Breaking the Silence

@Tired_Idealist said in #423:
> Either you trust the accused and risk harm to women and children or you trust the accusers and risk hurting someone's reputation. Those are the options and the choice seems pretty easy to me. Not sure what some of you don't understand about this.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to choose when it's not you the one being defamated.

> This is a monumentally stupid argument. Why is Hillsong still open when they've had multiple cases of proven sexual harassment? An organization continuing to exist and succeed doesn't mean that bad things don't continue to happen therein.

How? Why?

> You've already dodged one response from me, so I wouldn't be shocked if you did so again

This is because I'm afraid of you, I've got cornered, u r 2 smart 4 me

> Why should the reputation of Ramirez take priority over the safety concerns of numerous other people?

This is a biased question, safety of numerous people? You have condemned Ramirez already. If you prove Ramirez is a sexual assaulter then your question will make sense, and I'll say f him and his reputation, but if you don't prove your point, you are only another "canceller", feeding one of the worst metastatic cancer of the decadent western civilization.

I'm sick of this topic.

Great job lichess

Big ups to Lichess for taking a stand.
This is definitely the peoples' chess site!

@jose1122 said in #424:
> Yeah, it's pretty easy to choose when it's not you the one being defamated.
>
>
>
> How? Why?
>
>
>
> This is because I'm afraid of you, I've got cornered, u r 2 smart 4 me
>
>
>
> This is a biased question, safety of numerous people? You have condemned Ramirez already. If you prove Ramirez is a sexual assaulter then your question will make sense, and I'll say f him and his reputation, but if you don't prove your point, you are only another "canceller", feeding one of the worst metastatic cancer of the decadent western civilization.
>
> I'm sick of this topic.

I don't understand what else you need to see. They provided a pretty clear timeline with multiple witnesses. Also the legal side of this is irrelevant right now, if the guy is a potential sexual predator he should not be working with kids. It seems pretty straightforward to me.

@eddiemccandless said in #427:
> I don't understand what else you need to see. They provided a pretty clear timeline with multiple witnesses. Also the legal side of this is irrelevant right now, if the guy is a potential sexual predator he should not be working with kids. It seems pretty straightforward to me.

read the last pages if you want to get my point. And you don't have to worry, he was expelled from the club already, this is only the last formal step of a cancellation; he still didn't bow to their detractors.

How is breaking up with an organization a solution? Why not instead offer to setup a department within these organizations that will handle complaints of this nature. So STL or USC don't have to deal with what they clearly don't want to deal with, and we can solve the actual issue instead of creating new ones by fragmenting the overall chess community.

The department doesn't need to be a physical entity with a location and office hours. It could be just a set of people that are trained or have experience with dealing with harassment and related complaints. 4 or 5 of them. Ideally they can be sourced from the clubs themselves as volunteers who care about this issue. And are likely going to be present at the various venues since they are part of the club. When a situation arises, these volunteers can then guide the resolution and bring in whoever they think should weigh in on the matter.

Lichess has been a very open and inviting place, allowing anyone to be part of chess without even paying anything. That to me, makes it an organization that has its arms open to the world. Cheats exist, abusers exist, arseholes are everywhere, but all of us are all those things at some point if we are really truly honest. Resolving the issue is better than closing doors to sinners.

@Lichess said in #1:
> Comments on lichess.org/blog/ZNTniBEAACEAJZTn/breaking-the-silence

Even on YouTube. Unnecessary vulgar sexual innuendos by male streamers are ignored.

Anybody whose reaction to a rapist being exposed is to try to defend them is an awful person in my book. Good on LICHESS and absolute shame on USCF, FIDE, and the St Louis chess club. The chess community is sexist AF.

@Nowaythisnameistaken
@jose1122
"We don't know" can cover up any crime these days. I heard it too often. And especially it hurts the victims when they experience that their accounts are rejected. Well, let's agree that we don't know, but I will believe until some other information changes my mind. Believing a victim is not a crime. Speaking as a victim is not a crime.

Do you know that case where an Stanford university student raped a woman and they told her she would ruin his life and career by going to court. Fact is, that there was evidence found and they wanted her to silent anyways. It's not her who ruined his life. It's him who ruined his life by committing a crime ant this already happened and there is no turning back afterwards.
Her name was Chanel Miller.

It's kind of ugly that some "communities" try to protect their own so much that they would even protect criminals. Righteousness exalts a nation, sin is a reproach for any people. If you don't sort our evil early, these dudes become the elite, the powerful and there is only mankind to blame for it, because there are criminals and there are those who enable them by silence.

@jose1122

you keep throwing around "in dubio pro reo" while clearly having no legal education.

Here an example that shows that "in dubio pro reo" doesn't apply to all legal cases and with a very good reason:

you agree to buy a ball from someone and they will deliver it to you.

this exchange doesn't happen.

they didn't get money.

you didn't get a ball.

now who is at fault? What should a judge decide?

Well according to "in dubio pro reo" whoever is the first one to complain is the one who is going to lose, because they are the accuser so the other side is the accused and will be ruled in favour of.
This VERY CLEARLY is heavily biased towards the bad actor because they already won if there is no judgement as they acted in bad faith. So they win if they are accused and they win if there is nothing.

So "in dubio pro reo" is a HORRIBLE way to judge NON criminal cases. The stuff discussed here are NOT criminal cases, they are civil cases between 2 (or more) private entities.

But it's not surprising that you don't really understand these things considering you didn't even understand what this blog post was about and what the "demands" were even when they were quite obvious. Maybe for the future ask more question instead of making assertions ...