I’d agree. I feel the same way about BLM protests shutting down freeways. i.e. the targets they are picking to inconvenience in the protests - ordinary commuters - are not the right targets.
But I don’t think these people are harassing Turner out of a desire to change the justice system (those people are going after the judge and mandatory minimums). These people are harassing Turner because they want justice and don’t think they got it, so they are taking care if it themselves.
This is such an odd statement when Twitter - not used by a bunch of old boys - hasn’t chosen to stop their harassment problem - and has a huge one. When Silicon Valley - not exaction a bastion of guys with white hair - admits they have a cultural issue regarding women. When MRAs and PUA are a thing, and a community of Beta Males wants to overthrow the status quo. Or when high school principals are slut shaming teenage girls with “modest is hottest.” Its like the reality you live in is so very different than mine.
I suspect those that fight for “political correctness” and those that want to be offensive will be fighting it out for the end of time - as they always have long before political correctness was even a term.
:mad: False dichotomy, straw man, etc. Center-left liberals like me and Chait do not “want to be offensive”. That’s Trump, the MRAs, the “alt-right”, #gamergate. Very different crowd.
I’m not making any dichotomy at all. I’m saying that there will always be those who are offensive, and there will always be those taking offense. There will be a large middle - always. We will never achieve a perfect balance, because the issues at play are far too complex and achieving consensus is impossible in a free society with as many people as we have.
Take trigger warnings - the current darling of the anti-PC crowd. There are good reasons for trigger warnings. Someone coming back from a tour of duty overseas may find themselves triggered by violent images in a History class. With suicide among vets a huge issue - its probably best not to trigger him if you can simply say “we are going to watch footage of the Vietnam war. Its very graphic.” And then let the person decide whether to take the class or talk to the professor about getting alternate material to cover the information. On the other hand, college exists in part to challenge you, to make you think - and that’s done in part by making you uncomfortable. We don’t need to water down coursework so that it has no chance of offending anyone - that wouldn’t give us any intellectual rigor.
So the issues around “PC” are complex. We all want to be treated respectfully - which means we all need to treat each other with respect. Since we all have different definitions of what that means, there will never be a time when that is resolved.
Show me where Jonathan Chait has written anything that can be used to support the idea that victims of sexual assault bear the responsibility of keeping their stories to themselves and protecting the reputation of their attackers if law enforcement chooses not to prosecute.
Jonathan Chait’s comments about political correctness have all been about concerns, for example, that college students are stifling free speech by demonstrating en masse against people they disagree with. Take that as a given that he’s right about that (I don’t think he is completely right), nothing he has said has any bearing on this idea you’re proposing here.
We know what it’s like to live in a world where victims of sexual assault are suppressed from telling their stories. It’s a world where someone like Bill Cosby can assault 50 women over a period of 40 years and never face any consequences, because he’s rich and powerful and a man. It’s a world where Roger Ailes can use his power to force women to serve him sexually and they have to choose either to bear his importuning or sacrifice their careers. It’s a world where an assistant coach at a university can rape children for decades. I needn’t go on; many of these examples have already been given in this thread.
But these are the consequences of the believe that victims must be silent because the greater concern is the reputation of the accused. That’s the world we live in now, and it’s not a good place to be.
Look, your friend suffered from what you believe are false accusations. But two things here: (1) the false accusations didn’t kill him; they really didn’t, and (2) the occasional false accusation cannot be the overriding concern for how we order our society. That’s what “hard cases make bad law” means. Your friend was a hard case. But that one hard case cannot be the basis for the rules we make everyone in society follow. That’s the bad law.
You’re seriously arguing that it’s a burden on you (oh, excuse me, society) for me to tell the truth about having been abused for years, and you’re accusing me of being solopsistic? Your worldview is incredibly callous toward people who have been victims. Incredibly, insanely callous. In your attempt to prevent what happened to your friend from happening to other people you have swung so hard in the other direction that it’s not only unreasonable, it’s damaging to society.
My comment to Dangerosa about misogyny was not directed at anyone in particular, it was more a commentary about the state of affairs in society. I’m sorry you can’t see it, but with all due respect, you don’t actually live in it.
[QUOTE=SlackerInc]
But thirty years from now they will be gone…
[/QUOTE]
And this is demonstrated by Slacker’s overwhelming concern for the victims of false accusations of sexual misconduct, as opposed to the victims of sexual misconduct. There isn’t one woman that I’ve come to know well who doesn’t have at least one story—and usually multiple stories—of some kind of sexual misconduct directed toward her. It’s common as dirt. It happens to pretty much all of the women and girls in our lives, around us, in society. That’s not true of false accusations. But this concern over false accusations is being vaulted to the top of the pile, because, okay, thousands of women can be assaulted in our society, but let one man be falsely accused, and that’s the real tragedy.
