Senator Al Franken accused of sexual assault.

[Landlord]

2 hours ago, knapplc said:

I've just seen enough people falsely accused that I want a greater sense of proof than we have with Franken.

 

 

So I guess the 'cliche' liberal response is a hierarchy of importance, and something along the lines of, "we've seen infinitely more people (women) be abused and not be heard or taken seriously, so this isn't really something we should dedicate our priorities or attention to nearly as much as the much bigger epidemic."

 

Which is true. But, I guess what we're all trying to figure out is what the ideal means of approaching these situations would be in an equal world. I frankly have no idea what the answer to that is. It's impossible to be neutral - if you don't have an opinion, you're complicit in the status quo of inequality -- if you default on the side of believing women, then you are not giving legitimacy to the accused -- if you default to "innocent until proven guilty" then your stance is kind of in opposition to the claims of the accusers. What's a person to do?

[knapplc]

7 hours ago, Landlord said:

What's a person to do?

 

Easy answer - withhold judgment.  The problem comes from this need we have to establish a position right away. 

 

Judges don't do that. A Judge on their bench hearing both sides of a case isn't endorsing the defendant by not summarily ruling for the plaintiff, nor are they endorsing the plaintiff by hearing the evidence.  They sit, impartially, until enough evidence has been gathered to render a decision. 

 

Where society runs into trouble is when we form an opinion immediately.  Because nobody wants to admit being wrong, once that initial opinion is formed, it's unreasonably difficult to change a person's mind even in the face of fact.  The Duke Rape Case is a fantastic example of that and is along the same lines as these cases.  Way too many people convicted those kids before the facts were in. 

[teachercd]

Here is the answer.

 

1.  Do you have a job?  If you answered "yes" go to question two.

 

2.  If someone came to your job today, went to your boss and said "So and so groped me X amount of years (months, days, minutes) ago" would you think it was fair to be canned?

 

It is hard to do but it is fair.  

[TGHusker]

 While I appreciate the more open environment for women to 'tell their story' my concern is that there can be false claims presented for various reasons - political, revenge, monetary, etc.

So we end up trying the accused in the court of public opinion.  The falsely accused are summarily banished from a career, a family, a future.  The accuser got her (or could be his) position presented in public but the accused will find it difficult to present their side of the story in this type of 'judicial medium'.   So, I think there is some danger here - and we have to be slow to draw conclusions. 

 

With all of that said - I want this to be clear  FALSE ACCUSERS WILL BE RELATIVELY RARE and all complaints should be taken seriously.  We should also remember that the accused is not being tried by a jury of his/her piers overseen by an impartial judge. So we should be quick to listen but slow to judge. 

[QMany]

On 12/7/2017 at 1:00 PM, knapplc said:

To the bold - that is called hearsay, and not admissible in any court of law.  In the court of public opinion it's iffy. 

 

There are a ton of "Exceptions to the Rule Against Hearsay." See FRCP 803. Just because it is hearsay does not make it inadmissible. Just as one example, an excited utterance ("statement relating to a startling event made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement that is caused") is admissible hearsay.

[zoogs]

This has been a very distressing conversation for me. I'll continue to try to argue for a perspective I feel is not at all uncommon, except in some circles, including this one, it's the sort that will be resolutely opposed. If I'm unable to be persuasive, then I am sorry. I hope that you'll listen to others who can be.

To me it's felt this keeps coming back to two questions: 1) are Franken's multiple accusers credible, and 2) is what Franken allegedly did that big a deal. I reject the suggestion of carelessness because I think the case has been made as emphatically as can be, and Franken's own response is revealing. Yes, we need to be careful, but we have not been careless. There's a flavor of argument that bolsters the regime of silence, which, by all our admissions, is a tough but worthy thing to crack. And to #2, every allegation -- from the gropes to the kisses to the photos -- they're bad. Other things are bad, too, but so is this! There's rape, and there's also casual, pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct. The kind of atmosphere where men, especially powerful ones, see women's bodies as things for them to access at their pleasure and without asking, that's the world in which we have been living. It's been fine, even invisible for a lot of us. It hasn't been for others. And change is hard. It means recalibrating what we consider appropriate -- because the polite silence, accommodation, patience, and "you can't prove that" that have long been reinforced as reasonable are part of the edifice propping up that world.

