zabouti |||

DM from Martha Carmichael

I think it was in response to this FB post that Martha DM’d me with this:

I am tired of the one-sidedness of Me too. I was, from day one. But if you said anything against what was happening you were, I don’t know, something awful. In these sexual situations, I don’t think any sex should automatically be believed or not be believed, but both should be presumed not guilty until….proved otherwise . MeToo, I thought was supposed to correct the tendency to believe the man and not believe the woman. That was good, but it shouldn’t then turn into believe the woman and not believe the man. Oliver Wendell Holmes, when talking about religion and belief”, once said that belief is a bet. If we say I believe you are innocent” or I believe there is a God”, it sounds better than I bet you are innocent or I bet there is a God, but really a belief is just not a fact, it can never be because it is a bet. I think what people are forgetting is that it was the dems that called for an investigation of the woman who accused the supreme court nominee (at age 86 I cannot remember any names). They bet” she was telling the truth and said they believed” her. I personally think both Biden and whats her name should be assumed innocent …..until proved otherwise. However as a bottom line existentialist, I think context should always be considered. What we accepted when I was growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s is so different than what is accepted now. I will never forget, when a man killed another man he found in bed with his wife, and was not charged with murder. my mother telling me Of course not, he was defending his property.” Now that is a true story and I must have been 10 or 11 when I asked her why he wasn’t in jail. I am not sure that something a boy (yes, and 18 year old is a boy) did in college should ruin him for the rest of his life. It seems we don’t believe (bet) that people can change. Remember the scarlet letter women had to wear if they had a child out of wedlock? So, for me, when judging someone I mostly would judge them on who they are today. My basic rule when making a judgment about a person, is to consider 3 things: Self, Other and Context. I cannot imagine Biden doing that, it doesn’t seem to fit his modus operandi, but if he did, I would not hesitate to vote for him. Just rambling…..I guess I am saying, I don’t think ANYONE should be believed or disbelieved automatically and sometimes it felt like that was what MeToo was doing. This from a feminist before they were aucourant!

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