The latest gloating meme clotting up my email is this one; a lot of MRAs seem to think this is an irrefutable argument against feminism by a man who supports feminism, me.
The incident actually happened, and those are my words. I have no problem with that. However, it’s not making a point in their favor.
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That the incident occurred does not refute anything I’ve ever said; false rape accusations do occur. But notice the last point; they’re relatively rare.
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In over 30 years of teaching, this was the only time a woman attempted to extort me. Once. In 30 years. At the same time, every year I have heard of rapes and/or attempted rapes on my campuses. Final point stands confirmed.
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One thing not mentioned in the story: when I went to immediately report this incident, I was not questioned. No one asked me if I’d led her on; no one thought I was making up a story to hurt a young woman; I was taken seriously and the complaint was addressed seriously. In part it was because I acted promptly and got witnesses, but let’s have no illusions — as a man, my word counts for more.
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Perhaps the most important lesson, that my smirking taunters ought to learn, is that I did not come away from this unpleasant occasion with the idea that all women are conniving “bitches”. I was able to recognize that this was an unusual circumstance with a desperate young woman who was not plotting against me, but on the spur of the moment tried an unlikely ploy to save her grade.
So yes, please do keep trying to strike against me or my reputation with these kinds of games. Only an MRA would think this anecdote is somehow damning.
Yeah, that’s a pretty frightening story. But, I have never heard of anything like that happening at any university where I have studied or taught. So it’s definitely rare. Disgruntled grad students occasionally murder professors; as far as I know that’s actually more common.
While this may address the arguments, it completely ignores the use of different font sizes. And they spelt the name correctly. But of course that gets swept under the carpet too. For shame.
False accusations of sexual assault: a literally once-in-a-lifetime incident, and actually really easy to deal with through proper channels.
I don’t see how the concession that false rape claims do in fact happen at all diminishes the fact that most rape go unreported, or that one out of three women experience sexual or physical violence, or that our society treats rape victims as pariahs and supports rapists, or that most rape claims are NOT false. I work for an innocence project, and I’m familiar with a variety of demonstrably false rape claims. Some are malicious like in the Brian Banks case. Others are rapes that actually occur but tragically imprison the wrong person, as in the case of Ronald Cotton. Maybe MRAs could learn from these men. They were exonerated and did not dedicate their lives to misogyny. You’d think they would have more reason to. All it took for most MRAs was being turned down for a date.
Azkyroth @3 nails it.
I’m beginning to suspect that these folks aren’t all that good at thinking.
Just kidding, I’ve know they weren’t good at thinking for quiet some time.
People have faked their own deaths, so that means all corpses are rotten liars until proven otherwise. Or something like that.
Rotten liars until rotten?
It’s find to use a person’s own words against them, but it works better if you actually catch them in a contradiction. Dumbasses.
@Tabby Lavalamp #6: Plus they were probably asking for it.
Of course they were, John Horstman! If you don’t want to be brutally murdered, don’t go asking for it by being born!
Slymepitters gotta slyme.
Dear MRAs,
Please balance this equation for us, in order that we may understand each other better:
One threat of a false accusation of a man by a woman = ?.?? x 10^? actual rapes of a woman by a man.
But clearly, anecdote = data, so this one anecdote should tell us the default assumption we should make in the face of all rape accusations. Even if the person who told said anecdote disagrees with this conclusion. Right guys? /skepticism
Neither majorities nor minorities should play dirty. But if a minority member plays dirty, that means the playing field is even, and they’re actually the majority. Or something.
Thanks for posting this, PZ.
Bullet point two doesn’t really confirm anything, PZ. While I agree with the claim, your experience is anecdotal and not systematic. Does anyone know of any rigorous estimates?
In the same vein of pedantry, I’ve corrected your introductory statement, Justin.
Perhaps start here?
I love these things.
“But someday, a woman might accuse you of sexual assault/harassment, and then you’ll be sorry!”
Well, first of all, I make it a habit to avoid assaulting and harassing women. My odds of being accused drop from that alone. Second of all, yeah, I might get falsely accused. It happens, if rarely. I hope whatever authority that handles the accusation takes it seriously. I might even be inconvenienced, or asked to take some time off while the investigation is underway. Some women might become leery of being around me. That’s all ok. That’s small potatoes. I’ll deal, and take comfort in the fact that these methods will be helpful to victims.
