Yep, we all do it, and its bias, not racism or sexism - in my opinion. But people should confront their own bias, be willing to see how those with the most power get the most voice in the narrative.
The racism and sexism are intertwined: we are biased toward people we see as “like us”, and we hold sex and race so central to our own identity that they trump everything else.
I’m not disagreeing that situations like those you describe are unjust and that abuse is difficult to prove. Abuse should be reported. However, there are details in Chloe’s story that don’t add up in my mind. She could be the one in 100 that’s lying, but how do you prove it? First, why wait four years to report the abuse? Second, why leave the name of the abuser out? How does that help bring someone to justice? Chris was suspended by process of elimination, not because he had been named as an abuser. Third, if you have evidence in audio/video form, why on earth not turn it over to the authorities? Why stop short at threatening to use it? Fourth, why say an apology would have made it all go away? That makes it sound like the abuse wasn’t very serious after all. I would not be so forgiving had I been abused. Fifth, abusers tend to follow a pattern. Why did the other ex-girlfriends not see this pattern in their relationships with Chris?
For me the single biggest piece of damning evidence comes not from Chloe, but from the continued silence of Wil Wheaton about his former roommate and best friend. That speaks volumes unfortunately.
Why does she need to prove it? That is what I don’t get here. She isn’t pressing charges. People who believe it will believe it, people who don’t won’t. Yes, it might have an economic impact on his life as people decide they’d rather not have him as their face, but again, that happens all the time to women who are branded as “troublemakers” for complaining about harassment, and you aren’t worried about them. And no one has a right to sit on Comic Con panels.
Her goal is not and never was to “bring him to justice”. She may well not feel that the abuse rises to the standard of criminal action (and she may well be right). She may not care at all, not one little bit, about whether or not this has any impact on him. It’s not about him. It’s about her own process. It’s about understanding what happened to her ( and it may have taken 4 years for her to process it) and helping others not get in such a situation. She doesn’t want him to suffer, she wants to be released from her own prison of blame and doubt and shame and helplessness. She wants others to perhaps be able to avoid this.
The reason an apology would have helped so much is that one of the hallmarks of this sort of toxic relationship is the gaslighting–the being left with the conviction that you are the one that was unreasonable, that you fucked up, that you’re selfish and weak. The sort of toxic relationship she describes almost always involves the dominant partner refusing to admit they are wrong and grinding down the other person until they admit it, too. Having the abuser admit that they did that, that they deflected blame and controlled your own perceptions is incredibly liberating because it gives you your sense of self back. You weren’t crazy, you weren’t the bad guy, you weren’t making it up.
See, you’re setting up a standard that women should only talk about toxic situations if 1) they do so quickly 2) it was bad enough to be criminal and 3) they are ready and able to provide sufficient evidence to go to the authorities. Tons of abusive situations don’t reach those standards–and very often it is years before you realize how awful, how abnormal is all was. Have you ever had a friend come out of a bad marriage, and they tell these stories and you are just baffled at the things that they had apparently come to accept as normal? It takes a while.
You’re being very goal oriented about this: if he abused her, her goal should be to have him punished so that justice is restored. But that’s not generally the goal of abuse survivors. They don’t want revenge, or even justice. They want to understand and move on. They want to help others. And part of that process is talking openly about what happened.
Yes I do see wisdom in what you said. But if it’s really just about her getting this off her chest, then it should have ended there. Instead, AMC assumed the anonymous former boyfriend was Chris Hardwick and suspended him accordingly. It very much became about him, just as this thread is about him. Do you really think we’d give a rat’s ass—even the woke among us—if her former boyfriend hadn’t been someone famous?
So why are you mad at her? I’m nit saying AMC should believe her . . .I’m just saying there’s not enough evidence to call her a liar.
Assume it’s basically true, though from a subjective point of view. . It’s not criminal, just unpleasant. She has no proof. Do you feel what she did was unethical because of these forseeable consequences? Because I don’t, but I think a lot of people do.
I don’t know that what she did was unethical, though I do think it’s cowardly not to name him. I think what AMC did was premature and prejudicial and based solely on optics as opposed to logic.
