Nobody is saying that we should require a 99% certainty to form an opinion. What I’m saying is that so far exactly 0 evidence has been provided, and despite that we’re told that we should side with the accuser as a matter of principle. So, your standard seems to be that 0% is sufficient.
She made a claim. He didn’t refute any of the factual statements, the behaviors themselves are not terribly outlandish, and not what I’d consider out of character for the persona he presents to the public. Given the obstacles to reporting, and the backlash faced by even meritorious accusers, I find it more likely than not she’s telling a largely true story.
The thing is, having no opinion on matters that touch on oppression…well, that tends to favor the oppressor. So I try not to do that. Choice of evils, your mileage may vary.
Ultimately, she is accusing him of being a terrible boyfriend. And calling on us to question what we consider to be ‘normal’ behavior. I’m cool with that.
So, for example, a jilted ex with an axe to grind should be given very heavy consideration when looking at the credibility of both parties.
So their findings have no bearing on whether or not he is guilty of what he is accused of… but the opinions of strangers on the internet who have no personal involvement in the case and no evidence to refute AMC’s stance does? Do you really believe you know better than AMC?
You are also arguing that AMC’S decision to not fire him is motivated by money. In an era where allegations of sexual misconduct have derailed the careers of several high profile people, do you honestly believe AMC thinks keeping someone they know to be guilty of assaulting his ex-girlfriend and whose reputation risks being sullied by such accusations being made public is the financially sound decision? They know full well what viewer backlash can do to their bottom line, to suggest they are okay with risking that for Chris freakin’ Hardwick of all people is to imply that the people running the network are stupid beyond measure.
This argument would make sense if it was one of the major stars of TWD being on the receiving end of such accusations with AMC choosing to back them, but that’s not the case here. Chris Hardwick, popular though he may be is expendable. He’s the host of a show that reviews another show. It’s a ridiculously easy role to fill and the fact they already had a replacement at the helm during his suspension proves that. He is not someone I imagine a TV network would stake their reputation for.
What’s disingenuous is how you completely dodged my point and deflected with this strawman. If the doctrine of innocent until proven guilty is not meant to be practiced outside the courtroom, how can it hold any weight in the courtroom? What would society look like if virtually everyone could lose their livelihood and have their reputations ruined on the mere basis of an accusation of wrongdoing without ever being given the chance of proving their innocence first?
You haven’t addressed why do advocates of rape victims point to societal attitudes towards sexual assault as the reason why victims are not taken seriously by the legal system. So are laws meant to exist independently of the societies that create them or are they not? Do you believe “innocent until proven guilty” is a concept that can be realized if we take the position that it has no application in a non-legal context? Should I point you towards some studies that prove certain minority groups most at risk for going to prison are the ones most presumed to be troublemakers by authority figures since early childhood?
Well, here’s the thing. There is (so far) no evidence available lending Chloe Dykstra’s accusations credibility just like there is (so far) no evidence that fully exonerates Chris Hardwick. Just as there are people in her circle backing her up, there are people in Chris’s circle vouching for his innocence. This is really a classic he-said-she-said situation. No one appears to be capable proving their side of the story to be the truthful version, and that is the point.
Statistical likelihood is an irrelevant factor, because I’ve said before without evidence you have no way knowing which cases will be the outliers. False accusations being rare =/= false accusations being non existent.
So how are you certain that Chris is the “oppressor” in this scenario? And which statements of hers have been proven to be “factual”? Your gut feeling tells you all this?
Being a terrible boyfriend isn’t synonymous with being an abuser/rapist, which is what she has publicly accused him of.
That is indeed the point. And in that situation, I choose to side with the victim until I have good reason not to.
This isn’t relevant to Hardwick, but here’s one example: White Woman Pleads Guilty to Falsely Accusing 2 Black Men of Rape
She is being held criminally liable, but the two accused men have lost their scholarships. That falls under the category of “life ruining”, IMO.
And as I said, everyone is free to believe what they want. The only issue is when certain people (not you in particular) insist that merely holding an opinion on someone’s presumed innocence or guilt irrespective of evidence or lack thereof should be enough to make a decision impacting that person’s life.
How do you even know that there is a victim? I choose to see real evidence instead of joining a virtual lynch mob.
What’s the harm in waiting to judge?
I believe someone made a very good point about how the rapid dissemination of content via social media is what makes it so dangerous for the public to play judge and jury on these matters. Misinformation can spread like wildfire, and by the time the truth is uncovered the public will have already made up its mind and won’t be interested in having their POVs altered by changes in the story.
Sometime last month or the month before it, a woman in Texas falsely accused a state trooper of raping her while she was held in custody. The PD immediately released the body cam footage that exonerated the accused man, and thankfully the story died down before it caught national attention. But even within the span of the few hours that the story was alive, activist Shaun King got involved and there was already a GoFundMe set up for her legal defense. And of course, the story sounded very believable. She gave a very detailed account of the incident, plus the racial dynamics (she is black and the trooper is white) made it impossible to not want to believe her given that horrific encounters between white policemen and black civilians are sadly an established norm, and there is a precedent for cops to target minority women for sexual assault.
