What If

Because the list takes the onus away from women needing to speak out. We shouldn't require victims to expose themselves if we have other evidence.
- For the record: numerous women have spoke out against Trump for sexual misconduct while underaged. All the named ones are from Miss America or Miss Universe competitions. A couple of Epstein's victims have filed charges against Trump too but those remain anonymous.
  
  "At least" twenty-five women have publicly accused him and some have gone to court - here's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
- Yeah but when victims do expose themselves, it'd be nice if a bunch of online shit heads didn't constantly chant 'women are liars! They only want money!"
  
  Agreed
  
  Preaching to the choir in a place like Lemmy.
  
  your also forgetting death threats from magats, that forced one to drop lawsuit against him.

While in theory this is a good idea, I have first-hand experience with people grouping together and accusing me of doing things with another (at the time) underage individual, trying to get me kicked out of school/smear my name/see me imprisoned/etc...
The issue? The other underage individual they said I was doing things with, was female. Me, I'm gay as fuck. Which was made pretty obvious during questioning. Also upon examination with the other individual being tested and questioned separately... Suprise, they found that, indeed, both testing and questioning showed the accused activities were completely unfounded. All parties that made these false claims admitted that they were falsified shortly thereafter. I could have sued them, and their families (since they too were underage) - this could have actually ruined my life, these things should be punished, these traumas compensated - but I decided against it, just wanting the situation to go away. It was an awful experience, and I still have trust issues; one of the accusers was friends with me. At least, so I thought.
Now, that's not to say 'oh they are lying' in this case, but you can't just blanket believe either side. You need facts, proof, evidence. Imagine if I were to make these claims about you - suddenly you are interested in evidence and due process.
(I won't be replying to any replies to this comment - don't want to tear open that scar any more than I already have writing this)
- You're situation, while tragic, has nothing to do with his. He has been found guilty of assault in court. He has paid hush money and come to settlements. He has had his due process and now is sitting in the highest seat possible and no one is safe.
  
  The original pic uses non-specific language. If you find people responding as if it's a generalization, that's because it is.
  
  It's even easier to lie and blame a previously convicted person
  
  Indeed the Republicans should not have supported such an individual, nor people should have voted for him, but it's a quite different story.
- While I feel sorry for your experience, rape can ruin a life just as much and happens more often (and unpunished) than false accusations. They actually took you serious and made sure to do the proper interogations to find out people were lying. We are just asking they do the same for women who are raped.

Because people lie. What we can do is to not victim shame so women would be less afraid to come forward. This alone would help deter a would be attacker
- Agreed.
  It would also help out men and boys to have a safe environment to come forward with their claims without facing abuse from society/police.

What do you wanna bet that, within the next month, a right wing talking head uses that phrase to defend Ghislaine Maxwell?
- Actually, most of us can tell the difference between a committed sex trafficker and the actual sex slaves she helped traffic.
  If this does get said in her defense, it will be bad faith, and the only people that repeat it will be MAGA loyalists.
- Sure seems like a lot of these topics are coming up despite the fact any person with two brain cells to rub together knows there will always be some of any demographic who lies.

Allegations of sexual crimes should always be taken seriously and addressed immediately, however, that's not the same as taking the words of the victims words as the truth. A due process has to be mandatory and proof must remain a non negotiable requirement to arrest and punish someone. That's the one and only way justice can be served.

You can't just convict someone on vibes
- No you can't. You can however refuse to give them a job because they keep making inappropriate remarks about women and multiple women have accused them of sexual abuse, rape and harassment.
  
  EXACTLY. You don't need to "trust", you can look at the comments that were consistently made in regards to women, the vile behavior he engaged in, the known relationships, and the week court cases, i.e the evidence that was there in plain sight but people chose to ignore
- Fortunately pretty much everyone agrees
- It's not called "vibes", it's called "witness testimony" and every country on earth totally does convict people based on that

I think people do.believe them, it's just the way justice systems work. It has to be proved without shadow of a doubt.
- To give a serious answer you are right. Its not what you its what you can prove.
- Justice systems? Where? What woukd that even look like?

