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Senator Al Franken accused of sexual assault.


QMany

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Well agree with it or not it’s done . Next comes an order for Trump to step down and Moore to be disqualified from holding public office right ? All the Democrats who called for Frankens resignation , and any Repubs with a conscience should be equally outraged and take action ? Equal proof and admission of guilt is all there, it should be a no brainer. 

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Accusers are currently not only not believed right away, they're not especially believed, period. 

 

Here's an analogy I think is more apt than the Red Scare: racism. When the PC, pro-diversity crowd got their way, didn't they know the backlash was inevitable? When white people's careers were tarnished on charges of racism -- some of which, undoubtedly, could be perceived as unfair -- shouldn't we have been more careful? The movement and the protests against all of this: hey, we sympathize, but *this* particular way is not the right way. *This* particular way is to inappropriate, too much an overreaction, too fast to mete out retribution. How can we blame people for feeling the victim?

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Perhaps it'd help to place all this "let us wait and be sure of the facts" in context.

 

When the news first came out, I was stunned.  My first reaction before being made to reconsider was, well, he's not even touching her (look, I've a blind spot too about this). And there was the story. Could Franken deny it? No. He chalked it up to interpretation. He chalked the groping claims to interpretation, too. Those looked harder to prove, but the number of claims mounted, different women who'd crossed paths with him and reportedly told others about the events years ago. Franken said he was sorry, and ashamed. That he didn't mean to.

 

Perhaps if Franken had swiftly and more adequately come to terms with this, he'd be OK, but he sized up the situation and did not. And so he took himself down. Maybe he's a serial creep, maybe he was blissfully unaware of his casual creep moves, or maaaaaaaybe the groping part is an elaborate coordinated conspiracy coincidentally targeting a guy who didn't think twice at the time about taking that photo. Definitively, though, he compromised his position beyond repair. To defend this while remaining in office, he -- and Democrats -- would have had to fall back on asserting the interpretations of multiple women were mistaken when it came to forcing a kiss, or grabbing a body part. That "mime, but no touch" was not that big a deal.  Franken wasn't fired. He backed himself into a corner no voter or legislator with earnest priorities for advancing women's rights -- he'd count himself among this number -- could credibly back him.

 

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Undoubtedly there will be people who will attempt to lie -- perhaps even people paid by garbage organizations to try and bait journalists to publishing their fictions. Some of them will succeed, either by fooling the public or fooling the courts, due process and all. We can all appreciate the need to be careful. Nobody, to my knowledge, is saying wantonly believe all women and fire all men and to always shift the conversation to this point is an unintended disservice. When somebody with bad intent succeeds, let's all recognize where is and is not appropriate for the backlash to be directed, and not let the promise of inappropriate retribution moderate advocacy where it's important.

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1 minute ago, Landlord said:

There are plenty of people saying that.

 

Hm, I disagree.

 

At least from my side, I see the prevalent argument being nuanced. "Believe women" is not "believe all women, no stipulations, in every circumstance, as long as they are a woman, because it is actually impossible that there might be a woman who lies." I see a lot of people trying to clarify this in the face of misinterpretation. I do not see people on this side saying, "No, actually, it's the other one." Since I bolded that nobody, I should probably clarify that you can always find somebody saying everything. But this isn't a relevant thing that is happening, except in either unintentional or willful misrepresentation of the other side so as to cast them as the Real Threat(TM).

 

 

 

Splinternews: https://splinternews.com/believe-all-women-isnt-a-thing-1820799914

 

The Mary Sue: https://www.themarysue.com/yes-we-need-to-believe-all-women-mika-brzezinski/

 

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/08/analysis-movement-metoo-but-heres-why-were-still-talking-believewomen/923156001/ Particularly well-stated here:

 

"This moment is not happening because there are a bunch of women out there who believe due process and the rule of law need to give way to mob justice," said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA. "This is a moment where a class of people who have been systematically denied voice, have been denied respect, are being allowed to speak, and first and foremost we need to listen."



In fact, Williams notes, the saying has not been "believe all women" but simply "believe women" — a phrase that implores people not to brush off victims at the outset.

 

I hope that if this was a point of confusion here, that this clears up what people on my side of this argument are actually advocating. 

 

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It's great that all of these highly educated feminists and social psychologists can extrapolate the fine-toothed nuance of what it does and doesn't mean, but most people take things like, "Believe women" at face value. I get it though - "We need to adjust our posture to how we immediately receive claims of abuse on behalf of women because of their historically silenced and dismissed voices, and the rare occurrence of actual false accusations" doesn't work as well as a hashtag or a rallying cry.

