Yeah, if the police won’t do their job or prosecutors won’t do their job than get the mobs. Maybe this Epstein https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222719885.html character is a prime example. But as a general principle due process should be followed first. Not let’s jump straight to doxing and boycotts.
I’m sure there are. I mean aren’t there other threads discussing what should be done for women or men even that are sexually harassed/assaulted? This is a discussion about 2nd order effects.
Which quite often are ridiculed when they are brought up as something to consider.
Once again: what am I or other MeToo supporters doing that you think is wrong? It’s not clear to me what you’re objecting to in terms of individual behavior.
Or : you believe her without evidence, in other words you say it did happen, and he’s a terrible person, even though it didn’t, and he isn’t. And she gets away with it.
How do you choose between these two options and why?
People will naturally believe their wives/daughters/sisters/friends. I’ve known several people who have been sexually assaulted or raped. The problem comes when we’re asked with insistance, like on this board, to believe any accusation by a complete stranger against another complete stranger and told that this is somehow what we should do by default, or else we’re terrible people.
Also : what will you say if your husband/son/brother/friend tells you that he’s falsely accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, because apparently you’ll believe the accusation even if there’s no evidence, right?
People tend to think readily “what if my loved one was the alleged victim?”, but somehow rarely wonder “what if my loved one was the alleged crimina?l”. Apply also for instance, to people supporting the death penalty.
The answer is pretty easy – we treat every allegation with compassion and seriousness, and investigate them fully (assuming that’s what the accuser wants), and go from there.
Because it demonstrates that even under threat of bankruptcy and disbarment, prosecutors are still willing to pursue malicious prosecution for provably fictitious crimes. Likewise Sabrina Erdely, who ruined her reputation in Rolling Stone. Apparently rape and rape culture is a pervasive problem, and yet these people couldn’t find any real rapes to attack, so they had to resort to fabrication. And the big problem is that every time a story comes out about a fabricated rape claim, it makes other people less willing to give the victims the benefit of the doubt.
Have you ever heard of the “Presumption of Innocence?” It is, ostensibly, the basis of our legal system.
Someone breaks into my house and steals my TV. I tell the police, “My neighbor Steve stole my TV.” The police investigate Steve and find no evidence that he stole my TV. I may not like the outcome, but I should not be surprised that Steve escapes prosecution because there is no evidence he committed the crime.
So while I may understandably be hurt and angry and feel helpless, there are some things I would not do: I would not expect Steve’s employer to fire him, nor would I expect the neighborhood to evict Steve from his home. I would not walk around the neighborhood with a television to remind people that Steve is a TV thief. I would not write articles for Rolling Stone complaining that Steve stole my TV and also burned down my house (given that my house was, demonstrably, not burned down in the first place). I wouldn’t pick random neighbors and accuse them of TV theft just to raise awareness of the fact that TV theft does, undeniably, happen. And I wouldn’t accuse the police of being complicit in TV theft just because I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.
If a neighbor came to me and said, “Someone also stole my TV!” Then yeah, I probably would be inclined believe them. But if they can’t produce evidence, and the police investigation finds no evidence, what am I supposed to do about it? I can commiserate and support them, but no matter how strongly I believe Steve stole our TV sets, there’s not much else I can do about it.
And if I met one of Steve’s friends and said, “Steve is a TV thief,” I would not be surprised if they say, “Prove it.”
This is 100% the exact opposite of reality when it comes to rape victims. The vast majority of men at least tend to think “What if I was the one falsely accused?” And a good portion of women seem to stop and think “what if my male loved one was accused?” And that is what we are trying to fix, because false accusations are rare and rarely result in significant problems. It is irrational to consider that to be more important.
Maybe in some other situation, we have the opposite problem, where we think too much about the victims and not about the accused. You bring up the death penalty: that’s a good one. But, in the case of rape and sexual crimes, the problem is that many people care more about the accused than the victim. That’s why we get all this “it’ll ruin his life” crap, ignoring that rape victim’s lives are ruined a lot more.
As for someone I know being falsely accused? It’s not that hard. I would of course be biased towards believing them, rather than the accuser. And I would have a rational reason for that: I know the accused better, and can be a better judge of their character. However, there would also be an emotional component, and I would thus need to try and offset that.
And how do I do that? By believing the accuser. I don’t assume they are lying. I offset my natural thoughts with thoughts in the opposite direction. And then I stick with my mantra “believe, but verify.”
And, well, since I’m emotionally involved, I’m really the worst person to actually be remotely in charge of consequences. I get that my emotions cloud my judgement.
So appealing to them like you did is the exact opposite of what I think is needed. What is needed is rationality.
Isn’t it more like: You are sitting in your living room watching TV. As you are sitting there, your neighbor Steve enters your house and takes your TV right in front of you. You call the cops, tell them Steve stole your TV and they don’t believe you unless you have something other than your word. You don’t, so the cops don’t do anything. Steve smirks at you every time you see him from then on.
No, it establishes that a single person did so. It is anecdote, not data. It is cherrypicking to get the conclusion you want.
It exists in our legal system, yes. But then the rest of your post had nothing to do with our legal system. You are demanding that the rest of society bow to the demands of the legal system, where we deliberately err on the side of letting 100 guilty people go free than 1 innocent person.
So, by asking us to adhere to this principle, you are asking us to let 100 rapists get away in order to save 1 falsely accused. And we utterly reject that.
And, well, so do you. You said you’d believe your neighbor if they said their TV was stolen. So you believe the accuser. Exactly like you should. But then you demand we don’t when it comes to rape. You demand the presumption of innocence.
