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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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This part jumped out:

That same month, The Globe published details of the video referred to in E.M.’s statement of claim. Two videos taken on the night of the incident were shown to reporters by lawyers representing some of the players. In the first, which was recorded within the hotel room at 3:25 a.m. on June 19, 2018, E.M. can be seen from the neck up. A male voice can be heard saying “You’re ok with this?” “I’m ok with this,” she replied. In the second, which is 12 seconds long, and which was taken at 4:26 a.m., E.M. appears to be covering herself with a towel. “Are you recording me?” she asks. “Ok, good. It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

She says that off camera they forced her to say that but eh.

She was exchanging texts with them the next day:

The Globe story also revealed a text message conversation between E.M. and one of the players in the hours after she left the hotel room. The player begins by asking E.M. whether she had gone to the police. The woman said she had spoken to her mother and her mother had called police against her wishes. “You said you were having fun,” the player wrote. “I was really drunk, didn’t feel good about it at all after. But I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” she replied. “I was ok with going home with you, it was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”

To me this tilts more towards the "I regretted it afterwards" side of the scale than the "was held down and forcibly raped" side. Maybe her mom pressured her into escalating things legally.

Well, 2 things come to mind.

  1. I know gang bangs are icky, but the analogies up thread to american football are stark. We all need to be more comfortable explaining to young women that if you go home with a contact sports player or musician the chances of having a train run on you are enormous.
  2. I do find it amazing that you can even have video evidence of consent and it doesn't matter. How exactly is anyone supposed to differentiate between the people who want this and those who don't? Because there's a substantial group of the former who will fold instantly if, say, their mother points out that society looks down on being tag teamed. A multi million dollar pay out possibility being some decent cake icing.

I do find it amazing that you can even have video evidence of consent and it doesn't matter.

You can have video evidence of consent that matters. For example, if there's a video of the same woman shot in a safe space before the gangbang telling the camera how excited she is to have sex with not just one, but five hockey players.

When you are in a hotel room with five guys who are built like literal hockey players and they are growing increasingly frantic about you giving them video evidence that you willingly had sex with them, even if the room is not locked and they are not barring your way out, the inherent power disparity means that lying on camera is the safer option than risking one of them snapping.

Sure, you can in theory coerce someone into making multiple admissions of consent.

I haven't seen the videos, but the fact that the players presented them as evidence means they should in theory have value in their defense. Otherwise it would be more evidence of coercion!

To me this sounds a lot like "the girl was too drunk to consent to four more guys having sex with her after she went up to the hotel room with the first player". While you can disagree with the law lumping together A, "I liberally lubricated the girl that seemed to like me with cocktails so she would put out that evening" and B, "I liberally lubricated the girl that seemed to like me with cocktails so my mates would pull a train on her that evening" with C, "I lied to the girl that didn't seem to like me that I would show her a kitten to lure her into my hotel room, where I and four of my mates threatened to cut her face off if she screamed as we held her down and pulled a train on her", and I will agree that it's all a spectrum, B still lies much closer to C on this spectrum than A does.

Did he pour the drinks down her gullet? Yes, alcohol impairs your judgement. And yet you are still responsible for the choices you make, wise or foolish they might be.

He didn't, but the social contract between two people getting drunk together and ending up in bed to regret it later doesn't traditionally include four other guys in the same bed.

If you get blackout drunk with a sexy lady that approached you in the bar and wake up with your kidney missing, do you say, "oh well, I am responsible for the choices I made, live and learn"? Or do you contact the police?

What person has ever consented to having their kidney removed, inebriated or otherwise?

EDIT: Yes I've read that one article by Scott. I should have said "what person has ever consented to having their kidney removed by a stranger with no medical training in a hotel bathroom, inebriated or otherwise?"

Entirely not the point....but kidney donors? As we have two, it can be done with a live donor.

See my edit.

Touché. Perhaps I should clarify: what person has ever consented to having their kidney removed by a stranger with no medical training in a hotel bathroom, inebriated or otherwise.

TBF it sounded like one could have maybe talked Scott into something like that given the difficulty he encountered getting his sober consent taken seriously by the proper doctors!

Lol fair

Touché. Perhaps I should clarify: what person has ever consented to having their kidney removed by a stranger with no medical training in a hotel bathroom, inebriated or otherwise.