Anyone who, at this late date, is still defending Bill Cosby needs to take a long hard look at the portraits of 35 of Cosby’s 46 accusers in the latest issue of New York magazine.
Look these women in the face, and tell me they’re lying. Read their accounts, and tell me they’re lying. Watch the videos in which six of these women tell their stories to the cameras, and tell me they’re lying. Each and every one of them.
This is Lili Bernard. Is she lying?
Go watch her video and tell me that.
This is Victoria Valentino. Is she lying?
Go watch her video and tell me that.
This is Louisa Moritz. Is she lying?
Go watch her video and tell me that.
I believe all of these women. Their stories are all too believable, and all chillingly similar. Not identical, as if they’re reading off a script, but similar, in that they all describe a practiced predator with a standard MO.
But, Cosby defenders, you don’t have to believe all of them. If only one of them is telling the truth, Cosby is a lying, sleazy, predatory rapist.
Can you honestly tell me you think each and every one of these women are lying?
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Still running across more than a few Black women who think it’s all a conspiracy to take down a powerful Black man.
Their reasoning: his accusers are White women and Emmett Till and, they actually consented and he didn’t really drug them and false narratives of Black men raping White women, etc, etc.
I understand there is a history behind Black women believing that kind of stuff but at this point, I don’t care. Its supremely ridiculous to believe that there is a conspiracy of nearly fifty women, falsely accusing him of raping them.
Let’s face it, for some people, the word of this many women still means nothing until a man backs them up.
As powerful as it is to be faced with the combined images of so many of his accusers, I have no trouble believing misogynists/rape apologists will answer with an unequivocal “yes” simply because they believe all women to be born liars by nature. -_-
The mental gymnastics people go through to defend Cosby because he was on a TV show they liked will never not astound me.
And yeah, the MRA’s will say they are all lying, because their existence predicates on the notion that ladies are lying liars.
I’ve also heard the ridiculous argument that it’s TOO MANY women, which obviously means it’s a conspiracy, pile-on, etc.
@Irene Yeah, I’ve heard that on too.
My Google-fu has failed me on finding a definitive list (why does Wiki have a list of serial killers but not serial rapists?), but I have a feeling that Cosby might be one of the most prolific rapists ever. Uggh.
The likes of Paul Elam will NEVER believe them and will side with Bill Cosby, no matter how much evidence is against him. He said so himself. He also said that (to the man I have mistaken for him in a previous post. Thanks for the correction, SFHC. ????) disowning or threaten to disown a daughter for reporting her rape, is good parenting. But fortunately, his opinion and the opinions of his ilk do not matter, it is up to the jury to determine guilt and I believe that they would actually do their jobs and listen to these brave women.
@Paradoxical
A man has backed them up, and that man is Cosby himself. Didn’t he not so subtly confess to using ludes to drug women for sex?
I heard the same when Jimmy Saville’s alleged victims began to number in the hundreds. Doesn’t matter if any of them are lying, just one telling the truth would make him guilty.
But I also believe that some people are too heavily invested in disbelieving women to ever to accept that Cosby is guilty.
Though the conspiracy theory is so absurd in the light of so many accusers. IF, and I’m only saying IF, a woman somewhere did decide to make up a story about him based on what she’d read in the media, this would have to be a woman who had had dealings with Cosby, who could give times and dates consistent with Cosby’s timeline, who could testify having been alone with him. Nuh uh, they would’ve had to be plotting against him for years to pull that off.
It’s like when people dismissed Janice Dickinson’s story as jumping on the bandwagon. She accused Cosby in her autobiography written in 2002, but she was made to remove those passages by his lawyers. Is anyone suggesting she’s been planning to slander Cosby for the past thirteen years?
I think it’s a pity this hasn’t ended up in court. A criminal conviction in a court of law might put paid to all the people still complaining about trial by media.
@sunnysombrera
Yup, and people are STILL saying he couldn’t have done it.
I can’t wait to hear all the ‘he hasn’t been found guilty in a court of law, therefore we should believe his innocence’ arguments. Because we always determine what’s true according to court rulings.
sn0rkmaiden-It hasn’t ended up in the criminal courts yet? I hope it does soon. The testimony of nearly 50 women is very hard to ignore. Just look what happened to Ralph Harris (the arsehole who sexually molested and abused children) I am sure the testimony of these women would also be enough to convict Bill Cosby. Is there a statute of limitations preventing the case going to the criminal court? I am on my phone so I can’t look it up right now.
* Rolf Harris. Damn phone!
@missedb47,
in Harris’ case the statute of limitations wasn’t up, I think with Cosby it is. Though as I’m sure he hasn’t changed his ways in the past few years all it needs is one woman to come forward with a more recent accusation. Though his supporters will either accuse her of lying or complain that Cosby cannot get a fair trial under the media spotlight.
So much admiration for these women. I don’t even know what else to say.
The site was down for a while (hacker). Just in case it goes down again, New York magazine put the whole story on Tumblr:
http://nymag.tumblr.com/post/125179609945/im-no-longer-afraid-35-women-tell-their
OH HOLY CRAP WHAT DID I DO
misseb47: Sadly there is indeed a statute of limitations issue that means he will most likely never be punished for his crimes.
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7255095/bill-cosby-rape-lawsuit
@misseb47 – Yes. The statute of limitations is long since past on all of them. This will never come to criminal court. Which makes the people who are arguing that we wait for a criminal conviction just a touch disingenuous.
The thing that really bothers me about people who try to defend Cosby or any other rapist is that in general our society tends to believe the worst of people, particularly our celebrity’s. Generally if there is a scandal we will believe the accuser. The only exception to this is if the crime was rape. We only “don’t know all the details” when the crime is rape. And this reinforces all of our other problems surrounding sexual assault as well.
Colleges can get away with not having any policy in regards to rape because no one is willing to do anything about it. I’ve even heard that one victim was told to wait until the year was over and the man who assaulted her had graduated before coming back, this was how they were trying to create a safe space, by making the victim miss a year of college rather then punishing the perpetrator.
Evan when the victim is believed they are often blamed for the crime more than the perpetrator. You don’t hear people telling men who were robbed that they were “asking for it.”
If we want actually do something about these crimes we need to destroy our current culture of silence and our core message of “don’t get raped” replacing them with a culture of openness and a message of “don’t commit rape.” The fact that we haven’t done this already says very bad things about our culture in general.
I’m curious what rationale people would use as to why Cosby, of all people, would be targeted by a false rape accusation conspiracy.
@Ikeke35 – Well, that’s disappointing. What do they think about the two or three black women I see in the picture? Are they part of the conspiracy, or do the women you speak of just mentally disappear them?
semaphore:
Until last week, that’s what Whoopi Goldberg was saying.
Thank you for reporting on this, even though it’s not strictly speaking directly involved in online misogyny. These women, not just this story, are so important right now. Their years of silence deserves far more than fifteen minutes of sound.