In Anticipation of the Next Politically Charged Sexual Abuse Scandal...
It’s hard to trust claims of sexual abuse that only seem to come to light when a political seat or some other form of power hangs in the balance. These public discussions are always fraught and often triggering for many of us who’ve spent years in the trenches with abuse victims.
When a woman steps up and says, “This powerful person abused me; I can’t remain quiet while they vie for power over other innocent people” only to be met with rage, antagonism, and public character assassination, thousands and thousands of abuse survivors are watching from the sidelines. The broader discussion informs their decisions about how to navigate their own situations.
The following is a list of standards I personally think decent people should adopt to guide their own engagement in these discussions.
Never immediately assume blame OR innocence outright. Investigate thoroughly and without bias. Ask, “What is true?” rather than, “What do I want to be true, and how can I justify it?”
I’ve heard so many people say, “I’m waiting for the evidence to emerge.” It sounds like a wise standard, but really, if everyone sat around waiting for their favorite news outlet to provide the “evidence” that supported their desired conclusion, a lot of people would never see justice. We have to be firmly committed to brutal intellectual honesty, even if it implicates someone we really want to support.
”Innocent until proven guilty” is the standard for a court of law, not the court of public opinion. I find that people who preach this the most loudly when their pet candidates are in the hot seat are often really hypocritical in its application. Conservatives did not wait until Weinstein’s conviction to assume his guilt. Liberals did not wait until Donald Trump was convicted to assume his. We have brains.Never dismiss allegations simply because the candidate looks squeaky clean and the accuser has a messy personal life. A fractured personal life is often evidence of abuse, not proof of innocence, and predators are smart; they intentionally target vulnerable women whose broken backstories make them easy to disbelieve.
Just because this may be the first time you are personally hearing about the allegations does NOT mean this is the first time the women making them have voiced them or that they’re only doing it for financial gain.
For some strange reason, I remain unable to locate the lengthy list of women who have fast tracked their way to fame and fortune by making false allegations to destroy people's careers. Any time these women speak up (regardless of who they’re accusing or which way they vote), they are subject to a deluge of some of the most depraved and hateful abuse and cyber bullying you can possibly imagine.They stand to lose so much more than they stand to gain.
Sometimes these women have been speaking up for years, but their cries haven’t mattered enough to anyone for them to do anything about it until political strings are attached.
Other times, they convinced themselves their stories weren’t worth sharing until they realized their abuser was going to be given a lot of power with which to hurt others.
Listen to women you trust who have walked the abuse recovery road and helped others do the same. They can often see patterns others don’t.
Groping without consent is a big deal, not a "bad behavior" or an "adolescent mistake." Don’t minimize abuse.
Even if you’re fully convinced a woman is lying, communicate in such a way that you wouldn’t be ashamed to discover you were wrong. Imagine you had called someone a fat, ugly, lying b*tch only to discover conclusive proof that she had, in fact, been raped by your favorite candidate. How would you feel about that? Now ask yourself why so many women wait so long to speak.
When power is involved, the standard should be “above reproach.” Try to hold candidates to that standard as best you are able.
I dunno why this old article just hit my feed, but it's a good one. There's a conundrum here that my therapist and I have talked about a lot. Beside how difficult it is to get real evidence--so few first graders have the foresight to hide hidden cameras in their childhood homes, ha ha. Likewise, any woman who produced irrefutable evidence (having recordings she made surreptitiously, for example) would be suspicious on that account. (You recorded his calls without telling him?!?!)
Victims have to be messed up to the *exact* right amount for a jury. If you're too messed up, you're not a credible witness. If you're not messed up enough, you're not a credible witness. After all, if the story was true, you'd be more messed up! If a system has to err, I'd rather it err on the side of letting too many guilty people go. I'm not complaining about that part, nor would I ever. But it's readily apparent that sexual abusers are the ones who get away with their crimes the most, for this reason.
Good men must keep their hands to themselves so that bad men who cannot keep their hands to themselves stand out more. "Continence" is the value they used to teach, I think. It's not a reference to holding farts in church.