Thread by @JuliusGoat

Trying to come up with how unaware you'd have to be before thinking this was true only of rape accusations.

Like imagine not knowing about how bail is used in the system.

Or how plea dealing is used to force guilty pleas.

Or how pleading guilty puts a prior on your record.

Or how a prior makes you vulnerable to future interactions with law enforcement and the justice system.

Or just how much credibility a cop is given by a judge on the question "why did you stop the defendant?"

Or why did you break his orbital bone?

Or why did you tase him seventeen times?

Or why did you jump with your knee in his back after he'd soiled himself and passed out?

I think really what distinguishes rape and sexual assault accusations are, they're one of the few accusations that regularly must be brought by a less powerful party against a more powerful party if they are ever to be brought at all.

With theft you have missing property
With arson you have a burned building.
With murder you have a body
With kidnapping you have a missing person

Rape? You have to report it right away for physical evidence.

Interestingly, that physical evidence is systemically abandoned.

I'm trying to think of another crime for which the person reporting it first has to overcome this barrier of skepticism as to whether or not it really happened, in which that barrier is so hard to overcome.

Seems such a barrier would favor those who want to commit the crime.

Anyway, being accused of any crime by an empowered person such as a police offer, will ruin your life long before any trial, and thinking otherwise only reveals that you, unlike millions of other less privileged people in this country, don't feel that ever-present threat.

I feel as if people who say "rape is the ONLY crime that affects you just by being accused!" is basically just saying rape is the only crime they're worried about being accused of.

Not even necessarily that they've done something (although not necessarily NOT this, either).

Just that the accusation might come from someone other than a power that exists to shield them and harass others.

Yes. And I think this exists on the same spectrum, of crimes in which a more powerful person believes themselves entitled to the bodies of the less powerful.

Which, it strikes me, also describes the system that's so skeptical of the report of it.

https://twitter.com/girlgeek_rva/status/1051097748139851776

I'd also say this is why trying to draw parallels between rape accusations and lynchings are offensive.

The former is the less powerful petitioning the more powerful for justice.

The latter is the more powerful enforcing their authority over the bodies of the less powerful.

Maybe another way of looking at it is, abuse cases (rape, sexual abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse) are the only crime where we see systemic societal discomfort with the idea that an accusation might impact the life of the accused.

We'd do well to wonder why that is.

Or: If our country might be considered a family ... what are the things in our 'family' that we just don't talk about? And why?

Not just why is our 'family' so uncomfortable with the idea of a rape accusation having some impact on the life of the accused, but also the reverse.

Why is our 'family' so comfortable letting accusations destroy so many other lives, and what lives are they, and what crimes?

If a cop says they smell drugs, that's probable cause for further inspection or detention.

That's an accusation, with no proof other than their say so, which is always enough in a court.

Yet this doesn't happen in the suburbs or private schools. They must not do drugs there.

For some people, the main principal is their lives must never be ruined, completely separate from anything they might have done.

For others, the principal is that their lives ought to be ruined; it's only a matter of finding the reason.