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Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by romwell on Thursday November 11, 2021 @05:49AM (#29186586)
#metoo was literally about bringing the attention to the scale of the problem and raising awareness, and normalize talking about abuse, so that it wouldn't continue in silence.

The court of public opinion has existed before and after #metoo. Let's not pretend that #metoo invented it. If twenty people were to go public and say that Justin Bieber beat each of them with a crowbar, Justin Bieber would have some 'splainin to do, whether or not there's a court case.

If twenty people gave interviews and said that Martha Stewart personally fed them poisoned pies for shits and giggles, Martha would be affected by that, whether these people decide to sue or not.

But the society made an exception for sexual abuse. Rape and drugging in particular. #metoo simply made it count just as much.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by tremon on Thursday November 11, 2021 @09:39AM (#29188250)
Yes, and that's why we have libel laws: to stop these kinds of things from being "judged" in the court of public opinion. Raising awareness and providing support are all fine and very necessary, but the extrajudicial punishments is where the movement lost my support. Still, extrajudicial punishment is what we're left with if the judicial system fails to do justice.
Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by romwell on Thursday November 11, 2021 @10:30AM (#29188912)
Why did the movement lose your support? It didn't advocate removal of libel laws, did it?

And "extrajudicial punishment" is a stretch for "I have a right to tell people what happened to me without shame and harrasment".

Did #metoo make a call to burn people at stakes that I missed?

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by tremon on Thursday November 11, 2021 @10:59AM (#29189369)
You're kidding, right? You think that all of the things listed below are instances of "I have a right to tell people what happened to me without shame and harrasment", and none are instances of virtual stake burning? Note: this is the result of just five minutes of keyword searches, I have no opinion on the actual merits of these cases, just disproving your claim that there is no extrajudicial punishment associated with the movement:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenrobinsonjacobs/2020/06/30/...

https://www.tampabay.com/blogs/media/2017/10/31/house-of-car...

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-the-cancelling-of-j...

https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/the-wing-ceo-audrey-gelman-res...

https://pagesix.com/2020/07/01/essence-ceo-richelieu-dennis-...

https://www.distractify.com/p/tyler-joseph-canceled

https://www.rt.com/news/535587-depp-cancel-culture-festival/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57426579

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by romwell on Thursday November 11, 2021 @11:06AM (#29189462)
The things you listed look like a random collection of things that happened where there was some controversy.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, looks like you attribute all scandals to #metoo agenda.

[dead]
Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by tallanvor on Thursday November 11, 2021 @06:31AM (#29186848)
What are you talking about?

Women are still often told that sexual harassment is their own fault for dressing the way they do, or get told "boys will be boys". It used to be expected that women would have to put up with it in the workplace.

Rape victims get told that if they really didn't want it to happen they could have fought harder.

There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning.

So yes, society has certainly made an exception for sexual abuse of all forms for many years and those excuses are still being made. Are things improving? Yes. Are those improvements good enough? Not by a long shot.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by Jensson on Thursday November 11, 2021 @06:44AM (#29186911)
> There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning.

Name one case in the last 5 years where the judge uses the victims clothes as a reason for a light sentence in USA, and where the judge wasn't punished for it. It should be possible to find one right? If you can't even find one for a whole 5 years I wouldn't say that this is a problem we need to care about, once per 5 years in a population of 300 million is basically never.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by romwell on Thursday November 11, 2021 @07:50AM (#29187335)
TL;DR: read this first: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/sexual-assault-r...

--------------------------------------

You are asking the wrong question.

The judges don't give reasons for their sentences like that (i.e., the judge is under no obligation to say "I was going to give this person X years, but I'm giving them X-Y because the victim was wearing a mini skirt").

The question you should be asking is: is victim's clothing an admissible evidence in rape cases? That's to say, is it something that the defense uses in their arguments?

And the answer is that, historically, yes, victim's clothing has been extensively used by the defense in rape cases.[1]

The issue was serious enough that states started to adopt laws that banned using clothing as indication of consent in rape cases. By 1994, NY introduced such a law - being the second state in the nation to do so[2].

However, no matter what the law is regarding admissible evidence, the judges will most likely know what the victim was wearing because that, in itself, is collected for evidence. To argue that this does not factor into sentencing would be improbable given the prevalent attitudes in our society, and studies like[5] confirm that.

