This Open Thread has been brought to you by small fuzzy adorable animals.
May the victims of the Denver shooting rest in peace; may their families and the survivors find peace and comfort, and may the shooter find justice.
About ozyfrantzOzy Frantz is a student at a well-respected Hippie College in the United States. Zie bases most of zir life decisions on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and identifies more closely with Pinkie Pie than is probably necessary. Ozy can be contacted at ozyfrantz@gmail.com or on Twitter as @ozyfrantz. Writing is presently Ozy's primary means of support, so to tip the blogger, click here.
That bunny is awesome and should run for President.
Am I a cynic if I believe nothing would change even if the awesome bunny were elected?
Pikachu bunny!
http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/What_43f1e6_1232272.jpg
I am asking this question here because I have nowhere else to go with it, so I’m sorry if it seems a little too serious for a thread that started with an adorable bunny.
Someone I am very close to was recently falsely accused of rape and risks being expelled from his college. I have heard his side of the story, and given how things have progressed and what I know about him, there is no doubt in my mind that he has done nothing wrong. He is depressed and has been thinking about suicide. Please either take that on faith, or read this as a hypothetical question. I am not interested in hearing strangers who are not privy to any details tell me that he’s guilty. (I am equally uninterested in describing anything specific without a compelling reason since his privacy is at stake.)
What I do want to know is, what can I do for him? How can I support him emotionally? Is there anything I can do to help with the proceedings? Is there anything he should or should not do?
Thank you for your help!
Sigh, possible false accusations of any crime (or even “merely” gross are rule violations) always tricky to deal with.
First, even if you have very good reasons to believe that it’s false, sometimes it isn’t. The accused may be clueless, delusional, or have a faulty memory. People who are biased in their favor may also be wrong about them. Even so, under such circumstances, a true accusation can be just as cruel and traumatizing to them and the people around them as a false one. That doesn’t change the fact that society really shouldn’t tolerate bad behavior.
Or the same could be true of the alleged victim. That doesn’t make them malicious or lying, just wrong. And under such circumstances, *not* taking the alleged victim’s claims seriously is usually cruel and traumatizing to both them and the people around them. In particularly messy cases, it may occasionally be that *both* sides are seriously mistaken about what really happened.
Assuming that the accused isn’t some evil person who is good at fooling everyone, and the accuser isn’t someone trying to abuse the system for the sake of petty revenge (neither of which are very common), then in the end, someone will be hurt, and someone will be hurt worse, and possibly neither will really deserve it. There isn’t really anything you can do about that.
I don’t know that much about trials, but I would think that if you’re called as a witness or have reason to present yourself as a possible witness, then try not to be too biased about it. Otherwise, stay out of it. Either way, hope that whatever comes out of it is something resembling the truth, though there’s no way you’d absolutely know for sure. (Again, I’m hardly an expert, so take that with a grain of salt.) Win or lose, be ready to provide them emotional support for the long haul, because this will probably damage their life for years to come either way. (While this isn’t particularly fair, especially if they win, the same often happens to the accuser even if *they* win.) And again, win or lose, if it turns out that they really are clueless and/or delusional and it results in a pattern of bad behavior in the future that could potentially lead them into such trouble again, do your best to educate them and/or steer them away from that before giving up on them. Friends don’t let friends screw up their lives or other peoples’.
Again, I am not interested in talking about why I believe he has been falsely accused. There is a very important context that I am deliberately leaving out to respect his privacy.
I have nothing to say about his accuser’s motives. I have specifically asked him to avoid speculating on them or worrying about them because they are none of his concern and completely outside of his control. He has agreed that this is a good idea.
That is all I will say on that topic. Please respect my wishes to focus on what I – or hypothetical me who has proof of a false accusation that you would accept – could do in this situation.
Thank you for the advice about the trial and the emotional support. Yeah, it’s going to be a long haul, and it has not been easy for him. There’s nothing I can do to support the accuser since I do not know who she is, but I hope that she is getting the support that she needs.
Does your campus offer any sort of on campus mental health services by chance? I understand that this might be tricky given the situation you describe (especially if the accuser is also a student thus could be seeking out the same services right there on campus as well) so you may want to think twice about this though.
Maybe I’m reading this wrong but are people arguing against making rape laws gender neutral?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Government-looks-to-make-rape-laws-gender-neutral/articleshow/15035841.cms
I’ve started assuming that such people are just incredibly delusional.
Vrinda Grover stated “There are no instances of women raping men. I don’t think men are facing serious sexual violence as women. Consider the brutality and intensity of sexual violence against women.” There is no fact in this statement. This is meant entirely to obfuscate and redirect attention. It offers up no evidence in support of the claim yet roundly dismisses any claim of male victimhood. Then it reinforces the the horrors of the crime and portrays women as the sole victims. Is it really so surprising? Did you actually think that those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regard to the victim industry would even consider the idea of relinquishing any of that power? As horrible as it is, there is a lot of money involved here and that money is dependent upon the system working in a certain way. If men suddenly start being recognized as victims, it calls into question their sole status as depraved sex beast rapists. It draws attention to a flawed system and risks exposing the lies that we have been force fed regarding the nature of rape and it’s victims. Lamech states that the people opposed are simply delusional, but it’s those delusional people who have incredible power to steer public policy and that scares the absolute shit out of me. Rational discussion and intelligent policy are buried under rhetoric and false statistics.
“Vrinda Grover stated “There are no instances of women raping men. I don’t think men are facing serious sexual violence as women. Consider the brutality and intensity of sexual violence against women.”
Dismissal of fact followed by invoking the “who has it worse” argument.
Most of the people that support help for male victims of female rapists are not claiming that “men are facing serious sexual violence as women”. When it comes to helping victims of all walks of life it doesn’t matter which side is getting it worse. I thought it was all about helping EVERYONE that needs it.
I would be very interested to hear someone explain why the fact that women are raped by men more often than vice versa proves that men that are raped by women should not get help. And there is no need to “consider the brutality and intensity of sexual violence against women” when talking about helping men. Seriously how does the brutality and intensity that women suffer figure into the question of whether or not male victims should get help?
Or even to hear such a person refer to a study which unequivocally proves that women are raped more often than men. It’s an impossible claim to defend or refute.
OK, I have no idea how to handle this:
http://whataboutthemoonz.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/bigotry-101/
I was messing around on manboobz and found a commenter associated with this wordpress site. Now this notion of bigotry seems… Well, odd.
First of all it asserts that hatred against men specifically is not a form of bigotry since bigotry (like the simple activist definition of “sexism”) is tied into power analysis (of one form or another). Now, if I accept this definition it does grant a word that I can use to describe a general form of systemic oppression or hatred without having to get specific as to whether it is based on race, sex, etc.. But if I accept this definition, it makes it harder to express the notion of hatred against men since I can no longer call it “bigoted,” I have to settle for nondescript “hateful.” I could try to get more specific, but it starts getting messy along the lines of “erased male experiences” or “toxically minimized male viewpoints.”
Maybe in the right circles or spheres this definition would be more useful, but in an egalitarian or general access sort of sphere, I am not sure the gain is worth the cost.
That bunny is adorable – he/she reminds me of a bunny I had growing up. Is that a really young Holland Lop?