caffeinatedzombeh on 21/12/2017 at 21:38
Quote Posted by SubJeff
My issue is these systems favour the putative victims over the putative perps, and this it's just not equitable.
It's not intended to be.
That it takes forever for evidence to be processed and then not disclosed because the police haven't looked at it properly (to be fair, 40,000 text messages is a lot and probably not very easy to search through conclusively in any reasonable time frame, they didn't just fuck this up because they're useless, it's also very difficult) isn't particularly related to whether or not victims of rape should be anonymous or whether the attitude of the press towards the accused is anything other than what you'd expect.
The significant bias toward the victims in this sort of case is largely because the previous strategy to deal with false accusations of telling them to "go away and think about whether you really really do want to report it" was rather too effective.
If you consider that appropriate support for the victims is a completely separate thing from punishment of the perpetrator then a big improvement on one side of things and a tiny one on the other is still a big improvement.
heywood on 21/12/2017 at 22:19
Quote Posted by Kolya
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."
If you think it sucks to be falsely accused only to have your accuser later recant, imagine what it would be like to actually get raped. Or even just molested or groped or something, and then not be able to do anything about it, or worse yet get slut shamed or black balled for reporting it.
catbarf on 21/12/2017 at 22:30
Quote Posted by heywood
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.
That is exactly what you are saying and I cannot comprehend how you can call it a strawman. The only way it could be a misrepresentation of your beliefs is if you haven't actually thought through what you're saying.
You are explicitly stating that accusations, some minority of which we know are false, should be treated as true and punished even without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That means punishing some people who are actually innocent and do not meet a legal standard to be considered guilty. Your justification is that most accusations are legitimate, and it's unjust for guilty parties to frequently go free, so this is a more just outcome.
You are saying it is better if innocent people get punished in the process because it will also result in lots of guilty people being punished rather than go free. How else am I supposed to interpret your position besides a clear statement that the ends justify the means, and harming a few innocents is justified by punishing lots of wrongdoers?
Quote Posted by heywood
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.
So your response is to weaken the rights of accused, contrary to literally centuries of legal precedent and guaranteed to result in wrongful punishment, because it will punish more criminal acts, and the greater risk of harming innocents is an acceptable trade-off. And yet you call my summation of your position a strawman?
Quote Posted by heywood
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.
Quote Posted by heywood
What you guys see as lynch mob justice
When you're using exactly the same reasoning as lynch mobs, yeah, it warrants that label. We've already been through this, the false accusation rate on
any felony is extremely low. It's low for homicide, it's low for rape. These are serious crimes where we have a desire to see justice, but it's
your attitude that protecting the accused through the legal system is an impediment to true justice that empowered lynch mobs to kill innocents in the name of justice. You might not be calling for anyone to be outright murdered, but when your application of mob justice principles still ruins innocent peoples' lives, it's pretty awful to trivialize that as necessary casualties in the pursuit of 'true' justice.
We have a legal system because centuries of social development have led us not to trust the public to carry out justice on its own. You haven't given any unique reason to think mob justice produces a more just outcome than the courts for this one specific crime.
june gloom on 21/12/2017 at 22:35
Quote Posted by Dia
Nothing like a little comic relief. So glad to see you boys have such a wild and wacky sense of humor.
/s
Shitty sexist humor on a web 1.0-vintage forum dedicated to a long-shuttered video game developer? Shocking!
catbarf on 21/12/2017 at 22:35
Quote Posted by heywood
If you think it sucks to be falsely accused only to have your accuser later recant, imagine what it would be like to actually get raped. Or even just molested or groped or something, and then not be able to do anything about it
You're clearly saying it's worse for an offender to go unpunished than for an innocent person to be harmed by false accusations. And you're implying that because of this, it's better to take action and run the risk of accidentally harming an innocent, right?
Quote Posted by heywood
or worse yet get slut shamed or black balled for reporting it.
Nobody in this thread has defended accusers being assumed to be liars, slut shamed, blackballed, blacklisted, or any other negative treatment. Not immediately believing accusations is not the same as considering accusers to be liars by default.
faetal on 22/12/2017 at 00:08
Quote Posted by SubJeff
My issue is these systems favour the putative victims over the putative perps, and this it's just not equitable.
Unless it's been shown that, for example only 2-12% of claims wind up being false. Then it's absolutely equitable.
Giving every guy benefit of the doubt on innocence is fucking over the 88-98% of assaulted women in order to protect 2-12% of men, while also telling the estimated 40% of unreported rape victims, to continue shutting the fuck up, because we're tilting just a liiiitle further in our favour, culturally speaking. It's like saying that creating a bigger safe space for rapists is worth it so that we can get that 2-12% down to zero.
Favouring the putative victims is the right call, in probabilistic terms. Favouring the accused is flipping the coin and taking the less likely option, for the ultimate purpose of achieving what exactly?
This debate keeps lapsing into rhetorical statements, embedded in emotionally gratifying terms like "innocent until proven otherwise", while basically ignoring the nuances such as the quantitative aspect of the entire topic being that false accusations are in the vast minority. The risible notion that there is a system which somehow eliminates all false positives and negatives, and it starts with protecting men, seems to still be being touted.
There are going to be false positives (2-12%), there are a huge amount of false negatives (rape conviction rates are extremely low, as it is incredibly difficult to prove). Hiding behind the rhetorical barrier of comparing phrases ignores the real life numbers. If you push the equilibrium to prioritise falsely accused men, you are likely going to increase the false negatives, and likely create a backpressure to coming forward about sexual assault that will see that 40% rise further too.
Also, at the risk of being a repetitive bore - why are women less likely to believe when claiming rape versus robbery? This is a pretty important point.
All seems to be sidestepped in order to fall back into rhetoric, which I appreciate is easier to digest and sounds snappier, but doesn't describe anything outside of your own mental model. Analogies and appeals to the legal system are all well and good, but they ignore the quantitative aspect and lest we forget, we aren't debating a change to the legal system here - the premise of the topic is whether or not the #metoo movement is a worry on account of the risk of false accusations being taken too seriously and ruining lives. I'd say that on balance, the answer is a resounding no.
Aja on 22/12/2017 at 00:25
I think faetal just ended the argument.
Trance on 22/12/2017 at 00:35
If anything, he demonstrated that there isn't going to be an end to this argument. Aside from external intervention or sheer exhaustion, that is.
Kolya on 22/12/2017 at 00:46
Maybe you're not thinking this through, faetal. If I accused now of sending me unsolicited dick pics, you demand that everyone believes me, even on risk of falsely banning you from TTLG in the end. Which would be the most harmless consequence.
Do you want to try this, faetal? Because I'm totally up for it. Or will you just admit here and now that you were being a bit stupid?
Queue on 22/12/2017 at 01:51
Quote Posted by Dia
Nothing like a little comic relief. So glad to see you boys have such a wild and wacky sense of humor.
/s
I thought we had no sense at all.
(...and how do I get in on some of that dick pic action?)
