Two things to note:

Saying that this is from the nyt is misleading. It's an option piece and I doubt it's endorsed.

Second, that article appears to be attacking a strawman. Few, if any, if the feminists I communicate with believe that "believe all women" is an absolute insofar as there should be no further investigation.

It came about because historically, society didn't trust but verify, it ignored and threw under the rug. Believe women was a reaction to "but are you sure you weren't asking for it" and "but you don't remember, so how do you know you didn't consent". It was a call to trust but verify. People who say otherwise are either missing important context, or are pushing a false narrative.

I agree with you that attributing this view to a whole group is likely to be neither accurate nor particularly interesting. Plenty of feminists and others seem to be waking up to the conclusions made by this piece.

As much as I believe you that most people furthering this view had the best intentions, that does not stop us from critically inspecting if this idea is a good one when applied in real life. In practice this has turned into what the article describe, and I believe any claim to the otherwise is at this point only of rhetorical interest. Are you claiming otherwise, and if so how do you explain the mob-like behavior with no due process?

I reject the claim that "believe women" has turned into what the article describes, except in alarmist circles. The reactions to different accusers I think sides with me on that. Consider Weinstein vs. Franken. Reactions we're very different, in part due to the political nature, but also because the Franken accusations are less extensive than the Weinstein ones. Alarmism like that article misses the context that Franken chose to step down, prematurely in the eyes of many, whereas Weinstein has denied and fought this. Had Franken reacted like Weinstein, he'd still be in the senate and likely free of any major repercussions.

What mob like behavior and what lack of due process? Do you mean that people are seeing legal repercussions without due process? Or that private entities are choosing to disassociate from people without due process? In the second case, what standard of due process is necessary?

Are you suggesting it is morally wrong for me to disassociate from someone if I witness them committing a heinous act, because due process has not completed? If not, at what level of certainty is it morally acceptable for me to disassociate from them?

Are you asking for examples of the mob-like behavior? And lack of due process? Here are some:

-Duke Lacrosse, Rolling Stone, Columbia-guy,...

In the Lacrosse case there were legal repercussions in terms of the behavior of the prosecutor AND private entities ie. Gang of 88 issuing that infamous letter. Similarly in the Rolling Stone and Columbia cases.

False witch hunts like these are indeed relatively uncommon..but they do exist and are they definitely are a function of 'believe women.' Perhaps these are unavoidable consequences of a generally good policy..but it would be foolish to ignore discussion of them entirely.

Side note: Franken was clearly pressured out by the democractic party...I doubt very much he would be free of major repercussions if he had ignored that pressure. I think he was going to be ostracized by his caucus and he saw the writing on the wall. Once those senators published that letter...he was done.

I don't think anyone is suggesting it is morally wrong to disassociate from people whom you reasonably believe to have committed heinous crimes. In the words of Edward R Murrow responding to ongoing McCarthyism "We must remember always that accusation is not proof and conviction depends on due process of law." In practice, this simply becomes be cautious with leaping to judgement and exercise some common logic in weighing the credibility of accusations...like the fantastic reporters at the Washington Post did during the Roy Moore expose.

All three of those examples significantly predate the metoo movement, and I'd argue that none lacked due process:

- Lacrosse, due process was followed, but the prosecutor acted in bad faith.

- Rolling stone: The police investigation cleared them, there were no charges or anything, the story was considered a hoax/fake/discredited ~2 weeks after it was released.

- Columbia mattress guy: Found not responsible by the university.

I think I can agree that there was mob like behavior in those cases, maybe, but I don't see a lack of due process.

> Franken was clearly pressured out by the democractic party.

Yes, I think its a bit more confusing because of the Moore election at the same time, ie. the pressure may have been in part manufactured to prevent cries from republicans about hypocrisy from the democratic party, but that's a lot of conjecture. In any case, I think its pretty much unanimous that Franken's actions are less heinous than Weinstein/Moore, or at least the things that are considered credible.

