[RD] Why Men Need to be Involved in the #MeToo Movement

[Ryika]

Yes, so? Does that bring back his job? Does that free him from the emotional suffering he had to go through?

I'm glad the courts are doing what they can to restore justice, but nothing the court does now can offset the trauma he has already gone through, thanks to people on social media and the media drawing conclusions based on no evidence at all.

 

[Yeekim]

"No-one should ever be forced to do anything sexual against his or her consent" seems like a simple rule. It's one I strongly believe in and one I've always followed.
However, I'm lately becoming unsure whether this rule is enough to keep one out of trouble, because I'm seeing stories where the bare fact of asking consent is considered to be an act of sexual assault/harassment - and I'm not talking of repeated stalking or unequal employer/employee relationships either.

Mmm no, she expected him to read her very clear resistance. She did say no, repeatedly, and he continually escalated the situation under the guise of respecting her lack of consent.

I had heard nothing of the incident, so I looked it up. To me, it looks like your version is not supported by her account of the events,

Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”

“I just remember looking in the mirror and seeing him behind me. He was very much caught up in the moment and I obviously very much wasn’t,” Grace said. “After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this. And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”

They got dressed, sat side by side on the couch they’d already “chilled” on, and he turned on an episode of Seinfeld. She’d never seen it before. She said that’s when the reality of what was going on sank in. “It really hit me that I was violated. I felt really emotional all at once when we sat down there. That that whole experience was actually horrible.”

“It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” she told us. “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault. And that’s why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad.”

https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355

I believe women are subjects, not objects, and expect them to behave accordingly. Yes, ignoring clues is boorish and foolish. But that's when you stop giving clues and say "Stop it!", or just stand up and leave, to eliminate the possibility of any accidental or willful misunderstanding.
There is no difference between rape and sex, except for what is inside the heads of participants. If one doesn't like what's going on, one should say it, not "stop moving one's hand at some points" as a sign of displeasure.
Notice that she calls it "sexual assault", rather than "awkward experience". The former term is commonly used to describe crimes which carry a long jail sentence.
Maybe there should be some room between being a perfectly considerate lover and being a criminal?
If one of the parties "takes a really long time" to decide that they were assaulted ... isn't it kind of much to expect that the other should have realized they are out of the line in advance?

 

[warpus]

Yeah but why do you even engage that question?

It's CivFanatics, that's what we do here, we read things we disagree with and we respond to them.

 

[Synobun]

Yes, so? Does that bring back his job? Does that free him from the emotional suffering he had to go through?

I'm glad the courts are doing what they can to restore justice, but nothing the court does now can offset the trauma he has already gone through, thanks to people on social media and the media drawing conclusions based on no evidence at all.

Accuser: Gets publicly outed as a fraud, is possibly doing prison time.

Accused: Gets a 700k stimulus package for his business aspirations, becomes a successful author, and is publicly vindicated alongside an official reprimand against the tabloid that led the way on his defaming.

In your world, the accused is the loser in this equation. Does not compute. The court of public opinion is just that, opinion. The actual authorities set the record straight and the accused is sitting peachy while the one who tried to ruin his life is the one being ruined.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is important, because so far all the false accusations I've seen in the #MeToo movement have been utterly crushed. I've yet to see a false accusation do anything to a celebrity during this movement. The people who lost a step or lost 'everything' either admitted to it or disappeared in the face of overwhelming evidence.

It's not celebrity false accusations where people suffer the most, it's ones where a teacher or similar level of compensation gets accused, fired, acquitted, then can't even get interviews because their name is plastered on media to look up.

Or cases like the guy who got kicked out of USC over "domestic violence" (reported by a third party) despite his girlfriend consistently denying it and hiring an attorney to contest.

Calling out a celebrity is more risky. Not only do people have a normally non-existent extra incentive to doubt, but said celebrity is able and quite likely to throw a lot of $$$ into discrediting the account (unfortunately even if said account is legit).

I’ll just look forward to the gynocentric dystopia social media accusations OBVIOUSLY lead to where democracy is replaced by ********sm and men are castrated from birth, because the forward movement doesn’t really care either.

There are probably people that believe this will be the outcome, but I'm not one of them. There are a number of reasons it's not plausible, but I don't think anybody here needs to be convinced.

I am not overly concerned about accusations through social media. While I may find find false accusations through social media wrong and distasteful, they do not carry the weight of criminal punishment. The accused, if innocent, can seek damages through the civil courts which has a lower standard of burden on making a case. When it comes to social media, each of us can individually choose to believe, disbelieve, comment, scream, whatever and both the accuser and accused can expend themselves all they wish.

