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Monday Mini: The 50 Shades of Grey Defense · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stefan
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Never Teld You production of iHeartRadio. And quick content warning
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: before we start this one, we are going to be
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: talking about sexual assaults and victim blaming. So if take
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: care of yourself, just do what you need to do
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to take care of yourself. And this one fits along
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: pretty nicely alongside the one we just did about kind
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: of a survey of what dating is like. Unfortunately, it
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: fits along pretty nicely with it because we were talking
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: about some of the concerns women still have around dating,
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  Speaker 1: especially in a heateronormitive sense, and some of the reasons
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: why women are hesitant and and I would say this
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: is a big one, which is this whole victim blaming,
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  Speaker 1: this idea you will be blamed if something goes wrong,
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  Speaker 1: or you will not be believed. And we have talked
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: about victim blaming before and how toxic and insidious it is.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to do a quick revisit, and this is
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  Speaker 1: a really quick revisit because I think we could come
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  Speaker 1: back to this on a very specific thing I had
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  Speaker 1: never heard of that I sort of stumbled on in
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  Speaker 1: terms of victim blaming. I found it because of the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: writer's strike, I've sort of returned to my creepy YouTube videos.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But the creepy YouTube videos I normally watch, they are creepy,
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  Speaker 1: but they're much more like, I don't know, like paranormal
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  Speaker 1: or sometimes like I went to that huge mountaineering phase
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: which I kind of revisited, so it's like natural disaster.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe they're not I don't usually do true crime, is
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  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, like those are still there are
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  Speaker 1: still elements of your like maybe getting entertainment off of
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  Speaker 1: a tragedy that I happened to someone that can be
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  Speaker 1: very similar, But I don't normally do like true crime.
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  Speaker 1: But I wanted to find this very specific diving video
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  Speaker 1: because it has this infamous sign with a grim reaper
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  Speaker 1: on it, and some of you, I bet know exactly
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  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, but I was trying to find
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  Speaker 1: it because I knew it had been published under this
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  Speaker 1: one YouTube channel I follow. But a lot of times
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: they do like I don't know, like five instances of something,
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  Speaker 1: So it wasn't in the title, like I couldn't find
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  Speaker 1: it that way, so I was like reading the comments,
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  Speaker 1: and which is ill advised in any YouTube video. Situation.
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  Speaker 1: But through this I found something I had never heard of,
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  Speaker 1: which is the rough sex murder defense, which is also
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  Speaker 1: called the fifty Shades of Great defense, and all of
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  Speaker 1: the comments around it or so upset that I was like, Okay,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to Unfortunately, I'm going to have to
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  Speaker 1: look into this see what it is. We need to
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  Speaker 1: talk about it, and I'm going to talk about some
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  Speaker 1: of the broad strokes of the comments at the end.
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  Speaker 1: But if you're like me and you've never heard of this,
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  Speaker 1: the rough sex murder defense is a defense used a
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  Speaker 1: legal defense used by some who have murdered their sexual partner,
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  Speaker 1: claiming it was an accident of rough sex. It's almost
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  Speaker 1: always always a man using this defense in the case
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  Speaker 1: of a woman who is dead. It was first used
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two after an abusive husband killed his
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  Speaker 1: wife during what he called rough consensual sex, and he
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  Speaker 1: got the charge reduced from homicide to manslaughter using this
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  Speaker 1: The defense grew in popularity in the nineteen eighties in
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  Speaker 1: the US. From American jurist George Busack quote the rough
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  Speaker 1: sex defense to the charge of murder, asserts that the
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  Speaker 1: victim literally asked for the conduct that led to the homicide,
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  Speaker 1: and that the homicide was the result of sexual practices
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  Speaker 1: to which the victim consented and may have even demanded.
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  Speaker 1: Using this defense often results in a lesser offense. A
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  Speaker 1: survey in the UK from nineteen seventy two to twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty found that of sixty cases that used this defense,
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  Speaker 1: forty five percent resulted in a lesser sentence or punishment.
