Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Tocky on 22/12/2017 at 02:21

I'm just not enough for you anymore am I? You have to go looking elsewhere.

Sigh. We'll always have Brokelookingglass Mountain.

catbarf on 22/12/2017 at 02:25

Quote Posted by faetal

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?

For the ultimate purpose of living in a society where we all don't have to be afraid of being called upon to prove our innocence in a kangaroo court of public opinion.

Faetal, I know you're a smart guy, but I don't think you're really being consistent here. All felony crimes have an extremely low false accusation rate. The number of people accused of rape, murder, robbery, or any other felony crime who aren't justly found guilty of it are dwarfed by the number of people who are. In strictly probabilistic terms, we would punish more murderers than innocents if we favored the accusers over the accused. Your logic seems to consider that optimal through a simplistic mathematical calculus, but I don't think most people would agree- no compassionate society uses flipping a coin as an operational analogy for its justice system.

There's room for nuance when it comes to public opinion. Weinstein is almost certainly guilty of sexual assault. OJ Simpson killed Nicole Brown. There's such a preponderance of evidence in either case that we can speculate on the most likely outcome and feel pretty confident that we're not doing a disservice to an innocent person. But it's when you have less overwhelming evidence, fewer people reporting, and eventually in the case of one person's word against another's, that it gets dangerous to start making individual assumptions while appealing to broad statistics. Whether it's sexual assault or robbery, we favor the accused over the accuser despite an overwhelming likelihood that the accuser is telling the truth, in the interests of protecting the innocent. I've yet to see any substantive argument for why sexual assault or rape are unique such that they ought to be treated differently, for why punishing those wrongly accused of sexual assault is more societally acceptable than punishing those wrongly accused of any other crime. Because that's basically what you and others seem to be saying.

Like I've already said, there is no reason why sexual assault victims should be belittled, shamed, attacked, threatened, blacklisted, or otherwise treated any differently from reporters of any other sort of crime, and I don't think anyone in this thread has disagreed with that sentiment. (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system) According to RAINN, a widespread belief that the police won't take a claim seriously is the second-highest reason rapes go unreported, and that needs to change. I think sexual assault victims should be assumed to be acting in good faith until proven otherwise, as with any other sort of crime, and there's no reason women should be believed less than reporting rape than reporting robbery. But at the same time, I think the people they accuse should also be considered innocent until proven otherwise, as with any other sort of crime.

Basically I just don't see the logic for treating sexual assault differently from other forms of crime, when no substantive difference has been given. Low false positive rate? Same for most felonies. Low conviction rates? For rape, (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7442785/Rape-conviction-rate-figures-misleading.html) not once the case reaches trial. The issue seems to be bringing it to trial, due to a culture of shaming and disbelieving accusations, so why is eliminating those social factors and bringing the treatment of sexual assault in line with other crimes not enough?

Queue on 22/12/2017 at 04:51

I wish I knew how to quit this place.

Renzatic on 22/12/2017 at 05:08

Don't leave, Queue! You're the only person who isn't angry around here anymore!

faetal on 22/12/2017 at 13:17

2 points Catbarf:

1) The "you're a smart guy" rhetoric is an empty debating tactic, and ultimately meaningless unless I accept that you are in a position to quantify how smart I am (plus vice versa of course, hence I won't be telling you how smart you are). It is usually employed to add undue weight to a position, which isn't afford by its dialectical content, so perhaps refrain from that in future - condescension only works if the person you are addressing presumes your superiority on the topic. Maybe that's not what you are doing there, but I rarely see that sentence add anything of value, regardless. I'm not here so people can appraise my intellect.

2) You seem to have ignored the part of the link you used which shows that sexual assault reporting AND conviction are disproportionately low versus other crimes. This is precisely the part of my post which I am being repatitive with. Why are people less llikely to be believed when reporting rape versus robbery? Especially when the false accusation rate is found to be so low. I don't get how I'm being called inconsitent when my main contribution to this thread has been increasingly exasperating repitition of the same points. For your second link, I would not link The Telegraph which is an obnoxious, rold-fashioned ight-leaning rag, but perhaps use the report it refers to, since I'd be astounded if there hasn't been some editorial slant there. If you were using weighted search terms and the Telegraph was the link which proves your point, that's a bit of a red flag for bias. Proving points with source material is kind of what I'm trained to do as a career, so these things are realtively easy to spot.

Lastly, since you've basically met my argument with yet another wall of rhetoric, only pausing to add numbers which already agree with what I am saying, I am not sure how you think you've returned my part of the debate here. You've more or less said "Here are indeed numbers which show that what you are saying is correct", plus some rhetorical points about how you don't like what I've said (and the aforementioned appeal to condescension).

