More female privilege

[Sabine Grant]

So is that a yes? Yes, men being the sole providers for their families can get them lighter sentences in the US criminal justice system?

It might be a factor, but it is only one factor out of many. If a defendant is a responsible father who provides for his family, and his incarceration would be a hardship on his family, a judge would take this into consideration. I'm sure it happens all the time. The purpose of a sentence is to do what is best for society, not simply punish a person for a crime.

Consistently, family Courts dealing with custodial arrangements will place the best interest and welfare of minor children ABOVE what the involved adults expect or demand. And what is best for such children certainly does not include granting custody (to include residential custody) to a parent (father or mother) who does not have the best interest and welfare of the said children as their priority.

In this specific case, the Judge did not just blindly dismiss the fate of Vela's 6 minor children.

I would think that most people who have been parents would in fact support how the Judge took into consideration the fate of Vela's 6 minor children rather than a ruling which would have resulted in the displacement from their home and relocation in separate foster homes and with the added consequences I have previously listed.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Consistently, family Courts dealing with custodial arrangements will place the best interest and welfare of minor children ABOVE what the involved adults expect or demand.

In custody battles in Family court, yes. But this is the first I have heard of it in criminal sentencing. It highlights a principle of criminal sentencing I am not aware of, and may have been ignorant of; That your kids and family relations should get you a lighter sentence. That concept opens a up a few questions and strategies for those involved in criminal activity. Please note I am not asking what you think should be true, I am asking what the actual criminal justice system does on a routine basis.

And do you agree that a kid's father going to jail has a major impact on them, even if he isn't the primary caregiver? It seems to be such a common notion as to have become a trope. Has it been worked into the criminal justice sentencing system? Is this also taken into consideration on a lesser level?

 

[Bronzeage]

Consistently, family Courts dealing with custodial arrangements will place the best interest and welfare of minor children ABOVE what the involved adults expect or demand.

In custody battles in Family court, yes. But this is the first I have heard of it in criminal sentencing. It highlights a principle of criminal sentencing I am not aware of, and may have been ignorant of; That your kids and family relations should get you a lighter sentence. That concept opens a up a few questions and strategies for those involved in criminal activity.

And do you agree that a kid's father going to jail has a major impact on them, even if he isn't the primary caregiver? It seems to be such a common notion as to have become a trope. Should this case be taken into consideration on a lesser level?

"Major impact" is a vague quantity. I think anyone would agree that the difference between not seeing one's father for a few years, and being put into the foster care system, would be "major".

The idea a criminal would work to have a stable and well provided family, with the hope it would help render a more lenient sentence, if and when he was convicted of a crime, is something we should explore and certainly consider legislation to somehow discourage the creation of mitigating families.

 

[arkirk]

In custody battles in Family court, yes. But this is the first I have heard of it in criminal sentencing. It highlights a principle of criminal sentencing I am not aware of, and may have been ignorant of; That your kids and family relations should get you a lighter sentence. That concept opens a up a few questions and strategies for those involved in criminal activity.

And do you agree that a kid's father going to jail has a major impact on them, even if he isn't the primary caregiver? It seems to be such a common notion as to have become a trope. Should this case be taken into consideration on a lesser level?

"Major impact" is a vague quantity. I think anyone would agree that the difference between not seeing one's father for a few years, and being put into the foster care system, would be "major".

The idea a criminal would work to have a stable and well provided family, with the hope it would help render a more lenient sentence, if and when he was convicted of a crime, is something we should explore and certainly consider legislation to somehow discourage the creation of mitigating families.

We need to get away from draconian minimum sentencing laws in the first place. The purpose of a court should not just be to be arbitrary but fair. Things like our drug laws incarcerate large numbers of people for things that should not be counted as crimes. When a person's fate could hinge on just how one judge decides and the judge has people counting his decisions relative to how he is "letting criminals off," you have cases like Lynne Stewart where she was locked up in solitary confinement for non crimes while disease ravaged her. There needs to be a right to a speedy PUBLIC trial. Even the worst criminals should not be liable to the kind of treatment she received. We are the incarceration nation. We also have a government that is not shy about hiding what it does from the governed.

I very much doubt that family ties and family needs play much into sentencing in our criminal justice system. As for the notion of female privilege in our courts: I think Derek is focused on a very few cases and he is projecting the leniency in these few cases to seem to apply to all women. We all know a mexican laborer driving without a license is treated as far more serious than the offenses of Martha Stewart. I feel the disparity of justice mirrors the economic disparity and the blue issues are used on poor and minorities period. They are incarcerated out of all proportion to their "threat" to society. They appear to be being locked up in California to provide prison guards a livelihood and prison corporations a profit. And yes, poor and minority women are part of the fuel just like the men.

 

[Toni]

To replay most directly to the OP and the article in the OP:

I don't believe in violence as a means to solve a problem. What the mother did in this case was wrong. However, the injuries were not severe: they were repaired without stitches. So, he retained the penis and presumably, all the normal functions of the penis. Her intent seems not to have been to castrate him or even to seriously injure him but rather to leave a scar to remind him of 'what he had done.' The lack of severity and/or permanence of the injuries would surely be a factor in her sentence as were the circumstances surrounding the attack.