When your name comes up on basic searches implying nasty stuff, it's not so easy to get potential employers to take a second look.

Both side of the story? Pfffft! the first one who speaks up wins!

This is a pretty fun tactic in the Town of Salem game. It's not so fun when you realize you can legitimately apply the tactic with barely more subtlety in reality, and that people do this.

I would agree there is something lacking in US courts however. Too many anecdotal accounts of juries giving verdicts based on self-inconsistent reasoning and too much seeing that reasoning in action elsewhere for me to trust them completely. Abandoning evidence is just not the way to improve them.

 

[warpus]

Accuser: Gets publicly outed as a fraud, is possibly doing prison time.

Accused: Gets a 700k stimulus package for his business aspirations, becomes a successful author, and is publicly vindicated alongside an official reprimand against the tabloid that led the way on his defaming.

The problem is that this is the exception, not the rule.

 

[Synobun]

The problem is that this is the exception, not the rule.

It's the exception that false accusations don't pan out for the accuser?

How do you go outside? A woman might accuse you of something. You'd be helpless.

 

[Ryika]

Accuser: Gets publicly outed as a fraud, is possibly doing prison time.

Accused: Gets a 700k stimulus package for his business aspirations, becomes a successful author, and is publicly vindicated alongside an official reprimand against the tabloid that led the way on his defaming.

In your world, the accused is the loser in this equation. Does not compute.

Yes, the accused is the loser in this equation. He lost his job, he lost his reputation - although a lot of it has been restored by now, he has lost a lot of friends and acquaintances, and there are still feminist groups that call all of this an injustice against the accuser - he was slandered in public news papers, and the years he fought against those accusations, as well as the career he has had, he's never going to get back. Money awarded by the courts to equalize the injustice that they've caused (as a result of doing their job) does not change any of that.

That's of course the best possible outcome for Kachelmann, luckily for him, the accuser outed herself as a liar, which has allowed him to undo a lot of the damage that she had caused, but the empty accusations have still cost him a lot. Years of fighting. Years of being seen as a rapist by the public. How could he not be a loser of the situation?

The actual authorities set the record straight and the accused is sitting peachy while the one who tried to ruin his life is the one being ruined.

Yeah exactly. In most cases when it comes to metoo however, no authorities ever get involved, because the victims (and those who claim to be victims but are not) do not seek court justice, they seek to make accusations that are not provable either way with the evidence that is available to the public. All you have is that first part, where a person's reputation gets destroyed.

 

[warpus]

It's the exception that false accusations don't pan out for the accuser?

How do you go outside? A woman might accuse you of something. You'd be helpless.

I mean, we can have a conversation, or you can say crazy things and I can walk away.

 

[red_elk]

Accuser: Gets publicly outed as a fraud, is possibly doing prison time.

Accused: Gets a 700k stimulus package for his business aspirations, becomes a successful author, and is publicly vindicated alongside an official reprimand against the tabloid that led the way on his defaming.

In your world, the accused is the loser in this equation. Does not compute. The court of public opinion is just that, opinion. The actual authorities set the record straight and the accused is sitting peachy while the one who tried to ruin his life is the one being ruined.

Ryika is right, this is the example you wanted - false accusation which caused real harm to the accused.
The fact that he got compensation doesn't change anything. You asked for established cases of false accusation, which by definition implies that the accused managed to prove his innocence in the end.

 

[Synobun]

I mean, we can have a conversation, or you can say crazy things and I can walk away.

It's not crazy. You're trying to establish the precedent that the accused is helpless, that the accuser being the one facing the greater consequences is the exception. If you truly believe this, it must be difficult to navigate daily life given that this approach requires an inherent view that any female could ruin your life at any moment.

Ryika is right, this is the example you wanted - false accusation which caused real harm to the accused.
The fact that he got compensation doesn't change anything. You asked for established cases of false accusation, which by definition implies that the accused managed to prove his innocence in the end.

I guess you're correct. It is the example I wanted because it explicitly proves what I said right. I can work with that. Thanks.

 

[Ryika]

I guess you're correct. It is the example I wanted because it explicitly proves what I said right. I can work with that. Thanks.

Your claim was:

This is important, because so far all the false accusations I've seen in the #MeToo movement have been utterly crushed. I've yet to see a false accusation do anything to a celebrity during this movement. The people who lost a step or lost 'everything' either admitted to it or disappeared in the face of overwhelming evidence.

