Again, you can understand the logic behind those reactions. But both Lithwick and Baldwin gloss over an important fact. The person who wants this to be tried in the court of public opinion—the person who has invited, and even demanded, comment on the family's personal struggle—is Dylan Farrow. And she's done so because she's well aware that the court of public opinion is the only court open to her. Comments threads and social-media discussions may be ugly and awful, but Farrow has made an informed and understandable decision that they are not as ugly and awful as child abuse.

In the very first words of her op-ed, Farrow insists that her readers engage, personally and individually, with her accusations.

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.

That couldn't be much clearer. Farrow assumes that you, the reader, have a relationship to Woody Allen; you care about him and you care about his films. And she says that that relationship, what you think about Woody Allen and about his films, needs to be reevaluated in the light of the fact that she says he sexually abused his seven-year-old daughter. She is telling you, and you, and you that you have an ethical duty to consider her experience when you think about Woody Allen. She is saying that her family matters are, and should be, public. As Andrew Sullivan says of Farrow's opening and closing words, "These are sentences designed to do as much harm to Allen as he allegedly did to her—to pin the crime of child-rape onto every movie he has ever made, to obliterate his legacy as an artist by insisting that his entire oeuvre be viewed through the prism of his monstrousness."

You could see this effort as illegitimate or cruel—as "bitchery" in the poorly chosen words of Stephen King. But to see Dylan's op-ed that way, it seems to me, you have to assume that Farrow's version of events are wrong, and that Allen's are correct. If Allen did molest his seven-year-old daughter, then that's a public and, indeed, political issue, and Farrow's anger is not even a little bit out of proportion.

We view child abuse as political when it happens in more distant places. It's readily acknowledged, for example, that the abuse of wives and children in Afghan families is a human rights issue that merits attention not only in Afghanistan, but internationally. Closer to home, though, it can be harder to see. When people speak out about sexual harassment in the comics industry, as just one example that I'm familiar with, they often are told that they are making a big deal out of nothing, or that these sorts of interpersonal issues shouldn't or don't need to be aired in a public setting.