Althouse

Filed in yesterday in state court in Manhattan. I'm just going to extract some things that stood out to me, so I encourage you to do your own independent reading. My selections are entirely biased, as is this entire blog, toward what catches my attention: 

Giuliani worked aggressively to hire Ms. Dunphy, offering her what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work as his Director of Business Development with a salary of $1 million per year.... He made clear that satisfying his sexual demands—which came virtually anytime, anywhere—was an absolute requirement of her employment and of his legal representation. Giuliani began requiring Ms. Dunphy to work at his home and out of hotel room, so that she would be at his beck and call. He drank morning, noon, and night, and was frequently intoxicated, and therefore his behavior was always unpredictable. Giuliani also took Viagra constantly.

While working with Ms. Dunphy, Giuliani would look to Ms. Dunphy, point to his erect penis, and tell her that he could not do any work until “you take care of this.” Thus, Ms. Dunphy worked under the constant threat that Giuliani might demand sex from her at any moment.... In addition to his sexual demands, Giuliani went on alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist, and antisemitic remarks, which made the work environment unbearable. Many of these comments were recorded.... Giuliani gave Ms. Dunphy permission to record her interactions with Giuliani anytime, anywhere, as well as Giuliani’s interactions with others.... 

Giuliani preferred working with Ms. Dunphy in his home (and later from hotels) so that he could easily transition from work, to demanding sexual gratification, and back to work. Thus, Ms. Dunphy worked under the virtually constant threat that Giuliani might initiate sexual contact at any moment. Although Ms. Dunphy never knew when Giuliani might force sexual contact on her, upon information and belief, his actions were premeditated because, in many instances, he had taken Viagra or similar medication beforehand in preparation.

Giuliani often demanded that she work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her.... Throughout the employment and attorney-client relationship, Giuliani forced Ms. Dunphy to perform oral sex on him. He often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump. Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that he enjoyed engaging in this conduct while on the telephone because it made him “feel like Bill Clinton.”...

At certain times, Ms. Dunphy overheard discussions which contained, upon information and belief, privileged or confidential information. These discussions included, for example, strategies as to how to deal with the investigation being conducted by Robert Mueller, and whether it might be possible to distract, intimidate, or otherwise dissuade Mueller from proceeding against Trump....

Giuliani was rarely sober around Ms. Dunphy. Since he regularly drank all day and night, it became part of Ms. Dunphy’s responsibilities to fetch his alcohol and make sure that he was a “functioning alcoholic.”... 

Giuliani began to tell Ms. Dunphy that he loved her. Often, this was while he was coercing her into performing oral sex on him. He sometimes also referred to her as a “best friend” and he often told her that he “needed” her. Due to Ms. Dunphy’s vulnerable state, and the power imbalance between them as boss/employee and lawyer/client, she began to believe him.... 

Giuliani made derogatory comments about Jewish men and implied that their penises were inferior due to “natural selection.”... Giuliani said, “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. The red sea parted, big deal. It’s not the first time that happened.”... Giuliani demeaned and sexualized Hillary Clinton and mocked her body.... Giuliani mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren as “in search of a gender,” stating: “Pocahontas was a really hot babe, and Warren does not look like a babe. She looks like a person in search of a gender.” Giuliani later said he was “very hot” for Warren.....

Much more at the link, obviously.

The are 21 claims made, including sexual abuse and rape and sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

The complaint includes a screenshot from the movie "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm":

The jury has found that Carroll did not prove Trump raped her, but they did determine that he had sexually abused her. The jurors also found that Trump had defamed Carroll when he called her accusations false. They awarded her $5 million damages....

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that for the jury to establish that Trump raped Carroll, she had to prove that Trump engaged in sexual intercourse with her, and that he did it without her consent. The judge said that sexual intercourse includes “any penetration of the penis into the vaginal opening.”...

This means that the jury did not believe part of her testimony. They somehow found her story credible enough to believe partially but not totally. Was this a compromise verdict? 

On Truth Social, Trump responded: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!” 

Here is part of the Trump campaign’s first response: “In jurisdictions wholly controlled by the Democratic Party our nation’s justice system is now compromised by extremist left-wing politics. We have allowed false and totally made-up claims from troubled individuals to interfere with our elections, doing great damage." The campaign added: "This case will be appealed, and we will ultimately win.”

ADDED: The jury deliberated for 3 hours and found there was "sexual abuse" but not rape. The NYT says, "Sexual abuse is defined in New York as subjecting a person to sexual contact without consent."

