Comments

1

Given how quick one side of the political spectrum is willing to not just listen and take seriously the claims of alleged sexual victims but to push that any allegation needs to be taken as true what can one expect to happen with a list like this?

But as one person has said, even if a man is falsely accused of rape they will grow as a result of the experience.

2

" man is falsely accused of rape they will grow as a result of the experience."

Yes, just ask black men in the south under jim Crow what a great experience that was.

4

False charges of rape are vanishingly small. But by conflating anonymous-specious social media rages with legitimate rape charges (such as those levied at bart the ralpher), the right has successfully confused the two into a useful media cudgel.

5

@4: “False charges of rape are vanishingly small.”

Wrong. The number given in the headline post is 2% to 10%. Those are pretty large numbers for reporting of a felony to the police. Make it easier and it will become even more common.

7

"The number given in the headline post is 2% to 10%."

And that's to the police.

An anonymous list?

Better pay for dinner guys.

8

So we now have the bocche dei leoni, now all we need is a Council Of Ten,

“These were the terrible Lions’ Mouths. 
 these were the throats down which went the anonymous accusation thrust in secretly in the dead of night by an enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to walk the Bridge of Sighs and descend into the dungeon which none entered and hoped to see the sun again.” -Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain

10

"“We want to give victims a sense of justice...""

There are going to be a lot of feminist males on the left that are going to get swept up into this as well.

This will likely not end well at all. Circumventing the legal process, and posting a man's name online attached to an anonymous accusation will be disastrous to the man's life in the digital age. And what will we gain from this? Little, compared to what we are giving up.

Careful out there fellas. You better make sure you're hooking up with stable women because false accusations do happen, and a system like this means you have zero recourse in the event you are falsely accused.

Young people have no idea just how valuable our legal system is--as flawed as it is. Don't know what you got until it's gone. Counting my lucky stars I'm in a 20+ year relationship, and dating isn't on the menu.

11

@9 Nice move choosing the low end of the potential false accusations.

On the high end it may be at least 5 out of those 50. That's a lot.

Considering this anonymous posting situation circumvents the legal system both criminally, and civilly it would be in our best interest to assume the 10% number than the lower number. Men deserve at least that, considering the degree of exposure they're going to be subjected to.

12

Send them to the gulags!!!!!

It’s like a combination of 1984 and 1930’s Russia.....

Prediction: a couple of lawsuits will hopefully make this whole bullshit go away.

Or how about another list....maybe one where random female students get their names published for all to see on the Slut List or the Goldigger List, or the cheater List....evidence? Proof? Hahahahah, we don’t need that shit anymore....,it’s all about fucking with people.

And the kicker is this: the blowback from all the metoo bullshit is that the real rapists will get away with their crimes, because pretty soon ain’t nobody gonna believe any accusation.

Aren’t you left it’s getting tired of making shitty beds for yourselves and then having to sleep in them. This will yet another example

13

@10

A lot of feminist men on the left are still a little too prone to reflexively injecting and recentering themselves in conversations about sexual violence.

A bit of anxiety is understandable, but these feminist men on the left really need to learn how to cope with it in ways that don't involve shouting over the voices of women whose fears and suffering are a consequence not only of our current, non-hypothetical failures of justice, but also of the very real physical violence that men continue to inflict upon women.

14

@11: In addition to taking the low end of a wide range as his sole value, he then further flubs the statistical analysis, treating related accusations as if they were independent events. (If he says he has no idea that the assumption of independence was embedded in his math, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.)

15

@13 Complete nonsense uttered in your post. Men talking over women. Get over yourself.

Yes, the justice system does fail. But we're going to throw it out in favor of anonymously posting accusations with the names of the men--or women. Make no mistake about it, there will be women accused as well, and even some of them falsely accused. This isn't a one-way street.

There's not enough emotive knee jerking in the world that will veer us away from the hard fact that if the alternative is some anonymous posting on a website run by anonymous people there is going to be a backlash against #metoo that is going to harm legit women/men.

16

@15

Now look, you've gone and pulverized those poor pearls.

Seriously, there are much more constructive ways to cope with Feminist Man On The Left Anxiety... but you're going to have to stop yelling and start listening if you want to learn any of them.

You should probably wait for the present anxiety attack to subside, though. There's a right time and a wrong time for all this, after all.

17

@16 Personally, I think feminist men on the left get what's coming to them. Not concerned about them at all.

I do know one thing, there isn't nothing sweeter than being outside the dating pool, and watching this happen from the sidelines.

I'm older now, these things aren't my problem, thank goodness. I get to leave it to other people to worry about. Hell, if people want to get rid of an innocent until proven guilty/presumption of innocence model then run with it. It's worked out great in India and other countries where mere social media accusations get you beaten or worse.

18

Some of Elliott's accusers have responded to the article - unless they're absolutely fabricating, it's hard to accept both the accounts of the accusers and that of Elliott in his article. Someone is outright lying (not even Kavanaugh style, there were multiple avenues for both people to be giving accurate-ish accounts)

Have y'all seen that Michael B Jordan and him and his friends get Godlike powers? And they have fun with them, use them to get rich or popular and stuff, until one day one of them gets annoyed at some other drivers and flicks them off the road, killing them.

