The world we live in is one where women being assaulted is an order of magnitude larger problem than women falsely accusing someone of assault.
We're talking about less than 100 cases per year. The real thing to be worried about is a false conviction for drugs or DUI. That happens way more often.
That isn't to say you should not be thinking about making sure you don't put yourself in a situation where you could be falsely accused of something. I would say, if you are thinking in that way - spending some time making sure you don't do anything to make women uncomfortable is a good way to spend some of that energy as well - same goal, different thought process.
> The majority of men has totally fine behavior when it comes to women.
Yeah, about 75% ish. Not a great number. We don't educate young boys about ideas like consent so it isn't very surprising. Especially with the enduring rape culture in media and our government institutions.
I do believe women when they say they are assaulted/harassed, I don't victim blame, but after that experience I just avoid any situation that could cause someone to cause me harm by lying, so yeah, no being alone with women that aren't family, no giving or helping women that are alone, etc.
Also, I did some checking and I can't find sources supporting "100 cases per year".
Various sources say unfounded allegations are estimated to be 5-20% in different research, while there are hundreds of thousands of sexual assault cases in the US alone. This gives an estimate of multiple thousands to tens of thousands of cases per year.
I'm also not sure why you think worrying about false conviction /allegations in DUI and drugs should preclude us from worrying about something less prevalent. Can't people take precautions on all these things that threaten one's reputation and livlihood? There are many things that could have killed you with a 0.01% chance if people didn't bother to fix them, such as battery explosions, and letting them pile up because there are other things to worry about is not the way safety engineering works.
With regards to the 100 cases per year. I was using UK statistics for false rape allegations. Ironically, men are more likely to be raped by other men than be investigated for a false rape allegation.
> Can't people take precautions on all these things that threaten one's reputation and livlihood?
Of course! But if their "precautions" mean they are also being nasty to people I'll be happy to call them out on it.
Let's have a thought experiment.
If we take the prevalence of false accusations be several thousands a year (the lower end of the estimate), it would be between 1 to 2 incidents per 100k population in the US. For your UK statistics, I can't find a citation either - in terms of prosecuted cases you're perhaps right, again the buck doesn't just start with prosecution. Reported rape incidents can be up to 70k and prosecuted incidents is less than a tenth of that, and it's probably similar for false accusations - what I can find is an estimated prevalence of 3%, so in the UK it would be up to 2.1k among reported (not necessarily prosecuted) cases.
Incidentally, 1 to 2 per 100k is in the ballpark of rape statistics in low-crime areas, such as Hong Kong, Japan or Singapore. So the risk of rape in those areas is similar to the risk of false accusations in the US.
With this in mind, if a woman denies a ride to a strange man in Hong Kong in the middle of the night, does that mean she was nasty to the man? If you say yes, it's probably not the prevailing sentiment in those areas; if you say no, perhaps that can point to some cognitive bias.
For unions, sure let me know when you're able to set them up. Similarly, you can tell women in Hong Kong or Singapore to not worry about rape because you're going to do something to make the world better for them. But another important nuance is that unions won't help as much as you think they would. In the case of false accusations of pretty much anything, a lot of the damage is social, for people who are not already powerful; rape is an especially touchy topic that you would find fellow union members, especially female members, and sometimes spouses, to be less than sympathetic.
you read what you wanted to read, instead of what was actually written
Whether I was rebutting their comment depends on the subtext you think their comment had. There could very well be a subtext for such a well worn talking point.
That meaning of "forced" is very unreasonably literal. The meaning of "forced" here is that it's the only socially acceptable option, not that there's a gun pointed at them.
> Whether I was rebutting their comment depends on the subtext you think their comment had. There could very well be a subtext for such a well worn talking point.
They were saying it's reasonable to refuse the trip because of their false accusation worry. I don't know if I would even call it subtext, it seemed to be pretty upfront.
The subtext of your comment, if any, seemed to be that it's not reasonable to refuse for that reason.
I'm not 100% sure if that's what you meant, but whether it means that is entirely based on you. It's not based on their subtext. You should just tell us if that's what you meant.
Edit: In another comment you put> Nailed it. The amount of bandwidth men should dedicate to this is far lower than what women should be dedicating to it in terms of absolute risk.
I bet SoftTalker already does dedicate negligible bandwidth to that issue. A stranger coming up to you and asking for a ride is a very rare occurrence.
If you are telling a personal anecdote to threadjack a topic, there are several potential reasons why - if that is what you are trying to do. It is open to interpretation as to that poster's intent.
I have my own opinion having read dozens of discussions like this. YMMV.
So whether you were rebutting their comment is based on the reason they "threadjacked", and not the contents of their post? That means no rebuttal for what they explicitly said. And what they explicitly said was refusing a ride because of gender. Okay, that clarifies things. But it would make everyone's lives easier if you made your implications more direct from the start.