I think rape is about rape. Rapists rape because they want rape. If they wanted consensual sex, they’d obtain consensual sex in one of the many ways that are far, far less risky than rape. If I have to describe it using only the terms “power” and “sex”, then in my understanding rape is about the desire to exercise/demonstrate power by forcing someone into non-consensual sex.
Actually a lot of civil rights violations were predicated on “listen and believe”. Lynchings happened because people listened and believed when a black person was (often falsely) accused of raping or sexually harassing a white woman. And imprisonments of innocent people.
The left used to be the ones who were always defending due process, the rights of the accused, and that we should presume people to be innocent of crimes they are accused of. It’s strange to me how sides have completely switched on this, when sex crimes are involved.
None of this has anything to do with the legal presumption of innocence or judicially punishing the innocent. Nothing I’ve said conflicts with this concept. I would oppose any efforts (and I’m unaware of any such efforts on the left) to set aside the concept of presumption of innocence in prosecutions of rape, sexual assault, or any other crime.
But neither Trump nor Kavanaugh have been accused in a court of law. So in that sense, they are not examples of “the accused being treated very well by society and institutions”. You cannot compare either of them to Cosby or Weinstein, because those men were accused in the legal system.
How exactly would it unfold if Trump or Kavanaugh were not treated very well by the institutions of our society? Based on he said/she said accusations from decades past that were never investigated and the ones claiming victim status don’t want official investigations? What would less than ideal treatment look like under these scenarios?
I don’t know exactly, but I don’t think it’s important for my argument.
Complete and utter ducking of the question.
But it is. If you don’t know what not being treated well by society would look like , how can you so confidently say that they are treated so supremely well?
Okay!
Nothing bad has happened to them due to the allegations. How could that not be “treated well”?
Ok, thats what I’m trying to get at. Considering the fact that the accusations were made outside the judicial system, what sorts of “bad” things would you expect to happen to these men at the hands of society?
In a society that approached the issue as I think it ought to, they would have no political future due to the misogynistic and dishonest way in which they responded to these allegations (both Kavanaugh and Trump). The outcry would make political support for them untenable. And so they’d be relegated to the “punishment” of living out the rest of their lives as wealthy white men in America.
Ok, that’s reasonable. I’d agree with that.
You have said several times that defense against false allegations is easy, but you failed to support it when asked.
Very simply, assuming for the sake of argument that the allegation Trump how would you easily prove it?
You failed to answer my last set of questions. I am guessing Shodan’s post warned you off about where that was heading.
You say that a defense should be easy without “denigration” (a term you have not consistently defined.
However, the way that prove or disprove things is we attack them as hard as we can. That’s How we determine truth.
It remains unclear to me how exactly we determine truth without testing it, which is try and deny it, which according to you means denigrating it.
For example you have tried to chastise me for pointing out that carroll has a potential profit motive, waited decades to come out with her accusation, has not filed a police report and resists doing so because it would distract from migrant workers who are being raped.
You claimed I was denigrating her and that it was not right for me to do so without proof she was lying.
These things are all facts though. How is it denigration? What is morally wrong with pointing this out?
He doesn’t need to prove it. He’s doing fine, and being treated fine. He’s not being prosecuted, and in fact this isn’t harming him at all.
Calling her a liar (directly or indirectly) is denigrating her. Pointing out facts, if they’re relevant, isn’t denigrating.
I’m disputing your repeated assertion that false allegations are easy to prove false. That we are talking Trump happens to be irrelevant. Assuming Trump is innocent and needs to prove it, how is it possible that you could do so.
An accuser claims a rape happened. If we are going to defend, or allow an accused to be defended, at some point we are going to assert that it didn’t. This is, according to your definition, denigration.
I believe that your system fails to account for the fact, that everything is not always clear cut.
Facts can be interpreted more than one way. It is not always clear what they represent.
For example. Carroll waited decades before coming forward with her story, and only has a general idea as to the actual date. We could interpret this:
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This is normal. Rape victims are afraid to come forward, and are undergoing trauma. It is an act of courage to come out. Doing so is very traumatic and difficult and traumatic. It is normal to not remember exact dates after decades pass. We should believe her.
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Waiting decades and being vague about the date masks the verifiable specifics of the incident. This is normal behavior for someone who is hoaxing. Getting a false story to be accepted depends on the facts not being verified. Therefore, an unverifiable story is a red flag indicating falsehood. We should not believe her.
Both 1, and 2 are true. #2 is denigrating according to you and should not be done.
We could do this exercise with the rest of the facts in pretty much the same way.
Your system inherently denies any interpretation of the facts that supports the innocence of the accused.
I’ve already said that proving a negative can be difficult. If you’re asking how Trump could clear his name in terms of public opinion – that’s probably impossible, since so much of the public opinion is based on Trump’s own recorded words and actions. He’s the one who has said so many misogynistic things about women, including about his accusers. Of course, he hasn’t really suffered from it at all – he’s still President, of course.
If you’re asking how some non-Trump person (say myself) who was falsely accused might clear their name regarding a false allegation – it might take some work. False allegations are inherently unfair, and morally wrong – and sometimes people who have wrong things done to them have to do some work to make up for it.
Right now, in our society, broadly speaking, we treat the accused fine. We treat accusers like dogshit. I see no reason why treating accusers with compassion and seriousness would necessarily result in mistreatment of the falsely accused.
