Wall Street Rule for the #MeToo Era: Avoid Women at All Cost
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
This isn't fair to women, of course. But Water flows downhill, and people follow incentives. If you create a no-due-process superweapon that a class of people can point at another class, expect the latter to avoid situations where the former can use it. Duh. (In theory, women wouldn't be considered potential false accusers any more than men would, but the fact that the breakdown of gender roles has been intentionally lopsided means that a female accuser is both more likely and more likely to be taken seriously).
As die-hard a liberal as I am, I'm still sympathetic to the idea of examining whether we should shift the burden of proof for cases with characteristics that are systematically difficult to prove (not in the criminal justice system, of course; I think society-sanctioned state violence does and should have a much, much higher bar for protecting the innocent). But as a left-liberal, one of my primary points of departure with the contemporary left is that it seems to believe to its core that wishing on a star is all it takes for a policy to be effective, with no attention paid to the _actual_ way that a policy is expected to play out in the real world[1].
[1] I don't mean to suggest that the left uniquely has this problem, but I've got less exposure to the man-on-the-street version of the right, since I live in a deep Blue bubble and most of my friends form their beliefs based on whatever the Atlantic et al have on their front page.
Could you explain this? It almost sounds like you're interested in foregoing proof to decide cases where 'proof is hard'.
For a simple example, many people don't understand what it is about markets that make them powerful[1]. That doesn't preclude any economic role for government, since markets aren't perfect and there are cases where govt action is more suited to the situation.
Along the same lines, and taking a set of claims at face value: if there's an epidemic of rape and various institutions are systematically underserving victims, then it may make sense to shift that burden. I wouldn't say "forgoing" proof when proof is hard, but changing the standard of evidence. Proof isn't binary: for example, the "preponderance of evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" standards for civil and criminal trials are pretty different. For a directly relevant example, I'm not very incensed by institutions cutting ties with Dr. Cosby and Harvey Weinstein despite the lack of a criminal conviction, and I don't think it's very controversial that decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to.
Of course, this is all theoretical. I don't think most people are remotely capable of handling even the bare minimum of nuance we're talking about here, so it's much more likely that we end up overshooting the target and doing blind damage to the concept of due process. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[1] I've had conversations with people on HN itself about how Uber's pricing would be more just and just as effective if they did it manually instead of using the distributed pricing system we call supply and demand
I see your point now.
> decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to.
How much is 'a bit more' then?
You're essentially saying we should be allowed to substitute evidence if enough people vouch for a claim. In which case, to what degree of guilt can we attribute a person based on this metric?
If the degree has any significance, how is this different than mob-rule Justice?
And you're claiming many/most people already agree to this standard?
I'm simply trying to be charitable to a viewpoint that I'm not personally a fan of; none of your questions about the details of how this would be implemented are relevant to me.
> If the degree has any significance, how is this different than mob-rule Justice?
As I said, I'm talking about in non-justice-system institutions. I don't see why you think the choices here are "use the same bar as criminal justice" and "mob rule". Do you think the civil case bar I mentioned is "mob-rule" justice? Given that there are bars for assigning guilt that are even more stringent than "beyond a reasonable doubt", what prevents those from being the ideal and what makes you refrain from calling BARD "mob rule"? The binary that you're framing this in is not one whose existence I accept; in fact, I don't even think it's logically consistent.
> And you're claiming many/most people already agree to this standard?
Yes, at an intuitive level, I think many/most people agree that Cosby and Weinstein were guilty, despite not being convictable because they don't meet the criminal justice bar (excluding the one accuser that actually was able to take Cosby to court).
We can actually start to evaluate those already since many have already been created in specific places and nations.
Lets start with university policy and Title IX where accusation directly leading to suspension while investigation is on going. No evidence needed, and the later hearing panel that make a judgment is conducted by the school administrators and not the legal system.
Is this a good system? From what I have read it has every possible problem with it, among them being that most accused students can't afford a lawyer or even staying at campus while suspended so cases usually resolve itself automatically since the accuse has to leave regardless of the merit of the case. We also get cases where A accuse B, whose friend C then accuse A, with both A and B now suspended.
Then recently (as of this year), a woman came forward claiming I was harassing, intimidating, and sexually abusing her. This woman was one of the people who had supported me previously. She had been gunning for my position (she was just below me) and we had joked about her taking my position after I moved up. I'm still guessing to this day that was why she made those claims.
We go to HR, her sister presides over the case. I filed a complaint due to conflict of interest. The woman filing the claim threatened to open up to the media about this if the company went forward with replacing the woman in charge of the case.
It's probably no surprise, but they ruled against me and terminated my employment. I had no violations beforehand, no concerns, no performance issues, nothing. I was told to confess, just say it, was hinted at many times to just confess, just confess, we have evidence, anything else you say is a lie, don't drag it out, but I didn't.
I felt as if my career was over. I was a trans freak who assaulted women as far as I knew it. Who would want to hire one of me?
Thankfully, I got some good advice to fight it in court, and I did, and I won, thankfully. And that's when I learned, it's not about the truth, it's about image.
The company didn't care what the actual ruling was, in fact the company came from having a very bad image in the past just now forming a new one. And even though I won the court case, that didn't matter. I still had to explain it to future employers and that was all it took to shut the door on me.
I'm a die-hard liberal too. But that really shook my faith in the goodness of people. I had several suicidal episodes after that, only to be barely pulled out of it by my wonderful husband. It's so easy for someone to point a finger and that's essentially the only word to say in the matter.
