#MeToo Is Going Too Far
From arguably needed social change to a frenzied warlock hunt
We’re witnessing a perfect storm of sorts as various elements of leftist policy and ideology converge into an historical moment in which being accused of sexual harassment/abuse means being guilty. Being guilty, in turn, means the immediate loss of one’s career, one’s reputation, and one’s livelihood.
The accused is not able to confront his accusers, or even know their names, nor does he know, in many cases, that an allegation has been made or an investigation underway. He finds out when he is fired from his job, dragged through the mud, and is, what we’d say in any other circumstance, victimized.
There’s a problem here, one that we on the right may not be as willing to see because the majority of the people being taken down (so far) are unsavory persons populating socio-political worlds—Hollywood, politics, the media—in which we are “the deplorables.” It’s not hard to feel vindicated in some cases and Schadenfreude in others.
However, something very troubling is happening across our country. Not only is every alleged sexual offense from telling a ribald joke in mixed company to violently raping subordinates damned equally, but there is no burden of proof standard. Anyone can say anything about anyone, and the accused is finished, done.
So onerous is the potential for injustice that it’s being compared to the witch hunts associated with the Salem witch trials, a less-than-stellar historical moment that saw many good, innocent people not just lose their jobs but lose their lives based on the word of others.
The contemporary “warlock hunt” for sexual predators is also being compared to the nationally-embarrassing 1980’s hysteria about sexual child abuse, an hysteria that saw many good, innocent people not just lose their jobs but their freedom as they were imprisoned on false charges of sexual child abuse.
Tucker Carlson did a compelling segment on this in which he notes that despite some amount of pleasure on the right at the myriad lefties being forced from public life, principles matter. “Proof,” he notes, “is what ensures that the innocent are not punished.”
Watch:
The Left Insists Accusers Have the Right to be Believed. Period.
Proof is not needed to end the accused’s career, to deprive him of his livelihood, nor is he given an objective platform on which to protest his innocence. Indeed, protesting innocence is pointless because few will listen to much less believe the accused.
This idea that women don’t lie about sexual abuse or that because of their protected status they deserve to be taken more seriously than the “privileged” males whom they’ve accused of sexual impropriety is faulty on a number of levels.
Not only do people make false accusations in an attempt to seek revenge for some perceived wrong, but they can be coerced or coached to do so. We saw this quite clearly in the ’80’s when well-meaning social services personnel, teachers, and law enforcement worked to enhance and improve the recollections of children of sexual abuse that never took place.
Anyone questioning the veracity of the children’s often coached accusations were reminded that “children never lie.” Absolute nonsense, of course, but that was the silencing cry at the time. “If you don’t believe innocent children, you’re probably a pedophile, too! We’re coming for you next.”
This whole victims have a right to be believed viewpoint has legitimate roots. Rape victims in trials were (and still are) often pilloried for short skirts (they were “asking for it”) and for having a “reputation.” Sexual assaults, as a result, are underreported, and when they are reported, the victim decides not to proceed due to the attacks that would be made on her in court. I don’t think anyone thinks this is a good thing. Sexual assault is a serious crime, and its perpetrators should not be protected by their victims’ fear of further (and public) shame and humiliation.
That said, the pendulum has swung so far that there is no burden of proof at all on an alleged victim. Anyone who claims some sort of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is deemed to be automatically telling the truth. This has become such a socio-cultural touchstone that tone-deaf Hillary actually thought she could get away with supporting the victim’s “right to be believed.”
There is an unsettling element in the #MeToo movement that there is “justice” even when innocent men get caught up in and have their lives ruined as a result of false allegations. The sentiment appears to center on resentment and revenge for perceived historical wrongs that are used to somehow justify destroying innocent people today. This line of thought goes like this: “so what if innocent men are ruined? How many women throughout history have been ruined by men? Today’s men should suffer the same consequences because . . . erm, men are bad and have treated women wrongly, so . . .um, it’s our turn. Or something.”
