By now you’ve heard of Rolling stone’s UVA rape article, it’s retraction, and all the debate around it.
One of the interesting parts of the debate is this:
That was later downgraded to generally and most feminists haven’t gone quite that far, but the general trend from feminists has been that we should “believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says.”. The general tenor from the manosphere is that the default should be skeptism of rape claims given the amount of false rape claims. Both default belief and default skepticism have their proper time and place, it is situational. False rape claims do happen often enough to be worth considering them, but most rape claims are not false.
Generally default belief is best in the context of friendship, sympathy, support, and personal relationship. If a friend tells you of being raped, immediately believing and supporting her if she’s lying is low-cost, a few wasted hours at most, while not immediately doing so if she is not lying can be very damaging to her and to the relationship.
On the other hand, default skepticism is generally best in the context of law, informal punishment, or the impersonal. In these situations, immediately believing a lie will have immense negative effects on innocent parties, while not immediately believing the truth will be fairly low-cost as there will still be time to find the truth .
The tricky part is when the friendship and informal punishment overlap, ie. when you have friendships with both the accuser and the accused. In those cases, your best judgment on the characters of both parties combined with how close you are to each party is probably the best way to determine who you should default to believing.
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This brings me to another thought. Reading through the RS article there are a number of things that don’t pass the sniff test, but of all of them this one passage takes the cake:
Disoriented, Jackie burst out a side door, realized she was lost, and dialed a friend, screaming, “Something bad happened. I need you to come and find me!” Minutes later, her three best friends on campus – two boys and a girl (whose names are changed) – arrived to find Jackie on a nearby street corner, shaking. “What did they do to you? What did they make you do?” Jackie recalls her friend Randall demanding. Jackie shook her head and began to cry. The group looked at one another in a panic. They all knew about Jackie’s date; the Phi Kappa Psi house loomed behind them. “We have to get her to the hospital,” Randall said.
Their other two friends, however, weren’t convinced. “Is that such a good idea?” she recalls Cindy asking. “Her reputation will be shot for the next four years.” Andy seconded the opinion, adding that since he and Randall both planned to rush fraternities, they ought to think this through. The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape, while Jackie stood beside them, mute in her bloody dress, wishing only to go back to her dorm room and fall into a deep, forgetful sleep. Detached, Jackie listened as Cindy prevailed over the group: “She’s gonna be the girl who cried ‘rape,’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again.”
The friends in question have since responded and have said that the night did not occur like that, because of course it didn’t because that kind of response is just absurd. But the absurdity of it is magnified by the fact that it was so widely believed, which is bewildering to me. It makes me wonder about the social lives of feminists though. How could someone possibly believe that three people called by a friend in trauma and wearing bloody clothing would have their first thought be “but what about the keggers?”
I can not think of a single person I know whose first response to finding a friend who had been gang-raped wouldn’t be to provide comfort and aid the person (or possibly rage against the perpetrators). It’s hard to imagine anybody would respond like this, yet feminists and liberals all bought this incident as perfectly believable.
Is this how liberals, feminists, and their friends behave? Is this how people in their social circles act? Is this really a believable course of action to them? When they read this did they really think to themselves, ‘yeah, that’s how my friends would act‘?
If feminists really surround themselves with people like those in Jackie’s story, it’s no wonder they’re so screwed up. I’d feel pity for them if they weren’t so evil.
Maybe feminists should stop trying to dismantle the patriarchy and instead work on finding some better friends.
Or are they just so hatefully bitter that even if they know their friends wouldn’t act like that, they’d think everyone outside their bubble would?
I have seen a lot of false rape claims, and heard of even more. Even police will admit that many reported rapes are false on their face. DNA testing alone rules out plenty of accused rapists. Vox has had a few posts on this, and he has heard many, many false rape stories, worse even than Jackie’s. At this point, I would not believe my own sister if she cried rape unless she had a police report.
Feminists are creating a rape culture by constantly going on about one. A few years ago, a guy like me would have ridden to the rescue of any woman claiming to have been raped. Now, I am more likely to roll my eyes, yawn, and go find someone who has a more interesting story.
The Shadowed Knight
The title of that article suggests an imbecile wrote it…
A.J.P.
Naturally, I am referring to the article written by the coloured woman…
I think you misunderstand. No one thinks *their* friends would act like that, but those rednecks in Virginia? Those outgroup troglodytes who pledge frats? Those gun-toting lunatics in flyover country?
Ya, they would *totally* act like that. *They’re not like us*
Did any of these people believe Juanita Broderick or Paula Jones?
You hit on the key point when you described the willingness to believe the description of the behavior of the friends. Ordinary people don’t behave that way.
Based on the people that I knew in college, that frat house would have been a smouldering pile of ashes by morning if a friend had been assaulted like that.
You left out one reservation. It depends on how much trustworthy in general was your allegedly raped friend before. Someone known for making things up would be not believed as much, right?
Sailer had an essay on why Blackmail is illegal. Why actions that individually were legal, but when taken in combination where illegal. You can go to a person that you have damaging information about and strike an arrangement for confidentiality. You can go public with the claims. But to threaten to go public and demand money for silence is illegal.
The reason given was that were it not illegal then there would be more false claims.
The cultural demands of women in the treatment of any claim of rape is based on the fact that if it gets down to he said/she said then the accuser loses without proof. And this causes women to not report, therefore the problem is believed less widespread than it is.
But, to do what women say they want, leads to more false claims, more “adventuresses” blackmailing men with “Pay me or I scream Rape.” and likewise, any desire for revenge against any man any time. And the blackmail would be somewhat implicit in men’s dealings with women, in the form of implied threat. And in my experience, many women will use any women they have without any guilt.
The benefit of Uva is that it is proof that unstable women will do this, that massive numbers of people are wanting to believe it, and it shows how innocent men and groups are caught up in this. It sheds doubt on the false statistic of 20%, forces people to realize how stupid that statistic is, how it defies logic, defies what you see in front of your face.
I ask, what is the social benefit of smearing Bill Cosby? You could say the whole thing is nothing more than blackmail, a grab for money, and even if isn’t entirely, the claims by the women can never be substantiated, the cases would never work in court. Yet Cosby is damaged, even if innocent. And his accusers walk away Scott free if lying, hopefully with hush money, and oodles of attention to boot.
This emboldens others, more false claims, a gold rush in false claims, for any and all purposes.
At some point, women are going to have to agree to take responsibility for their actions, to not put themselves into situations where they could loose control, that for the greater social good, and because of reality, things like false rape blackmail, personal responsibility is necessary.
There is one way to stop both these “date rape”/”acquaintance rape”/”YesMeansYes Rape” and also false rape claims, and that is due process of law and awareness by women that a man is protected by due process of law and to not put herself in a situation where she might not give consent.
Obviously these folks have never heard of the phrase “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”.
Or has it been superseded by “Man bad, woman good”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony#Philosophy
The Anonymous above was also me.