# Black Panther movie **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 18, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075 "2018-02-18T20:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 27
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/521 "2018-03-14T02:26:36Z")
Better a thousand women be raped and not see justice, than one innocent man be unfairly _investigated and cleared by the police_? ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/522 "2018-03-14T03:17:28Z")
> [@HelenTroy](#): > > I’ve been following this topic with growing horror for days. He is wrong about so very many things, but this was one too many! _Laughs and slinks back into obscurity to post links to Bossip and The Root._ I’m just gonna chime in and concur - Black Twitter is a thing. I’ve never heard of Feminist Twitter or Gay Twitter, which would be surprising considering the large percentage of my friends that identify as being a part of at least one of those groups. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/523 "2018-03-14T04:27:23Z")
Kimstu, first off: you strike me as a feminist. How do you feel about this claim (now, to my surprise, coming from two different people) that there’s no “feminist Twitter”? Anyway, just to clarify: by “rights” I don’t only mean the minimum of protection against incarceration. That’s why I like the Mill quote I posted above. Again: “Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.” So how do you apply this? Take Aziz Ansari. He has not disputed the Babe account of the “worst night of [a 23 year old’s] life”. To me, that makes him a creep (though not a criminal) who deserves social shaming. But let’s say it’s someone else, anonymously accused of full on rape (or robbery, or whatever) and the uncorroborated accusation by a single accuser is widely disseminated online, but he vehemently denies it. To my way of thinking, it’s not ethically right to join the Internet mob who just declares him a criminal, end of story. You just don’t know if it’s bullshit. I see signs #MeToo, though an important watershed moment in many ways, may be sliding into moral panic territory. I don’t know the full story on Garrison Keillor, for instance, but MPR has not so far demonstrated to my satisfaction that he deserves to have his life and career just wiped away like Winston Smith did to yesterday’s news stories. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/524 "2018-03-14T04:43:36Z")
Is sexual assault something in which society “ought not meddle”? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/525 "2018-03-14T05:04:01Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > This is a good moment for some quotes from John Stuart Mill’s seminal work _On Liberty_: Seminal work for paternalistic racists, you mean - Mill is the epitome of the colonialism apologist, no surprise you admire him: “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians provided that the end be their improvement and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” That’s _also_ a quote from _On Liberty_. Note that the “barbarians” Mills had at the forefront of his thinking were the Indians - he spent his entire working life in the East India Company - the very engine of British imperialism, which brought the world such benefits of colonialism as the Indian famines and the opium trade. I can see why \*you \*are an admirer. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/526 "2018-03-14T05:09:36Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > I’ve backed up my case. There is no reason for people to “jump in” because there really isn’t anything else to say on the matter. FWIW, I think you have made a good case, but a lot of us “visitors” were all sleeping when Slacker started using reverse _argumentum ad populum_ like it was going out of fashion… ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/527 "2018-03-14T06:49:10Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Seminal work for paternalistic racists, you mean - Mill is the epitome of the colonialism apologist, no surprise you admire him: Oh jeez. :rolleyes: The liberal\* writer Adam Gopnik wrote the following about Mill in _The New Yorker_ (one of the most impeccably fact-checked publications of all time) in 2008: > **[The Passions of John Stuart Mill](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/06/right-again)** > > The nineteenth-century English philosopher, politician, and know-it-all is the subject of a fine new biography by the British journalist Richard Reeves. > [@](#): > > It is a hard thing, being right about everything all the time. Nobody likes a know-it-all, and we wait for the moment when the know-it-all is wrong to insist that he never really knew anything in the first place. The know-it-all, far from living in smug superiority, has the burden of being right the next time, too. Certainly no one has ever been so right about so many things so much of the time as John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century English philosopher, politician, and know-it-all nonpareil… > Mill believed in complete equality between the sexes, not just women’s colleges and, someday, female suffrage but absolute parity; he believed in equal process for all, the end of slavery, votes for the working classes, and the right to birth control (he was arrested at seventeen for helping poor people obtain contraception), and in the common intelligence of all the races of mankind… > > At the age of seventeen, he became a clerk at the East India Company, the private corporation that then ran India, and remained at its headquarters in London for thirty-five years, administering Indian affairs at a distance—a servant of British imperialism, but a benevolent kind. (When, later, the government tried to cut funds for Indian colonial colleges teaching Arabic and Sanskrit, Mill fought to keep the practice going, for fear of losing all contact with the élites. “Without knowing the language of a people, we never really know their thoughts, their feelings, and their type of character,” he wrote.)