Democrats and the Inversion of Justice
In theory, our legal system is designed to protect the innocent at all costs, including the occasional guilty person walking free when the burden of proof is not convincingly presented. Sir William Blackstone famously argued that it is “better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man should suffer,” and this premise was later iterated by Benjamin Franklin in 1785, with a significant change to emphasize the underlying principle of the Blackstone Formulation: “it is better one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.”
In the above video clip, Tucker quotes Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) who flips this on its head in discussing the Obama administration’s perverted application of Title IX:
“It seems like we ought to provide more of a legal framework then that allows a reasonable likelihood standard or preponderance of evidence standard,” the Colorado Democrat responded. “If there’s ten people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all ten people.”
“We’re not talking about depriving them of life and liberty,” he laughed. “We’re talking about them transferred to another university.” That line earned him a smatter of applause.
This cavalier inversion of the fundamental premise of U. S. jurisprudence (that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, that it’s better to release the guilty to save the innocent) is not an accident.
The Obama Admin, Title IX, and College Kangaroo Courts
The current toppling of alleged sexual predators across the political, entertainment, and sports worlds is rooted in Obama’s reign. It was during the Obama years that Title IX was exploited and weaponized on college campuses, where the basic tenet that one is innocent until proven guilty was defenestrated.
In the final five years of his presidency, Barack Obama’s administration undertook a worthy and bold challenge: the elimination of sexual assault on campuses. In fact, Obama’s team had a much more ambitious goal in mind. Vice President Joe Biden, the point person for the campus initiative, said at the end of his term that the administration was seeking “to fundamentally change the culture around sexual assault”—everywhere. New rules of sexual engagement between college students were written at the directive of the administration, but top Obama officials said they wanted these to be applied in the workplace and beyond.
. . . . many of the Obama administration’s good intentions went awry. Among the principles and polices that have become entrenched at schools—and are now spilling out into the wider world—are the beliefs that accusers are virtually always telling the truth; that the urgency to take action is more important than fair procedures; that we shouldn’t make distinctions between criminal acts and boorishness; and that predatory male behavior is ubiquitous.
These beliefs have resulted in many campus cases in which the accused was treated with fundamental unfairness, spawning a legal subspecialty of suing schools on behalf of these young men. Examining what happened on campuses shows where the politics and social rules of interaction between the sexes might be headed—and how to avoid making the same mistakes on a larger scale.
As always, the left wasn’t focused on college campuses; this was a dry-run for taking unsubstantiated accusations and trying them in the court of public opinion, with life-destroying results, the new normal. Once ingrained in our culture that the burden of proof was so light as to teeter on the word of a single accuser, the effect would ultimately reverberate though our legal system. Jurors would “just know” that an accuser is always right and the accused is always guilty.
Even as current Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss works to undo this damage, the socio-cultural impact is thundering. It’s thundering not because of some legal or federally-mandated kangaroo court culture (that’s easy to undo) but because that ideology sunk into American awareness. The idea that anyone accused of sexual crimes must be guilty because victims do not lie has become ingrained in our thought process, a part of how we see the world. This is incredibly dangerous.
The Perfect Storm and Its Resultant Warlock Hunt
A culture that insists accusers must always be believed, inverts justice, and restricts the rights of the accused can only lead to disaster.
From the American Interest:
In recent weeks, one after another prominent voice, many of them political voices, have been silenced by sexual harassment charges. Not one of these cases has yet been adjudicated in a court of law. Leon Wieseltier, David Corn, Mark Halperin, Michael Oreskes, Al Franken, Ken Baker, Rick Najera, Andy Signore, Jeff Hoover, Matt Lauer, even Garrison Keillor—all have received the professional death sentence. Some of the charges sound deadly serious. But others—as reported anyway—make no sense. I can’t say whether the charges against these men are true; I wasn’t under the bed. But even if true, some have been accused of offenses that aren’t offensive, or offenses that are only mildly so—and do not warrant total professional and personal destruction.
