It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.
An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.
Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.
She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.
One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.
The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.
She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.
“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”
Yeah, or how they should not have been convicted of a crime they may or may not have committed and sentenced to the most concentrated and well documented rape culture in modern history, male prisons. Obviously rape cultures exist. I agree with you.
False rape allegations happen, but they’re much more rare than actual rape.
The amount of support prison rape has in society is a real part of our rape culture. When rape is celebrated as a valid punishment, it helps support the same rape culture that supports questioning victims’ stories. That they must have done something to deserve it.
It’s all tied together.
I was not refering to false rape allegations.
Then you should be more clear.
Or you shouldn’t make assumptions.
You’re welcome to clarify your statement.
Which part do you need help understanding?
Everything. I read your statement twice and it reads the way Velma assumed because you didn’t say what you meant and just beat around the bush. You may think you said one thing, but you communicated another.
And you are still refusing to say what you actually mean. If you can’t distill your point into one simple sentence, then you don’t have anything worth saying.
Your comment strongly suggests to me a possible pre-existing negative framing of what I’ve said, and I’m not interested in opening myself up to further verbal abuse from you. I’m happy to engage with substantive disagreement, but your comment leaves with little confidence you are willing to do that here. I’m not going to continue a conversation that starts with personal insults and character judgements.
Alright, now you’re just being deliberately obtuse. Either clarify your comment or don’t but just stop wasting everyone’s time with this playing dumb act.
This is how rape apologists work. They like to dance around the subject, draw up false equivalences, and sow discord in order to obfuscate the true crime here - that this woman was raped by two men.
Calling in the backup? You being here is a choice you make to waste your own time that you chose to consider wasted.
Which comment? Because the comment that seemed unclear was apparently not what Velma wants to address now.
Which measures or actions do rape victims need to complete before the wider public believes they’ve been raped? I’ll go ahead and condense our two conversations into one right here.
So not about the unclear part where your assumption was wrong?