Jacob Schmidt wrote:
Yeah, that takes a special kind of person to live their lives in fear of that. I mean, someone could falsely accuse me of murder, or assault, or theft, or fraud, but I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about the exceedingly distant possibility of any of these.
They are truly juvenile. It takes no leap of imagination to go from these idiots to the vindictiveness of school playground arguments and namecalling… yes, primary school level.
Am I completely off-track here or does their argument defeat itself?
Paraphrasing: “PZ Myers had to act fast because in a he-said-she-said situation, people would believe the woman. […] Does it happen more often that men take advantage or that women lie?”
But – isn’t that precisely because of the prior probabilities that people would believe the woman? Precisely because it is (on average, not in a particular case) more likely that a man took advantage than that the woman just lied?
In other words: If it were more common that women lied about harassment than that women acutally are harassed – why would people believe the woman, and why would PZ have had to act fast?
Disn’t the MRAs just disprove their own point?
A personal view as a male:
All my adult life, having an active imagination, I’ve been afraid of such a thing happening to me. Knowing myself as a HSP, I would be deeply scarred by such an accusation, even if it would be taken seriously for no more than a single minute. I’ve had my professional and personal quarrels with both male and female adversaries, so this kind of tactics would be theoretically quite easy for women to employ. So, when I was in my twenties or so, I would have been eager to question even a rape accusation in light of this fear.
However, having now experienced human interactions for over two decades more, I’ve realized that such a theoretical scenario is highly unusual in practice. And very, very few women would ever even consider employing such despicable tactics in their life. And the women, who would do so, would most likely have psychological problems on their own to begin with, and rather need my help than my fear.
Also, a few years ago a colleague of mine was a victim of a very public rape accusation, which was eventually admitted to be a total fabrication by a troubled female acquaintance. After a police investigation, my colleague was quite easily cleared and has had no trouble afterwards, neither professionally nor in his relationships. I believe the accuser has received help for her problems.
So, while I still understand the fear that many sensitive and conscientious younger men may feel about a possibility of a false rape accusation, in practice they should probably have little to nonexistent fear of such false accusations. At least I don’t.
However, most women do fear the possibility of sexual violence, and sadly, this fear is not even nearly as far-fetched as mine was.
BTW
I hope she got help.
If you poke MRAs about “false rape accusations”, you’ll often find that they’re not referring to completely fabricated events, but to rape that isn’t “proper” rape, because “she was asking for it”, or “she wanted it really”, or some other disgusting excuse. From an objective point of view, they’re not worried about false rape accusations, but actual rape accusations.
Once you take this into account, their rhetoric makes far more sense. At least from their warped perspective.
Your critics have a way of presenting your past statements as evidence that you’re really the real sexist. It’s the exact same thing as when Republicans drag out Robert Byrd’s membership in the KKK as evidence that Democrats are the real racists.
It’s as if they think you can only ever hold one opinion and stick with it for the rest of your life. At one time you said something racist / sexist / homophobic / whatever, so that means you’re a racist / sexist / homophobe / whatever.
Except in this case I haven’t changed my views! I pointed out this example of a real-life anecdote, but it did not prejudice me against women forever.
#22: She was concerned about getting into optometry school. Her poor grade in my class did not prevent her from graduating, but probably did make it harder for her to get into a good professional program — the last I heard about her (this was many years ago), she was sending out lots of applications. Don’t know if she got in.
She didn’t get a recommendation from me, but there were no actions taken against her. Again, reacting quickly saved me from embarrassment, but also probably spared her from more serious ethical investigations that would have really blighted her career prospects.
What grade would you give to a student who used an n=1 for one side of an experiment, and n=entire campus, on the other?
The only female college student directly mentioned (in a post about her not being a student anymore) in Pharyngula on May 15, 2010, is actually related to PZ Myers.
PZ – If you feel like sharing the info, what actually happened after you consulted your dept. chair? How was the situation handled/defused?
Never mind, found it. It was in a comment. I wanted to see it in context because even coming from PZ it still bothers me a bit.
@ corwyn #26
You definitely get an F for DoE. The first sample size would be the sum of all female students that took a course with the OP during that timeframe.
> Who you believe says a lot about who you are… Which happens more often? That men unchecked will take sexual advantage of young women? Or that women will lie about being abused?
