Hear, hear, Spice Weasel! BAM!
Why thank you! I’m a fan of yours as well.
Psst. There is a thread about Al Franken and his actions. In that thread there are some people with the audacity to not call for an immediate lynching.:eek: Do you have any outrage left for those folks?
I’m not going to exactly defend Al Franken but I think the calls for him to resign are a bit drastic. He apologized. The lady accepted his apology. Why not just move on?
That’s my inclination as well but iiiandyiii gave me pause as regards the message it sends about the Democratic party as a whole. I’m on the fence.
I am not a fan of zealotry. I don’t like it with regards to punishment for substance abuse. I don’t like it for various degrees of other acts be they of dubious morality or not. Morality being weaponized is prone to abuse. Demonizing people that don’t need demonization to signal righteousness leads to oppression.
As I’ve stated elsewhere I think most incidents of this type come from ignorance and obliviousness, not evil. Our response should be proportionate to the crime, but there must be some response or there’s no impetus to avoid doing it. So what level of response do we demand, and what message are we sending to potential perpetrators?
Good luck calibrating a response in an age of social media and national notoriety. I know it’s off topic but people have to be getting worried about how powerfully and disproportionately social media influences reactions.
I’m not sure how you influence society to exert pressure in a certain direction with restraint. In some ways one has to be comfortable accepting if not embracing some internal contradictions.
Let’s say you accept the premise that Franken’s actions should result in his resignation from the senate. What job would people who advocate that premise be willing to accept for Franken? What unintended consequences does a class of acceptable jobs create?
The problem is that when it comes to sexual assault, “better one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished” means “better a hundred women suffer than one innocent man be punished”. Which may still be a defensible position in terms of what a court should do, but at least own what it is.
As a teacher, I always tell my kids that I ler them lie to me because I’d rather believe 100 lies than leave one kid with that horrible feeling of not being believed when you were telling the truth. I guess in my personal life, I feel the same way: I’d rather have to apologize to a man that I believed he might abuse a woman than have to apologize to a woman that I thought she was .maliciously making up lies about a man. So all things being equal, I will tend to believe the woman.
I see what you are saying but this isn’t even a guilt vs innocence issue strictly. It’s also how do you create incentives in society for people to behave in a fashion you want them to without those incentives being overly restrictive or punitive. I know it’s cliche but I think there’s a lot of wisdom in the sentence “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
So you worry if we make it too appealing/less traumatic to come forward, we will start getting false accusations? So women need to just take one for the team, and either suffer in silence or pay the price of the walk of shame, jus to keep the potential lying bitches from thinking they cpuld get in on that?
It’s always easy to ask someone else to take one for the team.
That’s a very creative interpretation. But no.
Let’s go back to your lying children example. Why not impose a zero tolerance! policy and expel any child accused of lying?
I don’t really accept that premise. I don’t really think Franken should resign. I’m less concerned with punishment than I am with social change.
It basically feels like women are being told to shut up because telling the truth presents too many complications. Well that’s what I experienced directly so I’m not surprised.
Based on the studies I’ve seen bandied about, even those least charitable to rape survivors suggest the rate of false accusations are about 10%. That’s like the kind of statistic you’ll see from redpillers, their worst case scenario.
What this means to me is that, worst case scenario, with any given accusation, there’s a 90% chance the alleged victim is telling the truth.
So why is the burden so disproportionately placed upon us? Why are we expected to suffer in silence? The odds of a conviction are vanishingly small. Do you realize that means we’re getting no justice at all?
I have to verify this stat, but at a recent seminar at my org, the legal advocates told us that nationally, out of every 1000 rapes, an estimated 56 are reported, 7 go to trial and 5 result in conviction. 5 out of 1000.
What exactly are we supposed to do? Just let it keep happening to other women?
Not at all. I don’t think people are disputing, well some are, what Franken is accused of. He apologized for the event so I assume something close to what the lady is saying occurred. The topic now shifts, for me at least, what is a proper response to disincentivize this behavior without being a counterproductive overreaction?
This reminds me of the initial reason for me joining this board. I joined to argue that an uncharitable and uncompromising view on the motives of someone who displayed a Confederate flag would lead to resentment and be counterproductive in the long term.
I think Ramira actually had a good observation in the Franken thread. I also think without writing a novel this is a difficult topic to discuss. Tomorrow I’ll have to sit at the computer instead of pecking at the tablet and flesh out what I mean.
I understand what you’re saying and I’m basically on the same page. I just don’t know the answer. Social media really does make it so much damned harder.
The numbers you cite are slightly off but here is a fact check of those numbers.
I have no opinion on this subject. To be honest I haven’t even read this thread. For some reason, though, I just feel like I belong here…
In answer to this question raised in another thread:
In this particular case, however, it’s appropriate.
SeniorCitizen007 was banned for being unable to stop talking about Muslims. It wasn’t the religion per se, it was the idea that Muslim people were somehow persecuting him and actively acting against his interests. The threads are linked in the Banning notice I linked to above if you want to see the samples. Racism is the appropriate word here.
Dang. I take back some of the insults I’ve made about octopus (except on political issues where I find him blinded by partisanship), as I’m finding myself in agreement with him in this thread.
BigT is one of those people who positions himself as the moral arbiter and high ground, from which he can lecture others on all manner of topics. It does get very tiresome, especially when he tries to lecture people who have infinitely more experience on the subject than he does.
I don’t position myself as the be-all, end-all expert on male victims of domestic abuse. I will note that I have never been contacted by PM by any male members of this board to discuss it. However, I am very aware that men don’t want to discuss it, don’t want to admit to it, are deeply ashamed that it happened to them, are confused and sometimes unable to process it (as I was at first) and thus, don’t want to share. I get it. Being a mouthy, arrogant asshole, I choose to put myself out there and talk about my experiences. Because the conversation needs to be expanded. Because I think someone has to, and I can handle it. Even when I have to relive trauma* and have stress reactions and physical pain because of it.
No part of that gives me the right (or inclination) to talk about what women experience.
And the only time you’ll see me arguing with them over it is in cases where they’re making all men the villains, saying it doesn’t happen to men, or proposing things that will harm innocent men.
- Make no mistake. When people speak about traumatic events in their lives, they are reliving those events, that pain, those decisions, those failures in their head. They’re in active pain while sharing it with you. The absolute worst thing you can do is dismiss that pain or focus on their past mistakes, which they cannot change.
Assuming we have free will, religion and other cultural practices are a function of choice and not so much genetics. Different religions, cultures, and ideologies are and this shouldn’t be surprising or controversial different. Not liking people’s choices is not racism.