Lost in the shuffle w/ Kavanaugh is the normative discussion about whether
the "believe women" mantra is logically defensible. I don't see any way it is.
1) Women are half the population... so this is a sizable chunk of people we need to immediately believe. We're not saying "believe Intuit trans men." That's a small population and the implications of such a policy are much less significant. So ... Can someone provide any scientific study which suggests women are more likely to correctly identify perpetrators of crime than men? If not, then really we need to "believe men" also ... and at that point we "believe everybody" ... which is obviously logically ridiculous in any he-said-she-said situation.
2) Now... There is some logical basis in weighing competing stories to believe that an accuser's version of events is more likely to be true than somebody defending themselves (as theoretically only the person defending themselves is speaking in self-interest... though that's not always true, but let's keep ti simple for now), but if so then instead of "believe women" what you really mean is "believe accusers." (see point #1)
3) Now that we're down to "believe accusers" does this only apply to sex crimes or all crimes? Looping back to question #1, can you provide me any study which suggests accusers are more likely to accurately identify a perpetrator of a crime in sex crime cases vs other crimes? My common sense tells me actually the opposite is much more likely to be true. There's some ambiguity with many sex crimes ... if 2 people go home together drunk and one claims sexual assault the next day, there's likely many shades of gray there. OTOH, either you stole my watch or you didn't. One of us has possession of my watch, and if it's you, then you stole it.
4) "Believe accusers" is quite literally the opposite of innocent until proven guilty. It's guilty unless there's ironclad evidence to the contrary. That represents a fundamental shift in our criminal justice system, because again, if we're doing this for all crimes (since sex crimes can't be treated as special). I simply can't get behind that type of change in our criminal justice system.
Where did I err, lefties?
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Posted: 09/18/2018 at 11:47PM