
Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings - mudil
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/opinion/golden-globes-metoo.html
======
malvosenior
People not on the hard left have been saying this exact thing for years. I
guess now that people like Franken are going down due to outrage, the NYT sees
value in due process and treating women as responsible adults.

I don’t mean for that statement to be flame-bait, I think it’s the unvarnished
truth and I’d be happy to hear opposing views.

~~~
FussyZeus
If you don't want it to be flame bait I'd suggest you phrase it more politely.

Feminists didn't put a gun to the leadership of NYT and demand they do what
they did. They reacted in the dumb ways that any corporation scared by the
idea of bad PR would and do regularly, and have been appropriately chastised
for it.

Both sides of this get it wrong: Women are cast as hapless victims way too
often, and their opposition in turn over-simplify every case, ignoring power
dynamics, social pressure, and the numerous other completely legitimate
reasons women have to say yes when they want to say no.

This is going to be a long and painful process, but it's overdue, and
necessary.

~~~
brucephillips
Well put. What I would like to see is a public discussion around what
constitutes a power dynamic large enough to make sexual advances unacceptable.
Any two people have some degree of power differential, after all.

~~~
FussyZeus
That's a VERY hard question to answer. And of course there is going to be
situations where a Manager legitimately is romantically interested in a
subordinate. It's going to happen, it's not even that out there of a scenario.

I think the most logical step is to get this shit out of the news cycle
entirely. Accuser and accused should be out of the public eye for as long as
we can possibly manage. The problem is so many mechanisms in both private
corps and even civic orgs are shit, which is why women are going to the media
instead because it's the only way they get listened to.

~~~
brucephillips
A manager relationship is the most clear cut. Much harder are the "powerful
people in the industry" relationships. Is the entire industry off limits to
those at the top?

~~~
FussyZeus
Again, all of this is extremely muddy by nature and will stay that way. There
are innumerable variables in every single case: the intent of the accused,
their credibility, their track record regarding these issues, the
circumstances of the perceived attack, the credibility of the accuser, which
of them is actually telling more of the truth, anything that was documented,
on and on and on.

Right now there is a revulsion in the public space because of the real bad
cases like Weinstein, who had a long and seemingly well known track record for
abusing his station to get sexual favors from women in his industry, and use
of his connections to keep it quiet from people who would've made it public.
That needs to fade away before there's any realistic chance of a rational
discussion. Yes, some people are going to get caught in the crossfire and
that's unfortunate, but I don't see a way around it.

------
jseliger
This piece is congruent with Megan McArdle's "Consider the consequences of
#BelieveAllWomen: It won't turn out well for women."
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/consider-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/consider-
the-consequences-of-believeallwomen)

~~~
vorotato
I can see how a pithy hashtag could be misconstrued, and I doubt that is how
the hashtag was intended.

It shouldn't mean assume the accused party is guilty, it should however mean
don't dismiss the injured party. If someone came up to you and said "James
broke my leg" the response shouldn't be "No he didn't", but it also shouldn't
be "Let's beat him up". It should be "Hey lets help you get that leg fixed up,
and help you get an investigation started". What people presently face with
sexual assault, especially when bringing up cases against people in power is
"No, not them, that didn't happen, you're making that up because you want
something." It's not limited to just women, Terry Crews was sexually assaulted
in an elevator and couldn't even use his massive muscles to pop them like an
orange because of how that would appear. He didn't speak out because he didn't
think anyone would believe him. So when people say believe the victim it
doesn't mean assume the accused party is guilty, but rather it means don't
just dismiss the victim when they say someone hurt them.

~~~
uoaei
In this case, intent has no bearing on its utility.

What should guide the rhetoric of social movements is, to take it back to your
college GE writing class, the consideration of "writer-based" vs. "reader-
based" writing. In the former, you write what you feel based on how it makes
sense to you; in the latter, the intent of the writing is to convey a message
in the way that the audience can comprehend it.

That hashtag will and does imply "the accused is guilty." Something that would
convey the intent you describe more directly would be along the lines of
#DismissNoWomen or #TakeHerSeriously.

