Or it could be that he admitted to being abusive outright, that he had 40 accusers, that there was no grey area like a Ghomeshi case where semi-erotic turned rapey. That, and he was a through and through hollywood liberal, so the typically uber-skeptical (who are usually right wing) hated him to begin with and were quite happy about the whole case for their own narrative. The Stewart study is ridiculous. 18 sample size with 90% false is silly to begin with. Others separated 'no-crime' and 'false' for good reason, but are you arguing that the studies are worthless because of their imperfect methodology or that they all vastly overestimate the number of false accusations? Or that all the ones over 8% are 'wrong' and those under are correct?
How do you guys feel about tech blogger Robert Scoble? He was accused by five people of sexual harassment. Instead of taking it, he wrote a blog post about his relations with those women. He denies the charges. And had to quit his company, gave up all speaking gigs, etc. The charges - https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcr...-sexually-harass-women-after-going-sober/amp/ His response - https://scobleizer.blog/2017/10/25/no-of-that-im-innocent-sexual-harassment-assault-accusations/
Closest to the first one but not really any of the above. The argument was mostly that “false accusations statistics can be really faulty” and, specifically, that the very number Nett was offering as support was shown to be unreliable by the same link he posted.
So then, what should change/be changed? Because the result of making an accusation can't be controlled victims should just keep quiet? What's the actual argument that's being made?
I read his response, and while he offers some reasonable sounding explanations, I'm dubious. Mostly because he keeps saying that what he did can't be sexual harassment because he didn't have authority over his accusers. I'm pretty sure if I kept hitting on my coworker after she told me to stop and then told my superiors it didn't count as sexual harassment because I didn't have authority over her my argument wouldn't get me very far. I do think that this situation does touch on the actual heart of the issue that's being discussed - so many of these controversies are created because at-will employment means it's not un-heard of for people to be fired for nothing more than a complaint to HR (or even less). It's employment related matters where the concern about false allegations ruining people's lives has the most traction, and the solution to that is to address the tenets around at-will employment, not telling victims they can never speak up about their experiences.
Yeah I'm not sure how you handle the situation. I can't find a balance between changing our cultural norms for the better regarding sexual harassment and doing it with an uncontrollable mob mentality that goes against our notion of due process.
Mine drops by the same percentage. Maybe higher with deductions. I guess I'm the only one in the middle class that wants to pay higher taxes. The cuts are fine, to me, but I know they're going to blow all of it on the military, and frankly at this point we need a raise in taxes to start paying off the debt. In any case the net gains/losses are largely based on the corporate tax rate. The adjustments in individual/married rates are marginal by comparison. It'll be interesting to see if they're enforced. The '$1.5 trillion loss' is very misleading, *if* the tax plan does what it attempts to do. Hence, why lobbyists are fighting tooth and nail, both for and against it. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/31/big...s-and-losers-as-lawmakers-try-for-reform.html Aren't they going down? If you're in that bracket you are paying a lot less up to $260k and the same range over $413k. They are going up by 2% for some of your bracket, but reduced by more over the remainder.
Interesting thing you've brought up, and I've done some research into these numbers as well. Obviously it's a hard thing to define, but let's use the statistics we have available to us. Follow the links to find my sources: About 23 percent of women (and 5.4 percent of men) report "unwanted sexual contact" on campuses. If we restrict ourselves to the 11 percent for whom that contact involves "oral sex or penetration", that's about 2 million women who have been assaulted. However, most of these go unreported -- the DOJ estimated that something around 80 percent don't get reported. Combined, that means that while a large percentage of people feel like they have been assaulted, just 11 percent of campuses had a reported rape in 2015. Let's take the other side -- the false accusations. Most campus estimates put it at between 2 and 10 percent. I'll use 8 percent, which is towards the higher end, but is still reasonable (based on my research). Of those that *are* found guilty, just 30 percent are expelled. Putting that all together, there have been about 150 suits filed against colleges that allege due process violations in Title IX incidents. I'd imagine that some of those men are completely innocent, others are guilty but didn't receive proper due process, and still others are simply grasping at straws. But let's assume that they're all completely innocent, and then again assume that the actual number of the wrongly expelled is triple the number that file suits, which isn't based on research but feels like the absolute upper bounds of plausibility. We have 200,000 women reporting assaults, 450 men wrongfully expelled for them, and 1.8 million women not reporting assaults. I don't know how anybody could look at those numbers and say that women lying is the major issue with Title IX. The number of false accusations is absolutely dwarfed by the number of unreported assaults. I think lying about being assaulted is awful, and the people that do it should be punished (and probably expelled, if it's proved they lied knowingly). I do not believe that there is some scourge of false rape reports, and I certainly don't believe it's worth paying attention to over all of the assaults that go unreported. I find the comparison between Kevin Spacey and Emmitt Till to be lacking in intellectual rigor.
There are no perfect solutions -- but. The first and most fundamental thing we have to change is our understanding of consent. Deciding whether to report a harasser to HR, or to the police, or simply name them on social media, is like deciding which direction to look for the horse that's already left the barn. We need more comprehensive sexual education, that actually deals with consent (and pleasure), and it needs to be broadly available during the years when it's most important. If you've had an abstinence-only sexual education, you will be completely ill-equipped to deal with real life sexual situations, let alone something as ridiculous as an American college campus. People scoff at programs geared towards teaching college freshman about responsible drinking and how to avoid sexual assault -- and the students scoff twice as loudly -- but they actually work. It seems stupid to have to go through a sexual harassment seminar when you've never thought about slapping a coworker on the ass, but that stuff actually helps, and it helps define areas that could be more gray than you think (making an off-color joke after work, for example). We need to standardize our national conversation about what is and isn't ok, and while that wouldn't completely solve the problem, it would help. I believe there are a lot of people who don't even understand what they've done wrong, and who would have done things differently if they knew. When it comes to reporting, I believe that the legal system should have a high threshhold for conviction, and that people who knowingly abuse the system should be punished harshly. On the other hand, I think that people should be perfectly willing to talk about things that have happened to them on social media, and to share their stories so that other people can make informed decisions about who to interact with. In the vast majority of instances, some women distance themselves from the dude, but most of his social circle makes excuses for him and continue hanging out with him anyway. These "wild mobs" are almost completely fabricated -- that's why it's such a big deal in these high profile cases. I couldn't count on both hands the number of times I've seen a guy accused of something on social media and it have no effect on his relative popularity.
