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Post by OverAndUnder on Oct 9, 2010 15:36:15 GMT -5
Over, go right on believing what you will. You point out that life is complicated, but yet you do not seem to understand it. That's all I'll say on this subject. Ironically, I was thinking the same thing. Your perspective doesn't appear to recognize the complicated nature of cause and effect. Perhaps I am interpreting you incorrectly, but you seem to feel that Event A occurs, then Event B occurs, and the fact that they are related means A caused B. In my view that is too simplistic an assumption. If Susie is emotionally sensitive about her weight problem, and her roomate Clarice secretly tapes and broadcasts Susie in the bathtub with the title, "the new whale at the aquarium", and Susie goes and jumps off a bridge, Clarice is a jerk and an illegal pornographer and a violator of any relevant privacy laws. But Clarice did not commit murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, or any other similar legal offense, because Clarice had nothing to do with the fatal act which killed Susie. Or if your boss calls you in and says you're being terminated, and your work has been so poor that she cannot give you a good recommendation, and you are in such hopelessness over your desperate financial situation that you jump off a bridge, your former boss has no legal culpability for your death. I think people are quick to jump in and externalize the blame for Tyler's decision to kill himself, because they perceive this to be primarily a case of persecution of his sexual orientation. While being protective and sensitive towards historically persecuted groups is an admirable and reasonable sentiment, it is too simplistic to say that any time sexual orientation is present as a component, the entire situation must be exclusively interpreted through the lens of that identity. Hundreds of thousands of other people have been and continue to be harassed every day for their orientation or weight problem or skin color or religion. Most of them do not kill themselves. What lawmakers, DAs, and judges must decide is whether a reasonable person would be able to expect that their actions are likely to lead to another person's death. Unless you are proposing that it is reasonable to assume everyone is one taunt or prank away from suicide, there is no legal reason for Ravi and Wei to be criminally prosecuted for Clementi's death.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 9, 2010 19:16:46 GMT -5
What's worse is that treating these jerks as if they were murderers could, in fact, actually lead to more suicides. One reason people kill themselves is to show the world just how seriously they feel that they have been wronged. Every time we assign extra blame to bullies when their victim suicides, we are actually suggesting to other harassment victims that suicide might be a way to get their tormentors into more trouble.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2010 17:52:17 GMT -5
Some of you people have never been bullied for being gay. If you haven't, it would be really great if you could shut up. This isn't like pneumonia or being fat... This is far more complicated, controversial, and devastating. Being fat doesn't tear families apart. Being fat doesn't prompt parents of religious moral fiber to kick their children to the street.
Straight people have sooooo many opinions and sooooo many thoughts on the matter, but in reality, none of them are qualified to comment on the situation. Psychological abuse is known to be more serious and scarring than anything physical. You simply don't get it.
Those kids who taped Tyler Clementi and posted the video online are guilty of pushing that kid to the edge. Did they kill him directly? No. Did they cause it? Yes. Letting them get off the hook only encourages this behavior with the message, "As long as you don't physically take his life, bully on!! He should have been stronger and just dealt with it!"