AND: I thought of the best answer to how the jury could do that: They could have understood Trump's Access Hollywood remark to mean he had a practice of grabbing women's crotches. So that tipped the evidence with respect to sexual abuse but did not support the claim that he penetrated the vaginal opening.

One woman I spoke with, Marissa Ross, who has written about sexual assault and harassment in the wine industry, explained her quite typical reaction to the notorious “Access Hollywood” videotape that surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Mr. Trump brags: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” including “grab” women’s genitals. When she heard the tape, Ms. Ross told me, “I didn’t just hear Donald Trump. I heard every man that’s ever hurt me. It was those boys in high school, it was my ex-boyfriend, it was all those men. For me, and I imagine for many other survivors, it was not just hearing Trump. It was everyone that violated me.”...

This column was published just before Carroll began her testimony at trial, so Tuerkheimer is anticipating how Trump's lawyers will undermine her credibility: 

The defense may insist that she welcomed the bantering exchange that led the two to the dressing room, and Ms. Carroll’s recollection in her complaint that she “kept laughing” after the incident may be used to support this consensual version of events. As an alternative, the defense might argue that the entire encounter was invented, noting that Ms. Carroll opted not to report the alleged rape to the police at the time or to seek medical attention. All this can be used against her as evidence she’s lying....

Tuerkheimer observes that this case is important because everyone is watching it and seeing how the accuser is treated and how the defense works and because "Mr. Trump has embraced the role of avenger on behalf of men accused of sexual misconduct":

In 2016, responding to the allegations of sexual misconduct against him, Mr. Trump asserted that “every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign” and added, “If they can fight somebody like me, who has unlimited resources to fight back, just look at what they can do to you.”.

“He came through the door and said, 'Hey, you are that advice lady,'” she testified, adding that she replied, “Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon.” She said she was delighted when he asked for her help selecting a gift. “I love to give advice, and here was Donald Trump asking me for advice about buying a present.... That was a wonderful prospect for me.”

Said David Choe, quoted in "Unpacking David Choe’s ‘Rapey’ Podcast Comments" (The Cut).

Choe is one of the actors in the popular new Netflix series "Beef." The podcast remarks are from 2014, and we're told "some viewers are calling for accountability." I'm not sure what form of "accountability" they are or should be asking for. The story he told on the podcast concerns crossing lines with a masseuse, similar to the accusations against Al Gore some years back.

ADDED: To say "I hate rapists, I think rapists should be raped and murdered" is to show that you have a narrow conception of what rape is. Of course, that's also why Choe could do what he said he did and exclude himself from the set called "rapists." But if you actually cared about sexual abuse, you wouldn't focus on restricting the category. You focus on restricting the category to protect the interests of those, including you, who engage in sexual abuse. Look at the reasoning behind "rapists should be raped and murdered." That's saying: Rapists are those who are irredeemable, utterly worthless monsters. And: That can't be me!

(And let me add that even "irredeemable, utterly worthless monsters" shouldn't be "murdered." You should recommend the death penalty, not murder. If you think the death penalty is murder, you should oppose the death penalty.)

The “pedophile” slur, a companion of the term “groomer,” is regularly applied by Republicans and right-wing media figures to Democrats and others who stand up for transgender rights, including gender-affirming treatment for adolescents. Greene cheerfully flaunted this use of the term on “60 Minutes,” which left [Lesley] Stahl utterly flummoxed: 

Greene: Democrats support, even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children. 

Stahl: Wow. Okay. But my question really is, can’t you fight for what you believe in without all that name-calling and without the personal attacks? 

Greene: Well, I would ask the same question to the other side … 

Not only did Greene casually conflate “sexualizing children” with transgender care, but she also is being despicably dishonest by reducing gender-affirming care to “surgeries.” Yet this conflation of support for trans youth with pedophilia slipped by, unrebutted, to a national audience. No wonder Greene told Semafor she was pleased with how the interview went.

Lesley Stahl initiated the topic and seemed to have thought that Greene would be flummoxed.* Was Stahl utterly unprepared for Greene to have an answer to the question why she'd used that word? Did CBS folk not game it out? It seems obvious to me that one predictable move was what Greene did: define "pedophile" broadly so that it's not limited to persons who have or desire to have sex with children.

It's like the way feminists refer to a "rape culture." It's not just about the malefactors who commit the specific crime, but about a larger system of creating risks and desires and vulnerability. Greene concisely stated the bold concept that sexualizing children is pedophilia.

Stahl should have been prepared for this. Perhaps she doesn't have what it takes to ask follow up questions. She reacted like a know-nothing: "Wow. Okay." And then she changed the subject to the general question whether name-calling — saying things like "pedophile" — is bad form! That's practically admitting Greene's epithet was accurate and then inquiring whether it should be avoided because it's mean!

