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Why are we digging up 13-year old stories, this feels like agenda-pushing
As horrendous as this story is (and yes, this man does deserve to get compensation for what he's been through), I agree.
This feels like the very subversive thing that someone with a nefarious mindset would pull to push vulnerable people more into the "manosphere" type mindset.
It may seem innocuous at first, "OH! It's just a user sharing a story that factually happened!"
But it's the pulling up of an old article about an enraging topic while women's rights are being stripped away/we're seeing a huge surge of Andrew Tate-style influences being held up by the younger male generation. This type of stuff absolutely normalizes hatred/mistrust of women by the redpill/blackpill fans.
As a fan of equality, I propose we be equally pissed for every group that has been wronged. I don't buy this selected/timed outrage explanation you're pushing. I can be angry for this, and angry about loss of abortion all at the same time.
I apologize that it's taken me this long to respond, I've been at work all morning. I would just like to take a moment to agree with you. I DO believe that false allegations should be spoken about more often, and that men SHOULD feel supported to share their fears/concerns/etc about this sort of thing happening. I do think that just by saying "That happens so rarely it doesn't matter", that we're hurting the feminist cause, because it's just like people saying "Oh, rape abortions only account for 1% of all sought after abortions, so it's a non-issue". For the people affected, it's absolutely a huge issue, even if they're both technically statistical anomalies.
I think its important to be outraged about false rape allegations, as it not only ruined this young man's life, and the people's lives he's close with, it now sheds a mistrustful eye on true rape victims. However, I do think it is telling that this story has resurfaced today as though it happened yesterday, when it is in fact over a decade old. I think it is telling that it is resurfacing during a time period where women's rights (not even just to bodily autonomy, but there are people arguing to get rid of no-fault divorce as well, among other things) are such a hot button issue. I think it is telling that it's resurfacing during a period where we're seeing a surge in young men subscribing to manosphere style content (I honestly think these young men feel unheard/unsupported in their hopes/dreams/wants/worries/fears/etc, but that opens up a whole other topic around extremist feminism).
Yes, I'm angry that this happened. I'm empathetic. I'd like to think (and I'll likely search it after this comment) that this young man received multi-millions in compensation, because not only did he lose 6 years of his life to the system, he's also faced a loss in job and relationship opportunities, and not to mention the emotional and psychological effects of being accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit.
TL;DR - Yes, we can be angry that this young man was wronged, but we can also be critical and suspicious of how/why this story resurfaced now.
Edit: I looked it up, his name is Brian Banks and he was only awarded $142K by the state of California for this wrongful conviction. That makes me doubly angry on his behalf. In no way does that even begin to try and make things up to him (not that I'm arguing that money fixes everything, but holy fuck, only $142K?!). https://www.hawaiiinnocenceproject.org/brian-banks
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for me it's the fact that multiple independent social media accounts decided this was the time to dredge this story up. The twitter post is from two days ago, and this post is from yesterday. What made this week the week that suddenly everyone decided to care about this particular story?
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You also wouldn't be able to post about an actual rape case from 13 years ago and get 600+ upvotes. People aren't interested in that.
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Because even Lemmy isn’t immune to fake internet points farming. People are gonna post the same old tired retread junk that we saw on Reddit.
What agenda? That there are false rape charges?
Oh. We becoming reddit?
So does that mean she was 16 at the time of the accusation? So, 22 when she recanted? Or was she 10 and then 16? Or is she just always 16?
google says the incident was in 2002 and the reneg in 2011 (cleared in 2012) so it seems like she’d have to be 16 at time of accusation, courts took a few years to actually jail him, and she would be about 25 when she came clean. It says the statute of limitations for lying in court was passed by the time he was cleared, so no chance for a counter-suit or he would have pursued* it. The accuser was ordered to pay back money she’d gotten from the school district for claiming an unsafe environment.
Oh wow, so they reward you for keeping up the lies as long as possible. Nice.
They actually won a $2.6 million judgement against her, whereas she originally won $1.5 million. Failed to show up in court. Broke little gold digger now.
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Feel like there is a mountain of information and context missing here.
Of course there is -- you can't push far-right talking points by being honest.
What does that even have to do with this?
Go anywhere there are incels and you'll see this reposted every week, complete with the same hot takes in the comments (only with more slurs).
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Damn, I thought lemmy would be better than easily swallowed obvious ragebait, but, I suppose, such is the modern internet.
Why would it be better im any way? It's the same thing. It's not some elite social media or something.
I thought it would be better cause it's defederated, but I also kind of just thought, more than that, that the crowd lemmy attracts would be more discerning than they are. My faith in the userbase was misplaced, though, and I suppose, ultimately, this place is really just reddit 2.0, with all of the inherent incentive structure issues that go along with such a thing.
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The post implies that this event happened recently, which it did not. Feels like OP has an agenda
Nowhere in the actual post was it implied that this was a recent event (other than in your head), and in point of fact-- this kind of thing still happens on a regular basis, especially to young male African-Americans.
Feels like the agenda is yours.
Nowhere in the actual post was it implied that this was a recent event
Context clues suggest it's recent. The image in question is a twitter screenshot from 2/7/2024. The current date is 2/10/2024. People are going to assume the twitter screenshot is in reference to current events, instead of an old fucking news article from over a decade ago. It's called a lie of omission.
