Maybe. But that is more than balanced by the greater increase in a woman’s chance to have a legitimate complaint investigated.
Before I get my panties in as knot I would need the details of the cases of unfairly maligned men instead of the hysterical hypothetical cases being presented.
What I’m hearing is that false accusations are a horrible, life-altering, devastating occurrence that happens more than we know. Sexual harassment, rape, assault, meh, whatever.
Then what are you going on about with your false dichotomy that you can only either believe men or women?
Yes, it is called being capable of critical thinking and evaluation of evidence.
Your argument that you should never believe women does not allow for any critical thinking or evaluation of evidence, but instead, starts from the position that the woman is a liar out to harm a perfectly innocent man.
Certainly not to the satisfaction of someone who will take words out of context and do their best to deliberately misunderstand them in order to create a false narrative to rail against.
To believe a woman is to give her story a fair shake, to accept it as a potentially credible allegation, and to follow up and determine the validity of it based on the evidence presented, as well as patterns of behavior of the people involved.
To not believe women is to consider any accusations that they make to be lies to stir up trouble.
See, this is a problem, you oppose believing women. You would call a woman a liar to her face if she came to you with a concern about a co-worker or superior who is harassing her, and accuse her of just making up stories to hurt someone.
The matter of online-community shaming culture has been an issue for years, is independent of the current version of the “me too” phenomenon, and entirely genger-neutral. Heck, the archetypal example of the Justine Sacco incident dates back to 2013.
Here is my problem with the argument that false allegations of sexual assault or sexual harassment are “rare”:
These things occur in private situations. Unless someone is stupid enough to call a female co-worker sugar tits in front of others or he rapes a woman on stage, the encounter is generally one done where only the two parties are present. As these allegations typically do not come forward immediately, no rape kit or DNA testing is done.
It is almost always a “he said/she said” proposition. No methodology that pretends to be scientific can put these cases into true/false categories.
The only time the stats count these allegations as false is when a woman makes a verifiably false statement as to a surrounding detail, and even then, those on the #metoo side simply chalk that up to the trauma of her experience. The woman has to be on the Crystal Magnum scale of lying/crazy before the possibility of falsehood arises, and even then the DA was still pushing for prison for those innocent players.
I don’t have a solution for this, but the status quo “always believe the victim” (and yes, calling her a victim before the evidence comes in) is not fair to the accused. Just because this is the political cause of the day does not mean that fairness should go out the window.
“Always believe the victim” isn’t the status quo. Hell, “take every allegation seriously” isn’t even the status quo. We’ve made some progress towards the latter, which should be the goal, but society still generally treats accusers like shit, and accused powerful men with far more sympathy than their accusers. Credible sexual assault allegations are still not barriers to powerful positions like president or SCOTUS justice. We have a long, long way to go.
That same argument applies to the assertion that false allegations of sexual assault or sexual harassment aren’t rare. And the preponderance of actual evidence is that rape has been and continues to be underreported, and even when reported is investigated at quite a low rate.
I don’t want to rehash the Kavanaugh thing, but it seems like your definition of credible means “not inherently incredible.” From my limited experience, I disagree with your contention that nobody takes these things seriously. I have three clients that I am representing on post-conviction relief that are doing effective life sentences for sexual assault with not one shred of corroboration, only the word of the alleged victim. Now maybe they are all guilty, or maybe they were railroaded. Unless God comes down and tells us what happened, I don’t believe we can ever know.
I agree. I have no position on how rare or not rare false allegations are. My contention is that it is simply unknowable. It is not a good thing to base a justice system on who can tell the best story and who comes across as more believable. Sometimes that leads to the truth, and sometimes that lets the best liar win.
I never said nobody takes these things seriously. I’m speaking of society as a whole – we’re not yet taking sexual assault and related allegations nearly as seriously as we should. Insults and dismissals of accusers are still commonplace and largely accepted, if less acceptable than in the past. Excuses and rationalizations for abuse and abusers are also still commonplace and widely accepted, if less acceptable than in the past.
We’re still far from being a just and decent society with regards to sexual assault and related issues.
However, one has to consider the benefit/cost ratio to lying. The benefit to a person saying he didn’t commit rape when he did is obvious and the cost minimal - he’s already accused, and if caught lying he goes to jail. But the benefit to a person saying they were raped when they weren’t is much smaller and the cost much higher even if undiscovered, as many actual rape victims have learned. Ford was - and continues to be - the subject of a national smear campaign and the target of death threats for coming forward with her allegations. What benefit was there for her to do so that outweighed those costs?
That doesn’t mean false allegations never happen - clearly they do - but they are usually heavily disincentivised even if the lie is never discovered, and obviously can result in jail time if the lie is revealed. While individual cases differ widely, broadly speaking there is not an equal probability of each of the two sides lying.
Lying about a rape doesn’t make sense, but there are lots of things that don’t make sense and still happen all the time. The benefit/cost ratio of committing rape is also pretty damn bad. I can’t even fathom how anyone could enjoy it, and the risks are obvious, but there are clearly some men who see those options and choose to commit the rape.
If everyone was rational, there wouldn’t be any false rape allegations, and there wouldn’t be any rapes, either. But if we accept that there are some men twisted and irrational enough to commit rape, is it unreasonable to think there are some women irrational enough to make a false allegation?