Why can't we just rely on common sense instead of jumping to massive generalizations regarding someones gender?
Trump has been covered in red flags regarding his treatment of women for years. E. Jean Carroll? Stormy Daniels? Katie Johnson? The Hollywood Access Tape?
I'm a little anxious that if Me Too blows up again it may have the opposite effect intended, and instead deflect attention away from Trump as people argue over the movement itself.
- I've heard some people call this the 'him too' movement. It's supposed to encapsulate the idea that right now we're seeing white men pushback against the 'Me Too', BLM, and 'Trans rights are human rights' movements.
  
  Yep more for us doesn't mean less for them. It's not a pie!

So, do you want to drop "innocent until proven guilty" for every accusation by a woman or do you have some simpler system than "evidence presented in an adversarial trial" you'd like to filter them through?
The justice system is broken, and I don't know if it can be fixed. It is far too affected by Capital.
- Nothing here is suggesting due process be skipped. The problem is that if he had his way, it definitely would be.
  
  "just believe women" (emphasis mine) implies not applying the evidentiary standard or due process to accusations from women. If we apply due process we aren't just believing them, we are (also) verifying their claims.
  But, like I said, the "justice" system is broken. Not only do we have ACAB issues, and DAs being political, but there's systemic bias against women and the marginalized from judges. (The "right" judge might not have a negative bias, but "on average" there seems to be a measurable effect/affect, tho it is hard to be sure you are comparing like with like when aggregating cases.) All of those are aggravated due to Captial being unequality distributed, and legally influencing 2.5/3 of those systems.

Trust but verify.

We all know. The rest is theatre.
- This!

Consider that if these women came forward, then the corrupt justice system, that's supposed to protect them, would dismiss or refute thier claims and leave them vulnerable to the powerful people they tried to expose.
They have to be believed AND protected from those they accuse, else they are just painting a target on their backs.
- Women have already come forward and had their lives destroyed. If the general public believed them during their trials, or honestly, if they weren't intimidated into dropping their case, this shit would already be in prison.
  But the testimony of women is valued less by the justice system than the testimony of rich powerful men. That's the problem. There is less trust in women overall, across the board in this patriarchal society.
  
  You're not wrong, but I think "rich" and "powerful" carry a hundred times the weight in that sentence as "men".
- refute thier claims
  That's what the defense is supposed to be attempting in an adversarial trial system.
  My current bias is that an adversarial system is a good way to actually achieve justice, but I'd be open to learning about non-adversarial criminal trials.

If you're the sort of moron who sees conspiracies everywhere, then the conspiracy goes one way in the first part and a different way in the second part.
They literally see more women speaking out as more unlikely.

I am all for seeing trump and anyone else in that list behind bars, but this kind of bullshit thinking goes nowhere.
- At least 26 separate women have accused Trump of SA over the course of the last 50 years, many of them before he entered politics. One of them even got a civil court to find as fact that he committed rape.
  Just how many witnesses do you need here? Would another 26 be enough? How about a thousand?
- how is it bullshit please explain...
  
  I'd assume it the bulshit is based on a different interpretation of the word "believe". Some people mean "don't need proof", which is bulshit. Some people mean " investigate as if you thought it were true", which is not bulshit.
- I dont think it's going to be a "list" like a nice spreadsheet itemising various white guys liaisons with under-age women including names, dates of birth, and witness details.
  Whatever is released, if anything, is going to be ambiguous and you're going to need to weigh the information and its source.
  This meme is challenging people who would generally line up behind the conservatives to consider other sources of information.

