next level rage stroke: thanks, brock fucking turner
I have all of these things swirling around in my head like the most depressing soup you've ever tasted, like a soup made up of Lifetime Original Movies, local news child murder stories, the tears of children who thought their parents would be coming home from the war, and those hungry dogs from the Sarah McLachlan commercials. Put those in a blender, my friend, and you've got a bisque of fresh spring-herbed despair the likes of which is in my head, growing that film on its surface even as I type.
I didn't want to write about Brock Fucking Turner tonight because the woman who continues to survive his attack has said everything, and it's her voice that we all need to shut up for, not mine.
I thought that nothing could enrage me more than the New York Times op-ed claiming that people don't trust Hillary Clinton because they don't know her hobbies.
I thought that I couldn't get more outraged than when the internet went after the Gorilla Mom, calling for social services to investigate her fitness as a parent when, in an unlucky split second, her kid did a kid thing.
I thought my eye would never twitch harder than when, for the umpeenth fucking time, Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood because of the ABORTIONS THAT CONGRESS DOES NOT PAY FOR.
I thought, okay, 2016, this is the year that Donald Trump gives me a rage stroke. At least I've found my upper limit. At least I've found the darkest hate-filled righteous rage place of screaming in my soul, and I've lived there for the length of an entire Trump press conference, and through prayer and the support of my sponsor, finally made it back to the light.
I thought I'd found peace.
THANKS, BROCK FUCKING TURNER.
YOU MANAGED TO TAKE SHIT TO THE NEXT FUCKING LEVEL.
You raped an unconscious woman, tried to run away, lied and changed your story, accused her of lying and irresponsibility. Then you put on a fucking navy blazer, got a fucking haircut, and promised to visit college campuses to warn students there of the dangers of ALCOHOL and PROMISCUITY. What a fucking plan. "I've been convicted of three counts of violent sexual assault on a college campus. You know what? I think I'd actually like to stay on college campuses some more! Maybe meet some young people. Offer them my wisdom. Will there be chicks?"
What, exactly, the fuck, were you planning to say there, Brock Fucking Turner?
Be careful kids. I had a bright future and DID YOU GUYS KNOW ONE TIME I MET RYAN LOCHTE? True story! I have Olympic rings keychains for everyone! Haha you're welcome!
But then some really bad stuff happened to me. I got drunk one night and... yadda yadda yadda, you don't need to know the details but the next thing I know this guy jumped off his bike and tackled me as I was running away from... something, again, unimportant details, and before I could even take a deep breath it was like "elite athlete and future surgeon and All-American Stanford swimmer accused of sexually harassing an unconscious woman who graduated from A STATE SCHOOL."
Now, instead of being a surgeon, I'm a registered sex offender and I have to live in my parents' pool house and my dad got me a job at his investment bank which sounds good but it's not because all the other guys at my level... well, let's just say they didn't go to Stanford. I'm not worried though. My dad always says, cream rises to the top.
But that's what happens when you go to college and drink and meet women who say "no, you can't have sex with me," but then they drink some more and you just kind of hang out hoping they change their minds, and then you offer to take them home when they're passed out, and if they don't say anything then you know, like, they wouldn't have passed out with you if they weren't like, cool with it.
THIS is what happens when women have the right to make choices about their sexual partners! PROMISCUITY, right? And the tarnishing of a young man's once-sterling reputation. So the moral of the story is: women shouldn't drink OR have the right to make choices about their... wait. Let me check my notecards.
Brock, that's just about as fucking HILARIOUS as Jared Fogle setting up a middle school mentorship program for cheerleaders with absentee fathers.
Yes, Brock. I did just compare you to Jared Fogle. Who is also a sex offender. Like you are a sex offender. Because you raped someone.
Rape is a great fucking equalizer, you prick. The list of traits that you share with Bill Cosby just went up by one, motherfucker.
Dude, I don't even have to take you down because half of the entire fucking internet is posse'd up and ON THE CASE.
I don't even have to touch the absurd, delusional, victim-blaming bullshit written by your father and classmate, saying you shouldn't have to go to prison for rape because you haven't had much of an appetite, and "D'AWWWW LOOK AT THAT SMILE."
I can't even unpack the breathless insanity of Leslie Rasmussen's argument that Brock CLEARLY isn't a rapist because DUH he didn't jump the victim in a parking lot. And she has a point. Brock didn't kidnap her while she was on her way to her car. POINT IN FACT: Brock stripped a passed-out, unresponsive woman from the waist down behind a dumpster, not in a parking lot, ergo, not a rape. Good point, Leslie. That's good lookin out. #SISTERHOOD
Judge Persky, I don't even have to say shame on you, your honor. But I'm going to anyway.
Shame on you.