~~~
vorotato
I'll be honest I'm don't really think the hashtag was written with that much
thought in mind. It seems to be more a reaction to people being told "I don't
believe you" when they claim someone has assaulted them. I agree it's unclear,
and reading the responses is a mixed bag. #MeToo was more direct and obvious
what it was about, however I don't think it's a huge mental jump to realize
that "Assume the accused is guilty" isn't a nuanced conclusion and is frankly
untenable as a policy.

~~~
uoaei
You'd be surprised by the extent to which governments enact policies based on
a tiny, very vocal minority of people with bones to pick.

------
JonFish85
I think that this is a natural consequence of a world in which it's impossible
to have a dialogue about some things. There are some topics in which it's
essentially impossible to have a reasoned discussion about things that we
disagree over.

This article talks about one: it's impossible to have this discussion with
most people (including friends and family) because as soon as someone
questions the generally accepted opinion, they're put on the defensive (in
this case: "OMG why would you defend a molester?"), and the entire discussion
becomes one of trying to defend yourself, and not about what you're trying to
discuss.

The same thing happened with the Googler who questioned the idea of whether
the tactics used for trying to improve Google's male-vs-female pay
discrepancies. Instead of anyone responding to points he made in any sort of
rational way, the discussion was immediately turned into "how can you defend
someone who says women are worse than men?" \-- not at all the case, but a
quick way to avoid a factual discussion by pigeon-holing a person who dares to
deviate from the generally accepted opinion.

This has also spread to politics: it's impossible to have any sort of reasoned
debate about "hey, maybe <insert your favorite politician here> isn't
literally the devil across the board" \-- the conversation immediately becomes
one of trying to undermine the person ("OMG I can't believe you're defending
Franken, a man who has assaulted women!").

It also happens when people try to debate things like whether the "Yes means
yes" laws are useful, reasonable or effective; I've never seen a reasonable
discussion about this (online or in real life), because if anyone questions
it, they're immediately on the defensive, trying to argue that no, they're not
defending rapists, and no they're not against a safe environment for women.
Politically, it's brilliant marketing, because there is absolutely no way to
argue against it without being immediately pigeonholed as a rape-defender, and
then spending all of your time trying to dig out of a hole that you've been
put into.

It's unhealthy, and I think leads to echo chambers -- no one dares to voice an
opinion unless they know people will agree with them. And this ultimately
makes the problem worse, I think, because without a reasonable dialogue about
issues, and without being able to accept the fact that people may have logical
reasons to disagree with you, I don't really understand how things will get
any better.

Edited: Dialog -> dialogue

------
IanDrake
The reason we must be careful is beacuase women can suffer from mental illness
just as easy as men. People with mental illness make things up.

Remember “mattress girl” or the Duke lacrosse team?

These cases ruined innocent lives, not something to be taken lightly.

------
barrkel
No light will come from discussion of this article.

~~~
belorn
I could not disagree more.

In a world where great injustice have happened, the solution is rarely to
abandon the legal system in order to right the wrongs. Too much collateral
damage.

The article encourage us to discuss how to right the wrongs without abandoning
the legal system. That would be a nice discussion to have on HN.

~~~
vorotato
I think most people who supported #MeToo or #BelieveAllWomen do not believe in
abandoning the legal system, though they may be discussing adjusting the legal
system such that we actually see more convictions of rapists, assaulters, etc
where the evidence succeeds in proving the accused party guilty beyond a
shadow of a doubt.

~~~
belorn
If we agree to that then I think we can also agree that adjusting the legal
system such that we actually see more convictions is also something which
practically everyone would want. There is few crimes in any nation that has
more than a single digit conviction rate. To give an example, Sweden has
dedicated police units for sexual violence crime, dedicated unit of
prosecutors for it, and a legal system where if there is evidence proving the
accused party is guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt then the accused will get
jail time. It still only has 8% clearing rate, which to be fair is higher than
in the US, but still where the wast wast majority fails because a lack of any
evidence beyond the testimony of the accuser and accused. By a coincident,
assault also has the exact same 8% clearing rate (but with a higher occurrence
rate).

The question is how to get the clearing rate anything near in which people
will start to feel that the guilty will be punished.

