Being honest and settling for a profit is more reprehensible than lying? Fuck, that’s some twisted shit right there.
Of course she would want justice. She has no hope for justice, not in 1995 and not now. So why is it so bad for her to profit from her honest account of it?
If you don’t agree or don’t get it, that’s ok.
No, it’s not really okay, not if there are enough people who agree with that to have any measure of authority or decision-making power in our country.
…
I am pretty sure that I am a minority in this, so you probably don’t need to worry.
Just for the counter sentiment, I see it as a form of self-empowerment.
She’s “claiming her story”, so to speak. The whole book, as I understand it, is a series of tales of compromising encounters with men written under the premise that women are better off without men. Sort of a, “I will not be cowed by the men who have attacked me” sentiment.
Yes. I saw that.
I find it interesting that folks are going for the “trying to make money” motive, when to me, it’s more likely that naming her attacker is an act of revenge that is legal under the 1st amendment. This *is *a form of justice.
The word you’re looking for is denial.
All conspiracy theories have a common form, sound, and arc. After reading dozens or hundreds of comments on a variety of topics - not just moon-hoaxing or birtherism or truthism, but perpetual free energy or 0.9999~ isn’t equal to 1 - I’ve found that it’s remarkably easy to identity that particular form of nonsense very early on.
In the same way, I’ve heard the arguments against civil rights and gay rights and tolerance of non-Christian religions and other forms of minority rights for decades, and they all have a common form, sound, and arc. It’s remarkably easy to substitute the arguments against one for any other. We’ve heard them all before and have learned through experience how dismissible they are.
It’s very simple. If you don’t want to be associated with deplorables, don’t sound exactly like them.
Law enforcement will always fail if victims keep them ignorant of the crime.
What does that have to do with accusations of rape?
You’d rather rapists keep their power and influence than giving some measure of that to their victims? Because that’s what I’m pushing for.
The system worked (eventually) for the Duke athletes. As it usually does for the accused, whether or not they’re guilty.
Which is what I think should change. The system should work for victims and survivors, and it usually fails them. The system is great for rapists and abusers - especially powerful ones like Trump. He even gets free defenders from skeptical strangers out there like you! Even with the chain of evidence Ascenray laid out, you still think he’s more likely telling the truth on this than Carroll.
Trump wins again, even if he’s a rapist.
I feel the same way about those that believe Trump’s account. And the thing is, I could be wrong. But if I’m wrong, nothing bad happens - Trump hasn’t suffered anything, and probably won’t. But if you’re wrong, you just contributed to all the shit accusers like Carroll have wade through just because they told their stories, and you just made it harder for future victims to speak out. Why are you so confident that that risk doesn’t worry you at all?
Which would be great if you could know beforehand who is guilty and who isn’t, who is the victim and who isn’t. But you can’t.
That’s a bad statement. It worked eventually for the Cosby accusers (as it usually does) and for the Weinstein accusers (as it usually does.). You really can’t have it both ways. You argue that the system is broken, and then that it isn’t. The point that you make that I accept as a given is that the system doesn’t always work. When it doesn’t, it can cut either way, against alleged victims or against accused. The given that I don’t accept which you seem to take on faith, is that the system is unfairly biased against accusers.
[quoteWhich is what I think should change. The system should work for victims and survivors, and it usually fails them.[/quote]
This is an unsupported statement of faith. It’s contemptible in that it ignores the work and success of our police, prosecutors, justice system, and support networks that advocate for and protect victims of sexual assault and punish the perpetrators. It works, and it works well. The fact that it sometimes doesn’t erase its virtues and successes
[quote]
The system is great for rapists and abusers - especially powerful ones like Trump. He even gets free defenders from skeptical strangers out there like you! Even with the chain of evidence Ascenray laid out, you still think he’s more likely telling the truth on this than Carroll.
[quote]
If you swallow that “chain of evidence” you make the term “credulous” an insult to yourself.
She should press charges.
Trump doesn’t have an account. His whole story is “I don’t know her and it didn’t happen.”
If the allegation is false, it could still cause him to lose the election. If she goes to the police, it could be proven false, or true.
If she doesn’t, it is placed in the court of public opinion. That is not the place to handle these things.
But Carroll does. She knows whether or not Trump is guilty. So if she knows Trump did this to her, are you saying it’s wrong for her say so?
My problem with your position is that it presumes the truth is unknown just because it’s unknown to 3rd parties. But we know that is not how it works in the real world. If an acquaintance, neighbor, or co-worker does you wrong somehow, you’re not expected to stay quiet about it for the rest of your life. You can tell others so that, at a minimum, they know to avoid from that person.
This applies even if you didn’t press charges against them. Having the matter tried in court doesn’t establish whether or not a wrongdoing occurred; it establishes whether a judge/jury was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt one occurred. A person victimized by someone else is always within their right to talk about it, even if a court hasn’t rule in their favor.
You need to hang out with better people.
Apparently your friends are sociopathic scumbags.
I think the fundamental error in your thinking is that you believe that everyone who finds themselves under a given set of circumstances, i.e. victim of a crime, would/should/must react in the same way that you would.
