It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.
An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.
Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.
She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.
One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.
The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.
She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.
“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”
This is the kind of rape which coldly reminds you that there are levels even within this kind of monstrosity. And as you yourself alluded in other posts, this particular person seems to be on the worst level of it, or close to. I do agree that it might have a perfectly reasonable and even sympathizable explanation, for instance perhaps he was regularly sexually abused by a parent when he was a kid and thinks that rape is some sort of punishment (which also counts as a societial source too). But unfortunately I find it hard to believe that there is a turning point from this sort of mental ilness/character once you are elbow deep in it. The only reasonable way forward for me is to change the society by conditioning younger generations and saving them from abuse, not spending time and energy on individuals that are too deep in such a pit.
I want to be clear about what I meant by social illness. It is an illness of the society which manifests in the behaviors and values of people, fascism being the prime example. I think these men (read the article and it’s actually two men) have been radicalized to the point where they are acting in a complete incongruity with near universal understanding of right and wrong. And in that vein the systems to rehabilitate them are ones that we need to build for the people less radicalized than them. The same applies for dealing with rape culture in general. The difference between these men and your everyday rapist or everyday far right chud engaging in stochastic terrorism seem to me to be ones of magnitude, not kind.