And yet maybe Stahl made the right choice in not inquiring into why it's acceptable to conflate pedophilia and the sexualizing of children or whether what Democrats support deserves to be called the "sexualizing of children" or what transgender surgery has to do with sexualization. Majorie Taylor Greene gives forthright, strong answers, and Stahl would need to be sharp and articulate. She didn't even try.

Here's the full interview.

_______________________

* As I've noted on more than one occasion, "flummox" is my favorite word.

Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.... 

When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling.  As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”

It was a big protest, generated by the real human beings the law school had assembled as its student body, not propaganda on the institution's website. It's real life, like the life experienced beyond the courthouse and beyond the law school, and it's not that polite. You know, it's also not polite to put "trans people" in quotation marks. It's a more polished form of incivility, but law students have long protested about the way law dresses up and glosses over injustice.

Of course, “We hope your daughters get raped!” is crude and ugly, but the right to defend one's own body has been taken away by the judges, and now, in America, a woman who has been raped may be forced to endure a pregnancy from that rape. In that context, “We hope your daughters get raped!” means: You might feel some empathy for us if it happened to someone close to you.

I had been warned a few days before about a possible protest. But Stanford administrators assured me they were “on top of it,” that Stanford’s policies permitted “protest but not disruption.” They weren’t “on top of it.”

Yes. The school failed him. Not only did the website promise collegiality, administrators, it seems, directly promised conditions that he relied on. You could parse their promise. What does it mean to be "on top of it"? What is "it"? They didn't say they would stop the protest. The students had a right to protest. The line was drawn at disruption, and where's the line between protest and disruption? Can we have a collegial debate about that? I'll bet we can't!

Before my talk started, the mob flooded the room. Banners unfurled. Signs brandished: “FED SUCK,” “Trans Lives Matter” (this one upside down), and others that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper. A nervous dog—literally, a canine—was in the front row, fur striped with paint....

Speaking of empathy... don't bring a dog into a noisy, chaotic scene. And don't paint your dog. I wonder what size and breed. It is dangerous to everyone to have a "nervous dog" in a place like that, and it's cruel to the dog.

When the Federalist Society president tried to introduce me, the heckling began.... Try delivering a speech while being jeered at every third word. This was an utter farce, a staged public shaming. I stopped, pleaded with the students to stop the stream of insults (which only made them louder), and asked if administrators were present. Enter Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Ms. Steinbach and (I later learned) other administrators were watching from the periphery. She hadn’t introduced herself to me. She asked to address the students. Something felt off. I asked her to tell the students their infantile behavior was inappropriate.

One could hardly expect the dean for diversity, equity and inclusion to take the judge's instruction and call the students babies. She had a lot of interests to mediate and an important, ongoing relationship with the students. 

She insisted she wanted to talk to all of us. Students began screaming, and I reluctantly gave way. Whereupon Ms. Steinbach opened a folio, took out a printed sheaf of papers, and delivered a six-minute speech addressing the question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” What could that mean?

It's impossible for Wall Street Journal readers to guess what that could mean. It's out of context. Metaphors look weird when you don't know what they refer to. Clearly, it's questioning whether some effort is worth what you get from it. It's not that weird.

While the students rhythmically snapped, Ms. Steinbach attempted to explain. My “work,” she said, “has caused harm.” It “feels abhorrent” and “literally denies the humanity of people.” My presence put Ms. Steinbach in a tough spot, she said, because her job “is to create a space of belonging for all people” at Stanford. She assured me I was “absolutely welcome in this space” because “me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech.” 

I didn’t feel welcome—who would? And she repeated the cryptic question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

It's not that hard to understand, and you've deprived readers of the context. Steinbach's remarks made sense and dealt with the relationship between the speaker and the protesters that she needed to manage. She told him he was "absolutely welcome in this space," but he wants us to care about his feelings — he didn't feel welcome — but the students had their feelings too. Steinbach stood in a crossfire of feelings, and she did well enough.

I asked again what she meant, and she finally put the question plainly: Was my talk “worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” 

Again she asserted her belief in free speech before equivocating: “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.”

That is, Steinbach acknowledged that there are different legal positions that are taken about free speech and this, too, is a subject for debate in law school. That is certainly true. Free speech rights could be lost if people don't believe in their value. It's not that difficult to articulate the arguments for limitations on free speech. Those of us who care about free speech rights need to be vigilant. They've been under attack for centuries, and they are under attack right now, from people, like those students, who would characterize some spoken words as a physical injury.