That's what I see from these Nth-Wave feminists: They've been collecting a lot of power over the lifetime of young millennials. Now they're exercising it - without full understanding that the power is in fact real and that the impacts have a true human cost (the modern discourse is, however, the the oppressed are powerless and that the privileged aren't real humans deserving of empathy or human rights).

The shame isn't so much that a few hundred (nothing, in the grand scheme of things) boys lost their college opportunities to spurious fake accusations; but that WE ALL SAW THIS COMING and functionally did nothing to stop it other than penning some comments to a SLOG post [especially shame to those who both saw this coming but want more of it]

19

@9 this is a perfect encapsulation of your level of intelligence.

20

@10 do you think anyone who submitted to the Shitty Media Men List felt a meaningful sense of justice?

One of the ideas i've been kicking around is that the reason these things happen is because we don't have faith in the justice system - from both sides. Victims don't feel any justice in reporting (and convicting) their attackers, and society doesn't feel like ex-cons provide any value. Of course, our prison system isn't designed to produce Good Americans, it's designed to house people and get rid of them. Generic Criminal Justice reform - with an emphasis on Restorative Justice and prisoner rehabilitation - might go a long way, socially speaking.

21

@17

What a quick turnaround!

I didn't really have benzos in mind when I mentioned coping mechanisms, but eh, whatever works I suppose.

22

@19: His math doesn’t even add up (3 instances each of a 2% chance of being wrong combine to 1/125,000 chance of being wrong?!?) and yet the accused must still be guilty.

Then again, a finding of guilt “Based on the accusations alone...” was where he knew he wanted to end, and so he then worked the numbers, quite incompetently, until he declared himself to be there.

This is what those darned UW kids are calling “justice” these days, eh?

23

This is quickly turning into McCarthyism for the left, without the dignity of public hearings

24

23

Exactly......and I think many on the left know that, but just don’t care.

I guarantee you this, the blowback is gonna be brutal.

25

Will the list include accused rapist Bill Clinton and his chief defender, Hillary Clinton?

Personally I'm going to keep reading and adding to the "Best Blowjob on Campus" list in the mens' room stall in the Union.

26

I really don't get the constant state of concern about men's (and let's be clear the lives people are so concerned about are white) lives being ruined.

Please name actual men whose lives have been ruined by accusations of rape. I'd like a list of names of men who literally had their lives destroyed by fake allegations of rape. I'd like a list of names men who literally had their lives destroyed when they are actual rapists!!!

Look at the world. Look at the people who have gotten away with rape and then look at the lives of victims. I mean the Catholic Church, the largest pedophile and rape organization in the entire world has never faced any repercussions. They have paid off their victims, moved the pedophiles around like they're playing tetris, and the organization STILL EXISTS and countless numbers of people continue to identify as Catholic, support the Catholic church and even send their children to Catholic schools and churches. None of the lives of those priests have been ruined, just inconvenienced by having to move somewhere else. Meanwhile their victims are in the what, hundreds of thousands? Millions?

45 is a rapist (he raped his wife, it's documented in the divorce proceedings and he has been accused of raping others, including a 13 year old girl whom he threatened with death, so she withdrew her complaint against him). He's a self-professed pussy grabber, says women need to be treated like shit, calls women pigs and dogs, and is LITERALLY one of the most vile misogynists on the face of the earth and he's in the WH. And he and his GOP minions (who have made all kinds of horrifying statements about women and sexual violence survivors) put a rapist on the SCOTUS. Even Bill Clinton has not suffered any true consequences for being a sexual predator and a rapist. The number of rapes reported is a small fraction of the number of rapes believed to occur. The number of rapes resulting in conviction of the number of rapes reported is an even smaller fraction. And finally the number of rapes resulting in prison sentences as a result of rape convictions is even smaller than that - and we're talking typically the most heinous and vicious of rapes (infants, elderly, disabled, serial rapes, etc.).

If a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the concern about men's lives being ruined were applied to the victims (both women and men, children and adults) being ruined, that wouldn't even begin to come close to all of the concern and hand wringing about the accused lives'.

I am sick of hearing about what a dangerous time it is for men and how their lives are ruined by false accusations of rape. It's total fucking bullshit and it is a narrative that needs to be challenged and shot down EVERY TIME. Statistics and facts do not support it. Women and men and girls and boys have their lives truly destroyed every single day by sexual violence. Statistics and facts support that statement. How about a fucking reality check every damn time this line of bullshit about men's lives being ruined by false accusations is spewed?

You know which male lives are in danger? Black male lives. Their lives are in serious peril and they are being murdered on a nearly daily basis in this country and they are being imprisoned at mind numbing rates for decades for the most minor of infractions - while white men go free and enjoy power and success all the while committing crimes of such magnitude it is literally incomprehensible (genocide of Puerto Ricans, kidnapping and child trafficking at the U.S./Mexian border, the poisoning of large populations in American cities like Flint, MI and place in North Carolina, the utter and total abandonment of large populations of Americans hit by natural disasters - from Lousiana and other areas hit by Katrina to black communities in Florida and Texas, etc.)