Also, the mother appears to have acted after seeing the victim (age 19) with her 16 year old daughter. He had previously dated her daughter (apparently a different daughter) and she saw him with her 16 year old daughter. She also claimed that the victim may have or was sexually abusing her 2 or 3 year old (depending on account) son. Whether the victim actually did molest any of the woman's children or whether she believed he did seems not to have been as much of an issue with Derec.

I think it is worth mentioning that the victim had previously dated a daughter of Vela, who broke up with him. Her mother took him back into her trailer because she felt sorry for him. Note: this is a trailer that was housing Vela, another man, and her 6 children. So 3 adults and 6 children were living in one small trailer. As far as I can tell, he was taken in as an act of charity and kindness. Apparently, he attempted to have some sort of relationship with the 16 year old daughter (which he admits to doing) and may or may not have actually molested a toddler.

Obviously, if the woman actually thought he was harming her child, she should have called the police rather than engaged in an attack that lasted for several hours and resulted in her cutting his penis. I don't think what she did was right and she should have been arrested, brought to trial and been sentenced. I think the sentence is probably appropriate, particularly since it includes anger management classes.

The fact that the victim could not be located for the sentencing left the judge with only the option of considering what was before him: a woman who attacked a guy who was living with her FOR FREE in an over crowded trailer after her daughter broke up with him, and instead of being grateful, he goes after the 16 year old and possibly (but probably not) a toddler. I understand the mother's anger and outrage, although I do not condone it.

 

[laughing dog]

So is that a yes? Yes, men being the sole providers for their families can get them lighter sentences in the US criminal justice system?

Obviously the answer is yes.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

If there is an inequity among genders in sentencing, why do you suppose that is? Who set up that inequity and for what reason? This insistence on demanding equality divorced from history, social context, or consequences beyond the event in question will not bring about equity, will not bring about justice, will not bring about lasting solutions. It just sounds like whining from a six year old mad that his sister got the "bigger half."

 

[Rhea]

So is that a yes? Yes, men being the sole providers for their families can get them lighter sentences in the US criminal justice system?

(They have certainly benefited from higher salaries for this stated reason for several hundred years. I've had it said to my face, "well he has a family to support")

 

[Sabine Grant]

Below is an interesting and very revealing read for posters who are empathetic towards children of incarcerated parents :

http://www.cor.mt.gov/content/Victims/FamilyMembersBehindBars.pdf

It really expands on how traumatic it is for the child (children). It is refreshing to encounter a Judge (OP case) who figured out an alternative sparing 6 minor children from being subjected to that situation if their primary caregiver parent had been incarcerated.

 

[Jarhyn]

the sad fact is, reality itself is biased in certain ways. More men than women will commit violent crime. Men will rape more than women will. Men will be more often guilty of domestic abuse.

More often men will be targeted with attacks on their genitals because more men than women use them to do violent things, not to mention that it's hard to injure someone with a wet hole, and it's harder to do something quite as symbolic as cutting it off. Even as a man who enjoys his penis and the penises of others and who is quite concerned about the unnecessary and unwilling mutilation of penises in things like infant circumcision, I'll shed no tears for the removal of some asshole's dick with a box cutter.

The fact of the matter is, more women get lighter sentences in things like this because more men end up deserving it. I'll be the first to stand up for a guy who didn't have it coming. But if you are totally fair with standards, more men than women will end up qualifying as firefighters and marines, and more men than women will earn the loss of their genitals. Being sore at women for the state of reality just means you should probably look long and hard to make sure you aren't one of the deserving few to lose something long and hard.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

the sad fact is, reality itself is biased in certain ways. More men than women will commit violent crime. Men will rape more than women will. Men will be more often guilty of domestic abuse.

This is true. And we need to be careful not to let this truth about group averages translate into bias when dealing with individuals who happen to belong to each group. We see that over and over both on this forum and in society at large.

 

[Jarhyn]

the sad fact is, reality itself is biased in certain ways. More men than women will commit violent crime. Men will rape more than women will. Men will be more often guilty of domestic abuse.

This is true. And we need to be careful not to let this truth about group averages translate into bias when dealing with individuals who happen to belong to each group. We see that over and over both on this forum and in society at large.

Be careful not to argue past me. My point is that MRAs pointing to the real trend of women getting lighter sentences for genital mutilations is expected due to the biases inherent in reality. There will always be bad calls, mostly due to other biases in reality, like the bias towards conflating a statistical reality as a characteristic universal to the entire group. But saying it's necessarily 'female privilege' that there are many more examples of dick mangling, or even that society reacts with less surprise and outrage when it happens, since earned penis mangling is so much more common, visible, and thus believable and forgivable.

If there is a female privilege in the regard of public opinion regarding adult genital mangling, it's been earned. And it doesn't change the fact that if such trends didn't result in a cultural shift towards ready acceptance of the deservedness of men getting their dangly bits pruned, it would still happen more often to, and be deserved more often by men, and wouldn't constitute evidence of female privilege. Until there is clear evidence that women have an unearned privilege, or any privilege at all, as opposed to already observed reality bias the hobby horse beaten by the scumming up of a few isolated cases is just putting the cart in front of the horse.