I don't even have to say a goddamned word about the bile-tasting irony that you're worried that this one night might impact the rest of your life. WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL. Getting caught raping someone was kind of a bummer, huh? You know what else is a bummer? I don't even have to fucking say it.
This pic has been all over the internet today and I am loving it:
This guy wants to make sure your dad knows that loving you, Brock, means not having a "you get one gimme" policy on rapes. Tattoos, yes. Putting your fingers inside an unconscious person? No. Sometimes love means zero fucking tolerance.
This writer helped your dad re-word his statement so it didn't turn me into a Feminist Werewolf anymore:
Yeah, half of the internet has already rendered a masterpiece out of taking you down, Brock Fucking Turner. I have nothing to add.
But then there's the other half of the internet that, well... as I'd say to Chicken, "is not my favorite."
Check out the comments section on this screamingly fucked-up Washington Post article in which "journalistic integrity" appears to have been scrapped in favor of "the bro code." (AND SHAME ON YOU, MICHAEL E. MILLER OF THE WASHINGTON POST.)
There's plenty of "why ruin two lives over one night of drinking? People make mistakes! What if he were your son?" comments which, actually, make me want to set those people on fire, literally tie them to a chain-link fence and pour gasoline all over their bodies and then strike a fucking match as I say, "I'm only ruining one life though, so you should really be fine with this."
There's plenty of the standard "but if she SEEMED FINE..." doubts, aspersions, questioning her timeline, questioning HOW drunk was TOO drunk. "She shouldn't have been drinking at a party with undergrads," writes one commenter. "She should have stayed home but instead she behaved like someone who refused to grow up, who wanted to party, so hooking up with a 19 year old while drunk seems opart (sic) of her "not acting like a college grad who should be old enough to know better"' SUCH A GOOD POINT CARLA1212 WE SHOULD TOTALLY RAPE HER.
Don't worry. We don't actually have gasoline in the house.
I tweeted and Facebooked a one-liner this afternoon: "May all mothers of sons raise Stanford bicyclists, not Stanford swimmers."
My intention was to remind everyone reading the internet today that there were three people that night who did not turn away when confronted with the ugly, uncomfortable truth of sexual assault: there were two men who saw something, said something, and chased a motherfucker down. And there was a victim who wrote and spoke publicly more than 7,000 private, devastating words about her body, her shame, her fury, her pain.
One woman on Twitter responded:
@yokatykatikate mothers & fathers of sons raise their sons to respect women. #BrockTurner s mother & father are both culpable in this rape
Goddamnit.
I was having such a good pile-on.
I was really working up a magnificent fucking fury here, and then she had to go and ruin it.
Brock, man, just so you know, that shit is not going to fly. You've already tried blaming booze, campus culture, and female promiscuity, and we are all calling bullshit.
Your beer didn't rape a woman.
Your college culture didn't rape a woman.
She didn't rape herself because she was just so promiscuous.
And guess what?
Your parents didn't rape a woman.
I didn't want to write about Brock Fucking Turner tonight because the woman who continues to survive his attack has said everything, and it's her voice that we all need to shut up for, not mine.
I thought that nothing could enrage me more than the New York Times op-ed claiming that people don't trust Hillary Clinton because they don't know her hobbies.
I thought that I couldn't get more outraged than when the internet went after the Gorilla Mom, calling for social services to investigate her fitness as a parent when, in an unlucky split second, her kid did a kid thing.
I thought my eye would never twitch harder than when, for the umpeenth fucking time, Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood because of the ABORTIONS THAT CONGRESS DOES NOT PAY FOR.
I thought, okay, 2016, this is the year that Donald Trump gives me a rage stroke. At least I've found my upper limit. At least I've found the darkest hate-filled righteous rage place of screaming in my soul, and I've lived there for the length of an entire Trump press conference, and through prayer and the support of my sponsor, finally made it back to the light.
I thought I'd found peace.
THANKS, BROCK FUCKING TURNER.
YOU MANAGED TO TAKE SHIT TO THE NEXT FUCKING LEVEL.
You raped an unconscious woman, tried to run away, lied and changed your story, accused her of lying and irresponsibility. Then you put on a fucking navy blazer, got a fucking haircut, and promised to visit college campuses to warn students there of the dangers of ALCOHOL and PROMISCUITY. What a fucking plan. "I've been convicted of three counts of violent sexual assault on a college campus. You know what? I think I'd actually like to stay on college campuses some more! Maybe meet some young people. Offer them my wisdom. Will there be chicks?"
What, exactly, the fuck, were you planning to say there, Brock Fucking Turner?
Be careful kids. I had a bright future and DID YOU GUYS KNOW ONE TIME I MET RYAN LOCHTE? True story! I have Olympic rings keychains for everyone! Haha you're welcome!