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  Speaker 1: And there are several specific examples you can look up,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: not going to go into them now. A few places
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  Speaker 1: have tried to make this illegal or at least difficult,
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  Speaker 1: because it's caught national attention several times where yeah, people
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  Speaker 1: involved are like, you're literally saying they asked to be killed,
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  Speaker 1: which is the ultimate form of victim blaming. And so
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  Speaker 1: I did want to go over as I mentioned the comments,
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  Speaker 1: some of the comments that I saw, and I was
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  Speaker 1: just trying to find this diving video, and a lot
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  Speaker 1: of it was what I presume they believe was well
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  Speaker 1: intentioned advice, and it made me very, very angry because
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  Speaker 1: it was all all of it was implying, subtly, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: sometimes not subtly at all, that it was the woman's
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  Speaker 1: faults or responsibility to keep themselves safe and or that
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  Speaker 1: they usually men in this case that you have to
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  Speaker 1: control your woman like this is whether it's a bother
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: or like a boyfriend or something like that. So in
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  Speaker 1: that case, I saw some that said something like, I
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  Speaker 1: don't let my daughter out. She thinks she's invincible, but
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: she doesn't know the world yet. She hates me, but
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: it's worth it. Another big one, ladies, don't drink in public.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: If you drink in public, that's on you, even non
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks. If a woman goes to a party in
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: her friends don't look out for her, that's on her friends.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of people blaming the friends and then ladies.
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  Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but if you don't take precautions,
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  Speaker 1: you are putting yourself in danger. Don't be stupid. So
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  Speaker 1: all of this kind of putting the blame on women,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of it in this case was around like,
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  Speaker 1: well she's into that, and she was asking that's what
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  Speaker 1: happens sometimes. Even though a lot of times, again I
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  Speaker 1: never even watched these videos. I didn't watch, but I
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  Speaker 1: read when I was researching this. A lot of times
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  Speaker 1: there was like a lot of and what I would
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  Speaker 1: consider proof that the dude just choked her like Jaz
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  Speaker 1: strangled her, and instead it's being turned into well, she's
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  Speaker 1: probably into that though, right Yeah. And the upsetting part
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  Speaker 1: is that we do live in a world. We've talked
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: about this before. We live in a world where many
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  Speaker 1: of us do. We have precautions in place. We've talked
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: about before at work conferences where women will have like
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: don't let her drink and be alone with these men
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: or whatever I'm looking at for each other. We do
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  Speaker 1: send pictures of guys we're meeting for first states. We
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: do watch our drinks, alcoholic or not. We do all
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of these things that when you think about, are quite
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  Speaker 1: frankly terrifying that we have to do them, but we
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  Speaker 1: do them to keep ourselves safe. But the tone of
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  Speaker 1: these comments is much more like, it is your fault,
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  Speaker 1: you knew the risks, as opposed to blaming the actual
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  Speaker 1: perpetrator or advocating telling men and boys like, hey, don't
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  Speaker 1: rape women, don't kill women, don't rape anyone, don't kill anyone.
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  Speaker 2: Right Well, And it's coming home to the point that
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  Speaker 2: it's so hard that half the time the men will
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  Speaker 2: blame their own ignorance, saying that they didn't know it
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  Speaker 2: was raped. Yep, Like we talked about consent in its self,
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  Speaker 2: and they don't understand consent because we don't talk about
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  Speaker 2: it enough. But we tell women what not to do,
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  Speaker 2: even though they're the ones say I don't want to
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  Speaker 2: do this, obviously, but their that type of choice is
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  Speaker 2: taken away altogether, and so you have to be extra
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  Speaker 2: precautious because just saying a word or saying or no
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  Speaker 2: or just walking away is not proof enough to say
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  Speaker 2: I didn't want this? What the are you're saying to me?
