Monday, February 05, 2024

New York State Passes Law That Could Have Counted Trump’s Actions as Rape

 

New York State Passes Law That Could Have Counted Trump’s Actions as Rape


Mother Jones: “On Tuesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signedlegislation broadening the state’s definition of rape, eliminating the penile penetration requirement. The bill, “Rape Is Rape,” expands the law to include nonconsensual anal, oral, and vaginal sexual contact. Starting in September, New York will be like many other states: The penal code will not limit rape to only forced vaginal penetration by a penis.  That narrow definition of rape has been key in the legal battle between E. Jean Carroll and former president Donald Trump. Last year, Carroll sued Trump, saying that he had raped her in 1996 and then defamed her by denying the accusations.

 (She was able to do so because of another bill that Gov. Hochul signed into law—the Adult Survivors Act, which granted victims a one-time window in New York to file a civil case against an abuser or institution that protected the abuser, regardless of when the assault took place.)

 In May, a jury sided with Carroll and said that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan dressing room. Carroll has held throughout the case that Trump used both his fingers and his penis in this assault. But the jury did not side in favor of the latter claim. Under the old language in New York’s penal code, this meant the initial jurors could not say Trump raped Carroll. But as District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the case has explained, the jury did find that Trump “deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm.” 

And, as I recently reported, Judge Kaplan has gone to great lengths to make one thing clear: Just because the law had a narrow definition of what rape is, doesn’t mean that Trump is not a rapist. The juror’s decision, Kaplan clarified, “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” “Indeed,” he continued, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”   


 

  1. “If Israel’s actions… are threatening the foundations of social, political, cultural, and physical life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, ‘genocide’ may be the appropriate term to describe the moral significance and scale of the harm caused by Israel’s attacks” — an argument from Jessica Wolfendale (Case Western)
  2. “For me, philosophy is part of a toolkit for understanding the world. I started life as a scientist and so that’s still probably how I first approach understanding… But I think philosophy has an important contribution in providing methods for clarifying concepts, setting out clear frameworks, identifying background assumptions, and synthesising work across disciplines” — an interview with philosopher (and former zookeeper) Heather Browning (Southampton)
  3. “Judd, a junior philosophy professor, was called in by the University’s president and told to clear out his office at the end of the term. He did, and spent his working life managing a junkyard. He did not see the ‘evidence’ against him until fifty years later” — John McCumber (UCLA) on how politics influenced 20th C. philosophy, and the challenges of making that case. Part 2 here.
  4. “If I click at a surface, it answers back. It’s like asking a question” — What is it like to be a blind person who uses echolocation (and who has taught it to thousands of students)?
  5. “Generative AI writing tools have some benefits. I like being able to understand what more of my students have to say… But…” — Jeffrey Watson (ASU) on teaching philosophy in a ChatGPT world
  6. Questions about philosophical method and expertise (especially across specializations) are interesting in themselves, but also because they’re relevant to practical decisions philosophers make, like whom to hire — after reading this post by Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam), hit the “previous” button and check out that one, too
  7. “We’re often incoherent through inattention to our mental states” but we try “to make them coherent when they’re brought to our attention” — which, says Alex Worsnip (UNC), “suggests that there is a kind of rationality… that we at least tend to approximate”