Enough!!! Enough of white male victimhood. It is sickening how white males have made themselves the victims in a world where they hold nearly all of the power, have nearly all of the money, and are literally responsible for harming the most people in this country.

And to all the trolls who will respond to this comment, I'm not interested in your justifications or your insults or personal attacks. Not going to read them and there will be no response.

100% fucking over it!!!!

27

“recentering, anxiety, shouting over the voices of women”

@13 I’m curious, is this how faux-woke males have to speak to get laid these days? I mean in my day, early 90s, we just had to drink some chamomile tea and pretend to listen to a woman to get a good blowjob. Now it sounds like you need a lawyer.

29

@27

Oh yeah, and we've also still got unreconstructed frat boys running around out there measuring other men by the number of women they've fucked, or at least claimed to.

I tend to forget about those meatheads, they're nearly extinct Seattle. But you're right, some parts of the country still have to deal with them.

30

@28: And xina is taking her ball and going home!!

“And to all the trolls who will respond to this comment, I'm not interested in your justifications or your insults or personal attacks. Not going to read them and there will be no response.”

That’ll show anyone who dares to give the name of a guy ruined by false charges of rape! Ha!

This is the new reality. I’m with @17 on being glad I’m not single.

30

" unreconstructed frat boys"

I was a grunge/punk in college, but the "sensitive" kind. Never stepped foot in a frat house. Got me shit tons of pussy, so legit question, is your faux-wokiness, "centering women' voices" etc etc what opens up the golden clam these days?

31

@30

Why are you so disturbingly desperate for an answer? Is the Rock and Rohypnol approach not working for you anymore?

When another man makes you upset, do you always find yourself thinking about his penis, or does it only happen when you're upset with a woman as well?

32

"Why are you so disturbingly desperate for an answer?"

I already knew the answer mate, you're chasing your own tail.

Enjoy the chamomile tea.

33

@32

That's it? You're sure?

You are now completely satisfied with the amount of information you have obtained about another man's penis?

34

" you have obtained about another man's penis?"

What information mate? I've only assumed yours is stimulated by green dyed hair, a BMI of at least 35 and the firm decentering your cock by some finely delivered intersectional feminism and post-colonial studies from a non-binary snowflake.

35

@26
"Please name actual men whose lives have been ruined by accusations of rape."
Way too easy... (Google a little sometime).

Reade Seligmann
Collin Finnerty
Dave Evans
Owen Labrie
Malik St. Hilaire
John Kivlin
VanDyke Perry
Gregory Counts
Malcolm Alexander
Alex Goldman
Brian Banks
Vicente Benavides
Nevest Coleman
Derrell Fulton
Darryl K. Pinkins
Roosevelt Glenn
Timothy Scott Bridges
Saifullah Khan
Lawrence McKinney
Martin C. Perez
Ronald Cotton
Roy L. Watford III
Mark Denny
Wilbert Jones
Thomas Haynesworth
William Barnhouse
Joe Jones
Michael Phillips
Marvin Lamont Anderson
James Curtis Giles

And that's just 10 minutes of searching.

In the last 20 odd years literally hundreds of rape convictions have been overturned using DNA testing... Many after long prison terms. Literally ALL of these men were falsely accused. ALL of their lives were literally destroyed.

36

@26 "You know which male lives are in danger? Black male lives. Their lives are in serious peril and they are being murdered on a nearly daily basis"

It's sad Black men are slaughtering each other by the thousands every year in America, that's for sure.

More White people are murdered by Black people each year, twice as many as Blacks murdered by Whites. What does that have to do with anything. Well, that means a Black person is much more likely to murder a White person than a White person murder a Black person. Look at the stats, it's all there.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 93% of Blacks are murdered by other Blacks. Whites on the other hand it's around 83%.

37

@34

Oh my goodness, it sounds like you have indeed satisfied yourself, and quite fully, with the information you have obtained about another man's penis... and regardless of how you obtained it, too.

Well, good for you! Some men like to build birdhouses out of reclaimed plywood, some men like to collect penis-information about other men. It's fine! We all need something to do in the evenings after the factory-whistle blows, right?

38

@22 (1/50)^3 = 1/125000, assuming the accusations are independent

39

@38: Yes, that was my point. If the same person is accused of rape by three separate persons — or by the same person three times — then the assumption of independence would be kind of foolish, eh?

40

@35 Yeah you need to reread my question. I said I'd like a list of names of men who literally had their lives destroyed by fake allegations of rape.

Spending time in jail when falsely accused definitely counts as a life being ruined. I will give you that. What are the numbers? Since the FBI puts false rape allegations at 8% of all reported rapes (and only a fraction of those are prosecuted and another fraction of that result in conviction and imprisonment).

Everyone else on your list, how were their lives destroyed, exactly? You have a long list of people falsely accused, but you do not in any way discuss how their lives were destroyed. Were they killed (by their own hand or someone else)? Are they destitute? Unable to work or function in society? Registered sex offenders? Drug addicts? Have they been shunned by society? Castrated? Unable to have a successful relationship or children or anything else they want? Were the deported? Are they homeless? Have they been forced to live the rest of their lives in their parents' basements?

How many people are actually falsely accused of rape vs. how many people are actually raped (out of rapes reported)?

