• @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    I never said that OP was “siding with Linus”, I said OP was using a rhetorical style that can be used to dismiss/minimize claims from pretty much anybody, regardless of the situation.

    I wanted to call OP’s attention to the fact that that style of argumentation is used in bad faith more often than not.

    More than a couple people in my life have been sexually assaulted and if you’ve ever actually been close to somebody who has, the callousness of the “well why didn’t you…” line of nitpicking is glaring.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      Oh, I completely agree. I think the default should always be to side with the victim, even if there’s a good reason to doubt them.

      I just think we sometimes go too far and ignore the other side when it doesn’t line up with what the victim says. Weigh the evidence and the motives of each party before making a decision. The bigger the power difference between the two, the more you should suspect the larger party of malice.

      I’m more reacting to the strength of the language here, not the general idea.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        I had a false accusation of sexual assault leveled against me in a court filing (as soon as we got in front of a judge it got tossed). It is pretty awful to have something like that stated about you in an official document, even when the outcome is “Dismissed”.

        And fwiw, to take the Carroll case in NY, I thought the line of argument “she can’t remember what year it was?” was a pretty reasonable thing to have doubts about.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I’m talking about social media reactions here, not police policy.

          The police should always assume innocence unless you have proof to the contrary, because the opposite is a potential loss of liberty for innocent people. If you’re a regular joe, you should side with the victim until the other side posts evidence to the contrary, because the opposite is potentially normalizing bad behavior of people in power.