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.”
It’s 100% terrorism and it’s exactly what all these misogynistic billionaires are funding with their money. All of these manosphere bullshit podcasters keep pushing men into misogyny and violence and social media giants enable them. They are not the root cause of the problem but they’re intentionally making it worse.
We’re seeing a very deliberate campaign targeting half our population with vitriol and violence. This isn’t free speech anymore, it’s terrorism.
After I posted my comment it occurred to me that people threatening women with rape in internet comments and DMs is definitely part of this story. If those threats are normalized, you don’t need to direct a specific person to attack another specific person, you can just trust that it will happen eventually, like other varieties of stochastic terror.
Yep! It’s also a stage of the radicalization pathway that the alt right pioneered. Each step primes people for the next as well as making them sympathetic to those even further down the line. While the person who’s only involved in light misogyny spaces may in theory oppose rape threats and rape, they may very well find themselves talking about false accusations or how you can’t control people on the internet or rapists. By having those reactions they’re already priming themselves to maybe be interested in communities where among other things some members make fun of rape victims that the community has decided are liars.
I wish I could upvote your comment more than once.