So, to return to the central point here, the metoo campaign, along with a more long-running trend of bringing more attention to the barrage of sexual harassment and abuse that many women have come to accept as normal (see (http://everydaysexism.com/) for a good example), is specifically seeking to address the specific issue that in a world still run more by men than women, at almost every stratum of society, women are taken less seriously than men when it comes to the simple matter of who their body belongs to. It just happens that this central point is fantastically exemplified by Hollywood, whereby some of the powerful men seem to think that being a gatekepper for other people's success, means you can (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html) turn up at people's hotel rooms, demand a variety of sexually inappropriate acts, and then hold someone's career hostage until they do it anyway, for example.

I think anyone would need to be stupid too, to not see this as the fine tip of a very large iceberg, and yet the biggest problem that some people are seeing, is that maybe some men somewhere have been falsely accused and it has ruined their lives. Of course that is an issue, it's just a much smaller one. I don't think calling out for even more scrutiny and "believe the man first" tactics is a benign move here, I think it originates in misogyny. Like making a public statement about being raped or assaulted is somehow trivial. Of course I don't think that all accusations should result in conviction, but I also think that saying "shut up unless you have proof" hurts 88-98% of the abused, to protect 2%-12% of the accused. If women are worth less tha men, this migt make sense, but it doesn't.

[EDIT] Sorry for typos - I'm using the French version of FireFox, can't install custom dictionaries due to no admin rights and the whole thing is red underlined everywhere the word doesn't coincide with French.

faetal on 22/12/2017 at 13:19

Quote Posted by Kolya

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?

Since we are only aware of each other via this forum, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't equate. You would have screen caps, or you wouldn't.

You think that this is a good analogue for a person forcing themselves on another person IRL?

Tell me more about how stupid I am though, please.

icemann on 22/12/2017 at 14:00

Quote Posted by Renzatic

Don't leave, Queue! You're the only person who isn't angry around here anymore!

Aye. I've practically never yelled at anyone in this place. Well once I told off a guy who made a racist comment about Aussies. But that's about it for me really.

*shakes fist*

catbarf on 22/12/2017 at 14:17

Faetal, I sincerely apologize for coming across as condescending. I only meant that we've had thoughtful conversation on serious topics before, and I genuinely value your opinion.

However, I don't think you addressed anything of substance in my post. On the contrary, you make points (like the lower reporting rate for rape) that I explicitly already stated, and then qualified exactly how I think should be addressed.

I'll say it again, because every time I do it seems to be ignored: Sexual assault and rape allegations need to be taken seriously, properly investigated, and brought to trial. Currently those crimes aren't treated the way other crimes are treated, and that needs to change.

What I can't understand is your justification for then going a step further and treating sexual assault differently from other crimes, with different standards of evidence and different public treatment, and predicating the justice of this outcome on a numerical principle that is demonstrably inconsistent with how Western society treats all other forms of crime.

You haven't answered this point. You've just repeated your same side of the rhetoric, repeated societal issues that I've already acknowledged and wholly agree are a problem, straw manned positions I never held (where did you get 'shut up unless you have proof' from my posts?), and then started speculating about my motives.

It's rather frustrating to go to the effort of typing out why I think protecting a few innocents is more important than punishing a greater number of the guilty, and explain that I hold the same principle for other crimes equally, and cite examples of how this is already enshrined in our legal system- only to be told that the only possible explanation is misogyny. It sure makes it feel like nothing I type is being read.

Maybe we're talking past one another- can you succinctly state your position on how allegations of sexual assault ought to be publicly treated?

Kolya on 22/12/2017 at 15:07

Quote Posted by faetal

I'm not your favoured putative victim because sexual harassment over the internet isn't so bad. And I better have evidence. Got it.

Basically the stakes aren't high enough for you. If I was alleging that you raped me, then people would have to believe me, favour my word against yours. But not for something minor like dick pics.

icemann on 22/12/2017 at 15:51

Quote Posted by catbarf

Maybe we're talking past one another- can you succinctly state your position on how allegations of sexual assault ought to be publicly treated?

Whilst this question was not aimed at me, I'm going to answer it.

To ensure best treatment to potential victim and the accused, it should not be allowed to be mentioned to the public until it has had it's day in court. That way the life of the accused is not affected unfairly, it reduces the chances of the judge or jury becoming biased (toward the potential victim or the accused) and provides for a more fair and just trial. That is how it should be. It also reduces harm to the potential victim (or should I say accuser?) through having to retell of their ordeal(s) from the accused to the media.

Does it prevent innocent people from being sentenced guilty? Hell no, but it is about the only way that ensues fair treatment to both sides.