And I guess what I'm saying is, I hope this never happens to anyone. I'm sure women aren't anything special when it comes to being evil or twisted. That's a silly thought to me. I fully believe most of the women coming out on the #MeToo movement are being honest and truthful. But when you can mold the situation in a way that you know no-one will question you, it only takes one to flip the world upside down. That's a lot of power to just give someone.
The utility function here is similar. The men in these situations have a lot to lose because they're in positions of power, yet live in relative obscurity without the social support system afforded to well-known public figures. They may or may not engage in behavior that's actually sexist, and they may or may not engage in behavior that's sexual harassment. False accusations of sexual assault, by all indications, are rare, and any accusation is reputationally costly to accusers in many ways. Data about false accusations of sexual harassment is harder to come by, as it's rarely treated as a criminal matter. But the statistics don't matter when the drastic outcome is so dire: if any of these men were to be accused, the current political climate ensures their careers and reputations will meet a swift end. To many, this is an unacceptable risk that requires mitigation.
Personally I've seen just about as many false accusations as true ones. It's not always the woman that makes the accusation, some men use it to hurt other men they don't like.
I've been accused by some random online that I never met.
A friend of mine rejected a woman on okcupid, she then made accounts both in his name and various women's names on the former site 'cheaterville' and reported that he gave her multiple sexually transmitted diseases including HIV which cost him an acting job becuase it was the first thing that came up when you googled his name and despite he and I both having screenshots of this psychotic individual attacking him via multiple forms of communication threatening him if he wouldn't go out with her they said 'get it removed or we can't have you be part of the production'.
A few years ago at my current employer a woman alleged I sent her all sorts of inappropriate text messages and provided screenshots. One problem, she used an iOS device and all of the messages allegedly from me, were in the color bubble of the recipient not the sender meaning she messaged herself then deleted the wrong color bubbles.
So there's 3, 2 of them involving me, all in the past decade.
Then Saturday on a friend's IG post about a candle sale at Bath & Body works I commented "Such a girl" a local newspaper reporter than replied to my comment:
"Oh ZANG, you sure diminished her! Girls are stupid, with their genders and stuff, lol, amiright?!"
To which I replied:
"..."
To which she replied:
"Yes? I'm here."
To which I replied:
"there's something wrong with you. I made a simple comment a friend that I've known for 8 years post being playful. Not because I'm some woman shaming toxic card carrying member of hte patriarchy. Maybe try enjoying your life instead of lashing out at complete strangers on the internet there slugger"
To which she replied: " Ah. Here, let me translate that for you: "I don't like being checked, so I'm going to gaslight and throw some phrases around to seem "woke" and then continue to diminish through patronizing name-calling".
At which point I then contacted her immediate supervisor at her publication, his supervisor, the editor in chief as well as an employee of the parent company that owns the newspaper as this woman's IG profile starts "Downtown reporter at @newspapersheworksatsinstagram" as what she did is entirely uncalled for and not at all professional and if she's done this once, she's done it many times.
So I have a local newspaper reporter putting words into my mouth, calling my character into question in a public forum, because I happen to have a penis and said 'such a girl' to a candle sale photograph on a post of someone that I've not only known for 8 years but have taken out several times over those years...
A gaggle of probably-too-young girls started screaming about losing their phone, then they turned to me, who's alone in line, and loudly accuse me of stealing it. I screamed back at them and called them dumb, earning eyeballs from everyone around. After about a minute one of them finds their phone and they all just pretend like nothing happened.
In an alternate universe, I was assaulted by the jocks in line who believe women first without evidence.
You know what I'm black, my spouse is white, and what do I tell her? "better safe than sorry". Sure if my spouse acted that way, we would have never met. I believe in personal responsibility, I also believe we have a responsibility to display an image other than the one displayed by "statistics", Hollywood and other cheap entertainment. When a white woman changes sides of pavement when I walk toward her minding my own business, I understand. It breaks my heart but I understand.
Within my family and the people I trust, I'll say and do things that outsiders might not approve of, and it's none of their business. However in a business, the entire point is just business, and whatever it takes to make it better. The intersection of business and personal-trust is the grey area. Should I be square all the time at work, and mitigate as much risk as possible? Or can I relax on my break and try starting a conversion with the attractive woman eating by herself?
The #meToo movement has shown that the grey area is certainly 'risky'.
Being as naive as I was, I was completely unprepared for it. Worse, it seems that if you mention this on the internet people counter with "that's not half as bad as X group has it." As if there's some race to win the "who had the harder life" competition. And anyone who's not in 1st place doesn't have the right to complain.
Innocent until proven guilty with a trial by peers. We enshrine these in our public justice system; it needs to be spread to private companies as well.
If a crime has been committed, there is a judicial system that can and will deal with that, with established standards regarding presumption of innocence and burden of proof.
What is missing is a suggestion for how you could avoid that. If business and institution are free to handle these things as they please, which they generally would be granted under labor law and free speech, there are those that are going to disagree with you and there are those that are going to be outright bad at it. Just like they are at handling a lot of other things.
If sexual harassment is as important as not being deemed "a team player" at a company or the right of colleges to design their own admissions process (sometimes to the detriment of Asian students) we can expect people to be mistreated, at the least subjectively so, for this as well.
You can certainly can judge those involved, but I think it is hard to make a case against the problem as such. Because if you have e.g. extensive rights for companies and extensive free speech, there will be downsides as society changes. But that is an expected part of the process, unless you want to change the process and thereby labor law and the rights of colleges or introduce something like the right to be forgotten.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Police-domestic-viole...
I would probably agree with an argument, if you were to make it, that the punishments in some of these cases that are driven by the reaction of larger social groups are too quick and too harsh. However, it sounds to me like you're making a much more extreme case that I have to disagree with.