Then she turned the floor back over to me, while hoping I could “learn too” and “listen through your partisan lens, the hyperpolitical lens.”

That sentence needs editing to put "hoping" closer to "she," but you can figure it out. She told him that she hoped he could not just talk to the students and teach them but listen to them and learn from them. She accused him of being political — hyperpolitical. 

In closing, she said: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ”

She was suggesting that protesting be seen in a positive light. Perhaps somehow the judge could have taken a lighthearted tone — I love protests! I was a student protester myself and I know how it feels to be righteously angry, etc. etc. — and connected it back to the things he came prepared to say. There was a path in that direction, but it was a road not taken.

This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering....

I've heard the audio. The judge becomes impassioned, and he expresses a good amount of hostility toward the students. As a law professor (retired), I can't imagine openly expressing hostility toward students who were aiming hostility at me. I lock into professor mode, mostly because I believe I have a duty to care for the students but also because I think a dispassionate, professional demeanor is more effective — especially when your interlocutors are highly emotional. Set the right example, and maybe they will meet you where you can coexist in something approaching conversation. 

Two days later, Jenny Martinez and Marc Tessier-Lavinge, respectively the law school’s dean and the university’s president, formally apologized, confirming that protesters and administrators had violated Stanford policy. I’m grateful and I accepted. 

The matter hasn’t dropped, though. This week, nearly one-third of Stanford law students continued the protest—donning masks, wearing black, and forming a “human corridor” inside the school... protesting Ms. Martinez for having apologized to me....

I don't think it was right to apologize for what Steinbach did. And I think the students had the right to protest. If they crossed the line into disruption, Martinez (and Tessier-Lavinge) should specify exactly where that happened. And they ought to apologize for the institution's failure to do enough to prevent the disruption or to deal with it quickly. 

The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion.

I don't think the students needed to limit themselves to "legal discourse." This wasn't the courtroom or the classroom. They were protesting, going outside of the "legal discourse" that the judge would have preferred. Protesting is an old tradition, and it's important, though sometimes rude and ugly. The students seem to have thought — with some reason — that judges like Duncan deserve to be made to feel ashamed of themselves and they went into the familiar theatrical protest style we Americans have loved and hated for so many years.  

That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker.

He keeps calling students "the mob." Where's the love? These are our young people. They did not commit violence or threaten imminent violence, so there was no occasion to protect him, as First Amendment law is traditionally understood. There's no First Amendment right not to be heckled! And calling the speaks "the mob" doesn't take away their rights. 

Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.

She wanted the students to know that the First Amendment — which Stanford, though private, is bound to follow —  is subject to interpretation and they may apply their legal skills to working to develop strong exceptions to free speech. Ironically, Duncan is arguing for a strong exception to free speech if he means to say that the students may not shout him down. 

I have been criticized in the media for getting angry at the protesters. It’s true I called them “appalling idiots,” “bullies” and “hypocrites.” They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so. Sometimes anger is the proper response to vicious behavior.

All right, then. He stands by his angry expressions. As I said, I would not, as a law professor, talk to students that way. But he wants the freedom to lean into anger. That puts him on the same page with them. Whatever happened to "the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse."

There's a lot of fog here!

The propaganda is working. Now I want a suffragette girlfriend.

You drive a hard bargain. But I'm buying whatever you're selling.

Was that supposed to be against the[m]?

Don't threaten me with a good time!

Kinky!!!

Yes please 

There’s something upsetting but also hilarious about this “If women get the vote, they’ll automatically become your supreme overlords” fearmongering. I saw some Spanish right winger the other day saying very seriously on an interview that we can't give political power to women because sexism exists for a reason. We'd only fuck when they want, he said. He argued that that's such a powerful tool of mind control that they'll become our overlords in no time if we supported the si es si 'yes means yes' law we recently passed in Spain; the law defines consent so rapists don't get away with it, btw. 

The thing is that it didn't feel like propaganda to me. It seemed like the guy truly believed what he was saying. Made me think. Like, wtf. If that's how they think, then it makes sense they defend sexism so bad. It's natural too that I defend feminism so bad, given there's people like that out there.

Or, as another commenter puts it: 

"What chance has a mere manchild"

There's no decent, ethical argument against equal rights for women. The argument — evident in both of those Reddit themes — is that men's minds are so subordinated to their sex drive that women must be subordinated because if they are given equality they will easily and naturally rise to dominance. It's an argument written in nature: The best chance at equality is male dominance. What an awful argument! But that is the argument, put clearly and bluntly.