And Mike, extra blame??? What's worse??? Really??? Again, you simply don't get it. You won't until you're persecuted because of who you share you love with. You don't understand.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2010 17:56:50 GMT -5
It's tragic that you decided to cope with your pain by killing yourself. Life is really complicated and tough and cruel sometimes, and sometimes all the options seem to suck badly. My sympathies go to your surviving loved ones, that they must deal not only with the psychological stress of your condition but additionally with the manner in which you chose to permanently irrevocably deny them your continued presence. One of the most condescending things I've ever heard. And to say them as your "sympathies" to a dead boy's family... Nice.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2010 18:01:36 GMT -5
Over, go right on believing what you will. You point out that life is complicated, but yet you do not seem to understand it. That's all I'll say on this subject. Ironically, I was thinking the same thing. Your perspective doesn't appear to recognize the complicated nature of cause and effect. Perhaps I am interpreting you incorrectly, but you seem to feel that Event A occurs, then Event B occurs, and the fact that they are related means A caused B. In my view that is too simplistic an assumption. If Susie is emotionally sensitive about her weight problem, and her roomate Clarice secretly tapes and broadcasts Susie in the bathtub with the title, "the new whale at the aquarium", and Susie goes and jumps off a bridge, Clarice is a jerk and an illegal pornographer and a violator of any relevant privacy laws. But Clarice did not commit murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, or any other similar legal offense, because Clarice had nothing to do with the fatal act which killed Susie. SHE CAUSED THE FATAL ACT THAT KILLED SUSIE. The definition of manslaughter is the killing of a human being without implied or expressed malice (the knowledge that one's actions are likely to result in death); requires a lack of any prior intention to kill or create a deadly situation. That's EXACTLY what those kids did. They are guilty of his death. Not even close to the same thing as being tormented for being gay. A boss firing an employee isn't abuse. You're trying to assign lines of congruency between two situations that could not be more different.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Oct 12, 2010 0:09:44 GMT -5
Some of you people have never been bullied for being gay. If you haven't, it would be really great if you could shut up. This isn't like pneumonia or being fat... This is far more complicated, controversial, and devastating. Being fat doesn't tear families apart. Being fat doesn't prompt parents of religious moral fiber to kick their children to the street. Straight people have sooooo many opinions and sooooo many thoughts on the matter, but in reality, none of them are qualified to comment on the situation. Psychological abuse is known to be more serious and scarring than anything physical. You simply don't get it. Those kids who taped Tyler Clementi and posted the video online are guilty of pushing that kid to the edge. Did they kill him directly? No. Did they cause it? Yes. Letting them get off the hook only encourages this behavior with the message, "As long as you don't physically take his life, bully on!! He should have been stronger and just dealt with it!" And Mike, extra blame??? What's worse??? Really??? Again, you simply don't get it. You won't until you're persecuted because of who you share you love with. You don't understand. Who has said anything about "letting them get off the hook"? I've said at least twice that they should be vigorously prosecuted for the crimes they committed. The executive summary of your post: Black people should shutup about white or latino or asian or arab issues because they aren't qualified to talk about those things. Homosexual men should shutup about women's issues because they aren't qualified to talk about those things. Margaret Cho should shutup about homosexual men because she isn't qualified to talk about those things. Rich people should shutup about poor people because they aren't qualified to talk about those things. Atheists should shutup about Christianity because they aren't qualified to talk about those things. This is the unfortunate end result of Identity Politics: "It's a [insert group] thing; you just wouldn't understand". If it's really that hopeless, then as Ani Difranco sings, "maybe we should put up a wall between the houses and the highway and then, you can go your way and I can go my way". In your emotional response, you fail to properly define what you mean by "bullying". If every day a white man goes for a jog around his city block, and every day a black man who owns a streetside corner bookstore calls out "Hey Ghostface!" when the man jogs by, that may count as bullying, but it's not a crime. If a Mormon woman walks to her ward meetings, and passes by a coffee shop where someone yells out "Hey church lady, show us the magic underwear that are supposed to get you into heaven!" and everyone else laughs, it's a mean and bullying expression, but it's not a crime. But there's a huge difference between saying that and saying "Do everything but take his life and I have no problem with it", particularly when I've said the opposite: that the people involved should be punished for the crimes they committed.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 12, 2010 0:28:25 GMT -5
And Mike, extra blame??? What's worse??? Really??? Again, you simply don't get it. You won't until you're persecuted because of who you share you love with. You don't understand. You really don't know anything about me, AA. Or at least, you only know what I've been willing to talk about, and only then if you have been paying attention.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Oct 12, 2010 0:34:33 GMT -5
It's tragic that you decided to cope with your pain by killing yourself. Life is really complicated and tough and cruel sometimes, and sometimes all the options seem to suck badly. My sympathies go to your surviving loved ones, that they must deal not only with the psychological stress of your condition but additionally with the manner in which you chose to permanently irrevocably deny them your continued presence. One of the most condescending things I've ever heard. And to say them as your "sympathies" to a dead boy's family... Nice. One of the most ill-informed things I've heard. You don't know anything about me or my experiences. If you'll go back a page and read carefully, you'll see that the comment you quoted was in response to a hypothetical situation. Nevertheless, I'll say that my sympathies to the parents of any suicide victim are as sincere as I can get. Life is messed up and really crappy at different levels for different people. It's always tragic when someone decides to deal with that by killing themselves, because it means they didn't see any other way out. I see it as largely a social fault, that this student hadn't yet been connected to resources on his campus that could provide support or referrals to off-campus groups. I wish that he had had a phone number, a name of an on-campus counselor, heck, I wish he'd had the name of a good lawyer to file a civil lawsuit against Ravi and Wei on top of the criminal prosecution they should receive for things like illegally recording and transmitting pornographic material.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2010 0:36:54 GMT -5
I think there's some serious misunderstanding/miscommunication taking place here. Fwiw.