You completely discount their previous experiences and their own mental strength and coping mechanisms in dealing with what has happened. You further dismiss in how that thinking changes after time has passed and the self-doubt and guilt and fear and apathy (what’s the point?!) creeps in. Nothing like this has ever happened to me and extremely unlikely that it ever would. My instinct is much like yours, report and fight for justice immediately. But I have come to understand that not everyone thinks like me. Not everyone has been as advantaged. Not everyone has grown up as resilient or brave as I believe I would be in a similar situation. I can imagine that bravery to some is in not going to the police but thinking they can just deal with it. But there comes a time, for some, where they can no longer cope with it and it comes out in a way that they can best express it. Sometimes it’s to write about it. Which (unless it’s revealed to be a lie) doesn’t make her horrible.
So then just be welcoming for women to come forward, and refrain from attacking or denigrating an accuser without proof of dishonesty. You don’t have to say “Trump is a rapist” (though, Trump is a rapist), but just refrain from attacking the accuser.
I don’t have it both ways – it usually fails accusers, and usually helps abusers. Weinstein and Cosby are rare exceptions. Most of the women I know have been raped or sexually assaulted; less than a tenth have actually gotten any measure of justice (and that goes for the ones that reported it to the police as well).
The data should very clearly indicate to you that it fails for accusers – most victims and survivors don’t come forward. If there was a working system, they wouldn’t be afraid to come forward… they’re not dupes or idiots; they’re people making the best decision for them, in general… and far too often, the best decision for them is “stay silent”. Because the system isn’t working.
Which part of that chain is false? Everything he said was accurate. I “swallow” it by acknowledging facts, and conclude that Carroll made a credible allegation that should be taken seriously and not dismissed or denigrated. That you don’t demonstrates, IMO, that you have a significant blind spot with regards to women and rape/sexual assault.
I said “bad things”. 
The “place” to handle these things is wherever victims and survivors choose. Rapists don’t get to choose that. In a society that treats women and victims/survivors like utter dogshit, we should go out of our way to be as welcoming as possible for women and victims/survivors to tell their stories. You’re going the other way, and making it harder for women, and harder for victims and survivors.
This is why I qualified the statement the way I did at the beginning.
No. And don’t presume to tell anyone else how they should behave. When an accusation is made public that accusation in and of itself may carry severe consequences against the accused. If the accusation is not judged critically and skeptically, those consequences automatically stand whether they are merited or not. This is unacceptable in a sane society. There are penalties to filing a false police report. Someone who bypasses the police and those penalties and only makes their accusation through the media should be subject to added scrutiny and skepticism.
This should be basic common sense.
That’s a faith based unsupported and unsupportable statement. It’s just not true. Try and prove it.
I say you raped me. I go public. I find out who you are. Nobody is allowed to say it didn’t happen. Your reputation suffers. You lose friends family, business. You have no recourse against my allegations. I can make the against you without fear of consequence and retribution.
Great system you are endorsing. I can’t imagine how it could possibly go wrong.
You keep spouting this, and ignoring the fact that you don’t know who the victims are without due process. You can’t separate and won’t try to separate a good accusation from a bad one. You leave the unjustly accuser no recourse against the consequences of slander, and you seek to shame and silence anyone who tries.
Your ideas aren’t just naive. They are evil.
We’re both doing this – you’ve repeatedly said that Carroll should behave in a different way.
Occasionally, but usually not. Trump and Kavanaugh have suffered nothing – in fact, the accusations may have greatly helped them, judging by how their supporters responded.
You’re not judging it “critically and skeptically” – you’re rejecting it and denigrating the accuser with absolutely no evidence of dishonesty. You’re making it so women better shut up… because so many have gone to the police and been treated like shit (alongside the relatively few who were treated decently), so then you’re taking away the only other options they have.
Such statistics have been cited time and time again – most women don’t report or speak out at all if they are assaulted or raped. The system is failing if women see it as so dangerous to them that they’d rather stay silent.
Then try it. I suspect it’d be pretty damn easy to prove this was a bullshit accusation – were you and I in the same town at about the time you say? Were we in the same place (say, did we attend a convention together in the summer of '99)? Did you tell friends at the time? Do I have numerous other accusations against me? If I were a prominent person, that’s what journalists would check before reporting on it. So after they demonstrated it was a frivolous claim, you could shout it all you want, and you’d just be another crazy person shouting online.
Bullshit claims are almost always exposed. And the real claims are usually ignored.
The new system is still failing, just slightly less than the old system. In the old system, Cosby and Weinstein get away forever. In the new system, occasionally one of those assholes actually faces consequences. But most abusers still get away with it, and most accusers still get treated like shit.
The unjustly accused still have all the power to refute false accusations – their lawyers and investigators can prove it was false, or prove the accuser made a deal with some shadowy figure to lie about it, or whatever. Remember the bullshit accusations (that never actually existed) against Mueller from a few months ago? That was a demonstration of how hard it is to fabricate a false allegation that goes anywhere. Jacob Wohl and his crew did their damnedest to fabricate an allegation against Mueller, and it backfired immediately. And Mueller didn’t even have to do a damned thing.
Journalists aren’t dupes. They generally sniff out the false allegations. Why is it really so hard for you to believe that Trump, who bragged about sexual assault, might really be an abuser and a rapist?
Andy:
Let’s be clear. Again. This is not about Trump. I am not defending Trump. I am consistent in my beliefs and would do the same if it were against anyone else.
I am looking at the merits of the accusation alone. I have not denigrated the women or made any derogatory comments about how that extend outside of the immediate scope of the narrative that she voluntarily put into the public eye in lieu of going to the police.
With that said, I don’t see us making any further headway here.