The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “we’ve always done it this way.”
“Come on, let’s mix it up!” The heart surgeon says.
“B-but we’ve always done it this way!” The other replies, “this is how you replace a heart valve.”
“That’s the most dangerous phrase in the human language!” The first surgeon replies haughtily as he inputs a fruit loop into the patient’s heart. “This will be his valve. He will be a fruit loop in a world of Cheerios.”
(taken from this post on the experiments of Harry Harlow)
This is serious business, because this is a large part of how sexism, racism, homophobia, rape culture, ethnocentrism, etc. continue to happen.
The reason we do heart surgeries the way we do is not “because that’s what we’ve always done.” It’s because that’s how year of scientific research says will give the best results. One of the best uses of the scientific method is to test common practice, and either eliminate it or give it legitimacy. Don’t do things because “that’s what we’ve always done,” do them because that is what evidence and research say we should do.
Saying “we’ve always done it this way” justifying maintaining a harmful societal norm is dangerous. We can do better.
She’s not being criticised for being “mean”, she’s being criticised for acting unprofessionally. She’s a judge, representing the State. It’s her job to be impartial, and being condescending and mocking does not reflect well. She can hate the guy all she wants – and I’d be kind of concerned if she didn’t, at least a little – but that’s for her off-hours. On the job she cannot represent a side because that implies a bias. And, let’s face it, the system is based on the idea that the side which better proves their argument wins.
Statements like “I just signed your death sentence” sound like gloating and that’s not professional at all.
Look, I know y’all want to be unnecessarily kind to sexual assaulters and rapists but this “criticism” is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read. He sexually assaulted over 150 women. That he’s being defended by the public and she “criticised” for being “unprofessional” says a lot about the culture we live in.
If you want to be nice to a fucking rapist you’re the problem.
Yeah, it’s pretty unprofessional for a doctor to assault 150+ women, but the women need to be called out for being “meeeaaan!!!”
I’m not even going to bother to look up every male judge who said ‘mean’ things about the abhorrent scum they were sentencing. Like, where did you think the phrase ‘passing judgement’ came from? Hint: judges.
I’m pretty sure her dropping a paper pales in comparison to him sexually assaulting 150 women and children.
Cos don’t kid yourself. Competitive Gymnasts are retired by the time they’re 20, so these are literal children he was raping.
I had to think about this for a bit, because I was trying to think of how judges normally act when sentencing people.
I thought back to my days of watching and reading true crime stuff 24/7, and how when it’s murder and the typically male judge is viceral in their sentencing hearing, everyone in the public is like “YES THEY DESERVE TO ROT IN PRISON FOREVER” but as soon as a female judge is appropriately viceral in her sentencing of man who sexually assaulted that many young girls over so many years, people are suddenly like “wow she’s so unprofessional”.
This is clearly a combined result of thinking that if women show any emotion in their jobs they’re being unprofessional and “hysterical”, and that people are unaccustomed to men actually getting proper punishment and sentences for sexual assault rulings. People are so used to men getting 6 months, 175 years seems INSANE to them.
Those two things that are so dominant in our culture are making it seem like this amazing woman was being overdramatic, mean and unreasonable. The thing these people that are so worked up about are forgetting, is that to so many of us, sexual assault is the same as murder. It’s just as evil. A visceral response is of no surprise to us and if anything, completely appropriate and necessary in a case like this.
In addition to everything that has been pointed out above, it should also be noted that she did and said these things AFTER he was convicted. She wasn’t sitting up there during the trial proceedings “taking a side.” Once he is a convicted serial sexually assault perpetrator, there is no need for her to remain impartial at the sentencing since he was found GUILTY.
^
he’s already plead and been found guilty. when he accuses her of being impartial she reminds him of this and asks if he wishes to withdraw his plea. this was a matter of correct punishment for an already admitted crime, not a question of guilt or innocence.
The jury had reached a decision already (guilty on one charge, not guilty on the second) but fuck. THIS is the kind of shit that deserves to be called out.
Meet The Universe’s First-Ever Supermassive Binary Black Holes
“In 1891, the object OJ 287, 3.5 billion light years distant and a blazar itself, optically bursted. Every 11-12 years since, it’s produced another burst, recently discovered to have two, narrowly-separated peaks. Its central, supermassive black hole is 18 billion solar masses, one of the largest known in the Universe. This periodic double-burst arises from a 100-150 million solar mass black hole punching through the primary’s accretion disk.”
The big problem with black holes is that, well, they’re so dark. They don’t emit any detectable light of their own, so we have to rely on indirect, secondary signals to infer their existence. That usually arises in the form of radio and X-ray radiation from matter that gets accelerated by the black hole’s extreme gravity, as well as from the magnetic fields that an accretion disk around the black hole can create. The radiation can form jets, and when a jet points at our eyes, we see a blazar. Well, the system OJ 287 has a periodic blazar that flares in a double-burst every 11-12 years, indicative of a large, supermassive black hole orbiting an even more massive behemoth, punching through the accretion disk twice with every orbit.