Or on a macro level, you could get convicted for rape and win an Oscar and a standing ovation anyway like Roman Polanski. Because, as Whoopi Goldberg said, "It wasnt rape-rape." I think your other point regarding people who abuse the system, which I am assuming you mean false rape accusers, are punished severely is at least starting to come to fruition. It seems to be taken more seriously by the legal system than it did 5 or 10 years ago. I think the only issue I have with your post is on the consent point. Is a universal definition of consent even possible? It seems heavily subjective based on individuals and the situation. Defining a forced, violent rape is easy. But what about when two people are drunk? Who is consenting here? I know thats splitting hairs and I agree that we need to have a basis level of education and understanding for the target groups on what is and is not permissible. My point is not to diminish the threshold of consent, its to see where we can possibly bridge gaps in how its defined. I just see some initial blindspots that should be considered.
These, I think, are exactly the sorts of situations that education can help. I don't think it's useful to tell college students (or adults, for that matter), to never have sex under the influence of alcohol. But we can certainly teach them to recognize certain signs -- is somebody generally unresponsive? Are they slurring their words? Have they thrown up? Are they reacting to you, or are they just kind of limp? Are they capable of clearly understanding what's going on around them? If the answer to any of these is no, then they've clearly crossed the line from "fun tipsy" to "unable to give meaningful consent." I think it's also worth teaching students that if you have any doubt at all, it's not worth fucking the person. You'd think that would be obvious, but I've read a number of cases I've read where somebody thought "well maybe it will be ok, she seems somewhat with it." In fact, "get her number and just fuck the next day" could be an entire college course. It would be more useful than most of them, anyway. Ironically enough, I think It's Always Sunny did a hilarious job of pointing out that context is critical for consent. Because of the implication. Teaching students that they should think about the situation -- is she having sex with you because you're the only way she can get home? Is she being pressured by your friends? Does she genuinely seem enthusiastic about the situation? Would go a long way towards solving this. You're never going to completely eliminate the grey areas, and there will always be some "he said, she said", but the first step is coming to a consensus on what consent is.
That seems fair. To add, I think a lot of the issues around consent and just how one gender views the other goes deeper and is in part, what contributes to a situation where non-consent occurs. Differing cultural values, socioeconomics, and just inter-family dynamics play a huge part in that. Having been in a fraternity, there are guys that are downright scumbags and will openly brag about hooking up with a passed out chick. In fact, we saw it occur on more than one occasion. Some nerdy rich kid was getting some girl from the next house over drunk in his room alone. He was trying to make out with her and she just kept fighting unconsciousness and his advances by moving her head side-to-side. If other people hadn't intervened, its easy to guess what could have occurred. And variations of that happened all the time. I would add that the first step would be to stop trying to shield people from sexuality, in general. With that can come an honest education even earlier than college-age on how to treat other people in those situations.
Not to derail the conversation, but the Vegas shooter's brother that was caught with kiddie porn last week? Now he's been banned from a nursing home in CA for threatening to kill people. It's pretty bad when the sketchy brother that was giving interviews seems to be the most stable one in the family.
Article said he was caught for kiddie porn when he was bragging about his brother’s Vegas attack. Yeah I’d take those threats seriously if I were them.
I concur education is a good start and a far cry different than internet lynch mobs. Im actually interested to hear what people think about why Spacey was basically covered for up until now. With Weinstein he had a clear power structure behind him and for a while delivered Oscar winning product so he had great influence in the business. Spacey really didn't have that. If it was such an open secret why'd they let Spacey skate?
Producers have more power, more stroke— but they are NOT the meal tickets. Producers are the people who put it all together but they work in the shadows. The stars are what sell, and Spacey is billboard talent starring in a critically acclaimed show. Stars need a clean image where as Weinstein already wore an awful image like a badge. They probably covered because he sold the soap, up until now his behaviour has covered until, like it always does, the bubble burst.
Yes but the Spacey stuff goes back decades. Did he really have that kind of clout back in 1985? Hollywood's just always covered this stuff up no matter how famous or powerful the player is, since there's just so much of this shit always going on.
I think a lot of it has to do with the hierarchal nature of the industry. Regardless of Spacey's clout at the time, he's still a hired actor on a set. That "outranks" just about everybody on that set, except for a few producer or director types. If anyone beneath him mentioned anything, it would have been buried and/or the complainer would have been kicked off the project, and probably labelled "hard to work with" and never get hired again. The overriding goal is to make money, not raise a stink and cause production issues. If something got out to the public, it could result in at best some bad publicity for the production, and at worst throwing away days/weeks/months of shots or cancelling the project, just like House of Cards. Take a look at what happened with Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson. That was probably the morally correct way to handle it, but the after-effects of that decision were fucking massive, and had huge impacts on more than just the guy who got smacked in the face. There is a ton of motivation to bury it all and sweep it under the rug vs doing the "right thing".