also what 'everybody knew' in practice often means '40 percent of people knew' or even more commonly '70 percent of women and 20 percent of men.'

(And exactly *what* they know also differs)

April 11, 2026 - 02:57 UTC

5
0
139
Also, if you've heard 3rd-hand about something, and the victim didn't want to come forward, the amount of steps you can take in response are limited. Even warning people can run into very sticky legal situations if you're not careful.
0
0
59
I worked with the NYS Senate years ago + there was a good on policy senator who often went out drinking w/his young interns + had an office of young staffers. Female senators advised their interns to stay away from him based on his observable behavior. He was offered course suspected of worse.
1
0
0
So if a story ever broke, I would have said that everyone knew, based on what we observed him doing, not based on anything I actually knew. I believe he was spoken to by leadership about his behavior.
0
0
0
part of this was some of those in the thread were throwing shade at some of the politicians withdrawing endorsements hinting that "everyone already knew", when as you point out, "everyone knew" is not the blanket statement they think it is.
1
0
10
At least some are journalists who are willing to put their credibility on the line for unsubstantiated assertions that "if I knew, Gallego knew" but not unsubstantiated assertions that "people keep telling me Swallwell is a sex pest" and boy howdy that's certainly one way to spend cred.
1
0
2
Yeah. I know of some stories (not all involve sexual issues) in my home state, and yeah....
0
0
6
and I want to emphasize very strongly here that *women often pay a serious price for coming forward and it can be extremely costly to their careers*
1
0
110
Add that knowledge to the fact that it can take time to process what happened. I imagine there are few people who haven't thought, "It wasn't that bad" about some form of trauma they experienced, until they couldn't deny it any more. But for some people that can take several years.
0
0
16