I'm confused, are you saying that law enforcement officers believing someone who reports a sex crime does something to undermine the foundation of our criminal justice system?
I'm confused, are you saying that law enforcement officers believing someone who reports a sex crime does something to undermine the foundation of our criminal justice system?
I don't think law enforcement officers should believe anything or anyone. They should collect evidence and present their findings. I'd prefer if they were all robots.
I think the courts should continue to operate on a policy of not convicting someone of a crime if there's a reasonable doubt they didn't do it. That's what I was referencing as a foundation of our justice system.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I'm confused, are you saying that law enforcement officers believing someone who reports a sex crime does something to undermine the foundation of our criminal justice system?
I don't think law enforcement officers should believe anything or anyone. They should collect evidence and present their findings. I'd prefer if they were all robots.
I think the courts should continue to operate on a policy of not convicting someone of a crime if there's a reasonable doubt they didn't do it. That's what I was referencing as a foundation of our justice system.
Considering no one is suggesting that, I don't understand the relevance of this post.
Women don't come forward about being assaulted because no one believes them. Police have charged actual victims of sexual assault with making false reports after they cajoled and intimidated the victim into recanting. There's a very public case where this resulted in many other women being raped by a serial rapist because police wouldn't investigate. They just assumed it never happened. No on is suggested due process being withheld. What we're suggesting is treating sexual assault as seriously as other violent crimes, instead of treating women like they're making the whole thing up.
I literally cannot comprehend why this one crime, this one specific crime, deserves such behavior.
I'm confused, are you saying that law enforcement officers believing someone who reports a sex crime does something to undermine the foundation of our criminal justice system?
I don't think law enforcement officers should believe anything or anyone. They should collect evidence and present their findings. I'd prefer if they were all robots.
I think the courts should continue to operate on a policy of not convicting someone of a crime if there's a reasonable doubt they didn't do it. That's what I was referencing as a foundation of our justice system.
Considering no one is suggesting that, I don't understand the relevance of this post.
Women don't come forward about being assaulted because no one believes them. Police have charged actual victims of sexual assault with making false reports after they cajoled and intimidated the victim into recanting. There's a very public case where this resulted in many other women being raped by a serial rapist because police wouldn't investigate. They just assumed it never happened. No on is suggested due process being withheld. What we're suggesting is treating sexual assault as seriously as other violent crimes, instead of treating women like they're making the whole thing up.
I literally cannot comprehend why this one crime, this one specific crime, deserves such behavior.
No one was suggesting that nor did I suggest that someone was. What people are suggesting is that an accusation should always be believed because it's rare that accusations are false. I replied to this idea stating that people are upset with this way of thinking not because they're afraid of being falsely accused, but because it's an idea that is in conflict with one of the foundations of our justice system (reasonable doubt).
I also suggested that what is a foundation in our justice system and how our social sphere works can be different.
As to your point about the police. Absolutely. Women need to continue to fight against an unjust system that is tilted out of their favor.
(to expand, public organizing, suing the police, recall the sheriff, etc.)
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I think when people are saying "Women need to be believed" it's not the courts they're talking about.
It's everyone else.
When someone says they were raped, the reaction of the people around them, especially friends and family, it shouldn't be some variation on, "Prove it." That's the prosecutor's job. When someone says they were attacked in any other way, the default reaction of the public is to believe them and talk about how dangerous things are. When someone publicly says they were raped, there's an absolute avalanche of people accusing her of lying.
Police don't need to "believe" the crime happened the way the victim said it happened. What they need to do is "believe" in their responsibility to investigate crimes reported to them.
I think when people are saying "Women need to be believed" it's not the courts they're talking about.
It's everyone else.
When someone says they were raped, the reaction of the people around them, especially friends and family, it shouldn't be some variation on, "Prove it." That's the prosecutor's job. When someone says they were attacked in any other way, the default reaction of the public is to believe them and talk about how dangerous things are. When someone publicly says they were raped, there's an absolute avalanche of people accusing her of lying.
I think this still rubs me the wrong way. I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to believe a stranger. And OF COURSE I don't believe anyone should assume a victim is lying and the people that accuse complete strangers of lying are sick.
No one has the mental energy or ability to categorize every stranger that makes the news into good or bad based on a couple soundbites. And I don't think we should either. It's another symptom of the digital age where we feel emotionally connected to complete strangers just because we see them in the news.
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
So, anecdote time!!!
When I was in high school my best friend told me that a girl he'd had sex with at a party the prior weekend was going around telling everyone that he raped her. I didn't know the girl or anyone she knew. I had no knowledge of the event or even any second hand accounts. Zero info beyond what my friend told me.
What should I have done in this situation? If I'm always believing the victim, then how do I know whether my friend is the victim of a false accusation or a rapist? Why do I have to believe anyone? I still don't know what actually happened. Nothing ever came of it beyond him telling me about it that one time.
Should I have disowned him as my friend?
The fact is I don't want to have to believe anything out of obligation. People are fucked up. The idea that I'll trust people unequivocally, let alone a complete stranger is crazy.
Police don't need to "believe" the crime happened the way the victim said it happened. What they need to do is "believe" in their responsibility to investigate crimes reported to them.
That's exactly how I'd put it
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I hesitated to comment in this thread, seeing how vitriolic everyone gets, but the more I read the more this feels like one of the gun control threads . Where you seem to have two angry sides, but both sides would outline fairly similar ideal scenarios. Basically the way they discuss the same ideas differs more than anything else.
Barring fairly significant upheavals like mandatory documented consent, legally it should look like:
Police and prosecutors investigate accusations thoroughly on the assumption that an accusation is true, and try to convict. They may fail to convict due to a lack of evidence, but not due to a lack of effort. The system as a whole must presume innocence, not investigators and prosecutors with an accusation in front of them.
Subsequent accusations against the same person become increasingly likely to succeed as evidence accumulates, so serial bad actors get caught sooner rather than (decades) later.
We should take away any officer discretion on preceding with rape investigations and we need to invest funding into the technology and techniques necessary to investigate rape thoroughly and sensitively.
I'm tempted to say we should have a legal burden to report sexual harassment, assault, and rapes. Arguably this will silence some victims who don't want their attack's reported to the authorities, but there's no perfect solution to that. Society can't give up the well-being of future victims to spare past victims emotional distress, as much as that sucks.
On how to behave socially we seem to have more actual disagreement, but I say 'seem' because I'm not sure.
As a random person with no authority over the situation, to an accuser's face, I believe them without digging and recommend counseling, reporting it, etc as best I can. To the accused's face, I believe them without digging. I watch and assess based on what comes up to the best of my ability, but tbh I don't know what's true--if I did, I'd be talking to police about it. If I'm close enough to the situation to need to pay attention, I do so and advise others to do so as well; if there's something to see it should be seen, and if not that should be seen too.
If I have authority over the accused, like as an employer or client or something, I believe the accuser the same. I dig more on the accused. I don't assume guilt or innocence, I just pay attention, ask pointed questions, review any HR documentation or other records that might be relevant, and use my head to make a judgement call. I don't need to meet the same burdens of proof as a court, but I'm not going to fire someone without something additional to go on. I am going to monitor them closely, and probably keep them out of unmonitored 1 on 1 situations.
In any situation where I know something relevant to guilt or innocence, I act on it. See something, say something. No free passes for friends, no assuming the best of acquaintances.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I don't know that you necessarily need to have done anything. Did your friend often act inappropriately around women that you are aware of? Did she come to you?
When someone says they were the victim of a crime, the minimum expectation should be support. Investigation is up to police. Proof is up to the courts. The rest of us should assume the victim is telling the truth and be supportive. That goes for any crime. We don't have to form a vigilante group and go after the accused, but we should ensure that a victim feels safe enough to report the crime. The fact that most women do not when they're sexually assaulted is an absolute failure not only of justice, but of society and everyone who is part of it.
I don't think it is an unreasonable ask to believe someone who says they were assaulted. Especially given the current culture and confusion around this specific topic. I'd rather believe everyone and support them and be burned if it turns out someone wasn't honest. As has been established that would be a very rare occurrence. I think it's the responsibility of everyone in someones circle to believe and support them as an initial stance. It's a lot easier to fight for justice if you have people in your corner.
I also think the police or investigators should have a duty to believe the reporter until given cause to think otherwise.
I think the criminal justice system should do it's utmost to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt though this could mean someone doesn't get justice, especially in he said she said situations.
How can we combat that?
Rape kit backlogs should be a thing of the past. It's a measure of how this is treated that we can't find the money to do the basics.
Officers who intimidate, cajole or otherwise pressure people reporting sexual assault should be disciplined and fired if it continues.
A victim advocate should be present (in addition to a lawyer) who will have the responsibility of advocating for the victim, combatting intimidation and reporting misconduct (this should not be an employee of the police dept).
Basically I think that "society" has a responsibility to be on a woman's side in this as the playing field is so tilted that it actively discourages coming forward. What to do if a false accusation comes up is a problem we can tackle when and if it occurs.
I think the "courts" continue to have the duty of proving an accusation and we can get better at this if we take rape and sexual assault more seriously.
In short, you can support women without causing the criminal justice system to collapse. You can if you try anyways.
I don't know that you necessarily need to have done anything. Did your friend often act inappropriately around women that you are aware of? Did she come to you?
When someone says they were the victim of a crime, the minimum expectation should be support. Investigation is up to police. Proof is up to the courts. The rest of us should assume the victim is telling the truth and be supportive. That goes for any crime. We don't have to form a vigilante group and go after the accused, but we should ensure that a victim feels safe enough to report the crime. The fact that most women do not when they're sexually assaulted is an absolute failure not only of justice, but of society and everyone who is part of it.
I agree with everything in here (and no, I had no reason to think he was a rapist, nor did I ever meet the girl), but doesn't this go against "women need to be believed"?
If there's any obligation, it's to give the people in your life the benefit of the doubt and it's to stay out of complete stranger's business.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
There are not two legitimate sides here.
There's "don't rape people" and there's "but what about...."
The "but what about..." people can fuck right off
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
There's "don't rape people" and there's "but what about...."
The "but what about..." people can fuck right off
I think that is a very gross misrepresentation.
No one I have seen has suggested anything other than, "don't rape people"
There seem to be separate discussions about how:
- the police should handle rape accusations
- the legal system should handle rape accusations
- social circles should handle rape accusations
- society in general should handle rape accusations.
While there is some crossover between each subject, I think they should also be dealt with and discussed as their own situation, because doing otherwise is leading to some crossed wires, and I think making people appear to be arguing who otherwise agree.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
So, anecdote time!!!
When I was in high school my best friend told me that a girl he'd had sex with at a party the prior weekend was going around telling everyone that he raped her. I didn't know the girl or anyone she knew. I had no knowledge of the event or even any second hand accounts. Zero info beyond what my friend told me.
What should I have done in this situation? If I'm always believing the victim, then how do I know whether my friend is the victim of a false accusation or a rapist? Why do I have to believe anyone? I still don't know what actually happened. Nothing ever came of it beyond him telling me about it that one time.
Should I have disowned him as my friend?
Yes.
(I’m taking your anecdote as a hypothetical. This post is not meant to be a personal judgement on you.)
What happened here is a classic “he said, she said.” You have a victim accusation and an accused’s denial.
In the absence of any other evidence, you chose to default to believing your friend and behaving 100% as though he were innocent.
When we say that part of the way society fixes the problem of sexual misconduct is for people to believe victims, what they’re saying is that you need to flip your default from “I’ll believe my buddy over any stranger” to “I’ll believe the victim over the accused.”
Both of those defaults are unfounded in evidence; they’re both heuristics, general behavioral strategies we adopt because we aren’t able to know with perfect certainty what the correct thing to do is.
So the key to this conversation is to say, “Because I know I am going to make a default assumption based on no evidence, which default assumption should I be making?”
Right now most people behave the way you do. People believe their friends couldn’t do such a thing, and they assume a stranger must be lying, or crazy, or whatever. Note that this is illogical. You know your friend, but do you know your friend’s intimate sexual behavior? Do you think your friend would tell you if they raped somebody? Most people do not know each other so well that the prospect of them having a secret like this is outlandish. Most people are notoriously bad at predicting what other people are capable of doing.
On the other hand, the only thing you know about the victim in this hypothetical is that she’s made an accusation. You also know that the vast majority of accusations are true. The fact that she’s a stranger means she has no social influence to wield on you in her favor, but it doesn’t mean you have a reason not to trust her.
Is society better off if you default to believing your friend? In most cases you’ll be protecting a rapist. That’s the world we have today—where the friends of the accused circle the wagons and shield that person from consequences. That’s a world where 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted and a lot of that goes unreported or unpunished.
If instead you default to believing the victim, I’d argue society is better off, even though in a small percentage of cases you’ll be ostracizing an innocent person. Because the vast majority of the time you’ll be rejecting friendship with a rapist and supporting a victim. That encourages women to report crimes. It tells people in your circle that there is a social cost to sexual misconduct. And that is the only way to start discouraging that behavior.
Your post begins with:
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
And ends with:
The fact is I don't want to have to believe anything out of obligation. People are fucked up. The idea that I'll trust people unequivocally, let alone a complete stranger is crazy.
If you truly believe that believing the victim is the right thing to do, you have to do that even when the victim is a stranger, or not as good of a friend, or wearing a short skirt, or (insert excuse here).
Because severing a social relationship is not the same thing as putting someone in prison, and should not be held to the same standard. If somebody texts me a dick pic I don’t need to investigate further to remove all reasonable doubt (hey, maybe he thought I was a doctor and he wanted my opinion about a wart), I just block the dude and move on. Just as nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts them, nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts other people. I have a lot of friends and none of them have ever been accused of rape, anybody can build that kind of friend group too.
You don’t want to do that because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision. Recognize that you’re never going to know for sure either way, that you’re always going to assume, and make the conscious choice to assume in the direction that’s most likely to help more people.
You put together a really thoughtful account of your reasoning, and I can understand where you're coming from. I think that I would follow much of that sort of reasoning when considering a stranger who faced allegations of sexual harassment or assault. For people who have reservations about applying that reasoning to personal associates and friends, I wonder if there is an acceptable middle ground between "believe accusers" and "bros before hos".
Taking some time to ask probing questions seems worthwhile, doesn't it? I can hardly fault someone for having a certain amount of loyalty to a known friend, but it's also important to be mindful of the company that you keep. I don't want to put myself in compromised or compromising situations, and I definitely don't want to have public affiliations to bad people, so if someone I do associate with is accused of doing anything untoward, I'm going to try to find out what I need to know from that person to make a reasonably informed decision.
Yes, and... on
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HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
What do you plan to do about it, because if you want to effect change, you are going to have to deal with it.
Slavery ended because a bunch of white people thought it should. The civil rights movement was successful (for a given value of success)
because a bunch of white people were on board. Every marginalized group that managed to change their lot does so, in part, by transforming a portion of their oppressors into supporters. Or killing them, but the numbers aren't really there for that.
It may not be a warm, fuzzy feeling, but it's necessary to accomplish your goals.
Your breathless declarative is that the only viable method to achieve the partial liberation of the the marginalized is for the oppressed to cradle the balls if the oppressor. Therefore, one who wants to see change happen should break out the lotion and avoid anything that could be construed as a squeeze.
A) this is an unrealistic and deeply cruel ask to make of those individuals who already shoulder the great burden of the prevailing power structure's lack of caring or interest
your reference to slavery as an analogous civil rights movement by which we can draw the conclusion that the oppressor's heartstrings being carefully plucked is necessary for the achievement of justice is a neat fiction that disregards the historical facts that incentivized those power structures to identify the continuation of their oppressive institutions as a greater threat than an asset, and that includes the agitation and unruliness of the oppressed
This is great "fire up the masses" speech, but has literally no concrete next steps to getting there. Like, it's not even clear what ideal you're arguing in favor of. This entire thing could be about Occupy Wall Street and it would read exactly the same.
It is possible to point out the hypocrisy and cruelty of the existing status of affairs without devolving into tribalism. The only way we are going to win this fight over the long term is by changing minds, and we cannot change minds by yelling at people like an itinerant preacher on the street.
How quixotic.
I am criticizing the underlying assumption of the post that aims that no chnage is possible without maximal comfort afforded to men and their feelings about potential loss of power or sanctuary.
The evidence cited for this claim is incomplete and ahistorical. I am stating that it was not merely kid gloves that let to white people accepting black liberation, and therefore it's analogous relationship to the subject o cultural shifts on sexual assault cannot also rely on such a myopic view.
Making men feel safe from false accusation is not the main issue, and it so far from the core as to absolutely be a distraction. Making men fear true accusation is a necessary condition of cultural change. Many men will balk at that. That's fine. Change happens when a critical mass gets on board, not 100% of men. So the decalarative statements about what will absolutely, guaranteed occur if people who want to change the culture do not cuddle every indignant testicle who fear a loss of power are not convincing.
3DS: 2165 - 6538 - 3417
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Yeah. I didn’t get into that but “in the absence of evidence, default to believing the victim” does not mean “don’t bother gathering evidence.” Talk to your friend, or if it’s a public figure, read the news stories yourself and decide if you think the accusation or accusations are credible. Make an informed decision for sure. Just recognize that most of the time, victims tell the truth; and that you don’t need to hold your decision to the standard of definitive proof to take action or speak up.
And of course it’s just as important to actually support the victim as it is to deal with the accused.
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
edited October 2017
Not sure if this was posted, but Neogaf might be dead because the owner is just another creep to add to the pile.
The problem seems to be "automatically disbelieving the victim." The fact that lying about rape *sometimes* happens seems to make men automatically leap to "maybe she is lying" for *any* given case.
The fact is, "victims" have been known to lie about practically *any* crime, but when your friend says her car was stolen, you don't leap to "maybe you faked it for the insurance money" even though it has happened in the past and is perfectly feasible.
The problem seems to be "automatically disbelieving the victim." The fact that lying about rape *sometimes* happens seems to make men automatically leap to "maybe she is lying" for *any* given case.
The fact is, "victims" have been known to lie about practically *any* crime, but when your friend says her car was stolen, you don't leap to "maybe you faked it for the insurance money" even though it has happened in the past and is perfectly feasible.
Rape is a troublesome crime. It can happen without leaving physical or documented evidence.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I was posting in a thread when everything came crashing down. It's really nuts, as I've been following GAF almost as long as I've had the internet. Say what you will about much of their members, but there were lots of friendly, helpful communities who could produce some amazing stuff. If the site's gone for good, that's going to remove a significant chunk of my internet browsing time and a giant lack of helpful resources I was using.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yeah. I didn’t get into that but “in the absence of evidence, default to believing the victim” does not mean “don’t bother gathering evidence.” Talk to your friend, or if it’s a public figure, read the news stories yourself and decide if you think the accusation or accusations are credible. Make an informed decision for sure. Just recognize that most of the time, victims tell the truth; and that you don’t need to hold your decision to the standard of definitive proof to take action or speak up.
And of course it’s just as important to actually support the victim as it is to deal with the accused.
It's important to specify what victims tell the truth about. Victims tell the truth about whether a sexual advance or some sexual situation was wanted or consented to. Victims may not always tell the truth (i.e. give an account of what happened that is consistent with other evidence about what happened) about the circumstances surrounding the assault/abuse, for a variety of reasons. Saying that "victims tell the truth" without going into any detail may inadvertently play into narratives around false accusations, because victims of assault and abuse aren't "reliable" in the ways that unsophisticated and uninformed laypeople might expect them to be.
Practically all the staff left once this came out, and the site is unusable at the moment.
Is there a source that isn't KiA, which was the GlooberGorf homepage, essentially, orrrr
Yeah, it's basically dead. I used to be a poweruser and seeing the site die like this makes me want to cry. I like you guys but the sheer craziness that went down in Neogaf was like watching a circus, a fireworks show, and a wrestling match all at the same time.
Also it's the only place on the internet that I found an out and proud black community that discussed comics and videogames. It was beautiful.
I was posting in a thread when everything came crashing down. It's really nuts, as I've been following GAF almost as long as I've had the internet. Say what you will about much of their members, but there were lots of friendly, helpful communities who could produce some amazing stuff. If the site's gone for good, that's going to remove a significant chunk of my internet browsing time and a giant lack of helpful resources I was using.
PM me if you need access to the discords.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited October 2017
Not the first time he's been accused I believe. There was another thread about it before the forums went down.
I really hope that isn't the end for Gaf. Its got its ups and downs in the community like any site but its been a regular stop while browsing for years.
Hopefully it outlives the scandal and it gets sold. Can't see him just shutting it down if it was a source of income.
I really hope that isn't the end for Gaf. Its got its ups and downs in the community like any site but its been a regular stop while browsing for years.
Hopefully it outlives the scandal and it gets sold. I'm ready for the brave new world of EA's Neo Gaf.
From the history of past forum implosions the community will probably schism into 2 or so offshoots, neither of which is NeoGAF
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I am criticizing the underlying assumption of the post that aims that no chnage is possible without maximal comfort afforded to men and their feelings about potential loss of power or sanctuary.
The evidence cited for this claim is incomplete and ahistorical. I am stating that it was not merely kid gloves that let to white people accepting black liberation, and therefore it's analogous relationship to the subject o cultural shifts on sexual assault cannot also rely on such a myopic view.
Making men feel safe from false accusation is not the main issue, and it so far from the core as to absolutely be a distraction. Making men fear true accusation is a necessary condition of cultural change. Many men will balk at that. That's fine. Change happens when a critical mass gets on board, not 100% of men. So the decalarative statements about what will absolutely, guaranteed occur if people who want to change the culture do not cuddle every indignant testicle who fear a loss of power are not convincing.
Your strawmanning is pretty blatant. I made no reference about maximal comfort, or cupping balls, or whatever other sexual metaphor you want to trot out. I also didn't say anything about kid gloves, and certainly didn't say or imply it was the only thing that made change happen.
If the majority of men do feel a loss of power and sanctuary through these changes then they will be stopped, because men are already in power. That is the nature of power. People aren't going to change because you're sad or angry or offended or whatever. If giving them a reason to do so sticks in your craw, then I am sure you can sustain yourself on righteous indignation.
Cooler heads will actually make a difference by being someone people want to work with instead of against.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I am criticizing the underlying assumption of the post that aims that no chnage is possible without maximal comfort afforded to men and their feelings about potential loss of power or sanctuary.
The evidence cited for this claim is incomplete and ahistorical. I am stating that it was not merely kid gloves that let to white people accepting black liberation, and therefore it's analogous relationship to the subject o cultural shifts on sexual assault cannot also rely on such a myopic view.
