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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9735 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Outed as an Actual Rapist.

"Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

'I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. 'I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’'"

Platner officially denies the allegations, but you can tell from his statement that deep down he knows it's true. He can't admit to it because he would go to actual jail, but everyone knows his campaign is over.

The haters said he would crash and burn, and they were correct. Honestly great call by the haters.

The Maine Democratic Party has one week until the ballot deadline to pick a candidate while stepping on as few toes as possible. Let the games begin.

Unlike the way you describe the link it is not "Platner outed as an actual rapist".

It is "women who dated him says it was rape, kinda, she didn't fight him off or stab him with the sewing needles or go to the cops or anything like that or even try to run out of the house after he was done".

Racicot told POLITICO she connected with Platner on the dating app Bumble in 2019 and had consensual relations with him prior to the night he allegedly assaulted her.

That night in late 2021, she said she had exchanged text messages with him and told him not to come over, saying she wasn’t in the mood for company. Later that evening, she said she realized when she heard a sound on the stairs that he had let himself into her house, which was unlocked.

Platner came up the stairs, Racicot said, to where she was on a couch. He got on top of her and kept grabbing her, she said, while she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wasn’t interested. Racicot said she smelled alcohol on his breath and believed he was “almost blackout drunk” because Platner ignored her protests and continued to grab her after knocking over an antique sewing kit, spilling small needles everywhere.

“And, the look on his face and realizing what was happening, I just realized that, like, I am in a situation where there’s no consent here,” she said.

Racicot said she tried to separate herself from Platner by telling him she couldn’t be in that room anymore, after which he followed her to her bedroom and had sex with her against her will. She said he also ejaculated inside of her despite her telling him not to, as she was not using birth control at the time.

She went to clean herself up, she said, and when she returned, Platner had fallen asleep. She contemplated waking him up to kick him out, but worried he could hurt someone driving in the state he was in.

The following morning, she said, Platner tried to put his arm around her and she pushed him away. She said she asked him whether he remembered what had happened the previous night; according to Racicot, Platner said he didn’t remember. Racicot said she told him to leave and never contact her again.

That's a whole lot of "it was non-consensual but I didn't do nothing about it" going on there. At this stage it's pure "he said/she said" and rests on "could it have happened like that? yes. did it happen like that? who knows?"

Is this the same here and gone?

This woman made a few bad choices(having a previous hookup with platner). Then afterwards he invited himself over and she told him not to come. She unwisely didnt lock the door so he just let himself in. Then she told him to stop while he grabbed her and tried to mount her. If that’s not rape, what is?

Oh, hydro, there are a lot of legal definitions of what exactly is and isn't rape, and judges make comments about it.

I'm now sufficiently burned on "oh wow hey just so happens that at precisely the right moment to help us get rid of this guy we hate, someone comes forward with an accusation of sexual assault that conveniently has no witnesses to support or, for our purposes, prove it never happened, gosh what are the chances, eh?" stories of this kind to be very dubious.

Lack of consent is not in itself rape. Suppose it hadn't been Platner walking in her front door. Would she have fought that guy off, called the cops, tried to get help? Because the story can be interpreted to be "she kinda would have gone along if he'd been sober, but because he wasn't, she just shrugged and let him get some so he'd go away in the morning". There's nothing there about "and I tried fighting him off, and when I got into my bedroom I locked the door but he broke in, and I tried calling for help but he grabbed my phone" etc. in the story.

Could have been rape. Could have been choice she later regretted. Could be "I don't want this guy in office, so here's my story". Could be a lot of things. I don't like Platner, but this isn't enough in the story to say "yep definitely rape rather than dubious consent". A lot of women (and men too, I guess) have sex out of a sense of duty or obligation, that doesn't make it rape.

A lot of women (and men too, I guess) have sex out of a sense of duty or obligation, that doesn't make it rape.

I don't think a lot of men really have much experience with this. Furthermore, I believe that according to human instinct[0] having to do this disqualifies you from being a man[1]. (Which is also why most human societies, bar the ones over the last 100 years, have this baked into their understanding of male homosexual activity, regardless of whether or not they actively prosecuted it.)

That knowledge gap creates some significant problems, though, since you have to guess as to how bad the problem actually is. So you can't tell nearly as well if the opposite side/sex is bullshitting you, and if you default to "just Believe Them" for a few generations, you get this situation, where normal relationship dynamics have effectively become rape (or can become rape arbitrarily), especially in the marginal case (like this one) where that duty/obligation is all that's left in the relationship.

It's understandable that, if this state of affairs is broken to the point it's getting in the way of other political goals, the "side" that gained a sociopolitical advantage from normal relationship dynamics being rape (whose candidate it ostensibly is) would start pulling away from the polemic and towards nuance/reality. The principled ones break first.

[0] Generalizes to 'being taken advantage of', but this is specifically why Samuel Jackson's character says those things in the first place. Bitches are by definition female (shorthand for "obligated/subordinate"- not a prescription), which is why calling a man one in this context can even be a bad thing in the first place.

[1] And is part of why men in that position don't usually like talking about it if and when it should happen to them. (And if it involves a woman, why the response is some variation of "nice" or "how'd you con her into it?", and in either case is followed by disbelief should the man complain about being turned into the obligated/subordinate partner. In conventional relationships other men will mock the complainant by making whip-cracking sounds.)

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