>like the fantastic reporters at the Washington Post did during the Roy Moore expose.

Indeed, but there's a significant group of people that appear to think that that expose wasn't due process, and that anything that doesn't pass through the legal system is by definition not due process (and this is what I object to). It appears that GGP is someone who holds that opinion, but they avoided directly answering that question.

reading more of your comments I disagree with very little of what you said

edit: sorry if I wrote too much. I guess I got excited.

Sure they predate #metoo but they are part of the same laudable impulse: to hold sexual predators accountable-often in the court of public opinion. I fail to see why you would make a dichotomy between them and this moment. Maybe this one is larger?

Before we continue: I am not lawyer and I am going to refer to due process roughly as "When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law." (wikipedia for due process)

Perhaps we should smear the meaning of due process a little bit for this discussion. I do not want to be too legalistic. Could we not expand our discussion to include due process on the part of media? I.e. skepticism, verification, basically making sure stories are well sourced and are as true as is possible given reasonable constraints. In short, good, professional journalism in the sense of Woodward and Bernstein.

Now onto the core of your comment. You are mincing your words very very finely. Due process was 100% violated in each of these cases.

Lacrosse-The prosecutor was DISBARRED and JAILED (briefly). Crystal Mangum LIED. MIKE NIFONG LIED. Just because justice won out in the end doesn't mean there were not significant due process violations during the case. Maybe lying isn't a violation of due process in the strict legal sense. But it sure as hell is a miscarriage of justice and that should be very frightening.

Those falsely accused still experienced real and lasting damages including being harassed verbally on campus by protestors, being shamed by faculty members. The press leapt to judgement and turned a bunch of rich, privileged, smart(?), white boys into monsters.

To me this case is incredibly concerning-because if rich white male lacrosse players can be falsely accused and have their lives turned upside down and possibly destroyed...what chance do the less fortunate members of american society have? how many poor black men, innocent of any crime, are rotting in overcrowded prisons? How many innocents are on death row? I think we have a duty to be cautious...I would rather we let some guilty escape than we punish innocents. I don't know where I would draw the line in terms of numbers.

Fun fact: one of the duke lacrosse guys now works for the innocence project.

-Rolling Stone: There are people who still believe that story...

-Columbia mattress guy- and no ONE cares. people still talk about that accuser as doing a profound service to the moral ethos of the republic. That guy's reputation was shattered. He had his education interrupted and experienced real damages.

Franken: Yeah.

Re: your last part. This could be partially my fault for conflating due process in a legal sense and due diligence and good journalistic practices a la Washington Post. I agree- those people exist and they need to be convinced otherwise.

Look- I just posted in another comment thread advocating for and supporting the fact that in the American press people have substantial freedom to make accusations and shame malefactors. It is essential to safeguarding our liberties. I treasure that right. However, that right imposes on us, as citizens and readers, certain responsibilities to ensure we do not falsely accuse and shame the innocent. I think that duty is simply to be restrained and be calm and reserve our strongest opprobrium until we have a reasonable degree of certainty. If you are ever accused of a significant crime or misdeed (in court or in the press) I am sure you would hope that you yourself be extended that same privilege.

Honestly do we really have any point of argument? I mean come on- do you really think duke-lacrosse didn't have due process issues? If so we need to talk more about the facts of the case.

Here is my tldr: false accusations are real, they do happen, and so I think it behooves the public to weigh the strength of an accusation and ponder the merits of each individual case before looking for witches to burn. Alternatively, sexual abuse/harassment are a real problem and I think all of us, men,women,non/binary, children, should be introspective about how our own actions can make things worse for victims and easier for predators. Most people accused of crimes are guilty.

Similarly, when we let false accusations stand we empower those lunatics who really and truly do believe that every accuser of roy moore is a paid liberal shill and that women should be returned to a state of powerlessness and legal bondage. This is not an academic point-I go on the /r/The_Donald to see what they are like and people there really and truly believe that.

edit2: I didn't really talk in detail about lacrosse/mattress but they had problems.