That really is an interesting question.
Not very happy about weighing in on the wrong side of these questions, or keeping company with some very unsavory people, but here goes….
The answer to the first question is easy: I’ve always believed that who I am is somebody who relies upon evidence to form his worldview. So I did a quick survey of the intertubes for decent evidence that might address that question.
The evidence is infamously difficult to interpret. The best available figures on rates of false reporting: between 2% and 10% of all rape reports result in charges against the person reporting for providing false evidence (not conviction, or actual rates of false reporting which cannot be reliably determined). Source: literature survey at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape, outliers discarded due to questions on sound methodology. This sounds like awfully strong evidence, until you weight it against the the following statistic: between 3% and 8% of all reports of rape result in prosecution (not conviction, or actual rates of true reporting which cannot be determined). Source: various secondary sources like this one: http://www.uky.edu/CRVAW/files/TopTen/07_Rape_Prosecution.pdf . Admittedly not quite comparable statistics, since I suspect that rate of charges laid is not the same as rate at which “prosecution” is pursued in either situation. And I concede that I was not able to find reliable primary sources for data on the rate of prosecution, of rape cases without having to build spreadsheets of my own from raw crime statistics. But one works with what one can get.
As best i can tell, the evidence says: that’s a very difficult question to answer.
Curiosity can be very inconvenient sometimes. It WAS an interesting question, and the results were (I thought) interesting enough to share. Let the ***storm begin. :-(
Counterpoint in advance: yes, I realize that the question is indirectly related to the topic of THIS posting, which does make a valid point.
Don’t you run the risk of falsely being put in the same camp as Shermer? I could see MRAs concot a “what do you do when someone pulls the pin and hands you a grenade?” scenerio via a false statement accusing you of sexual assault. With your student encounter, aren’t you at high risk of character assassination and defamation?
Just to clarify, I was in no way stating that the original “what do you do when someone pulls the pin and hands you a grenade?” thread was in any way false. Rather could that truth be twisted into a lie by MRAs and used against PZ based on his student encounter.
#28: She was immediately taken to the office of the department chair, with women faculty present, to discuss the severity of her accusation. She apologized. It was over.
#32: The difference from the Shermer story is that there are multiple testimonies to the facts of the case, and a history of deplorable behavior, which I confirmed before publishing the direct account of the woman involved. That was not a story with no foundation and no antecedents.
You’re doing exactly what the MRAs are doing: straining desperately to make the two situations analogous.
@ragdish 32:
Corroboration is the key difference.
@PZ 34:
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t you say in the past that you didn’t care if the MRAs used this tactic against you because, at worst you’d have a bunch of women slightly more leery around you at cons and it wasn’t such a big deal, and you’d prefer your name tarnished than to silence yourself about actual abusers?
#34: That was not my intent. My sincere apologies if it did.
This kind of pre-emptive whining about persecution is fundamentally dishonest: it’s an attempt to characterise criticism as unfair before any such criticsim has been given; IOW, it’s a kind of well-poisoning.
@30: Only if the OP surveyed ALL professors who also had those students. N is the number of (potential) victims. Flip the variables around and see if you still agree with the methodology. “I have only been raped once in 30 years, but I have heard of cases of rape accusation extortion every year.”
I agree with most of the thoughts here, in that false accusations are relatively rare, but I am surprised how quick everyone seems to be to forgive someone for essentially threatening someone’s reputation, job and personal life. Even PZ, the victim here, describes it as “an unusual circumstance with a desperate young woman who was not plotting against me, but on the spur of the moment tried an unlikely ploy to save her grade”. Yes, she didn’t follow through, but is what she did any better than threatening violence? Would “give me a better grade or I’ll punch you in the face” also just be “an unusual circumstance with a desperate young person who was not plotting against me, but on the spur of the moment tried an unlikely ploy to save their grade”?
P.Z,, yes, that’s frightening enough, and I can certainly empathize, but consider for a moment what we sexual minorities face. From the time I came out as a gay man in 1994, to the time I retired in 2003, I worked in three jobs, and in all three of them, was accused by virulently homophobic fellow male co-workers of sexual harassment. In all three cases, there was an investigation, and in all three cases, I was exonerated.
