In an emotionally charged Instagram Live session on Monday night, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the ordeal she underwent while hiding from marauding MAGAs during the January 6th Capitol attack. She explained that the trauma she felt that day was exacerbated because she was also, she revealed,
a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven’t told many people that in my life. … But when we go through trauma … whether you had a negligent parent, or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life small to large, these episodes can compound on each other.
She compared the calls she’s heard from Republicans and others to “move on” from the Capitol attack to the strategies of abusers trying to convince their victims to forget what they’ve endured.
And now there are some who are telling her to “move on” not only from the Capitol attack but also her sexual assault — if they’re even willing to believe it ever happened.
If you want to see a thick mass of men with this attitude, all you have to do is to take a look inside the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit at the moment, where there are several heavily-commented-upon threads devoted to the topic, full of men not only deriding AOC but also suggesting that the real victims of such charges are men.
“SURPRISE! AOC survived sexual assault,” declared a MGTOW called Magnolia1008. “i guess we all must survive her now.”
One commenter called ChadLadPronouns declared that
I just don’t believe women if they claim they were sexually assaulted. They use it for pity points and victimhood capital. We have reached the point in society where the weaker and more oppressed you are, the more powerful you become. It is a total clown world.
Mythrowxra seemed to suggest that AOC had fantasized the whole thing.
Don’t care. Being raped is so common now… not to mention women fantasies of rape and other deviant behavior. Unless you have a closed court case with undisputed evidence… I do not give a shit.
Last_Supermarket302 accused AOC of being the real “instigator” — of what exactly I don’t know.
A narcissistic instigator, who accuses others of her own crimes..
Every topic always results in AOC making it all about herself. And when it backfires, always blames someone else.
Some mocked her claims of sexual assault, suggesting that whatever had happened had been no big deal “Ask her to define sexual assault,” wrote silly_birb, “and you will discover it was a dog humping her leg.”
“What’s the sexual assault?” External-Can-7839 asked. “Ugly guy hit on her in front of her friends, thus lowering her social status and embarrassing her?”
Others imagined more detailed scenarios, with massy525 writing a virtual short short story from what he suggests is AOC’s point of view:
After my 37th mimosa I found myself once again in an alleyway with jizz leaking from my cervix. Dammit I thought. IDk if my insurance will cover another plan B pill this Saturday.
Anyway I was assaulted,raped and stuff, men are evil, women are wonderful, give me free stuff. Speaking of stuff, i’m off to go get stuffed.
He isn’t the only one to let his psychosexual fantasies of AOC spill out all over his screen:
“She is a functional lunatic,” wrote fractal97.
With that deviously pretty face covering the whole screen and staring at you with those fanatic eyes, you wonder whether you are watching a horror movie or having a nightmare. I cut any feed that mentions her name and avoid reading anything about her. Your peace of mind is too valuable to be polluted with such people.
Others took issue with his assessment of AOC’s looks, suggesting she wasn’t attractive enough to rape. “She looks like an anthropomorphic pineapple with Bell’s palsy,” sniffed Magx01. “Check out her eyes and their placement on her head,” added fredanderssen. “There are telltale signs of fetal alcohol syndrome there.”
“Who would sexually assault this woman?” sneered jeetz09 “Is it a necrophiliac?”
A commenter called willy65hog suggested that he and many others would jump at the chance of sex with AOC. “Who wouldn’t CornHole her?” he wrote.
Ugh.
There’s more awful stuff in all three threads but, frankly, I’ve had enough for today and so I’m just going to stop right here. These guys are second only to incels at being the fucking worst.
I hope the rest of your day goes better than theirs.
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So are they accusing her of rape? Or of storming the Capitol & killing a cop? I’m confused here.
@Crip Dyke:
Well, they’re taking the position that rape is regret sex with an unattractive person, and they’re calling her an unattractive person, thereby implying that anyone who had sex with her probably regretted it, therefore she raped them. I think.
MGTOW: They’ll dismiss claims or evidence of sexual assault, but will scream murder at the thought of paying for a date’s meal. SMH
Once again, this is a projection. Right wingers constantly try to paint themselves as victims and profit from their imagined victimhood.
And this is why no white men are anywhere near positions of power. /s
It says a lot how he just tosses this out casually.
When you definitely know what a cervix is.