In any case, it is my understanding that 'innocent until proven guilty' is part of criminal law. In other kinds of law the burden of proof is lower.
Of course these claims have to be investigated carefully. But I think it is wrong to try to copy elements of criminal procedures to civil matters.
It is important to strike a sensible balance. We cannot have a situation where women would always lose because of lack of hard evidence.
When you serve jury duty and the case involves domestic violence, you are explicitly reminded of this because most people will assume it is not.
Still, we end up with cases like Brock Turner where he does get convicted not with the victim's testimony but a mountain of corroborating evidence and national media scrutiny. And then receives what is essentially a non-punishment.
But maybe there are such places.
Every case is different: witness testimony can be far more credible than photo evidence, dna evidence can be less credible than video evidence.
There is — as far as I know — no legal system in the world that measures the validity of a case based on the amount or type of evidence. You can absolutely be convicted on witness testimony alone in the US. That’s very unlikely but entirely possible under the law.
Of course, it helps if there is corroborating evidence, but there is no rule that says one cannot be convicted (in the US) based on a victim's testimony alone. It just doesn't happen often because usually there is some sort of corroborating evidence of a crime, and because it's hard to eliminate all reasonable doubt without any.
(I would be really scared to live in such a country, that strikes me a a recipe for disaster)
Is there evidence that this is more likely in sexual assault cases than others? Your post here [1] (and the post you are replying to) seem to suggest that it is actually less likely in these cases.
How can we know what specific pieces of evidence led to his conviction? I would assume the jury took into account the victim's testimony and the testimony of the onlookers who stopped him. What makes you say he was "convicted not with the victim's testimony but a mountain of corroborating evidence and national media scrutiny"?
Really? I think the reasons for the requirements of evidence are justified in civil matters just as they are in criminal.
We cannot have a situation where men always have no defence because of a lack of requirement of evidence.
In a criminal case, if the defendant remains silent then it is up to the prosecution to present enough evidence.
In a civil case, any argument made by the plaintiff that is not rejected or corrected can be accepted as true.
Of course, legal systems vary, but in general there is no right to remain silent during a civil case.
Until recently, the women/victim side was assumed guilty... still are in many places/circumstances.
We're leaving judge and jury duty to the public, social media, old media, individuals and (above all) corporate policy. None of these operate on a presumption of innocence.
> Until recently, the women/victim side was assumed guilty... still are in many places/circumstances.
The victim being "assumed guilty" is just an awkward phrasing of "innocent until proven guilty" for the perpetrator. What do you see as the difference?
If someone robs your house and you see them running away, television strapped to your back, you call the police and give testemony. You say what you saw and the jury judges on the merits of the case.
What doesn't happen, in a robbery, is the defense team lining up a slew of witnesses talking about all the times you left your house unlocked, all the times you invited other suspicious people over, all the times you sold something on Craigslist and all the times you Googled the price of the TV that got stolen. The defence doesn't use this testemony to show that you really wanted to give your TV away, and it wasn't actually stolen, and even if it was, weren't you sorta asking for it anyway?
I'm not saying that prejudice is right, it's just.. evidently hard to shake.
White woman accuses black man -> accused is guilty.
rich woman accuses poor man -> accused is guilty
black woman accuses white man ->accused is not guilty
poor woman accuses rich man -> accused is not guilty
It's still that way, sometimes. The difference is now is that "who has more power" suddenly varies a ton based on who's making the decision and the political optics of the situation. So some people on wall street (statistically richer and whiter than average) are scared (rationally or not, you decide) that they're now potentially vulnerable to false accusation when they were previously insulated to some degree by being (mostly) rich and white.
If I've come to appreciate anything-among many things-in the last few years of this cultural evolution full of "social justice" debate, discussion and forums-it's that there are pockets of the social fabric who seem very eager to suspend elements of the public justice system or eagerness to put a moratorium on certain 'memes' inherent to our system of adjudicating wrong deemed absolutely necessary or otherwise considered baked in, incontrovertible features of Western "justice" (because fairness, equanimity, better 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent go to jail etc) in just about every realm that isn't a court room where they would beholden to certain burdens and requirements to satisfy other 'memes' inherent to our system of adjudicating wrong.
Edit: I really wish the people who have such an issue trying to explore and openly discuss these ideas (even if you personally disagree with them) would step forward and actually offer a counter response versus driveby downvotes of myself and wutbrodo who replied here-and other comments here in the thread trying to actually explore the issue on a level that isn't surface level, shooting from the hip reactions. Barely fresh for 20 minutes and we're both nearly greyed out.
That isn't to say that Enlightenment liberalism is unquestionably correct, but the conversation has shifted such that the hoi polloi have started to reject liberalism without having even done the basic work to consider the pitfalls and the counter-arguments to those pitfalls (you will, of course, find more radical strains of thought that reject liberalism, and while I disagree with them, I don't have the same problem, in that they tend to be sincerely held and supported).
To be clear, I don't mean "hoi polloi" to refer to some caricature of an uneducated lower class. It was probably five years ago that I had an argument with someone on an internal board at Google, wherein he claimed the presumption of innocence was irrelevant, since it was a legal constraint by which we weren't bound. Again, not saying that its incontrovertibly correct, but the guy had no concept of why it existed in the justice system and whether those principles were generalizable.
I have served on a jury in a sexual assault trial and after what I’ve seen of the process first hand I would rather work for a company that doesn’t roleplay as the judicial system and instead believes the victim and uses the preponderance of evidence approach for determining guilt.