When I came out, I was fully prepared for this kind of thing to happen, and sure enough, it did. One should understand that whenever one is honest about being a member of an unpopular minority, harassment and intimidation can be expected to be used against you or to extort you. Discrimination and blackmail becomes routine and expected, even at the highest levels. In one case, I heard from a friend who worked there, that I had been shortlisted for a technical vice presidency at a major media outlet, but when it was discovered that I am gay, the senior VP scratched me off the list. I went to work at another company, and much to my dismay, about a year later, that same senior VP was hired by my employer as a VP over my division. My life was made a living hell until I finally quit three years later. In my exit interview (by his boss, the subsidiary president), I explained my reasons for quitting and suggested that she ask my coworkers what my experience had been. Within a month, he was gone.
The point is that such abuse as you experienced is hardly rare and is much more common than you might think. I like to joke that I am a member of so many unpopular minorities, that there’s not a person on the planet who couldn’t find a handy reason to hate my guts. As a gay man, a political leftist, a militant atheist, a non-patriot, and an anti-capitalist, I get it from just about all sides, and allegations of sexual harassment is the favorite method. So while I can certainly empathize and understand how you felt in that experience, you ain’t seen nothin’ till you’ve been in my shoes for awhile. So spare a thought for us combination sexual/religious/political minorities.
Scott @40:
While I sympathize with your issues, and they are real issues, there are a couple of key differences.
1) The accusers in your case were male. This seemingly trivial point is quite significant, in that it relies on the inherent male privilege of being believed more readily, as well as the false ‘if it bothered a guy, it must be really bad’ idea that only women whine about little things.
2) You were also quickly exonerated (and good for the company for not attempting to smear you or pressure you to leave because of others).
So I don’t think your experience disagrees at all with PZ’s. And you are a member one of the disadvantaged minorities, but don’t use that to downplay the disadvantage faced by others, please. Women have some things that are much harder simply based on their gender. Racial minorities have some thing that are much harder just based on their skin color, accent, etc.
Now, imagine being a gay, black woman……
Let me get this straight… Nobody here is claiming that false rape allegations DON’T HAPPEN. It’s obviously something that does happen. People here are arguing that it’s rare…except it’s NOT RARE. Obviously statistics point to the FACT that more rape allegations have truth to them or are true. However, even if the number is as low as 2%–that doesn’t mean it’s something that is RARE. Do you know that only 2% of the world’s population is naturally blonde? Would you call having naturally blonde hair RARE? I suppose it depends on where you are–but 2% is hardly rare when taking into account the number of people that are raped.
If 200,000 people make rape allegations, using the statistic of 2%, that means 4,000 people a year are falsely accused of rape. Of course the point that Tavris made in her speech at TAM is interesting–how remembering can have an effect on people’s perception. But let’s pretend that the world is black and white for a minute. That means that from the period of 2008-2014, 28,000 people would have been falsely accused of rape–in the United States alone.
Yes, it happens LESS than actual rapes. NO, it is NOT RARE. The existence of these cases, and cases like PZ Myers here, give credence to Tavris’s point that we must remain skeptical and ask for EVIDENCE at all times. That doesn’t mean we’re rape apologists and it doesn’t mean we’re calling the accuser a LIAR (you should watch her speech, she does a great job of outlining this point).
This brings me to Michael Shermer. PZ Myers discusses how he had known Shermer to behave badly at other events. He was a ‘cad’ I guess. He also published the account of a woman who said that Shermer kept her glass full (of alcohol). Perhaps these incidents speak to his character, but they CERTAINLY don’t make him a rapist. Perhaps Shermer thought he was being charming. Once again you have two differing perspectives here. (I know, I know–only the FEMALE’S perspective matters, right? Like the old story about Watson and the guy in the elevator… Except that’s not reality. Yes, we should be observant of others’ emotions and try not to distress them… Granted. However, there are times when one person is genuinely trying to be kind and is honestly misconstrued. Imagine a big, hulking man following you down a dark alley smiling widely. He might think his smile would let you know that he’s not threatening and that he would just like to return to you the wallet you dropped. You might think he’s a terrifying stalker.)
Carol Tavis mentions how different actions are perceived by the various parties involved. Also, we (as the audience) will inevitably form an opinion about a situation immediately–even if it’s based upon unrelated evidence. Knowing what PZ Myers already thought about Shermer, it’s not a surprise that he would assume that this accusations were TRUE. He immediately published the anonymous accusation and put the full authority of his belief in the account behind the accuser.
