heywood on 19/12/2017 at 17:26
Quote Posted by Kolya
Newspapers have a thing where they always write about "the alleged attacker" until sometime is actually sentenced.
Is this a thing with German newspapers? Because over here, newspapers print a name as soon as they get it. When a suspect's name is withheld from a story, it's nearly always because the police are withholding it from the press.
Harvester on 19/12/2017 at 17:30
I don't know about Germany, but in the Netherlands only the first name and the first initial of the last name are released. If the press knows the full last name, they collectively agree to keep it to themselves.
Starker on 19/12/2017 at 17:55
Not if it's a celebrity or a famous politician, surely?
Starker on 19/12/2017 at 20:46
Well, nobody here has said that women should be blindly/automatically believed. And like the article says, those people who have said something like this have been widely criticised.
The idea that you should either believe all accusers and throw the accused in jail without trial or treat all the accused as if they were completely innocent until proven guilty in a court is a false dilemma. There's a good deal of middle ground between those extremes. The world is nuanced, not black and white.
One of the things that I think often gets overlooked in this kind of conversation is that the system right now is incredibly stacked against the victims. The gauntlet that awaits in hospitals, at the police and in court is itself a very hard road to go through (for example, having a rape kit done takes several hours and can be a pretty invasive and traumatic experience both physically and mentally), but then there are the wider attitudes that are pervasive in all kinds of situations, no matter whether it's just harassment or full on rape, ranging from "what's wrong with a little Mad Men sexism?" to "why are you trying to ruin this young man's life?"
It's definitely not something that's in the distant past. It wasn't that long ago that sexual harassment at workplace or even marital rape started being taken seriously. And the Brock Turner trial was just last year.
SubJeff on 19/12/2017 at 22:26
Quote Posted by Starker
Well, nobody here has said that women should be blindly/automatically believed.
You keep saying this. It's like you missed have the thread
Here:
Quote Posted by Dia
If the accusers are
not believed, then the charges
will not be investigated.
And practically this what happens, which is why the accused is not anonymous.
Harvester on 19/12/2017 at 23:21
Quote Posted by Starker
Not if it's a celebrity or a famous politician, surely?
You're right, not in those cases (and we've had a few of those on the #metoo front lately), and that was what the discussion was about. I was in a hurry, saw something and replied to it, without considering what people were actually talking about. Sorry for the confusion.
Kolya on 19/12/2017 at 23:59
I'm pretty sure Dia meant that accusations should be taken seriously. Also from the context of wanting to start investigations she must have been referring specifically to accusations made to the authorities.
And I think we all agree on that.
This thread is about the subversion of the IUPG principle and the NYT article I posted is relevant to that. Especially because it lays out how an ideological approach can hurt the victims credibility again.
There's something else I wanted to say. We talked a lot about innocent men potentially getting caught up in such accusations. I talked a lot about it. Partly because I oppose any ideologies reflexively. But also because there's something to discuss here.
I understand that the number of such cases is very small compared to the number of cases of rape, abuse, sexual assault. So talking so much about these few cases seems disproportionate. Like that's all we - or I care about.
That is not so. I just don't have much to say about rape. It's atrocious and psychological murder. Discuss?
It's when get to the fringe cases where the controversies and the discussions start. Poking at those is a lot more fruitful in terms of having an interesting debate. And there is no question that this what I'm here for.
If you hope to stop a rapist by discussing on TTLG you may find this unethical. But that's how it is.
Starker on 20/12/2017 at 03:14
I mean, I don't entirely disagree with the article. False accusations do hurt both the innocent and the real victims and and "trust but verify" is not very far from the idea that has been forwarded here -- that accusers should be taken seriously and accusations should be investigated. I think what the article misses is that a lot of the cases made public have been supported by evidence and sometimes by admission of guilt. It's by no means just "blindly believe all women".
Also, the IUPG principle doesn't really work that way outside of the courtroom, does it? Someone accused of murder, especially if there is credible evidence, isn't treated the same as someone who's not accused of murder. At the very least there is the suspicion and maybe bail conditions that rob them of their freedom. And we don't treat the Sandy Hook shooter or the Columbine shooters as innocent, do we? Even if there never was a trial to establish their guilt. The problem with IUPG in real life is that it's not true -- someone is not necessarily innocent just because they haven't been proven guilty in a court yet.
Finally, I don't think talking about it on TTLG will prevent rape, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement to be had in how we handle and how we talk about sexual abuse. And that's worth discussing as well. Sorry if it doesn't seem very interesting.
heywood on 20/12/2017 at 17:11
Presuming a person is innocent until guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt is not a law of physics or one of the ten commandments. It's a legal standard we adopted for criminal prosecutions because it produces more just outcomes. Just outcomes are what we should be interested in here, not blind adherence to a principle.
Obviously, when a person is falsely accused of sexual harassment or abuse, and they suffer as a result of the accusation, that's not a just outcome. But when an act of sexual harassment or abuse goes unreported, or reported and unpunished, or when reporting it leads to shaming or further hurting the victim, that is not a just outcome either.
Up until now, the way we have been dealing with sexual harassment and abuse is more often than not skewed in favor of letting the perpetrator get away with it. And in some circles/workplaces/industries/etc. it seems like the decks have been pretty well stacked against the victim for a long time. These places need reform, and the reform process generally starts with a sort of truth and reconciliation phase where all the accusations come to light. The Catholic Church went through that, and over time we found out that pretty much all the allegations were true. Hollywood is now going through that phase, and judging by the admissions of guilt and the non-denials, it's looking like it's mostly all true. It's also rolling through politics now.
That doesn't mean all victims' stories are true and some people aren't being hurt by false accusations. It just means that the balance of injustices is way over on the other side. If you guys insist on applying the standards of criminal prosecution and presume the allegations aren't true unless there's a conviction, you're working to keep it that way.