I think there's a clear fear here about how easily a man's career can be destroyed by an allegation. There's a larger conversation to be had here as well, but again, the fight is not for the blanket, willy-nilly belief and immediate response to every woman. It is precisely the case here that this started off with a public, corroborated case and was followed by numerous others, both open and anonymous. 

With respect to workers being fired from their jobs, this is about labor. The accused have rights, naturally. Organized labor can and should protect them from the caprice of bosses and companies, who might be thinking about PR (see NBC's firing, and un-firing of Sam Seder as one example). Where Franken differs is that he is a public servant. Partly through his response but primarily through the sum of his actions, his credibility has been shot. He has not been burned at the stake by a lynch mob, he is not the victim of a new-age Red Scare, the rule of law in America is not crumbling, or any number of other grossly inadequate analogies that will always be bandied about in such times. He lost the ability to hang on to this seat of power with dignity, and this was his own doing. It's a credit to the public and not a shame that we've interpreted events in this way.

Matt Yglesias made a worthwhile point a few days ago in how we should openly include partisanship in these discussions. I think that plays no small part in all of this. We cannot help but be compromised by our political beliefs, especially the more firmly held they are. Franken will be replaced by a Democratic Senator and the Democratic Party will be stronger for his resignation. I do not know how I would have responded if MN had a Republican governor instead, since I haven't been put to that test. Any action Franken took after all of this came to light was inherently a political one. Hold fast, deny, argue for a slap on the wrist -- none of these things would be possible without seriously compromising both his own and the entire Democratic Party's fight on this issue, and all women's issues. The charges are too serious, too credible for any of those recourses, all of which are necessarily rooted in "but what if these charges are actually all frivolous? We've no way of knowing." I can appreciate that someone sees zero difference in the absolute criminal court verifiability of the claims on Franken, or Moore, or Weinstein, or others. I can't help but notice the lack of protest when it comes to Moore and all the times he's been called a child predator.

Franken may yet have his day, but with each new allegation it's looking more and more unlikely. I appreciate the example he set in the act of stepping down and commend him for finally doing it. I especially appreciate his many Senate colleagues who finally made this necessary, as it's clear that he himself still doesn't *really* see it. 

 

tl;dr -- 
Sorry for the book. It's hard and frustrating to take part in these arguments a lot of the time, and I can't promise I'll continue. This is one of the things I feel most strongly about, and I'm hopeful today that the conversations, tough as they are, are moving forward in the right direction. 

[BigRedBuster]

8 minutes ago, zoogs said:

This has been a very distressing conversation for me.

 

Gosh, I thought we were having a decent and healthy conversation about this.  Sorry it's so stressful for you.

[zoogs]

Wow, I'm sorry that's your response. We are having a decent and healthy conversation. It's also not a frivolous, impersonal, or inconsequential one. So of course it can be distressing. 

 

Since it was unclear, I'm saying that it is really, really hard to see the prevalence of certain kinds of responses to this event. And how firmly held those perspectives are. I'm laying out both my opposition to them and why I find it distressing. I'm not saying, "you guys are mean for stressing me out", if that's how you are taking it. If you feel yourself totally untouched by any way all of this goes, I suppose that's good for you.

[BigRedBuster]

11 minutes ago, zoogs said:

Wow, I'm sorry that's your response. We are having a decent and healthy conversation. It's also not a frivolous, impersonal, or inconsequential one. So of course it can be distressing. 

