Another gem from Salon --
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/02/jian_gh ... l_assault/
How is "she's a liar" an ugly defense? Especially in this case, where the three complainants were shown to be, well, lying, about significant, material issues. The judge called them liars, when he said they had a willingness to ignore their oath to tell the truth.
From the article -
God knows nobody’s expecting a confession. But it’s not enough, from a defense point of view, to spin a story that perhaps these competing narratives could be the result of faulty memory, or miscommunication, or some other explanation. It has to be: Women lie. These women are liars. It has to be, they’re not simply mistaken, they’re “malicious.” And the persistent challenge these defenses offer is — isn’t it easier to believe that a whole bunch of women are liars, than one man is?
No, honey, Ghomeshi's female attorney did not argue that "women lie." She argued that THESE PARTICULAR women lied, and then she demonstrated that in open court, to the point that the judge's language in highlighting their lack of attention to their oath was about as extreme as you'll ever see.
Moreover --- women DO lie. They lie just like men lie. People fucking lie. Christ. What is this shit that people are into with placing women on some pedestal that "oh, a woman would NEVER lie about rape...." -- of course they would. Not most of the time. But, some would. That's why you have criminal trials.
But, the fashion, now, is to "Just Believe." Doesn't matter if the evidence doesn't match the allegation. Whatever she says happened to her happened to her. And, women don't lie, so why do we even have a trial anyway?
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar