• 2 Posts
  • 37 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • So, a few things:

    • many of the men accused have stated that the husband pitched the idea as “this is a kink she really enjoys, being drugged and then having sex with strangers”. (Of course they never pretend to have met her in person beforehand to get her consent for the whole thing in the first place)
    • there are some that have said “what’s the big deal? It’s his wife, he gets to decide to lend her out to his friends.” (!)

    I don’t know how many of the first group are being honest, but the existence of both can give you an idea of how bad our culture used to be towards rape, and still is to a large extent.

    There’s a pretty striking moment of archival footage, from the 60s or 70s I think, of some french dude being asked in the street “and you, have you ever raped a woman?” And his response is a very matter-of-fact “well, of course!”.

    People don’t want to believe that rapists are, in many ways, just ordinary people. So they both refuse to see it in others, and refuse to see themselves as capable of even contributing to the problem. Hopefully this can be the wakeup call many men here in France need to realize they must push back when their friends make rape jokes, for ex.









  • the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

    Even though I fully expect the police here aren’t doing as much as they could (I mean come on, are they expecting phones to come with wiimote hand straps?) , I’m at least glad their public rhetoric is that they can’t “arrest their way out of the problem”.

    I imagine that’s poor compensation when you’ve just had your phone snatched, however.





  • The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they’ll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today’s elections).

    • In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right’s 18%).
    • In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right’s 34%).
    • In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right’s 41%).

    IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).