Brock Turner Judge Quotes

We want Harvey Weinstein in prison. We want Brock Turner to have a longer sentence. We want Judge Aquilina to sign Nassar’s death warrant. We rely on a third party to take these ‘bad men’ away, usually in the form of an institution or the state. And this White Knight or Angry Dad is patriarchy personified. This is how our outraged activism fails to dismantle the intersecting systems of heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism that produce sexual violence – and strengthens them instead.

The judge in this case, Aaron Persky, similarly worried about “the severe impact” of the conviction on Turner’s future and gave him what was, by the relevant standards, a very lenient sentence (six months in county jail—of which he served just three—and three years’ probation). Much was made throughout the trial and sentencing of Brock Turner’s swimming prowess. And Dan Turner was still not satisfied, believing his son shouldn’t do any time whatsoever. He described his son’s crime as a mere “twenty minutes of action,” out of twenty years of good behavior (WTIW Staff 2016; see note 10 here.). But just as the murderer can’t claim credit for all of the people he didn’t kill, Turner was no less a rapist for all of the women he didn’t violate. And when there is one victim, it must be said: there are often others. So his father’s estimated ratio may have been on the low side. 11

But it is easy to be angry with the father, the judge, and the friend. It is also fitting, up to a point. Yet it would be a mistake to view them as on a different plane of moral obtuseness, as opposed to merely being on the extreme end of a himpathetic spectrum on which many of us lie. Brock Turner's defenders exhibited forgiving tendencies, and spun exonerating narratives, that are all too commonly extended to men in his position. And such tendencies seem largely from capacities and qualities of which we're rarely critical: such as sympathy, empathy, trust in one's friends, devotion to one's children, and having as much faith in someone's good character as is compatible with the evidence. These are all important capacities and qualities, all else being equal. But they can have a downside, when all else is not equal: for example, when social inequality remains widespread. Their naive deployment will tend to further privilege those already unjustly privileged over others. And this may come at the expense of unfairly impugning, blaming, shaming, further endangering, and erasing the less privileged among their victims. In some cases, the perpetrators, knowing this, select their victims on this basis.