Making men feel safe from false accusation is not the main issue, and it so far from the core as to absolutely be a distraction. Making men fear true accusation is a necessary condition of cultural change. Many men will balk at that. That's fine. Change happens when a critical mass gets on board, not 100% of men. So the decalarative statements about what will absolutely, guaranteed occur if people who want to change the culture do not cuddle every indignant testicle who fear a loss of power are not convincing.
Your strawmanning is pretty blatant. I made no reference about maximal comfort, or cupping balls, or whatever other sexual metaphor you want to trot out. I also didn't say anything about kid gloves, and certainly didn't say or imply it was the only thing that made change happen.
If the majority of men do feel a loss of power and sanctuary through these changes then they will be stopped, because men are already in power. That is the nature of power. People aren't going to change because you're sad or angry or offended or whatever. If giving them a reason to do so sticks in your craw, then I am sure you can sustain yourself on righteous indignation.
Cooler heads will actually make a difference by being someone people want to work with instead of against.
I am sick and tired of people coming in here and chiding the rest of us that we need to think first and foremost about men and how they feel.
Make no mistake, that's what you're doing here.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
What do you plan to do about it, because if you want to effect change, you are going to have to deal with it.
Slavery ended because a bunch of white people thought it should. The civil rights movement was successful (for a given value of success)
because a bunch of white people were on board. Every marginalized group that managed to change their lot does so, in part, by transforming a portion of their oppressors into supporters. Or killing them, but the numbers aren't really there for that.
It may not be a warm, fuzzy feeling, but it's necessary to accomplish your goals.
Your breathless declarative is that the only viable method to achieve the partial liberation of the the marginalized is for the oppressed to cradle the balls if the oppressor. Therefore, one who wants to see change happen should break out the lotion and avoid anything that could be construed as a squeeze.
A) this is an unrealistic and deeply cruel ask to make of those individuals who already shoulder the great burden of the prevailing power structure's lack of caring or interest
your reference to slavery as an analogous civil rights movement by which we can draw the conclusion that the oppressor's heartstrings being carefully plucked is necessary for the achievement of justice is a neat fiction that disregards the historical facts that incentivized those power structures to identify the continuation of their oppressive institutions as a greater threat than an asset, and that includes the agitation and unruliness of the oppressed
This is great "fire up the masses" speech, but has literally no concrete next steps to getting there. Like, it's not even clear what ideal you're arguing in favor of. This entire thing could be about Occupy Wall Street and it would read exactly the same.
It is possible to point out the hypocrisy and cruelty of the existing status of affairs without devolving into tribalism. The only way we are going to win this fight over the long term is by changing minds, and we cannot change minds by yelling at people like an itinerant preacher on the street.
How quixotic.
I am criticizing the underlying assumption of the post that aims that no chnage is possible without maximal comfort afforded to men and their feelings about potential loss of power or sanctuary.
The evidence cited for this claim is incomplete and ahistorical. I am stating that it was not merely kid gloves that let to white people accepting black liberation, and therefore it's analogous relationship to the subject o cultural shifts on sexual assault cannot also rely on such a myopic view.
Making men feel safe from false accusation is not the main issue, and it so far from the core as to absolutely be a distraction. Making men fear true accusation is a necessary condition of cultural change. Many men will balk at that. That's fine. Change happens when a critical mass gets on board, not 100% of men. So the decalarative statements about what will absolutely, guaranteed occur if people who want to change the culture do not cuddle every indignant testicle who fear a loss of power are not convincing.
It's not an either/or proposition. Change requires both pushing and pulling, and not everyone reacts to the same factors in the same way, if at all.
This is the problem with all of the emotional arguments going on in this thread. People get incredibly defensive and riled up when anything other than complete agreement on all points is had, including "well they should just change their minds and do it."
Even if you take it for granted that you aren't going to change the minds of the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, there is a larger question of what you are going to do for the majority of people, from both genders, who hold a worldview which prejudices them towards believing that rape victims are "sluts" rather than that someone could possibly be a rapist in the first place.
The vast, vast majority of these people are not themselves rapists, so screaming at them about the patriarchy or white privilege or rape culture isn't going to get you anything but eye rolls. Being even more confrontational will only cause them to dig in deeper. The psychology on these things is very clear. And yet, we face the problem that these are the people you need to convince in order to get widespread societal change, like it or not.
Most of us agree entirely in principle with the idea that: a) rape is bad, b) our society perpetuates attitudes which cause a gross under-reporting of rape and lack of consequences for rapists. But when some of us dare to raise the question of What Next? we get met with incredulous stares of "enabling the status quo" and being "part of the problem".
I have stopped 2 rapes and 1 assault in my lifetime, two of which put me in significant personal danger. I have opened up my home to victims of assault. When someone uses the word "rape" as a blithe metaphor, I correct them on the spot. When people express attitudes that perpetuate false ideas of what masculinity means, or assume the male gender where none is needed, I point it out. I go to the extent of using female gender pronouns as the default in the majority of my work correspondence, just as a matter of course.
I don't say these things to toot my own horn. I say them to make it clear that we are on the same page here. These things are wrong. We should be stopping them. But there are only a few limited things we can do within our own personal spheres of influence.
So my question, which I have asked repeatedly, and which to my count only two people have even bothered to grapple with, is what else can we do about it? If this thread is just going to be a place where people pat themselves on the back and point out how shitty everyone else is and how toxic and terrible "the other people" are, then I think I'll take my leave. Other people, who I expect are also allies in this fight, have already expressed how hesitant they are to even begin a dialogue here, and I think that speaks to the tone of the thread.
I am sick and tired of people coming in here and chiding the rest of us that we need to think first and foremost about men and how they feel.
Make no mistake, that's what you're doing here.
No, I am saying if you want to be as successful as possible, you need to take it into account.
That's not making it first and foremost.
The prevailing attitude is annoying as shit and I'm on your side. I promise you, you are making enemies you don't need to. You are actively working against your own interests.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I've taken it into account and given it all due consideration.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Sexual assault takes up this weird headspace unlike any other crime where the victim's behavior is more important than the perpetrator.
Like, if someone's car is stolen, if they left the window down, or the car unlocked, or the engine running, doesn't mean the thief is suddenly no longer guilty of stealing a car. We don't ask if they've given away cars in the past, or trade cars with people, or how many people they've given rides to. Like, none of that matters.
But when someone is raped, all of a sudden whether or not they've ever willingly had sex before is paramount. Like......
what?
False accusations of rape can happen.
But so can false accusations of any other crime. Why it's so much more important when it comes to sexual assault....well...I can only guess.
It goes to intent. If every day I give 5 dollars voluntarily to the homeless guy on the corner, it's going to be harder for me to argue that today I didn't give it to him and instead he stole it out of my hand.
The problem is that sexual assault is unlike other crimes because the act of sex/flirting is something that we do quite often voluntarily. Therefore it's not enough to prove that sex/flirting happened, you also have to prove that it was not voluntary. That's a burden not necessary for stealing a car, because nobody ever gives their car to stranger voluntarily.
So what happens if Oprah Winfrey says her car was stolen?
GAF has a large cohort of very misogynist shitheels out to get site leadership for being so vociferously anti-GooberGoose as they were, so if this is true you're going to see the people who ran the largest coordinated campaign against women in internet history claim this as some kind of victory.
Aside from the gaming community losing what is *the* premier forum left on the landscape, bar none, this is only going to make the conversation around sexual assault worse in our fandom worse. Fuck.
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
So, anecdote time!!!
When I was in high school my best friend told me that a girl he'd had sex with at a party the prior weekend was going around telling everyone that he raped her. I didn't know the girl or anyone she knew. I had no knowledge of the event or even any second hand accounts. Zero info beyond what my friend told me.
What should I have done in this situation? If I'm always believing the victim, then how do I know whether my friend is the victim of a false accusation or a rapist? Why do I have to believe anyone? I still don't know what actually happened. Nothing ever came of it beyond him telling me about it that one time.
