“The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you people, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you people would go along with them on the assumption — the evil assumption —that all males lie, that all males are basically immoral beings, that all males are not to be trusted around women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, people, we know is in itself a lie, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some males lie, some males are immoral, some males are not to be trusted around women. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular gender.”
(Lightly edited from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird)
A straw man? Perhaps, but #BelieveWomen and #NotAllMen make me wonder.
READER COMMENTS
Thaomas
Mar 9 2020 at 3:49pm
Of course. Men lie. Women lie. But when the statements are “He assaulted me” and “I did not,” (and no external reason to disbelieve either) one has to come down to a prior, who under the circumstances has the greatest incentive to lie. Nowadays, a woman would suffer little from admitting to have had a consensual relation with a man, so ceteris paribus, she has little to gain from lying.
john hare
Mar 9 2020 at 7:33pm
Some women will lie to hurt the man. Under many conditions, guilty until proven innocent, and sometimes after holds. There are many sayings that work against an accused; “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” for one. I have seen it and heard it many times. There seems to be very little risk to a woman falsely accusing a man.
Some people, men and women, are just dishonest. One of the leading clues is how much effort they spend trying to convince you of their integrity.
Thaomas
Mar 10 2020 at 9:34am
Let me point out that belief and the action that should result are two different things. One might believe the accuser but not “beyond the shadow of doubt” and so vote “not guilty” on a jury where the sentence will be death or life imprisonment.
I notice that I could never get some of my friends who supported Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court to say whether they believed, in a 50/50 sense, his accusers. I interpreted this to mean that they weighed the cost of his non-conformation so highly that they were applying a much higher standard of belief but did not want to say so.
Mark Z
Mar 9 2020 at 8:04pm
What exactly do men gain from assaulting women? Not much, it seems. Should we approach such accusations with a prior of, “the crime he’s accused of is senseless, there’s no rational reason for doing it, I or any normal person would never do it, so my prior is he almost certainly didn’t?”
The reality is, people who commit violent crimes, whether sexual assault, murder, or falsely accusing someone of such crimes (which I would include as a violent crime give its consequence) tend to do so for atypical, pathological reasons. E.g. irrational hatred or anger, sadism, mental illness, etc. I think these are as plausible motives for falsely accusing someone of something as for personally doing violence against someone. They have the advantage, moreover, of allowing one to outsource the work to the state, and having a much lower chance of getting in trouble.
Thomas Sewell
Mar 11 2020 at 12:12am
What you seem to be implying is that everyone should generally believe all accusers unless there is additional evidence to prove them wrong.
So if someone states that Thaomas has assaulted them, but you deny it, without any further evidence (let’s say they can’t recall enough about the assault, for example, the location or exact date, for there to be any additional evidence), we should all believe them rather than you, correct?
That’s actually your personal preference and belief?
Have you ever considered that it’s okay to just not come to a conclusion about an issue when there is insufficient evidence to prove something one way or the other?
Fred_in_PA
Mar 11 2020 at 1:15am
I wonder if some of the accusations aren’t “false truths”.
That is, the woman believes what she is saying even though it isn’t true.
We’ve known since the early sex studies (not sure whether this was Kinsey or Masters & Johnson) . . . but we’ve known for a long time that women are normally at a lower level of sexual arousal than men. But that, once aroused, they will generally become more aroused than their partner; faster heart-rate, higher adrenaline levels, greater excitement, more sweating, etc.
Anyone who’s had a teenage daughter (or owned an un-spayed female dog) has worried about their sexual drive / sexual hunger. What madness are they likely to fall into when the hormones kick in?
And the prevailing model of memory (I think) is that it’s stories we repeat to ourselves about what happened. (And that, upon retelling, the stories often get distorted.)
Suppose the man is trying to win her to his bed and he succeeds in getting her aroused. And she falls. (Note that metaphor of falling includes the idea that you can’t help yourself as you go hurtling past the 23rd floor on your way to the pavement below. There may still be a small part of your brain that knows this is all a horrible mistake, but you haven’t the means to overcome the situation in which you’re gripped.)
Comes Monday morning, and she is no longer in the grip of Saturday night’s madness. Indeed, she has trouble trying to re-experience it. It seems so outside of her normal (or her present) experience.
She finds herself musing that, “I can’t believe I was such an animal (or such a slut).”
And gradually, after many re-tellings, that becomes the story as she remembers it. She knows it happened, but she can’t believe how eagerly she consented — even begged him on.
Saturday night, it was consensual. It was mutually (and rabidly) desired.
Six months later, it wasn’t. (Especially, if he’s done nothing in the meantime to keep her emotionally engaged in their relationship.)
So she’s telling the truth as she (now) remembers it.
Except that’s not the way it actually happened.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I do agree with at least the first part of Mark Z’s post: Given the loose sexual more’s of our times and the ease of finding a willing partner, “the crime he’s accused of is senseless, there’s no rational reason for doing it, I or any normal person would never do it, so my prior is he almost certainly didn’t?”
Fred_in_PA
Mar 11 2020 at 11:39pm
In fairness, you can spin this story the other way.
That the man, in order to preserve his self-image as a “good-guy”, has selectively forgotten all the plotting and planning he went through to achieve this result. Has selectively forgotten how aggressively he pushed ahead against her protestations that “I really must go.” How “Please” could have meant “Please, No.” just as easily as “Please, Yes.”
So his memory — that it was all consensual — could be just as false as hers was.
Perhaps the lesson is that memories — even honestly believed ones — may not be a very good record of what actually occurred.
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