Yeah, at some point I want to get a pair of nice floggers, and I’ve been wanting to get some more leather clothes, especially some nicer stuff to wear to contests and such. And that’s all without touching on kink furniture or the tools to try making my own stuff (of higher quality than the various self made implements I already have).

Fuck I could blow so much money on sex and kink stuff…

I want to be clear about what I meant by social illness. It is an illness of the society which manifests in the behaviors and values of people, fascism being the prime example. I think these men (read the article and it’s actually two men) have been radicalized to the point where they are acting in a complete incongruity with near universal understanding of right and wrong. And in that vein the systems to rehabilitate them are ones that we need to build for the people less radicalized than them. The same applies for dealing with rape culture in general. The difference between these men and your everyday rapist or everyday far right chud engaging in stochastic terrorism seem to me to be ones of magnitude, not kind.

Yeah I’d say it’s morally bad, even sexual harassment, but also constitutionally protected political speech, in part because it’s to an elected member of the government

Because vaginas are tough af

Even if our pursuit is doomed I believe we still owe it to ourselves and each other to work for a better world. It’s both a matter of practicality and a matter of character. Surely things can be done better, but also we must every day choose who we will be, we choose the contents of our souls continually, and since we choose we can choose better, and when we don’t know what choice is better we can do our best and try to learn where we can.

I choose hope because we are people, even when things are bleak, and people can change. We can innovate. We can reorganize. We can learn and choose better. Perfect is impossible, but better always is possible.

Two books I recommend for hope are The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow, which show that society has been organized wildly differently in the past in ways most people don’t know because it’s relatively recent archeological and anthropological knowledge, but also it goes against the two competing “common knowledge” accounts of how civilization got to be this way. And The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuinn (cw the protagonist does rape someone), which imagines an anarchic society, struggles and all, which feels very real and like it may someday be possible, especially to those who’ve had plenty of experience in anarchy adjacent communities, spaces, and projects.

You want both? How about neither. Don’t worry you still wouldn’t have gotten either had you picked just one. Anyways, we’ve decided to do a bunch of overtime not doing anything beneficial and massively outspent our budget. Anyways you don’t really need those libraries, sidewalks, or schools.

If it’s not murder, it didn’t happen on camera, and it didn’t happen in a car cops couldn’t care less unless it’s really easy. Like easier than testing a rape kit and matching it to a database of sex offenders and other rape kits (which should be pretty damn easy). Speaking as a victim, I knew cops were fucking useless, but I’m very vocal since my experience about how brazenly they don’t care. Like, to the point they didn’t notice the footprint under a window with a cut screen and insisted we must’ve left the door unlocked.

I have no doubt that there are serial rapists out there with many samples of their DNA sitting in police offices untested with none of the victims knowing that the rapist has targeted a lot of people already.

The fucking nerve to argue over the right to keep raping someone blackout drunk!

I don’t know. Even communities committed to restorative justice have broken stairs. But just because there are still issues doesn’t mean we should give up the pursuit of a better and more just system. Issues like this are part of why it’d be stupid for a large government to just adopt what some communes and anarchists are trying, but taking elements, working towards similar aims, and encouraging such radical and voluntary groups to keep trying to innovate and find solutions are things we can do now

Yep! It’s also a stage of the radicalization pathway that the alt right pioneered. Each step primes people for the next as well as making them sympathetic to those even further down the line. While the person who’s only involved in light misogyny spaces may in theory oppose rape threats and rape, they may very well find themselves talking about false accusations or how you can’t control people on the internet or rapists. By having those reactions they’re already priming themselves to maybe be interested in communities where among other things some members make fun of rape victims that the community has decided are liars.

That’s honestly lower than I expected

I think you’ve already had a decent impact on it here. Still a ways to go and all that, but it doesn’t feel as entirely focused on men’s perspective as it did before you and a handful of other very vocal women got here. That focus on men had me considering leaving for a while, something I no longer am considering.

Fundamentally rehabilitation is a two way street. Society has to provide the tools and resources to help change, but the criminal has to want to change and choose to do so. I highly doubt this man will ever want to change.

I hate calling everything terrorism, but raping a political candidate over her party sure fits my understanding of terrorism, same as last year’s political assassination.

I believe in rehabilitative and restorative justice. But a necessary prerequisite for them to work is that the guilty understand what they did was wrong and want to change. Rapists, much like domestic abusers, in our society very rarely feel that desire.

Someone who would do something like this has something seriously wrong with him, but it seems to me like it may be more likely to be an illness of society that he’s symptomatic of rather than an individual mental illness. He needs to be kept under control for the safety of others until we can find a way to make people like him eligible for restorative justice, which I doubt he will live to see.

It’s also important to understand that the unfortunate reality is that even if we get there some people will immediately move towards trying to be ok rather than prioritizing stuff like calling the cops and gathering evidence. Taking a shower, disassociating, and trying to keep moving forward without acknowledging what happened are all behaviors we need to be understanding and sympathetic towards even if we as fellow citizens and justice oriented people do wish that more evidence had been collected.

And that’s all ignoring the fact that rape kits are rarely even tested. It’s still worth getting one done if you’re a victim. But victims and non victims alike should be demanding better on this front.

Holy goddamned fuck. That’s awful and also terrifying that someone would be so bold as to do this to someone running for congress. I sincerely hope the cops actually give a shit about sexual violence for once in this case.

ETA: I want to add in that while I hate calling every crime terrorism, this sure feels like an act of terrorism intended to scare women away from running for office as democrats.

The federal government and military really ought to swap positions there. I’m opposed to the death penalty in general, but we’ve got a lot of soldiers who commit war crimes and need punished for it

The problem with nitrogen is it’s comfortable for the executioner and scalable. Historically that combination doesn’t go well

Brb drugging my family with anti nausea medicine

That sounds like someone who just wants the pain to go away

And I know psychedelics were good for my trauma