And this is going to be tricky, because it is definitely still Bella’s right to not take Billy’s advice. “You’re dating a murderer” is not something that she has to let influence her decision, because hey, it’s still her life. But all this is happening in the larger social context where women and girls are sometimes told that their new boyfriend is, say, a rapist. And we’re told from the day we’re born that this is how we’re supposed to react: defensively. Defending him.
We (women especially) are regularly told that men are “innocent until proven guilty”. We’re urged to apply legal precepts to our personal opinions, and to allow those legal concepts to even override our good judgement. We’re told that believing other survivors is akin to monstrous vigilante (in-)justice: witch hunt, lynch mob, kangaroo court. We’re not allowed to disassociate from friends who are rapists, or who abused their girlfriends, if we ourselves didn’t see it happen. I was once pushed roughly to the floor by my (ex-)husband while four of our closest friends watched; not a single one of them dropped his acquaintance after our divorce. The abuse that happened to me was seen as a private matter, not something they felt allowed to have an opinion on.
The law of the excluded middle is a fallacy. And that’s what it is to say that there’s nothing between “standards of proof strict enough for a court of law” and “not believing anything we didn’t see”.
Also, I suspect she would change her tune about innocent until proven guilty if she was being accused of a serious crime, whether in a court of law or not.
Ana Mardoll, Twilight deconstruction
Kurtz’ English girlfriend, in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, failing to notice confusion
Should be its own quote :)
The law of the excluded middle is a fallacy. And that’s what it is to say that there’s nothing between “standards of proof strict enough for a court of law” and “not believing anything we didn’t see”.
Also, I suspect she would change her tune about innocent until proven guilty if she was being accused of a serious crime, whether in a court of law or not.