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JoshuaZ comments on February 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: ArisKatsaris 01 February 2015 11:03AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 February 2015 11:44:27PM 2 points [-]

Looking at your link, it appears that rather he is being accused of doing things that only qualify as "rape" due to the current anti-rape hysteria/witch hunt.

From the link:

At The Amazing Meeting, Alison Smith, then-JREF employee through August 2010, and founder of the now defunct Skeptical Analysis of the Paranormal Society (down) (cached copy), alleges that Michael Shermer plied her with alcohol to the point of losing time and memory, then brought her to his hotel room and had non-consensual sex with her.

Is that really only considered rape due to "anti-rape hysteria/witch hunt"?

Comment author: alienist 01 February 2015 11:59:33PM 8 points [-]

What does "plied her with alcohol" mean? Does it mean that Shermer spiked her drink or force fed her alcohol? Most likely she was drinking with him had a little too much to drink when up to his hotel room, had sex with him, in the morning regretted it and decided to declare it non-consensual.

Calling an encounter like the above "rape" is precisely what I'm objecting too.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 February 2015 05:54:51AM 2 points [-]

Maybe it's as you describe, and maybe he was ignoring her saying no repeatedly. Why privilege only the hypothesis that makes Shermer innocent?

Also, the other accusations, while short of rape, are of bad behavior. Would you trust an ethicist who went around hitting people?

Comment author: RowanE 03 February 2015 06:00:14PM 1 point [-]

Don't we have a cultural tradition of privileging the hypothesis that makes someone innocent? I mean, I see people say "innocent until proven guilty" is just for the courtroom, but that strikes me as the same sort of thing as "it's only censorship if the government does it".

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 February 2015 12:01:06AM 2 points [-]

Yeah, this is a problem. It is possible that such a situation is only retroactively declared to be non-consensual, but that's not what he's being accused of. He's being accused of it actually being non-consensual. Do you agree that non-consensual sex with a severely inebriated individual is rape? Because that's the central accusation here.

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