Should I have disowned him as my friend?
Yes.
(I’m taking your anecdote as a hypothetical. This post is not meant to be a personal judgement on you.)
What happened here is a classic “he said, she said.” You have a victim accusation and an accused’s denial.
In the absence of any other evidence, you chose to default to believing your friend and behaving 100% as though he were innocent.
When we say that part of the way society fixes the problem of sexual misconduct is for people to believe victims, what they’re saying is that you need to flip your default from “I’ll believe my buddy over any stranger” to “I’ll believe the victim over the accused.”
Both of those defaults are unfounded in evidence; they’re both heuristics, general behavioral strategies we adopt because we aren’t able to know with perfect certainty what the correct thing to do is.
So the key to this conversation is to say, “Because I know I am going to make a default assumption based on no evidence, which default assumption should I be making?”
Right now most people behave the way you do. People believe their friends couldn’t do such a thing, and they assume a stranger must be lying, or crazy, or whatever. Note that this is illogical. You know your friend, but do you know your friend’s intimate sexual behavior? Do you think your friend would tell you if they raped somebody? Most people do not know each other so well that the prospect of them having a secret like this is outlandish. Most people are notoriously bad at predicting what other people are capable of doing.
On the other hand, the only thing you know about the victim in this hypothetical is that she’s made an accusation. You also know that the vast majority of accusations are true. The fact that she’s a stranger means she has no social influence to wield on you in her favor, but it doesn’t mean you have a reason not to trust her.
Is society better off if you default to believing your friend? In most cases you’ll be protecting a rapist. That’s the world we have today—where the friends of the accused circle the wagons and shield that person from consequences. That’s a world where 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted and a lot of that goes unreported or unpunished.
If instead you default to believing the victim, I’d argue society is better off, even though in a small percentage of cases you’ll be ostracizing an innocent person. Because the vast majority of the time you’ll be rejecting friendship with a rapist and supporting a victim. That encourages women to report crimes. It tells people in your circle that there is a social cost to sexual misconduct. And that is the only way to start discouraging that behavior.
Your post begins with:
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
And ends with:
The fact is I don't want to have to believe anything out of obligation. People are fucked up. The idea that I'll trust people unequivocally, let alone a complete stranger is crazy.
If you truly believe that believing the victim is the right thing to do, you have to do that even when the victim is a stranger, or not as good of a friend, or wearing a short skirt, or (insert excuse here).
Because severing a social relationship is not the same thing as putting someone in prison, and should not be held to the same standard. If somebody texts me a dick pic I don’t need to investigate further to remove all reasonable doubt (hey, maybe he thought I was a doctor and he wanted my opinion about a wart), I just block the dude and move on. Just as nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts them, nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts other people. I have a lot of friends and none of them have ever been accused of rape, anybody can build that kind of friend group too.
You don’t want to do that because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision. Recognize that you’re never going to know for sure either way, that you’re always going to assume, and make the conscious choice to assume in the direction that’s most likely to help more people.
@Astaereth this is a lot to unpack but well put! You definitely correctly called out how I contradicted myself and made some great points.
I would say that you're a bit off the mark on my reaction to my friend (which I never really stated). I always had a seed of doubt about him. And if I'd ever met the girl, I'd have had a seed of doubt about her as well. Even if I went with the statistical likelihood of the accuser usually telling the truth, I'd still have doubts because it's just odds, not certainty. I don't think there's a single person I trust 100%.
There are more than two options between believing the woman or not believing the woman. You can withhold judgement. You can accept that you don't know the truth and never will. I think it's ok to let life be grey when it has to be. As long as you're kind and honest then you're fulfilling your moral duty.
So how about the idea of a victim advocate for sexual assault that is not an employee of the police department?
What other solutions can be put in place to support this?
Gag orders on sexual assault cases (i.e. neither the victim or suspect can be named)?
Sexual harassment training mandates for employment (not a handbook nobody reads and not after something shitty has happened)?
It sure seems like everyone is in agreement that we need to encourage and support victims so that they come forward and make reports. The criminal justice aspect is another kettle of fish.
I think it would be a good idea to talk about ways to do this rather than attacking each other.
It's a fact that women and other victims of sexual assault are actively discouraged from speaking up, what concrete things can we do to change this?
A hashtag and Weinstein falling isn't going to make a dent. Civil rights has been brought up a lot and it sure as shit wasn't just press and speeches that turned the tide. Actual laws changed.
If you told me person A gave their wallet to person B, who was a complete stranger, I would say I don't believe you. It is so far outside of normal behavior that even without any additional proof it is unbelievable on it's face. Same goes for all of the other examples, except rape. Because if you told me that person A had sex willingly with person B that is a very common behavior. I need more information to be able to decide if I believe it was non-consensual because on it's face it isn't extraordinary.
Falsely accusing someone of rape is a far less common crime than rape itself.
So if person A is accused of rape and person B is accused of making a false report, which accusation is more likely to be false?
Why does the alleged rapist deserve presumption of innocence, but not the alleged perjurer?
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
So, anecdote time!!!
When I was in high school my best friend told me that a girl he'd had sex with at a party the prior weekend was going around telling everyone that he raped her. I didn't know the girl or anyone she knew. I had no knowledge of the event or even any second hand accounts. Zero info beyond what my friend told me.
What should I have done in this situation? If I'm always believing the victim, then how do I know whether my friend is the victim of a false accusation or a rapist? Why do I have to believe anyone? I still don't know what actually happened. Nothing ever came of it beyond him telling me about it that one time.
Should I have disowned him as my friend?
Yes.
(I’m taking your anecdote as a hypothetical. This post is not meant to be a personal judgement on you.)
What happened here is a classic “he said, she said.” You have a victim accusation and an accused’s denial.
In the absence of any other evidence, you chose to default to believing your friend and behaving 100% as though he were innocent.
When we say that part of the way society fixes the problem of sexual misconduct is for people to believe victims, what they’re saying is that you need to flip your default from “I’ll believe my buddy over any stranger” to “I’ll believe the victim over the accused.”
Both of those defaults are unfounded in evidence; they’re both heuristics, general behavioral strategies we adopt because we aren’t able to know with perfect certainty what the correct thing to do is.
So the key to this conversation is to say, “Because I know I am going to make a default assumption based on no evidence, which default assumption should I be making?”
Right now most people behave the way you do. People believe their friends couldn’t do such a thing, and they assume a stranger must be lying, or crazy, or whatever. Note that this is illogical. You know your friend, but do you know your friend’s intimate sexual behavior? Do you think your friend would tell you if they raped somebody? Most people do not know each other so well that the prospect of them having a secret like this is outlandish. Most people are notoriously bad at predicting what other people are capable of doing.
On the other hand, the only thing you know about the victim in this hypothetical is that she’s made an accusation. You also know that the vast majority of accusations are true. The fact that she’s a stranger means she has no social influence to wield on you in her favor, but it doesn’t mean you have a reason not to trust her.
Is society better off if you default to believing your friend? In most cases you’ll be protecting a rapist. That’s the world we have today—where the friends of the accused circle the wagons and shield that person from consequences. That’s a world where 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted and a lot of that goes unreported or unpunished.
If instead you default to believing the victim, I’d argue society is better off, even though in a small percentage of cases you’ll be ostracizing an innocent person. Because the vast majority of the time you’ll be rejecting friendship with a rapist and supporting a victim. That encourages women to report crimes. It tells people in your circle that there is a social cost to sexual misconduct. And that is the only way to start discouraging that behavior.
Your post begins with:
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
And ends with:
The fact is I don't want to have to believe anything out of obligation. People are fucked up. The idea that I'll trust people unequivocally, let alone a complete stranger is crazy.
