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by leephillips 1667 days ago
"in the spirit of believing the victim"

The only kind of sense this could make is as a tautology. If the commenter is a "victim" then you've already decided to believe him or her. But what evidence do you have to support this belief?

2 comments

worth noting that the parent comment was flagged to death 4 minutes after posting and vouched what, a half hour later?

Anyway, I sent this to the comment author via email, but the best I can do in public is link to https://www.blackburncenter.org/post/on-believing-victims

Context: I run r/Relationship Advice.

Oh. I thought "hey, why are you not greyed out then?" but that would explain it.
I don't see the tautology. The point is, when someone claims they are a "victim" (I would agree the term is only a loose fit here), we believe them. The whole point of the statement is to not demand evidence.

Obviously we're not talking about the legal system here.

I do think this whole idea has minimal relevance to the thread as I really don't think the PC qualifies as a victim. Just wanted to clarify the idea of "believe the victim" as it's extremely important in potential cases of sexual assault (which, again, not relevant here).

And abused as well