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  Speaker 2: As well as the fact that a majority of those cases,
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  Speaker 2: most likely again it involves rape in general, so they
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  Speaker 2: have been violated on several times. And even when the
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  Speaker 2: women are alive after the fact, or the victims are
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: alive after the fact of being raped or sexually molested,
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  Speaker 2: they're not believed and they're alive to defend themselves. So
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  Speaker 2: painting a picture of someone who can't has no way
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  Speaker 2: of voicing their side. The likelihood of them being believed
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  Speaker 2: is still low when they do survive incidents like that.
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, that's kind of the whole conversation in talking
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  Speaker 2: about literature, like fifty Shades of Gray and not that,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: like not to be little when it comes to BDSM,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: but when you look at it the way that it
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  Speaker 2: has been publicized versus what it is like in the
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  Speaker 2: actual king community, which are the most conscientious group of
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  Speaker 2: people that you'll ever meet. And when you bastardize that
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  Speaker 2: into again fifty shades of gray, that's when the toxicity
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  Speaker 2: really drips in and allows for people to think this
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  Speaker 2: is the norm when it's absolutely untrue.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And that's like there's so much negotiating that
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  Speaker 1: goes on in something like that, and like, if it's
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  Speaker 1: healthy and consensual, then that's great, that's fantastic. But I
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  Speaker 1: think a lot of times that isn't happening. And even
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  Speaker 1: I mean plenty of these, Like you said, I'm pretty
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  Speaker 1: convinced they weren't into rough sex. It shouldn't matter if
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  Speaker 1: they were or not. But it's just like a lie.
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  Speaker 1: It's just like they're saying that, right. I have talked
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  Speaker 1: about this too. I've run into this before where I
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  Speaker 1: just had a bunch of bruises and they weren't related
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  Speaker 1: to anything sexual, but a guy said to me, like, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: that's hot, you're into rough sex. I feel like this
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  Speaker 1: idea of oh she asked for it because she likes
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  Speaker 1: rough sex. Oh she's disposable. Then, like that shouldn't be
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the case. You should be able to enter a sexual
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  Speaker 1: you should be able to enter like any relationship and
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  Speaker 1: not think, oh, he might kill me.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And if I remember from our BDSM episodes with
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: the members of the BDSM kink community, they're so good
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: at what they do. They didn't leave Marx like they
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: knew how to do this professionally. So if they're leaving
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Mars that should be when you're questioning something something's not right,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: or something's not done correctly, or something's not done in
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the safety of the kink world. And that's again the conversation,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: like there's a difference between kink and literal violence and abuse, yes,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: which is being covered like that man needs to be
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: violent and abusive for him to get off. That is different, yes,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: absolutely wildly different from being in the kink world. And
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: that's again that conversation. Of course, again these are excuses.
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  Speaker 2: We know that majority of these cases had nothing to
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  Speaker 2: do with consensual sex to begin with, had nothing to
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: do with love, had nothing to do with relationships. It
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: had everything to do with he wanted to take her
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: life and control hard. He was an abusive person who
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: probably has always been an abusive, controlling person. But the narrative,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: the fictional narrative which we see in like common things
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  Speaker 2: I told you, Like I'm thinking of a True Blood episode,
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  Speaker 2: like one of the first ones in which one of
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: the main characters pretends to die during their quote unquote
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  Speaker 2: rough sex scene and he gets caught and then she
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: actually does die. You see True Blood, you'll know. But
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: like that type of thing where you think you could
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  Speaker 2: accidentally kill somebody because you're over the top. I think
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: you're more aware than you think this is. That's not like,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: that's not maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm like very good
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: at being aware of my sexual experiences. I don't know that.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like, there's never been a moment where I'm like
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I'm in danger or I'm dangerous somehow, or I might
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  Speaker 2: hurt somebody doing those.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's one of the the key
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: things is one like as we did in those Kink episodes,
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  Speaker 1: it's not always sexual at all, and it's very like
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  Speaker 1: you're checking in. You're checking in, you're checking in because
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: something can go wrong, somebody can get hurt. But this,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: like I said, most often it involves strangling, and somebody
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: pointed out, like you to kill someone via strangling is
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: not easy, and it takes like five plus minutes. Like
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you're not accidentally outside of maybe some freak cases, you're
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: not accidentally strangling anybody.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And the partner, unless they're unconscious, they will fight,
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  Speaker 2: like inevitably, it's an instinct, like your body fights, whether
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: you're doing it or not, whether you're reacting or not.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: They often fight and struggle. Right, that's like we're going
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: into like my new details on this and like talking
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: about specifics as if like we're on a case ourselves.