My system is about how decent people should respond to allegations. All I’m advocating for is compassion and seriousness, and refraining from denigrating women without proof of malicious intent. Maybe in a perfectly fair society, we don’t have to worry about the mistreatment of accusers – everyone can speak their mind and we’ll have a perfect system that gets to the facts. But we don’t live in that society – we live in a society that treats accusers like dogshit. In this society, I’m worried about the accusers, since they’re the ones who are mistreated. If we get to a point at which there is a serious problem with falsely accused men being treated poorly, then I’ll be very much in favor of a change in how society handles them. But we’re not there, not even close. We’re wildly far from there.
You can worry about this hypothetical possible sci-fi future mistreatment of the falsely accused if you want; I’m going to worry about the present, real-world mistreatment of accusers and women in general. I’m worried about real mistreatment, not hypothetical mistreatment.
Andy:
I’ve done a bit more reading about Me Too. As a movement lots of people are saying lots of things, not all of which agree with each other. It is evolving and this is normal.
Based on this, I can’t say that your interpretation of what Me Too wants is wrong.
Nevertheless my take on it, and specifically “Believe Women” is a little different than yours.
I will illustrate my take with a couple of ridiculous examples:
If a man shows up with a bleeding stump of an arm and claims that he was attacked by Luke Skywalker who lopped his arm off with a lightsaber, he is not laughed or dismissed by the police. It is taken seriously. That there are problems with this story, as the person has had their arm lopped off, and is necessarily out of sorts. Clearly something terrible has happened. We need to listen very carefully, and not contradict his story so that we can gather all the facts. Their will likely be essential nuggets within this story that may let us catch who did it. This poor guy has gone through hell and needs to be taken care of.
If a woman shows up looking disbelief and distraught and bruised and says that a flying saucer landed on her roof and she was raped by space aliens, investigative authorities are all too likely to dismiss her story en Toto, presume nothing has happened and treat the woman like the hysterical lunatic they think she is.
Me Too points out that this is rather unfair. The stories are essentially equivalent. Both have suffered intense trauma. Both need help. While neither story is likely true literally, they need to be listened too carefully, and contradicted so that the whole version of events can come out. This way we get those essential nuggets that we can use to find out what happened. Also, it is just wrong not to treat people suffering from trauma with compassion and respect. We know this. We do it in the Skywalker example automatically. We tend to do the opposite in the space alien example. This is wrong and needs to be corrected.
There are people at MeToo who take this sort of thing too far and feel that we should scramble the jet fighters (so to speak) automatically at the women’s story.
Overall that’s the point I see and I think it is well taken and correct. I would agree with it 100%.
Your interpretation appears to be just a couple of notches over from my take, in the direction of the people who want to scramble the jets.
I don’t think #MeToo is advocating for space-alien stories to be taken seriously (though everyone should be treated with compassion, as you say). If there are a few nuts who do, then most of us are ignoring them. In any case, there aren’t any space-alien stories the movement is focusing on – #MeToo is focused on the credible stories that have come out, about Trump, Kavanaugh, and many others, in addition to the broader mission of making it easier for women from all walks of life to tell their stories.
I think in your previous posts, with the hypotheticals, you’re worried about a bunch of potential future things that you think might go wrong. I’m much more worried about what’s actually already going wrong, as I think #MeToo is as well. If in the future, some of your worries come to pass, then they should be addressed. But nothing like that has occurred on anything close to the scale that accusers are facing today.
Ok. That’s fair. But you Called me to task for denigrating Carroll for doubting her story. You must concede that she seems to be doing quite fine. She is wealthy, successful, seems happy, has a book coming out, is on TV. She is doing well and living life on her own terms.
She doesn’t need your defense any more than Trump needs mine.
So, what’s the problem?
You’ve stated that my denigrating her makes it harder for other victims to come forward. I’m not buying that, but if I do, the opposite is also true. Taking it too seriously could encourage false accusations against others.
What I object to is the idea that you think it’s ok to tell me how I am supposed to interpret things and what I should and shouldn’t say or feel about them.
I don’t care if you “doubt her story”, but that doesn’t require calling her a liar.
We already know that your type of response makes it harder for victims and survivors to come forward – that’s what they say. We only have to listen to them. They say that they’re worried that coming out and telling their story will result in insults, attacks, threats, denigration, etc., including baseless accusations of dishonesty… and worse.
And there is no “too seriously” for these allegations. How could something be taken too seriously? If it’s a false accusation, taking it seriously means the falsity is more likely to be revealed. Taking it seriously means the truth is more likely to be revealed, whatever it is. And if the false allegations are revealed to be bullshit, then that should demotivate future false accusations.
What we say goes out into the atmosphere and can affect society – but I don’t care what you feel. I don’t think we should say the kinds of things that abuse victims and survivors have indicated makes it harder for them to come forward.
You are focusing on the space aliens. They are both there because I wanted both stories to have an obvious element to which we might attach doubt. I wanted it to stand out so you could see how that element was being treated without affecting the proper care of the victims.
I do in fact know that Me Too is not worried about space aliens.
The point of it is that almost every story has elements in it that raise doubt.
You are correct to think that I am concerned about future ramifications more than the past.
This is because I can’t stop what happened to the victims of the past. I can however argue against things that will cause future victims. That might be worthwhile.
We’re not talking sci fi. These things move fast.