That my belief is selective. My point has nothing at all to do with belief. It’s about words and actions, and those certainly ought to be selective.
It sure seems to be selective, though:
I don’t know if anyone has accused her of lying. I sure didn’t. The question at hand is why you believe her and not Hardwick or his defenders, why you require evidence that she may be lying but require no evidence whatsoever that she’s telling the truth, despite the seriousness of the allegations, especially in today’s climate; despite the fact that she is apparently embittered and has reason to embellish, if not outright fabricate. And despite the fact that an investigation has now exonerated Hardwick, and major organizations including AMC and NBC have effectively staked their reputations on it.
I think we can find the answer in your earlier comment that such accusers should be “welcomed”, which to me carries the very disturbing connotation that, because a lot of bad things happened in the past, a good dose of injustice is now called for – or at least, who cares if some innocents get swept up in the tide of retribution.
I’m not just making that up:
I just want to say that this stunning comment goes against the most fundamental principle of justice that has been established in modern civilizations for centuries. It’s like another comment that was made earlier, in effect saying that if there’s even a 51% chance that such an accusation might be true, then let the lynchings begin.
I can’t believe that this is how far things have gone and that we, as a society, are tolerating it.
Then why don’t you automatically believe Chris Hardwick’s response to the allegations? Or the responses to the allegations by three of Hardwick’s other ex-girlfriends? You are definitely being selective about which words and actions you choose to focus on. Only Chloe’s words and actions matter to you. Thankfully, AMC was willing to look beyond that narrow scope in attempting to discover the truth—a discovery she chose to take no part in. That ought to tell you volumes.
Several have in this thread, IIRC.
I haven’t said anything about belief. I don’t care about your or anyone else’s belief.
We live in a big broad society in which victims and survivors are constantly denigrated, and this is only starting to change very recently, and only with very small bits of progress. This is doing massive harm to present and future victims and survivors, and making it less likely that they’ll feel safe coming forward next time.
So I’m advocating an extremely, massively high standard for publicly (and this message board is public) criticizing – even suggesting or hinting at the possibility of dishonesty – an alleged victim who chooses to tell their story. And that standard hasn’t come close to being met here, IMO.
Society and culture, right now, are massively tilted against victims and survivors, and I’m advocating people be extremely careful in order to help start the process of tilting society and culture towards compassionate and fair treatment of victims and survivors.
Huh? I haven’t said anything about belief. I don’t care about your belief, or the belief of any other posters. Beliefs are irrelevant to any of my points.
I certainly am, as should you and everyone else, when it comes to survivors and victims and allegations of sexual assault and abuse.
Actually, I have no reason to disagree or criticize AMC at this time. I have no reason to praise them either. They’ve said nothing critical or denigrating towards Dykstra or any other victim that I’m aware of. Hopefully they’ve done a thorough and fair investigation.
On the face of it, AMC has done nothing contrary to my philosophy or what I’m advocating for. It’s possible their investigation was biased, but I have no knowledge of whether this is likely or not.
Given the developments we’ve seen in recent months, you surely must mean that in some instances society has been biased against victims of actual sexual abuse. But what I’m seeing now is a tsunami of overreaction against almost anyone who may have done almost anything in the context of a relationship that has gone sour and that may have had bad moments, complete with an in-group cultural jargon that seems common to a lot of the claims – and in-group jargon usually denotes a group that is empowered, politicized, and maybe socially weaponized. It doesn’t seem like a group that things are “massively tilted against”.
Serious question, and no snark intended: I can’t tell from your response if this is really code for intentional bias and injustice, where you believe the accused should be deemed guilty until proven innocent, to make up for past wrongs by the other males of his species, as in the quotes I cited. Because if it isn’t, that definitely isn’t clear.
I have no interest in bias or injustice – only in trying to tilt society towards justice and compassion, with regards to the treatment of victims/survivors of abuse (and alleged abuse). I think we’re (finally!) barely moving in that direction, after literally centuries of abominable treatment, but only just barely.
I have no problem whatsoever with these improvements. But we need to understand that justice and compassion work both ways, for both sexes, and it does not consist in trial by social media based on one person’s unsubstantiated remarks, especially when that person may have reason to be jealous or vindictive, and especially when there is a social movement afoot that gives them unprecedented power with absolutely no standard for judging the veracity of their claims.
I strongly disagree with most of the assumptions in the second half of this post (the “trial” statement, and especially the “unprecedented power” one). That’s the root of our disagreement.
We rarely agree on things, but you have hit the nail on the head. At least to me, the arguments on the other side boil down to something like because women have not been believed when they allege sexual assault or domestic violence for so many years, it is now time to turn the tables and believe them all of the time, perhaps unless their story is so terribly incredible that we have to dismiss it, but even then tell her how proud we are of her. And when we do that, there might be some innocent men who lose their careers or their personal freedom, but hey, payback’s a bitch ain’t it?
Did I get it wrong? Please someone on the other side tell me I’m wrong about that.
Yes, you’re wrong.
The pendulum has swung too far the other way. The system has overcorrected. There is no more presumption of innocence before being proven guilty. And no, you’re not wrong, regardless of what anyone else says.
No, you’re right. 
I’m mostly on board with that, one exception being anonymous accusations like the recent rape allegation against Maynard James Keenan. It’s very likely a good thing the veracity of the person who created a twitter account to tell that story was scrutinized, problems were found, and the ambiguity cleared. It’s too easy to libel someone that way. The bar for critique has to be lower.
I have no problem with scrutinizing (meaning investigating) accusations. That doesn’t conflict with anything I’ve said at all. And scrutinizing doesn’t mean challenging anyone or anything publicly without good evidence.
Unless we do it here, you mean. People have lost their shit when anyone dares to scrutinize Chloe Dykstra’s account.
So before an accuser is challenged, there must be “good evidence” to do so? When the only evidence is the accuser’s uncorroborated story, how do I get this good evidence without a challenge?
You don’t know that. You’re just assuming, without evidence, that she has spoken about her experiences.
This is nonsense. Was Hardwick convicted of a crime? Was he sent to prison?
The standards of evidence that must be met before we send a person to prison are not the only standards of evidence that are relevant to human life.
When people publicly accuse her and imply dishonesty and otherwise denigrate her? You bet your ass I do. Who cares what you think or believe? Who cares what you research on your own time? Who cares who and what you investigate discretely? I certainly don’t care about any of these things. I care what you say and do that future victims and survivors might see as reason not to speak out. Believe anything you want. Research anything you want. Investigate (discretely) anything you want. I have no problem with any of those things.