Now just imagine if the story had been given time to blow up? People had already worked to track down the policeman’s identity and misidentified his brother as the alleged rapist cop. Everything about this story justified taking the side of the accuser before knowing all the facts, and yet against all odds, despite the statistics that show that false rape accusations are rarer than an asteroid hitting the earth, she turned out to be a liar. This was a plot twist absolutely no one saw coming. But there it was. A false rape allegation in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
So in an age where the already blurred lines between fact and fiction become even more easily blurred, I think it most sensible to step back, not allow sentiment or bias to colour your view and not feel too confident taking sides when all you have is one person’s words against another. I don’t think it does a disservice to rape victims to remain neutral in absence of evidence. I think it’s dangerous to promote the mindset that if you’re not willing to automatically condemn the accused it’s because you think the accuser is a liar, or worst yet you think all women who speak up are liars. Swinging from one extreme to the other will be at the cost of all the hard-won progress that’s been achieved for sexual assault victims. I’m afraid by the looks of things it’s a lesson that’s destined to be learned the hard way.
And then there was an investigation and the truth came out. I didn’t read about this case when it first occurred, so I don’t know if her account rang true or had holes in it from the start, but these isolated and rare incidents of false accusation are inevitable and unavoidable, no matter which side we take initially. But the benefits from initially believing the victims far outweigh the negatives.
As for lives being “ruined”, that’s down to the relevant authorities. I have no problem with them putting the accused on suspension until the facts are worked out, rather than jumping to a conclusion and immediately expelling them. I may initially believe the alleged victim, but I also do not immediately rush to condemn the accused.
So where do you stand on Chloe Dykstra’s allegations today?
Go back through the thread and read all my posts.
Why? They weren’t that interesting the first time. I just want to know if your view has changed with the emergence of new information or if you stick to your original view despite new information.
This is not true. Testimony is evidence.
I completely disagree. For the sake of a neutral statement let’s drop the word “abuser” and use the neutral word “accused”. Many of the accused that were in the news in recent months were indeed in positions of power and were able to carry on real and actual abuse for a long time because of it. But there’s nothing about the relationship between accuser and accused that inherently creates a power imbalance in favor of the accused, and these days, it’s exactly the other way around because of the toxic hypersensitive environment that #MeToo has created. This is the point I’ve been trying to make.
Hardwick managed to emerge from this more or less intact because he was already well established and valued. But suppose this had come out when he was just trying to get established with a network. Innocence wouldn’t matter because the investigation wouldn’t have happened, he’d just be thrown under the bus. Where’s this great imbalance of power on the side of the accused that you keep fantasizing about?
I am unaware of any new information. Enlighten me.
Yup. And so is the question put about the acrimonious break up.
…“accused” is not a neutral word.
Is what I’ve bolded the particular group we are examining?
Name ten cases that were in the news in recent months where the power imbalance favored the accuser and not the accused. Nah, I’ll make it even easier. Name five.
Toxic hypersensitive environment?
I think you are being hypersensitive here.
What is it exactly do you think #MeToo is all about?
You can delve the meaning of #MeToo from the words after the hash-tag.
Me. Too.
It means “I can relate to your story. Because I understand your story. Because it happened to Me Too.”
What #MeToo has done is simply revealed the scale of the problem. And no matter how big a problem you think “false allegations” are (and they are, indeed a problem) they pale in significance when compared to the prevalence of women who have stated that “yes, what happened to her has happened to me as well.”
If #MeToo makes you feel uncomfortable then perhaps the hashtag is doing its job.
You make it poorly.
Hardwick is not the exception. Emerging from this more or less intact was predicted in this very thread. This is the norm.
It probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
Doubtful.
Is this a serious question?
Because we can answer it, but before we do I just want to make sure you aren’t taking the piss.
The conventions of legal language and protocols beg to differ.
It’s the group I was talking about while acknowledging that some accused have been in positions of power. But not everyone is in that position, so I want to understand where this idea comes from that the accused supposedly has all this power.
Wait, you want me to cite news stories about men being accused who were not famous enough to make the news?
And therein lies a huge part of the problem. “Me too” what? Cosby and Weinstein were criminal sexual predators. “Me too” is introducing false equivalence to the point that “my ex was mean to me” qualifies as “me too” and hence, “one of those”, just like Cosby and Weinstein. It’s the fallacy of false equivalence, also known as the fallacy of association and the bumper-sticker fallacy. I strongly suspect that this is precisely why Hardwick was exonerated, not that he was a prince in a perfect relationship, but that Dykstra was leveraging the trendy groundswell of #MeToo on flimsy pretexts.
I don’t care if they “pale in significance”. One false accusation in a trial by mob and social media is one too many.
The norm is being falsely accused but then getting exonerated? Name ten cases that were in the news in recent months where this has happened. Nah, I’ll make it even easier. Name five.
It would have made a difference.
I think you would agree that the overwhelming majority of these things happen behind closed doors with no witnesses and no physical evidence, correct? It will be he-said, she-said.
Given that, how can any meaningful statistics be compiled on the percentage of these types of allegations that are false? If we only count as “false” those cases where the accuser recants her story like in the linked article, then I think it is more than fair that the number of false allegations are grossly underestimated.