 

Since it was unclear, I'm saying that it is really, really hard to see the prevalence of certain kinds of responses to this event. And how firmly held those perspectives are. I'm laying out both my opposition to them and why I find it distressing. I'm not saying, "you guys are mean for stressing me out", if that's how you are taking it. If you feel yourself totally untouched by any way all of this goes, I suppose that's good for you.

 

I have a wife who is in management of a decent sized company.  I have two daughters who will ultimately be professionals working in the work force.  I want them to be protected in the work place and feel comfortable reporting inappropriate sexual activity if it happens.  I have over 100 employees where many are women that I value very much as employees/friends and their contributions to the company.

 

I take this issue very serious.  

If you're distraught discussing this with me, I have specifically said that I'm not talking just about Franken.  I'm fine with him resigning.  I thought he was a dork anyway and think there's better to have in the Senate.  If these allegations are credible (and it seems some are) then great....glad he's gone.

 

My part of the discussion is based on the general question of, how do we move forward in a word (that I support) where women feel free and empowered to come forward, how do we classify, verify or quantify a complaint to the point where a man's career should be destroyed?

 

That might seem like a horrible question to you, but, it's a very valid question to ask and it doesn't make me, as the person asking it, some horrible person that supports sexual harassment.  

 

Edit to add:  I do respect your views on this by calling out for the resignation of a Senator from your own party.  There are many people that don't do that.

Edited December 8, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[Landlord]

15 minutes ago, zoogs said:

Wow, I'm sorry that's your response. We are having a decent and healthy conversation. It's also not a frivolous, impersonal, or inconsequential one. So of course it can be distressing. 

 

Since it was unclear, I'm saying that it is really, really hard to see the prevalence of certain kinds of responses to this event. And how firmly held those perspectives are. I'm laying out both my opposition to them and why I find it distressing. I'm not saying, "you guys are mean for stressing me out", if that's how you are taking it. If you feel yourself totally untouched by any way all of this goes, I suppose that's good for you.

 

 

I think you'd do well to understand that a lot of us (at least I'm assuming a lot of us, but definitely at least myself) still feel quite ignorant in some respects about these realities, and how we should respond to them, approach them, and deal with them. I didn't learn about any of this in school or from a textbook. I've never actually been told in my life, explicitly, about the concepts of consent or bodily autonomy or what is or isn't harassment, etc. I've learned everything I know through conversations like this one.

 

My ignorance should not be a cause of stress for you, it should be an exciting opportunity to engage and bring me out of it. 

[zoogs]

"I'm so distraught, guys, and it's your fault" is not what I was trying to communicate, so please don't be fixated on that. And I'm not saying that you support sexual harassment.

 

I guess the case I'm attempting to make is that I feel some of the popular responses really undermine the cause. To go back, again, to that editorial by Rebecca Traister I've referenced a few times now. I feel rather dismally that this is what is going to play out: https://www.thecut.com/2017/11/rebecca-traister-on-the-post-weinstein-reckoning.html?utm_campaign=thecut&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

 

Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them. So there will be more — perhaps unconscious — hesitancy about hiring women, less eagerness to invite them to lunch, or send them on work trips with men; men will be warier of mentoring women.

 

This is a watershed moment for us. It's not clear that the backlash won't win out. There's a lot of feeling polite and reasonable encoded in it, and a lot of shrillness, impropriety, falling-over-face-anger being ascribed to the movement. This is a dizzying time and I don't think I'm the only one stressed out by it. Where exactly our anxieties are, I think outlining them and discussing the worthiness of those respective concerns (both sides of which can be held at once, maybe!) is a valuable exercise.

 

 

 

[zoogs]

14 minutes ago, Landlord said:

I think you'd do well to understand that a lot of us (at least I'm assuming a lot of us, but definitely at least myself) still feel quite ignorant in some respects about these realities, and how we should respond to them, approach them, and deal with them. I didn't learn about any of this in school or from a textbook. I've never actually been told in my life, explicitly, about the concepts of consent or bodily autonomy or what is or isn't harassment, etc. I've learned everything I know through conversations like this one.

 

My ignorance should not be a cause of stress for you, it should be an exciting opportunity to engage and bring me out of it. 

I appreciate that. I don't mean to blame anyone, and I don't mean to suggest that either you should have known or are horrible people for not feeling the same way. I'm in the exact same boat: I didn't learn any of this in school. It's all been through the conversation we're now having, nationally. And for the most part, it's been a really eye-opening, positive, and optimistic process. Seeing the power of the pushback, at the same time, can be quite demoralizing. This isn't on any of you; I've read the same arguments many times before. At times it feels like this is an inevitable feature of humanity on aggregate, or at least as it will be in our lifetimes. Because you realize it's not the domain of some out there folks on the fringe. It's strongly built in to our very notions of reason and respectability. How on earth do we change that? It feels quite fragile.

[knapplc]

17 minutes ago, zoogs said:

"I'm so distraught, guys, and it's your fault" is not what I was trying to communicate, so please don't be fixated on that. And I'm not saying that you support sexual harassment.

 

I guess the case I'm attempting to make is that I feel some of the popular responses really undermine the cause. To go back, again, to that editorial by Rebecca Traister I've referenced a few times now. I feel rather dismally that this is what is going to play out: https://www.thecut.com/2017/11/rebecca-traister-on-the-post-weinstein-reckoning.html?utm_campaign=thecut&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

 

Quote

Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them. So there will be more — perhaps unconscious — hesitancy about hiring women, less eagerness to invite them to lunch, or send them on work trips with men; men will be warier of mentoring women.

 

This is a watershed moment for us. It's not clear that the backlash won't win out. There's a lot of feeling polite and reasonable encoded in it, and a lot of shrillness, impropriety, falling-over-face-anger being ascribed to the movement. This is a dizzying time and I don't think I'm the only one stressed out by it. Where exactly our anxieties are, I think outlining them and discussing the worthiness of those respective concerns (both sides of which can be held at once, maybe!) is a valuable exercise.

 

 

This quote in here is partly what I said on Page 1 of this thread, speaking about the backlash.  Men are seeing men forced out of their positions without trial, without due process, without anything other than one side's story being told.  It does not matter if those stories are all true, a step was skipped and that will have consequences. 

 

I can't see how anyone interested in these women seeing justice can be OK with the men accused not getting justice.  That can't not backfire.

 

[zoogs]

Without question, I think the easiest way to avoid provoking this backlash would have been to keep the peaceable status quo and stay in the lane.

 

Nobody is even talking about depriving men of their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process. If we are to invoke the fifth amendment, we should also note that we are not talking about the depriving of life or liberty -- except in cases, such as charging a guy with crimes and potentially throwing him in jail, where due process will be observed.

 

The only issue I'd take with your statement is whose fault is the backlash. The bear is being poked, and we wouldn't like the bear if they got angry. Perhaps the problem is that  they are a bear who will respond in this way to preserve their desire to not be poked about this.

[RedDenver]

5 minutes ago, zoogs said:

Without question, I think the easiest way to avoid provoking this backlash would have been to keep the peaceable status quo and stay in the lane.

 

Nobody is even talking about depriving men of their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process. If we are to invoke the fifth amendment, we should also note that we are not talking about the depriving of life or liberty -- except in cases, such as charging a guy with crimes and potentially throwing him in jail, where due process will be observed.

 

The only issue I'd take with your statement is whose fault is the backlash. The bear is being poked, and we wouldn't like the bear if they got angry. Perhaps the problem is that  they are a bear who will respond in this way to preserve their desire to not be poked about this.

You're not addressing the case knapp is talking about: what happens when a man loses his job/career (or other punishment) and then it turns out his accuser was lying? Then the pendulum is going to swing back the other way where the accusers are no longer believed right away, which is where we've been before. So instead of that happening, let's be sure of the facts before meeting out punishment.