Rep. Katie Hill announces resignation

[Brainster]

Who here said Hill did nothing wrong? Can you quote that person? We all agree that a relationship with a subordinate is wrong.

How about Hill herself?

"The forces of revenge by a bitter jealous man, cyber-exploitation and sexual shaming that target our gender and a large segment of society that fears and hates powerful women have combined to push a young woman out of power."

Sure doesn't sound like a mea culpa to me.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to distract from the fact that your "team" is trafficking in revenge porn.

Are you OK with the RNCC, a division of the RNC, trafficking in revenge porn?

And of course the Steele Dossier wasn't revenge porn because they didn't have photos of the piss tape.

 

[theprestige]

Who here said Hill did nothing wrong? Can you quote that person? We all agree that a relationship with a subordinate is wrong.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to distract from the fact that your "team" is trafficking in revenge porn.

But you do know better. You know that this thread is about her resignation for unrelated offenses.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say Brainster is trying to keep the thread on topic, and you're trying to distract from the fact that your "team" bla bla bla.

Really, who cares? If you want to start a thread about trafficking in revenge porn, go for it.

 

[Joe Random]

IMO there's a difference between issuing a general warning, even if based on a specific example, and telling a specific person after the fact what they should/shouldn't have done.

"19 year old Katie got blackout drunk at a frat party and several guys there pulled a train on her. Best to stay sober and keep your wits about you in situations like that, lest bad actors take advantage of you. There are a lot of really horrible people out there whom you simply can't trust not to do you harm."

vs

"Well, Katie, you shouldn't have had all those Jager bombs if you wanted to wake up will all your orifices still their original size."

The two are hugely different, but it seems people are wont to treat them as being equal. Any suggestion that a generic person take precautions against being harmed is treated as victim-blaming a specific person and absolving the bad-actor in their case.

 

[theprestige]

IMO there's a difference between issuing a general warning, even if based on a specific example, and telling a specific person after the fact what they should/shouldn't have done.

"19 year old Katie got blackout drunk at a frat party and several guys there pulled a train on her. Best to stay sober and keep your wits about you in situations like that, lest bad actors take advantage of you. There are a lot of really horrible people out there whom you simply can't trust not to do you harm."

vs

"Well, Katie, you shouldn't have had all those Jager bombs if you wanted to wake up will all your orifices still their original size."

The two are hugely different, but it seems people are wont to treat them as being equal. Any suggestion that a generic person take precautions against being harmed is treated as victim-blaming a specific person and absolving the bad-actor in their case.

"Katie, you know that getting blackout drunk at parties full of strangers is a bad idea."

"Shut up! You're not the boss of me."

The next day:

"Seriously? What were you thinking?"

"It's not my fault! I was blackout drunk and they took advantage!"

"You chose to get blackout drunk. What was that about?"

"Shut up!"

---

At some point, Katie is going to look back with regret on all the self-destructive choices she made, and blame herself for many of the outcomes that resulted.

Or she's going to destroy herself before she has a chance to snap out of it. Talking to her about those choices, the consequences, and the responsibility she bears for the choices she made, may be an important part of helping her snap out of it.

But you probably can't reach a 19 year old that way. Some stages of life, the lessons can only be learned by living through them.

 

[Minoosh]

I realize that I am falling into a degree of victim blaming but to me the rather unhelpful moral is not “don’t take photos of you having sex” but “don’t marry a ******* *******.” That’s 7 asterisks per word if they pass auto-censor and it sounds a little like a certain sex act.

I know I’m on thin ice here and I apologize in advance as none of us has perfect judgment. But strictly speaking I’m not sure revenge porn should even be a crime. A civil matter, certainly, and perhaps there are aggravating factors that should tip the balance to criminality, like if the images were used in a way consistent with extortion/blackmail. And if it’s a crime in some states that’s OK with me but if it were ever challenged I think there would be a legitimate argument that free speech applies just as it would to any other potentially embarrassing and/or inconvenient photo. If you say you want to keep government out of the bedroom, is it consistent to say the government should be in charge of punishing people who circulate the wrong bedroom-based pixels? What if you don’t mind naked photos of you being online, but only if it’s a really flattering shot? If someone posts the outtakes without your explicit consent, should that be criminal?

I’m sure plenty of people here can set me straight on the legal theory but the core of the problem IMO is how toxic “love” can be when it curdles into hate. I’m not sure the government can protect us from that.

 

[theprestige]

I mean, "don't take photos of yourself having sex" seems like a no-brainer, unless you're actually intending to publish.