Nice try, but false accusations are not a ratio of one to thousands. And you say I “believe” the accusation against my friend was false, another “sly” remark I’m not going to let pass. She said he raped her Saturday night. From Friday afternoon to late Sunday night, he was on a road trip, hundreds of miles away, not just with me but two other friends. Three witnesses to the fact that her story was bullshit (though who knows what would’ve happened if he had just been home alone that night–at the very least, I could not have been 100% sure the story was false, and that is sickening in its own right). She not only had no witnesses to the alleged assault, but none who could place him within 200 miles!
So, yeah: I “believe” the accusation was false, kind of like how I “believe” we are real people on Planet Earth and not just lines of code in the Matrix. :dubious:
You still haven’t answered the question. Do you agree that if someone grabs my tits at work–and I have zero evidence–I have
An absolute moral obligation to tell the cops–and if I fail to do so, I am partially responsible for any assaults he goes on to commit and
An absolute moral obligation not to tell my boss and/or co-workers, lest they believe me and it has adverse employment consequences for the guy.
Because that is what I sincerely understand you to be saying and it boggles my mind.
Whatever you seem to think I’m implying through the use of one word, that’s all on you.
But tnis—
Yeah, it might be one to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Sexual assault is very common. How common are false accusations?
Unless, of course, “women are lying whores.”
Yes, you should report it to the police. But what exactly are you hoping to accomplish by reporting it at work? What makes you so sure it won’t turn the workplace into warring camps, one who thinks he is a disgusting sex criminal, one who thinks you are an awful person for defaming an innocent man, and maybe a majority group that doesn’t know which of you to believe, so they just downgrade their level of trust in both of you?
What does that accomplish? Who does it help?
Somewhat ironically, I think part of the reason false accusations are rare is because the whole system is designed to punish the person making the accusation. What on earth is the point? In my more cynical moments, I think that’s by design–not to protect men from false accusations, but to protect people that are just a little rapey–you know, otherwise good guys–from having their lives ruined by a bad mistake, or a weakness.
:eek: Wow, if you actually believe this, your seemingly way out there posts actually make a weird kind of sense. Per the FBI, false allegations are about 8%, so a ratio of about 1 to 11 or 12.
Presumably she’ll be hoping to accomplish not having to work with someone who abused her any more. I’m not sure why you think a confidential report to the manager or HR, whichever is appropriate, would turn the workplace into a warzone. The majority group shouldn’t be hearing about it at all.
So yes, you do think I should tel the cops and not tell my boss. Wow.
It helps if there are other women with the same story, because that’s more convincing evidence.
It helps if my boss has other reasons to believe the person is toxic, and is trying to make a decision about keeping him.
It warns other women to stay away from him to avoid assault.
It lets people who believe me–people who know me well enough to know I don’t lie about such things–know that he is an evil guy and they shouldn’t associate with him.
It lets me openly avoid being alone with him so that it doesn’t happen again.
Everyone keeping their mouths shut means we have a sexual predator festering in our midst, with women having to privately deal with shame and disgust without the option to even protect themselves from future assaults. How is that a better working environment?
never mind
No, I’m going to tell any other women that might work with him. I’m also going to tell any male co-workers I think of as allies, so that they can help me avoid him–things like making sure I don’t have to sit next to him at a meeting, or work alone.
I may be coming at this from a different place because I am from a different place, but it shouldn’t really be your place to do that. It’s the responsibility of the management to ensure people are safe, and to investigate your claims. Not yours to spread what, in the absence of corroborating evidence, are nothing but unsubstantiated rumours.
Would you be happy if someone spread around your workplace that you were a thief, without backing it up? I suspect you’d be furious, and expect the person who accused you to face the consequences of doing so unless they could prove it. The same should apply if you make the accusation.
Whether it’s factually true or not is, at this point, irrelevant. That is for the subsequent investigation to determine.
I’m sorry, but that’s crazy. If you know someone is a sexual predator because you were his or her victim, you warn the people around you. Our actual lives aren’t a court of law.
Irrelevant, except for the, you know, real world relevance of being sexually assaulted again, you mean. Do we care about that? Does a person have a right to try not to be assaulted?
I keep forgetting.