Obviously being sexually harassed is bad, but being profiled or falsely accused it also bad in a different way.
Pedophilia has a lot of similarities to islamic terrorism. They aro both way over represented by the news despite being very rare in real life, and this misrepresentation combined with the heinousness of the crime causes people to behave irrationally and profile others when it is not reasonable to do so, not based on any evidence the person presents, but rather by association (people who “look suspicious” are generally just the hollywood stereotype).
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Exaggerated male profiling is not actually a good thing for women, and I think there should be some education against it just as males are educated against sexual harassment. No good comes from antisocial behaviour, be it by males or females.
I feel like we’re addressing a problem that was a lot bigger when I was a kid, but since this seems earnest, keep in mind that your risk and my risk of false accusations are roughly the same. My being female doesn’t protect me from false allegations. There is no movement to encourage or normalize false accusations. There hasn’t been anything in the headlines telling me that false and ruinous accusations are a thing. The potential exists, but no more than usual, and it threatens your cause and mine.
I don’t have a lot to add to LHoD’s excellent responses, but just a couple of things:
The example you gave isn’t of a situation where you had to be careful. The parents there were the ones being careful - overly so, I’d agree*. Yeah, it put a damper on your day, but you were never at risk.
I have to ask: is this one example from many where you feel you were inappropriately looked on with suspicion, or was it a one-off or close to it? I didn’t become a dad until age 55 (let’s not hijack this thread about that, though), and somehow I managed to get through my intervening decades of adulthood without being in any situations that I can remember that anyone was giving me the hairy eyeball due to being in proximity with kids. Was I lucky? I don’t think I was particularly circumspect back then.
*Seriously, kids were playing a spectator sport in a public place, and they got spectators. Who’d’a thunk?
You’re lumping together two different things that differ in frequency by several orders of magnitude, and describing them both as “very rare in real life.”
American victims of Islamic terrorism: the ~3000 killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and a handful of others. In a nation of 300 million, that’s roughly a 1/100,000 chance of being a victim of Islamic terrorism.
American victims of childhood sexual abuse: numbers are hard to come by, but we’re not talking about one woman out of every 100,000 being molested as children. We’re not talking about even 1 in every 1000 or 1 in every 100. Probably more like 1 in 10, if that low. This is something that is distressingly common, not “very rare in real life.”
I think you and many others are missing a key point: I acknowledge that my unease was irrational and the scenario in my head was extremely, extremely unlikely to actually happen.
mmm
ETA: By the way, when I spoke of hyperbole, I was referring to this:
This is a different issue than the context I raised it in. I was responding to the OP’s belief that a single accusation completely ruins a person’s reputation, regardless of any legal consequences.
So I am pointing out a famous case in which an actual harasser clearly has not had his life ruined because of a single fabricated allegation. Is the point totally the last word on the matter?
No, because Trump is a different beast because he’s a politician. But if I mentioned Creepy George at my last job who got away with those sorts of things for decades, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.
And no, because there clearly has been at least one case of a demonstrably false accusation (the LA case mentioned earlier) having a huge impact on people’s lives. But I’m not convinced that such things are any different or more common than say, Richard Jewell being wrongly accused of bombing the Atlanta Olympics, and having people remember his name 20 years later for all the wrong reasons.
The point is that this obsessive thinking that a six year old is likely to ruin your reputation, bankrupt you, and leave you a total mess for the rest of your life by uttering a few false words is probably about as real a concern as being eaten by an alligator.
Sure, people get eaten by alligators. Not all of them did something to deserve it. But if you are the type of person who is going to very substantially alter normal behavior in society because of a fear of alligators, I’m saying that this is more likely to be a symptom of a larger problem (as another poster argued in reference to his own difficulties with anxiety and other matters).
On reading what I wrote yesterday, I owe an apology to jsgoddess.
Somehow, in my mind, I had what she said mashed together with what ulfrieda said (“the what about me” comment)
So, basically the thoughts I meant to convey are these. Yes, men, or some men, are afraid of false accusations from women. I am. I’ve suffered it in a way I would call minor, when I was a minor. Yes it negatively affected my life in a middling (at that time) sort of way. I never went to church camp again, and had been looking forward to going for at least six more years.
I’ve seen sexual harassment policies change from being worded and enforced with the idea that the man is always the aggressor and the woman is always the victim to recognizing that sometimes the opposite is true and sometimes its man on man sexual harassment or woman on woman. But this progress has been rather uneven and the most progressive group I’ve seen was the army where one might not intuitively expect that policy, rather than out in the civilian world at large.
Some of us see a culture that automatically convicts and punishes men socially upon accusation regardless of proof or what a court of law decides, just because they are men. Some men see this and automatically adjust there behavior to avoid situations where that could occur and wonder what the fuss is about. The fuss is why can’t a man just enjoy the spectacle of a kids soccer game without automatic suspicion? Why must dads who take their kids to the park be viewed with hostility and assumed to be a perverted creep?
The situation that was used to kick off this thread, while maybe a hypothetical to most of you, truly isn’t to me. I’ve watched it happen, as I said with minor changes in setting and detail.
We gathered here in this thread to discuss our fear, as a way of dealing with that fear. **MMM ** did invite comment from posters who are not men, and I over-reacted, jsgoddess, I’m sorry.
Too bad that isn’t true. I have personal experience of someone going to jail, on the testimony of one 12 year old girl. A girl that had already spent time in a non-residential home for abused children for unrelated events. How do I know? I read the trial transcript. The police had built up a pretty good set of circumstantial evidence, but no proof except the testimony.
I understand. I was responding to a poster who said it almost never happened based on one testimony.
I appreciated your OP.
I think the problem resides with the he said/she said subset of accusations. You were unreasonably afraid because there is no balance of power. You, and men in general are hardly alone in this. As other posters have pointed out, women live their lives on the losing end of the balance of power. Now all of a sudden men are experiencing it and like any new threat it is frightening out of proportion to the likelihood. The threat is not legal-few of the people in the news lately are in immediate danger (the future may be different for them) of legal action. But creditable accusations have resulted in severe consequences.
What we all want is for women to not have to live in fear of any man that comes near her and that any accusation be judged with a “beyond reasonable doubt” basis. Not with an assumption that one person’s word is more to be believed than the other person.
We aren’t anywhere near there for either women or men.
Not just the losing end directly when the power is exercised (i.e. being raped or harassed or assaulted), but also the societal expectation that women must be alert at all times, must protect themselves, cannot slip, cannot use bad judgment or else they bear some responsibility at some level for that power being exercised. And then if women react by being fearful of men, why, that’s an attack on men. And if they speak up about things that have happened to them, why, men are in terrible danger of false accusations.
To hear any part of this dressed up as “a perspective I’ve not heard discussed” is risible.
You are the one who chose to frame your feelings as a new perspective on a major, ongoing sexual harassment and assault scandal involving multiple powerful men who got away with abusing their power for years. You are the one who compared your situation as a man who on a single occasion felt “vulnerable and uneasy” for what even you recognize was no real reason to that of the actual victims of sexual assault. Then you specifically invited women to share their thoughts on this. What were you expecting?
In a movie theatre, unless its crowded and there isn’t room, its polite to keep a seat between you and a stranger.
I have to agree with JSGoddess…welcome to the club - where I sit down on an airplane wondering if this will be one of the one in four times if I’m sitting next to a strange guy that he finds some way to inappropriately grope me (its usually arm against breast and thigh against thigh - sometimes its hand on thigh - often while he pretends to sleep - or make an overtly sexual comment. Do I let it ruin my life? Nope. I put headphones in, the biggest jacket or blanket I can over my body and ignore it.
Hey guys, be alert. Just like women are told to be alert. Don’t sit next to a child in a movie theatre - put a seat between you if possible. Women have been making sure there is a seat between them and a strange man for years. Afraid that working late alone with a coworker might get you accused of sexual harassment - I haven’t worked late with a coworker for years because one raped me.
And I doubt one unfounded accusation is likely to ruin anyone’s reputation. You might even find yourself elected to the U.S. Senate. I’ve lived my life in a world where people have gotten away with everyone knowing that they mistreat women, and somehow, they still get invited to parties and keep their jobs for years. If you live in a world where those accusations are taken seriously enough to ruin someone’s life the first time out - I’ll trade you lives.
YOu do have a right to not suffer serious consequences for unproven allegations. And of course there is still the option to sue false accusers and your employer.
Yes, you can sue, but you do not have any constitutional right to be free of unfounded accusations. Suing for libel or slander in the U.S. is a very difficult proposition though - you are not at all likely to win. Nor do you have the right not to suffer serious consequences for unproven accusations. Many, many people have suffered serious consequences for unproven accusations.
You don’t have a constitutional right to be protected from imagining serious consequences for imaginary unproven allegations, which is what this thread is about.