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[sluissa]

Innocent until proven guilty is still the ideal, even if it hasn't been the reality for a while now.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Cops are lazy cowardly scum, news at 11? They won't even process sex crimes against women half the time either, or any crime they can get away with minimizing.

There are at least as many people who say "women should be grateful for the attention" as say "men can't really be raped", and I think most reasonable people understand both those attitudes as being destructively wrong. For the rest, you can't fix bad philosophy.

And the allegations are testable. If people who don't know each other and don't know each other's testimonies all give essential matching details, that's material evidence. If you disagree with that, I think you've severely underestimated just how bad people are at lying. We don't see a lot of cases of false rape allegations falling apart years after a conviction, almost all of them fall apart dramatically during the investigative phase because constructing a false reality good enough to pass muster is just beyond most people.

[Trekkin]

I didn't say the allegations weren't true, i said they were untestable. That's a different thing altogether. And the fact that men are going to be more wary about hiring a woman if lots of women are making public allegations that bring their employers down is just pragmatic realism, it's not bias. It's just a fact. Even if it's 1 in a million chance, less people will hire you if you could destroy them on a whim. That's just an observation, not a value judgement.

You're acting like every allegation results in a media circus. The media do vet the accusers, you know; that's how the Washington Post caught that fake accuser of Roy Moore's planted by Project Veritas to discredit them.

[nenjin]

Although it does seem somewhat interesting that all these big media personalities that lead interviews (and have interviewed presidents) are all going down at the same time.

It's like if someone was wanting to discredit the media with things that don't actually have anything to do with the facts of reporting, they're getting everything they could have wanted right now.

[Reelya]

That example was political trolling however, aimed at the WaPo. Direct accusations against specific celebrities or media employees from individual accusers don't get the same level of research going into them, they just get printed verbatim, such as the allegation against George Takei. Plenty of people have lost their jobs already over untestable allegations from single people.

And my point again wasn't who's right or wrong, it's that the perception of their being a witch hunt harms trust. It doesn't matter if every allegation is true or not, the perception that someone could take you down with a baseless allegation, if you have a falling out or they want your job, that harms trust. Sure, believing women's allegations in a "guilty until proven innocent" fashion is the trendy thing right now. It empowers women. However, it empowers them to a level of "snap my fingers and I can destroy you completely", which is probably going to be a bad thing for women in the industry in the long run. Lack of trust both ways is what leads to higher levels of gender segregation, as that is how employers can avoid having to deal with both abuse scandals and hypothetical false allegations.

[smjjames]

Looks like Roy Moore is getting a Trump bump as he's started moving ahead in recent polls: https://www.vox.com/2017/11/29/16715636/roy-moore-lead-doug-jones-new-polls

The chances of Doug Jones winning were already slim just due to it being Alabama.

Trump is currently trying to push tax plan in Minnesota and it's his usual meandering word salad.

I can't help but wonder if his style of speech (on topic-off-topic-on topic-off topic) is helping or hurting the tax reform push or if it's neutral. Obviously it worked just fine for him during the election and his base eats it up, but Congress is trying to sell it to everybody, not just the 35% or so that makes up Trumps base.

[redwallzyl]

Although it does seem somewhat interesting that all these big media personalities that lead interviews (and have interviewed presidents) are all going down at the same time.

It's like if someone was wanting to discredit the media with things that don't actually have anything to do with the facts of reporting, they're getting everything they could have wanted right now.

No conspiracy just the breakdown of hegemony into ideology. It happen every once and awhile usually to dramatic results.

[Dunamisdeos]

I'll pop in and say that I have witnessed the situation described by Reelya, where someone actively tries to hurt someone knowing that there is a pre-existing bias, and furthermore that this person directly referenced current allegation events in the news as part of their attack. I am not able to give more details.

I don't think it takes much observation to see a bias against men in terms of sexual allegations. There is a clear bias in our culture that it's men who are sexual predators and women who are the victims. A man is often not allowed to be alone with any child whatsoever regardless of whether or not there is any indication whatsoever of predation. I used to teach, and it was made clear on multiple occasions that if I was left alone with a child for any reason it would look bad because I am male.

Male friends of mine have had the cops called on them for being in a children's park with their own actual children. These things are simply not concerns for women.

Understand that none of this means that there is not a problem with men in power taking advantage of women. There obviously is, but these things are not mutually exclusive. What Reelya is advocating is rationality, not ignorance of either issue.

[Lucus Casius]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "rationality," in this case.  Convincing everyone who's ever been sexually abused to take turns and make sure they space out coming forward with it long enough that those worried they might be accused of abuse don't panic?  Telling the media not to report accusations?

[Trekkin]

I'll pop in and say that I have witnessed the situation described by Reelya, where someone actively tries to hurt someone knowing that there is a pre-existing bias, and furthermore that this person directly referenced current allegation events in the news as part of their attack. I am not able to give more details.

