Jess Philips And Carl Benjamin

[flash2015]

I don't know if I am choosing a topic too close to the civility edge but let's see how this goes...

I found out about the Jess Philips and Carl Benjamin (Sargon) rape joke saga a few days ago. Carl defends it and has doubled-down at least a couple of times claiming that we don't understand the context. Can someone point me to the context I am missing? I had a quick look and can't find it...even though Carl's supporters keep repeating the context excuse. I just can't comprehend a context where this is a good riposte.

I personally think Carl is being an utter moron if he chooses this "free speech" hill to die on. Jess Philips may be an ass...but joking about raping/not raping her is going to undermine any valid or invalid argument he had. With Carl and Tommy Robinson headlining UKIP, I can see why even Nigel Farage had enough.

Any thoughts? Am I just a prude...or is civility still important? I know this is a controversial topic but I hope we can keep it friendly (famous last words).

[StevenC.]

I don't know if I am choosing a topic too close to the civility edge but let's see how this goes...

I found out about the Jess Philips and Carl Benjamin (Sargon) rape joke saga a few days ago. Carl defends it and has doubled-down at least a couple of times claiming that we don't understand the context. Can someone point me to the context I am missing? I had a quick look and can't find it...even though Carl's supporters keep repeating the context excuse. I just can't comprehend a context where this is a good riposte.

I personally think Carl is being an utter moron if he chooses this "free speech" hill to die on. Jess Philips may be an ass...but joking about raping/not raping her is going to undermine any valid or invalid argument he had. With Carl and Tommy Robinson headlining UKIP, I can see why even Nigel Farage had enough.

Any thoughts? Am I just a prude...or is civility still important? I know this is a controversial topic but I hope we can keep it friendly (famous last words).

So basically this all started years ago, when Carl was still a relatively obscure personality on YouTube. Jess Phillips had been claiming without evidence that she had been receiving rape threats on twitter after a video had surfaced that purported to show her laughing about male suicide. Carl, who was skeptical of her claims, called her out on it and she ignored him. So then he thought up a way to get her attention and get a rise out of lefty twitter by tweeting "I wouldn't even rape you" at the MP. Carl also did this to prove a point: that SJW's and Jess Phillips supporters would intentionally take his tweet out of context. This blew up for a couple weeks and then people forgot about it.

Fast forward a few years. Carl is running for political office as an MEP and local media outlets dredge up the incident as part of a smear campaign against him.

That's basically the jist of it.