Rape/Sexual Assault Culture

Apples and oranges....if I was her dad...biff, bam, socko!!

 

I'll be honest, if it was my daughter I'm not sure I could have controlled myself enough to ask the judge if I could beat the crap out of him. I tend to think I'd have just flown at him on sight.

Well, when I was younger anyway... nowadays I'm more a 'saunter' kinda guy than a 'fly at him' fella.

But that's really my point. If the criteria for punishment is what a victims dad would do, that probably won't lead to the best results and, like I say, what if those around the victim don't care about them or if they haven't got anybody close to them. Should we let their attackers go free?

We have to judge based on the details of the crime itself... not how somebody else feels about it.

 

I don't know how true this statement is, because you can't get people to admit to that belief. But I did get that sense with how some reacted to the Rolling Stone/Virginia story, "Eff 'em, even if those guys weren't guilty of that, they're still assholes, and I don't feel sorry for them."

 

At the most any of these people we were talking about were only losing there jobs or the ability to go to school where they wanted. While important, they don't stack up with them losing their property or much more important, their freedom.

 

Not sure of your argument here.

 

I'm much less concerned about any rush to judgement or any denial of due process when we are talking about jobs being lost versus freedom being lost. Also a rush to judgement by private individuals means much less to me than the same action by a government.

 

Got it. I disagree, but I understand the distinction -- it is a useful one.

 

Recently Margaret Atwood was pilloried by large numbers of people for publicly suggesting that it was important to hang onto the principle of innocence unless proven guilty. Her comments provoked a torrent of complaints that she had betrayed all women by her implicit suggestion that it's a mistake to simply accept as truth all allegations from all women.

 

True. However, per Booty's post, you will find many people who are okay with that sacrifice, but who will not admit it -- to themselves as well as others.

 

Actually, plenty of people will effectively admit it publicly -- that was the whole point of my post.

 

Effectively, yes. Openly, no.

 

School-board parents are the very worst. There is no evil that they would not perpetrate, once they get into their heads the idea that their children are threatened (whether the children are or not). School-board parents are the people who hounded gays out of jobs for decades.

Not on this earth are they my role model. If school boards ran the show, black kids still wouldn't be allowed in white schools. Gotta protect the children, you know.

 

Many parents believe a lot of stupid crap. Some parents are uncomfortable with male teachers, or gay teachers, for example.

Teachers typically have due process rights under their collective bargaining agreements that prevent them from being suspended based on a mere allegation. If you're going to upend someone's life by suspending them and putting a cloud over their entire career (which leads to huge stress and anxiety for the accused, even if they are ultimately exonerated), you should have to have more evidence than a simple accusation.

 

At any rate, to return to subject, I don't mean to imply that the #MeToo movement has gone overboard. I don't think it has, to date.

 

A plethora of public comments like "One of the most important feminist voices of our time shits on less powerful women to uphold the power of her powerful male friend" seems like 'openly' to me.

 

Katie Roiphe's article in Harpers suggests that it is a common theme in the Twitterverse, and some of the people who are advocating it there have pretty established careers in higher education, journalism, etc., as opposed to mere internet presence.

 

This seems like a false dichotomy. It is possible to take someone and their allegations seriously, and investigate/evaluate them thoroughly and with consideration and respect, without simply accepting them as true. In fact, the necessity of doing both -- treating allegations seriously while reserving judgment, not just in the criminal sphere but in the public sphere as well -- was the core point of Atwood's letter.

You're right, of course, that the standards of the courtroom are different from personal ones. It's a reasonable subject of debate/dispute as to what extent they *should* be.

 

You and the Doc are both saying I am wrong? That worries me a bit.

 

Not really: A lot of the people Roiphe quotes are saying on their twitter accounts what they wouldn't say in the classroom or in their articles/columns. They come across with being okay with some being sacrificed for the greater good, but not necessarily to the extent of signing their real name and mentioning their current employment status. As to how "openly" this is can be debated, I guess, but the semantic aspect would have Brummie in here posting pictures of afflicted hamsters in no time.

 

I think a lot of people who have said such things on Twitter can be identified; but it's fair to say that Twitter has a tendency to uncork people's ids, and perhaps in a more natural environment the extreme position wouldn't be expressed by those same people, dunno.