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  Speaker 2: But the level of victim blaming to go to this point,
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  Speaker 2: the level of stupidity that it takes for people to
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  Speaker 2: write this as if they're doing something they're being a hero,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: which is the other part of that they really think
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: they're doing something. Yeah, I'm gonna protect you by telling
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: you you're you're a slot if you do this or
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: you're asking part of you to do this, like you
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: are really reason we say all this, like your good
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: intentions here is exactly why we're like, yeah, even the
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: good ones are like I'm protecting you.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: You know you're not right exactly. And that's going back
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to what we just talked about in the dating one.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: When a lot of men are so frustrated feel like
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: they can't like find someone. Here you go like this
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: is what we have in the back of our head
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: could happen and people would believe it, Like this was
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: a literal defense that is used, and people believe it,
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  Speaker 1: they get lesser sentences.
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  Speaker 2: Like even if the intention was from the the man
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to kill that woman, is still that woman's fault for being.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly exactly a him. And this is like, like I said,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: this is the this is how insidious victim blaming is.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this because we did do
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: our audiobook and I did have a really emotional thing
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: in there about when I was sexually assaulted in college.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And I was thinking about it because the whole chapter
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: is about rape kits. And I realized I didn't write
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: about it, but I realized I never, ever, not once
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: thought I should maybe get a rape kit. I never
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: thought I should report it because I just assumed, like,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: no one's gonna believe it. I was drinking, I had
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: one drink. I was drinking, I went out, I was
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: in a miniskirt, I knew the risk, and the sad
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: thing is, I mean, there's a lot of sad things.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I was there to watch another friend to make sure
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: nothing happened to her. I hadn't even wanted to go. Yeah,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: but that's that's how insidious this is. It never occurred
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: to me, not once once. So I got a lot
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of work to do about this, to dismantle this.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure we'll come back because I kind of
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: just I ran into this and I was like, I'm
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: sure there's a lot of research I could do. I
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: do want to come back and revisit sort of the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: like marital rape situation, because we had a section about
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: that in the book too, and I was like, I
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: want to I'm curious if this has changed since we
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: wrote it, because it's been like a while since we
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: wrote it.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I wonder how it is backtracked because we now
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: know that many of the Republicans who are like, stop
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: grooming my children are cool with putting that back child
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: marriage yep, And they are putting it into law today
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: even though we've been removed once before. So you're like,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: that's yup. What so with things like that which takes
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: away consent essentially like from young girls specifically, like it's
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: it's scared, we know who was scared for? Does that
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: also mean that they're going to take that kind of
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: because we know several states still have it banned, I know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: rapid marriage saying that that's legal. Yep.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I feel like we need to come back
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and do a bigger survey, a bigger survey on that
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: when when we're not trying to take time off and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: go on vacation. But I did find a diving video
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: by the way.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Good, I'm glad you found that.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I learned all of this process.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: That was the price to pay.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I paid, but now I know. Now I know about
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the mystery of polar polar vortex in Florida. Yes, anyway,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: thanks as always for listening listeners. I know this wasn't
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: an easy one. You can email us at Stephanie moms
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on
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  Speaker 1: also have a tea public store. We have a book
• 17:10
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• 17:13
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• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for
• 17:22
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