11 ms·

comparing someone being excluded from a social gathering to being summarily executed is pretty fucking distasteful. in my view taking the accusations of abuse v

by nyolfen 12y ago

comparing someone being excluded from a social gathering to being summarily executed is pretty fucking distasteful. in my view taking the accusations of abuse victims seriously is a sign of progress. no heads are rolling.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
> comparing someone being excluded from a social gathering to being summarily executed is pretty fucking distasteful. The retribution from those who act upon these accusations almost universally targets a livelihood. I gave one example and have heard even worse ones. I have also been the victim of false accusation, which resulted in me acquiring a stalker who has performed some of these tricks on me. Luckily, that has been limited to one crazy, and I cannot express to you how anxious I am that it's not many more people. Imagine an entire group of people outright working to deny you the ability to feed yourself and, potentially, your family, then tell me it's a distasteful comparison. I'm not allowed to say any of this based on the rules of this discussion, by the way. I just sit back and look at all the people who stood by Jackie in spite of any of the plethora of ways that story began to fall apart, and I shake my head. Doubt is a thing of the past, and that frightens me. Truly. I think it's going to be an extreme social issue going forward.
FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
You think it can't destroy lives? You seem to think it's a good idea to summarily believe accusations with no evidence and no attempt to involve the legal system and convict someone in the court of public opinion just because somebody said something. People lose their livelihoods over this. People could get kicked out onto the street. Do you think that nobody could do that to you?
- nyolfen 12y ago
  you know what destroys a hell of a lot more lives than false rape accusations? rape
  - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
    When someone is raped, they aren't ostracized from society, and they don't spend the next five or ten years in prison, and unable to find work for the rest of their lives.
pluma 12y ago
In other words "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply when we sympathise with the victim? Bullshit. Sexual abuse is a horrible crime and that it is so difficult to prove makes it only worse, but although we should take allegations seriously, they're just that: allegations, not a verdict or judgement. If we condemn alleged criminals based on allegations alone, we might as well just start lynching people again. Taking an alleged victim serious is not the same as treating allegations as undisputed fact. It means assuming they're honest and not just seeking dramatic effect. The reason banning him from the event was inappropriate was not that the victim hadn't pressed charges or wasn't credible. It's that the alleged rape took place a decade ago and the outrage calling for his ban was entirely based on hearsay (essentially "someone called this guy a rapist, so you should treat him as a convicted sexual predator").
- akerl_ 12y ago
  This. Accusations should be taken seriously. Taking them seriously means investigating them, it means not blaming or shaming the accuser, and fixing the serious flaws in how our legal system manages to do the aforementioned things. The goal here is that the legal system should be a safe and effective vessel for identifying valid accusations and punishing offenders, not that the accusations should be turned by society into a verdict.
- nyolfen 12y ago
  'innocent until proven guilty' is a legal principle, not a social one. i'll err on the side of a victim any day of the week if there's not a very compelling reason not to
  - pluma 12y ago
    Sure, you can do that, as long as you don't take direct actions (i.e. any form of vigilantism, including making the accusations any more public than necessary to press charges) against the accused based on that sympathy. Just look at the development of the Rolling Stone rape story[0] for an example of why it's a bad idea to take direct action against someone based merely on accusations. Rape, just like child abuse, is such a terrible crime that in our society mere allegations are treated as fact -- even when they are proven false and even when a trial establishes innocence (not simply reasonable doubt). Heck, the social effects are so dire, the social punishment can last for a lifetime, regardless of the actual sentence. It's never justified to risk ruining an innocent person's life. This is why we grant the state the monopoly of violence: because any individual is far too emotional, irrational and unreliable to be trusted with taking matters into their own hands. [0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternit...

by nyolfen 12y ago

jsmthrowaway 12y ago

> comparing someone being excluded from a social gathering to being summarily executed is pretty fucking distasteful. The retribution from those who act upon these accusations almost universally targets a livelihood. I gave one example and have heard even worse ones. I have also been the victim of false accusation, which resulted in me acquiring a stalker who has performed some of these tricks on me. Luckily, that has been limited to one crazy, and I cannot express to you how anxious I am that it's not many more people. Imagine an entire group of people outright working to deny you the ability to feed yourself and, potentially, your family, then tell me it's a distasteful comparison. I'm not allowed to say any of this based on the rules of this discussion, by the way. I just sit back and look at all the people who stood by Jackie in spite of any of the plethora of ways that story began to fall apart, and I shake my head. Doubt is a thing of the past, and that frightens me. Truly. I think it's going to be an extreme social issue going forward.

FeeTinesAMady 12y ago

You think it can't destroy lives? You seem to think it's a good idea to summarily believe accusations with no evidence and no attempt to involve the legal system and convict someone in the court of public opinion just because somebody said something. People lose their livelihoods over this. People could get kicked out onto the street. Do you think that nobody could do that to you?

nyolfen 12y ago
you know what destroys a hell of a lot more lives than false rape accusations? rape
- FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
  When someone is raped, they aren't ostracized from society, and they don't spend the next five or ten years in prison, and unable to find work for the rest of their lives.

pluma 12y ago

In other words "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply when we sympathise with the victim? Bullshit. Sexual abuse is a horrible crime and that it is so difficult to prove makes it only worse, but although we should take allegations seriously, they're just that: allegations, not a verdict or judgement. If we condemn alleged criminals based on allegations alone, we might as well just start lynching people again. Taking an alleged victim serious is not the same as treating allegations as undisputed fact. It means assuming they're honest and not just seeking dramatic effect. The reason banning him from the event was inappropriate was not that the victim hadn't pressed charges or wasn't credible. It's that the alleged rape took place a decade ago and the outrage calling for his ban was entirely based on hearsay (essentially "someone called this guy a rapist, so you should treat him as a convicted sexual predator").

akerl_ 12y ago
This. Accusations should be taken seriously. Taking them seriously means investigating them, it means not blaming or shaming the accuser, and fixing the serious flaws in how our legal system manages to do the aforementioned things. The goal here is that the legal system should be a safe and effective vessel for identifying valid accusations and punishing offenders, not that the accusations should be turned by society into a verdict.
nyolfen 12y ago
'innocent until proven guilty' is a legal principle, not a social one. i'll err on the side of a victim any day of the week if there's not a very compelling reason not to
- pluma 12y ago
  Sure, you can do that, as long as you don't take direct actions (i.e. any form of vigilantism, including making the accusations any more public than necessary to press charges) against the accused based on that sympathy. Just look at the development of the Rolling Stone rape story[0] for an example of why it's a bad idea to take direct action against someone based merely on accusations. Rape, just like child abuse, is such a terrible crime that in our society mere allegations are treated as fact -- even when they are proven false and even when a trial establishes innocence (not simply reasonable doubt). Heck, the social effects are so dire, the social punishment can last for a lifetime, regardless of the actual sentence. It's never justified to risk ruining an innocent person's life. This is why we grant the state the monopoly of violence: because any individual is far too emotional, irrational and unreliable to be trusted with taking matters into their own hands. [0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternit...