The point of this is not to exonerate Bryant. The point of it is that when you paint him as all good or all bad, he’s first off, no longer a human being, and secondly, it forces those for whom he was a hero to reject that he could possibly do anything wrong — which is what leaves the woman (or women) out in the cold, being vilified and shamed.
It took 60 women to bring down Bill Cosby because we were so sure that he was a good man and not a bad man — meanwhile, it’s not that cut and dried. Relying on that binary view actually meant that a lot more women suffered. It’s like Hillary Clinton referring to Trump supporters as reprehensibles. When you paint human beings with a broad brush like that, it not only lacks empathy, but it backfires.
It’s to say that making people choose between unnuanced characterizations of him serves no one, including the woman that he raped. She’s continuing to be shamed and vilified for tarnishing the memory of a hero. Meanwhile, putting him up on a pedestal as a perfect person not only hurts her, it also robs him of his humanity.