Most people guilty of sexual assault (in the literal sense not the legal sense) will never face any legal consequences because of how the judicial system works: I would never want to work in an office where the same was true.
If you flip this statement, you find yourself in a similarly bad situation: if you always assume the perpetrator is innocent, the victim is now in a world of hurt until / if they can get a conviction. Unfortunately a lot of times for various reasons (many to do with the psychology of being a _person_, e.g. shame / no report, shock / slow to report) it devolves into "he said she said" because there's no physical evidence anymore << even if multiple people have stories about the same offender.
The result is that women live in a state of _perpetual fear of men_. And that's current state.
^ That's not even to mention that women are disproportionately likely to be assaulted / hurt by men than the other way around.
I'm not saying _presuming guilt_ is good. But that's not what happens, and your statement is a bit misleading. When you mention "firing/expelling/crucifying" you must remember these are usually done with pretty thorough investigation / good reason to believe the victim; there are far and away more cases of offenders getting away with their misdeeds.
Hyperbole does not help at all, and this statement is several levels beyond hyperbole. A bit of nuance, please.
Do women try to bow out gracefully from relationships even if the onus shouldn't be on them, sometimes from fear of men potentially harming them? Do men do this at all?
Do you tell your daughter to watch out for predators before college? Do you tell your son the same thing, or different? Which one are you more worried for? Do you tell your daughter to stop being vigilant in <any scenario> because creeps aren't a threat?
Do women try to bow out gracefully from relationships even if the onus shouldn't be on them, sometimes from fear of men potentially harming them? Do men do this at all?
That's what the entire Bloomberg article is about! Yes, men apparently now routinely bow out gracefully from relationships with women, because they fear the woman will harm them.
And the article is showing this because it is a massive, unheard of change.
Of course we do. Btw statistically men are assaulted more often than women.
Yes, "innocent until proven guilty" is a terrible and fearful situation.
Result, the only thing she could do was filing a report at the police station, and now she have to wait for another girl to get raped and go to the police. I still scream "rapist!" when i pass by his restaurant though, twice this year and will do that too at Christmas, and will continue until i get arrested or until i pardon him. I also gave his picture and contact information to all my highschool friends so they can avoid him, as it's a small city and we are around the same age (luckily i'm no living there anymore). My sister's former cooking school now forbid female student to take apprenticeship there (a bit cynical, but well, better than nothing).
I was all for "innocent until proven guilty", and still am, but maybe because it's still fresh, i really can't condamn public shaming anymore.
[0]I might have the wrong word: she was working on her cooking diploma while working in a restaurant
In many types of sex crime cases, the prosecution must also prove that (3) the behavior engaged in by the parties was not consensual.
People do not generally consensually enagege in battery, theft, or murder. People consensually engage in sexual activities all the time. Also, sexual activities often have no third-party witnesses, which makes proof more difficult.
Colleges don't almost always simply believe the victim. It's quite the opposite: “Alarmingly, many universities are compounding this trauma by failing to support survivors and, in some cases, actively seeking to silence them.” [1]
Businesses don't almost always simply believe the victim. In fact, "often employees fear that human resources will help the company lash out at the accuser rather than punish the accused." [2]
Online communities don't almost always simply believe the victim. Take Twitter for example and how a chunk of that online community turned against Christine Blasey Ford. [3]
In the last case involving the accuser and the accused, the accuser had to move several times, hired her own private security detail, and continued to receive death threats [4], all the while the accused got the promotion of a lifetime. Hardly the case of — as you put it — "the accused is vindicated, the accused has already been fired, expelled, or crucified by public opinion."
I know that what you said is personal opinion, but as far as the data supporting that opinion, I just didn't find it.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/27/unive... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/business/sexual-harassmen... 3: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/conservative-rea... 4: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665407589/kavanaugh-accuser-c...
In a way it is like Game of Thrones. If you take something to HR, you better win. And sometimes both of you lose.
This presents an interesting conundrum, and I wonder how it will complicate the process of proving sex discrimination related to mentoring disparities. Even if laws stay the same, I think some jurors will be more sympathetic to the "Pence approach" in the wake of #MeToo. This will make it harder for plaintiffs to win in mentoring discrimination cases, and will mean lower settlement offers as well.
"Sex predator/Abuser" will be the label placed on a guy who violently rapes a woman, just as it will be applied to the guy who said something PERCEIVED to be inappropriate (or who might have had consenting sex with a employee)
My sister the other day refereed to a guy who cat called her as "Violating her integrity".
When there is little distinction in describing: 1- someone saying bad things 2- an act of violently forcing yourself on someone and scarring them for life 3- Inappropriate, but consensual sexual behavior It can be a little worrisome to be accused of saying bad things or of being even perceived as possibly having a relationship with someone.
As men it’s easy to think of harassment as isolated but for many women it’s a constant day to day threat and successfully managing that risk means quickly identifying potential threats even if they may not escalate beyond verbal harassment.
Verbal harassment can put someone already on edge in fear for their life. He absolutely violated her if that’s how she feels.
1- The first woman's gang rape where she spent months in the hospital recuperating. 2- An upper middle class woman getting told in a loud manner "uuuuhhh girl, you're looking finnnnneeee today"
Really? You can't see the difference between 1 and 2? You can't see the need for different terminology?
That's on you. I find it silly, and I find the confounding hurts everyone involved. Including girl #2, who has a legitimate complaint, but seems ridiculous using the terminology that is used for #1.
It also creates an environment of emotions and hysteria instead of reason and logic applied to resolving problems.