Given the statistics on how many women (and men) are victims of rape in their lifetime, there are reams of information about the emotional, physical, financial, and additional repercussions of being raped (or sexually abused). Victims suffer not only in being assaulted, but it affects their entire lives - some more than others - in any number of extraordinarily significant ways.

https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28153649

I stand by my original statement and questions and comment as a whole. Lots of hand wringing about white boys and men having their lives destroyed when reality does not reflect that.

41

Also @35 https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-rape-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/

43

@40
You just asked for names. Feel free to google them yourself if you want to evaluate the damage done to their lives.

45

@40 please think about the implications of your words a little harder. By your standard, there's no reason rape should be a crime. It's a penis and a vagina just like jail is a home. What do you think should count as material harm? Physical trauma? most people accept that. Emotional/Psychological trauma? You argue above that it essentially doesn't exist. You have no problem thinking that (for eg) Blasey Ford's life was ruined (so ruined that, after the events that happened after the assault at age 15, she was merely able to earn a doctorate and two masters degree and have two children over the course of a 16-year marriage)... so when you hear Blasey Ford's testimony, you are thinking that nothing bad happened and there's nothing to correct or punish.

These are your arguments, Xina.

You're a bleeding heart liberal who doesn't believe emotional pain is real and doesn't care about the suffering of others. Get that horseshoe tattooed on your damn forehead.

46

@40: You also said you were not going to respond, so why should anyone fulfill your impertinent demands to the letter? You are, after all, free to relieve your own groaning ignorance on this matter — a matter of which you have now repeatedly crowed your own great expertise — by doing some research yourself on this topic.

It should be pretty easy, as @35 demonstrated. After all, if there’s one thing which should be obvious, it’s that false accusations of rape are not rare.

47

Good Evening Katie,
I thought in light of this hotly contested discussion, I would recommend a fine book that I'm finishing up. It's titled "'If This is Feminism, It's Feminism Hijacked by Melodrama': Unwanted Advances" by Laura Kipnis. Ms. Kipnis is a professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

It's largely about the negative and excessive consequences of Title IX enforcement on American university campuses and some specific cases involving tenured professors and sexual misconduct accusations. She also recounts her story. Wow, is it enlightening. Check it out.

48

@46: Exhibit A: Jule Swetnick.

Not rare indeed.

49

@35 I did ask for a list of lives that have been destroyed. I did Google your list of names and as far as I could tell none of these men's lives have been destroyed (with the exception that I noted of of those that have served jail times). All of the Duke Lacrosse dudes are living well, have successful careers, relationships, etc. I could not find one man on your list of names that has been destroyed. Did I miss something?

The sheer volume of victims' lives that are literally destroyed by rape (and if you hate women and don't believe them look to all of the men that were molested and or raped by priests in the Catholic Church and listen to them tell how their lives were destroyed - how many committed suicide, how many have addiction problems, how many have relationship problems, how many have employment problems, how many are homeless or suffer from serious mental illness, etc.)

Even if you chose to only compare male victims of rape, sexual assault, and molestation and the damage done to their lives vs. the what, less than 2% of falsely accused of rape men who end up in jail the differences are vast. Does it make it easier to believe and for you to care if the victims are male?

Compared to men who have not been sexually assaulted, men who were sexually assaulted before age 18 have a greater risk of having mental health problems, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression; alcoholism and drug abuse; suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts; problems in intimate relationships; and underachievement at school and at work.

The suicide rate for sexually abused males is 14 to 15 times higher than for other males.There is also a study that shows that rape victims are 4.1 times more likely to contemplate suicide and 13 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-crime victims.

As 1 in 20 women have reported being raped in their lifetime vs. 1 in 71 males reporting they have been raped in their lifetime, it does not take a Ph.D in mathematics to ascertain that the lives of women that have been destroyed by being raped is significantly higher than the male statistic I provided.

Men are not being falsely accused of rape in large numbers. Men who are being accused of rape (falsely or not) do not experience the destruction of their lives. Men accused of rape (falsely or not) are not victims. They typically not only have immense support around them during the time of accusation, but also continue to go forward and live their lives successfully and unscathed.

Dr. Ford is receiving death threats and cannot live in her own home (and many people, myself included, believe her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh). Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh's now sitting on the Supreme Court, surrounded by male senators who have said revolting and vile things about sexual abuse and rape survivors loudly and publicly and the rapist and pussy grabber in the WH apologized to BK "on behalf of the country" at BK's swearing in ceremony. Boy do I feel bad for how Brett Kavanaugh being a raging alcoholic and sexual predator in HS and college ruined that guy's life. (Remember he already held a prestigious judicial position before his nomination to SCOTUS - one he used to stock his staff with female clerks who looked like models).

The narrative that it is a dangerous time for white men because of women falsely accusing them of rape is wholly false. White men are not victims. The continued insistence that they are victims and the vitriol spewed here in response to even the suggestion that is not the case, proves the point.

