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.”
Every time rape culture comes into the line light a remember a part in college where a friend, well call her blue, was so drunk she was pants-off propositioning several people. All of us were like “Blue if you’re down tomorrow, that’s cool. But like, go to bed.”
Not Nick. Name not redacted. I went into their room and cock blocked. Straight to Nick “brother you’re way more cogent than her. This is rape, and everyone here knows it.”
Or, sorry to both sides here, but the time Jenna, name not redacted, came downstairs with a suggestive giggle and grin after we had all just helped our friend James (not his name) to bed, in his own home at his house for a graduation party. Jenna, that was rape. And I said it out loud to you in front of everyone. And you giggled like it was cute.
There’s a small percentage of humans among us that don’t respect others autonomy. They need to be outed. They need to be held accountable. We need them away from the rest of us.
Fuck you Nick. Fuck you Jenna.
Thanks for being the type of person to call that shit out in the moment.
I’m sick and tired of men telling me that rape culture doesn’t exist, that rape victims should have done something different, they should have worn something different, they should have not gone out alone, I’m fucking sick of all of it.
We have a problem with misogyny and rape in this country. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum on its own.
Trump is merely a symptom of the rot.
Yeah, or how they should not have been convicted of a crime they may or may not have committed and sentenced to the most concentrated and well documented rape culture in modern history, male prisons. Obviously rape cultures exist. I agree with you.
False rape allegations happen, but they’re much more rare than actual rape.
The amount of support prison rape has in society is a real part of our rape culture. When rape is celebrated as a valid punishment, it helps support the same rape culture that supports questioning victims’ stories. That they must have done something to deserve it.
It’s all tied together.
I was listening to an excerpt of Jimmy Carr interview a few days ago in which he was arguing that one of best ways to combat toxic masculinity was to encourage young men to go down to the pub with the lads. That men in groups will keep checks on others within the group.
I respect Carr and his crusade against toxic masculinity, but I am a guy and a lifelong feminist (thanks mom) that grew up in an extremely misogynistic culture. Sure, my friends would have kept me in check, but that’s because we were always a mixed gender and sexuality group. Most “lads” crews I knew, once drunk and rowdy, were more likely to gang rape a girl than not if she told them off. Sorry Jimmy, humans are still way to close to close to chimp to be left unchecked.
I don’t know how feminist I’d consider him. As I recall, he and Stephen Fry both drifted right in their politics over the past decade or so:
“the problem with American communism, which is woke, is better described as American Marxism. And what it is is instead of trying to redistribute wealth, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do, they want to redistribute status. And that is a recipe for fucking madness” -Jimmy Carr
Stephen Fry ended up praising Jordan Peterson or some such, Carr started talking anti-woke politics on podcasts after being “cancelled” by a heckler.
From a student news website:
“Jimmy Carr has built his career on his deliberately offensive style of comedy – nothing is off limits and nobody is safe. His new special, aptly-titled His Dark Material, is supposed to epitomise this ethos, as Carr spends an hour bombarding his audience with endless quips about hipsters, vegans, gingers, women (including his own girlfriend, who sounds like a very lucky lady), victims of sexual abuse, little people, and anybody else he feels hasn’t been at the receiving end of enough grief lately. His pièce de resistance comes in the form of a section at the end of the special filled with jokes Carr brazenly calls his “career enders”, in which he says that few people know about the fact that an estimated half a million Roma people were murdered during the Holocaust because nobody wants to “talk about the positives”. One man’s suffering is another man’s slapstick.”
https://thestudentnews.co.uk/2022/03/03/the-charge-of-the-woke-brigade-the-case-against-jimmy-carr/
He tried to defend the Holocaust joke by saying it brings attention to non-jewish victims of the Holocaust which earned him every comedians highest achievement when going anti-woke - being defended by Jeremy Clarkson.
I only know him for his, as of late, takes on toxic masculinity. Some are good, and some (like the one I highlighted) are dreadful.
I think it’s much more prevalent than people want to admit.
Otherwise, spontaneous gang rapes wouldn’t occur with such frequency. Why are there always so many men that are up for it randomly? What are the odds, yeah? Seriously, that wouldn’t be possible if it was a rarity.
They’ll rape animals and men, too, because they’re rapists. Women and children are smaller, so they are preyed on much more, but if all women disappeared tomorrow, they’d still rape whomever/whatever else they could.
Sure, this could be a political ploy in this case, I know nothing. But the reason such a ploy is believable is because it’s so common.
It’s way more prevalent than most men want to admit, that’s for sure.
Women have either been victims themselves or know someone who has been a victim. The rate is close to 1 in 3 women have been raped.
It’s 1 in 5, but it is still a lot and way too high.
What the fucking shit… This makes me gag! God fucking damnit, I hate men… and I’m saying that as a man!
It depends if you’re looking worldwide or at the US. It also depends if you’re looking at reported cases vs unreported.
But yes, it’s still way too high.
Find culprits like Luigi found!
I appreciate the vigilante energy, but maybe we could demand that our politicians and our police forces and our DAs actually do their fucking jobs.
Let’s process the enormous backlog of rape kits in this country.
Let’s believe victims when they say they’ve been raped.
Let’s give all of the evidence of a crime over to the people who will prosecute those crimes. And then fire them when they don’t fulfill their duties.
I agree. I mean Luigi found quick, use resources to find culprits same.
I’m sorry, but the language “democratic bitch” is just so unbelievable. And there’s no medical records? I feel this story was planted by her to take advantage of the current media coverage of Cornell and the resurgence of the me too movement. I do not trust politicians.
Absolutely fair to be suspicious of politicians, but given the current political climate under ICE and Donald Trump, a serial rapist himself, it is completely plausible that a couple of MAGA hardliners would rape a democrat to induce political terror or to punish them. Rape is about power, not sex, afterall.
Helping the rapists with this horseshit… dickhead
Here it is.
Not even an hour has passed since this was posted and there’s already someone casting doubt on this victim’s story.
Yeah what a shocker that people consistently exercise caution when hearing reports of horrific things and don’t simply grant women the privilege of absolute trust…
What do women gain by being victims of rape?
She believes she could have suffered a concussion during the altercation, which would have been her third one, although she didn’t seek medical attention. “I just wanted to forget it,” she said. Her body was covered with bruises from the assault, including dime-sized ones from fingers and more on the back of her arms and above her butt.
She initially didn’t want to report what happened either. She was “embarrassed” and just wanted to “forget it happened,” she said. But on the campaign trail, Greene-Placentia is constantly speaking about fighting for Arizonans, “and I didn’t feel like I could keep saying that if I weren’t also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault,” she said.
She told her campaign staff what happened that Sunday and her husband the next day. She reported the assault to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office two weeks later. She told deputies that the sexual assault occurred near 99th Avenue and Bell Road in Sun City, according to the police report.
She was staying at her in-district Sun City apartment, while her husband called her several times from their home in Surprise. After redistricting in 2023, their home in Surprise was moved 1.6 miles outside of CD-8, but Greene-Placentia still wanted to live and vote in the district.
When Placentia called, she was in the bath multiple times and was “being nauseous on the phone,” he said. According to the police report, Greene-Placentia vaginally bled for three days after the assault.
It was “odd” for Placentia to go two days without seeing his wife. He admitted his feelings were hurt and wondered if she was hiding something from him, he recalled.
Greene-Placentia’s landlord, Annarose Lily, was the only person who saw her during her two-day blackout. One or two days after the assault, Lily tried to check on her outside the apartment as “she looked like she was gonna fall over,” but Greene-Placentia brushed it off, Lily said. She didn’t tell Lily the full story until a few days later.
Try reading the fucking article next time.
Believe women.
Oh, shut the fuck up.
