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
The “believe women” stance is so childish and naive.
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.
"Just believe them" is shorthand for "Believe them long enough to actually press charges and hold a trial instead of dismissing them by default".
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
Trial by socia media? Fuck outta here.
All these scummy shitbags are certainly guilty, but this needs to be proven.
The motto I get behind is "trust, but verify".
"If we just trusted women"
We don't trust people based on their gender. We trust them based on credibility and evidence. If there's even the tiniest amount of doubt then it better to let the guilty walk free rather than put an innocent person in jail. And I'm speaking broadly here - not about Trump specifically.
That is not OP's point. Their point is the opposite, namely that a lot of people automatically distrust people (women) based on their gender. Lots of women have provided credible evidence under oath:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
Yeah, and inoccent until proven guilty. We should not believe absolutely anyone, regardless of gender, making any accusation.
Every accusation should be thoroughly investigated, though.
It happened with Neil Gaiman recently. Many accusations, no sentence for him (at least as of yet), he denies the claims.
Yet, massive lost to reputation, projects cancelled, etc.
If he's found guilty, all the shame and consecuences to him, but society should stop acting like people talking or a "hyper graphical article" makes things true.
We live in the age of quick opinions, echo chambers, and the like.
Is this a showerthought or just wrong? Someone just learned that anecdotal evidence < material evidence by a lot
Innocent until proven guilty (I say that as a woman AND a survivor of SA).
Then again he was proven guilty in other cases. Seeing as those weren’t enough to remove him from power permanently I am not sure what this would do. If I had to bet on if he assaulted minors I’d go for heck yes. I’d bet nearly everything I have on that. So I’d be a pretty bad jury member of this case ;) anyway: the more evidence there is, the harder it is to ignore. Victim statements are pretty good evidence, but more is better.
Believing women dosnt mean just acting blindly on a womans word and nothing more.
Believing women means intiating proper procedures, starting investigations, and gathering the facts and evidence, impartially and without prejudice.
So yes, We need the epstein files, even if we believe women, because they are evidence that, in all likelyhood, supports their claims.
These files should have been handled a decade ago, but the fact that they've spent so much time and energy trying to alter and hide them shows how damning they really are, that even after having months of time to alter and remove Trumps name, that they still were not able to and had to emergency switch to "Epstein files? What files? No such files exist!"
Convicting based upon words sworn under oath and with no facts to back it up but feelings and outage has lead to a lot of overturned verdicts and innocent lives ruined.
No one should be "just believed". Everyone's claims should be taken seriously and looked into. But no one should be believed automatically.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of "Believe women".
Brett Kavanaugh raped a woman in high school, and had three additional accusations of sexual assault, yet all of that was ignored to put him on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has a 67-page Wikipedia article on all the sexual assault claims against him, yet he was still a reality tv star, a popular media figure, and now president. Allegations and rumors against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein circulated for years before anyone took things seriously enough to bother doing something about it. Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman and was let off with six months because the judge didn't want to "ruin such a promising future" (or similar words), served it in county jail, and was released after 3 months.
"Believe women" means taking each allegation seriously instead of doubting women with questions like "are you sure you want to report this", "are you sure it wasn't just a misunderstanding", "are you sure you weren't drunk", etc. "Believe women" means stop trying to dismiss or downplay behavior with things like "why would he do that" (Trump's assault on the plane), or "she's not that pretty", or "she was asking for it", and actually investigating the crime instead of brushing it off as a college prank, or the casting couch, or someone trying to get 15 minutes of game by accusing someone famous.
"Believe women" doesn't mean automatically accepting every claim, but believing it enough to accept that it might have happened and conducting a thorough investigation of the alleged incident.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of "Believe women".
Including OP who said "We wouldn’t need the Epstein files to prove DJT’s guilt if society just trusted women in the first place."
According to OP, there's no need to know what the Epstein files say because these women's accusations are enough to convict him on their own. People are reacting to that absurd phrasing, not to the idea that women's accusations should be taken seriously and investigated.
No, the problem is the saying itself. It literally just says "believe women". There's no room for interpretation in there. The problem is the phrase itself. If you want a phrase that means take women's allegations seriously, then the phrase you should use is "take women's allegations seriously"
Yes, the Epstein files are important, but not for proving guilt.
Honestly, guilt doesn't matter in this case, because nobody who matters cares. His fanbase, his voters, his politicians and even his supreme court don't care. He's been convicted of felonies, and it just didn't matter.
But the Epstein files are something different. It's one of the core things his conspiracy manic fan base are sworn in on. It's part of their core narrative and beliefs. Him being in there could really shake things up.
Um... I'm a girl, and I totally believe these women were assaulted because we're talking about rich assholes who literally feel like they can do anything.
But you have to present evidence no matter what. That's literally how the court works. If all we have is he-said-she-said, then there's not much we can do to reach a verdict. There have been regular people who have been incorrectly deemed assaulters/rapists due to lack of evidence. We have seen women who lie about this. You NEED to have proof, to ensure that it's an undeniable fact that the accused is officially recognized as a shit person.
This is an unrealistic ideal, I'm gonna be real. I want these women to win and be acknowledged. I want all who interacted with Epstein to rot in prison and hell. But we need evidence. That's just the truth.
"not a girl in sight in these comments"
lmao you just assume if anyone disagrees with you we're not women.
It would help if there weren't millions of dollars, entire organizations, and even the government that is trying to silence them and cover this up. This isn't an issue of people not believing the women as I'm sure the average person has been sceptical with this from the beginning. The problem is that the guilty are rich and powerful enough that they can make their problems disappear. The problem isn't that the people want to know who's guilty (I'm sure most of the names won't even be that surprising) it's that they want to know why the guilty are getting away with it and why the government is actively protecting these monsters. Its the fact that they can get away with whatever the fuck they want, even raping children, and still get to live their lives like nothing ever happened. It's why everyone on both sides of politics don't really care who's on the list, they just want some actual fucking consequences.
The rich and the elites already get away with so much bullshit, and if we let them get away with something as awful as this we might as well give up on calling ourselves civilized.
evidence needs to be present to determine guilt.
nice try though. release the files.
Wikipedia has a 67-page article on sexual assault allegations against Trump.
When a woman claims to have been assaulted, I automatically believe her in regards to how I treat her.
As far as the person she's accused goes, though, I think it's pretty easy to understand that nobody should be convicted on the sole evidence of their accuser's testimony, and I think that should apply to the court of public opinion as well.
It's a situation where either one person is guilty of a horrible crime, or the other is making false allegations of said crime. In order for both to be "innocent until proven guilty", you need to assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they're false while interacting with the accused. It's really counterintuitive and maybe impossible to do
Got me an ex that wanted, out of spite, to turn me in with the police for rape. And saying so she could baby lasso me back.
There is a reason why evidence is needed to proof something.
Maybe not a court provable thing, but the takeaway here is that conservatives specifically are willing to give this man infinite benefit of the doubt, to a level never seen before. Even if we can't throw his disgusting rapist ass in jail, he should 100% not be allowed to be president, much less actually succeed in that effort. It's sick and fuckin weird. If you look over all the actual criminal and civil convictions, along with general aggregate proof, additionally the proof of just being a small, bigoted, racist, narcissistic POS, and stack on top of alllll that these other general allegations, the man is clearly an unforgivablly worthless sack of shit that no reasonable person could possibly look up to. That's why true chump supporters are all either completely fooled by disinformation they CHOOSE to believe over all else, or "ends justify means" types who are lying to not look like pieces of shit themselves and live in a state of irrational fear, or straight up supportive of hate directly i.e. Nazis.
Accusations aren't evidence. It would break the way we prosecute. 25 different testimonies does give more credibility to the claim than 1, but is still isn't proof sadly.
Proof is required if you want someone to be convicted of a crime
Edit: I agree that rape should be punished properly. There isn't a way to prove an accusation without evidence that proves something past a reasonable doubt.
Giving automatic wins to rape accusers sacrifices the rights of the accused.
Fucking with human rights is wrong, and everyone here knows that accused people are innocent until PROVEN guilty.
All that being said, there's dozens of provable crimes Trump has committed that would justify executing the fucker.
that’s why i don’t think anything’s gonna change for powerful men on the epstein list if it gets released. many of these men already have allegations of sexual abuse against them and they still live their life just fine
(also, holy shit those comments???? that post about how lemmy is worse for women than reddit was wasn’t lying, jesus)
One thing is certain: someone who has been declared a rapist by a court of law and has been convicted of many serious crimes should never be president of a country — especially not if he is also doing everything in his power to withhold incriminating material relating to the investigation of a pedophile ring.
This thread is fkn mess.
I don't think you understand how proof works
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:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.