Rapists need to be outed and shamed and in a society where men in power are saying and doing what they are saying and doing to women on the national and international stage, women are going to fight back and they are going to fight back in ways like this (the UW students) because coming forward and telling their stories, pressing charges, and trying to hold rapists accountable is not working. Women are not believed and they are victimized again as punishment. The Brett Kavanaugh shit show proved that. Men do not care about women and they will do whatever they want and destroy any woman's life as they please. And if they are called out on it they will react with vehement vitriol and threats of retaliation. BK ranted and raved about the retribution he plans to serve up.

50

@35 I also noted that every man falsely accused of rape that served jail time in the list you provided was a black man and that most of the men on the list falsely accused rape were black boys or men. So again, white men claiming victimhood when they are not victims. A tired trope. A blatant lie. A perpetuation of WS and misogyny.

Oh and here's an exact number for you - much smaller than the numbers I had even projected above. Fewer than 1 percent of all rape cases end with a felony conviction. And even then, some don’t go to jail. Only 0.6 percent end up behind bars, according to an analysis of federal crime statistics done by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

51

https://www.thecut.com/article/false-rape-accusations.html

52

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/05/trevor-noah-calls-out-trump-for-trying-to-convince-men-they-are-the-true-victims-of-the-metoo-movement/?utm_term=.9436dabcd1c4

53

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-worlds-worst-support-group/536850/

54

https://medium.com/@nilegirl/dear-white-men-stop-using-your-privilege-to-claim-victimhood-ce4ac3b142cd

55

https://www.care-international.org/files/files/Counting_the_costofViolence.pdf

56

https://qz.com/work/1334192/the-story-of-a-campus-rape-shows-how-womens-careers-can-get-hurt-before-they-start/

57

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/04/03/sexual-assault-awareness-month/99834118/

58

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/rapes-long-shadow-dealing-with-the-personal-costs-of-sexual-assault/article25859454/

59

https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/19/us/rape-financial-costs/index.html

60

There are literally over 175 million results when you google "the true cost of rape of women in the world" and yet when you google "how men suffer when falsely accused of rape" of the over 46 million results many of them are about how rare false allegations are, how males are more likely to be victims of sexual assault than falsely accused of sexual assault, and lots of other topics covered but not the actual one googled. Yeah.

The shit show state of this country, 45, Kavanaugh's nomination and the day in and day out vicious misogyny (and the unapologetic white supremacist ideology) in this country has me wondering what it is going to take to break this country wide open. Will there ever be a tipping point? Will humanity ever change and evolve and be better? Or is this it? Because if this is it, this shit show, this troll roll, this harm everyone and kill kill kill mentality of mind, body, and spirit of humanity as a whole, we really need to pack it in and be done.

Perhaps nature will simply wipe us out, sooner rather than later.

61

It's a good thing Katie wasn't on the stranger staff when Matt Hickey was raping women. She'd likely interview him about how awful his life had become with all these mean rumors about him and buried the story as quick as she could.

What happened to that woman of integrity that broke that story, hey?

62

The best part about people like xina (other than the hilarious display here: "give me the names, but I won't listen!" "THOSE NAMES DON'T COUNT!" is how brave they are to risk the lives of others to get what they want. So brave. So heroic.

@9: Thanks for mathematical proof that you are a fucking idiot, not that it was really necessary.

63

The statistical numbers of men who have been falsely accused are artificially low because historically the media does not report about men as men. By that I mean that men are never asked how they feel as men on any issue. And, just as many women are afraid to come forward after having been assaulted so are many men, probably more so. You might try googling Gary Dotson.

64

Someone once famously asked "Who's doing all the raping?"
It's an interesting question, because it matter's doesn't it? Who's doing it and who it's being done to determines whether an accusation of rape is taken seriously and investigated. Most aren't, and reporting to the police is still a crap shoot, whether they even investigate or bother to make a report at all. In the Duke and Virginia cases the stories of the accusers fell apart under an actual investigation. If anyone thinks Dr. Ford or the other accusers got a real investigation, I don't what what to say. Websites to anonymously accuse people are bullshit and counter productive, but rape and sexual assault are so depressingly common. And victims dismissed either way - if you are successful and keeping it together then it couldn't be that bad, if you are mess of addiction and troubles then you have no credibility. This is not a "witch hunt" or McCarthyism, it's a desperate attempt for accountability for something that is gotten away with more often than not

65

I don't truat this statistic which claims that false accusations are small. Sure, maybe when it comes to reporting rape to the police...maybe. But people act as if this applies to any and all allegations sans police reports. It's fishy when someone accuses another of a crime, but isn't willing to go to the police.

66

@65: This post didn’t reference the original study, which is no longer available at the original link. If I recall correctly, the 2% - 10% figure came from reports to university police. One can assume a list maintained to no known standard by anonymous college students will have a far higher rate of false reports.

Despite what xina seems to believe, no one here believes the solution to false reports of rape is to ignore all reports of rape. Rather, we address both rape and false reports by ensuring a full investigation of every report of rape to the police. That includes processing all of the rape kits, keeping all of the databases current, and providing support for all persons who report rape.

67

My old coworker and friend is on there for "verbally harassing a female student and getting her fired". Didn't realize he was a rapist

68

@66

Curiously, none of the Very Concerned Men arguing in here seem to be suggesting that the solution to false reports of rape should be the court system, either. We do still have slander and libel laws on the books, don't we? And all sorts of avenues in the civil courts?

