I’ve played with enough hockey players to know that our collective way of teaching our sons how to respect women is broken. It is absolutely a culture problem.
Because you can’t prove what’s inside your mind, and that’s what a lot of sexual assault cases come down to.
She said and acted one way, but is saying after the fact that in her head she believed something else.
You can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt in that case.
There’s a reasonable possibility she wasn’t in a state of consent, but it might not rise to the “more likely than not” standard you see in civil trials, even.
They might be toxic hockey bros, but they dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s very thoroughly. Like more than in almost every other sexual encounter that happens.
There is video of her “consenting” but you could hear the men in the background telling her “say it, say it”. A woman in a room of at least 5 large men intimidating her to consent is not consent, that is coercion. And that is not in her head, that is video evidence.
The problem with your statement is here:
'a woman in a room of at least 5 large men intimidating her to consent is not consent"
You assume it isn’t, but it 100% can be. Your bias doesn’t make you right.
There are plenty of completely consensual videos of this exact situation online if you’d like to check. Both professional and amateur.
But with cars passing the courthouse after the verdict honking in support of the players, and with the union for professional hockey players now advocating for the men’s return, what appears more likely, at least for now, is for the story that threatened to shake the foundations of a sport being forgotten as quickly as possible.
This is what happens all the time. This is why #metoo happened. And your take is why it won’t stop any time soon.
Fuck the “boys will be boys” shit and start teaching them how to have self-control instead.
What part of any of this was boys will be boys?
What part of any of this was hockey related?
It’s a problem with sex and consent and how consent is an impossible legal concept to prosecute except in obvious situations where it is actively revoked.
It’s currently impossible for anyone to know they have the consent of their partner if the partner can always revoke it while saying nothing, or even while their partner is actively saying yes and then claiming duress later. If consent is impossible to know for sure, having sex is a huge legal liability for everyone participating.
That just isn’t legally tenable as a situation unless the goal is literally to prevent everyone from having sex. That’s a terrible idea, so the better options is to pick a different method of defining consent.
It may not be what some people want, but unless we want to change our legal system’s requirement for “beyond a reasonable doubt” I don’t see a better option.
What part of any of this was boys will be boys?
What part of any of this was hockey related?
Are those serious questions?
But [the case] also revealed the existence of a secret Hockey Canada fund, which the organization eventually admitted it had specifically created to pay settlements in sexual assault cases against players – apparently lifting the lid off a long-simmering culture of abuse and cover-ups extending far beyond the case at hand.
Sexual assaults have been covered up by literally every organization that has ever had people in it. This isn’t a sport issue, the Catholic Church has been doing it for thousands of years. Hell even families have covered up this kind of thing by paying people off for all of known history. Why are you surprised it exists anywhere? Fining people isn’t going to stop that either, even if you started jailing executives from organizations if it happens all you would see is organizations shutting down, there’s nothing they can do to prevent it 100% of the time no matter how much they “change their culture” .
So what’s your solution? How do you prove something that happens only inside someone’s mind?
You could video tape every single sexual encounter from start to finish, require both drug and alchohol tests prior to ensure competence, have the people involved make sworn statements before and every 5 minutes during, and it still wouldn’t hold up if one party said they felt pressured because they thought the person would hurt them (physically, mentally, emotionally) outside the encounter if they didn’t go through with it.
The system doesn’t work.
So either sex has to stop entirely, people need to risk going to jail every time they have sex, or we need to change the system.
It’s funny, I for one have never had to worry about going to jail after sex… Maybe it has to do with not getting friends to take turns on someone who wasn’t even aware this could be a possibility, who knows.
It’s funny, I’ve never been shot or stabbed.
However if I check the news, there’s going to be people that has happened to despite them not doing a damn thing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’ve also never been killed by a drunk driver.
Just because something hasn’t happened to you yet doesn’t make it impossible.
There are more than a few false sexual assault/rape cases that have occurred and later proven to be either malicious, or due to social pressure afterwards.
You might not be worried about going to jail after sex, but thats what each of those people likely thought too.
Ban sex, masturbation only, save the planet from ourselves /s.
That’s not self control. That’s just not being a complete asshole in every single way. As someone who worked in a huge hockey city in arenas I can tell you hockey is a blight on this country that will eventually enable us to be become just like 'murica. We’ve already adopted the sport celebrity culture fully and people will literally fight you over hockey.
I’ve had people punch me and spit on me, I’ve had to call the cops numerous times over threats of physical violence against me or someone else, had my life and vehicle threatened with damage, I’ve had a player jump over the boards and try fight me because I asked him to leave the ice surface after his allotted time was up. I had a guy even try pull me off the ice resurfacer because he was pissed he couldn’t skate longer.
They’re fucking worse than Neanderthals and they are taught that every day, year round from the time they can strap blades on their feet and praised for it. They call it “the Canadian game”. We give them millions of dollars to.play a fucking kids game and never ever ask them to grow up. I’ve seen junior players who’s dad’s still tie their fucking skates.
I mean, you say hockey is the problem, but people will literally fight you over coffee, a parking spot, or some invisible force in the sky.
It’s not the sport that’s causing problems, it’s just humans being humans.
We like to think we’re evolved beyond such stupidity, but we aren’t even close.
Anyone pretending that “changing the culture” will magically eliminate the problem entirely is just as stupid as the people they’re complaining about.
People are always going to do bad things, and that’s why we have a legal system to deal with those situations.
Maybe they are hockey players 😜
Because of toxic culture? It’s right there in the headline, their behaviour is toxic and it is protected because they’re all just a bunch of good ol boys. This happens every time, in all walks of life.
Boys just being boys. I fucking hate that excuse like we are animals who can’t control themselves.
I agree. I’m not validating it, just telling it like it is. Shouldn’t be some great mystery?!
This case has been on my mind a lot lately.
It’s possible that (a) they absolutely committed sexual crimes, and (b) they shouldn’t be convicted.
It is the law’s job to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That means that the accusers in any case have to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt - which unfortunately means getting grilled mercilessly.
It’s imperfect - it’s a flawed system that lets guilty people go free. HOWEVER, better to let the guilty go free than imprison the innocent. And the thing is, as long as there isn’t a perfect record of all actions and intentions, it’s always going to be imperfect.
My feeling is that they five are dirtbags who at the VERY least, took gross advantage of a woman who didn’t know what she was getting in to; and are almost certainly guilty in a non-legal sense of rape. But generally speaking, if the judge says there isn’t enough evidence to convict them, then I’m inclined to believe the judge.
Now the real question is whether the NHL opens their arms to these shitheads, or whether they say “no, we’d rather not.” Except that it’s not a question - the NHL, like any sports league, will come up with an excuse to allow at least the good ones in without consequence.
You seem to be conveniently forgetting the whole part about the judge completely ignoring the 5 men and focusing on accusing the victim of lying. That has nothing to do with proving or not the guilt of the accused.
