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Watching the reactions for supporters of voice actor/sexual predator Vic Mignogna having most of his lawsuit thrown out for lack of evidence is both scary and instructive.
This isn't something I've really covered so the situation might be unfamiliar to some of my readers. I'm not really going to try to sum it up, but it's pretty easy to Google.
But the short version of the short version is, a man with a long history of accusations of conduct that starts at copping feels in fan photo ops and goes upward decided to slap a lawsuit on his most prominent accusers and a company that parted ways with him.
Legal Twitter has had a field day with the antics of his lawyer, who doesn't have experience with this kind of suit and has conducted the case mainly by riling up Vic's fans in a very public way.
I can't begin to sum up all the points of law he got wrong along the way, to say nothing about the overall legal strategy.
But along the way, he and other supporters have been portraying this lawsuit as a nuclear option level legal slamdunk, open and shut case.
But along the way, he and other supporters have been portraying this lawsuit as a nuclear option level legal slamdunk, open and shut case.
And so when 90% of his complaints were thrown out for lack of evidence... the people who had been up until that point high on smugness at what they had been told would be a righteous legal smackdown on those who challenged their idol went into full-on cognitive dissonance.
They *knew* that the court case was basically a formality because their guy was Right and would be Vindicated, and now he's suffered a setback, which means something is Wrong.
Suddenly the judge is corrupt, the whole court system is flawed, the conspiracy goes to the top.
Suddenly the judge is corrupt, the whole court system is flawed, the conspiracy goes to the top.
And there are people with anime avatars and default avatars talking about how the only solution to #MeToo accusations that "are totally false" is lethal violence.
I'm watching this, and what's going through my head is how every tweet by (or about, if it gets enough traffic) Trump gets a chorus of replies predicting he will absolutely win in a landslide in 2020.
Now, I will not be the person to tell you he can't win. His quickest path to a legitimate victory is for enough of us to decide he's washed up and on his way out and relax.
But it's not a lock, he can lose, and when he does... we're going to see a lot of that same stunned disbelief.
To jump back to #MeToo, one thing I am noticing on an upswing is this line "accusing without evidence". Reactionaries throw those words out there as if it's a damning accusation any time someone comes forward.
"She accused him without evidence".
"She accused him without evidence".
If someone shares a story about their male boss or more senior coworker inviting them back to his hotel room and coming on to them, or whatever, the refrain is "But she accused him without evidence."
And in the emerging culture of anti-MeToo, this isn't he said, she said.
And in the emerging culture of anti-MeToo, this isn't he said, she said.
The era of He Said, She Said is on its way out, replace with an era in which She Keeps Her Trap Shut, because if you accuse someone without evidence, that means you're lying, and a false accusation is as bad as or worse than the crime being accused.
Going hand in hand with "accused without evidence" is "why didn't she go to the police?", which is being applied to things that aren't inarguably crimes but are definitely off, definitely creepy, definitely wrong.
Never mind that in many cases the people coming forward aren't trying to put someone in jail, they're coming forward for their own emotional and mental health reasons, or to warn others, or to try to create some kind of accountability.
And never mind that the same people saying "Why not go to the police?" would swiftly conclude it was a false accusation if a police complaint didn't result in a criminal conviction.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes. As a matter of faith in these circles, someone giving testimony against a man is "accusation without evidence" (which is false and a lie) without objective, external corroboration.
We're going back to the ages (which we had only barely set foot out of) where a woman's testimony alone is not enough to convict a man, which makes most of the transgressions that happen behind closed doors once again a personal matter, private matter, family matter, etc.
