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In general, my guess would be that women are starting to tell their stories because they know how their silence affected their lives. I think they want something better for the women of today and tomorrow. I think they must surely recognize that conviction of their attacker is unlikely, but perhaps they hope to change the climate, the stigma against the victim, and what they assumed would be a traumatic and likely ineffective experience of reporting.
I think you're right about that. What's been sobering about the #metoo movement is how many women can actually say, "this happened to me, too, and I felt scared and alone and ashamed and that no one would believe me." Many men (people, really,) are dismissive of the zeitgeist, but we can only hope that its legacy will change the way we as a society do things.
...or...is there a debate at all? (Figured I'd post it in "Great debates)
I only write this because recently had a handful of female friends on social media post about how ashamed they are of their OWN friends on Facebook are calling the "reporting sexual assault 30 years later to be hogwash". That their friends are dismissing that if they came out with it this late, it was probably consensual and it was just regret sex or something.
(This happens when the guy has sex, and doesn't call her back and SHE calls it rape).
They are upset that their OWN friends find fault with women waiting so long to report it.
It's like "Shame on you for doubting them!"
Be honest, would you seriously block or unfriend, even in real life, your friends that you know on Facebook that have lacked empathy towards the victims coming forward decades later? Does it shock you that many are in opposition against those who come forward with their experiences?
Personally I feel that the processes in which we as a society go about reporting sexual misconducts in this country is severely flawed. I feel that there needs to be more education and safer ways for people that have had crimes committed against them the ability to report the crime with no shame, guilt, or judgement. That being said, we also need to make the laws clearer so that if you don't report the crime during the allotted time frame, then you lose the ability to later come forward. I also feel that if you feel you've been a victim of a crime, whether it's theft or rape, that you need to help the authorities in proving that a crime was committed. He said she said 30 years after the fact is a terrible way to destroy entire communities/work places/families/etc just by the accusation itself. We are all young once, and the things we do when we're young and experimenting are not the same things we do as mature adults for the most part. In my opinion, we are in a broken place right now, that needs reform, certainly in favor of the victim's rights and needs but also by not falsely creating new victims in the process.
It's wrong until it happens to someone whose career I want to see ruined, then it's right, just this one time.
To be clear, if Kavanaugh isn't affirmed by the Senate for whatever reason, his career will not have been ruined. He still has a lifetime appointment to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and it's unlikely that these allegations would be grounds for impeachment.
Serving on the Supreme Court is not a typical career move and should be reserved for the very most intelligent, well-educated, experienced jurists of the highest moral character that the U.S. has to offer.
None of us has any knowledge of whether Kavanaugh did what Ford alleges. But the Senators should hear both of them out and if they find her account credible, vote against his appointment. That is what they're charged with doing--making a determination of whether he's fit to sit on the Supreme Court.
The rest of it--why she waited to come forward, or the amount of evidence she can produce, or what the public thinks about her accusation, isn't really relevant.
As far as the OP's question, I don't use FB to call out people about anything, and especially not their political beliefs.
+1 to that. I'm afraid the last few weeks have done tremendous damage to the #meto movement. Originally, it was about outing monsters like Weinstien and Cosby. Now its morphed into making unsubstantiated claims for political reasons.
Its also concerning the radical shift in what constitutes "assault". I can't tell you how many college parties I attended where a drunken man or woman flashed parts of their body I didn't care to see. I didn't feel assaulted; I felt embarrassed for the person that had over-indulged. Also, an unwanted kiss now constitutes sexual assault. I have to admit that there was a time or two where I misread the messages and kissed someone. It was apparent the kiss was unwanted and I immediately backed off. The one case I most vividly remember, my shame and disappointment was much worse than the other person's experience of brushing me off. Its crazy to think that decades later this incident could be redefined as sexual assault.
Well, the thing is, when it comes to kissing, you never had (or have) to have permission. It was the man's job to just go for it, and asking "May I kiss you" at the end of a date would be a turn off to most women. It'd ruin the spontaneity.
1. The word rape is too broad a term, covers everything, and is desperately shoehorned onto minor cases where it just makes no sense. This dilutes the word and complicates the whole issue. An unwanted hand on a breast at an adolescent beer party, while not good, is not the same as hoodlums with guns abducting a woman out jogging, raping and beating her in a barn, and leaving her in a ditch. Nobody thinks about these acts in the same way. Nobody feels they should be punished in the same way. Yet the same word is used to describe them, or close. We need to have more nuance in how we describe the issue. I'm not at Cosby/Weinstein with Kavanaugh yet. Maybe I should be. I don't see evidence of this behavior in the last thirty years of his life. I don't see evidence of drugging people. I don't like what I hear, and I don't like Kavanaugh to begin with. But the nuance is lost here. There's an element of stick the worst buzzword you can find on somebody, and shiver in horror. I don't buy it.
2. Memory is fickle. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, even when the event is recent, and even when the eyewitness was sober. Not all eyewitnesses are wrong. Some get it right. But going thirty years back in the past, memories start to fade. I have writings from that long ago in my own life. Not everything I read in my diaries matches up to what I internalized in memory from those time periods. I find that my moods were sometimes different from what I remember, what I did, who I did it with, and so on. I'm not talking about huge discrepancies, but little things. I think everybody has had this experience in some way. We see an old picture. We forgot about one of the people in the picture. We're surprised. We're wearing a shirt we forgot about too. Without the picture, which is evidence, we wouldn't remember the little things. Credible testimony is built on little things. I believe Christine Ford in general. I have less faith in her ability to reliably describe the particulars of what happened.
In the end, we've made a choice. We could accept accusations uncritically. We would jail innocent people. Instead, we require proof. We can't prove everything. Guilty people get away. That a guilty person goes free invalidates the whole legal system to some people. An innocent person imprisoned, is worse in my view.
Last edited by unwillingphoenician; 09-24-2018 at 05:32 PM..
I have no problem with late reports. But, late report or not, we should have the same evidentiary standards. If your claims cannot be proved--a fact that may be magnified due to the passage of time--then we should not give you (as the accuser) the benefit of the doubt just because you are making allegations of sexual assault. Not when the accused is also credible. And news organizations should not be so quick to give such stories legs and credibility where there is insufficient evidence. That's journalist misconduct.
...In the end, we've made a choice. We could accept accusations uncritically. We would jail innocent people. Instead, we require proof. We can't prove everything. Guilty people get away. That a guilty person goes free invalidates the whole legal system to some people. An innocent person imprisoned, is worse in my view.
We should require proof. But now the accused gets tried in social media long before a point is reached in the legal system where proof, or lack of same, is evaluated. Look at the recent accusations of "emotional abuse" made against Chris Hardwick in an online blog. A social media furor ensued and before he could even respond, let alone an investigation be initiated, his television shows were taken off the air by two different networks and he was removed from a convention panel. The damage to him was immediate, and affected his reputation, career, and livelihood, all due to a "trial" without proof in social media. It took months for an actual investigation to clear him of charges that seemed dubious from the beginning to any rational person.
The problem here is not #MeToo, or the delay in reporting rape and other attacks, it's the fact that the accused are now victimized by SJW's in social media who incur no responsibility for their slander before moving on to the next target of their vitriol.
Because so many assaults go unreported, one has to wonder what the actual statistics are - I have to wonder how many American women there are who by age 25 and above have NOT been groped in some fashion at some point in their lives? Part of the problem is likely that if you count near same-age games of "Doctor", backseat fumbling in high school, etc., the number probably drops to near zero. And if you count non-sexual forms of assault, how many of us (male and female) have been bullied on the playground, roughed up intentionally playing sports, etc.? All of us?
Which goes to support all of the above comments that state not all assaults are created equally. "Copping a feel" on a date at age 15 is a bit different than what happened to Elizabeth Smart, and IMHO, should not disqualify one for being a Supreme Court Justice, especially if it cannot be substantiated beyond what has been done so far. I find it very, very convenient that someone affiliated with higher education (collectively a very liberal group), comes forward with this at the last minute to subvert a nomination by a President that liberals hate worse than a root canal. But even if it did happen, in the exact same set of circumstances as has been reported, it's not enough to offset a lifetime of good work and disqualify Kavanaugh. And before the screams of agony die down, I have two words for the screamers: Bill Clinton. And maybe two others: Ted Kennedy.
Because so many assaults go unreported, one has to wonder what the actual statistics are - I have to wonder how many American women there are who by age 25 and above have NOT been groped in some fashion at some point in their lives? Part of the problem is likely that if you count near same-age games of "Doctor", backseat fumbling in high school, etc., the number probably drops to near zero. And if you count non-sexual forms of assault, how many of us (male and female) have been bullied on the playground, roughed up intentionally playing sports, etc.? All of us?
Which goes to support all of the above comments that state not all assaults are created equally. "Copping a feel" on a date at age 15 is a bit different than what happened to Elizabeth Smart, and IMHO, should not disqualify one for being a Supreme Court Justice, especially if it cannot be substantiated beyond what has been done so far. I find it very, very convenient that someone affiliated with higher education (collectively a very liberal group), comes forward with this at the last minute to subvert a nomination by a President that liberals hate worse than a root canal. But even if it did happen, in the exact same set of circumstances as has been reported, it's not enough to offset a lifetime of good work and disqualify Kavanaugh. And before the screams of agony die down, I have two words for the screamers: Bill Clinton. And maybe two others: Ted Kennedy.
There's a little bit of a difference here. Whether we like them or not, Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy...and Larry Craig and Mark Foley...were ELECTED politicians.
Kavanaugh was not elected to the Supreme Court. Essentially, he's in the process of a job interview.
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