If you truly believe that believing the victim is the right thing to do, you have to do that even when the victim is a stranger, or not as good of a friend, or wearing a short skirt, or (insert excuse here).
Because severing a social relationship is not the same thing as putting someone in prison, and should not be held to the same standard. If somebody texts me a dick pic I don’t need to investigate further to remove all reasonable doubt (hey, maybe he thought I was a doctor and he wanted my opinion about a wart), I just block the dude and move on. Just as nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts them, nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts other people. I have a lot of friends and none of them have ever been accused of rape, anybody can build that kind of friend group too.
You don’t want to do that because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision. Recognize that you’re never going to know for sure either way, that you’re always going to assume, and make the conscious choice to assume in the direction that’s most likely to help more people.
@Astaereth this is a lot to unpack but well put! You definitely correctly called out how I contradicted myself and made some great points.
I would say that you're a bit off the mark on my reaction to my friend (which I never really stated). I always had a seed of doubt about him. And if I'd ever met the girl, I'd have had a seed of doubt about her as well. Even if I went with the statistical likelihood of the accuser usually telling the truth, I'd still have doubts because it's just odds, not certainty. I don't think there's a single person I trust 100%.
There are more than two options between believing the woman or not believing the woman. You can withhold judgement. You can accept that you don't know the truth and never will. I think it's ok to let life be grey when it has to be. As long as you're kind and honest then you're fulfilling your moral duty.
Isn't the answer to hope your friend isn't a rapist but let the investigators do their best to make that determination and to purposely not attack the person making the report? It's not at all up to the friend to determine any outcome at all.
This is simple. You treat the situation seriously and don't harm the person reporting the assault just because your friend is the accused.
The problem right now is that that second part isn't happening and the accuser is attacked and shamed etc...
You owe your friend loyalty and support but that doesn't ever mean you're clear to attack someone else.
Recently, the popular gaming forum site NeoGAF imploded in on itself when the owner Tyler Malka "Evilore" was once again accused of sexual assault; and this time moderators are fleeing the site. The resulting allegations and flood of traffic even caused the site to be temporarily shut down for a time.
Tyler Malka has been accused several times in the past of sexual misconduct, even himself allegedly boasting about grabbing women without their consent. It seems like the latest allegation was enough to make Malka take matters in his own hands, shutting up all conversation about the scandal on the forums, and his fellow moderators are not having it.
The most recent meltdown, and the reason for Malka deleting massive amounts of threads on the site, and the temporary shut down, revolve around a recent Facebook post calling him out for a specific instance of sexual assault.
***
Just like with everything on the internet, a little digging is necessary to see the authenticity of certain claims; especially those in dealing with dire topics such as sexual assault. When the topic of NeoGAF and how they handle situations like this came up, one user took to a forum to explain that the post above is in fact real, and this is why we should care:
“Guess I should chime in since I'm being named.
In a private group convo, one of my fellow participants brought up the fact that EL got #MeToo'd on FB. I saw someone on my feed telling a story an hour prior that could've fit but I didn't read it too closely, was skeptical and posted a shot in our convo.. I was then directed toward the comments and lo and behold, there was the name. Was a holy shit moment for me, and something of a letdown too, having met both the accuser and the accused IRL. Posted that shot in our convo as well. Came to the realization that this should only really go public if the accuser wants it to because it's her story to tell, and the rest of the participants in the convo reached the same consensus, or so it seemed. I deleted the shots from our group chat. Turned out one of the people in there saved the shots, and gave them to another person who then posted it on Voat, and did a godawful job at concealing the identity of the accuser and myself before doing so. She doesn't deserve to get doxxed and harassed by the internet mob if she's not ready for it, and it's solely for that reason that I didn't want this getting out there, which is why I regret sharing that shot in that group convo.
But yes, it's real.”
Immediately after the above statement took place, that user was banned. A lot of speculation ensued afterwards when the original Facebook post was taken down, prompting many to wonder if it was real, which led to the above statement validating potential authenticity. More and more moderators for the popular site seem to be "jumping ship" including Besada, Xander Cage, Cyan, and Kabouter.
The site promptly went into lockdown mode and the moderators started stepping forward:
Malka continues to police the site, shutting it down, and monitoring social media statements bringing up the latest allegation. Many continue to bring up his past association with a previous moderator that was later arrested for child pornography. Malka distanced himself from the offender, though donations to him from Malka himself continued to come to light. Whenever anyone brought it up, from either side, the users were allegedly banned immediately.
Posts
I'm confused, are you saying that law enforcement officers believing someone who reports a sex crime does something to undermine the foundation of our criminal justice system?
I don't think law enforcement officers should believe anything or anyone. They should collect evidence and present their findings. I'd prefer if they were all robots.
I think the courts should continue to operate on a policy of not convicting someone of a crime if there's a reasonable doubt they didn't do it. That's what I was referencing as a foundation of our justice system.
Considering no one is suggesting that, I don't understand the relevance of this post.
Women don't come forward about being assaulted because no one believes them. Police have charged actual victims of sexual assault with making false reports after they cajoled and intimidated the victim into recanting. There's a very public case where this resulted in many other women being raped by a serial rapist because police wouldn't investigate. They just assumed it never happened. No on is suggested due process being withheld. What we're suggesting is treating sexual assault as seriously as other violent crimes, instead of treating women like they're making the whole thing up.
I literally cannot comprehend why this one crime, this one specific crime, deserves such behavior.
No one was suggesting that nor did I suggest that someone was. What people are suggesting is that an accusation should always be believed because it's rare that accusations are false. I replied to this idea stating that people are upset with this way of thinking not because they're afraid of being falsely accused, but because it's an idea that is in conflict with one of the foundations of our justice system (reasonable doubt).
I also suggested that what is a foundation in our justice system and how our social sphere works can be different.
As to your point about the police. Absolutely. Women need to continue to fight against an unjust system that is tilted out of their favor.
(to expand, public organizing, suing the police, recall the sheriff, etc.)
It's everyone else.
When someone says they were raped, the reaction of the people around them, especially friends and family, it shouldn't be some variation on, "Prove it." That's the prosecutor's job. When someone says they were attacked in any other way, the default reaction of the public is to believe them and talk about how dangerous things are. When someone publicly says they were raped, there's an absolute avalanche of people accusing her of lying.
I think this still rubs me the wrong way. I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to believe a stranger. And OF COURSE I don't believe anyone should assume a victim is lying and the people that accuse complete strangers of lying are sick.
No one has the mental energy or ability to categorize every stranger that makes the news into good or bad based on a couple soundbites. And I don't think we should either. It's another symptom of the digital age where we feel emotionally connected to complete strangers just because we see them in the news.
Now for actual people in your real life. Yes, I think believing the victim is a good course of action.
So, anecdote time!!!
When I was in high school my best friend told me that a girl he'd had sex with at a party the prior weekend was going around telling everyone that he raped her. I didn't know the girl or anyone she knew. I had no knowledge of the event or even any second hand accounts. Zero info beyond what my friend told me.
What should I have done in this situation? If I'm always believing the victim, then how do I know whether my friend is the victim of a false accusation or a rapist? Why do I have to believe anyone? I still don't know what actually happened. Nothing ever came of it beyond him telling me about it that one time.
Should I have disowned him as my friend?
The fact is I don't want to have to believe anything out of obligation. People are fucked up. The idea that I'll trust people unequivocally, let alone a complete stranger is crazy.
That's exactly how I'd put it
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Barring fairly significant upheavals like mandatory documented consent, legally it should look like:
Police and prosecutors investigate accusations thoroughly on the assumption that an accusation is true, and try to convict. They may fail to convict due to a lack of evidence, but not due to a lack of effort. The system as a whole must presume innocence, not investigators and prosecutors with an accusation in front of them.