Apparently the best way to be an expert on something is to refuse to read anything about it. I guess I must now be an expert in sports, Croatian politics, parasitic wasps, and many more topics I haven’t read about.
When I saw the title of the post, I just kind of assumed you were talking about Michael Tracey, Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore.
Three names I would be very glad to never hear again.
How long do these people stay powerful? Do they experience a constant reversal of fortunes: the weakest and most oppressed of us one day and the most powerful of us the next day, only to become weak and oppressed (or is it the weakest and the most oppressed) on the third day?
You don’t care because rape has become common? Also, you don’t care because women fantasize about rape? Also, you don’t care unless a judge finds the evidence of rape to be undisputed (maybe you’re asking for witnesses to this crime or a confession from the rapist)? Got it.
Maybe she was born with a deviously pretty face. Or maybe it’s Maybelline
Are you sure you’re not talking about Michele Bachmann?
And yet you read a MGTOW post about her — and commented on it.
They react this badly to a woman with some pretty tame centre-left ideas and they have the cheek to suggest it’s everyone else who is oversensitive, shrill and hysterical. I don’t usually advise that people learn better emotional regulation but good god, these guys need it.
This is unironically true and at the same time a horribly monstrous thing. Or perhaps it’s not that it’s common now but rather it’s always been common, it’s just that women are trying to come forward despite all the slandering and opposition.
It breaks my heart because I know plenty of women in my immediate circle of friends and relatives who are either sexual assault or rape survivors. With most of them experiencing this when they were children.
These people are fucked in the head. Making sure that they get nowhere near power is a moral imperative. Same goes for making sure conservatives become a powerless minority for all time.
Putting aside the utter, sociopathic lack of empathy, MGTOW would be shitting themselves in terror if they were the ones crouched in a closet while an angry mob armed with guns and flex cuffs ransacked their workplace searching for them. These are people who can’t even go to the grocery store without getting worked up into a lather about the end of civilization. The tiniest pushback makes their world fall apart.
They’re contemptible.
Holy batman projection.
Most of my sympathy for AOC come from all the shit she have to endure. The fact her political position don’t seem shitty do help, of course.
On Facebook, I’ve seen hundreds of laugh reacts to her story, the vast majority of them from men. It goes way beyond MGTOWs. There’s something about AOC that makes men reveal just how misogynistic they really are.
These people make me feel like we should do back ground checks on everyone’s internet history before they can be on a jury for a rape trail. Cause mgtow and mras and so forth would let any man walk from rape charges if given the chance.
@Elaine : but conversely, choosing jurors based on whether they conform to a law-defined standard of decency is dangerous.
In other word, how do we make sure that if a Trump-alike come into power, he don’t change the standard from “being decent” to “being a MAGA cultist” ?
I think forcing diversity (as opposed to pure randomness, making sure there’s at least 40% women or male, and people from different income level) and having a big enough jury work better in practice, because MGTOW aren’t all that numerous. And if they became the majority, there’s a lot of reason to flee as far as you can.
@ohlmann
They already ask questions to weed out juries as it is. If you are dealing with a hate crime, they ask if you have an prejudices that could keep you from being fair. If you are a woman and your dealing with a man attacking a woman, they ask you if you have ever been attacked by a man because they think that will keep you from being fair as well.
personally, and this is probably the most misandry thing about me, I don’t think at least 50% of men are fit to be on a rape trail. We live in a rape culture, there are to many men who are rapists out there who have never been charged or convicted. There are to many men out there who think the rape they committed isn’t actually rape. And there are to many men out there who even if they aren’t rapists, side with the rapist because they don’t know what consent is and the fall in line with “well she must have deserved this somehow” or “man sure with the hot female teacher “raped” me as a kid, am I right?”. people who treat rape like a joke, or are rape apologist, or are rapist themselves should not be on juries like that. The internet has shown that people reveal their true selves in a public way when they are given a mask to hide behind.
@Elaine
Indeed, I seem to recall an AVfM post where Elam encouraged men to always vote to acquit rapists no matter what the evidence said.
I agree. I think too many men, even those who are ostensibly progressive, are willing to look the other way because our culture tells them not to take rape seriously.
