*Note from The Union: Due to the master files for this Letter to the Editor being forcefully removed by a previous alumni of MHS, we are unable to fully depict the following Letter to the Editor. This version of the letter is retyped from the original print newspaper edition. We apologize for any inconveniences this may bring.
Dear Editor,
On July 5, 2015, 17 year old Jay Cheshire hangs himself in the park after a retracted accusation of rape. Exactly one year later, his mom hangs herself in the same park on the same tree. Armaan Premjee, a USC student, is accused of sexual assault at a party and is expelled despite video evidence that he was actually the victim and the girl was the aggressor.
#BelieveWomen
It’s these stories that don’t get posted on social media because they don’t support the feel-good narrative of the leftist feminists. To maintain their illusion of impartiality, they point to cherry picked cases of (male) celebrities, like Terry Crews, fortunate enough to have the platform to speak up, yet more obscure cases get conveniently swept under the rug.
Justice is dealt only when it’s convenient to the MeToo agenda-such as Aaron Persky-but where’s the justice for Jay Cheshire? The left likes to believe it’s the enlightened among sheep, priding themselves every time they point out social injustice. At the end of the day, a morally bankrupt judge is out of a job and a son and his mother are dead over a lie. Yeah sure, our society is totally biased against rape victims.
Saying that trials are fair while also deciding who’s guilty before the trial even starts sounds like something the North Korean government would say. It’s crazy how we can study the totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and the Soviets and read dystopian novels like 1984 while still thinking we’re on the “right” side of history by assuming a group of people are innocent without an impartial trial. I wonder how that faired out for the Jews and capitalists in Germany and Russia.
The scary part is we’re not only heading down a path of discrimination; we’re heading down a path of justified discrimination, not unlike the Nazis using psuedoscience to convince themselves that races other than Aryan were inferior.
During the era of high racial tensions in the South after the Civil War, Democrats would falsely accuse blacks and Republicans of rape so that they’d have an excuse to lynch them, nobly claiming that they were protecting women while in actuality eliminating and silencing those that opposed their agenda. And look at what the Democrats are doing right now.
The sad, sad irony of the #MeToo movement is that because of all the accusations that have emerged, the voices of actual victims are being drowned out by those that exploit the movement for personal gain.
A major goal of the #MeToo movement was to condemn the supposed societal discrimination of victims, but it has turned into the villain it hoped to extinguish. How is ruining the lives of people based on only proven lies any better than shaming victims of sexual abuse? Imagine for a moment being a stressed student only to then be falsely accused of sexual assault, having everyone you’ve known turn on you based on a lie and convinced that they’re doing something noble. This culture is how school shooters are made, not lax gun regulations.
For any other crime, like murder or theft, just accusing someone isn’t enough for prosecution. It’s strange then that we hold sexual assault to a different standard. It’s quite the coincidence that this double standard allows the Left to both push their agenda and label their opposition as women-haters. It’s easy to gain power when all your opponents are suppressed, a tactic used by (not surprisingly) the Nazis and Soviets.
Before the feminists start misrepresenting my stance, I’ve never said that we shouldn’t believe women. I’m just saying that we need to treat sexual assault cases the same as we do with any other crime, with substantial evidence and the presumption of innocence. Sadly, we live in a time where people that want legal equality for men and women are labeled as misogynists.
Class of 2020
Note: This letter is that of the author and does not necessarily reflect those of The Union, students, administration, or Milpitas Unified School District.