Slut shaming in the Buffalo News?

Not at all. I believe that she believed she was raped. Was she? I don't know. Probably.

 

Ok Dick, I'll bite.

What's the difference between "she believed it happened" and it actually happened?

 

Have we not been over this? I'm pretty sure we have.

Based on the limited information that we have and subject to change, I believe that she believes that she did not grant consent.

I know nothing about Patrick Kane's side of the story at this point to make any kind of assessment of its credibility.

I assume he will say that he believed that consent had been granted.

This is not a particularly controversial stance. States and universities are passing laws left and right requiring affirmative consent, so as to establish clearly the expectations in these situations.

 

I was talking about your ex girlfriend.

 

On this point -- what Dick means by "she believes she was raped" -- I don't think he's off base at all.

Take the opposite: Would you write "she was raped" because she says she was raped? So Patrick Kane is a rapist then, we know this?

As Dick notes, and as we've discussed on here quite a few times, the kangaroo-court antics of colleges dealing with rape accusations, even after they are dismissed by the police, should be a pretty clear indicator that opinions vary greatly on the topic.

 

No one is saying a rape shouldn't be investigated fully based on the word of the accuser.

He's intimating that the woman/girl herself doesn't necessarily know if she's been raped. That there were actions that may have provided a gray area.

 

There might have been a gray area.

But he isn't intimating at all what you're saying. He is simply noting that something isn't considered rape because the accuser says it is rape.

Your stance indicates to me that she was raped because she says she was raped.

 

To me, this all leads back to the fact that the prosecutors should not have leaked about the investigation and that the Buffalo News did an awful job with its editorial decisions following that revelation.

 

That's a good point. After reporting both the investigation and the details about the bite marks and scratches, the News is in a situation where it would be very difficult to justify not also running stuff from Kane's camp, the "slut shaming" stuff that has got people so infuriated, for example.

 

Assuming the leaked investigative details are an accurate depiction of what's in the police report, I'm not sure it's such a good idea to put everything on a delay that suits the court system's schedule. Think of the rumor mill and the accusations of cover-up if all we knew was "police checked out something at Kane's house, a woman says something bad happened" and then we didn't hear anything for a few months until charges were dismissed. There's a watchdog function there.

 

Even if the leaked details are accurate, they still represent a small subset of facts the prosecutor selected to suit his agenda. How about just following department policy and not commenting on an ongoing investigation? There are pretty good reasons for that policy.

 

The overarching point of all of this is that if a meathead douche like Patrick Kane, or anyone, is innocent until proven guilty, rape is a serious enough allegation that accusers should be assumed to be credible until proven otherwise.

And anyone who thinks the nebulous nature of rape accusations works against the accused is just not paying attention.