And, finally, stop trying to say that people regularly go around making false accusations of rape to raise awareness. Don’t perpetuate the propaganda.
Here’s the part you don’t get: they don’t. Women have been historically disbelieved by husbands, partners, parents, coworkers and friends. We are where we are today because, generally no one has believed women, except perhaps other women.
Men have, in general, been fine with workplaces and communities in which their female friends and family members are groped, touched, and ogled. This is the status quo.
So, no, men don’t believe women, even their loved ones. Or maybe they do and don’t care.
So, due to the actions of individuals, you change the way you act towards a group. “Well, there was once this guy that made this false claim, so I don’t believe anyone anymore.” that’s not rational. That is justification and rationalization of what you already want to do, to dismiss the claims of women.
How about, every time a big story comes out about a rape, it makes other people less willing to give the perpetrators the benefit of the doubt? That’s not a thing? Men who rape and lie about it do not in any way cast doubt upon the next man who claims to have not raped, but a woman lies about being raped, and that casts doubt on the next women who claims to have been raped?
Do you not see the double standard that you are vehemently defending here?
We say that every accusation should be investigated. Really, investigating a claim is the best way to get to the bottom of it. A proper investigation actually is more to the benefit of the accused than the accuser, as an investigation is more likely to turn up evidence that there was fabrication than there is to turn up evidence of non-consensual sexual contact.
We are saying that we should believe women and have a proper investigation. You keep saying that women need to prove their case before an investigation may take place.
Presumption of innocence is what you get when you are at a trial with a jury. It is not what you get when you are being investigated. The cop that is looking for clues to tell if you stole your neighbor’s TV is not operating under a presumption of evidence, they are investigating to give information to the courts for them to make that determination.
And when they go over, and see Steve smirking and watching your TV, he says, “No, he gave it to me.” They come back, and say, “Sorry, but we talked to him, and it turns out, you’re a liar. You gave him that TV consensually, and are now just trying to get attention/cuase problems/act out/ get revenge on him.”
So, Steve is also a co-worker of yours, and he works with high value merchandise. You know that he stole your TV. Would you not warn your boss that Steve is a thief?
You wouldn’t warn your neighbors not to let Steve into their homes unattended, and allow them to find out for themselves that he will steal their TV?
The next two sentences of yours are foam speckled hyperbole, and there is no response possible to such irrationality.
As far as the last, when the police accuse you of being a liar and just trying to get attention for accusing your neighbor of stealing your TV, you aren’t going to have the slightest bit of irritation at them dismissing your claims out of hand?
And Steve sits there, watching both your TV’s in full view of the neighborhood, smirking that there is nothing you can do about it.
Steve’s friends are probably TV thieves themselves, and at the very least, are TV thief apologists.
No, it doesn’t mean that they don’t believe what they say, just that they say it for show.
Since we were talking about tumblr in the other thread, a perfect example of virtue signaling IMO are the numerous blogs that start with a proclamation of support for gay rights. Supporting gay rights in our day and age is totally unremarkable, especially on a platform where a lot of users are either social activists or kinksters, both unlikely to oppose gay rights. What is surprising there is finding the blog of someone who opposes them. There’s nothing trangressive or courageous in writing that you’re supporting gay rights on Tumblr in 2018. The only point is to show that you’re a good person, in agreement with pretty much everybody you’re going to interact with in your support for what is a super popular view among your peers.
Write “I support gay rights” on a billboard in 1960, or write it on your blog in 2018 in Iran, and now we can talk. On tumblr (or on the Straight Dope) in the USA in 2018, it’s just virtue signaling. Now, you could say that it’s a positive thing to say, so why not? The thing is that there are many nice things you could write in your presentation. You could start your blog with, say, “I support the victims of the civil war in Syria” or " I support the funding of the reasearch for a malaria vaccine" or any number of other positive and nice things also showing that you have your heart at the right place. But people don’t write that. Because although that’s not something that will get them any hatred, it’s also not something that will get them pats on the back. Contrarily to “gay rights”, it’s not particularly popular and trendy among their peers.
I’m sure that pretty much all people writing “I support gay rights” in their presentation actually support them. I’m even sure that a small number of them write it because, for one reason or another, they believe it’s still particularly important to show your support for this particular cause. About as many as those who write “I support the victims of the civil war in Syria” because for one reason or another they think it’s particularly important to show your support for this particular cause. The overwhelming majority, however, write it because it’s the popular idea of the day. The first (very small) group would have written “I support gay rights” on the billboard in 1960 because it was the right thing to do. The second (very large) group would have written “jail the fags and throw away the key” on the billboard in 1960 because it was the popular thing to do. I have zero trust in people who feel the need to proclaim high and low their support for the popular idea of the day, especially when they do so in what is essentially an echo chamber.
Nobody AFAICT is suggesting modifying our legal system. This is a discussion of what people personally believe about accusations, and the strangely rigorous conditions that some people have decided to apply solely to beliefs about accusations by women concerning sexual misconduct by men.
If that is so then why is that a tactic so commonly used? Even on these forums and others we have a mob that tries to provide “justice” via enacting social costs.
That’s a tough question. I don’t think anything can be done other than an attempt to educate people on critical thinking to process information and teach people that what they say nowadays online can reach people across the globe instantly and be remembered forever.
In other words modern communication is going to be vastly more disruptive than most have imagined.
So what am I or other #MeToo supporters doing/saying that is not in keeping with “critical thinking” or the principle that messages online can reach and last forever?
As near as I can tell, you are not agreeing with the premise that false accusations are such a big problem that, coupled with the destructive nature of globe-spanning free speech, our (men’s) entire way of life is threatened!