Dia on 21/12/2017 at 14:02
Nothing like a little comic relief. So glad to see you boys have such a wild and wacky sense of humor.
/s
catbarf on 21/12/2017 at 16:11
Quote Posted by heywood
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.
Obviously when an act of any other kind of harm goes unpunished or hurts the victim, it's not a just outcome. But we keep to 'innocent until proven guilty' on the principle that it's better to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent person. That goes
way back as a societal principle and it's not something we look to be giving up anytime soon. Most felony crimes have a vanishingly small false accusation rate, it's not like sexual assault is unique in that regard.
Stating outright that it's better to harm innocent people than allow some wrongdoers to go free is, frankly, pretty scary. 'Trust but verify' does not mean 'everyone's a liar until they win in court', it means not engaging in essentially mob justice and saying the ends justify the means.
heywood on 21/12/2017 at 16:47
When an act of harassment or abuse happens, an innocent person is harmed. When nothing is done about it, the harm is magnified. Why is it that some of you guys only seem to care about an innocent person being harmed if it's a dude?
catbarf on 21/12/2017 at 18:40
Did you read, like, anything I wrote, or are you just here to strawman?
SubJeff on 21/12/2017 at 19:53
Quote Posted by Vasquez
Some forms of sexual assault I'd actually like to call
sexist assaults - they're not so much sexual acts (as in ME SO HORNY YOU SO IRRESISTIBLE!!) but a way of saying "We live in a world where I can do this to you and get away with it, and you're a silly little woman if you think it'll ever change".
Such as?
I'm not only concerned about "dudes".
Sexual assault against anyone should be punished. That's a given. There are already robust systems in place for this.
My issue is these systems favour the putative victims over the putative perps, and this it's just not equitable.
Oh, and I'm still finding it amusing that the maths failures in this thread haven't replied to nor acknowledge it.
heywood on 21/12/2017 at 19:54
catbarf - I'm not the one strawmanning. Nobody stated outright that it's better to harm innocent people than allow some wrongdoers to go free, as you put it.
What I said was that if an act of harassment or abuse has occurred, somebody has already been harmed. A system that vigilantly protects the rights of the accused, to prevent harm from false allegations, is not a just system if the result is that sexual harassment and abuse are widely tolerated, excused, and rarely punished.
You said it's better to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent person. It's easy to agree with that when it's somebody who stole a 12-pack from a convenience store, because nobody really got harmed. If we're talking sexual assault, I would still agree with that up to a point. But what happens if there are 10 instances of sexual harassment or assault that go unpunished for every wrongful accusation? What if it's 100 to 1, and "he said, she said" and "innocent until proven guilty" become tag lines for men in power to just sweep it under the rug? At some point, it becomes absurd to call this justice.
I do not feel it is necessary or appropriate to apply the standard for criminal convictions to public opinion. What you guys see as lynch mob justice is what I see as a public reckoning and reconciliation for a mountain of wrongs that have been swept under the rug for a long time. The criminal justice system wasn't solving this problem. Administrative justice kind of was for some people, or wasn't for others, depending on where you work. In places where it wasn't, it's been up to the press and public opinion to call it out.
Kolya on 21/12/2017 at 20:09
If I get involved in a terror attack I may call for the attackers to be summarily executed. I've been there, I saw what they did. Why would you need a trial and all that BS? Just pop their fucking heads. They had no pity on me either.
And some people who haven't been involved themselves would agree with me, because they empathize. My fear and terror becomes their fear and terror.
That doesn't make it right. Empathy and compassion are not the same thing. (
http://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy) I'm against empathy but for compassion.
heywood on 21/12/2017 at 20:27
Your analogy equates publicizing an accusation against somebody with executing them.
Kolya on 21/12/2017 at 21:08
They don't call it character assassination for nothing.
Maybe you want to read again what Conor Oberst said about the accusation against him:
"When something like that -- something random and terrible -- happens to you, it's like... At this point I equate it to getting in a car crash or getting struck by f--king lightning," explains the 37-year-old singer. "I don't feel like there's ever complete closure to something like that in the sense that you carry the psychological things with you."
Vasquez on 21/12/2017 at 21:12
Quote Posted by SubJeff
Sexual assault against anyone should be punished.
Of course it should, have I said otherwise? But don't pretend to be so dumb you don't know it's abundantly more common that a man assaults a woman than the other way around, and it's not very uncommon that in sexual assault it's not only about sexual desire, smaller or bigger part of the thrill is having power over the victim. Some of the more severe attacks are probably driven by the sense of power alone*.
Quote Posted by SubJeff
My issue is these systems favour the putative victims over the putative perps, and this it's just not equitable.
You mean the legal system? How? Even outside the courts of law I'd bet it's still way more common for people to look the other way or shame the victim - at least when it's not a downright violent rape but the "Mad Men/everyday/normal" -kind. The recent cases involving high profile Hollywood actors and politicians are just a tip of a gigantic iceberg. And I'm pretty sure that in many cases of those Starker is right - the workplaces have been aware about the problems but have shut up about it, precisely because it's their money horse, and if they knew the allegations about the accused were clearly false, they surely would stand up for them.
* And before you nitpick: obviously in the more severe cases there probably are other factors, too, like the attacker being crazy in one way or another, but I meant when you compare the motives of sexual attraction <> power and control.