Skeptics immediately questioned the account. Note that this does NOT MEAN that they immediately came down on the side of the accused. Skeptics, however, did take issue with some aspects of the story and the way it was presented. It wasn’t first–or even secondhand. The letter is careful never to use the word rape. It’s anonymous and corroborated by anonymous sources. No one could question the ‘evidence’ being presented and it was never reported and thus there was absolutely no way to DISPROVE the allegation.
Were skeptics WRONG to question the accuser? Absolutely NOT. Skeptics SHOULD question. That DOES NOT MEAN that they need to ‘take a side.’ However, most of these skeptics were labeled ‘rape apologists’ for not just accepting the account as it was delivered. And it was not delivered well. Even if the account WERE 100% true, it’s possible that one or both parties (being that they were likely inebriated) did not correctly remember or ‘misremembered’ events. Perhaps Shermer honestly believes that this woman consented and even remembers her consenting. The MOST COMMON way both MEN AND WOMEN consent is to simply not resist the sexual advances of the other person involved. Perhaps she thinks she resisted or said no–but never did. Perhaps she had sex with him, regretted it, and misremembered afterwards. Perhaps she was just raped. The point is that there is no way to possibly know what REALLY happened–as neither party likely knows exactly what happened.
However–we’re rape apologists and not skeptics if we question the account? PZ Myers would have you believe so.
We are supposed to take his word for it. He knows the ‘anonymous’ girl. She wouldn’t do something like that. He knows Shermer is a cad. Therefore, she was RAPED. No room for skepticism at all there.
I wonder though… What if the girl that accused PZ Myers of rape had gotten one of her friends to corroborate the story? What if it wasn’t just ‘spur of the moment’? This was a way of saving her grade. She thought about it, she executed it…what if she had a friend willing to go along with it?
Better yet, what if it was just someone with a bone to pick with PZ? What if this person made an anonymous phone call or wrote a letter to the campus police about him sexually assaulting her? There’d likely be an investigation. That’s more than Shermer got. Maybe this girl would make the letter public…perhaps using a trusted source as the method.
One girl made up a LIE about you PZ. Another girl might make up a LIE about someone else. You don’t KNOW that she was telling the truth, you assumed it because you trusted the author and had preconceived notions about Shermer’s character.
You decided to publish it anyway. It’s because in truth you’re NOT a skeptic. You have already shown disdain for the term as it is… You’re not a skeptic and you believe that feminism and skepticism are mutually exclusive.
And that’s sad.
Yes it is rare. What you want us to do is to disbelieve all allegations of rape.
Shermer’s bad actions toward women is well known. Unless you also act badly toward women, why try to defend the indefensible? Unless you rape to except in name only….
Its so sad you can’t tell the truth and recognize the truth.
Doesn’t matter what he thought he was doing. If he took advantage of her drug-lowered inhibitions to have sex with her, then he raped her. That the drug in question is alcohol is neither here nor there.
Why is this simple concept apparently so bloody hard to understand?
@buckbuckerson #42, you’re not a very good Skeptic. You’ve got your facts wrong.
Brief rundown of the Fail:
The letter was firsthand.
The letter-writer said this (note the use of the first person):
Having sex with someone who can’t consent is the definition of rape. Who gives a fuck if she didn’t use the word?
They’re anonymous to you and me, because PZ didn’t share their names. PZ Myers knows the accuser and the corroborator.
What does that even mean? The evidence is a first-person account. Dude, you’re free to “question” all you like, but PZ’s blog isn’t a fucking court of law and “proof” applies only to mathematics and formal logic.
Here you are, lecturing us all about “Skepticism,” and you’ve got your basic facts wrong.
Advanced Skeptic Protip: Next time, before you weigh in on a topic, don’t rely on what your friends told you so-and-so wrote on his blog. Read it for yourself first.
Read it here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/
buckbuckerson:
I don’t know who you were reading, but the “skeptics” I recall “questioning the account” definitely defended Shermer.
Maybe you should go read the Grenade thread.
Scott @40:
I’m truly sorry for how horribly you were treated. Such discrimination and blackmail is vile.
I don’t, however, think the above is true for everyone. Certainly it wasn’t true in my case.