And, btw, I wouldn't have started the other thread if I had read this one first. It seems pretty insensitive in close juxtaposition.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Oct 12, 2010 1:11:20 GMT -5
Ironically, I was thinking the same thing. Your perspective doesn't appear to recognize the complicated nature of cause and effect. Perhaps I am interpreting you incorrectly, but you seem to feel that Event A occurs, then Event B occurs, and the fact that they are related means A caused B. In my view that is too simplistic an assumption. If Susie is emotionally sensitive about her weight problem, and her roomate Clarice secretly tapes and broadcasts Susie in the bathtub with the title, "the new whale at the aquarium", and Susie goes and jumps off a bridge, Clarice is a jerk and an illegal pornographer and a violator of any relevant privacy laws. But Clarice did not commit murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, or any other similar legal offense, because Clarice had nothing to do with the fatal act which killed Susie. SHE CAUSED THE FATAL ACT THAT KILLED SUSIE. In what way did she cause Susie's fall from the bridge? You have stated it, but have presented no evidence to show that either Ravi or Wei caused Clementi to fall from the bridge. If you get drunk and drive your truck 75mph down a small residential street, killing some kids playing stickball, you are culpable for their deaths even though you didn't set out with any intent to kill them, because it's reasonably understood by everyone that driving drunk is extremely dangerous and operating an automobile at high speeds is almost certain to be fatal or wantonly injurious to any living thing in your path. Legal precedent doesn't seem to support the doctrine that it is reasonably understood that taunting someone is almost certain to be fatal to them. Hence, the other students are not guilty of Clementi's death in a legal sense. Morally? Ethically? Perhaps yes. But I will be very surprised if the DA even attempts to pin a manslaughter indictment on Ravi and Wei. Other high-profile cases where bullying or harassment led to suicide have not met the prosecutorial burden for a homicide conviction. This case is unlikely to do so either. Even the legislative responses to these situations center around criminalizing the harassment, not making a legal link between the suicide and a homicide charge. And such a link would be unlikely to pass judicial muster without a wholesale rewrite of criminal statutes. No matter how upsetting it is, this was not legally a homicide by any remote stretch. As I said in the beginning, the real problem is with a society in which Clementi didn't feel like he had any other avenue to seek redress for the heinous acts against him. Let me put it this way: racial tensions are still pretty bad in some areas of the United States, but when was the last time a black person committed suicide because someone white harassed them? Somewhere on an American school playground tomorrow, some white kid is going to repeat the bigoted nonsense they hear from Uncle Joe, and call a black kid a "nigger". Thankfully, odds are good that little Bigot Jr. is going to meet some strong disciplinary action to let him know that such things aren't acceptable. I hope we are quickly reaching a widespread social level at which the same kind of response would occur when one kid calls another a "faggot".
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Post by bigfan on Oct 12, 2010 11:51:59 GMT -5
It seems that stupidity, cruelty and cowardice can be easily combined early in life.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2010 11:54:36 GMT -5
Again, you simply don't understand...