To the majority of your comment, I agree. However, one thing that I want to note, and this is a bit of semantics, but I think very important here:

>Due process was 100% violated in each of these cases.

Your reasoning that due process was violated is that the accused (and the prosecutor) both lied. I'll point out that the reason we have due process in the US is in part to defend against false accusations. As a result, I think that the series of events false accusation -> investigation and case -> acquittal is the opposite of a failure of due process, its a shining success.

This extends to the Roy Moore/project veritas example too, but replace "due process" with "journalistic integrity", and remove the sort abuse of power overtones that make due process that much more important.

Ah an interesting point about due process. I buy that.

Yes journalist integrity is a good term that I feel captures the scope of what we would like to discuss.

Side note watching the project veritas videos is so heartwarming. It really makes you believe in democracy and truth again. Seeing good fact-checking...glorious

Some prominent examples of the lack of due process and mob-like behavior below, and this is just the top of the iceberg.

Edit: My exact point is that in these cases it seems like the employer in question announced that they believed the accuser before looking into both sides and the evidence.

As a disclaimer I don’t know the truth of Smiley’s or Lizza’s cases; I don’t have enough detail to form an opinion. And yet, that in itself seems disturbing. It seems safe to say that few of these men will ever work in journalism again; there is a blacklist, and unless they can conclusively clear themselves, most of their names are on it.

## Lizza in the New Yorker

After what appears to have been a fairly brief investigation, it announced that Lizza was a sexual abuser, but left the rest of us to guess at what sort of abuse might be involved. Lizza, meanwhile, says: “The New Yorker has decided to characterize a respectful relationship with a woman I dated as somehow inappropriate. The New Yorker was unable to cite any company policy that was violated. … This decision, which was made hastily and without a full investigation of the relevant facts, was a terrible mistake”.

## Tavis Smiley of PBS reports a similar experience:

Quote from Tavis: "PBS launched a so-called investigation of me without ever informing me. … Only after being threatened with a lawsuit, did PBS investigators reluctantly agree to interview me for three hours.

If having a consensual relationship with a colleague years ago is the stuff that leads to this kind of public humiliation and personal destruction, heaven help us. The PBS investigators refused to review any of my personal documentation, refused to provide me the names of any accusers, refused to speak to my current staff, and refused to provide me any semblance of due process to defend myself against allegations from unknown sources. Their mind was made up. Almost immediately following the meeting, this story broke in Variety as an “exclusive.” Indeed, I learned more about these allegations reading the Variety story than the PBS investigator shared with me, the accused, in our 3 hour face to face meeting."

## The times star political reporter Glenn Thrush

At the times star political reporter Glenn Thrush is under investigation. Thrush apparently is accused of hitting on younger women who work in his industry, and occasionally at his outlet, though he had no managerial power over them.

Megan McArdle had a couple of opinion pieces that also explain this better than I can here in [1] and [2].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/consider-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-18/the-curre...

You didn't address my questions. You've given some instances where you don't believe you have enough information to draw a conclusion, but where you also admit you don't have all the information that the employer did. Is your claim that PBS, the New Yorker and the NYT did not investigate?

In other words, why is your reaction to take Lizza or Smiley at their word when they say that their employer is lying, but not take the employer at its word when it claims that Lizza and Smiley do something that is objectionable? As far as I can tell, you have an action by an employer and a statement by an employee, and are claiming from that that the employer didn't have enough information to act. How can you know that?

My exact point is that in these cases it seems like the employer in question announced that they believed the accuser before looking into both sides and the evidence. How do you think this does not illustrate that?

How is one supposed to come back from your employer making these kind of statements while you are being investigated?