The things men and women naturally do—flirt, play, lewdly joke, desire, seduce, tease—now become harassment only by virtue of the words that follow the description of the act, one of the generic form: “I froze. I was terrified.” It doesn’t matter how the man felt about it. The onus to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties falls entirely on him. But why? Perhaps she should have understood his behavior to be harmless—clumsy, sweet but misdirected, maladroit, or tacky—but lacking in malice sufficient to cost him such arduous punishment?
. . . . It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime—like any other serious crime—requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.
. . . . Harvey Weinstein must burn, we all agree. But there is a universe of difference between the charges against Weinstein and those that cost Michael Oreskes his career at NPR. It is hard to tell from the press accounts, but initial reports suggested he was fired because his accusers—both anonymous—say he kissed them. Twenty years ago. In another place of business.
. . . . We are a culture historically disposed to moral panics and sexual hysterias. Not long ago we firmly convinced ourselves that our children were being ritually raped by Satanists. In recent years, especially, we have become prone to replacing complex thought with shallow slogans. We live in times of extremism, and black-and-white thinking. We should have the self-awareness to suspect that the events of recent weeks may not be an aspect of our growing enlightenment, but rather our growing enamorment with extremism.
Women will ultimately suffer the most from this age of the warlock hunt. What man is going to want to hire women? Especially young, attractive, intelligent women?
Revolutions against real injustice have a tendency, however, to descend into paroxysms of vengeance that descend upon guilty and innocent alike. We’re getting too close. Hysteria is in the air. The over-broad definition of “sexual harassment” is a well-known warning sign. The over-broad language of the Law of Suspects portended the descent of the French Revolution into the Terror. This revolution risks going the way revolutions so often do, and the consequences will not just be awful for men. They will be awful for women.
. . . . Given the events of recent weeks, we can be certain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preservation will cease to speak of anything personal, anything sexual, in our presence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are listening. They will adopt in our presence great deference to our exquisite sensitivity and frailty. Many women seem positively joyful at this prospect. The Revolution has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?
Who could blame a man who does not enjoy the company of women under these circumstances, who would just rather not have women in the workplace at all?
. . . . Our success and advancement relies upon the personal and informal relationships we have with our colleagues and supervisors. But who, in this climate, could blame a venerable Oxford don for refusing to take the risk of teaching a young woman, one-on-one, with no witnesses? Mine was the first generation of women allowed the privilege of unchaperoned tutorials with Balliol’s dons. Will mine also be the last? Like so many revolutions, the sexual revolution risks coming full circle, returning us right where we started—fainting at bawdy jokes, demanding the return of ancient standards of chivalry, so delicate and virginal that a man’s hand on our knee causes us trauma. Women have long been victims, but now we are in so many respects victims no longer. We have more status, prestige, power, and personal freedom than ever before. Why would we want to speak and act as though we were overwhelmingly victims, as we actually used to be?
Some on the Left Are Also Worried #MeToo Has Gone Too Far
A few leftists have started to speak out, questioning the nature of this warlock hunt hysteria and warning their enthusiastic peers of the unintended consequences of their well-meaning but thoroughly misguided #MeToo mania.
Virtue-signalling, one writer argues, cost a Democrat Senator his seat on the off-chance the #MeToo movement can be parlayed into the removal of President Trump. This is not a good plan.
“You know who’s going to get hurt by this?” a member of Congress asked me recently, referring to the about-time uprising of women against predatory men. “Women.” He explained that male members of Congress are now going to be reluctant to hire a woman when they have the option of hiring a man for a job, and that very attractive women would be particularly at a disadvantage in obtaining jobs on Capitol Hill. (Buxom is out.) Self-protection, in other words, might well lead to a new form of discrimination. And this could travel beyond elected politicians, though they’re feeling especially worried now.
. . . . The whole [Franken] thing happened with startling speed—no deliberations, no process, and no pause for thought, it seemed. The main actors against him got increasingly worked up—and they struck at the first opportunity. The entire episode, from when the first complaint about Franken was aired to when he announced unhappily that he’d leave the Senate, took three weeks; his self-appointed prosecutors turned on a dime, at first supporting and then throwing process (consideration by the Senate ethics committee) to the wind.