Which brings us to the main problem: that even without taking clothing as an excuse, sexual assault perpetrators are often left unpunished or given a slap on the wrist, like in the infamous case of the rapist Brock Turner[7].

This is, of course, tangential to the point that a significant part of the population believes that clothing can be an indicator of consent [3][4], which results in the dismal proportion of cases being reported to begin with, and then a small percentage of those brought to prosecution.

In the end, the judges simple don't give prison time to rapists. The judges give light sentences citing anything as a reason, without consequence.

You can see plenty of cases in the survey[8], many of them quite recent.

The analysis of the extent to which victim-blaming has been a factor in each of those cases is left as an exercise to the reader.

[1]https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/30/nyregion/new-law-says-vic...

[3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/13/...

[4]https://philpapers.org/archive/WOLPDA-3.pdf

[5]https://escholarship.org/content/qt0fq160dv/qt0fq160dv.pdf?t...

[7]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/us/brock-turner-blamed-dr...

[8]https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/sexual-assault-r...

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by Jensson on Thursday November 11, 2021 @08:05AM (#29187445)
> The judges don't give reasons for their sentences like that

The post I responded to says they did, note the "citing this sort of reasoning", citing means they said it straight out and you should be able to find a court document where they explicitly used that reasoning:

> > There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning.

It is a very different thing from judges being open about these things and it getting pushed underground. I asked about evidence of the former since that was what the person said still happened today. I just wanted to confront that lie, people often lie about these things to make their case seem stronger.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by romwell on Thursday November 11, 2021 @09:33AM (#29188204)
Sure. I can't prove to you that US judges today still openly admit that clothing was a factor in sentencing.

A cursory Google search turned up an example in Canada[1] and Ireland[2]; followed by California passing a law banning use of clothing as evidence of consent last month[3]. Such laws and guidelines are still non-existent in states like Indiana[4].

I have no idea how to find court documents (I'm not a lawyer!), but given the above, I'd find it highly unlikely that the US is faring that much better than Canada and Ireland.

In particular, given that the vast majority of sexual assault and rape cases don't go to trial at all, I don't know at which stage clothing is used as evidence of consent. And as long as it's presented in court, it's a factor in the jury deciding whether to declare the defendant guilty.

But if you want to die on that hill, sure, let's assume that that particular sentence is false.

I.e. that it only used to be the case in the US, it's still the case around the world, and states like California are passing this kind of legislation in 2021 just for shits and giggles.

That doesn't affect any other point made in this conversation, but I hope you enjoy confronting this "lie" =)

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-attire-does-n...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46207304

[3] https://www.kvcrnews.org/california-news/2021-10-12/in-cases...

[4] https://www.thestatehousefile.com/politics/lawmakers-urged-t...

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by AmericanChopper on Thursday November 11, 2021 @06:39AM (#29186888)
Which is a justification for the objective metoo set out to achieve, and it seems one a lot of people agree with.

However those objective are very clearly to undermine the foundational principles of justice. Perhaps you find the arguments for this to be very compelling, but it’s simply a fact that metoo set out to promote a presumption of guilt, in all areas of society that it was able to influence. Most metoo advocates entirely avoid addressing this fact, and a lot of people reasonably disagree with metoo because of it.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by notahacker on Thursday November 11, 2021 @08:51AM (#29187794)
The principle that the standard of evidence for the state to deprive somebody of their liberty should be high /= it being epistemically sound to assume the person issuing denials is the most likely person to be telling the truth.

And as far as concrete responses go, I would think it extremely unjust to lock up somebody purely based on anecdotes about creepy behaviour towards kids. But I also wouldn't hire him as a babysitter or a television presenter.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by unbalancedevh on Thursday November 11, 2021 @09:39AM (#29188251)
When false accusations/anecdotes result in someone being socially ostracized, it is still an injustice that can severely affect the person.

I don't really think there's a prescriptive solution to this, but I hope society improves on it. Reality is what it is.

Re:Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died by notahacker on Thursday November 11, 2021 @10:02AM (#29188536)
Oh, I agree with that (and likewise not being believed can severely affect a person whose accusations are true, and often also involves ostracism). Ultimately I think society improves when the crime is genuinely rare, which has the side effect of innocent people being less likely to be accused, but there isn't an easy answer to that either.