But then some really bad stuff happened to me. I got drunk one night and... yadda yadda yadda, you don't need to know the details but the next thing I know this guy jumped off his bike and tackled me as I was running away from... something, again, unimportant details, and before I could even take a deep breath it was like "elite athlete and future surgeon and All-American Stanford swimmer accused of sexually harassing an unconscious woman who graduated from A STATE SCHOOL."
Now, instead of being a surgeon, I'm a registered sex offender and I have to live in my parents' pool house and my dad got me a job at his investment bank which sounds good but it's not because all the other guys at my level... well, let's just say they didn't go to Stanford. I'm not worried though. My dad always says, cream rises to the top.
But that's what happens when you go to college and drink and meet women who say "no, you can't have sex with me," but then they drink some more and you just kind of hang out hoping they change their minds, and then you offer to take them home when they're passed out, and if they don't say anything then you know, like, they wouldn't have passed out with you if they weren't like, cool with it.
THIS is what happens when women have the right to make choices about their sexual partners! PROMISCUITY, right? And the tarnishing of a young man's once-sterling reputation. So the moral of the story is: women shouldn't drink OR have the right to make choices about their... wait. Let me check my notecards.
Brock, that's just about as fucking HILARIOUS as Jared Fogle setting up a middle school mentorship program for cheerleaders with absentee fathers.
Yes, Brock. I did just compare you to Jared Fogle. Who is also a sex offender. Like you are a sex offender. Because you raped someone.
Rape is a great fucking equalizer, you prick. The list of traits that you share with Bill Cosby just went up by one, motherfucker.
Dude, I don't even have to take you down because half of the entire fucking internet is posse'd up and ON THE CASE.
I don't even have to touch the absurd, delusional, victim-blaming bullshit written by your father and classmate, saying you shouldn't have to go to prison for rape because you haven't had much of an appetite, and "D'AWWWW LOOK AT THAT SMILE."
I can't even unpack the breathless insanity of Leslie Rasmussen's argument that Brock CLEARLY isn't a rapist because DUH he didn't jump the victim in a parking lot. And she has a point. Brock didn't kidnap her while she was on her way to her car. POINT IN FACT: Brock stripped a passed-out, unresponsive woman from the waist down behind a dumpster, not in a parking lot, ergo, not a rape. Good point, Leslie. That's good lookin out. #SISTERHOOD
Judge Persky, I don't even have to say shame on you, your honor. But I'm going to anyway.
Shame on you.
I don't even have to say a goddamned word about the bile-tasting irony that you're worried that this one night might impact the rest of your life. WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL. Getting caught raping someone was kind of a bummer, huh? You know what else is a bummer? I don't even have to fucking say it.
This pic has been all over the internet today and I am loving it:
This guy wants to make sure your dad knows that loving you, Brock, means not having a "you get one gimme" policy on rapes. Tattoos, yes. Putting your fingers inside an unconscious person? No. Sometimes love means zero fucking tolerance.
This writer helped your dad re-word his statement so it didn't turn me into a Feminist Werewolf anymore:
 |
| Lucretia Madden Pruitt fixed this right on up thanks girl |
Yeah, half of the internet has already rendered a masterpiece out of taking you down, Brock Fucking Turner. I have nothing to add.
But then there's the other half of the internet that, well... as I'd say to Chicken, "is not my favorite."
Check out the comments section on this screamingly fucked-up Washington Post article in which "journalistic integrity" appears to have been scrapped in favor of "the bro code." (AND SHAME ON YOU, MICHAEL E. MILLER OF THE WASHINGTON POST.)
There's plenty of "why ruin two lives over one night of drinking? People make mistakes! What if he were your son?" comments which, actually, make me want to set those people on fire, literally tie them to a chain-link fence and pour gasoline all over their bodies and then strike a fucking match as I say, "I'm only ruining one life though, so you should really be fine with this."
There's plenty of the standard "but if she SEEMED FINE..." doubts, aspersions, questioning her timeline, questioning HOW drunk was TOO drunk. "She shouldn't have been drinking at a party with undergrads," writes one commenter. "She should have stayed home but instead she behaved like someone who refused to grow up, who wanted to party, so hooking up with a 19 year old while drunk seems opart (sic) of her "not acting like a college grad who should be old enough to know better"' SUCH A GOOD POINT CARLA1212 WE SHOULD TOTALLY RAPE HER.
Don't worry. We don't actually have gasoline in the house.
I tweeted and Facebooked a one-liner this afternoon: "May all mothers of sons raise Stanford bicyclists, not Stanford swimmers."
My intention was to remind everyone reading the internet today that there were three people that night who did not turn away when confronted with the ugly, uncomfortable truth of sexual assault: there were two men who saw something, said something, and chased a motherfucker down. And there was a victim who wrote and spoke publicly more than 7,000 private, devastating words about her body, her shame, her fury, her pain.
