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EAllusion wrote:It just occurred to me that the accused in the Columbia mattress case is not an American. So does that mean it was fair to railroad him in public?

Obviously not. If you were to put your Democratic hat on for a second, how would Hillary answer this assuming we could force her to give a straight answer.

When she says sexual assault victims must be believed, does that include the women that accused her husband of sexual assault?

ajax18 wrote:

EAllusion wrote:It just occurred to me that the accused in the Columbia mattress case is not an American. So does that mean it was fair to railroad him in public?

Obviously not. If you were to put your Democratic hat on for a second, how would Hillary answer this assuming we could force her to give a straight answer.

When she says sexual assault victims must be believed, does that include the women that accused her husband of sexual assault?

My guess is she'd either dance around or not answer the question by being offended that it was asked.

What Clinton actually said is that survivors of sexual assault need to be believed and supported. This is true. That is to say, if a person is sexually assaulted, not being believed when they come forward exacerbates the potential for psychological damage for that person. This is especially true of children. What Clinton is saying is not controversial. It is important that survivors are believed.

What you've immediately taken from this is the idea that if someone says they were a victim of sexual assault, they must be believed no matter what. Not only that, but if they accuse someone, that accusation must be presumed true. Clinton isn't saying this. There are groups of people, usually influenced by radical feminism, who very much argue that because false allegations of sexual assault are a rarity, we must take a believing attitude towards accusations by default. At the same time, there has been a movement on college campuses that seeks to minimize due process protections for the accused and has fairly radical ideas about the nature of obtaining sexual consent. Clinton's comments can be interpreted as pandering to that group while being careful to avoid actually agreeing with them. I'm not sure about that, but what's certain is that she's left enough room to plausibly deny that should the charge come up. What we're left with is a comment that is sympathetic to the plight of rape victims. Rape is a huge problem in our country, its victims are overwhelmingly women, and those women too often suffer in silence or hostile disbelief.

What you've immediately taken from this is the idea that if someone says they were a victim of sexual assault, they must be believed no matter what. Not only that, but if they accuse someone, that accusation must be presumed true.

What does "believe," mean if the accusation is not assumed to be true?

Where I disagree with most is that I think there should be a penalty for bearing false witness in rape cases. When Crystal Mangum was proven a liar, she suffered no penalty for the damage she caused. Feminists say that punishing false accusations would discourage victims from pressing charges. I think victims should be discouraged from pressing charges when those charges are false.