Nicole Bedera is a PhD student at UMich, and she recently posted a thread on Twitter which I think is absolutely worth sharing about the “lives ruined” aspect of #MeToo. You can find it here. Some choice quotes:
Pretty harrowing stuff. The whole thread is a response to Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer claiming that his client’s life has been ruined. I like how The Hill reports it:
Hmm. You mean if you assault or rape double digits worth of women, you may not be invited to be put back into a position of power? We heard the same “woe is me” bullshit spiel back during the Kavanaugh hearings, about how the accusation ruined his life and hurt his family. You will hear this more and more as men become accused of sexual assault. “Woe is me, my life is ruined, how could you do this to me” - ignoring that they chose to assault or rape those women, and ignoring that sexual assault and rape actually do ruin a life - the victim’s.
But yeah. Let’s stop accepting “they ruined my life” as an excuse. Especially if the life in question is absolutely not ruined - Weinstein may never get to be the biggest kingmaker in hollywood again, but he’s still filthy fucking rich and will still probably never see the inside of a prison cell. And don’t be afraid to ruin someone’s life over crimes they chose to commit.
Thanks for the link. There are several posters on this board who always trot out the “ruins lives” mantra. But have yet to find a single person whose life was ruined because of a false accusation.
Very related, listen to the two NYT’s The Daily podcasts about Weinstein (they came out on 9/18 and 9/19). The two shows are focused on former, very famous women’s right advocates who do a 180 and help douche-canoe Weinstein defend himself and his reputation. I’m still going
I mean… they’re out there. The latest flashpoint for the lovely people over at gamergate (read that “lovely” the way you might read it in the phrase “oh lovely, my toilet overflowed and now there’s sewage and shit everywhere”) is someone who killed himself because he was accused of sexual assasult and abuse by multiple women, including Zoe Quinn. No good reason to believe the allegations are false, mind you, but he did kill himself.
It’s just… they’re the exception, not the norm. The people who lose their livelihood due to false rape accusations are, much like false rape allegations, a tiny minority and absolutely not the norm. The norm is that even serial rapists get coddled by the system over and over again, and that rich, famous, powerful people can still be elected president of the united states after 22 people accuse him of rape - one of which was a child at the time.
Again, one of the interesting things about zombie threads like these, is reading about former posters who seemed all right, yet somehow got the boot between their posts in the zombie and today.
How did BPC get the ax? Just curious; I didn’t remember the thread(s) that caused it.