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Things like this, defines what society is these days. Someone accuses someone of underage rape/ sex, then that accuser is by default 100% correct - even if there is no evidence.
Even if this is occurred several years back, it is a bigger problem these days. As the accused person always has the lower ground - even if they're innocent.
This only holds up when "I saw it on social media" is your authority.
Someone accuses someone of underage rape/ sex, then that accuser is by default 100% correct - even if there is no evidence.
Complete bullshit. There is always a trial and when there is genuinely "no evidence", victims are dissuaded from continuing.
Even if this is occurred several years back, it is a bigger problem these days
According to... some guy on the internet.
If you have proof of widespread false accusations, why are you being so vague? You could be busting hundreds of innocent men out of jail and you wouldn't have to keep reusing the same story from years ago.
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My molester got away with it. He abused 31 other kids before getting caught. He was 'proven innocent 30 times and only got 15 years for that 32nd kid that he got convicted for.
I've run into him since his release, he tried to get me to tell the court that he didn't do anything.
I've known other victims.
Look up the average number of victims before a predator is caught. Fake testimony is rare, predators getting away with their crimes is common.
Go fuck yourself.
I agree with you. Lots of people spitting nonsense in this thread and/or wildly ignoring basic statistical data. Almost feels like Twitter.
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Ragebait garbage. Bot posted horseshit. Internet filth in other words. Posting shit like this is a cowards game.
Without knowing the real story or anything: Based off this picture, she should be thrown in jail.
You then have the dilemma of people afraid of admitting their accusation was false
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sometimes men are convicted of sexual assault wrongly, but these cases are few and far between, and are an insignificant fraction compared to the number of sexual assaults committed. Believe women.
edit: did I fucking stutter? BELIEVE WOMEN!
Since it sounds like some of you are at a loss for words, I just want to mention that I am a cishet guy who was scared if false accusations until I looked into how unbelievably rare they are when compared to the actual problem of legitimate sexual assault and rape cases. I’ve been falsely accused of rape, from another guy, when arguing about this very topic. I never went anywhere, other than him privately messaging me afterwards to tell me how correct I was (after getting his ass handed to him by the women in his life, no dobut).
handy guide to my positions:
- it’s terrible this guy went to jail when he was innocent. truly. I feel for him. Sincerely.
- This post still feels like agenda pushing, agendas which i elaborate on below.
- Often, men are so fearful of the idea of false accusations of rape that they create a culture of fear in other men by posting scary stories, usually trying to redpill them into downplaying and disbelieving the women in their lives when they explain that they have been raped by other men. Survivors of sexual assualts already feel like they won’t be believed, they are often told if they will be killed if word gets out. Rapists are often well-adjusted-presenting men who you wouldn’t otherwise think were rapists. When someone says they have been sexually assaulted, believe them! When you learn that this happens to women a lot more than it happens to men, maybe you’ll understand why the #metoo “movement” asked one thing of men: believe women. It was a tag originally meant for other survivors, but when you saw more women posting it, maybe you failed to realize many of them were saying “I too have been raped” and not “I support the #metoo movement”.
- men can be raped by any gender. it doesn’t make them any less of a man. there aren’t enough men’s shelters of intimate partner violence / domestic abuse and that is a real problem. Gender separation in these shelters makes sense, but if you care about men who were wrongfully abused start addressing this problem first and build more men-only shelters.
- “Believe women” does not mean “always believe women over men”. It means, in this context, to accept that when a woman says she has been sexually abused, raped or harassed, she isn’t lying about it.
- Outrage what happened to this guy is fine, but put it in perspective. Or, tell the women in your life how much of a shame it is that this guy was imprisoned. make the fear of false imprisonment for rape known and see how she responds. Report back and let me know if you still have a woman in your life. It’s that bad.
- Women are tired of explaining this to dudes. That’s why I am explaining it to dudes.
I, for one, believe in equality. We cannot say we seek it in one hand while placing another's rights above someone else's in the other.
Broadly speaking I'm against over defining boundaries - they are used to label and divide people. People divided are weaker.
To your point of believe women - I want to ask why does that mans word bear less weight than hers? Traditionally people leading with that mantra will continue with "don't punish her... it will drive away others who need to step forward." Truth is truth. Equality should be equally distributed. She should be imprisoned for the same time and provide damages for the irreparable damages caused to his life.
If we are willing to convict on just the assertions of one party equality will continue to exist. There needs to be a strong understanding that decisions have weight - even bad ones.
Cases such as these need to also be handled properly to protect /all parties/ involved. Proper research, proper due process, all of it- before anything is made public. Gossip and slander is equally damaging. If due process is followed and both parties are respected this problem is minimized.
This is a tricky discussion to navigate as I'm sure this could devolve into discussions of il intent etc... so for the sake of keeping things civil I'll say that people, humanity in general, is capable of being absolutely shitty and nothing will change that. What we should look to do is minimize the collateral damage as best we can and do our best to safeguard against it.
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Blindly believing women is what got us to this, its silly to decide someone isn't a liar by what's in their pants. We should instead believe whoever has more solid evidence
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this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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