Where's the "we shouldn't believe a man who denies accusations of sexual assault until he takes it to court" that you'd expect to be paired with "we shouldn't believe the victim of sexual assault until she goes to the police?"

Seems kinda weirdly lopsided, doesn't it?

70

@49 Xina - if the Duke lacrosse players living well is proof nothing bad happened to them (not that you have any knowledge of their lives at this point, you completely made it up, but whatever), then nothing bad happened to Blasey-Ford either, because she's living well.

Oh, she had to move out of her home due to death threats counts as having her life destroyed, but somehow going to prison doesn't count? Personally, i'd rather get death threats via mail/email/twitter than have death threats made to my face by a guy I'm locked in a 12x12 with, but that's me.

@68 "we shouldn't believe a man who denies accusations of sexual assault until he takes it to court". Are you seriously advocating for an state in which the only people who are allowed to defend themselves are those with the money to pay for a civil tort, and simultaneously Xina essentially argues that anyone with that much money can't be hurt/damaged/destroyed anyhow? Very Kafkaesque.

71

26

“Genocide of Puerto Rican’s”????

Da fuq?

72

Xina rage posts: “I’m not going to respond!1111”

.....responds 14 more times..

Lmfao....get back on your meds freak.

73

@71 You actually read that whole entire rant? LOL

Everything is genocide these days. There'a lot of groups vying for that word. Feel for Jewish folks who actually experienced literal genocide.

74

@68: “Seems kinda weirdly lopsided, doesn't it?”

Not if you’re familiar with concepts such as the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof being entirely upon the accuser, and the accused not needing to prove anything. But those are all basic concepts of justice in America, which completely explains your utter ignorance of them, eh?

@70: “Are you seriously advocating for an state in which the only people who are allowed to defend themselves are those with the money to pay for a civil tort,”

He won’t believe that Ed Murray could be innocent until and unless Murray sues Delvonn Heckard in court and wins. :-P

75

Evidence of rape is very hard to come by when you know your rapist, as it is the case most of the time. Pics or it didn't happen, right? Even DNA is just evidence that sex happened. An investigation can turn up motive for lying about it, possibly, or incriminating texts and emails. Too often it never gets that far. The accuser is dismissed WAY more often than taken seriously, and often punished for speaking out, even ostracized by the whole community. If you don't have video or eye witness then don't bother reporting, even if you do good luck if your rapist has a "promising future". And 30 years later every one will say "oh my god how did it go on so long why didn't anyone say anything???"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/opinions/arlington-texas/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f84d3b405f83

I understand the problems of convicting people on accusations alone, but the problem with "No evidence, keep your mouth shut" is that it effectively silences the vast majority of rape victims. I get the feeling a lot of people on here don't think rape is a serious crime at all, unless you are attacked in your home by a stranger it doesn't count. That is a tiny minority of rapes. Who's doing all the raping?

76

@75 Rape is a serious crime. And with a serious crime comes the responsibility of proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.

77

@69: Here’s what I actually wrote about Meinert:

“...the rape accusations against Meinert may well be true.”

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/07/20/29455773/when-friends-do-terrible-things/comments/124

So, my statement has been proven wrong? How? Did someone “prove” to your satisfaction that it is “1000%” certain that the rape accusations against Meinert cannot be true? Because that would be news to Clement, and to all of Meinert’s other named accusers.

78

@76 There in lies the difficulty because that effectively prevents the vast majority of rates from being reported

Say you were raped at a party, you’ve been drinking but you remember what happened and remember who did it. You reported to the police but there is insufficient evidence. Should you even report it If you’re not sure you can prove it?

Your kid comes home from school and says he was grouped by the gym teacher after class.

The person you were dating and have had consensual sex with in the past rapes you in anger after a fight

None of these scenarios are likely to produce the kind of evidence you are talking about, but they happen all the damn time. And they go unreported, or are dismissed when they are

Not all men are rapists, but if you want to avoid getting raped the best way is to not socialize with men. And if you don’t want to be falsely accused of rape then don’t socialize with women. There really isn’t an easy answer to this

79

@78 "There in lies the difficulty because that effectively prevents the vast majority of rates from being reported"

Wrong. What prevents rape from being reported is the possible victim doesn't report.

So what do you propose, just believe every accuser, and assume the guilt of the accused?

There is a simple answer: Report your attack. Gather information, and evidence. Report your attack. Report your attack. Report your attack, not to some anonymous sjw website, report your attack to the P-O-L-I-C-E. Not the band, the actual police.

If it doesn't work out then live the rest of your life terrified of males.

Here's the thing, being someone myself who has experienced the reality of sexual abuse, you report it, and if there is no legal resolution whether it be criminal or civil, people have to move on with their life by getting therapy, and working towards goals that have to do with living a fulfilling life. Period.

Sure, we can change the Constitution, get rid of the presumption of innocence, if you want to take a run at it. Personally, I would rather my attacker run free than put an innocent person behind bars. Call it pro-rapist, or just call it plain common sense that I would cling to such a notion as presumption of innocence, either way, I am not in favor of ceding any ground when it comes to an accuser having to prove it.