There wasn’t even a meeting of the party caucus to deliberate and discuss. (Male Democratic senators with misgivings didn’t want to get in the way of the women.) A group of Democratic women senators got up a head of steam; its ringleader, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, declared, a doctrine of “zero tolerance.” “Enough is enough!” became not just an expression of exasperation but a policy.
. . . . What’s particularly disturbing about the Franken affair is that a senator was driven from the seat he was elected to because he’d become inconvenient. . . .
. . . . What was the inconvenience caused the Democrats by the sudden spout of complaints about Franken? Well, you see, the Democrats—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer weighed in, probably sounding Franken’s doom—didn’t want to have to answer the “what-about” question when they attacked the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore for the documented charges against him of pedophilia or when they attempted a new assault on Donald Trump’s predatory behavior toward women in the past.
At least one leftist is concerned that the wrong (i.e. right wing and/or broad brush “misogynist”) agenda is being served and argues that it’s important to figure out whose agenda is being served by allegations of sexual misconduct.
This should be a moment when powerful men and the women who’ve protected them say: ‘hey, when we were in charge it didn’t go that well, maybe we should learn to doubt ourselves, and our judgment, maybe we shouldn’t make snap decisions based on our brand-new interest in women as human beings possessed of inalienable rights.’
But instead they’re just finding new grounds to be in charge and to adjudicate all this.
Consider the experience of writer Ijeoma Oluo, who last week said that USA Today asked her to write a piece arguing a feminist position against due process.
She says an editor there told her, “[…] They want a piece that says that you don’t believe in due process and that if a few innocent men lose their jobs it’s worth it to protect women. Is that something you can do?”
They were asking her to say feminists are happy to harm individual men for the good of the cause, and not interested in distinguishing innocence from guilt. She refused. That’s not who she is and not who feminists are.
. . . . A friend who was once a congressional aide remarked to me that when it comes to men in the legislative branch, they’re nearly all guilty of some form of sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior, insensitive remarks, and so forth. I suspect a high percentage of powerful heterosexual men in general are guilty of at least Franken’s degree of denigration of individual women, and if such things are grounds for dismissal, fairness would demand we dismiss them all.
But we are not going to find out about all of them. We are going to find out about some of them not because they are the most egregious, but because of other factors—because someone has good documentation to share, because a former victim is not afraid, or because something matters more than that fear, or because it fits a larger political agenda.
. . . . In this moment, we need to ask better questions. Whose agenda is being served in each case? Who decides? How do we weigh degrees of gravity? This is not about men who violated the norms but about the fact that misogyny has long been the norm. Misogynists have been protected and promoted for not decades but centuries. What are we to do about that?
Moving forward, we need to figure out who decides not just these individual cases but how we move past this era of impunity—and who “we” is going to be, because justice for women sure doesn’t include Project Veritas and Mike Cernovich.
We do indeed need to ask better questions at this time. Why, for example, should all accusers be believed to the exclusion of any defense by the accused? Why is it okay to invert justice and argue that it’s okay if innocent people get swept up in the warlock hunt hysteria? How can we undo this now entrenched socio-cultural belief? How, in other words, do we ensure that needed change happens in terms of sexual predation but that we don’t throw common sense, fairness, and decency out with the bath water?
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Comments
The Cultural Revolution has simply left the campuses and entered mainstream society. 20 years from now the idiots now in college will be the “leaders” of America. Oh, boy! I can hardly wait.
I’m glad that I won’t be around in 20 years, though I worry for my grandchild and the world she will have to face.
Maybe that is the reason this entire family did this.
“An entire family in Arizona have decided that all of them are trans. NPR celebrates.”
http://www.gaypatriot.net/2017/12/17/running-in-the-family/
Don’t worry , the frenzy will end when the manufactured crises fails to
unseat Trump , All the Liberals will go back to similar work and circumstances .
Anyone who did not see where this was going has not been paying attention.
They’ll be in for a surprise.
