Back to the OP, here’s a piece of an article published on Dec. 6 in The Washington Post. It’s like my thought experiment in that all rape accusers are to be believed without question. The accused are guilty until proven innocent. It’s pretty much the logical extension of believing all rape allegations without question. The author mentions that she is a rape victim who did not know she was raped until much later. She also says that women who are raped can give contradictory facts.
It seems to me that it would be pretty hard to defend against allegations that can give contradictory facts and are presumed true until proven false.
She also has this line stuck in a paragraph that looks like a complete non-sequitur for me:
If the rapist is not a monster, why presume him to be guilty?
I don’t think it’s the right direction to head. Do you all think that’s the right direction for the future of rape allegations?
If this isn’t the right direction to head, how do you reconcile the idea that rape allegations should not be questioned but can be publicized?
I wonder what people think? The accuser went out drinking, got drunk, made out in the hot tub, and had sex, evidently a threeway with two guys he subsequently accused of having sex with him when he was too drunk to give consent. His accusation against the first person was dismissed so he accused the second guy.
Is everyone who doesn’t agree with the accuser in this case, venal scum rape defenders?
Everyone at this late date who doesn’t agree that the two dozen accusers of Bill Cosby have accurately described his method for committing drugging and raping is quite probably a venal scum rape defender unless they are Bill Cosby’s lawyer.
Meh. I’m not Cosby’s biggest fan. Multiple accusers doesn’t look good. But, lots of people accurately describe getting abducted by aliens and anally probed, too.
The problem with this is that you don’t have to tiptoe around all that much if you don’t have inherently offensive opinions about it to begin with. If you find yourself having to expend a lot of effort to not offend someone, that generally means you need to start questioning your own views.
I also hope you see how ridiculous you were being back then. One set of threads by a single poster made you want to leave the entire board. And holding a grudge by the one person who is not in any way responsible.
Also, you need to check your concept of “white knighting,” as, if they were white knighting her, then you’ve done a ton of white knighting, including in this thread. White knighting cannot just mean defending someone against someone else who is perceived as being mean to them.
Their position is not that they get to be wrong in general. It’s that you don’t get to tell them them they are wrong for being emotionally invested. You should not act like it’s just an intellectual conversation, and thus not say things that could be seen as an attack on your opponent personally.
I do find it strange that the guy who talks about how much more polite things were in the 50s has said in another thread that he doesn’t stop to think about how what he’s said comes across. That’s kinda a necessity for politeness.
And politeness requires paying attention to the emotional state of the person you are talking to.
The thing you need to realize is that your intentions don’t really matter if everyone else sees it as meaning something else. The meaning of your communication is the meaning that is received.
If you truly did not mean to offend, then apologize for saying something offensive instead of constantly defending yourself. Especially stop acting like people are assholes to have dared to be offended by what you said.
Not that the comment wouldn’t have been out of line, even if it meant what you say it meant. The fact that you think it’s okay to comment about a woman’s sexual appeal as an insult during an argument–that’s where there is misogyny. Her sexual appeal is completely and totally irrelevant to her argument.
The notion that it is okay to bring up the attractiveness of a woman in an argument as a counter/insult is what is misogynistic. It means that her attractiveness is of higher value than her argument. It doesn’t have to be her entire value to be offensive.
Yeah, yeah, someone could do it equally to men. But they don’t. Stick with the real world, not hypotheticals. That’s where that line about realizing this isn’t just an intellectual exercise is relevant.
And anyone who wants to call me on going through the thread backwards and responding late or whatever, have at it.