 

[thebeave]

Let's see how this looks when we consider not gender inequality in sentencing, but racial inequality:

If there is an inequity among genders between blacks and whites in sentencing, why do you suppose that is? Who set up that inequity and for what reason? This insistence on demanding equality divorced from history, social context, or consequences beyond the event in question will not bring about equity, will not bring about justice, will not bring about lasting solutions. It just sounds like whining from a six year old black guy mad that his sister a white guy got the "bigger half."

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Let's see how this looks when we consider not gender inequality in sentencing, but racial inequality:

If there is an inequity among genders between blacks and whites in sentencing, why do you suppose that is? Who set up that inequity and for what reason? This insistence on demanding equality divorced from history, social context, or consequences beyond the event in question will not bring about equity, will not bring about justice, will not bring about lasting solutions. It just sounds like whining from a six year old black guy mad that his sister a white guy got the "bigger half."

A change in the statement which illustrates the statement. It divorces the statement from history, connection to social context, or consequences beyond the immediate event. And more importantly, it avoids answering the actually questions.

Bravo.

 

[Toni]

Let's see how this looks when we consider not gender inequality in sentencing, but racial inequality:

If there is an inequity among genders between blacks and whites in sentencing, why do you suppose that is? Who set up that inequity and for what reason?

Um, that would be the white guys who were happy to benefit from a system of inequality that left them at the top of the heap and happened long enough ago that they can feel their hands are clean. After all, they didn't actually own slaves or participate in lynchings.

This insistence on demanding equality divorced from history, social context, or consequences beyond the event in question will not bring about equity, will not bring about justice, will not bring about lasting solutions

.


Oh, I agree that context is needed. But here's the context: slavery was an evil that did not end when official slavery ended. Its legacy is still very much alive and doing quite well 50 years or so after the Civil Rights movement.

It just sounds like whining from a six year old black guy white mad that his sister any white guy black person got the "bigger half." any piece of the pie at all.

FIFY.


Actually, I was wondering when someone was going to mention that the very same people who insist that blacks deserve the harsher treatment they receive under the law (more arrests, more serious charges, more convictions and longer sentences) would cry foul if they thought women were receiving a better deal than white men.

It took a little longer than I thought it would.

Let's review the case in the OP: a woman who had taken in a homeless guy after her daughter broke up with him--took him into her very over crowded trailer--becomes angry and upset that she thinks he's going after the 16 year old. And maybe the toddler (although accounts are not consistent. I couldn't find a transcript that says she really believed the guy was going after the little kid). She and 3 other adults (none of whom has been charged) held the victim for hours during which time she abused him and inflicted a cut small enough not to require stitches in the victim's penis. Depending on whose version you believe, despite her threats, she did not deliberately cut him but the cut occurred when he knocked the blade. After the cut she expressed concern for how he was doing and told police she never meant to hurt him but only to scare him. ( http://fox59.com/2013/12/30/police-woman-cut-mans-penis-with-box-cutter-over-molestation-claim/ )

The judge hands down a 16 month sentence which does not include prison or additional jail time but house arrest and anger management classes for .

I did a not terribly thorough internet search but it seems that most of the time when women cut off the penis of a man, they are sentenced to life in prison. Of course that crime is far more serious than inflicting a wound which was not serious enough to merit stitches.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

If there is a female privilege in the regard of public opinion regarding adult genital mangling, it's been earned.

And that's what I am talking about right there. If it exists, it isn't earned. It is learned in regard to a group and generalized to individuals we tie to that group who have in no way earned any such thing. And this doesn't just apply to the "man as aggressor" and "woman as helpless victim" stereotypes. It applies to any such groupings and the individuals within those groups, be it race, gender, or whatever else.

 

[Bronzeage]

Just a sidenote: The woman used a box cutter and the wound was superficial enough to not require stitches. This indicates a lack of intent to injure. She could have left him looking like an open face clb sandwich with little more effort.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Just a sidenote: The woman used a box cutter and the wound was superficial enough to not require stitches. This indicates a lack of intent to injure. She could have left him looking like an open face clb sandwich with little more effort.

Good point.

Ms. Bobbit cut it off, put it in the car, drove miles from the house and threw it in a field.

 

[Derec]

Ms. Bobbit cut it off, put it in the car, drove miles from the house and threw it in a field.

And not only was she acquitted of her heinous crime but became a feminist icon and heroine.
As I said, female privilege. I know of no man who mutilated a woman's genitals, got acquitted and became viewed as a hero.

 

[laughing dog]

If there is a female privilege in the regard of public opinion regarding adult genital mangling, it's been earned.

And that's what I am talking about right there. If it exists, it isn't earned. It is learned in regard to a group and generalized to individuals we tie to that group who have in no way earned any such thing. And this doesn't just apply to the "man as aggressor" and "woman as helpless victim" stereotypes. It applies to any such groupings and the individuals within those groups, be it race, gender, or whatever else.

On planet Earth, such things are a reality whether one likes it or not. People naturally base decisions and views on "averages".