“… takedown of the “Deep State” by his first publically exposing their perverted sex lives, with new revelations to come being warned “will rock the nation” this coming week, this report concludes, Security Council intelligence analysts note that the Obama-Clinton supporting search giant Google is now using its immense power to censor content, to include the shocking sexual predatory evidence against the leftist MSNBC host Chris Matthews…:
December 17, 2017
America Warned Is Unprepared For Trump’s Cataclysmic Destruction Of “Deep State”
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2454.htm
You are SO RIGHT!
The Democrats are already declaring what FRANKEN did was just alright by them!
“Absolute nonsense, of course, but that was the silencing cry at the time. “If you don’t believe innocent children, you’re probably a pedophile, too! We’re coming for you next.””
Sounds like Rags.
That was his goto accusation over Roy Moore.
What if a male will only speak with a female subordinate in writing or on video because no other contact would be safe from unsubstantiated claims? What if all males decide to carry recorders during every working minute if a female also works there? I have all daughters with professional degrees and careers. This trend will hurt them I fear.
False claims of racism have led us to segregated dorms on campus, no whites allowed meetings, etc. The Klan could only dream of this crap returning. I fear we are heading toward organizations that may be all male or female. Or, maybe the safe environment where women never leave the house so men are safe! Isn’t that how they do it in Saudi Arabia?
Jail the real offenders (Clinton should have been in prison in Arkansas)and not wait for decades. The MSM owns this mess for their coverups.
Written records can be altered. Video and audio can be edited. The only safe means of keeping men from assaulting women, or women of accusing men of assaulting them, is to completely segregate the genders. This seems to work just fine for the Saudis, and much of the Muslim world. Perhaps we should require that all women be chaperoned by male relatives and live behind walls the rest of the time.
Do women really want to go back to that kind of future? Or do they want to put their big girl pants on and get on with life? It is their choice.
“What if a male will only speak with a female subordinate in writing or on video because no other contact would be safe from unsubstantiated claims? What if all males decide to carry recorders during every working minute if a female also works there? I have all daughters with professional degrees and careers. This trend will hurt them I fear.:
Excellent point. I think that we have seen the corollary in the “de-policing” of minority neighborhoods. The Black Lives Matter hysterics have caused police officers to react by responding only to the most critical incidents, and it those living in mostly poor, mostly minority neighborhoods who are paying the price by living under anarchy. You know, those people for whom, for the most part, the BLM idiots purport to speak.
This sounds surprising similar to what I, and a few others, have been saying on this blog for weeks. SURPRISE…SURPRISE…SURPRISE!!!
PROOF…PROOF…PROOF. Does everyone understand NOW?
Seen plenty of comments here at LI crucifying those accused on the sole word of the fake news Left’s say so. Some serious irony there.
How do we fix the problem when the majority of tenured-job-for-life university professors are teaching young adults to push tumbrels and operate guillotines?
How do we go about pulling down the corrupt professors without ruining the university system? It’s like peasants in feudal England plotting against king and country.
We make a concerted effort to start attacking the universities, particularly their grievance studies programs. Demand that your state legislature defund them to the extent they can. Threaten to revoke their land grants if applicable, unless they eliminate such programs. Get your Congressmen and Senators involved.
All of this slime originated in the universities. That’s where it’s gestating right now.
“We’re witnessing a perfect storm of sorts as various elements of leftist policy and ideology converge into an historical moment in which being accused of sexual harassment/abuse means being guilty. Being guilty, in turn, means the immediate loss of one’s career, one’s reputation, and one’s livelihood. The accused is not able to confront his accusers, or even know their names, nor does he know, in many cases, that an allegation has been made or an investigation underway. He finds out when he is fired from his job, dragged through the mud, and is, what we’d say in any other circumstance, victimized.”
Fuzzy, it’s even worse than that.
First of all, it’s not just that job, or your reputation up to that point. It’s your possibility for ever holding any job ever again. Because any future employer is going to be able to search and the accusation will pop up. It’s your possibility for having a life — that same search is not uncommon in the dating game these days. There it is again. The fact that the cops investigated and found no evidence won’t matter — ask that poor Kentucky congressman. That’s assuming the cops won’t reopen it so they don’t get accused too.