Yiiiiiiiiiikes. Sounds like you’re perfectly okay with the possibility of an innocent person’s life getting railroaded by false accusations as long as it helps you secure some sense of justice. Payback for women who were telling the truth and weren’t believed, right?
Since you’re also bringing race into the discussion to bolster your virtue signaling, need I remind you that rape accusations have historically been weaponised by white women against black men with devastating consequences for the falsely accused. Still happens today: Lying White Woman Who Falsely Accused 2 Black Men of Rape Now Accuses Police of Lying on Her Mind you, the accused men in this story have not had their scholarships reinstated even after being exonerated. So much for their lives not being ruined.
Some people are allowing their personal feelings on the matter to cloud their judgement, and what we have as the result of that is people like yourself are rationalising and downplaying the consequences of allowing uncorroborated claims to be treated as gospel truth.
I’m not yet taking a side regarding Hardwick and his ex, but this notion that we have a moral obligation to automatically consider an accuser’s claim to be factual because “false accusations are so rare that they’re statistically insignificant!!!111” and act like it’s no big deal when some of them do turn out to be false will inevitably lead to a backlash and an undoing of all the progress achieved with the #MeToo movement. I don’t imagine that anyone truly concerned about helping sexual assault victims feel comfortable enough to share their stories wants this to happen.
No, I’m not at all. But I also don’t think we should give Hardwick the benefit of the doubt and accuse Dykstra of lying. I’m not saying her accusations are factual, but rather that she has a right to tell her story, and people who deal with Hardwick then have the responsibility to determine their inevitability - that isn’t my job, or Biffsters.
I’m also disappointed that there are a lot of men responding to the #metoo movement with sudden concerns of false accusations - completely missing that, yes, other people have been victimized by false accusations for a long time. That victimization isn’t good for anyone, but you know what - it isn’t good for ANYONE - it would be really nice if they recognized that this has been everyone else’s reality for a long time.
But did you not literally say in your previous posts I quoted that you’re not bothered if the claims turn out to be bogus because women have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to believability? That was basically your argument. Of course the alleged victim has the right to tell her story, and people have the right to believe or disbelieve her. What is bothersome is that you have admitted to a blatant disregard for the actual facts of the situation, that her allegations still carry weight with you even if they are proven to be fraudulent. It’s disingenuous to claim that you expect her story to help women if she turns out not to be a legitimate survivor of abuse but a vengeful, lying ex. No assault/abuse victim ever feels “helped” by women who lie about sharing those very real and painful experiences. If anything, it trivializes the impact of rape/abuse when women selfishly utilise fake accusations to settle a score.
I don’t see how dismissing the impact of an unproven, potentially false allegation of assault/abuse is any better than dismissing women who are brave enough to speak up about being sexually assaulted. In both instances, you’re justifying giving credence to only one side out of prejudice. We’re swinging from one extreme (branding all accusers as lying whores) to another (all accusations are valid and the accused should be immediately shunned) and few people seem to understand that the latter is no more helpful to victims sexual assault than the former. If you’re willing to look the other way for false accusations because of their scarcity, then don’t be surprised when false accusations stop being rare and people eventually slide back to doubting the victim by default because vindictive, attention-seeking women are taking advantage of a climate that defaults to them always being right. It’s a lot more sensible to take no side until the facts are known so no one is unfairly harmed by coming forward nor are they ruined by spurious allegations, but nah that doesn’t feel very feminist, does it?
As an aside, I also don’t think the #MeToo movement is conducive to grey area situations, nor do I believe it was designed for situations where the severity of the alleged misconduct is ambiguous at worst.
You won’t get a perfect situation. Some women will speak, and be untruthful. Others will speak and be truthful. And ambiguous conduct is exactly what this is about - would you not have people be able to say “gee, I was treated badly by that person?” Does that extend to friendships, relatives, coworkers, bosses? Men don’t get a pass on having their behavior questioned when they are uncivil or impolite or cruel because its ambiguous any more than my sister in law does for sitting in my house saying my gay daughter is going to hell - in front of my daughter- or a former friend does for sleeping with another friend’s husband.