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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Ah, yes, ye Olde "just believe them" attitude.
No one would ever lie for personal gain, right?
I don't "believe" claims that have significant impact - that requires evidence. Which is the basis of our legal system.
Just wait till you've been wrongfully accused about something and have to stand before a judge. It's no fun, and you'll be grateful then that evidence is required.
This is exactly right. The "believe women" stance is so childish and naive. "Take women seriously" would be just as effective, less dangerous and fit into every just legal system on the planet
For every 100 rapes and sexual assaults of teenage girls and women reported to police, only 18 lead to an arrest
It's naive to believe our criminal justice system is reliably investigating and prosecuting instances of sexual assault.
When people have sex, they usually do it in private, without any witnesses. Whatever happens during that time is often difficult to prove afterward, since it typically comes down to one person’s word against the other’s. Unless there’s clear physical evidence of assault, it can be extremely hard to establish that something was done against someone’s will. Most reasonable people would agree that “she said so” alone doesn’t amount to proof - and isn’t, by itself, a valid basis for sending someone to prison.
"Listen, you were in an alley and nobody was around, so how do we know you weren't handing over the wallet voluntarily?"
"Maybe you asked them to hit you when you volunteered to hand over your wallet."
"Hey Pete, this guy is one of those men trying to ruin innocent people's lives with false mugging claims!"
Hot damn this comment section is a flood of sexist shitheads being perfect example of the culture that assumes women's accusations are false and trying to ruin men's lives. So damn disappointing.
What are you suggesting exactly? You have an actual solution here to offer or you just want to be a smart ass?
That police and prosecutors do their fucking jobs.
Well let's hear some suggestions then.
They do the jobs and follow up on reports? That's not a hard thing to ask.
He wants cops to sit in a cuck chair and observe every sexual encounter to ensure no funny business. He'll also have a little retail iPad where you do an esignature for consent before starting.
I don't think the current legal systems are perfect, but I do think "believe women" would make them fundamentally worse.
How do you handle the issue of future false accusations? And don't give me the hand wavy "but there are so few false accusations" because that doesn't matter to the person being accused.
THE core tenet of most legal systems is effectively "innocent until proven guilty". "Believe women" utterly breaks that, they cannot exist within the same legal framework.
So, would you rather have the legal system change to better serve women by equally investigating their accusations, or by removing "innocent until proven guilty"?
The same way you do it with men, presumably. Document the incident, collect forensic evidence, interview suspects, refer the matter to the local DA.
I'm trying to imagine this response for any other crime. "Oh, you want us to investigate your car jacking? How do we know you don't loan it out voluntarily? I guess we should just convict an innocent person!"
See, this is the problem. "Believe women" implies that women are telling the truth before an investigation has taken place. If you had read my original comment you'd see that I'm not suggesting women should be treated as they currently are, but that "believe women" specifically is a harmful rhetoric.
If we both want women's accusations to be taken seriously and investigated as any other potential crime would be, then we're on the same page and want the same thing. The statement "believe women" does not literally or figuratively mean that though, the problem is the wording. Say what you mean instead of this wishy washy language that is detrimental to the cause.
In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country. This figure only accounts for data reported by 30 states and Washington, DC; the total backlog number is unknown.
Findings from Canadian national policing data indicate that one in five cases (i.e., 20%) of sexual assault reports to police are deemed baseless (Doolittle et al., 2017). However, the high rates of unfounded are inconsistent with findings from a meta-analysis of seven studies of confirmed false reports of sexual assault to police (Ferguson & Malouff, 2016). They reported that the rate of false reports was approximately 5% (0.52 [95% CI .030, .089], which is considerably lower than the Canadian average for unfounded sexual assault classifications. Sexual assault appears to be coded as unfounded with relative regularity and seems to be ubiquitous within law enforcement discourse. High rates of unfounded sexual assaults reveal that dismissing sexual violence has become common practice amongst police in Canada
In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women.
The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Can you tell me how this is relevant to the point I made? How any of that suggests something other than what I said?
If you want to have a conversation, let's have a conversation but don't throw data that is irrelevant to the point I made while dodging the point I made.
How do you have a conversation about the trustworthiness of an alleged rape victim if you throw the rape kit in the trash, file the complaint as "unfounded" based on gut instinct, and turn a blind eye to well-financed smear campaigns by serial abusers?
Because as far as the law is concerned, they ARE NOT a victim until they are proven to be just as the accused IS NOT a perpetrator until they are proven to be. It has absolutely nothing to do with "trustworthyness", and all to do with due process.
Destroying this legitimately good and absolutely fundamental part of the deeply flawed legal system will not fix this problem. It will only create more. Rage against the machine all you want, I'm absolutely with you. But do so with some critical thought behind it.
It's so crazy to talk about "innocent unless presumed guilty" as a policy that exists in western society, when we are drowning in cases to the contrary.
What sets rape apart from, say, immigration violations or illegal drug use or terrorism charges or subway fare evasion or CEO murdering isn't this sacred commitment to "innocent until proven guilty". It's the number of people and the volume of surveillance equipment dedicated to investigating and prosecuting these crimes.
Treat allegations of sexual assault with even a fraction of the seriousness put forward to prosecute minor traffic violations. Maybe we can clear that mountainous backlog of uninvestigated rape claims within the victims' lifetimes.
That is patently false. This really makes me think that you have absolutely no concept of what you're talking about. The "court of public opinion" often assumes guilt based off of an accusation and that is exactly why "believe women" is so dangerous.
I agree, and this should stay exactly as it is. It's is one part that is unquestionably beneficial to literally EVERYONE.