One woman on Twitter responded:
@yokatykatikate mothers & fathers of sons raise their sons to respect women. #BrockTurner s mother & father are both culpable in this rape
Goddamnit.
I was having such a good pile-on.
I was really working up a magnificent fucking fury here, and then she had to go and ruin it.
Brock, man, just so you know, that shit is not going to fly. You've already tried blaming booze, campus culture, and female promiscuity, and we are all calling bullshit.
Your beer didn't rape a woman.
Your college culture didn't rape a woman.
She didn't rape herself because she was just so promiscuous.
And guess what?
Your parents didn't rape a woman.
You did.
Is Brock Fucking Turner's dad a dick? Yes. Should he stop writing horrible fucking letters? Absolutely. Is he terrified, like all parents of perpetrators, that his son might face actual justice? Hell yes he is, and he's flailing all over the fucking place, insulting a woman who has been shamed and humiliated enough already, just trying to keep his son out of prison. I pity him. Truly.
But is it his fault that his son raped a woman? No.
I won't blame Brock's choice to rape on alcohol. I won't blame Brock's choice to rape on women expressing sexuality, women looking pretty, women wearing clothing, women doing things that men find appealing.
I won't blame anybody or anything except Brock for Brock's fucking decision and Brock's fucking actions because Brock is old enough to drink and drive and vote and go to war and be fucking responsible for his own fucking hands and what they do to women who are fucking unconscious.
THIS ONE IS ON YOU, BROCK FUCKING TURNER.
I won't blame Brock's parents because Brock Fucking Turner is a grown ass man. For 20 years, he has had coaches, teachers, parents, friends, TED talks, sports heroes, and role models who have all contributed to the diarrhea-colored mural that is his identity, honor, attitudes toward women, ideas about consent, victim complex, inability to take responsibility, borderline sociopathy, and general shitbirdery.
This isn't ROOM. He didn't spend 20 years in a shed with only his parents to teach him about the rules of courtship, and then emerge, go directly to a party, and then wait for the first girl to pass out into his arms so he could violate her with astonishing lack of remorse, just like his parents taught him. HE HAS BEEN SOCIALIZED. If you don't like what this "socialized young man" looks like, I suggest you, reader, might lift your gaze from the easy target of that young man's parents and take a good fucking look around at the world that you helped build with your attitudes about women, and your votes, and your silence when someone asks, with a disapproving purse of lips, "but what was she wearing?"
DID NOBODY ELSE READ MISSOULA BY JON KRAKAUER.
This news cycle is a devastating, wrenching, and humiliating reflection of American misogyny.
This just in: rich, white, educated, athletic young man who (whoopsies!) drank a little too much one night > working-class woman who shouldn't have been out drinking at a college party anyway (what did she think was going to happen?)
By the way, we would never have heard about any of this if these people weren't white.
God damn it, I just wish someone would change the fucking record once in a while.
But is it his fault that his son raped a woman? No.
I won't blame Brock's choice to rape on alcohol. I won't blame Brock's choice to rape on women expressing sexuality, women looking pretty, women wearing clothing, women doing things that men find appealing.
I won't blame anybody or anything except Brock for Brock's fucking decision and Brock's fucking actions because Brock is old enough to drink and drive and vote and go to war and be fucking responsible for his own fucking hands and what they do to women who are fucking unconscious.
THIS ONE IS ON YOU, BROCK FUCKING TURNER.
I won't blame Brock's parents because Brock Fucking Turner is a grown ass man. For 20 years, he has had coaches, teachers, parents, friends, TED talks, sports heroes, and role models who have all contributed to the diarrhea-colored mural that is his identity, honor, attitudes toward women, ideas about consent, victim complex, inability to take responsibility, borderline sociopathy, and general shitbirdery.
This isn't ROOM. He didn't spend 20 years in a shed with only his parents to teach him about the rules of courtship, and then emerge, go directly to a party, and then wait for the first girl to pass out into his arms so he could violate her with astonishing lack of remorse, just like his parents taught him. HE HAS BEEN SOCIALIZED. If you don't like what this "socialized young man" looks like, I suggest you, reader, might lift your gaze from the easy target of that young man's parents and take a good fucking look around at the world that you helped build with your attitudes about women, and your votes, and your silence when someone asks, with a disapproving purse of lips, "but what was she wearing?"
DID NOBODY ELSE READ MISSOULA BY JON KRAKAUER.
This news cycle is a devastating, wrenching, and humiliating reflection of American misogyny.
This just in: rich, white, educated, athletic young man who (whoopsies!) drank a little too much one night > working-class woman who shouldn't have been out drinking at a college party anyway (what did she think was going to happen?)
By the way, we would never have heard about any of this if these people weren't white.
God damn it, I just wish someone would change the fucking record once in a while.