Meinung: #MeToo hat unsere Kultur verändert, aber es konnte unsere Gerichte nicht verändern

Me too died with the 2016 new years rape in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_New_Year%27s_Eve_sexual_assaults_in_Germany

All of a sudden Liberal and centre right governments were telling women they shouldn’t have dressed provocatively, should be with male companions and shouldn’t stay out late. Because the perpetrators were from a none Christian religion and non western culture they also tried to cover it up. Even this website was doing its best to censor and delete posts after the believe her and me too movement.

Since then the world has gone further and further fascist. Germany’s AFD party became relevant thanks to the centre rights response.

Having the courts disregard truth and go with mob mentality, often time given the cute name ‚court of public opinion‘, is the wrong answer. Good for the judge not to give more fuel to the far right fascist movement.

To preface this: i will probably phrase something in this response in a way that could be better said. I apologize to anybody that I might offend with my choice of wording at any point. And I hope you can engage with the sentiment of this over the semantics.

Unfortunately, I think both sides of this are probably putting too much weight on the implications of this decision.

This decision in itself shouldn’t be seen as the end of #MeToo, or „okay so sexual assault is now legal“ (which I have seen all over today). It’s obviously not a „win“ for those advocating for better treatment of SA victims in the system, but lets also acknowledge that this wasn’t some open and shut, easy case. You had a victim who by her own admission provided verbal consent, and the case was about wading into the very grey nuance around under what circumstances consent can be considered freely given and what kind of due diligence should have been expected on the part of the men in this scenario to verify that the verbal consent they were hearing was genuine, and not coerced. I think we do have an evolving understanding about this, but I understand why laws may struggle to parse and adjudicate that.

Again, its okay to be disappointed in the results, but I would TRY not to overstate how big of a setback this is or be overly pessimistic about what this says about women’s rights more broadly. I don’t say this in a „wow, women should stop complaining“ way. I say this because I worry that this level of public pessimism will amplify the potential chilling effect of the decision. Maybe the decision itself means that some victims won’t come forward in the future. But I think a massive discourse about „wow, this is evidence that the courts will never ever hold men accojntable“ makes the problem even worse, especially because the facts of this case were really unique and difficult.

Now, on the other side, its also crazy to see the response from a lot of men today. „Those poor boys“, „they should be suing her“, etc. Give me a break. They aren’t criminals, in the eyes of the law, but they were absolutely overprivileged, entitled creeps at the best. The world has lost NOTHING of value by the NHLs choice not to give them a job and a pedestal. They have not been „vindicated“, they have been exonerated of the criminal charges against them. Even the judge is not ACTUALLY saying „she was a liar and this was BS“, the judge basically said „look, in a case where we don’t have a lot of other evidence, this needs to be strong and its not. She’s not credible or reliable (within the context available).“ Let’s also not ignore the fact this all brought to light the fact that sexual assault was routine enough at that point that Hockey Canada was actively maintaining a
Slush fund for paying off women.

This case is not evidence that women will NEVER be believed. Nor is it evidence that women SHOULD never be believed or that men are the real victims. Everyone would be better off if we just stopped talking about this frankly very specific situation that 99% of commenters have almost no understanding of.

Consent cannot be withdrawn after the act. This is the lesson people should take away from this. It’s not sexual assault if you regret having sex with a stranger later in the evening or the next day.