[…] > > When, in the eighteen-sixties, the English-appointed governor of Jamaica punished a native uprising with hideous cruelty—the accused were tortured and many hanged, after trumpery trials—Mill led the fight in England against him, chairing a committee to have him tried not for maladministration but for murder. (A committee formed in defense of the governor included Dickens and Carlyle.) When Mill said that his rights were worthless unless everyone else had them, too, he really meant it. His friendship with Carlyle broke only when the Scotsman’s racism became too much for Mill, a passionate abolitionist, to bear. :dubious: \*Here is the cite for Gopnik’s liberalism: > **[The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-second-amendment-is-a-gun-control-amendment)** > > There is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the historical understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/528 "2018-03-14T07:35:56Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > Is sexual assault something in which society “ought not meddle”? Sigh. Okay, let’s try it like this. > [@](#): > > Scenario 1: Michael and Hannah are 19-year-old college sophomores. Both of them have led pretty normal lives up to this point, by all accounts. They are reported by peers and teachers to be honest, at least as honest as any normal teenager (maybe a little sneaking around after curfew when they were in high school, or going to college parties that serve alcohol to underage students, that sort of thing). > > Michael, Hannah, and various witnesses agree on a few things. The two of them met at just such a party; they had a couple drinks each but weren’t wasted; they made out at the party; they left together. Michael and Hannah agree that they went back to Hannah’s apartment, and that sexual intercourse occurred there. But Hannah went to the police and accused Michael of raping her, while Michael insists the sex was fully consensual. > > Hannah was not physically injured, and no one heard anything. But she insists that this was because Michael threatened her with a beating if she didn’t submit to sex. Michael swears that nothing remotely like that happened, although he does say she seemed mad when he left, due to his refusal to give her his number and telling her that he was just out for a hookup that night, and she wasn’t his type as far as being girlfriend material. > [@](#): > > Scenario 2: Matt and Josh are thirty-year-old former business partners. Their startup went under, putting them both deep in debt, and they each blame the other. Mutual friends describe them both as having stewed over their anger for weeks leading up to “the incident”, but are shocked at the level to which things escalated one night. > > At the wedding of a mutual friend, the two began arguing and were seen to go out on the roof of the hotel. No one witnessed what happened next, until passers-by on the street below noticed two men grappling with each other, hands around each other’s necks, leaning precariously close to going off the edge of the roof. > > Hotel security ran out on the roof and found them that way, but there was no obvious way to tell who had “started it”, nor was any of the forensic evidence gathered after the fact any help. Both told the same story about the other: “He’s crazy! He tried to kill me, and I only fought back to save my own life.” The capsule summary of the scenarios (in the media, for instance) would generally be, respectively: Scenario 1: Michael Jones was accused of raping a 19 year old female student he met at a party (her name is kept anonymous). He has maintained his innocence. Scenario 2: Matthew Smith and Joshua Anderson have each accused the other of assault and attempted murder related to an incident on the rooftop of a hotel, where they were both attending a wedding. Note that in Scenario 1, there are two asymmetric aspects: only one of the two of them is named in the media, and there’s a sort of implicit idea that either he’s a sexual predator and she’s an innocent victim (and this is seen as more likely nowadays, whatever the practice in bygone years), or _maybe_ his protestations of innocence are valid. But in that latter possibility, unless people really think about it carefully, the implicit idea is that then they are both innocent. But au contraire: the two scenarios are actually much more similar than it appears. In both cases, two people are each accusing the other of a heinous crime. We have passed the rubicon: there is no way to put this toothpaste back in the tube and get back to a state of mutual innocence. In Scenario 1, Hannah is accusing Michael of a serious crime: rape. But Michael is not only denying this, he is also accusing Hannah of a serious offense, of slandering his name (without having to reveal hers), and putting him in potential jeopardy of serious prison time, a lifelong status as a felon, and certainly a big lawyer bill and a shitload of stress. And she too is (implicitly) maintaining her innocence. So let’s say the criminal cases in both cases are dropped or dismissed for lack of evidence. Here’s where the social aspect comes in. I assume all of you agree that it would be unfair for large numbers of people, who don’t even know the two people involved, to go around dragging Hannah’s name through the dirt (if they could even discover her identity) as a false accuser. We don’t know her accusation was false, and it would be awful to imagine her being put through that kind of public shaming if she’s truly just an innocent victim. But why doesn’t the same hold for Michael? Michael may be a monster who brutalized Hannah that day. Or he may be completely innocent, the victim of a malicious smear.\* We just don’t know, and we should not make him pay that social price, in case he is innocent. \*That 3% false report statistic, BTW, is not what you all (and nearly everyone) make it out to be. Even if we take it at face value for what it is, it doesn’t mean “97% of women’s allegations are fully substantiated.” That’s impossible: far too often, it really does come down to “he said, she said” in a private moment behind closed doors. So what it actually means is “3% of the time, police find proof that the accuser was lying.” That’s quite a different thing entirely, as this proof is going to impossible to get in the many cases where the person accused of rape does not deny having sex with the accuser, and there were (as there usually are not, even in this day and age) no witnesses. So the real number is: (3+x)% of accusations, where x represents all accusations which an omniscient being could tell us are false, but which we otherwise will never know for sure. All we know is that it’s going to be significantly higher than 3%, unless you think there’s something about false accusers that makes them significantly more likely to accidentally provide airtight evidence that they are lying. And that would be a highly dubious supposition that does not fit with any reasonable “prior”, nor with Ockham’s Razor or plain old common sense. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/529 "2018-03-14T09:17:53Z")
