. Everything's important if you care about people.

It's exhausting, of course, to try to deal with everything at once, but don't shit on women and tell us to shut up about Franken so we can keep his damn seat in the Senate (his replacement will be chosen by a Democratic governor, so Franken's place is in fact something we can afford to lose). Take the accusers seriously and don't tell us we're concentrating on the "wrong" thing. Women have had enough. Don't be chickenshits defending harassers. Be at least as good as the TV networks who finally canned Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose. Demand resignations from every scumbag, no matter which side they're on. And work like hell to keep Roy Moore out of office; the tightening polls are starting to scare me. :(