 

I guess I personally don't feel a burden to believe anything in particular about most situations very detached from my life. If I was in a professional field that behooved me to it would be different, and if someone I have a relationship with is assaulted or is sharing their experience (my best friend was recently raped, for example, and the DA tragically didn't take the case due to lack of evidence), then I absolutely find it very easy to believe them, but otherwise I mostly just observe and listen.

 

The question I have for you zoogs is, like with what I was saying to knapp about getting to a place of equality meaning tipping the scales disproportionately the opposite direction -- are you comfortable with the micro collateral damage in pursuit of the macro progress? As evidenced in the NYT article, there are plenty of people who are okay with it (and also as evidenced by the article, there are plenty of people saying, 'believe all women', despite you personally not knowing of any :lol: ). As evidenced in this thread, there are plenty who aren't (knapp). What's your take? 

Edited by Landlord
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9 hours ago, teachercd said:

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.  

Seriously?

 

If you are not a public official, and the groping didn't happen at work or involve coworkers or clients your boss has very little interest or reason  to know or care about your groping.   Much less discipline/fire you for something that you did in private.  As horrible as assuault/harrassment is that's a reach teach.

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4 minutes ago, NM11046 said:

Seriously?

 

If you are not a public official, and the groping didn't happen at work or involve coworkers or clients your boss has very little interest or reason  to know or care about your groping.   Much less discipline/fire you for something that you did in private.  As horrible as assuault/harrassment is that's a reach teach.

Yes.

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19 hours ago, Landlord said:

It's great that all of these highly educated feminists and social psychologists can extrapolate the fine-toothed nuance of what it does and doesn't mean, but most people take things like, "Believe women" at face value. I get it though - "We need to adjust our posture to how we immediately receive claims of abuse on behalf of women because of their historically silenced and dismissed voices, and the rare occurrence of actual false accusations" doesn't work as well as a hashtag or a rallying cry.

 

I guess I personally don't feel a burden to believe anything in particular about most situations very detached from my life. If I was in a professional field that behooved me to it would be different, and if someone I have a relationship with is assaulted or is sharing their experience (my best friend was recently raped, for example, and the DA tragically didn't take the case due to lack of evidence), then I absolutely find it very easy to believe them, but otherwise I mostly just observe and listen.

 

The question I have for you zoogs is, like with what I was saying to knapp about getting to a place of equality meaning tipping the scales disproportionately the opposite direction -- are you comfortable with the micro collateral damage in pursuit of the macro progress? As evidenced in the NYT article, there are plenty of people who are okay with it (and also as evidenced by the article, there are plenty of people saying, 'believe all women', despite you personally not knowing of any :lol: ). As evidenced in this thread, there are plenty who aren't (knapp). What's your take? 

 

I'm not posting doctoral dissertations from the ivory tower èlite here, gosh. It's not that much nuance, it doesn't require "high education" to understand, it just takes the slightest bit of paying attention to grasp what "believe women" means.

 

Or maybe we can decide that feminism really screwed the pooch by going with "believe women" instead of "listen to women, and understand that the default has been too much on the side of dismiss" and decide, therefore, that the are being appropriately discredited for it.

 

Yes, I think if for example all men accused of anything were shot on the spot in a terrifying new authoritarian dystopia, that would be bad. Hopefully with all the understanding that you do have you can see what I'm trying to say here. Something -- let's say racism and injustice -- is very far in one direction. Cry out for change, and all of a sudden elicit all manner of "oh, but this will go too far the other way." That was an awful NYT article from Bari Weiss (https://theintercept.com/2017/08/31/nyts-newest-op-ed-hire-bari-weiss-embodies-its-worst-failings-and-its-lack-of-viewpoint-diversity/) fighting imaginary demons. But to answer your question, I don't even want the scales to tip to the reverse of where they are today, because that would be a pretty s#!t deal for men. 

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On 12/9/2017 at 0:55 PM, zoogs said:

But to answer your question, I don't even want the scales to tip to the reverse of where they are today, because that would be a pretty s#!t deal for men. 

 

 

How do you get to even if one scale has been favored to extra for 300+ years and we don't want to favor to the other side in our pursuit?

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7 hours ago, Landlord said:

 

 

How do you get to even if one scale has been favored to extra for 300+ years and we don't want to favor to the other side in our pursuit?

 

If you've been flying your plane in circles, the easiest way to get to a straight path is to even out your wings. Move the stick too far and you're just flying in circles in the opposite direction.

 

 


 

Add Mario Batali, TV Chef, to the growing list of men outed for harassing women. 

 

Mario Batali Steps Away From Restaurant Empire Following Sexual Misconduct Allegations

 

 

 

 

If I had to guess, I'd say most every major newspaper in America has a long list of men who have been outed by sources, and they're working to verify the stories as we speak.  This is going to continue for a while.  It's good for society.  Get it all out in the open, and show women that we're listening. 

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