------
vorotato
"the trickle-down effect to cases like those of Garrison Keillor, Jonathan
Schwartz, Ryan Lizza and Al Franken, in which the accusations are scattered,
anonymous or, as far as the public knows, very vague and unspecific, has been
troubling."

This is a hot take, especially when Al Franken was literally photographed with
his hands on a woman's chest. Sexual assault is bad, using your position to
enable that should get you fired. Yes even if you are a democrat.

"What about the women who are the predators?" the author claims, though the
#metoo was fundamentally about sexual assault, not specifically men assaulting
women. I mean literally one of the heinous examples she provided was a man
assaulting a man. This article is concerning, and I'm curious what their
ulterior motive is.

Just to announce my bias, I'm a leftist, and I have a suspicion this is a
democrat trying to gloss over the unacceptable behavior of Al Franken, who for
the record I personally supported until I learned about the sexual assault.

~~~
brucephillips
> Al Franken was literally photographed with his hands on a woman's chest.

No, he wasn't.

~~~
vorotato
Yes, I guess you're correct looking very closely it does appear he is merely
making groping motions very close to her breasts. It changes it from sexual
assault to sexual harassment which is still completely unacceptable. It still
is not a behavior that any of our elected officials should be engaging in.

~~~
brucephillips
It's still not completely clear. I haven't been following this case
specifically, so I don't know other details that may have come out, but there
can easily be mitigating circumstances. Maybe they had a cat and mouse game
going on all day, and she had been doing the same to him. Maybe he was merely
reciprocating an inside joke. He wasn't her boss, so that sort of game
wouldn't be a big deal.

I'm sure this sounds to you like I'm reaching, but I can think of many, many
similar circumstances where I've done something completely innocent in context
that would get me skewered if taken as a sound bite or a picture. That's why
I'm slow to take the man's career.

~~~
vorotato
They were on a work trip together as colleagues. If you're on a work trip, or
any work event you don't make advances on your colleagues and you definitely
don't make sexual jokes. IANAL but unwanted advances in the workplace
constitutes sexual harassment, feigned groping jokes also count as sexual
harassment. If she was making butt grope jokes at him she could similarly lose
her job. It's a very bad idea all around and you shouldn't do it. Just because
someone doesn't press charges because they're having fun with it doesn't mean
you're not walking on insanely thin ice.

~~~
tatersolid
> IANAL but unwanted advances in the workplace constitutes sexual harassment

No, it doesn’t.

Asking a colleague someone on a date may be an “unwanted advance” but that is
_not_ sexual harassment. Even asking someone on a date and having them decline
multiple times is not sexual harassment, so long as the asker is polite and
respectful about it.

Sexual harassment is a fairly high legal bar in the USA. You can _sue_ for
just about anything, but if you want to win you need _evidence_ of truly bad
behavior.

Which is as it should be; convicting based solely on the accuser’s testimony
is not fair no matter the crime.

Source: recent all-hands corporate training session held by an employment
attorney

~~~
vorotato
edit: To clear the air, I completely agree regarding the statement.
"convicting based solely on the accuser’s testimony is not fair no matter the
crime."

it's not always so clear cut though, for example if they decide to quit as a
result of the advances, then it could count as sexual harassment due to the
adverse employment decision. Admittedly you're completely right about winning.
You're not going to win a lawsuit because Sally politely asked you out once,
but maybe if she "politely" badgered you every single time she spoke to the
point where you were not willing to work with that person any more, and that
caused you to get demoted.

Usually someone has to be a dirtbag, but some people think they're not
dirtbags when they totally are dirtbags. That's when HR disasters happen and
the accused weave some tale about how they were totally innocent when in
reality they were shitty people creating a hostile workplace otherwise the
jury would never have voted the way they did.

bob: "Oh but you said asking out was okay" HR: "yeah but uh your version of
asking out was putting your balls on their desk and saying 'hey babe you know
you want this'" bob:"Yeah but there was nothing rude about that, babe is a
compliment"

bob@thePub: "I can't believe they fired me you ask a girl out and all the
sudden it's sexual harassment"

you know who I'm talking about.