There will be no Jimmy Valentine in this brave new world.
And this isn’t especially new; there’s always been a certain number of people who will play the accusation card to dodge punishment. Padding expense reports, non-performance in your job, a multitude of sins can be hidden under the charge of “sexual harassment” or “hostile environment” or “raaaaacist”. What’s changed is the willingness to disregard evidence in favor of Narrative.
“Women will ultimately suffer the most from this age of the warlock hunt. What man is going to want to hire women? Especially young, attractive, intelligent women?”
Why, the man who doesn’t want to be accused of refusing to hire them because they wouldn’t put out, of course.
I really don’t see a good end for this.
This, from the crew who excoriated Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his hunt of communists in our government and media. He turned out to be right, didn’t he?
MCCARTHYISM: THE ROSETTA STONE OF LIBERAL LIES
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2007-11-07.html
McCarthy was an odious dirtbag. He was, however, right about the Communists.
It’s possible his alarums would have been taken more seriously had he not been an odious dirtbag. But perhaps not.
Isn’t it funny how the only people willing to upset corrupt apple carts are odious dirtbags? That may not be a coincidence.
“The great and toothsome sinners are made out of the very Same material as those horrible phenomena, the great saints.”
“They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.”
Screwtape
The progs support this. They do not care what the consequences are.
It’s up to people of good character to put a stop to this. Insist on evidence. Do not believe 40 year old accusations by paid accusers to start with.
In my opinion the backlash is not going to be against women being hired, it’s going to be not believing women who actually have a true case.
We tried very hard to do this in the Roy Moore case.
Everyone who wanted to find him guilty found a way to rationalize their prejudice. We’ve got 300,000 Alabama Republicans right now, patting themselves on the back over the maintenance of their virtue.
…though maybe a little less now with a Democrat Senator.
This is the real problem: people have to fight their own natures while at the same time being provoked to self-righteousness by the poison of social media.
Fighting yourself is a tough business. As Richard Feynman said, “you must not fool yourself, but you’re the easiest person to fool.”
many .. political voices, have been silenced by sexual harassment charges….Leon Wieseltier, David Corn, Mark Halperin, Michael Oreskes, Al Franken, Ken Baker, Rick Najera, Andy Signore, Jeff Hoover, Matt Lauer, even Garrison Keillor—
Huh… I wonder why Roy Moore was not listed here.
Duke Lacrosse anyone?
Yes. Insist on evidence. And separate rape, assault, and extortion of sexual favors on threat of job or promotion loss from less serious behavior.
When I was working, I heard all kinds of raunchy language, and this was in the 1970s. I told the men (I was the only woman) that my only requirement was that they don’t aim it at me. We got along fine, and no unhurt me or threatened to.
Doggone autocorrect. “No one” hurt me.
The first thing to do is recognize that only part of the country is throwing a hissy fit. It is the same bunch that that has been throwing one hissy after another for months.
I did not get flapped over my kids when they threw tantrums, either.
But your kids don’t drive the headlines. And they don’t have a vote.
What we’re witnessing is the political equivalent of the AIDS crisis: a plague which strikes down a “high risk” group (Democrats) while partisans hysterically try to convince society that it affects everyone equally.
You reap what you sow.
Though I should also clarify, I assume two things:
1) Due process largely reaches the truth.
2) Democrats are probably guilty.
The guilty will be found out, the innocent will be freed.
So by supporting the rule of law, I’m not really risking anything. This is one of those happy situations where doing the right thing morally is also the easiest course of action.
I wouldn’t count on it. And when the false accusers aren’t charged, it won’t stop.
https://www.heartlandcollegesports.com/2017/12/17/rodney-anderson-latest-example-of-metoo-movement-gone-too-far/
“They [men] will adopt in our presence great deference to our exquisite sensitivity and frailty. Many women seem positively joyful at this prospect. The Revolution has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?”
Have you ever entered a room and everyone suddenly stopped talking? THAT’S what the workplace will be like for women now.