Every situation isn't the same and the law isn't black and white (however, what Wei and Ravi did is exactly the definition of manslaughter - they didn't intend for him to die or for a deadly situation to occur, but they caused the timeline of events to occur).
Believe what you want. However, unless you're gay, you just don't have the relevant experience to comment effectively.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 12, 2010 12:25:23 GMT -5
Believe what you want. However, unless you're gay, you just don't have the relevant experience to comment effectively. What chance is there for any human harmony if everyone believes that it is not possible for anyone different to understand them? I don't have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to understand what it is like to walk a mile, even if I don't know EXACTLY what their shoes feel like.
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Post by OverAndUnder on Oct 12, 2010 13:05:52 GMT -5
Again, you simply don't understand... Every situation isn't the same and the law isn't black and white (however, what Wei and Ravi did is exactly the definition of manslaughter - they didn't intend for him to die or for a deadly situation to occur, but they caused the timeline of events to occur). The Law is black and white, because the codes and statutes exist on a printed page with specifications and subchapters to define the application and scope of the Law. On the other hand, interpretations of the Law are not always black and white. Yet common legal practices do establish a well-recognized framework for interpreting the Law and standards by which police officers, district attorneys, grand juries, and jurists, decide whether the evidence warrants criminal proceedings. It is those agents of the state who determine whether these kinds of situations qualify as homicide under current legislation and precedence. Your personal beliefs as to the moral culpability of the participants are only relevant except insofar as they might motivate you to seek legislative change in the future. And your application of the definition of manslaughter to this situation isn't backed up by the judicial record. I encourage you to spend a few hours of your afternoon on LexisNexis and WestLaw searching for relevant cases showing homicide convictions in these kinds of circumstances. Again, if Clementi had instead responded by following Wei on her evening jog and pushing her off a bridge to her death, would Ravi be charged with Wei's homicide? The answer is, there isn't a DA in the country who would charge anyone other than Clementi with the homicide (although Clementi would probably have a decent chance at a reduced charge/sentence due to the extreme duress). Same actions by Ravi and Wei, Same harassment, Same anguished mental state by Clementi, Same "time line of events", Same manner of death. If you think the Law suddenly changes its view of who committed the homicide because a different body went off the bridge, you don't understand the intentionally engineered dispassionate perspective of criminal statutes. If Ravi and Wei go to trial for homicide, I will delete my account on VolleyTalk. If they are even charged with homicide by the DA, I will change my avatar to a GIF with the words "All-American #11 is right and OverAndUnder is an idiot" for six months. So unless I'm a lesbian I can't comment on legal issues? I didn't realize those two "L" words were a package deal.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2010 13:57:28 GMT -5
I don't have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to understand what it is like to walk a mile, even if I don't know EXACTLY what their shoes feel like. You also don't have to compare every single life situation with a silly metaphor like you have done this entire thread. And no, you can't fully understand what it's like to go through life as a gay man unless you have done so. Just like I can't understand what it's like to have been a victim of cancer or a shooting or a robbery or anything I haven't experienced. No human can fully understand a situation that has not happened to them, because part of fully understanding it is feeling the natural emotions that occur as a result of said situation. Those emotions cannot be "mocked" or "copied" or whatever because you are not sure how your body will handle any situation until you are actually IN that situation. If you are never actually living your life as a gay man, you cannot fully comprehend what it is like to do so. There's no justifying that you can understand it, because you can't. It's 100% not possible. I have never been skydiving, and I can't understand what it's like to skydive. I think I can - but I can guarantee you that if I actually go skydiving, the emotions I will feel during the process are not anything I feel when I pretend what it would be like to skydive. I have never been morbidly obese, and I can't understand what it's like to be morbidly obese. I might think I can - but if I were actually to ever become morbidly obese, I would experience emotions I never thought I would experience, and I can't say what those emotions even are, because I am not morbidly obese. So no, you can't "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" - and it is more because you are not that person, not really that you don't have the same shoes. (I thought maybe your stupid metaphor would help explain to you why you are absolutely incorrect here.)
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