today in asshattery...
So the justice secretary is in hot water because he has failed to keep up with the funky youthspeak of kids these days. Like "date rape" - WHO KNEW that didn't mean sex with consenting minors! I have no sympathy for him there. And I am very NOT on board with the plan to cut prison time for early confessions. He rightly deserves censure for that move and his apparent inability to use words.
The thing that's rubbing my eyeballs wrong is all the news outlets foaming at the mouth over him putting forward the idea that some rapes are worse than others, and thus they get differential sentencing from judges. It's an idea that he put in extremely insensitive terms, and yet, I find myself thinking that it also makes an intuitive kind of sense, at least when contrasting cases of violent sexual abuse with his stated example of, say, two teens believing wrongly that they can mutually consent when the law in fact treats them as the mildly mentally-impaired adolescents they like as not are. But then statutory offenses are a legal swamp of a different odor. It's a whole lot messier to argue for assessing the comparative "severity" of adult assault A vs. adult assault B. But, that's exactly what happens in courts anyway, practically speaking. And THAT doesn't sit quite right with me either.
A classmate texted me about the story as it broke while I was on the way home, and at first I wasn't sure that it was all that relevant, just another case of an out-of-touch statesman failing at respecting survivors. But it touches on the most difficult question I was asked today at my presentation. Well, one of the two, and both of them posed by my supervisor. I need to keep reminding myself not to let the mentor awe flip over into an inferiority complex - Wonder Woman wouldn't have taken my project on if she hadn't thought I could turn it into something badass.
Also my second-home of a state continues to baffle and sadden me. Actually the state's fine, it just needs a governorectomy like whoah 8| GODDAMMIT SCOTT WANKER, "small government" does not mean going out of your way to make a small number of the public you claim to serve fucking miserable during what is already a pretty trying time of their lives.
The thing that's rubbing my eyeballs wrong is all the news outlets foaming at the mouth over him putting forward the idea that some rapes are worse than others, and thus they get differential sentencing from judges. It's an idea that he put in extremely insensitive terms, and yet, I find myself thinking that it also makes an intuitive kind of sense, at least when contrasting cases of violent sexual abuse with his stated example of, say, two teens believing wrongly that they can mutually consent when the law in fact treats them as the mildly mentally-impaired adolescents they like as not are. But then statutory offenses are a legal swamp of a different odor. It's a whole lot messier to argue for assessing the comparative "severity" of adult assault A vs. adult assault B. But, that's exactly what happens in courts anyway, practically speaking. And THAT doesn't sit quite right with me either.
A classmate texted me about the story as it broke while I was on the way home, and at first I wasn't sure that it was all that relevant, just another case of an out-of-touch statesman failing at respecting survivors. But it touches on the most difficult question I was asked today at my presentation. Well, one of the two, and both of them posed by my supervisor. I need to keep reminding myself not to let the mentor awe flip over into an inferiority complex - Wonder Woman wouldn't have taken my project on if she hadn't thought I could turn it into something badass.
Also my second-home of a state continues to baffle and sadden me. Actually the state's fine, it just needs a governorectomy like whoah 8| GODDAMMIT SCOTT WANKER, "small government" does not mean going out of your way to make a small number of the public you claim to serve fucking miserable during what is already a pretty trying time of their lives.