“…its ringleader, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, declared, a doctrine of ‘zero tolerance.”
Gillibrand is the Robespierre of this revolution. She pushed hard for Obama’s Title IX kangaroo courts. Her career has build built on the backs of crushed young men, some of whom were innocent.
Because she’s from indigo-blue New York, she most likely will never have to pay for her behavior.
Thank you for standing up. Fuzzy. One political pattern that’s always annoyed me and turn me cynical is the tendency of victim group’s to only support rights for their own group. I’ve gone through life watching as white CIS males championed blacks gays and women. And very rarely seen those groups champion rights outside of their tribal unit. It’s sad that your defense of men is noteworthy, but bear with me awhile as I pause and enjoy this moment 😉
Well done.
Something needs to be done about the enablers. All of these managers and supervisors and staff that “always knew” should no longer be allowed to get away with that.
And you’re spot-on about the wait victims are treated by organizations when they step forward. I was not sexually harassed but I pursued action against the perp through the organization’s (Society of Creative Anachronism, SCA) conflict resolution system on behalf of three women and their preteen daughters who were afraid to come forward.
As a male you don’t understand it until you experience it. I’m partly thankful that I have. For these women, none of which were Shrinking Violets, coming forward would only have inflicted more pain and suffering on them. One of them explained it as this: “Nothing will be done about him and I will be drug through the mud all over again.
And she was right. I sat down with a regional officer and over the course of 18 months back and forth she never even approached the perp. Not even a “Hey Sir Richard, I’m hearing some troubling complaints about you and newcomers… what’s going on?”. But she scrutinized me up down abd sideways. Her entire game was to shut me down with threats of libel slander lawsuits (do you have a spare $30k to prove your innocence?) And find out what hard evidence I had so that she could begin damage control.
I had endured threats of violence threats to my marriage threats of financial ruin, I had been warned ” if you continue to pursue this people you care about will get hurt”. Many nights awake worrying ” They’re coming for you. There’s no Cavalry over the bexr hill coming to the rescue. You’re all alone. Are you sure you want to do this?”. But I’m a United States Marine. I think I may have folded if not for that. And this Regional officer bitch Twisted all of it around and spread rumors I was molested as a child. that I was on some vengeful Crusade, Ahab still hunting the whale. This was the bravest thing I ever had to do in my life ( and I’ve led LAV-25 platoons through minefields) and she reduced it to a pitiful joke. This was a regional officer of the SCA, and a Public Defender in DC. Of all the people who should have helped not just me, but the girls Richard had tried to groom and molest, as well as preventing future victims.
He had been targeting single moms with preteen daughters for 18 years. 18 fucking years and getting away with it because people like her enabled him.
And that’s the hardest part for these women who come forward – this loss of faith in people they’ve always respected admired and looked up to. Imagine if you went to Professor Jacobson at a convention with a complaint that one of his colleagues had tried rape your friend. And his response was “Oh she’s been asking for it, practically begging, did you see the way she was dressed this morning?” .. after you recovered from the shock would you ever be able to look at him the same way again? And when I went to the people in the SCA that I trusted they fell like dominoes. One after the other I found that these Paragons of character and virtue where all empty suits every single one of them (except Theo). Later when I did research I discovered that survivors of sexual assault often experience .. loss of faith in authority figures and institutions, depression, drug abuse, suicide. And I can understand why, these betrayals are like getting assaulted all over again – it kills your soul.
And I maintain that the enablers are worse than the perp. Mini psychiatrist have come out with studies claiming that child pedophiles cannot be cured, they are wired this way, born this way. So in a sense, even so their actions are evil, they don’t really know any better. But the normal people surrounding them who see the signs and look the other way and stare down at their shoelaces those are the evil people, they know better and they allow it. Because if they make a fuss they may not be invited to the cool parties.