Here are all of the Epstein Files that have either been leaked or released.
https://joshwho.net/EpsteinList/gov.uscourts.nysd.447706.1320.0-combined.pdf (verified court documents)
https://joshwho.net/EpsteinList/black-book-unredacted.pdf (verified pre-Bondi) Trump is on page 85, or pdf pg. 80
Trump’s name is circled. The circled individuals are the ones involved in the trafficking ring according to the person who originally released the book. These people would be “The List “ Here is the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiKUXrlcac
Here's the flight logs https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165424-epstein-flight-logs-released-in-usa-vs-maxwell/
—————————other Epstein Information
https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Calif_Lawsuit.pdf here’s a court doc of Epstein and Trump raping a 13 yr old together.
Some people think this claim is a hoax. Here is Katies testimony on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnib-OORRRo
Epstein’s Ex Says He Boasted About Being a Mossad Agent https://share.google/jLMGahKlCzfV1RHZq Epstein and Israel both hired lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who says he's building 'legal dream team' to defend Israel in court and on internationally | The Times of Israel https://share.google/Lb9hDOduBWG4Elpid
Epstein Docs: https://ia600705.us.archive.org/21/items/epsteindocs/
Epstein Bribes/Payments: 1 BILLION+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7IrEi-ybzs
—————————other Trump information:
Here's trump admitting to peeping on 14-15 year old girls at around 1:40 on the Howard Stern Radio Show: https://youtu.be/iFaQL_kv_QY
Trump's promise to his daughter: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-dating-promise_n_57ee98cbe4b024a52d2ead02 “I have a deal with her. She’s 17 and doing great ― Ivanka. She made me promise, swear to her that I would never date a girl younger than her,” Trump said. “So as she grows older, the field is getting very limited.”
Trump's modeling agency was probably part of Jeffreys pipeline: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration/
A good summary of Trump-Epstein timeline: https://thepresidential.medium.com/we-have-been-gaslit-about-donald-trump-and-jeffrey-epstein-for-four-years-fbda67c20f75
• ⁠Much of this info can also be found on: https://theepsteindocs.com/
Feel free to do your part and spread this info around so it is never “lost”.

I just want to take a moment to apologize to women for all the bullshit you’ve had to endure, like being treated as interchangeable, objectified, talked down to. None of that is okay, and no one deserves it.
- Apology not accepted. If you personally never did any of the above, then an apology is not needed. Nor is it fair to ask of men to apologize on behalf of other men who did. Women don't want apologies from men who aren't at fault. They just want men to stand up for them.
  I get the sentiment, but wording matters because this is the kind of rhetoric the manosphere loves to take out of context to claim that men have to apologize for just being men.
  
  That's a fair sentiment individually, but it's not just an individual problem.
  Men don't just need to be not part of the problem, they need to actively be part of the solution.
  
  Sadly your view is not the norm.
- What a hero. Line up, ladies, we got an ally over here
- Would be cool if i could smile or show kindness around men without tge near certainty that ill be treated like a piece of meat.
  Instead i need to take joy in denying them that.
- Would you accept an apology from someone who has hit you in the face and is going to hit you again?
  Make it stop first.
  
  Why would someone who has never hit you in the face need to apologize?
  We do not control others actions.
  
  Fair point. Accountability > performance. I’ll sit with that.

It's not just about trump tho and it's about concrete evidence. The list is yk about getting a list of all the perpetrators.
- First hand witness testimony is evidence though.
  And fwiw we've already got it. Not to mention he's already been found guilty of rape in a court of law if we want to go through the whole "sexual assault means rape and the judge said so" thing. "He's a rapist" is a statement of fact, even if the cowards at ABC News don't want to say so again.

We believe them, we just need to prove it.
People believe in magic sky daddy, im still waiting for proof there too. To be clear, if proof appears im obeying sky daddy so hard.

You could make a similar collage full of false accusers. Without the need for proof, this could easily become a weapon to be used against good people. Don't forget that Trump's base is full of women as well
- Sounds like bullshit
  
  Uh. Which part specifically? None of that is opinion lol

You don't have to listen to the women, just listen to Cadet Bonespurs himself.
He went on Howard Stern and boasted of going into the dressing rooms of the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Nobody who matters (Trumps fanbase, Trumps voters, Trumps politicans and Trumps supreme court) care whether he's guilty or convicted.
But the Epstein list is something very central to the Trump campagin narrative and thus if he's on there, that could cause major issues between Trump and his fanbase/voters.

Awww shit here we go again

I like the energy, I think Trump should be rotting in prison, but it's a shit argument that basically gives unrestricted power to random individuals.

In general I agree but the timing of saying this is peculiar given the E.M. trial.
- What’s the EM trial?
  
  More ironic than peculiar.
  Ghislaine Maxwell's case got reopened. Cuz if there's no Epstein list than why did she go to jail?
  
