I think there’s a pretty big difference in how we should judge someone’s character if
A) They think there IS consent
B) They know there is NOT consent
Do you disagree?
It doesn’t make her experience any less horrible, but I think it makes a huge difference in terms of how we judge the offender. As I said above, I think one of these is just irredeemable, one of them is not.
"Her name was mistakenly released to the media three times (by policy, The Times never published it), and a sealed transcript of a closed hearing on DNA evidence was emailed to seven media outlets, including The Times.
In the transcripts, a DNA expert detailed evidence bolstering the defense’s contention that Bryant’s accuser had sex with someone else soon after the alleged rape."
Jeeze I wonder who did that? I suppose since we don’t know for sure, we have to consider all possible ways this thing could have been mailed to several media sources.
And also, I wonder which team the “DNA expert” worked for? I guess we shouldn’t assume the defense.
And ya, this is the same DNA evidence that the prosecutor denied proved anything about her having sex just after the rape.
Nobody in this thread is doing that. The choking happened, it’s a matter of consent with regard to that. Other sexual encounters could be to blame for her vaginal injuries.
I’m not saying you are. It seems like you are making the argument Kobe’s lawyers put that out there to try and show the injuries came from someone else than Kobe rather than slut shaming her. We know that can’t be however because one of Kobe’s defenses was that he chokes women during consensual sex on the reg.
Yea maybe but there is no way to know whether he truly thought he had consent, maybe he just said that, he already lied about having sex with her. In this case I think you can pretty much run “he thinks he had consent, and he didn’t care about consent as the same”
I’m already repeatedly on the record that the defense team, and by having presumably approved their strategy, Kobe as well, are responsible for their wrong and bad actions shaming and outing the name of the victim.
Now, as for what I posted specifically, the LA Times may be interpreting the evidence they saw, or they may have made a mistake in not attributing the allegation, or they may be trying to go extra easy on the hometown hero the day after he died. I don’t know. I’m passing on information from the LA Times, which I hope we can all accept as a credible news outlet. I’ll allow for the possibility they’re doing something bad here, though.
Did the prosecutor say she didn’t have sex in those 15 hours, that it was not proven that she had sex in those 15 hours, or something else? Like, again, range of possibilities. Personally I don’t really care if she had sex 5 hours before, 5 hours after, 20 hours before, 20 hours after, whatever. That’s her business and nobody should judge her for it. All I’m concerned with is the evidence for the case and how it impacts the facts of the case.
Really at this point, I also don’t care much about that. Getting back to my main point: there’s a significant likelihood that he raped her intentionally, a significant likelihood that he misunderstood the consent being withdrawn, and a very small likelihood of other events. He should be judged based on a range of possibilities, not just one.
That’s pretty much all I’m saying - that there’s no way to know what he truly believed in that moment, thus no way to know what really went down. I don’t think that “he thinks he had consent” and “he didn’t care about consent” are the same. People who care about consent can misinterpret consent, especially about specific acts rather than an overall sexual encounter.
The quote I just posted was from the same LA Times article you linked.
It basically says a DNA expert testified at a closed door hearing that evidence suggested she had sex within a day or so after the rape. And somebody sent the transcripts to the press.
And the prosecutor denied “it” (presumable denied the DNA shows she had sex soon after the rape).
So again, for somebody repeatedly accusing others of twisting facts, you are not looking good here.
Sometimes I’m naive but even I know you can get an expert to testify to basically whatever you want if you have the money. And then the convenient leak and the prosecutor denial kind of tells me all I need to know.
I think that we should aim society toward a place where we err more towards good men having unfairly ruined reputations rather than rape going under reported, under prosecuted, and women not being believed.
At the same time, I think we can then in a case like this say, “Okay, but let’s not drag his reputation any more than we know is fair to do. Let’s acknowledge the range of possibilities and judge him accordingly.”
Then we continue to course correct as a society towards believing women and taking all allegations seriously, knowing there will be more credibly accused men, the vast majority of whom will be guilty, but a few who will have their reputations ruined without us knowing for sure, and a smaller subset of them will actually be innocent.
I’m not saying we can’t move forward because we cannot ruin those innocent reputations, what I am saying is let’s just acknowledge the facts and not make assumptions about the people in that spot where their reputations will be ruined without 100% certainty. Let’s just acknowledge that there is not 100% certainty, even as we accept that it is more just to ruin those few reputations rather than to have rape go under reported and under prosecuted and to have women be shamed and called liars.
There’s plenty of research regarding delays in reporting and all that, and as far as I know it doesn’t make false allegations more likely. On the other side of the equation, I’m way more inclined to just say someone who has had 10 accusers come forward is definitely a bad dude doing bad things than I am to say someone who has had 1 accuser come forward definitely did what he’s accused of. To interpret that as a defense of the 1 rather than simple logic seems wrong to me. Like, almost every time someone gets accused, within two weeks there are several more accusers, because these guys tend to be serial offenders abusing their celebrity/power.