I am arguing that any form of sexual assault is predatory behaviour engaged in by an abuser and it is completely appropriate for a woman to consider someone who verbally harasses them to be a sexual assault risk.
Sexual assault is woefully under reported and woefully under prosecuted, you cannot possibly argue that we have ever applied “logic and reason” to this issue. The progress that has been made in the last decade has improved the logic and reason applied to this issue but we have a long way still to go. A few decades ago you could not legally rape your wife, how is that logical? Or well reasoned?
According to you, both 1 and 2 can be described that way.
Listen you are right in part. Like when people talk about drugs being ba-a-a-a-d.
Is cocaine bad? Yes
Is the war on drugs justified by this? No
Same here. You are talking about a real problem. You are suggesting solutions that hurt everyone involved and then acting like if someone doesn't agree with you they are denying the problem.
I'm not denying the problem. I pointed out issue with an applied solution and instead of addressing them, you bring up the problem the issues were supposed to address, while ignoring the point.
If you mean “physically violated” then sure, you cannot be physically violated by words, but I don’t see the value in making that distinction. If a woman is afraid to go to work because her colleague shouts obscene remarks at her every time he sees her, why does it matter (in the context of ensuring she feels safe at work) if he hasn’t escalated to committing the acts he threatens yet?
Every situation is different, for some women a physical assault can be far less violating than a daily campaign of verbal harassment.
...
You are the reason for the article above. Congrats. Now celebrate your victory.
There are physical assaults that are far less consequential than verbal assaults, that’s an indisputable fact. Anyone who has experience with victims, has been a victim _or_ even just someone who uses “logic and reason” would understand that.
Stop moving the goal posts. Stop your whataboutisms. My original post comparing #1 to #2 stands. You confound such situations. This hurts everyone.
If a person is being harassed by a colleague and they're not cool with it, then the next step is reporting it and trying to get that person out of their life.
> You cannot be physically violated by words, but I don't see the value in making that distinction.
Maybe I can point out the value for you... Americans and humans in general have an inalienable natural born human right to say, in general, whatever they wish. There's value in human rights. On the other hand, any kind of physical touch can be interpreted as assault if the recieving party doesn't consent.
> Why does it matter if he hasn't escalated to committing the acts he threatens yet?
Because expressing their rights to speech isn't illegal. Not only is it not assault, but it's not even close to assault. You're miles away from actual physical assault. In terms of logical progression.
Edit:
> for some women a physical assault can be far less violating than a daily campaign of verbal harassment.
Can you explain this, because I'm entirely unconvinced.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine being more threatened and traumatised and violated by someone in a position of privilege detailing the ways they want to have sex with you in graphic detail every day you interact with them, than threatened/violated/traumatised by a drunk person at a party grabbing at your body without permission.
Verbal harassment doesn't get any more violent than putting the idea of assault in your head. Actual assault is the manifestation of the idea brought by the verbal harassment. It's an entire order of magnitude worse than verbal harassment! It's not even in the same league!
I don’t know what your life is like, whether you’re friends with many women, but if you ever have an opportunity to listen to someone speak about abuse I really recommend it. You will learn so much. Abuse is so much more than what you think it is.
If you make the comparison of horrific verbal abuse to nearly-innocent physical abuse, I could see what you mean. But if you keep the degree of assault identical between physical and verbal assault, physical will always be worse.
Tell that to Neil Degrass Tyson! Would you ever consider him an asshole? And yet, here he is getting lambasted for pointing out a tattoo on a woman's arm and telling people he doesn't do hugs.
You literally can be the nicest man in the world and still get #MeToo'd
I thought he was being accused of physically touching a clothed area of the woman's arm without being granted consent, not merely "pointing out". The words "pointing out" imply a gesture, which can be done at a distance, not unwelcome physical contact.
Is this really an offense worth ending someone's career over?
(And is it any surprise that we might all deduce the lesson if it is?)
In isolation? No. It's a social faux pas that should be responded to with apology and remediation. Nobody is perfect, after all.
As one incident in an overall pattern of abuse stretching one's career? Different matter. If this pattern holds, the accused doesn't need to be propped up as a role model for science communication.
If he did in fact physically touch her, then this isn't an ambiguous "he said/she said" problem, this is a violation of her personal boundaries.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredcows/2018/11/two-more-...
1/ In modern societies women are often wronged, in the form of discrimination, harassment, abuse, and violence.
2/ Some of the policies designed to help women are hurting man by default, for instance, positive discrimination or "guilty until proven innocent".
3/ Some think the amount of wrongness done to women is orders of magnitude bigger than the amount of wrongness done to man. (Including me)
4/ Some think this discrepancy between wrongness warrants the policies that hurt men by default.
5/ Some think the no amount of wrongness discrepancy warrants a policy that hurts someone by default. (Including me)
2/ Most of the policies designed to help women actually hurt them. Positive discrimination usually ends up being much worse than doing nothing.
> A late-40-something in private equity said he has a new rule, established on the advice of his wife, an attorney: no business dinner with a woman 35 or younger.
To be clear: Numerous (to me) means approaching 20% of all accusations. That's only 1 in every 5 accusations. Does numerous mean something else to you?
Can you please cite your sources?
Even the very definitions of what counts as sexual harassment / assault / rape / hate speech etc are deeply controversial. A most prominent example are radical feminists like Dworkin who essentially say that all heterosexual intercourse is rape.
That's a stupid argument. Can we please not equivocate exceptionally dumb arguments with serious ones?
(Also, while we basically live in a post-satire society, I still like to call Poe's Law on exceptionally dumb arguments.)