Who will speak for the accused rapists? Aside from the patriarchal culture and society, which has generally protected them for decades and centuries. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/530 "2018-03-14T09:33:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Who will speak for the accused rapists? Implicit in your snark is the assumption that they are guilty. What about those who truly are not? Even if you argue on utilitarian grounds for sweeping then up with the guilty (a valid position, even if one I strongly disagree with), you might have the basic decency not to add insult to injury by holding them up for contemptuous ridicule, on their way to the pen, or at least to career ruin and outcast status. I mean, you do seem to be liberal/left. Do you not have any sympathy for the decidedly left of center Innocence Project? What happened to the liberal stance on the rights of the accused? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/531 "2018-03-14T09:38:14Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Implicit in your snark is the assumption that they are guilty. What about those who truly are not? Even if you argue on utilitarian grounds for sweeping then up with the guilty (a valid position, even if one I strongly disagree with), you might have the basic decency not to add insult to injury by holding them up for contemptuous ridicule, on their way to the pen, or at least to career ruin and outcast status. > > I mean, you do seem to be liberal/left. Do you not have any sympathy for the decidedly left of center Innocence Project? What happened to the liberal stance on the rights of the accused? > > Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I certainly have sympathy for the falsely accused. I think that being falsely accused of rape is very rare, and having a false accusation of rape do significant harm is even rarer. And I think that society generally protects accused rapists far, far more than it protects accusers. This might be just starting to change, hopefully. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/532 "2018-03-14T09:46:15Z")
How can you say “very rare”? 3% is already not that rare (more likely than rolling snake eyes with two dice); and I don’t see how you can dispute my logic as to why the true number must be significantly higher (but if you think you can, let’s hear it). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/533 "2018-03-14T09:48:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > How can you say “very rare”? 3% is already not that rare (more likely than rolling snake eyes with two dice); and I don’t see how you can dispute my logic as to why the true number must be significantly higher (but if you think you can, let’s hear it). > Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I couldn’t find your cite. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/534 "2018-03-14T09:49:10Z")
Also, how is publicity for the accused and anonymity for the accuser evidence that society has been protecting the former far more than the latter? Stop mindlessly regurgitating these talking points and engage with facts and logic, man! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/535 "2018-03-14T09:50:32Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I couldn’t find your cite. It was the number given upthread by someone arguing your side. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/536 "2018-03-14T09:59:54Z")
I’m glad you spurred me to find my own numbers. Others in this thread may not be so appreciative (“Thanks a lot, Andy!”). Per Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > In March 2017 a new research on the prevalence of false rape allegations in the United States in the period 2006-2010 was published on the Journal of Forensic Psychology. The goal of the research was to obtain recent figures of the prevalence of unfounded allegations of rape and compare to unfounded allegations of other crimes. According to the data provided by the FBI, about 5000 allegations of rape every year corresponding to an average 5.55% of the allegations of rape were deemed false or baseless after investigation. That was at least five times higher than for most other offence types. Cases of disputed consent were not included in the results as they were subject to judicial review in court.[7] My mathematical/logical point from upthread still applies in that there is a huge group of cases we can never know how many of which are false; but certainly it has to be some of them. But even if it’s just 5 1/2%, that is far from “very rare”. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/537 "2018-03-14T10:05:32Z")
Note also that “five times higher” than other crime reports. Meaning, instead of “believe women” (who report rape), we should be much more skeptical of them than people—male or female—who report other crimes. I am actually shocked to learn this, and appalled—in part because it does a disservice not just to the men falsely accused, but to the woman who are honestly reporting real assaults! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/538 "2018-03-14T10:23:05Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Also, how is publicity for the accused and anonymity for the accuser evidence that society has been protecting the former far more than the latter? Stop mindlessly regurgitating these talking points and engage with facts and logic, man! I’m unaware that all accusations become public. As for the 5.5%, “false or baseless” doesn’t necessarily = malicious or dishonest. And considering our history and our society, I’m not sure if numbers like this tell us much more than police conclusions in the Jim Crow South told us about crime by black people. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/539 "2018-03-14T10:45:34Z")
You ask for a cite, then dismiss it when it hurts your argument. Whatever, dude. And yes: anyone being booked on a criminal charge is a matter of public record, which used to get routinely reported in the newspaper, in the “police blotter”, even if not covered elsewhere in the paper. Could the Internet age afford more anonymity? The information is still public record, but your grandma might not— well, scratch that: your grandma still reads the newspaper. Maybe I should say your niece might not see it because she doesn’t read through the newspaper. On the other hand, rape arrests are still fairly big news unless you are in a very large city. So they are likely to make the TV news, and whatever local online sources you look at on Facebook. And of course, if even one person in a social network sees it, it will spread. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/540 "2018-03-14T11:04:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Oh jeez. :rolleyes: The liberal\* writer Adam Gopnik wrote the following about Mill in _The New Yorker_ That’s nice, and all, but what in it says that Mill didn’t write what I quoted? And personally, I don’t give a shit if you think he was the “benevolent kind” of British imperialist flunky. That’s just code for _paternalistic_ racist oppresion vs any other kind. He directly said that the people that his own administration lorded it over were like children: > [@](#): > > For the same reason we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end perhaps otherwise unattainable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075.md?page=26) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075.md?page=28)