@Maximian @LilyM I just checked the whole speech and have to admit that I may have to change my view somewhat. I had assumed that this was what an attorney had said in court in a speech addressing the jury with the aim of securing Weinstein’s conviction. Clearly it would be wrong in court to suggest that both sides are equally entitled to lay claim to the truth. In court, if a complainant says that Weinstein committed offenses A, B, and C, and Weinstein says that he did not commit offenses A, B, and C, then it follows that only one of them can be telling the truth. The attorney was, however, speaking outside court, giving more of an overview of where we are at as a society with regard to women speaking out about sexual offending. She said:
Women will not be silenced. They will speak up. They will have their voice. They will stand up and be subjected to your small army of defense attorneys cross-examining them, attempting to discredit them, humiliate them, shame them, and they will still stand in their truth.
She’s not talking about her clients specifically, and she’s not speaking in the context of a legal process. I have to say, I think the phrase “to stand in one’s truth” is a ghastly abuse of the English language. Furthermore, if you take its meaning absolutely literally then I would agree that it is suggesting that there can be different kinds of truth and that the truth can be different things to different people. In this context, however, I think it’s more likely that it’s a rather poor way of saying “Women will stand up for the truth” or “Women will remain firm in their resolution to maintain what they know to be true” etc.
If you Google the phrase “Stand/stands/standing/stood in my/your/his/her/its/our/their truth”, you will find plenty of results. I have never heard it used in day-to-day speech, but seemingly it is a phrase that people use quite frequently. I guess it is a relatively new idiom with which I am not yet familiar. Heidegger wrote, “we are compelled to let the poetic word stand in
its truth, in beauty”, which in the original German is: “Wir sind daran gehalten,
das dichtende Wort in
seiner Wahrheit, in der Schönheit, zu lassen.” (
Was heißt Denken [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954], p. 8.) However, this seems to be a very specific context in which he is suggesting that the poetic word must be allowed to stand in a truth which is its very own and which can be perhaps equated with beauty or is inextricable from beauty. This is obviously very different from the context of a legal situation.
