You Won't Win By Setting Aside The Presumption of Innocence And The Requirements Of Due Process

Note:  I'm coming to think that when issues of rights get involved with sex, especially sex of the kind that hook-up "culture" encourages that everyone goes stupid.   Or enough people to make it seem like everyone has.   The speed with which what started out as an obviously necessary effort to out men who had raped, assaulted, and harassed women has degenerated into a number of huge messes also leads me to think that unless everyone draw some distinctions very fast that the whole thing will turn into a complete hash.   I've tried writing this post several times and have come to the conclusion that there's no straight line through the problem because too many people are including too many, different, sometimes unrelated issues under one category.  You can't do that and expect anything but a mess.

As it has developed over the past two and a half months the wave of accusations of sexual harassment against men has grown and expanded and has come to cover a large number of accusations against men who are accused of everything from legally defined rape to being guilty of looking at women the wrong way.   And with the expansion of what has been included.  under the #MeToo umbrella includes everything from serious actual crimes -singly and committed against large numbers of women - to illegal harassment to understandably obnoxious behavior to, as I mentioned, women objecting to how a man looks at them - as was claimed against one of the psychology profs at Dartmouth.   And there is also a range of evidence and documentation supporting the accusations, from what looks like it should have gotten action by the police and prosecutors to the merest accusation and even just internet rumors based on supposition*.

Is this defined as a problem too big to achieve a satisfactory outcome?   After looking at the opposing manifestos of the groups represented by Catherine Deneuve and Caroline Haas (agreeing far more with Haas than Deneuve), the same in the United States, of Samantha Bee's piece on it last week, I think it's in danger of imploding due to that.  It is certainly being attacked on the basis of claims which can be characterized as extravagant or false.  Any false claims will be magnified to attack claims of even genuine crimes, they are probably the worst enemy of those who want to make progress against the assault and harassment of Women.

I don't know if this is going to become a feature of life online but I do know it's probably not sustainable, the excesses damaging the original or the most important intentions of those who started it and those who seriously want to stop as much of the actual abuse as possible.   As things such as the obviously political accusations against Al Franken came to be associated with it, I was certain that a backlash against it was inevitable and that stage of things has been reached.  Other than any innocent people whose lives will be damaged or their careers destroyed, the even greater tragedy of this is that the serious goals of #MeToo will be side tracked.   

One of the problems is that the desire to be all inclusive of the wrongs people claim has overshadowed the need to acknowledge that false accusations are bound to be part of any such manifestation, especially in the age of online gossip.   Any such false accusations demonstrated to be false or even just successfully refuted with the general public due to insufficient evidence will inevitably lead to the discrediting of real accusations of crimes and wrongs.   Which are real and which are false can't be known except through the presentation of evidence and its evaluation and, especially when it's sex,  I doubt that's possible in many cases. 

That is the use those already made are being put to by those who don't want things to change as a result of #MeToo.   And I doubt there is any way to keep them from using discredited accusations that way.  I know those made against Al Franken, when I saw what was presented as "evidence" and the history of Leann Tweeden with Republican ratfuckers were what first led me to think that the most basic rules of fairness to those accused had been set aside.  

You can assert that the women "must be believed" because of the role that not believing women played in allowing the conditions that allowed the rape and harassment to persist as it had but that's not sustainable.  No ones credibility should rest on their identity, if you claim that right for Women, I guarantee you that Men will claim the same right and they'll get it.   The solution is the presentation of evidence and its fair evaluation, not taking accusations or claims of innocence on faith.  

It's not just or right to judge any individual case on the basis of assumed trends in other cases because every case can only be judged on the basis of the evidence of guilt.  

I have been telling people that for more than five years in a case of accusations made and believed on the basis of no evidence against gay men.   If women aren't traditionally believed when they expose someone who has wronged them, the opposite was traditionally the case for gay men.  Gay men would be believed to be guilty of whatever they were accused of, even, in many cases when they were the victims of beatings or even murder in which the murderer or attacker said they did it because the gay man came onto them.  That even worked when the victim was straight, in some cases.    As I was able to point out, even then, 2011, there were papers being published in law journals against banning the "gay panic" defense even in murder cases because the lawyers advocating it be retained said jurors were going to believe it, anyway.  

The solution to both cases, at least in the case of actual crimes, is to demand that evidence produced be evaluated and considered, when that is possible.  When there is no evidence that meets legal requirements injustice may be unavoidable but foregoing that in assessing guilt is a guarantee that there is going to be injustice.   

When you mix sex into wrongdoing, especially when it is possible that the victim might have consented to what happened and there are no witnesses to that consent or refusal (as there generally are not) knowing who to believe can't be assumed to be knowable on the basis of gender or identity.   If you want a good illustration of that, consider the traditional assumption that no White Woman would give free consent to have sex with a Black Man and the consequences for Black Men accused of rape.  Then, it was automatically assumed that the Black Man was lying based on his identity.   And there didn't even have to be any sex involved or even an accusation made by a White Woman,  Mere suspicion was often enough to get a Black Man killed.   You can substitute the term Gay Man for Black Man and Straight Man for White Woman and you might get what I'm talking about. 