It’s possible that because the environment was different in 2003 or 2004 or whenever it was, that just didn’t happen, and the absence of that happening doesn’t prove him innocent. I do factor it in when considering the range of possibilities, and to me it makes the miscommunication a lot more likely, because it makes serial rape a lot less likely. I find it extremely unlikely that, if he was the type of person who would intentionally rape someone, this would be the only time it had happened.
Yeah, I know. Some have told me, many more I’m sure have not.
I don’t consider it much of a defense to say he’s responsible for a miscommunication that led to her experiencing one of the worst things that can happen to someone. The defense is basically to just say hey there’s a significant chance he didn’t intentionally violently rape her, and there’s a pretty big difference in his character based on that.
By this standard we can never allow for the possibility that anyone who is accused of any form of sexual assault didn’t knowingly and willfully do it. I don’t think that’s where the conversation about this should go. It seems far more productive to go toward consent and why it needs to be clear and how to make it clear within the reality of how sexual encounters happen, and how to be cautious and how to make sure you are both on the same page.
I’m just going to circle back to the point I made way above: my position on this issue as a society is that we need to move forward to believing women as often as possible, make sure that more assaults are reported and that more justice is served. It’s correct to adjust in a way that leads to more ruined reputations, even if some of them are innocent, because that’s less of an injustice than having more rape go unreported, which leads to more rape.
But that can all be true and be my position, while at the same time I can acknowledge that we don’t know for sure what happened with Kobe Bryant, and there is a significant likelihood of a miscommunication that was on him to get clear. As a result, we should judge his character accordingly.
I think both those positions can coexist.
My interpretation is that it sounds an awful lot like she had sex within a 48 hour window and the defense wants it to be 24 hours after and the prosecution wants it to be 24 hours before, and frankly I don’t care which it was, nor do I care how many people she had sex with in the first place - other than to the extent that it impacts the likelihood that her injuries were caused by a rape.
Like, various people are arguing various points of the case with me, which is putting me in a position to make the argument that his defense made, which is not really what I set out to be doing.
Getting back to my main point here: you list all the facts in one place in a neutral light, and it is clear to me that you can create a lot of narratives by picking and choosing which ones to focus on. People in this thread keep taking the ones that look the worst for him, putting them in the worst light for him, and pushing those.
I tried to push back toward neutral on those, and I’ve tried to avoid arguing his side too much, but I keep getting drawn into those arguments.
My stance is not that he’s innocent. My stance is not that he didn’t make mistakes. He clearly made a bunch of mistakes. My stance is not that he couldn’t have raped her, nor that it’s unlikely he raped her. My stance is that we don’t know, and that the two most likely things would be that he raped her on purpose or a miscommunication that led to her having revoked consent and him having failed to understand that - it’s on him, but it’s not an intentional violent rape.
That’s it. A few people here want to make it out to be 100% that he did the worst possible thing given the facts, and I think that’s unfair and an inaccurate portrayal of the facts. To me the argument would be more like “Was it 70% likely that there was a miscommunication or 30%?”
But, even on that, I don’t care. Either way he did something bad, it’s a matter of degrees. Settling on some % of probability doesn’t change her reality at all, and it doesn’t do much for anyone else. Call it 90/10, for all I care, I just don’t think that he should be judged 100% for something he is not 100% likely to have done. I think any reasonable likelihood that he didn’t do the worst possible thing here is pretty substantial and has a pretty big impact on how he is/should be remembered.
I’m going to step out of this thread for now. I don’t think I can make my points or illustrate my positions much more clearly than I did in the last two posts, hopefully people see what I was and was not getting at. Any more arguments will be either circular or just snarky insults, and that doesn’t do anyone any good. If someone advances the discussion in a direction that makes me think productive discussion can be had, I’ll pop back in.
Ok. I just want to make a point that I think your very clearly articulated positions are fucking horrible and embarrassing.
wtf did I just read
I suggest the Kobe stuff be transferred to its own thread.
“Sports - A Thread For Pettifogging”?
Ok, that made me laugh.
I won’t lie. I am currently engaging in a Twitter war because I insist on bringing up Kobe’s legacy of rape.
This is the exact moment to have it because people are wrong. I see it as being the same as talking about gun control in the hours after a school shooting.
This isn’t edge-lording for me. This is about striking back at the culture of rape that allows someone like Donald Trump to be normalized. And I get that this strikes a nerve and that some people might find it counter-productive, but this is what I am. This is authentically me, criticizing the same sort of myth-building process that the establishment uses to work against criticism of the police or military.
You do realize that the rehabilitation of Kobe’s public image was a major PR campaign trying to burnish his personal brand, right?
I’m not saying you can’t be sad about his family. Just don’t ignore the bad stuff.
When Michael Jackson died, were we supposed to focus on his music and ignore the kiddy diddling? Did you only remember a smiling Kirby Puckett and not his history of domestic violence?
Maybe y’all think I’m being harsh here, but I think the people who want to go easy on Kobe are kind of like Brock Turner’s judge. You make it easier to understand how there can be Paterno apologists.
I suppose you’ve completely forgiven William Kennedy Smith because of his work against landmines.