I absolutely agree. The lack of investigation is the issue, not the fact that women are implicitly believed when they make an accusation. No one should have that privilege.
If you asked me, I would have guessed a number around there.
That sounds like there’s an exceptionally high amount lying.
I mean I don't think 25 women would lie about stuff that would be slander or libel when it comes to someone as litigious and thin skinned as Trump.
Not much evidence you can provide when it's one person's word over another. Only thing I can say is he never won a libel suit against his accusers as far as I know.
I don't care who is accused - I refuse to convict anyone on anything just from an accusation.
More people making a similar accusation isn't evidence, at best that's a witch hunt.
I also that, but I'm also in support of massively reforging the legal system so that everyone can and will use it appropriately.
Which a large part of that will be changing how it is funded and expanding it all that appearing before a court to have your case heard is as easy as possible.
Any issue before a court shouldn't be swayed so easily by how much money you can spend on it, or how long you can tie up the issue to delay and it avoid resolution.
It's a weird situation where I think more is better
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Witness testimony in court is not "just an accusation". It's corroborated by cross examination.
This is pretty ironic.
Cross examination is where the opposing council questions the witness in an attempt to poke holes in their testimony, point out inconsistencies and otherwise discredit the witness.
While corroboration means:
To strengthen or support with other evidence; make more certain. synonym: confirm.
Cross examination, be definition, is the exact opposite of corroboration.
And like a good scientist, I don’t give a shit what you think. Give me evidence.
People can’t argue that Donald Trump’s assault on due process is wrong and then turn around and argue that any individual should not get due process, even that scum himself. The gender of the witness is irrelevant, witness testimony is unreliable as it is subject to intimidation, coercion, deception, or even the plain old fallibility of human memory.
I absolutely think there is evidence out there. This man has said so many awful things and I don’t believe all 25 accusers are lying. But I do believe every case should be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the evidence allows.
Donald Trump’s crimes must be laid bare and proven beyond a doubt because even then the MAGA cult will do their mental gymnastics but he will truly have been dethroned as the populist leader of the right that he’s been since 2016.
A-fucking-men
"Maybe she wanted it"
"Maybe she injured herself"
"Maybe she is just jealous"
Hard to get evidence to trial when the police and prosecutors ignore evidence of rape like bruises, torn clothing, etc.
Yeah? You got any proof of bruises, torn clothing or et cetera? Please, let’s nail him to the wall together!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I’m not constantly asking for evidence you dunce. I’m arguing the original point. Fuck Trump, he’s a cunt for 1000 reasons and I BELIEVE in my heart of hearts he molested girls.
We stand on a system that requires evidence for those claims for a reason, and I believe in those protections when you or I end up under fire.
So after reading this linked wiki article I find a couple interesting points of the above description.
1 relentless requests
2 pretense of civility and sincerity
So I'll ask you a couple questions, if you don't mind answering (and much thanks to you if you do answer them)
As I don't observe either of the points in your comment in this thread, if I were to go look at your comment history, and I wont because I don't care to spend any effort to do so, will I find a history of you asking for evidence on this specific topic, as if you were looking for opportunities to do so, Cherry picking as one might call it?
And also how often would you say someone accuses you of sea lioning beer on Lemmy?
I'm asking because I'm betting the answers are no and hardly ever
It's frustrating when people try to eject to from a discussion because they ascribe motives you don't possess, at least in my experience if it does
Behaviour of sealion is only right course of action if someone just accused it of something that would destroy its life and reputation.
"Just believe them" is shorthand for "Believe them long enough to actually press charges and hold a trial instead of dismissing them by default".
Between charges and a trial is a criminal investigation. If that doesn't give enough reason to proceed to trial, charges are dropped.
A better stat would be %age of accusations that result in an investigation. That should be a lot higher, but police shouldn't be trying to prosecute cases that have nothing but an accusation to court.
They aren't processing evidence, so what else can they prosecute with? Vibes?
https://www.endthebacklog.org/what-is-the-backlog/
Look up statistics for your area.
More capacity to process rape kits is something I can get behind. More evidence is good. It would stop people clamouring for convictions based on accusations alone.
So if you are assaulted with no witnesses then having bruises, stab wounds, and other injuries shouldn't be enough for the police to take any action?
Because that is the physical evidence that the police routinely dismiss.
That's because they're not looking for evidence that shows a crime was committed, they're looking for evidence of who committed the crime
Your injuries are evidence of a crime, but not necessarily evidence of a specific perpetrator
Yeah, I think a lot of people are completely missing the point. Very similar to how saying "black lives matter" doesn't imply that non-black lives do not matter, or that black lives must somehow be considered more important than any other life, the phrase "believe women" doesn't imply that we should start doubting men, or that a woman's testimony should be held as a higher form of evidence than anything else. It's pointing out the clear systemic bias against women in a system controlled and dominated mostly by men who do not want to cede their power and authority.
One of the many flaws of the English language is how difficult it is to condense a very complex sociopolitical message down into a catchy one-liner without losing a ton of the context that got people there in the first place.
Wasn't BLM just a scam to extract money for its operators?
No.
Wait, which do you think happens more often: a false accusation, or an uninvestigated sex crime? Because false allegations happen, but statistically it's like saying you shouldn't go to restaurants because occasionally chefs murder people with knives. It'll probably make the news, but only because it's so fucking rare.
I said neither of the above. Don't put words in my mouth.
People are falsely accused of crimes all the time, which is why the legal system requires evidence.
What I said is wait until you stand before a judge falsely accused. I didn't say of what crime, you assumed.
All the time? Like once a week? Or like every day? Or maybe like roughly every minute of every day of the year?