Consider that when due process broke down in these instances, it was members of the dominant power, straight, White Men, who were most likely to be the ultimate beneficiaries of that, it wasn't gay men.  It was LGBT People, it was Black People, and it is Women who are most likely to be the ultimate losers if due process, both in law and other levels of enforcement is not applied.   Insisting on due process is a protection for Women as it is for Men of any gender or racial or ethnic identity. 

I think a lot of this is the consequence of the reduction of formality in places of business, in schools.  I think it's likely that if there are monetary consequences for corporations and schools in this that it might lead to a wise reintroduction of policies against co-workers having romantic or sexual relationships.  IF THEY ARE REINSTATED THERE SHOULD BE A POLICY THAT WHEN THERE IS A VIOLATION THAT THE FIRST ONE FIRED WILL BE THE ONE IN A SUPERIOR POSITION IN THE CORPORATION.   That would be wise as well as just because it would probably make bosses think harder about coming on to and pressuring an employee to have sex.  

I also think it should lead to schools, especially colleges and universities, to enforce a ban on romantic and sexual relationships between teachers and staff with students.  Faculty should know they could lose their job if they come onto a student and evidence of that can be produced.  I'd go so far as to ban private meetings between them.  There should also be more effective bans against the consumption of alcohol and drugs which are certainly a big part of producing the problem.  What it can do to convince girls and boys that they really shouldn't get drunk or go with strangers in bars who pick them up I don't know, I do know that if we're going to consider people of college age to be adults then they don't get to claim some kind of right to do stupid stuff like getting sloshed or agreeing to go someplace they could be attacked and raped and that the responsibility for them doing so falls on the college or university.   

Again,  people don't have a right to be stupid, that is being stupid, voluntarily through getting drunk or letting their libido do their thinking for them.  People who are unintelligent through no choice of their own need protection of a kind that college students would reject as infantilizing them even as they choose to diminish their own capacities.   What they're doing by doing those things, especially in places like pick-up bars is volunteering to be victimized by people who want to take advantage of the, either by their consent while being voluntarily stupid-drunk or by force if they don't give consent.  If they were robbed or beaten up intead of raped, I don't think they'd fail to see the point.   

If they gave their consent, even stupid-drunk then they are guilty of making a fool of themselves, if they didn't give consent they are the victims of a crime, unfortunately, due to their going into danger voluntarily the crime will probably be impossible to prove.   Of course you'll be able to think of all kinds of cases and accusations that don't fit those closely but the problem is that they will be refuted by people who claim they do and there is seldom anyone who can produce evidence to refute them.  If the guy who they claim raped them was stupid-drunk, as he might well have been, it doesn't help.  

I am beginning to think the drinking age should be 45, though there are plenty of people I'm reading online who make me think that's too low. 

Keeping yourself safe is going to do you a lot more good than insisting that the police or prosecutors or the college or university get you justice, which will often be impossible due to putting yourself in a condition to be victimized, especially when there is no one to witness whether or not you gave consent.   If the only thing to judge by is your going back to some guy's place, voluntarily, it doesn't matter how wrong it seems to include that in deciding who a jury believes because it's going to happen anyway.  Your best buddy online won't tell you that but I just did.  And I say it to any man, especially any gay man as much as I would a woman or girl.  In fact, I've said it to gay men for years.  And I will say to any man who wants to get a woman or girl or man or boy back to his place so he can have sex with them, you're putting yourself into a situation to have accusations made against you.   I don't have any sympathy for men who do stupid stuff and get accused of assault or rape falsely.  I'll save my sympathy for people who didn't put themselves in harms way knowingly or through choosing to be drunk in a pick-up bar or frat party.

I am also coming to think that unless these problems are considered in smaller, sorted categories improving things won't be possible because #MeToo has come to mean too many different things to be effectively sustained.

*   I will not go into the case of Aziz Ansari and the accusations at the site "Babe" because I'm not familiar with him or the site or the accusation except to say maybe that's unavoidable when people pick up strangers for sex and that it's incredibly stupid to encourage people to do it.  I'd say any website that encourages women to hook up with strangers is encouraging a percentage of them to put themselves in a situation that could lead them their being raped or maybe murdered.  As far as I've read about it, "Babe" is a site run by a bunch of irresponsible jerks who, like so many jerks online, are mostly interested in generating traffic for their site through being irresponsible jerks.  And I'll say that anyone who slams second-wave feminism on the basis I've been reading from such people is too stupid and irresponsible to produce anything good.   Why not slam the suffrage movement and really make asses of yourselves.

I will advise Ansari and other men who participate in hooking up,  you are setting yourself up for those kinds of accusations, that's not going to stop so maybe you should consider what happened here as an indication that it's not the best idea you've ever had.