  The Hockey Canada Sexual Assault Trial. The woman who was involved had the initials EM.
  Some Quotes from the woman judge who presided over the case: “Although the slogan ‘believe the victim’ has become popularized of late, it has no place in a criminal trial. To approach a trial with the assumption that a complainant is telling the truth is the equivalent to imposing a presumption of guilt on the person accused of sexual assault and placing the burden on him to prove his innocence. That is antithetical to the fundamental principles of justice enshrined in our constitution.”
  “On the basis of all the evidence, I find as a fact that the complainant did express she wanted to engage in sexual activity with the men by saying things like “Is someone going to f—- me” and by masturbating, the judge says.
  “I accept the overwhelming evidence that E.M. was acting in a sexually forward manner by masturbating in this room full of men and asking them to engage with her. She communicated her willingness to engage in sexual activity.”

I mean, if anyone without Trump's money and influence had this many accusations leveled against them, you can be pretty sure they'd be behind bars by now. It's not that the women aren't being trusted, it's that the entire fucking system is broken. Or more accurately, is designed to serve the rich and powerful.

Kids got raped and now you’re saying it’s their responsibility to jail the rapists? No.
- Not their responsibility, but if they do speak up people should fucking listen and do something about it.

i, too, believe in gulity until proven innocent
- Enjoy losing your liberty because some lunatic made false accusations on you
  
  (I was being sarcastic)
- Yeah, until the court system he owns says he's bad, again, hes good!
  
  well I am not talking about Trump. I believe he's guilty. There's plenty of evidence to support that.

Money and government are in the way. Person to person, who the fuck wouldn't believe the woman?
- Well if i have to believe women here, it's a slippery slope to believing them about my bros!
  
  That is an issue. Just believing women is ideal.

Well…
If the justice system didn’t have a systemic massive unjustified distrust of women, and it spontaneously reached the peak of equality on this specific metric, then there would probably eventually be a higher rate of false accusations.
And then we’d eventually end up with a latent mild justified skepticism of all sexes, and then we’d still end up needing objective evidence.
So it’d be kinda self-defeating, except for a handful of glory years. Now would be a fantastic time for those glory years, no doubt, but it’s not a long-term solution.
- Wow you just rode that sucker into space immediately
- Statistically, less than 1% of all accusations of sexual assault are false.
  Statistically, about 3% of sexual assaults actually end in a conviction. Only about 11% get to court. Only about 25% are reported.
  Considering men do most of (not all) the sexual assault (by far, though), it seems currently a lot of sexual predators are escaping justice.
  Now I get US society (and most of human society in general) is way hung up about sexual relations. It's exacerbated by the Abrahamic religions who have proscriptions against sex which have informed our culture. We also fail to recognize teenage sexuality, and in fact hate our teens, seeing them as promiscuous delinquents even while we try to teach them math, and this has informed the rise of the alt-right, the man-o-sphere and all the War Boys that joined up with ~~Immortan Joe~~ Donald J. Trump ( WITNESS! ). We crank out horny teens by the hundreds of thousands and don't inform them at all how human interaction works.
  (Case in point, check out what romance looks like in cinema, especially romantic comedies, and see if you'd tolerate any of that crazy shit IRL.)
  So we set teens up for sexual assault, mostly on the side of men, since girls are taught they're slutty (and that's bad) if they even think a half-libertine thought.
  So we need massive amounts of both judicial reform and cultural reform regarding sexuality. And then believe women when they say they were assaulted.
  
  where's your source for the 1% statistic?

What if...Trump says he isn't a pedophile because being with any of these girls would make him a hebephile. While there are people who go after young pre-pubescent children, pedophiles, men like Trump, like them pubescent. Yes, everyone likes to use the word pedo because then they don't have to remember which word means what, but that is also the kind of loophole that Trump and his ilk use to claim their innocence. They aren't pedos. They are Hebes. Semantics but that's what criminals like to use to hide their illegal activity.
- Is that relevant to something?

Went wrong so many time in the past.
The list is the way

Oh, I tried this on shower thoughts. Get ready to read some depressing comments.
- It's called logic & rule of law & ethics. Which you don't have
  
  Exactly. This guy is advocating for dropping due process, these people are insane and can't see the consequences of their own thinking.
  
  Nice ad homin, I'm definitely going to take your opinion seriously now!