[lbo-talk] Feminism and the False Memory Syndrome

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Fri Oct 20 14:37:47 PDT 2006


On 10/20/06, Jesse Lemisch <utopia1 at attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com>
> > Suppose that one day a woman (or a man) accuses you of raping her (or
> > him) or sexually harassing her (or him) or whatever. Am I supposed to
> > believe the accuser automatically?
>
> This is an astoundingly retrograde way of dealing with this issue, utterly
> uninformed by feminist views. It's a cartoon version of every charge of
> rape/molestation.

Anyone can be potentially accused of anything, if no evidence aside from an accusation is necessary. Sometimes, accusers are telling the truth; sometimes, accusers are consciously lying; sometimes, accusers have talked themselves into believing what is not true. The difficulty of discerning the truth exists whether accusers are male or female, whether the accused are male or female. Courts exist to sort out competing claims to truth. If accusations alone sufficed to determine guilt or innocence, we would not need any court. Encouraging automatic faith in the words of accusers is not good for civil liberties, which ought to be a concern for those who are critical of Stalin's political repression.


> But the following
> constiutes a dismissal of the whole issue, and with no evidence of any
> acquaintance with Bettina Aptheker's book. I

If you haven't noticed, I'm questioning faith in "recovered memory" in general, not just any particular "recovered memory."

About Bettina Aptheker's claim that her father raped her or any other claim like that made by anyone else _based on "recovered memory"_, I can be at most agnostic, for I do not have faith in "recovered memory." -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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