Alright.
Let’s talk about last Friday.
I’m not slipping into character for this one. I’m not going to start cursing, I’m not going to emphasize a bunch of stuff. I’m not going to try to be funny, or abrasive, or anything like that. I’m just going to talk to you guys for a moment.
As you know, last Friday, for Furry Friday, I took some stories from furries and, with their permission, used them to illustrate some points. The points were basically intended to be broken down as follows:
- Furry can affect your court proceedings, so you need to be aware of that;
- Although you’re a welcoming fandom, Furries who are above the age of consent should avoid circumstances that lend the appearance of impropriety in dealing with minors;
- You shouldn’t be forming Twitter lynch mobs; and
- Rape should be reported to the police.
3 and 4 were touchy subjects. Very touchy subjects, and I got a lot of mixed responses to them. They ranged from “Thank you for this” to “How dare you tell us not to self-police” and all the way up to “The police won’t do anything.”
I’m not going to touch the rape topic today. I’m not touching it because I’m already working on something to help explain how the justice system deals with this stuff, and to hopefully help explain why it may seem like the justice system doesn’t care. I put out a call among lawyers, and am arranging some time to interview a sex crimes prosecutor in relation to the largest concerns I’m hearing and the biggest protests to the statement made. I’d prefer to let the person who actually handles rape cases speak on that, and accordingly I’m not going to talk about it until then.
The lynch mobs thing, though, I will touch on.
The largest protests and loudest dissents were regarding the perceived position against the Furry community policing itself and allowing “bad actors” to go free and unpunished. It’s likely a response to how I phrased things in the article. I can see how people may have taken that as “lay off rapists.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t even really about rape. It was about jumping to conclusions of judgment and acting on them publicly, and encouraging others to do so.
I don’t think that’s right, and the reason I don’t think that’s right is simple: innocent people will get tarred by that brush.
In law, we have something called “Blackstone’s Ratio.” It goes like this:
Better ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.