Monday, March 16, 2020

Me too : you too ?

Dear Charlie, I'M BACK. I know, I know... too many emotions. Keep calm and carry on reading.

Today I’d like to talk to you about feminism. Feminism is a movement I admire a lot, because I do consider as normal that women and men should be on the same level. I will not take that much about it today but more about #MeToo movements or even “Balance ton porc” in France for example. Even if I believe they are essential to feminism, I’d like here to talk about their dangers.


Indeed, I believe that they can be extremely dangerous for societies, and I’d like to begin with the presumption of innocence. It is a judicial principle which is extremely important to me.

The presumption of innocence is the legal principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. In many countries, presumption of innocence is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, and it is an international human right under the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11.
Source : Wikipedia


With these movements, the problem is, to me, that men cannot defend themselves. Indeed, when a person, usually a woman, declares having been sexually attacked by a man, even if most of the time it is true, the man has got no way to defend themselves or just to present their point of view. I’m sure that we all know the power words can have -we study them !- and this power can be used again someone. Words can be the interpretation of a situation, and objectivity is extremely hard to reach, especially in such a situation. Therefore, women can describe something in the perception of it while men will have a completely different perception of the scene they have been witnesses of.

Obviously, here, we can say that men will not tell the truth in order to protect themselves, but, well, we have no law which says it is always the case, so let’s be pragmatic !

  
With these feminist movements, laws have been promoted. Even if it is not necessarily enough yet, they are to be used, in my opinion. Still in my opinion, women and more generally everyone should be using laws and courts in order to find justice in a certain situation. Therefore, all conflicts would be solved in a court.

Because the problem is a court case is held on Twitter is that you have the supposed victim on one side with most likely the biggest part of the internet with them and on the other hand the supposed rapist who is abandoned by his friends and family and who receives insults, etc. Even if some may think this is legitimated by the fact that this person deserves what happens to them. They don’t. First of all because in many cases there is still no proof that the situation has happened a certain way and secondly because even if they should deserve this, the best way to solve problems is to go in front of a judge. Otherwise, if we use Twitter to hold cases, we arrive in a society of permanent denunciation, where there is no access for the supposed guilty person to their basic rights, and where such violence is held to them that the supposed victims of the beginning almost become bullies.

Therefore, to me, the best way to solve problems, notably of that kind, is just to use justice.

“Truth never damages a cause that is just” M. Gandhi


Well Charlie, I think I’ve played enough devil’s advocate… Let’s conclude on me restating that I really support feminist movements.

I’ll be back soon (isn’t the term ending ? hey Mrs C :D -- JOOOOKE)

T

5 comments:

  1. There's a very interesting concept called "ochlocracy" (def : a political system in which a mob is the source of control; government by the masses) which could describe these places like twitter or internet chats in a general way.

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  2. Thank you for this article. Some people claim that feminism is strictly reserved to women. I strongly disagree . I think that it is great to read a feminist point of view expressed by a young man. As you well-know "we should all be feminists." Interesting perspective too, Aurélien. I wish you had written more on this topic.

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  3. Hello, I found this article very interesting. However I would just like to say that the percentage of false accusations of sexual assault in Europe has been found to be around 2 to 6percent. Now I do understand what you mean when you say that no trial should be held on twitter and that there's still the presumption of innocence which is a fundamental concept of our justice system and I agree with you on that. However I would like to say that I don't think false accusations and twitter trials only affect men because, from what I've witnessed, women are affected by it too. Even though, I would agree, sometimes at a less important scale. Now I do think that hate on social media is a serious problem and that it is no place to judge people.

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  4. I really liked your article and to have someone else's perspective was nice. Like Mrs. C said being a feminist should not be only reserved for women, and like you said, the main idea of feminism is to allow an equal balance in society between men and women. So i think men should be encouraged to become or say that they are feminist because it means they believe as much in women's rights than their own.

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  5. Hi, thank you for your article, really. I totally understand your opinion and even share it when it comes to the idea that "trials" sometimes pops out of social medias and that's it can be harmful. However this movements have been created to break the social silent imposed to women and this tool may be an alternative to broken social systems

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