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Comment by KittenInABox | Hacker News Reader

No one is saying Woody Allen shouldn't produce his own memoir. I am saying its weird to conflate not desiring to purchase the nonfiction rights of a credibly accused child molester and then profit off of selling that same nonfiction to otherwise significantly more niche issues such as whether or not a white author should be writing black protagonists.

The end of the essay even focuses on the race aspect! I just completely do not understand trying to conflate the purchasing of a credibly accused child molester's work to excessive purity on writing brown/black people in fiction.

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> whether or not a white author should be writing black protagonists

Shouldn't be a question. Anyone should be able to write whatever they want without involving identity politics/purity tests.

I know it shouldn't be a question. That's why I'm baffled that they're being conflated here.

The "conflating" is addressed just a couple of paragraphs later:

>The above cases are each distinct. You may agree with how the book world responded in some instances, and disagree in others. But what these cases convey is how much the literary establishment is struggling with a dread of “harm,” related both to content and authors. It speaks to the spreading sense that it thinks of itself as carrying out a moral mission, whose standards are those of progressive activism.

I think saying that it's a "progressive activism" struggle to protest giving a credibly accused child molester money by purchasing his nonfiction is extremely weird, especially when it's being compared to something so innocuous.

It's about cancelling an author even without conviction. Innocent until proven was once a progressive achievement but it got replaced by innocent until flame war. We are back to the of witch hunting where an accusation was tantamount to a conviction.

Credibly accused is not a thing. You're either guilty or not guilty and he hasn't been found guilty.

Yes, the world is black and white. Definitely no grey areas in the legal system. Certainly no guilty people get off on technicalities.

We live in an imperfect world and justice is imperfectly applied, but for all of us to have a shot at being treated fairly when it's our turn to sit in front of a jury, it's pretty important that we let the system do it's job.

Anyone who gets to the point of a criminal trial has been credibly accused. If the accusations weren't credible, the prosecutor would not bring the case. The standard for a criminal conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt" which is a higher bar than "credibly accused" (and rightly so).

"Not Guilty" does not imply "Innocent"

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