Subsequent accusations against the same person become increasingly likely to succeed as evidence accumulates, so serial bad actors get caught sooner rather than (decades) later.
We should take away any officer discretion on preceding with rape investigations and we need to invest funding into the technology and techniques necessary to investigate rape thoroughly and sensitively.
I'm tempted to say we should have a legal burden to report sexual harassment, assault, and rapes. Arguably this will silence some victims who don't want their attack's reported to the authorities, but there's no perfect solution to that. Society can't give up the well-being of future victims to spare past victims emotional distress, as much as that sucks.
On how to behave socially we seem to have more actual disagreement, but I say 'seem' because I'm not sure.
As a random person with no authority over the situation, to an accuser's face, I believe them without digging and recommend counseling, reporting it, etc as best I can. To the accused's face, I believe them without digging. I watch and assess based on what comes up to the best of my ability, but tbh I don't know what's true--if I did, I'd be talking to police about it. If I'm close enough to the situation to need to pay attention, I do so and advise others to do so as well; if there's something to see it should be seen, and if not that should be seen too.
If I have authority over the accused, like as an employer or client or something, I believe the accuser the same. I dig more on the accused. I don't assume guilt or innocence, I just pay attention, ask pointed questions, review any HR documentation or other records that might be relevant, and use my head to make a judgement call. I don't need to meet the same burdens of proof as a court, but I'm not going to fire someone without something additional to go on. I am going to monitor them closely, and probably keep them out of unmonitored 1 on 1 situations.
In any situation where I know something relevant to guilt or innocence, I act on it. See something, say something. No free passes for friends, no assuming the best of acquaintances.
When someone says they were the victim of a crime, the minimum expectation should be support. Investigation is up to police. Proof is up to the courts. The rest of us should assume the victim is telling the truth and be supportive. That goes for any crime. We don't have to form a vigilante group and go after the accused, but we should ensure that a victim feels safe enough to report the crime. The fact that most women do not when they're sexually assaulted is an absolute failure not only of justice, but of society and everyone who is part of it.
I also think the police or investigators should have a duty to believe the reporter until given cause to think otherwise.
I think the criminal justice system should do it's utmost to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt though this could mean someone doesn't get justice, especially in he said she said situations.
How can we combat that?
Basically I think that "society" has a responsibility to be on a woman's side in this as the playing field is so tilted that it actively discourages coming forward. What to do if a false accusation comes up is a problem we can tackle when and if it occurs.
I think the "courts" continue to have the duty of proving an accusation and we can get better at this if we take rape and sexual assault more seriously.
In short, you can support women without causing the criminal justice system to collapse. You can if you try anyways.
I agree with everything in here (and no, I had no reason to think he was a rapist, nor did I ever meet the girl), but doesn't this go against "women need to be believed"?
If there's any obligation, it's to give the people in your life the benefit of the doubt and it's to stay out of complete stranger's business.
There's "don't rape people" and there's "but what about...."
The "but what about..." people can fuck right off
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I think that is a very gross misrepresentation.
No one I have seen has suggested anything other than, "don't rape people"
There seem to be separate discussions about how:
- the police should handle rape accusations
- the legal system should handle rape accusations
- social circles should handle rape accusations
- society in general should handle rape accusations.
While there is some crossover between each subject, I think they should also be dealt with and discussed as their own situation, because doing otherwise is leading to some crossed wires, and I think making people appear to be arguing who otherwise agree.
Yes.
(I’m taking your anecdote as a hypothetical. This post is not meant to be a personal judgement on you.)
What happened here is a classic “he said, she said.” You have a victim accusation and an accused’s denial.
In the absence of any other evidence, you chose to default to believing your friend and behaving 100% as though he were innocent.
When we say that part of the way society fixes the problem of sexual misconduct is for people to believe victims, what they’re saying is that you need to flip your default from “I’ll believe my buddy over any stranger” to “I’ll believe the victim over the accused.”
Both of those defaults are unfounded in evidence; they’re both heuristics, general behavioral strategies we adopt because we aren’t able to know with perfect certainty what the correct thing to do is.
So the key to this conversation is to say, “Because I know I am going to make a default assumption based on no evidence, which default assumption should I be making?”
Right now most people behave the way you do. People believe their friends couldn’t do such a thing, and they assume a stranger must be lying, or crazy, or whatever. Note that this is illogical. You know your friend, but do you know your friend’s intimate sexual behavior? Do you think your friend would tell you if they raped somebody? Most people do not know each other so well that the prospect of them having a secret like this is outlandish. Most people are notoriously bad at predicting what other people are capable of doing.
On the other hand, the only thing you know about the victim in this hypothetical is that she’s made an accusation. You also know that the vast majority of accusations are true. The fact that she’s a stranger means she has no social influence to wield on you in her favor, but it doesn’t mean you have a reason not to trust her.
Is society better off if you default to believing your friend? In most cases you’ll be protecting a rapist. That’s the world we have today—where the friends of the accused circle the wagons and shield that person from consequences. That’s a world where 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted and a lot of that goes unreported or unpunished.
If instead you default to believing the victim, I’d argue society is better off, even though in a small percentage of cases you’ll be ostracizing an innocent person. Because the vast majority of the time you’ll be rejecting friendship with a rapist and supporting a victim. That encourages women to report crimes. It tells people in your circle that there is a social cost to sexual misconduct. And that is the only way to start discouraging that behavior.
Your post begins with:
And ends with:
If you truly believe that believing the victim is the right thing to do, you have to do that even when the victim is a stranger, or not as good of a friend, or wearing a short skirt, or (insert excuse here).
Because severing a social relationship is not the same thing as putting someone in prison, and should not be held to the same standard. If somebody texts me a dick pic I don’t need to investigate further to remove all reasonable doubt (hey, maybe he thought I was a doctor and he wanted my opinion about a wart), I just block the dude and move on. Just as nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts them, nobody is obligated to choose to associate socially with somebody who hurts other people. I have a lot of friends and none of them have ever been accused of rape, anybody can build that kind of friend group too.
You don’t want to do that because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision. Recognize that you’re never going to know for sure either way, that you’re always going to assume, and make the conscious choice to assume in the direction that’s most likely to help more people.
You put together a really thoughtful account of your reasoning, and I can understand where you're coming from. I think that I would follow much of that sort of reasoning when considering a stranger who faced allegations of sexual harassment or assault. For people who have reservations about applying that reasoning to personal associates and friends, I wonder if there is an acceptable middle ground between "believe accusers" and "bros before hos".
Taking some time to ask probing questions seems worthwhile, doesn't it? I can hardly fault someone for having a certain amount of loyalty to a known friend, but it's also important to be mindful of the company that you keep. I don't want to put myself in compromised or compromising situations, and I definitely don't want to have public affiliations to bad people, so if someone I do associate with is accused of doing anything untoward, I'm going to try to find out what I need to know from that person to make a reasonably informed decision.
How quixotic.
I am criticizing the underlying assumption of the post that aims that no chnage is possible without maximal comfort afforded to men and their feelings about potential loss of power or sanctuary.
The evidence cited for this claim is incomplete and ahistorical. I am stating that it was not merely kid gloves that let to white people accepting black liberation, and therefore it's analogous relationship to the subject o cultural shifts on sexual assault cannot also rely on such a myopic view.
Making men feel safe from false accusation is not the main issue, and it so far from the core as to absolutely be a distraction. Making men fear true accusation is a necessary condition of cultural change. Many men will balk at that. That's fine. Change happens when a critical mass gets on board, not 100% of men. So the decalarative statements about what will absolutely, guaranteed occur if people who want to change the culture do not cuddle every indignant testicle who fear a loss of power are not convincing.
