#yall will literally say to believe victims and that the ~accused~ has to prove themselves

[atiny-piratequeen]

Unpopular opinion or whatever

I wanna have a conversation about accountability when it comes to shit like this. The same people who make a thousand and one posts going "believe the victim always believe the victim" to the extent that they IMMEDIATELY start spreading things that aren't properly fact checked or addressed officially, specifically the folk that pull the "if you dont 100% believe victims, you're siding with abusers" to guilt people go real fucking radio silent when it turns out our "victims" were people lying or people who weren't giving us the full story or being mistranslated.

So what happens when the person yall swore up and down was an abuser for a week ends up not being one? Yall literally made THEM a victim. Calling for them to be removed from their groups with no proper evidence, no investigation (we are strangers on the fucking internet!!! We're not detectives bruh!! This is like the third time in the past fucking 10 months yall did some inspector gadget shit framing mfs for shit they!! DIDNT do!!!)

And yall never see the same amount of people spreading the mistrans rounding back with the correct information. Yall pat yourselves on the back with the believe victims without question rhetoric and then when the "victims" were liars, yall dont keep that same energy when it comes to genuine apologies for how you treated people.

Im in no way saying any of us have the right to play detective and pick apart something an alleged victim has to say, we should never do that, especially because there are actual victims out there who finally step out and speak up.

But at the same time yall really need to learn that people can, have, and will continue to use that mentality of "believe the victim, get angry first" to LIE about shit. We do not live in a fairytale world where people are above making up lies and using the "court of public opinion" to ruin someones fucking life for no other reason than because they can and because they know people will side with them with no evidence with that mindset.

And when we find out they're lying what happens? Deadass I see some of yall shrug and go "well its good that it wasn't true" and go about your days like the person yall demonized didn't become the victim.

This shit has me fucking sick to the stomach.

I will never wrap my head around people lying about trauma people actually go through for?? Some reason??

ESPECIALLY this time, because clearly to some extent, someone was actually hurt and they should be able to speak their truth without having people twist and take their words and lie??? To hurt someone else?? How fucking vile can you be? And everyone involved with those mistranslations suddenly poof poof changing names and accs and shit.

And on GOD, i need yall to fucking wait before yall hop on the fucking pitchfork bandwagon because a good portion of yall telling people they're literally siding with abusers for going "I dont know enough yet to believe it (fully)" are the same mfs that ate up and spread mistranslations and will be hella quiet when we find out no, shit wasnt like that.

"I believe this person may be a victim" and "i need to wait to see more, accurate information" are two statements that can fucking coexist holy fucking shit.

Stop fucking lying to ruin peoples careers, stop making it hard for actual victims to come forward, and stop jumping on people with questionable sources of validity as your "evidence"

[quadaxxels]

My two cents on: Eunsoo Lim vs. Mariah Bell

First of all, if you thought this post was going to be filled with my conspiracy theories on whether or not Bell injured Lim with intent you can keep on scrolling.

The ISU still hasn’t said anything official yet (as of 22.03) and as far as I know the investigation is still ongoing - so I’m not going to jump to conclusions What I do was to express is my utter anger, disgust and frustration at all the people who literally watched I,Tonya once and are now all of a sudden figure skating experts and are launching a witch hunt on Mariah.

Now, whether or not she did it on purpose is another story - it seems that the only footage on twitter of the practice is super super grainy and you can barely make out who is who. Sending her literal death threats isn’t something light and certainly NOT SOMETHING YOU DO BASED ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE! not that sending any death threat in the first place is ok. And at this point in time, there have been no official statements released by the ISU or solid evidence released proving that Eunsoo was out right attacked.

What also gets my blood boiling is people who very very obvious don’t know anything about figure skating, accusing Mariah Bell of being a racist, or that the attack was racially motivated. And before any of yall try to clock me, I’m chinese australian so this is very much within my jurisdiction.

See, i say ‘very obviously know nothing about fs’ because that’s just not how the sport works. In fact, that’s not how most athletes in almost any sport at the elite level works. Even more so for fs because skaters literally train with rinkmates from ALL OVER THE WORLD, OF ALL AGES. It’s one of those sports where at the end of the day you represent yourself more so than your country. Professional skaters train for years before they even make it to the senior elite level circuit. You have to start young and first get entered into junior level competitions before transitioning to seniors, so these athletes have literally grown up around each other, travelling to different countries competing against each other.

Mariah and Eunsoo are RINKMATES! THEY TRAIN TOGETHER. WITH OTHER ASIANS. NAMELY NATHAN CHEN, VINCENT ZHOU, AND MARIN HONDA. And from what I’ve seen she gets on rather well w nathan chen, so surely if the attack was on purpose and was racially motivated these other four can testify - but again, that hasn’t happened so.

The other issue I take with labelling this a racially motivated attack, is that given the socio political climate rn and how WELL asian representation and asian issues are being discussed in american/western media - blindly going around yelling THAT’S RACISM AGAINST ASIANS based off of zero to no solid evidence is extremely extremely damaging to the progress of the asian conversation and narrative at large. We end up taking two steps back by trivialising and jumping the gun on making allegations that could turn out to be false.

Because right now everything really is just circumstantial. What if it turns out that everything really was an accident? Then all of you who participated in throwing comments around on Bell’s social media are at fault for any mental or societal damages that might happen when false allegations of racism are made. That shit ruins lives. Cancel culture has made call outs powerful, powerful tools - so we have to use it CAREFULLY.

This goes out particularly to my fellow ABCs: STOP CALLING MARIAH BELL A RACIST WHEN WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING YET. STOP PLAYING THE RACIST CARD IN GENERAL SO EASILY. I understand the need and the want to stand up for our fellow asians, asian pride and all that. But honestly, when the source that broke the news was a fckn kpop site of all things (and NOT a reputable figure skating or sporting website even) - pls exercise reasonable caution when believing the article word for word. Taking this into account I do partially blame the first few media outlets who broke the news for poorly written descriptions of the incident. Namely sensationalising what happen. Again, the footage is grainy on twitter but even then we can see that Eunsoo was clearly not savagely attacked like those first articles had made it seem. Bell did not approach Lim with her skates in hand like a knife and slash at her like a mad woman.

ABCs we need to calm down, collisions in fs happen all the time. In fact, two pairs skater crashed into each other during live broadcasted warm ups in the same competition. Figure Skating is a high risk sport. Athletes get thrown in the air and are expected to spin 3 times before landing, hell, athletes throw themselves in the air and are expected to spin 4 times before landing - ALL WHILE WEARING KNIVES ON THEIR LEGS. So it’s understandable that accidents (and i stress the word accident) happen. Hell, even golden boy yuzuru hanyu has been the victim of an accidental collision during warm ups.

TAKE HOME MESSAGE IS:

Figure skating has evolved since the days of Tonya Harding. The level of respect that these athletes have for each other is unparalleled and unreal, so don’t make conclusions about the sport when you know nothing about it

The racism card is not one to just be throwing around willy nilly. It’s a very serious allegation to make and you can’t just use it whenever a POC is involved bc believe it or not, sometimes people can be motivated to start conflicts based not on colour.

DEATH THREATS ARE NEVER OK

also before i go i just want to mention for those who don’t follow fs but are keeping up with this incident, the world championships are still ongoing (which is why investigation into the incident is slow), they haven’t finished yet so in the meantime please respect the boundaries of these two professional athletes and others in the sport who are still competing and do something better with your time than harass strangers on the internet :)