Penn State serves as a good template for this pattern. A lot of people spent a great deal of time money and energy on the football program. When that program was threatened, the Long Knives came out. Any action was permissible in defense of the football program. In the morning after the dust settles they looked in their mirrors and their conscience said hey we may have done some things that we can’t live with. And they responded Hell No we’re going to live so let’s look at those memories and adjust them. – yes we were fighting against gossip and rumor mongering and envious boosters from other organizations we didn’t really Shield a child pedophile no…
Anyways, TLDR – we need stronger laws that will rope in the enablers of sexual harassment and sexual assault. If the HR Manager it’s covering for a VP’s 10 years of raping interns, she needs to be in the cell right next to him.
My Lord, what more do you want, in the area of rape and sexual harassment protections?
We have shield laws in place to protect people, usually women, who come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault. We have been defining what constitutes violations of laws and standards in this area for decades. We have processes in place to hear these complaints, investigate them and deal with them. Corruption and corrupted officials have always existed and the only thing that can be done by them is to expose them.
What your basic complaint seems to be is that women are terrified of being scrutinized. If a man’s veracity is examined, in light of his making serious charges against another, no one whines that he will have to relive the “trauma” of the initial incident. However, in the case of women making these claims, the old double standards crop up. Women should be believed simply because they are women. Women are delicate little flowers who can not be exposed to any trauma but are perfectly capable of facing the trauma of combat. All women are paragons of virtue, even though some of the most famous women in history were liars, cheats, murderers and scoundrels of the highest magnitude.
All allegations of heinous sexual behavior should be examined closely and appropriate action taken. No accuser should be summarily dismissed. And, anyone in a position of authority who ignores such accusations, or who acts to protect the abuser should be punished. But, an accuser has got to expect that his or her accusation will be examined closely and that they will be examined as well. This is especially true where no independent corroborating evidence exists. A person who accuses another of beating him, who can not produce physical marks or witnesses to the assault, will have to prove his veracity in other ways.
The business of business is not justice, it is business. Much of what gives our latter-day Mcartyites power is the desperate, deep motivations of organizations of all sorts to seek safe harbors. “Better safe than sorry” saith HR, and they’ll continue to say it so long as the cost of discarding due process remains far lower than the cost of failing to act on a legitimate complaint.
It does seem ironic that one of the few defenses against this is the claim that “it’s bad for women.” Of course, it is bad for many women for many reasons, but not at all bad for those willing to use false accusations as a weapon to disarm or destroy rivals. Or sometimes just for the social approval of being recognized as part of a seemingly righteous social movement.
For, truly, it’s bad for all of us. For who would choose to live in a society where “believe the women” means there can be no effective defense against even decades-old accusations made with little if any supporting evidence?
“women don’t lie about sexual abuse,” they said. Yet most of us understand that people lie about all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, but few things are lied about more than sex. Is anyone willing to assert that women are inherently more honest than men, or that an assertion of “men don’t lie about that” wouldn’t elicit little more than a belly laugh followed by withering ridicule? People lie. About all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons. But especially they lie about sex (past and present).
But you’ve always known that, haven’t you?
Accusers do not have the right to be believed they have the right to be heard. We should listen and verify. No where at no time in our system of justice has there ever been conviction without proof. Now can be no different.
So we listen, we hear, but we cannot decide without proof.
Touche!
You win the Intertubes today!
RE: “Accusers do not have the right to be believed they have the right to be heard.”
What greatly concerns me is how the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater in the feeding frenzy to name an accuser. If the individual has a number of claims, it is probably a pattern of behavior which, as a psychologist, I would expect to find. If it is a singular accusation, or only one that brings a few others that cannot be substantiated, it is unlikely to be a pattern of behavior.
What people do not understand (and why it is so critical to scrutinize character) is that a person who does this as a pattern is unlikely to stop. Bill Clinton is a good example. They surround themselves with like-minded types (confirmation bias) that will lead them to believe everyone does it. They are usually sincerely shocked to be told it is unacceptable because they go down the rabbit hole of self-deception.
Millenials are learning a very hard listen in the difference between popularity and virtue. Being popular does not guarantee virtue, and being virtuous doesn’t always guarantee popularity.
Welcome to the cruel harsh world. Glad you finally arrived.