@Ohlmann
It sounds like what you’re suggesting is that things will average out. However, the problem is that a significant chunk of people believe truly awful things, and another chunk are apathetic enough to go along with that. Fascism works not because most people become fascists, but because they can persuade enough apathetic people to join forces. On a jury, this is dangerous.
We don’t have pre-emptive challenges to jurors here. It’s just first 12 names out of the hat.
But in terms of conviction rates (bearing in mind this is mainly from research in the UK and Ireland; other jurisdictions may differ), guilty verdicts went up in rape cases when women started to be more prevalent on juries from the 1920s.
However by the mid 30s acquittal rates tended to be higher for women jurors. That seems to have been the case until very recently.
Over the last few years though there has been a swing the other way; and now female dominated juries are slightly more likely to convict.
There have been a number of studies and suggestions as to why that may be. There seem to be two main factors.
One is that now juries get judicial guidance as to rape myths (such as early reporting by victims, demeanour and behaviour of victims towards their attackers etc) and are told to not let them influence their decisions.
The other is that, because of changes to jury selection, there are more younger and less educated men on juries, and they seem more likely to acquit.
Both men and women though seem more reluctant to convict younger defendants.
And it should be mentioned that the above mainly applies to cases where consent is in issue. Where the defence is identity (i.e no one disputes there was a rape, just whether it was the defendant) or ‘no sex’ cases (i.e. the defence is there wasn’t any sexual contact) then the conviction rate has always been equally high for both male and female jurors.
Some links here if anyone wishes to get into more detail:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02885871
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/WR1100/WR1146/RAND_WR1146.pdf
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_704445_smxx.pdf
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20404525.html
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/juries-women-more-likely-convict-1574121
To follow on from the above. I went to a lecture once (unfortunately I can’t find any reference to the material online) but it was about a study where they had monitored real rape trials where the issue was consent.
The researchers identified five factors that had to be present to make a conviction likely. I wish I could remember them all. But they were things like: the victim had to be of higher social status than the defendant; the victim had to be perceived as more attractive than the defendant. I can’t remember the others but you can probably see where it was heading.
@alan
That makes a lot of sense. When I was in high school and trying to report my own assault, the officer I talked to didn’t even want to do anything about it because I was a drug addict at the time. Told me I wasn’t reliable enough for this report. My ex was a charming, smart, and good looking young man. He brought the schools test scores up. he went to church on Sundays, he was a “good boy”. I was at the time barely a c student. Didn’t go to class if i could get out it. Didn’t have many friends, was a creepy skinny looking goth who hung out in the cemetery on the hill and used dead animals in art projects. I understand that reporting it when I was in a downward spiral wasn’t a good looking thing, but I didn’t know what else to do then. The only people who believed me we’re the other outcast. See but my ex was smart, he’d hurt me in front of them too sometimes, but when they tried to back up my stories of what happened they we’re told they weren’t a reliable witness to this either.
@ Elaine
Yeah. It’s that ‘perfect victim’ thing.
One of the disconcerting findings in the studies is that neither men nor women like to convict young defendants because they ‘don’t want to ruin the man’s life’.
But it’s the old adage that when it comes to rape “Men are judged on their futures; women are judged on their pasts.”
@alan
Kind of goes in hand with people letting pedophiles off the hook when their a woman and the boy she abused was a teenager. They think that boy is lucky it happened to him, and that it’s somehow less damaging to be groomed by an adult woman then it is to be by an adult man. It’s disgusting.
I can almost understand the people being reluctant when the abuser is young. There is probably that hope that it’s just a youthful mistake and they will grow out of it.
@LindsayIrene
She is ambitious, dedicated, very secure in her believes and obviously not interested in “you” (as in, the male watcher).
There is nothing those men hate more than a woman like that.
And I say that as someone who disagrees with her in many regards (IE: she’s not left enough for me, but hey, it’s the USA)
Semi O/T; but look who’s now on this list of terrorist groups (under ‘P’)
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-en.aspx
My “fave” is how many people I see saying that AOC is an idiot and knows nothing about economics policy … which was her major in university and her career since.
Really their argument is that AOC is a woman. And that’s supposed to convince me of something.
And now #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett is trending on Twitter because right wingers are pushing a conspiracy theory that she’s lying about being threatened by the insurrectionists. I’d express my feelings about this, but it’d likely violate the comments policy.