Wow, what a horribly constructed word. Condesplain would probably be more effective at conveying that meaning.
But that would omit one of the connotations of the word, which is that this is something that principally (though not exclusively) men are guilty of doing to women, as part of a larger underestimation and devaluing of the knowledge and opinions of women. Whether you buy that factual premise or not, that’s why the word was crafted.
What’s more, if it lacked the gender connotation, we would never be having this conversation about the phenomenon. The word was only coined recently and yet it is now everywhere–NYT’s 2010 word of the year–suggesting it was actually a very well-chosen neologism.
I’m not sure I agree with that. People like gossip. People like salacious gossip. And what’s more salacious gossip than rape accusations?
Not to mention that some number of women would probably read it out of a somewhat innocent and sincere naivete, believing in some ideal of sisterly solidarity. I mean, these are college students we’re talking about here, who aren’t noted for always having a correct understanding of how the universe works.
(Although a lot of that would probably depend on the details…)
But it would immediately be filled with random garbage. Have you ever read the internet? Keeping the random trolls and jokesters away requires both strong moderation and committed user base that is willing to maintain order. And you aren’t going to get many “longtime posters” on the accusation page.
People like gossip, but only about people they know. The chances of running across someone you know in such a forum would be rare, and there are much better ways to get gossip within your own community. Do you think people are going to be sitting there rapt reading about alleged rapes by strangers 3,000 miles away from them?
Well, in the show, the implication was that it was a website restricted to Princeton University.
Perhaps she could put a disclaimer on the website that these are stories as told by the people telling them.
No one really has to read it. It would be more like a database. If it was indexed to Google, someone would just need to google someone else’s name, and they’d see a rape accusation tied to that name. Since employers routinely search on candidate’s names, the candidate would have to try to prove that this rape didn’t happen. Would an employer believe it? What reason would they have to disbelieve it?
If there was enough advertising, people might choose to post there to get their stories out there, especially if it was advertised as a way to anonymously air their stories and speak out against what happened to them.
If the database was big enough, I’d think that some amount of people would check it just because they checked their own name in a search. (I’m not limiting the website to the show and an internal website. This thought experiment website would be public.)
ETA: And it’s possible that some people might read it to see if others have had the same experience they’ve had and particularly if some other person had the same experience with a particular individual.
Bringing gender into makes it more of a charged word, making it less useful in communication, unless the point of the word is to irritate and offend. Popular != good.
I give it 45 minutes before 4Chan has every name on Facebook on there.
Maybe. But if they wanted to do something like that, why wouldn’t they have already done it? It would be easy enough to set up a website like that. They would have to care about it enough first. If no one read it, as was claimed, why would they care about it?
A web administrator does have some authority to stop something like that. An automatic script could be disallowed. It would be easy enough to see that the stories are not different.
Someone would own the website, so there would be some oversight on it.
But also, isn’t that one of the problems of creating a site to put out accusations without much question of them? Anyone can put anyone else’s name out there for any or no reason.
This is one of those things that can’t really be predicted ahead of time. If the objection is that no one would read it, why would that be a problem? If no one cared, then that girl starting a website to do that would be like someone starting a blog to talk about their experiences. If, on the other hand, people did care and take it seriously, then it’s open to abuse. Even if it’s known to be open to abuse, people googling a name are still liable to make judgments about what they see there.
If I remember correctly, the issue on the show was that according to the woman, she had been drugged. Wouldn’t that leave traces? Wouldn’t the police investigate? What always surprises me in these stories on TV shows is that the whole thing is handled by the university, not the police.
The trouble here are the drugs, which remove any doubt that it was a real rape (if the woman was telling the truth). If it had been alcohol, then it would have been possible for the man to think he was having consensual sex while the woman wasn’t in a position to give consent, so they could both be right. And without intoxication, presumably there would have been violence involved that would leave evidence one way or the other.
I think in the alcohol case naming and shaming could work. A guy who got accused once or twice could own up to having made mistakes without being branded a rapist, while one who shows up time and time again would deservedly suffer social stigma.
You could even set up such a site that the claims only get published once two or three have been received, so no single woman would be responsible for ruining a man’s reputation.