In the UK, official government research put the figure at 10% of all (rape) accusations being false. But if you read the reports, you'll see that the true figure must be much higher, as the methodology reclassifies lots of data points to avoid them being considered false.
Which paper do you mean by Jan and what replications have you got in mind? And where do you recommend I look for the UK figures?
A word of warning. I've found that there is a shocking rate of lying about these studies, both in other academic papers and the media. Moreover you have to read the papers carefully because they're often written by people with an explicit agenda (to minimise the false reporting rate - exception is Kanin who appers to have no agenda). You really have to watch out and not take any claims at face value, even when they'd appear to be in credible reports from credible sources. It's very sad but it appears that in a rather meta way, the topic of false reports of rape is dogged by false reports about studies of false reports about rape!
The idea that the rate of false reporting is very high is probably once of the most controversial and dangerous topics in our society today. If you write your paper you are very likely to be attacked for it, at least if your paper is based on police report data. Good luck!
Kanin, 1994
https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations...
He reviews police reports for every single rape allegation in an unnamed American town, selected because the police department had the time and resources to investigate every allegation thoroughly. In 41% of the cases, the allegation was false. In this study, for a report to be considered false the accuser had to agree it was false. Thus the true rate must be higher, as there was no real incentive for the women to admit they lied to the police. The study provides data on the motives for why the false allegations were made.
Note the appendix. The original Kanin study was done on an unnamed American town. In the appendix they replicate the findings in a US university. Actually the percentage there is slightly higher at exactly 50% false reports (admitted false by the accuser).
The data Kanin provides on why false allegations are made has been replicated by the Dutch police:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_f...
This Dutch replication doesn't examine the percentage of all claims that are false, just the motives for cases proven false.
Jan Jordan, 2004
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComput...
This study examines New Zealand police reports and replicates Kanin, by finding a 41% false reporting rate. The paper is horrendously biased, but nonetheless contains useful ground truth data about the NZ police conclusions in a large number of rape reports. The breakdown is:
- Genuine cases, 21%
- Uncertain/insufficient evidence, 38%
- Police investigated and concluded the complaint was false, 33%
- The complainant themselves said their own report was false, 8%
If we add together 33% and 8% we get 41%.
The paper goes into a lot of detail if you're looking for material.
Finally, the UK study is here:
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/ht...
It states that in 9% of cases the claims were considered false by the police. This is quite far off Kanin and Jan, so what's going on? Again, it requires careful reading. About 20% of all reports are "no crimed", that is, the police classify the report as "no crime occurred". This classification is intended for very narrow and unusual situations like the original report being made accidentally, but the prevalence shows it's not being used like that. The UK has put considerable pressure on its police to always 'believe the victim' etc, and they appear to have come up with this way to minimise the number of reports classified as false. It should be clear that if someone files a report of rape (which can't really be accidentally reported), and the police conclude no crime occurred, this is the same thing as a false report. These two categories take the UK to 29%. Lower than Jan and Kanin but still very high. The missing chunk is probably the category where the accuser withdrew their police report so investigation did not continue. These reports may or may not be false. This study also contains some data on motives.
One theme that crops up in quite a few of these papers is that when police officers are interviewed and asked to estimate the rate of false reports, they give rates in the 40-50% range. In media reports you will frequently see a rate of 2% being quoted, so this is an exceptionally large difference in perception between journalists writing about the topic and police who deal with it. The UK study has some anonymised quotes from police talking about the problem.
There are many posts in this discussion thread stating that men are wrong to worry because "the statistics prove false allegations are not a problem". That claim appears to be false: replicated studies show the problem is vastly larger for rape than any other crime (false report rate for murder is ~2%). Men are probably right to be wary.
Shockingly, the UK government document you cite explicitly suggests "Expanding the concept of ‘real rape’".
If that’s not enough to clear his name, how can anyone ever escape the stain of a credible accusation? It seems prudent given that problem to ensure that no accusation will be credible.
People refer to Kavanaugh as a rapist when he wasn't even accused of rape. 50% (or more) of the country still thinks of him as such. His family and children received death threats.
The case of Brian Banks is an example that should meet your standard. Black man with a potential professional football career goes to jail, DNA evidence exonerates years later.
Your past is still vital to who you are, both in your own eyes and in the eyes of others. Your comment is ignorant of the trauma that these circumstances bring to the accused - if you can have empathy for the victim, you should be able to carry the same empathy for the accused.
Again Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina-Lisa_Lohfink
The matress stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_rape_contr...
But we know of those only because they were public figures or have been carried out in public. You don't hear about the private ones.
Also people here really seem to be assuming any case where someone is found not guilty means the accusation was false, which is not how it works. Just ask OJ Simpson.
>Also people here really seem to be assuming any case where someone is found not guilty means the accusation was false, which is not how it works. Just ask OJ Simpson.
For a third person this is kinda how it works.
The last I heard about Kavanaugh he'd been totally exonerated. There's no reason to believe he did anything to this woman.
First, his name was Mark Judge not "Mike" Judge - so get off the high horse about being factually correct when you can't even get one name right.
Zero corroborating eyewitnesses, zero recollection of the location of the "party" from 35 years ago.
You know that Kavanaugh was shortlisted by Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign? Predating Dr. Ford's timeline for documenting the alleged abuse during therapy.
I don't think this is any different. The chance of being falsely accused is probably very small, but I know I'd absolutely crushed, both mentally and physically (lack of sleep for months in a row) if it happened to me. Even if, a year or two later, they'd clear my name. It's sufficient to have just a few high profile cases to increase that fear.
That doesn't mean that I'd go out of my way to avoid hiring women...