80

The 124,999/125,000 fraction cited earlier was the chance that, taking a 2% rate of inaccuracy, anyone with three accusations would be guilty of at least one. Fifty cubed is 125,000. If one bought 2% of all the tickets for three raffles, one's chance of winning all three would be one in 125,000.

This is easier to present with a 10% chance; of the eight possible different outcomes:

GGG .729 (.9 cubed x 1)
GGI/GIG/IGG .243 (.9 squared x .1 x 3)
GII/IGI/IIG .027 (.9 x .1 squared x 3)
III .001 (.1 cubed x 1)

I wish there were more distinction in the vocabulary between "false" accusations that are deliberate lies, cannot be proved either way, and are sincere inaccuracies.

81

@70

Of course not, that's why I first mentioned criminal statute on libel and slander.

@74

But presumption of innocence is precisely what you and the rest of the Very Concerned Men are adamantly refusing to grant to a woman making public accusations of sexual assault, isn't it?

I am suggesting that according to the very same Highly Principled Legal Ethics you have been invoking here, it seems you should be obliged to assume that a woman making a public accusation of sexual assault is innocent of any slander or libel.

Now to some, this might sound very confusing-- it means the legal system might have to presume that BOTH the alleged rapist and the alleged slanderer are innocent until the courts deliver their decisions! But this is of course no contradiction at all, if you simply stop and consider what the word "presume" means. It is not a synonym for "decide."

But any confusion aside, the high ethical standard you're invoking simply is not being uniformly applied in our shabby little debate here. Instead, for some reason, the Very Concerned Men of SLOG only want men to be presumed innocent, and would quite strongly prefer that women be presumed guilty.

83

@78
“Not all men are rapists, but if you want to avoid getting raped the best way is to not socialize with men. And if you don’t want to be falsely accused of rape then don’t socialize with women.”

That was pretty much the social standard until a generation or two ago... My sainted mother would never have dreamed of being alone in the company of men without a chaperone, It would have destroyed her reputation. Likewise my father never would have put a woman in that situation. It simply wasn’t done. I know it seems quaint now, but it worked well for a very long time...

The worst of human nature never got the memo when the feminists re-wrote the rule book.

84

@81 Reporting to the police isn't slander. Making it a public spectacle is. Those are two separate legal issues. Nice try though. Conflating the two doesn't make it so.

86

@84

But making a public accusation is precisely what we are talking about here. Why won't you grant the presumption of innocence to the person making that public accusation? Why do you instead insist on presuming she is guilty of slander?

@85

I am indeed, but you're not making an argument there.

87

@80: The question wasn’t the product of three 2% chances. The questions were (a) the justification for thrice choosing the number at the far extremity of an eight-point range, and (b) the justification for treating three events which are quite clearly related as if they were statistically independent. @9 hasn’t provided a justification for either; unless he does, his math doesn’t matter.

Since you raised this matter again, though, I’ll ask you:

How many significant digits are in the values 2%, 10%, and 124,999?

If the derived value of 124,999 does turn out to have more significant digits than the values upon which it is supposedly based, what is the justification for this?

Please show your work.

88

@68, @81, @84: It’s entirely possible for a person to be a victim of assault, and yet not know, or be wrong, about the identity of the assailant. The victim should therefore report the assault to the police, along with a belief (if any) in the identity of the assailant. The police should then begin this thing called “an investigation,” which will gather this thing called “evidence,” which, in turn, will help the police decide if the specific person accused (If one was indeed so indicated by the victim) merits further investigation on this matter. (The police have even been so cleverly industrious as to create an entire taxonomy of persons under investigation: “person of interest,” and “suspect” are two such gradations.)

By contrast, what we are talking about in this headline post and thread is a very public accusation, not made to the police, not to be investigated by the hosts of the public site, that a specific, named person committed a specific, horrendous crime.

I hope you can now begin to see the difference with which we are all very concerned here.

89

@88

You seem to be suggesting that I'm arguing that the police shouldn't investigate cases of sexual assault. That's not good-faith argument.

But shouldn't the police also investigate cases of libel and slander? Is there nothing that needs to be investigated and verified there?

You demand that we presume a man is innocent of rape when his alleged victim has not yet spent a night in a police station reporting the crime and being being questioned.

Yet you also insist that we presume a woman is guilty of slander when her alleged victim has not yet spent a night in a police station reporting the crime and being questioned.

I do see the difference, but I find that difference ethically bankrupt and morally repugnant.

90

@89: “You seem to be suggesting that I'm arguing...”

I haven’t suggested that you are arguing, because you have yet to demonstrate you know what words mean. For example:

“...that the police shouldn't investigate cases of sexual assault.”

You got that from where, exactly? From this?

‘The police should then begin this thing called “an investigation,”’

Here, let me alert you to certain key words and concepts.

My phrase, ‘[t]he police should then begin this thing called “an investigation,”’ did not in any way, shape, or form suggest “that the police shouldn't investigate...” This is because “an investigation” is the noun which results from acting out the verb, “to investigate.” Noun and verb are thus affirmatively (not, repeat not — negatively) affiliated. Therefore — and please do try to keep up, if you can — my phrase, ‘[t]he police should then begin this thing called “an investigation,”’ was meant to indicate the police should, in fact, investigate. (Please note also that “should” is, in fact, the diametrical opposite of “should not.”)

