Having no clue who Amber Tamblyn was, I asked my daughter (who knows such things) and she explained that she was in a movie called the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I hadn’t seen it. Yet, this apparently made her sufficiently knowledgeable for the New York Times to publish her thoughts on believing the victim. After all, movie stars are often victims.

When I was 21, I went into the office of a producer of the television show I was starring in to discuss a big problem. By this point I had been acting for more than a decade, and the show was very successful and beloved. Still, I was nervous about facing the firing squad of Emmys that sat behind him and saying what I had to say.

Being the star of a TV show at 21 (sorry, but I have no clue what show it was) is kind of a big deal. One might suspect she’s neither marginalized nor vulnerable, but rather a hot property that some guy with a “firing squad of Emmys” would like to keep happy. Happy star, happy show and all. That she was nervous is surprising, though at 21 she was young. It was probably unusual for her to feel nervous, given the obsequious way people treat young stars. Maybe being nervous was traumatic in itself for her, not realizing feeling nervous was normal for lesser children.

A crew member had kept showing up to my apartment after work unannounced, going into my trailer while I wasn’t in it, and staring daggers at me from across the set. I liked him at first. He was very sweet and kind in the beginning. We flirted a bit on set. But I was in a relationship. And liking someone certainly didn’t merit the kind of behavior he was exhibiting, which was making me feel unsafe.

While “staring daggers” relies a bit too heavily on perception, the other complaints might mean stalking or might mean something entirely benign. Was he in her trailer to clean the waste baskets? Did he go to her apartment to bring script changes? Or maybe he was a stalker and she had every reason to “feel unsafe.”

My hands were freezing and I balled my wardrobe skirt up around my fists as I spoke. It was all caught in my throat — my embarrassment that it had gotten to this point. The producer listened. Then he said, “Well, there are two sides to every story.”

Amber Tamblyn was, and is still, outraged. Outraged! How dare he not believe her and act upon it immediately? How dare he not take the word of his star over some poor replaceable schmuck. One of them was vulnerable and marginalized, and the easy route for the producer was to keep his star happy and get rid of the person she wanted gone. Even if the alleged stalker did nothing wrong, he was fungible. She was not. Yet, the producer responded that he would be fair to the accused. And Amber Tamblyn’s reaction?

For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem. Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.

Putting aside the relative “stature” involved here, which raises some questions about Tamblyn’s perceptions and thought processes, the cry is nothing new. Believe the victim. If a woman says she’s been made to “feel unsafe,” then she has, and whoever made her feel that way must be burned at the stake. Because she said so.

In their full court press, the Times pushed further in another op-ed, this one by less famous women:

Nicole Bedera and Miriam Gleckman-Krut are campus sexual violence researchers and Ph.D. candidates in sociology at the University of Michigan.

As sociology students, with a dedicated cause, they open with a particularly disingenuous question:

Who should have the right to define rape: survivors who have experienced sexual violence or those who are accused of perpetrating it?

Had this been asked by anyone qualified to raise such a question, it would have been too flagrantly wrong to chalk up to ignorance. Sociology students can get away with it, though they get a “D” for their effort, and that’s only because they spelled all the words right.

The answer to the rhetorical question, obviously, is neither. A false dichotomy doesn’t require a choice be made between the two, but they can hope their readers won’t grasp that the question is fundamentally unsound. They seek the only emotionally satisfying choice between the two false options given, which is geared toward one end: believe the “survivor.” If the survivor says she experienced sexual violence, then she did. She did!

The difficulty in providing hard evidence has long presented a devastating barrier for victims’ access to recourse and remedies, and it discouraged survivors from coming forward.

Evidence is what the law uses to distinguish between an allegation proved and unproved. The absence of evidence can be a barrier to proving an accusation. Some might even say that it should be, because without evidence, there is nothing but a naked accusation. Evidence is a burden that “survivors” can’t bear.

Lurking within this rationalization to overlook the absence of evidence is the same position taken by the movie star, that the only solution is to believe the “survivor.” Everything else is window dressing after that. As there is no rational argument against due process for the accused, the only way to achieve the “justice” the “survivors” demand is to believe them no matter what. There is no “two sides” for accusers. Just believe them or you side with the rapists.