Women have been ignored, not believed or punished for being the victim of abuse, in numbers most of us wouldn’t possibly believe were true if it weren’t for witnesses and the sheer number of people who can attest to a persons sexual sleaziness and assault. A movement has started to stop avoiding the police who often ignore you, fear not the crowd of people who insult you for calling out your abuser and deal with the trial where the defence will make you relive your trauma while badgering you for an hour about how much you drank and what you were wearing. Amazingly, most men I know are supportive of the metoo movement and horrified by the scale of the revelations applaud women who haven’t been depleted of strength, energy and patience to take their abuser to the law.
But then of course…there is a minority of men whose first though is about “false accusations”. It’s beyond nauseating to hear or read this. When it comes to false accusations of libel, physical assault, stealing, murder or fraud…all things that can destroy your life…you never seem to hear people’s first reaction being “hey…but what about false accusations”. Of course the situation is quite different because in those other cases more people are prone to calling out accusations because they’re likely to be taken seriously and not re-victimised. But when some men feel that people factually, rationally and reasonably pointing out that rape levels are high and it should stop…is an actual assault on every male in the world…and the best response they can give is to either deny the scale, trivialise the victims experience or whine that some accusations are false.
Yes…a false accusation destroys someone’s lives, as it does with false domestic abuse allegations, kidnapping, murder, libel or fraud. And yes, measures should be taken to investigate the claims well and prosecute those who maliciously made a false claim. But the fact that some people’s most important contribution to the movement debate is that a minority of false accused must be protected says a lot about how seriously they take sexual abuse and how mostly women are treated.
Once again. yes, more should be done to protect falsely accused, in EVERY kind of criminal accusation that can ruin someone’s lives. However, just with nearly EVERY kind of criminal accusation, the default position is to take the accusation seriously and that it may be true, for a number of important reasons.
And yes, some men will blow false accusations out of proportion and penalise women by not hiring them or using their professional services. That also tells a lot about how they allow their irrational feeling of being attacked…to irrationally penalise women.
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