My example is of course still not from the metoo movement, so it doesn't entirely qualify as I said at the beginning, but to claim that it's not an example of a false accusation that "did anything to a celebrity" is just ridiculous. It's an example where a celebrity had his life ruined, his career, his reputation, his mental health, and you're trying to close your eyes to all of these things because he does now get some money, money that is not going to give him back the things that he's lost because of it.

It does not prove your claims right, and I think it's pretty pathetic that you'd try to weasel your way out of it, instead of acknowledging that this is exactly the example you claimed you were "yet to see", with again the only thing sort of disqualifying it from being a counter to your initial claim being that it's not actually from the metoo movement, but from a testimony that predates it.

 

[Synobun]

You think I'm pathetic?

Anyways, no, it does prove my qualifying statements right. The statement that you bolded, and that you're hinging your daring counterargument on, is irrelevant, given that your trumping example is not only not a celebrity but also not from the #MeToo movement at all.

 

[warpus]

It's not crazy. You're trying to establish the precedent that the accused is helpless

I'm not, you're just putting words in my mouth. I'm just pointing out that justice by twitter can ruin the lives of innocent people, and one example of somebody getting a fat paycheque out of it does not change that.

this approach requires an inherent view that any female could ruin your life at any moment.

This is what we call hyperbole, and what I call "crazy talk"

 

[red_elk]

I guess you're correct. It is the example I wanted because it explicitly proves what I said right. I can work with that. Thanks.

Erm.. you made a trivial statement that some false accusations were utterly crashed. Again, my point is that "utterly crashed" and "established as false" are equivalent terms.
People are arguing about unproven accusation ruining lives, which is not what your example was about.

 

[Ryika]

You think I'm pathetic?

No, I think your behavior in this situation is pretty pathetic, I would never make a general character judgement based on a conversation on some random forums.

Anyways, no, it does prove my qualifying statements right. The statement that you bolded, and that you're hinging your daring counterargument on, is irrelevant, given that your trumping example is not only not a celebrity but also not from the #MeToo movement at all.

No, I stated from the very beginning that it's not related to metoo, and just a general example of how these things go, which you accepted when you tried to dismantle it in post #100 as it stood there, with that limitation already having been acknowledge by me in the very post I mentioned it.

When it comes to metoo, you're still asking for an impossible standard, how would such an accusation be proven to be false by now? Any accusations that have been made during the movement are by definition too young to have gone through proper jurisdiction to prove them wrong, but there are ARE cases where we don't know either way at the moment.

The "The people who lost a step or lost 'everything' either admitted to it or disappeared in the face of overwhelming evidence." part is simply incorrect, and here's one of the newer examples that goes against your narrative:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...-writers-group-after-sexual-harassment-claims

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Neither accuser nor accused should be getting publicly judged without evidence. Once upon a time this concept wasn't some far-flung idea. More trivial things than unproven criminal claims are kept under wraps by law, there's no reason ongoing investigations can't be.

 

[Synobun]

No, I think your behavior in this situation is pretty pathetic[...]

I consider it a compliment that you think this. Thank you.

In regards to your "newer example", what do you think it's saying? It's remarkably sparse on detail.

 

[Arwon]

I don't know how people can read that Ansari piece and think that's okay behaviour by him. There's just zero chance he "misread" anything or "missed" signals. He knew exactly what he was doing - ignoring signs of lack of interest and resistance for as long as he felt he could get away with.

This is because knowingly and with plausible deniability pushing boundaries and wearing down resistance is a very common dating/seduction "script". A man boundary-pushing and trying to force one's way past a woman's disinterest, discomfort or reluctance is literally one of the main heterosexual sexual encounter "scripts" taught to young men by and it's terrible. It's a "script" that's responsible for a significant amount of rape and other suffering. And of course even in other cases, as the target it's basically impossible to tell whether it's going to turn violent this time. It's exactly why we talk about enthusiastic consent.

It is also really just deeply unerotic, that article is like one long cold shiver.

 

[Synobun]

I don't know how people can read that Ansari piece and think that's okay behaviour by him. There's just zero chance he "misread" anything or "missed" signals. He knew exactly what he was doing - ignoring signs of lack of interest and resistance for as long as he felt he could get away with.

I'm not sure anyone thinks it's okay. Just not sexual assault/rape. There is a spectrum in offense, and being persistent doesn't rank highly on the scale of egregious crimes.