What’s it doing on Instagram? Did Heather Lind bring it up with his caretakers first?

moviemeister76: So sexual assault victims need permission from their perpetrators before they speak about what happened?

That is not what I said at all. Stop engaging in the Republican strategy of deliberate misstatement. The reason to go public is when a private confrontation is ineffective. We cannot make starting with a public accusations (not just sexual ones) the norm just because easy outlets like Instagram exist. Soon people with a vendetta or simple maliciousness for whatever reason will start making false public accusations. If that has ever happened to you, you would know that a denial is useless. It is very difficult, and most of the time impossible, to prove a negative. People just start gossiping and you, though even if innocent, pay the price. Even if you win (as an acquaintance of mine did, even receiving a 6-figure settlement), you will probably have to move to another community. This is why our system says that people are innocent until PROVEN guilty.

If Heather Lind had gone privately to the caretaker (as it appears that Bush is no longer able to directly speak for himself) and received an apology, would she or should she go public? What would be the motivation to do so? Keeping quiet out of fear or because of hush money is one polar wrong. Blaring an accusation from the housetops is another polar wrong.

moviemeister76: You know what? Don’t you EVER tell me how I should deal with accusing the man who raped me. EVER. Victims have the fucking right to handle it however we fucking see fit. All you are doing is showing that you’re more concerned about being accused of sexual assault than the women who are sexually assaulted.

You know nothing about me. You don’t even know if I am a man or a woman. I was careful to point out that I am not limiting my remarks to sexual assault, but negative public accusations of all kinds. However, I am so glad no one has ever falsely publicly accused you of anything, that you have had the luxury of supposing that all negative accusations of any nature are prima facie true.

Cmae: More passive aggressive mansplaining.

Question: Is it still mansplaining if a woman wrote it? More likely you are attempting ad hominem—trying to discredit the person rather than engage the argument itself.

Cmae: Passive aggressive female misogny works too.

And yet there is no misogyny, male or female, in my comment. All I have said is there should be a “regular order” to making accusations of any kind. Otherwise, people will start making accusations of all sorts, and I have been careful to say, those accusations do not necessarily have to be sexual in nature to do real harm. You are also very close to the next step, presumption of guilt, rather than presumption of innocence. One reason police shoot unarmed black people more often than white people is the problem of presumption of guilt. I am arguing for consistency of approach.

I agree that too often society winks at sexual misconduct. Even on Dkos, many of the ads objectify women and all we hear are excuses about how Kos does not control the ads. Running headlong toward the polar opposite of presumptive guilt would be counterproductive. This is a true slippery slope. Note the comments. A number of people are ready to speculate all sorts of things about Bush.

moviemeister76: Dear God. Why is it whenever someone wants to defend something they wrote that was misogynistic or racist as hell, they always give us a multi-paragraph screed?

So instead of a refutation, you offer a restatement of your original assertion without anything to back it up except “misogynist” is the ad hominem du jour.