Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen: 'Distortions and Outright Lies'

[BellaKos]

137. Well, I, for one, am gonna' stick up for you, WFE

Your comments seemed logical and thoughtful to me. Wow. I said it. Out-loud, too.

The evidence concerning Farrow's allegations ... all that can be confirmed as fact and all the speculation about the truthfulness of Allen and the Farrows and all the assumptions about motivations -- has been adjudicated in the courts. Period.

The issue today is Dylan Farrow's public comments made recently and Allen's response. I believe it would be illogical and distracting to consider these recent comments in making a judgment about: 1. victim/survivor issues concerning child molestation; 2. the credibility of experts in their assessments of victim's truthfulness; 3. whether or not the judicial system handles these kinds of allegations well; and 4. whether or not I appreciate either Allen's or Mia Farrow's past work. As far as the individuals are concerned, I don't know them personally so I am not qualified to assess their characters.

Beyond that, what I see in the ongoing "discussion" here at DU is hard to articulate. And I've seen it before in discussions about the progress or the lack thereof concerning the roles and status of men and women today and how the two genders interact with one another.

It seems that there are a few women here who are venting their pain concerning past injuries perpetrated by men -- whether it be injustice, emotional and physical abuse, and/or egregious crimes of rape and child molestation. They vent their pain -- their emotions -- in the guise of rational argument. This is a perfectly normal thing that people do all the time. (By the way, this is the same kind of thing that the Teabaggers are doing -- except their pain is because of economic reasons, mainly.)

This is fine. As long as the emotions are not vented as personal attacks. Or as long as emotions don't become so overwhelming that they affect the individual's well-being.

I realize that I may have pricked a nerve, so I'll say now that I'm not going to be lured into an ongoing debate about my observations. I know that those who are seeing the Allen/Farrow issue through the prism of their personal experiences won't hear me anyway. Nor will they be persuaded by my pointing out that judgment from afar is not judgment atoll, but rather an indulgence in gossip. Again, that's fine. And again, it's not an unusual activity among us regular folks. It's just not the way actual court cases are adjudicated. And our court system is all that we have to wrestle with accusations and allegations and crimes -- the truth of which may be ultimately unknowable.