Tuesday, October 24, 2017

So now they want to get rid of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because "It encourages doubt

when someone says they've been raped!"  Wonderful.

There SHOULD be doubt; our whole system is built on 'innocent until PROVEN guilty beyond reasonable doubt'.  But these idiots want to tear that down in the name of "Believe the victim no matter what!"
At least some victims.
This is why Lee elevated righteous scepticism: she was addressing a culture in which instant belief had replaced fairness. As it has again today. This is not to say modern-day feminists are racist. Of course they aren’t. But there is a thread that ties the old racist hysteria about black male rapists and today’s supposedly progressive panic about “rape culture”: an astoundingly dismissive attitude towards due process and the rigorous establishment of guilt. What both these moments share in common is an insistence that we believe the victims. No questions, no scepticism, no interrogation — just belief. But belief in cases like this has caused untold damage throughout history. Black men were hanged because of a cult of belief. In the Satanic Ritual Abuse and paedophile panics of the 1980s and 90s, families were torn apart as a consequence of a cult of belief. What damage is being done now by the elevation of almost-religious belief over cool, just scepticism? Our cry should not be “I believe you”; it should be, “I respect you and I want to believe you. But I need proof. Strong proof. Because I prefer civilisation to barbarism.”
Very damned much so.


1 comment:

Arthur said...

"This is not to say modern-day feminists are racist. Of course they aren’t."

*COUGH*COUGH*SPUTTER*. Damn, I shouldn't have been eating when I read that.