Well, rationally, this is as "untestable" as the accusations themselves, so I suppose the smart thing to do is to completely disregard it.

[EnigmaticHat]

Although it does seem somewhat interesting that all these big media personalities that lead interviews (and have interviewed presidents) are all going down at the same time.

It's like if someone was wanting to discredit the media with things that don't actually have anything to do with the facts of reporting, they're getting everything they could have wanted right now.

It started in Hollywood, which has its own sort of... particular culture.  Hollywood has this wealthy, beautiful* in-crowd that's extremely interconnected, and then a rotating crowd of young people moving into the area and either succeeding at finding an "in", or failing and moving out within a couple years.  Additionally directors have an extraordinary amount of power over their employees for many reasons.  Its a situation that's extremely ripe for sexual abuse.  And also an environment where bad rumors about people can spread very quickly, sometimes without the knowledge of the general public.

What we're seeing now is a generational difference.  People have known about the sexual abuse and harassment in Hollywood for as long as Hollywood has been a thing, its just they turned it into a negative stereotype for the victims.  That stereotype being the attractive female actor who got where she is now by giving people BJs.  And additionally there's always been a semi-glorified stereotype associated with Hollywood of the lecherous wealthy old man who gets to have all the sex he wants (essentially Hugh Hefner, not him specifically but that kind of person).

Female millennials simply aren't OK with authority figures that are guilty of sexual harassment, much less assault.  The older generations were OK** with leaving that as a sort of background noise that everyone knew about but was never brought to light.  Resisting the control of corrupt male authority figures is the issue for young women today and it will likely be the primary motivating political force for an entire generation of women.  For example notice how even when we talk about abortion nowadays the narrative is often not about the issue itself, but about how abortion legislators are overwhelmingly male?  That's because young women don't want to be controlled by old men.  They don't see it as natural or inevitable any more.  Trump is the ultimate powerful lecherous old man that gets away with everything, as a result he's unintentionally rallied women into a political activeness.

This was always going to happen.  Its much like how with the millennial emphasis on a particular kind of "genuineness"*** in politicians always meant that politicians would be called to take an explicit stance on whether racism is bad.  Trump was simply the catalyst for that, just as he's now becoming a catalyst on the issue of workplace sexual offenses.  The cause and effect here goes "grab her by the pussy" > the women's march > hollywood mass sexual assault accusations > big 3 cable news network sexual assault accusations > general media/celebrity/artist sexual assault accusations > whatever the future holds.  The women's march is going to be talked about in history books, it cannot be over-stated how much it is going to change the future of American politics.  Remember a whole percentage point of the US population all came out for the same protest.  That... doesn't happen.  Not in a country this size.  For reference.

*seriously if you ever want to give yourself a skewed perspective of what an ordinary person looks like, move to (some parts of) LA

**except the people that weren't of course, I mean its entire generations.  It would be fair to say that boomers in particular were opposed to sexual assault and sexual harassment, just less opposed than they ideally should have been.  In particular while some boomers campaigned against sexual harrassment, there's also a crowd that's looking forward to the day that they get their money/power and then they'll have infinite access to sex.

***which could be most accurately summarized as forwardness, directness, or honesty.  Whereas for boomers, a politician appearing "genuine" meant that they were relatable, personable, or classy.

[Loud Whispers]

There's also the whole thing with Hollywood losing money so its big cheeses aren't so able to hire agents/give hush money anymore. Thus people are far more confident to go out against them because the fight is now more equal

[sluissa]

Pretty sure the womens' march had nothing to do with this sequence of events. I'd even argue it was meaningless in the long run. It's been all but forgotten outside of whatever circles you seem to hang out in. The biggest thing is that it triggered a series of other marches that sort of diluted the meaning of a "march" up to the point where we now have Juggalo pride marches demanding rights for fans of a freakin' music group.

The Bill Cosby and Fox News scandals started up well before that and while there might have been some prior, but less memorable or news attentive cases prior to that, everything that's happened in the media sex scandal universe seems to have been a chain reaction from, especially, the attention that Bill Cosby got.

Also the fact that most of the allegations brought to light are from years or decades ago. Many of the women aren't millennial by any stretch of the imagination. (Yes this risks getting into the argument of "what's a millennial" again... but honestly, a lot of these people are flat out greyhairs at this point.)

[Sheb]

Well, it's a change in work culture which mean that people feel more confident bringing those allegations up now. There is also the fact that being the first one to speak against someone in a position of power is more risky, so you have a "open the floodgate" effect when someone finally speak up against a serial offender.

[misko27]

Brief digression, but it looks like patience with Tillerson is running outL they're making plans to remove him.

Given what I've heard about the slow gutting of the State Department under Tillerson, probably not a bad idea. His succesor is the current CIA director, who is to be replaced himself by a senator from Arkansas.