And more bullshit. Someone please explain this to me: “Their only crime was bad judgment; of everything else, they are innocent.” (from this article).
Now, if they didn’t DO anything – where exactly does the bad judgment come into play? Because in my experience, bad judgment usually leads to something, um, bad – so if nothing happened at the party, then….what? Do you see where I’m going with this?
I keep trying to give Duke the benefit of the doubt with regards to how they’re handling the lacrosse team assault, and then they go and say shit like this:
“The behavior was bad behavior, boorish behavior,” Brodhead said about the party in a Tuesday night news conference. “But from there to what is alleged is a very serious step.” (from this article)
I’m sorry, did you actually just say that? The womyn who was “allegedly” attacked, um, ACTUALLY landed in the hospital, beat to hell and clearly sexually assaulted. And you’re trying to pass this off as “bad, boorish behavior” that got distorted by someone’s overactive, overaccusatory imagination? Why not just come out and accuse the womyn of fabricating this whole thing because she’s a golddigger? Because that’s where it sounds like you’re going, to me.
I HATE when they do this shit. I don’t care if Duke is trying to cover its ass, or to avoid some messy issue until the police have finished their investigation – I cannot stand when someone comes forward to say they were raped, attacked, assaulted, and people are like, “Well, that’s what she *says* happened, but….” Do you have any idea how hard it is to come forward and say you were raped? Like, just to begin with, just to say, “I was raped.” Because people just don’t want to hear it – they want to start trying to figure out if maybe what you were wearing had anything to do with it, or if they can blame it on your profession, or whether you were out alone late at night where “women shouldn’t be.” And then the difficulty in coming forward is only amped up a ridiculous amount when you’re a black single mother exotic dancer accusing rich white boys – I’m sure she realized the spin this was going to get. And instead of recognizing that, on top of this absolutely horrible attack, on top of dealing with THAT, she DID come forward, probably knowing that people were going to be all, “Well, they’re rich and upstanding members of the community. Maybe they were a little boorish that evening, but, hey, she’s a stripper. Can we take her word, really?” And instead of recognizing how brave this womyn’s being, they’re calling it a “situation,” “a serious step,” “serious allegations” – as if it were nothing more than empty allegations.
Goddammit. Fuck all you people. All you people who take that stance. Just fuck all of you. You are assholes.
And P.S., Duke, what’s this bullshit about “They tell Duke kids, ‘Don’t go into the big, bad Durham community.’” (from same article). Durham is the bomb, you stupid haters. That sentiment (“don’t go to Durham”) is racist, too: lilywhite privileged Duke telling its kids not to go into black, ghetto Durham. Fuck you for that, too, Duke.
I am just really mad today/this week.
Duke’s PR department is really dropping the ball, I think. Or maybe it’s the Arbusto approach, and they just don’t fucking care. But if I was in Duke’s PR (which, really, I would’ve quit a long time ago, and I would definitely quit over this recent assholery), I would be slapping a handler on every single bastard that was allowed to make statements about “the alleged incident” (grr) to the press. I get that you need to not make statements that imply guilt on the part of any of your precious, precious rich white boys, but do you have to make statements that are so fucking callous and hateful towards the womyn? I don’t think so. I think you could just keep your fucking mouth shut and be all, “Well, we’re waiting for the police findings, and we’ll go from there.” Without being all nasty and “But it’s a stripper making these claims…And boys will be boys.” about it.
Michael made some good points in the comments under that Duke post, about why Duke should wait for the official investigation to end before really doing anything. And I agree – although I’m also glad the rest of the lacrosse games were forfeited. And I agree with the whole “innocent until proven guilty,” and I want these guys to get due process. I guess what frustrates me is that it seems obvious there *are* guilty parties, and that it seems very likely that members of the lacrosse team know exactly who the guilty parties are and aren’t speaking up – and that’s reprehensible. And also, I really think everyone present at the party needs to be held accountable, to some degree. Yeah, maybe there was someone (or some people) who tried to stop it, and we wouldn’t want them being unfairly punished – but they can also speak up now, if they’re concerned about that.
Whatever. Grr.
To change subjects, this recent class project of Greg’s makes me insanely happy whenever I watch it: Sunshine Farting Gnomes. It’s not really about sunshine-farting gnomes, but that’s what I like to call it. He compressed it, so the picture quality isn’t so hot. Whatever. Go watch it. The professor supplied the original soundless cartoon clip, and everything else is all Greg. He wrote the music, recorded it, etc, etc. Although one of the voices is mine. Anyway. Go enjoy.
The Angry Naked Bum breaks it down for us in yesterday’s post (March 27th): It is of course noteworthy that Duke’s reflex to cover its rich privileged white ass is far quicker than its urge to do good by a working class black single mom.
I don’t think I can put it better than that. And I know, I know – can we really expect Duke to do anything other than what’s in its best legal interests? And my answer is, clearly, “Um, yes, I think so. It’s called decency.” Anyway, go read what Angry Naked Bum says about all this shit.
And if you’re wondering, there has been community response – I just didn’t check my email early enough to know about these events beforehand:
-There was a candlelight vigil last night outside the house (610 Buchanan Blvd, to be precise).
-There was a “Cacerolazo” this morning at 9am – a pots and pans protest. I’ve never heard of Cacerolazo before, but it’s a tool wimmin use worldwide to call out sexual assaulters – basically you stand outside their house and bang your pots and pans.
The Cacerolazo especially cheers me up a bit. I’ll have to start checking my email more often, so I don’t miss stuff like this.
If you haven’t heard about the fucking Duke men’s lacrosse team: they had a party and hired two black wimmin escorts to dance, supposedly for around five men (there were really really more than forty men present). The wimmin showed up, started dancing, and the fuckers started shouting racial slurs, so the wimmin left. Some of the guys followed the wimmin out to their car shouting racial slurs. A few of the guys managed to coax the wimmin to return. Once inside the house, the wimmin were jumped by the waiting guys, separated, and one womyn (an NCCU student and mother of two) was forced into a bathroom, where she was raped, sodomized, and beaten by three white guys for over half an hour. There really aren’t any words I can think of that correctly express how fucking enraged I am about this. And of course it looks like “the authorities” are doing fuckall about it – they waited two days to search the house after the rape was reported; Duke “officials” aren’t conducting their own investigation but are waiting to see what the police turn up – they’re also not reprimanding the lacrosse team, it looks like it’s just back to business as usual. I also don’t understand why they’re not charging everyone at the party, since it sure sounds like they all had a hand in the attack. If two guys run out to coax the wimmin to return, and the rest are all waiting inside to jump them, separate them, and force one into a bathroom – yeah, maybe they weren’t the actual rapists, but they were a party to it. And even some local lawyers are trying to give it some sort of discrimination spin – “searches by the police should be based on a suspicion that is directed toward an individual, not just a class of people.” Yeah, because those rich white privileged Duke-student lacrosse players have enough injustice to deal with – they don’t need us willy-nilly accusing them of rape or anything. Sarcasm, that.
I am so fucking mad. And disgusted.
DNA tests ordered for Duke athletes
Dancer gives details of ordeal
Fuck yeah!: Oglala Lakhota president: we’ll host abortion clinic on reservation
Cecilia Fire Thunder, you rule!
I love when I find out that someone I know has a blog! (I also love meeting people in real life that I previously only knew through their blog, too. Ahem.) Anyway, I just found out Chase blogs, and not only does Chase blog, but he makes fun of Republicans. That’s the kind of blog I can heartily endorse.
Go read it here.