Do let us know how much, if anything, you understood about the differences so noted.

91

Mr(?) Tensor - I agree with you (at least loosely) about the application; some people just seemed to misunderstand the maths. A lottery example explains the numbers much better. I considered attempting to go into the human factors involved, but it was too great a quagmire.

92

It would be nice if every rape that was reported was taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. This rarely happens. Outside of high profile cases and instances of being raped by a stranger, someone who has absolutely no reason to be near you let alone inside you, most rape reports go exactly nowhere. How do we change that? In many cases there is no evidence beyond reasonable doubt that rape happened, but that does not mean that it did not happen. This is incredibly frustrating for rape victims and this is why we are here. People are telling their stories more, hopefully being more open about rape and sexual assault will encourage more reporting, and maybe this will pressure authorities to actually investigate. But honestly I just see a bunch of people telling victims of rape and sexual assault to shut the fuck up unless they can produce an open and shut case, which is rarely ever possible.

If the police actually do their job and investigate, a rape report will be public sooner or later. If insufficient evidence is found the person who is accused will always have that on record and the person who was raped will be framed as a liar.

Why are people pretending this is simple as reporting your car stereo stolen? There is serious denial here about pressure on rape victims to keep their mouth shut, to make it easier on the people around them, to make their own lives easier, to try and move past it except it never really leaves you. what I am hearing over and over is that if you do not have proof you should not come forward, but the majority of rapes results in little if any actual proof. I am not just concerned with date rape amongst adults here, although that is more on topic with the University website, which I do not agree with, but also with children who face making reports on people in positions of authority such as teachers preachers coaches and family members. Report to the police! But accusations without proof will ruin people! in reality, it ruins the accuser a lot more often. This is how they get away with it for decades.

I was being cheeky when I suggested that men and women shouldn’t socialize with each other to avoid rape and accusations of rape. I do not believe that most men are rapists. I do not believe that rape and sexual assault should be a normal part of growing up as a teenager, this is not the time to look back to the past when the shit was way less talked about but happened just as often

93

when I was in middle school, I learned that my elementary school gym teacher was accused by several students molesting them. There was no proof but their word, and they were kids. He did eventually get fired, but I’m pretty sure he never spent any time in jail. Apparently a lot of teachers stood by him and were convinced of his innocence. I always thought this guy was kind of an asshole and he did have a cadre of kids that hung around him and seemed to get special treatment. I don’t know if these were the kids that accused him. Did they thwart a Jerry Sandusky, or get an innocent man fired for some petty reason? only those kids and Mr. whatshisname know

94

@86 uh... is anyone assuming the creator of the shitty UW list is "guilty"? My opinion (tldr: it's simply a power and intimidation exercise, there is no plan to try to prosecute anyone or seek justice for anyone, just the catharsis of putting someone's name on a list and the masturbatory reveling around it. I think it speaks poorly to the author's character that they have no remorse for an action that's super likely to materially harm at least one innocent person - basically, it's GWB-level Collateral Damage take)

What are the consequences? Are they being fired for their job? Suspended from university? The create of the OG Shitty Media Men list is getting a book deal. She's also being sued - but in that case, she'll have the presumption of innocence, and Elliott will have to prove his case.

That's how the system is supposed to work (you should read the feminist left's reaction to this, which is "how dare he try to defend himself!"). Assuming Elliott's innocence does not mean he does not need to prove his case against Donegon et al - he still has to PROVE whatever the elements of slander/libel are, show cause for damages, the whole thing.

You're asking people to give her (and other women) the Presumption of Truth. Presumption of Truth and Presumption of Innocence literally cannot co-exist; it's like an Immovable Object and Irresistible Force. You can't have both.

@92 why is it more complicated that reporting a car stereo theft? It's not nearly so complicated for simple assault victims, who face similar losses of bodily autonomy and agency. We watch criminal assaults for fun in this country and no one seems to bat an eye. Why, explicitly, do we have different ideas about sexual violation when it comes to the law enforcement process?

95

@94: ‘ ... is anyone assuming the creator of the shitty UW list is "guilty"?’

Indeed, if a male student was guilty of rape and knew it, a shrewd move would be for him to create a blizzard of unsupported rape allegations across the university community. He could then just shrug off any truthful accusation against him as being just another unsupported one.

@92-3: Rape often leaves damning evidence upon the person of the victim. This is why we need more victims going to the ER/police immediately, more money for processing rape kits, etc. We need to make reporting the norm, and ensure everyone knows it.

And, you seem to have fallen for robotslave’s tired false dichotomy: “Either believe the accusation, or you’re accusing the victim of libel!!1!” In fact, if a trial results in a “not guilty” verdict, it simply means we’ll never really know what happened. There is no need for us to decide. We need neither treat the victim as a liar nor the accused as guilty.

96

Wow, this story is already badly out of date.
Stephen Elliott Sues Moira Donegan, Creator of Shitty Media Men List

https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/stephen-elliott-sues-moira-donegan.html


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