*Citation needed on that claim.
The reality is that "false" sexual assault/harassment claims are around 2% to 10%. And that number is likely higher than reality because some law enforcement agencies will call a claim "false" simply because they could not find enough corroborating evidence. [1]
If anything, there is a disincentive to report sexual harassment/assault, because the victim has HISTORICALLY been victimized again in the media. The vast majority of sexual assault crimes go unreported because of this and other reasons. [2, 3]
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-r...
[2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-compassion-chron...
Why run the risk that you get a sociopath who will make a false claim for their own gain?
Why can't these men just learn
Side note: How many women have been accused of sexual harassment?
In my experience, the "position of power" reply is a canned response that is being used to deflect a question. It is in my experience never accompanied by a substantial understanding of what power actually means, and of an awareness of the long tradition of difficulties of defining the concept of power.
In order to help you get away from this naive position, let me invite you to consider reflecting on the fact that the ability falsely to accuse others of heinous crimes and get away with it might be a power in itself. (Cf how the Khashoggi murderes are likely to get away with it -- would you or I get away with murder?)
Stanford: Myths about false accusation [0] BBC: The truth about false assault accusations by women [1] CNN: Sexual assault false reporting: What the statistics say [2]
[0] https://web.stanford.edu/group/maan/cgi-bin/?page_id=297 [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45565684 [2] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-r...
Consensus seems to be
- "only about 40% of rapes are ever reported" [0]
- "the number of rapes and sexual assaults which are never reported or prosecuted far outweighs ..." [1]
Pretty much by definition of "not reported", it is difficult to believe that one can confidently make statements about the number of rapes that are not reported. Another shortcoming of [0, 1] is that they don't in fact say what they mean by rape. The very definition of this term is controversial (e.g. statutory rape, which is nonforcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent. Note also that the age of consent varies between different legal systems). This is a serious omission.
Given this, why should one take the rest of the articles serious?
This sort of willful misunderstanding of concerns feels like a subtle gaslighting campaign.
The vast majority of men being discussed here have zero problems in their treatment of women. They quite rationally have calculated that being around women at work is now a significant risk to them, with little or no upside in return, so they're bowing out.
You can preach all you like, but in my experience it's almost impossible to get people to act against their own self-interest, especially when the welfare of their loved ones is on the line.
Welcome to the new normal.
However, I think public figure/political circumstances are the outlier and don’t agree with the concept of avoiding women. That’s just dumb on a number of levels. But I can understand the risk-adverse thinking. Ironically, the crowd screaming to “believe her” despite a lack of evidence actually caused more harm to women in the long run since the implication is that a women accusing anyone of anything is going to be “believed” regardless of evidence and without a consideration of due process. That’s a scary place to be as a man, knowing that a mere accusation and public flogging awaits even if there is no evidence of any wrongdoing having occurred.
They're not worried they don't know how to treat women with respect. They're worried that in 5, 10 or 15 years they they'll be put on the spot to defend their behavior in an interaction they don't even remember happening.
Men are now protecting themselves against possible accusations of wrong doing by women, in professional settings, conferences, school... because now anybody can accuse them of abuse on Twitter with a simple hashtag and the world will never believe they are innocent even they have been deemed innocent by a court of law.
I personally refuse to be with alone with a female coworker in any situation, even elevators. And any private meeting is done with the door open.
Most of women also treat men like the humans they are.
The problem lies in the fact that bad women treat all men badly and bad men treat all women badly.[citation needed]
Hence, fear results in good men and women having to avoid eachother, for lack of a better response.
But you just assumed yourself that these men are somehow flawed.
Just because one is wearing a seatbelt doesn't mean she s a bad driver.
The article focuses on the self-preservation concerns and it would be a lie to suggest that there's no CYA involved.
But it's not the only dynamic. As a senior exec I both legally represent my employer and am seen to represent it by many employees. If how I act or communicate is misconstrued this could have far reaching consequences.
But more important to both of these (because the real risk of something going pear-shaped isn't that large), is the effect that, seemingly inconsequential, actions can have on the recipient.
As an example, a mentee of mine received an email from a senior colleague asking her to go for drinks. She asked my advice as she felt obliged to go but didn't want to give the wrong impression. She was quite concerned. Turns out, he had invited a number of people who had performed well on a project but had omitted to be clear about why they were invited. Entirely innocent, easily misconstrued.
In my view, if senior folk get more thoughtful about their actions, it's likely to be net positive. There may be some unintended consequences (there usually are) but I don't believe the real risk is especially high.
I agree with your conclusion that "if senior folk get more thoughtful about their actions, it's likely to be net positive".
You also mentioned that "If how I act or communicate is misconstrued this could have far reaching consequences". I agree -- and this also cuts both ways.
The original point I was trying to (clumsily) make was: One could easily see the men in the original article as actively excluding women from positions of power. The 'far reaching consequences' in this case would be punishing women who have legitimate grievances for raising those grievances and emphasizing a power gap between genders.
Chance of getting falsely accused of anything sexual is on average probably very slim, but the fallout of such an accusation can be devastating.
So, that led to a generic solution building on what I was already doing. Just bring more women (and minorities) into your workplace, treat your workers well, spend time with them (in public if you're worried), build relationships, have their back where they need it, and they'll probably have yours, too. I actually don't have much charisma or management skill only working one job like that. I was the favorite boss of most of my people for years, though, just doing the above surviving all false claims of all types. It probably helps that I'm pretty genuine where they just knew what I would or wouldn't do.