## Edit: @joshuamorton Can't reply to your comment below so doing it here.

Honest question: We have three threads here where we engage in discourse, and I want to ask you a question from my experience of it. If you have already made up your mind and are not willing to engage with any evidence that shows that you might be wrong, why do you engage in discourse at all?

I see this pattern all over social media and to me it just seems like identity grand standing and a declaration that you believe in the dogma of that identity. Neither helps facilitate a productive discourse.

>How do you think this does not illustrate that?

Your evidence for this is solely a statement from the "accused". I'm not saying that they're lying, but that it is in their best interest to say the exact same thing no matter what the truth is. In other words, without any additional context, a person saying "this negative thing is a lie" is exactly what you'd expect them to say, whether or not it was actually a lie.

So no, if the only evidence for the employer not "looking into both sides and the evidence" is that the person who got fired claimed that, I don't find that alone at all a reliable claim in the absence of any corroboration.

Replying to your edit:

>If you have already made up your mind and are not willing to engage with any evidence that shows that you might be wrong, why do you engage in discourse at all?

This is a strong assumption, and one that is untrue. Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling. I've handed out more than a few deltas on /r/changemyview, so I'm not saying this without some basis in reality.

It appears that you're making a veiled claim that I'm virtue signalling, and I object to that accusation.

> Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling.

If when asking for proof of where employers declared that they believed the women before inspecting all evidence and hearing both sides some very prominent examples of that does not convince you, then I do not know what will.

> It appears that you're making a veiled claim that I'm virtue signalling, and I object to that accusation.

I am pretty straightforward and made that direct claim as I feel like I wasted my time, and I tried to understand where you come from or provoke you to think about it.

I rarely go to this step and I am not sure calling you out is the best course of action, but due to the denial of this direct evidence as well as other experiences in these threads I feel like this is justified and I think this kind of discourse deserve a rebuttal for what it is. I know no other way to call out these rhetorical tricks than brutal honesty. I might be wrong, I am not in your head.

>employers declared that they believed the women before inspecting all evidence

No, you gave examples of employees claiming that about their employers. In a discussion that started with you claiming we shouldn't treat accusations as facts, I would have expected that you could tell the difference.

I suspect there might be a middle ground between the libertarian/individualist "people are competent, rational agents and you're on your own" and treating people as children.

We might, for example, recognize that many people, even competent adults, can be quite bad at dealing with awkward or hostile social situations, and can use help.

I don't think you can have it both ways. You can't teach your kid to walk without risking that they occasionally fall and hurt themselves, and as we grow further these kind of small falls is a natural byproduct of taking risks that leads to growth.

It really sucks when your kid runs in front of a car, but thankfully that is quite rare and there are some simple heuristics that seems to ameliorate most such potential situation.

Okay, so how do you decide whether to have hire school crossing guards or not? Or to put in a stop sign or not? Or to require seatbelts?

We can and do make decisions as a society to change the environment we live in for the better. You can't eliminate all risk and not every proposed solution is going to make sense, but that doesn't mean you just say "hey, they're adults" and shrug.

My personal anecdotal experience is that people that say they are social justice warriors, including my cousin, tend to not engage well in the conversations that facilitates equality by building mutual empathy. It is very hard to meet the person in front of you for whom they express themselves to be when you already made up your mind on who they are before they opened their mouth.

Don't get me wrong, I donate the the ACLU to protect the speech of the social justice warriors of the world and any other exclusive world-view. However, it is important that we protect ourselves from being limited to these exclusive world-views and refuse that they limit us from exploring possible different solutions. Protecting our democracy is messy and hard.

> tend to not engage well in the conversations that facilitates equality by building mutual empathy.

I think you hit the right spot right there. I always baffled me how little empathy hardcore leftist display for other people experience

I think its more about the balkanization of American discourse rather than any particular group doing this on their own. There is an excellent comment by @stupidcar outlining this as part of this thread. Its worth a read.

Would you please not post ideological flamebait?

If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092277 is fine, this is not.