# 100 female French writers, academics... negative on new “puritanism” sparked by sexual harassment... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 10, 2018, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295 "2018-01-10T08:05:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/41 "2018-01-11T20:02:10Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Although you started off very selectively quoting my post, I think you ended up showing why I have a point. I quoted what I was responding to. If people want to read the whole post it’s right there in the thread, and you haven’t shown how my ‘selectively quoting’ actually removed any relevant context, so as far as I can tell you’re just grasping at straws. > [@](#): > > However, once you get into the hackneyed mode of ‘what if as man this happened to you’ you started to demonstrated my point, I think. First of all those analogies never work for stuff which isn’t obviously unacceptable. Then if it’s obviously unacceptable we don’t need those analogies. Adding a homosexual element when the targeted man might not be a homosexual makes them work even less well (FWIW same would go for men insistently hitting on women they _know_ are lesbians, that would be an aggravating factor). The analogies work fine. The fact that the behavior is obviously unacceptable when discussing men, but supposedly ‘grey area’ when discussing women is exactly the point of the comparison, not some flaw. Adding the homosexual element makes them work better, ESPECIALLY when applied to heterosexual men, because it makes it clear that the advance is unwanted in the first place. Some men have a hard time conceptualizing a woman they aren’t attracted to (at least in a ‘slumming it’ way) hitting on them, but I’ve never seen one of those types have a hard time realizing how much they’d dislike some dude treating them the way they treat women. > [@](#): > > But the more marginal cases are also on people’s minds. What marginal cases exactly? I keep hearing people say “what about the ambiguous cases that are all over the place”, but there’s just crickets chirping when they’re supposed to list them. > [@](#): > > BTW I’d suggest in a post where you probably meant ‘if one thinks that’s perfectly cool’, to just use that albeit somewhat archaic pronoun. When you say ‘you’, one, I in this case might take it to mean you’re trying to put me on the defensive suggesting I engage in improper sexual behavior. In which case I’d have to tell you to go fuck yourself. The pronoun ‘one’ avoids that confusion. If you want to take a post written in normal English that’s not a personal attack, then read it in a weird way to make it into a personal attack, then violate board rules, a moderator can handle the situation. I’ll continue posting in English, however. ---
**Author:** ![johnod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dc4da7/32.png) [@johnod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnod)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/42 "2018-01-11T21:42:44Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Is your assertion that a person who is a victim of a crime cannot also be witness to the crime? That’s bizarre and doesn’t match anything I’ve ever read about the US legal system. So the accuser is supposed to be an impartial witness, as well as the only witness, and you feel that’s all the proof required is it? In other words a single womans word is sufficient to convict people. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/43 "2018-01-11T21:49:24Z")
Exxxx-ellent! \*\* bookmarks the thread to respond to this topic / perspective in a future blog post \*\* ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/44 "2018-01-12T03:18:29Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Eyewitness testimony is evidence in the legal system, so the idea that there are just accusations and no evidence doesn’t stand up in the first place. You, and people like you, want to suspend the rule of law that eyewitness testimony has any meaning, which has the practical effect of allowing just about all forms of sexual harassment and sexual assault as long as there’s not an audio or video record. Eyewitness testimony is also notoriously unreliable. As is memory. This is a well known fact. Learnt after several major miscarriages of Justice. Even, or perhaps, especially when a person is giving evidence they honestly believe happened. Multiple witnesses can be and have been wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/45 "2018-01-12T05:30:29Z")
> [@johnod](#): > > So the accuser is supposed to be an impartial witness, as well as the only witness, and you feel that’s all the proof required is it? > > In other words a single womans word is sufficient to convict people. Twenty women are a single woman? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/46 "2018-01-12T13:41:48Z")
Still, testimony is a form of “evidence” – however, it may be determined to be bad or weak or invalid evidence, but it is not “no evidence”. But at least most of us do not subscribe to shooting down someone on just one mere say-so… I hope. Another thing that comes to my mind about these expressions from the group of women is that they may be thinking about what I’ll call the Franken Syndrome – a fear of having men who were or are their allies in what they consider the Big Picture scheme of things, washed away over a zero tolerance policy for individual conduct. They may just fear that the next one to fall may be someone \*they \*care about or consider one of the Good Ones. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/47 "2018-01-12T13:47:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Who are you going to believe? Twenty people who all accuse one person of a crime or the accused person when he says all twenty of his accusers are lying? > > There’s common sense and there’s a refusal to believe something no matter how much evidence there is. Depends on whether 19 of the accusers said nothing until the accusations went viral., and the accusesd was not the same person, but anyone down the hall who happened to be convenient. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/48 "2018-01-12T13:56:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Twenty women are a single woman? Yes, not like the justices system only a few years ago had multiple independent accusers for abuse cases ([List of satanic ritual abuse allegations - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations)) which turned out to be false. Oh wait. ---
**Author:** ![johnod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dc4da7/32.png) [@johnod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnod)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295/49 "2018-01-12T14:50:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Twenty women are a single woman? No twenty women are not one woman. But you have twenty alleging twenty different incidences, not twenty women and one incident. So effectively it is one woman’s allegations. Not twenty women witnessing one alleged incident. Does it cast doubt on the accused? Yes it does. Does it warrant suspicion of the accused? Yes it does. Does it warrant looking into the allegations? Yes it does. It doesn’t however warrant the suspension of a fair trial before any sort of conviction. Here’s a case that made big news in Canada recently. What was proved ,was lies, collusion, and “outright deception” on the part of the accusers. Not guilt on the part of the accused. This is why a fair trial is called for. > **[Trial of Jian Ghomeshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Jian_Ghomeshi)** > > In late 2014, Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi was arrested and charged with four counts of sexual assault, and one count of overcoming resistance by choking, in relation to three complainants. He was charged with three additional counts related to three more women on January 8, 2015. On October 1, 2015, Ghomeshi pleaded not guilty to one count of choking and four counts of sexual assault. The trial began on February 1, 2016. He was acquitted of all five charges on March 24, 2016. Ghomeshi was t... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-female-french-writers-academics-negative-on-new-puritanism-sparked-by-sexual-harassment/806295.md?page=2)