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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Dylan Farrow: read this excellent piece of writing

3 replies

DuskAndShiver · 03/02/2014 23:17

thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/woody-allens-good-name/

"The second reason it’s okay if I’m wrong is that I’m probably not wrong. It’s much more likely that I’m right. Because I am not on Woody Allen’s jury, I can be swayed by the fact that sexual violence is incredibly, horrifically common, much more common than it is for women to make up stories about sexual violence in pursuit of their own petty, vindictive need to destroy a great man’s reputation. We are in the midst of an ongoing, quiet epidemic of sexual violence, now as always. We are not in the midst of an epidemic of false rape charges, and that fact is important here. All things being equal, it’s more likely that the man who has spent a lifetime and a cinematic career walking the line of pedophilia (to put it mildly); all things being equal, the explanation that doesn’t require you to imagine a conspiracy of angry women telling lies for no reason is probably the right one. It’s a good thing that juries can’t think this way, that they can’t take account of Occam’s Razor, because—in theory—the juridical system needs to get it right every single time (or at least hold tenaciously to that ambition). But you and I can recognize the bigger picture, because we aren’t holding a person’s life in our hands. Especially in situations like this one, the overwhelmingly more likely thing is that he did it. The overwhelmingly less likely thing is that a pair of bitter females—driven by jealousy or by the sheer malignity of the gender—have been lying about him for decades."

OP posts:
scallopsrgreat · 03/02/2014 23:57

I like. Good way of explaining the whole innocent until proven guilty trope which inevitably leads to a default position of the accuser is lying. We aren't in a court of law!

Scarletohello · 04/02/2014 00:00

Brilliant!

TheDoctrineOfSnatch · 04/02/2014 09:12

That's a great article, I do wish it was taught that "innocent until proven guilty" means that until judicial process has reached a judgement, a person must be treated in the eyes of the legal and social system as having the status "not guilty" (and of course it is guilty and not guilty, rather than innocent and guilty) and that they cannot be treated prejudicially afterwards if a trial returned a verdict of not guilty.

It does not mean that the accused is a saint and the victim is a liar.

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