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And of course it’s just as important to actually support the victim as it is to deal with the accused.
Http://amp.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/77im7i/neogaf_owner_and_admin_evilore_accused_of_sexual/
Practically all the staff left once this came out, and the site is unusable at the moment.
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The fact is, "victims" have been known to lie about practically *any* crime, but when your friend says her car was stolen, you don't leap to "maybe you faked it for the insurance money" even though it has happened in the past and is perfectly feasible.
Is there a source that isn't KiA, which was the GlooberGorf homepage, essentially, orrrr
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Rape is a troublesome crime. It can happen without leaving physical or documented evidence.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
A couple of mods (who since quit the site upon the news) have been tweeting the details:
I was posting in a thread when everything came crashing down. It's really nuts, as I've been following GAF almost as long as I've had the internet. Say what you will about much of their members, but there were lots of friendly, helpful communities who could produce some amazing stuff. If the site's gone for good, that's going to remove a significant chunk of my internet browsing time and a giant lack of helpful resources I was using.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's important to specify what victims tell the truth about. Victims tell the truth about whether a sexual advance or some sexual situation was wanted or consented to. Victims may not always tell the truth (i.e. give an account of what happened that is consistent with other evidence about what happened) about the circumstances surrounding the assault/abuse, for a variety of reasons. Saying that "victims tell the truth" without going into any detail may inadvertently play into narratives around false accusations, because victims of assault and abuse aren't "reliable" in the ways that unsophisticated and uninformed laypeople might expect them to be.
Yeah, it's basically dead. I used to be a poweruser and seeing the site die like this makes me want to cry. I like you guys but the sheer craziness that went down in Neogaf was like watching a circus, a fireworks show, and a wrestling match all at the same time.
Also it's the only place on the internet that I found an out and proud black community that discussed comics and videogames. It was beautiful.
PM me if you need access to the discords.
I really hope that isn't the end for Gaf. Its got its ups and downs in the community like any site but its been a regular stop while browsing for years.
Hopefully it outlives the scandal and it gets sold. Can't see him just shutting it down if it was a source of income.
From the history of past forum implosions the community will probably schism into 2 or so offshoots, neither of which is NeoGAF
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Your strawmanning is pretty blatant. I made no reference about maximal comfort, or cupping balls, or whatever other sexual metaphor you want to trot out. I also didn't say anything about kid gloves, and certainly didn't say or imply it was the only thing that made change happen.
If the majority of men do feel a loss of power and sanctuary through these changes then they will be stopped, because men are already in power. That is the nature of power. People aren't going to change because you're sad or angry or offended or whatever. If giving them a reason to do so sticks in your craw, then I am sure you can sustain yourself on righteous indignation.
Cooler heads will actually make a difference by being someone people want to work with instead of against.
I am sick and tired of people coming in here and chiding the rest of us that we need to think first and foremost about men and how they feel.
Make no mistake, that's what you're doing here.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
It's not an either/or proposition. Change requires both pushing and pulling, and not everyone reacts to the same factors in the same way, if at all.
This is the problem with all of the emotional arguments going on in this thread. People get incredibly defensive and riled up when anything other than complete agreement on all points is had, including "well they should just change their minds and do it."
Even if you take it for granted that you aren't going to change the minds of the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, there is a larger question of what you are going to do for the majority of people, from both genders, who hold a worldview which prejudices them towards believing that rape victims are "sluts" rather than that someone could possibly be a rapist in the first place.
The vast, vast majority of these people are not themselves rapists, so screaming at them about the patriarchy or white privilege or rape culture isn't going to get you anything but eye rolls. Being even more confrontational will only cause them to dig in deeper. The psychology on these things is very clear. And yet, we face the problem that these are the people you need to convince in order to get widespread societal change, like it or not.
Most of us agree entirely in principle with the idea that: a) rape is bad, b) our society perpetuates attitudes which cause a gross under-reporting of rape and lack of consequences for rapists. But when some of us dare to raise the question of What Next? we get met with incredulous stares of "enabling the status quo" and being "part of the problem".
I have stopped 2 rapes and 1 assault in my lifetime, two of which put me in significant personal danger. I have opened up my home to victims of assault. When someone uses the word "rape" as a blithe metaphor, I correct them on the spot. When people express attitudes that perpetuate false ideas of what masculinity means, or assume the male gender where none is needed, I point it out. I go to the extent of using female gender pronouns as the default in the majority of my work correspondence, just as a matter of course.
I don't say these things to toot my own horn. I say them to make it clear that we are on the same page here. These things are wrong. We should be stopping them. But there are only a few limited things we can do within our own personal spheres of influence.
So my question, which I have asked repeatedly, and which to my count only two people have even bothered to grapple with, is what else can we do about it? If this thread is just going to be a place where people pat themselves on the back and point out how shitty everyone else is and how toxic and terrible "the other people" are, then I think I'll take my leave. Other people, who I expect are also allies in this fight, have already expressed how hesitant they are to even begin a dialogue here, and I think that speaks to the tone of the thread.
No, I am saying if you want to be as successful as possible, you need to take it into account.
That's not making it first and foremost.
The prevailing attitude is annoying as shit and I'm on your side. I promise you, you are making enemies you don't need to. You are actively working against your own interests.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
So what happens if Oprah Winfrey says her car was stolen?
GAF has a large cohort of very misogynist shitheels out to get site leadership for being so vociferously anti-GooberGoose as they were, so if this is true you're going to see the people who ran the largest coordinated campaign against women in internet history claim this as some kind of victory.
Aside from the gaming community losing what is *the* premier forum left on the landscape, bar none, this is only going to make the conversation around sexual assault worse in our fandom worse. Fuck.
@Astaereth this is a lot to unpack but well put! You definitely correctly called out how I contradicted myself and made some great points.
I would say that you're a bit off the mark on my reaction to my friend (which I never really stated). I always had a seed of doubt about him. And if I'd ever met the girl, I'd have had a seed of doubt about her as well. Even if I went with the statistical likelihood of the accuser usually telling the truth, I'd still have doubts because it's just odds, not certainty. I don't think there's a single person I trust 100%.
There are more than two options between believing the woman or not believing the woman. You can withhold judgement. You can accept that you don't know the truth and never will. I think it's ok to let life be grey when it has to be. As long as you're kind and honest then you're fulfilling your moral duty.
What other solutions can be put in place to support this?
Gag orders on sexual assault cases (i.e. neither the victim or suspect can be named)?
Sexual harassment training mandates for employment (not a handbook nobody reads and not after something shitty has happened)?
It sure seems like everyone is in agreement that we need to encourage and support victims so that they come forward and make reports. The criminal justice aspect is another kettle of fish.
I think it would be a good idea to talk about ways to do this rather than attacking each other.
It's a fact that women and other victims of sexual assault are actively discouraged from speaking up, what concrete things can we do to change this?
A hashtag and Weinstein falling isn't going to make a dent. Civil rights has been brought up a lot and it sure as shit wasn't just press and speeches that turned the tide. Actual laws changed.
Falsely accusing someone of rape is a far less common crime than rape itself.
So if person A is accused of rape and person B is accused of making a false report, which accusation is more likely to be false?
Why does the alleged rapist deserve presumption of innocence, but not the alleged perjurer?
Isn't the answer to hope your friend isn't a rapist but let the investigators do their best to make that determination and to purposely not attack the person making the report? It's not at all up to the friend to determine any outcome at all.
This is simple. You treat the situation seriously and don't harm the person reporting the assault just because your friend is the accused.
The problem right now is that that second part isn't happening and the accuser is attacked and shamed etc...
You owe your friend loyalty and support but that doesn't ever mean you're clear to attack someone else.
http://comicbook.com/2017/10/22/neogaf-down-owner-sexual-assault-/