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If I could offer some general commentary on the discourse surrounding the Reade allegations that actually is not a judgment on the allegations themselves, but an observation from someone who has spent years as a survivor advocate and has tried to take in this story objectively..
I understand why people believe Reade. Survivors are never perfect. And many of the character assassinations some have used to vindicate Biden have been used against survivors in the past. HOWEVER...
There are many reasons to doubt her story as well. So it’s quite understandable why many do not believe her. It’s a complicated case and bc this site has no known mechanism for nuance, we can only believe one of two things:
Either those that believe her will do anything to get rid of Biden OR those that don’t believe her must be lying to themselves (or hypocrites!). The former of course not helped by actual tweets from the journalists most aggressively pushing her story.
Interestingly, the most level-headed approach to this whole debacle seems to be Biden? In recent weeks, he has vigorously denied the claims while also defending her right to speak and encouraging investigation.
And investigations by more objective reporters have turned up many things to cause us to be doubtful! But we all retreated to our extreme corners (He’s a rapist! No he’s not you crazy liar!) and now there are no winners.
One side too aggressively defended a story that loses credibility every day and the other side too aggressively went after an alleged survivor before a thorough invesigation was done (partly bc the original reporting went with this story way too soon).
As many have commented “believe women” was never meant to say “believe women no matter what.” It meant to start from a place of believing women (we mostly do not!). But then investigate.
I say all of this bc I’ve been really disappointed in the discourse surrounding this story. Either you’re terrible for giving space to Reade’s allegations OR you’re terrible for not believing her. We have to do better. We just have to do better.