The people, men or women, who my bosses thought weren't motivated would sometimes work hardest for me. It's just because I treated them respectfully. Also, helping them would where I could. Such tiny things go so far to bring out the best in people. As a side effect, they also reduce the number and effectiveness of false claims. So, I recommend companies just do more of that. Treating people well, inclusive behavior, and so on. Every company I know like that out here gets good results of some kind.
I wish the author spent some time on elaborating what the right thing is. The right thing might be too obvious for me to realize what it is.
You don't hear about these problems talked about though, simply because men are the affected parties.
It's kind of astonishing how long it takes some people see this obvious answer.
Expert hint: It also solves a lot of other workplace issues as well.
In this context, if you believe that men are in dramatic positions of power, then you would have to find the # that shows how often powerful men are wrongly accused (vs. just the average man).
In the absence of a more focused study, it's the best we have.
Do you have an alternative study to link to?
To that end, I refuse to make perfect the enemy of good.
Personally I pick decency. I don't really care if this view is down-voted.
> “Some men have voiced concerns to me that a false accusation is what they fear,” said Zweig, the lawyer. “These men fear what they cannot control.”
This reveals so much about the mentality of the people being interviewed.
The statistics of false rape accusations do not justify this concern. I would expect that an industry that copes with risk as part of their job to understand this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180101025446/https://icdv.idah...
Some of the men are demonstrating a rational argument (albeit based on flawed statistics), but they're using it to justify running away from the problem rather than addressing it.
That's offensive. These men have the right to do displays of virtue (such as only talking with an open door). Why do you presume that men must risk their jobs ? It sounds like some some macho-requirement.
One of the cornerstones of their entire industry accounting for the uncertainty of the future. They're already risking their jobs (and, indeed, their companies) every day.
Contrast that with a statistically insignificant number of false accusations.
If they are truly afraid of false accusations (like they say) rather than true accusations, then they haven't clearly done the math.
(If, on the other hand, they're afraid of true accusations, they should proactively cease to sexually harass women and maybe they'll have a less guilty conscience.)
I'm not imposing a macho-requirement on anyone, just asking that they exercise some sense of consistency here.
One company's head of security at WTC started doing evacuation drills after the 1990's bombing thinking something destructive to whole building is worth having a plan for. He said all but 5 people got out in 2001. In same place, a bank was running OpenVMS clusters on high-quality hardware with a far-away site in case something happened to the building (standard concern, too). They claimed those nodes were the last thing that failed with no transactions lost. Everything else was destroyed.
People often consider hurricanes, tornados, flood levels, wild fires, and earthquakes before moving into an area. Lots of folks avoid Tornado Alley and the Southern/Southeastern Coast for that reason. One person thinking floods might get bad in Texas put an inflatable, rubber circle filled with water around their house. It was only one floodwaters went around instead of through. Likewise, the Hurricane Architecture article said author [statistically-unnecessarily] went with dedicated servers and architecture for super-high volume. Became main source for news during flood for entire state with tons of traffic. Kept folks informed.
Lots of people either don't put political/religious/relationship/work information social media or periodically delete it to make digging up previous dirt on them harder. It either takes no effort (former) or small effort (latter). The endless volume of folks getting quoted before being slammed online or being fired at work suggests this is a rational practice. Also, as Schneier says about crypto, the number and effectiveness of such attacks seem to go up overtime where traditional, risk assessment is nearly impossible.
Certain appliances, like toasters and tumble dryers, cause a disproportionate amount of homes to be destroyed. Many homeowners make sure they're only used when someone is there to react to damage. For toasters, some people also unplug them when not in use (idk if that matters). At least "person is there" is a costless precaution that prevent loss of entire home.
Another which is sometimes labeled discrimination is folks staying out of the hood to avoid being violently assaulted. There's quite a few hoods in Memphis, TN near me. Most people, regardless of race or gender, avoid them if they can since they don't want to be mugged, raped, beaten, or killed. When weighing that, people consider the psychological effect it would have on them. If they don't live there, the choice is (a) go meet people, do stuff, etc where I almost certainly won't experience violence or (b) go do same stuff where said violence is reported (or not) several times a day in those same places. Most people, again all groups, do (a) to avoid cost of (b) since it's never worth it to them. Some do (b), though, for a variety of reasons. Just saying it to acknowledge they exist.
In the main article, these are rational, successful people are similarly facing a catastrophic risk that's got an entire movement behind the tools that make it work. They don't know odds of it happening but do know the cost is end-of-career and frequency is increasing. They are rightly thinking in terms of catastrophic, risk mitigation where the entire class of risk is mitigated since the cost is unbearable. Although I disagree on specifics, they're definitely right to mitigate a catastrophic risk increasing in frequency. It's what they usually do. Me too.
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea that women are viewed as potential catastrophes. That's probably just where we're at with identity politics these days.
I'd rather the superweapon not exist or be used only based on stronger evidence given its catastrophic effects. Otherwise, we're back to men wanting control over their lives/careers minimizing catastrophes by treating women as potential catastrophes. If not in general, then they'll do it for private or couple-looking meetings with them. As we're seeing.
But realistically, regardless of what the stats are, if you read news stories about powerful men being shot down through false or trivial accusations every day, stats aren't going to be the main thing on your mind, are they?
When I was arrested many years ago, the news spun it as though I had hacked into millions of computers and used them to DDoS the FBI, and then somehow use that to take over their computers.
In reality, I had found that they had an unsecured arbitrary file upload (i.e. had zero authorization guarding it) and told them about it on Twitter. Not the best move, but a far cry from what the media accused me of.
If you expect me to take the word of reporters above that of scientists, well, that ain't happening.