If recording your sex happens to be your fetish, then making a record that is both difficult to publish and well-secured against accidental or malicious discovery seems like a no-brainer. Polaroids in a locked cashbox, for example. Or on a USB stick in a password-protected file.

Letting someone else record your sex on their phone is pretty much begging for publication whether you want it or not. Maybe the risk of publication is the fetish?

 

[Joe Random]

"Katie, you know that getting blackout drunk at parties full of strangers is a bad idea."

"Shut up! You're not the boss of me."

The next day:

"Seriously? What were you thinking?"

"It's not my fault! I was blackout drunk and they took advantage!"

"You chose to get blackout drunk. What was that about?"

"Shut up!"

---

At some point, Katie is going to look back with regret on all the self-destructive choices she made, and blame herself for many of the outcomes that resulted.

Or she's going to destroy herself before she has a chance to snap out of it. Talking to her about those choices, the consequences, and the responsibility she bears for the choices she made, may be an important part of helping her snap out of it.

But you probably can't reach a 19 year old that way. Some stages of life, the lessons can only be learned by living through them.

Which also brings up the issue of, from a moral standpoint, fault/blame/responsibility being treated as a zero sum game. Katie ought not to have gotten black-out drunk and her parents are probably right in trying to make that point stick with her, but that doesn't lessen the wrongness of Chad for reenacting his favorite scene from Last Tango in Paris while she was passed out. Which, to tie back to the main topic of the thread, almost feels like what some of Hill's supporters are leaning toward. Telling her she shouldn't take photos having sex unless she's willing to risk them going public doesn't diminish the wrongness of someone else posting revenge porn. And by the same token being wronged by having revenge porn of her posted doesn't diminish the wrongness of the inappropriate relationship over which she resigned.

I have a collection of racy photos taken of me and my ex. Never showed them to anyone else, nor would I. And while I don't expect she would, if someday she winds up sending them out to all her FB friends I'd be disappointed and probably a bit pissed, but would have to acknowledge the risk I took in letting our Happy Adult Alone Time get digitized.

I'm not in public office or any sort of PR position, so not like I had much to lose in my particular case.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

IMO there's a difference between issuing a general warning, even if based on a specific example, and telling a specific person after the fact what they should/shouldn't have done.

"19 year old Katie got blackout drunk at a frat party and several guys there pulled a train on her. Best to stay sober and keep your wits about you in situations like that, lest bad actors take advantage of you. There are a lot of really horrible people out there whom you simply can't trust not to do you harm."

vs

"Well, Katie, you shouldn't have had all those Jager bombs if you wanted to wake up will all your orifices still their original size."

The two are hugely different, but it seems people are wont to treat them as being equal. Any suggestion that a generic person take precautions against being harmed is treated as victim-blaming a specific person and absolving the bad-actor in their case.

Yes and no. I agree, of course, that there's nothing wrong with giving advice, but part of the problem is that it's so one-sided, and also that people jump so quickly to what the survivor did wrong in cases of sexual assault or exploitation.

In discussions about drunk drivers killing pedestrians, no one goes "perhaps those pedestrians should've worn reflectors, not been drunk or listened to music on their headphones, and made sure to cross the street at crosswalks". Especially if the drunk driver had run people down deliberately.

It is curious how we tell girls not to drink too much so as not to be abused, but we don't tell guys to drink responsibly so as not to end up doing something you'll regret once sober. To the contrary, you often see drunkenness used as an excuse by people taking advantage of others: "sorry, I was wasted and didn't know what I was doing".

I went to an afternoon class on sexual abuse once, and one of the two teaching the class said that when she taught teens about sexual assault, she used to tell them, slightly paraphrased, that "I know you're full of hormones, and that you get even more horny when drunk, and that it gets even worse if there are pretty girls around, but if you're at a party and you're uncontrollably lustful, take a hike into the woods, take care of your problem on your own, and come back when you're ready to be around people again". If more people had this attitude, it might make a difference in the end.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I went to an afternoon class on sexual abuse once, and one of the two teaching the class said that when she taught teens about sexual assault, she used to tell them, slightly paraphrased, that "I know you're full of hormones, and that you get even more horny when drunk, and that it gets even worse if there are pretty girls around, but if you're at a party and you're uncontrollably lustful, take a hike into the woods, take care of your problem on your own, and come back when you're ready to be around people again". If more people had this attitude, it might make a difference in the end.

Eh, I disagree. It plays into all the sexist tropes (and ageist ones) about raging hormones and uncontrollable lust, and the mere presence of girls being tempting. People who believe in such things are the ones who are going to be causing problems, IME.