{"id":41279,"date":"2017-12-16T05:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T10:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41279"},"modified":"2017-12-15T13:58:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T18:58:31","slug":"when-righteous-fury-slides-into-moral-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/12\/16\/when-righteous-fury-slides-into-moral-panic\/","title":{"rendered":"When righteous fury slides into moral panic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle<\/a> on the dangers of believing all accusations of sexual impropriety and eliding mere crass behaviour with violent sexual assault:<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, when we accept no limits on what constitutes a crime, and when we lower the standards of evidence for believing a crime has occurred, we aren\u2019t necessarily furthering the cause of crime-reduction.<\/p>\n

Of course, some people might say that that\u2019s just too bad, but we\u2019re going to have to expect some casualties in the war on the patriarchy. Women have left jobs for years because they couldn\u2019t stand the harassment; have found their careers stalled because they wouldn\u2019t play along; have spent far too many hours desperately trying to dodge creeping hands. Why should we weep because a few innocent men are now victims?<\/p>\n

One answer is that \u201ctruth and justice matters.\u201d That\u2019s a good answer. But if it doesn\u2019t satisfy you, here\u2019s another: Moral panics aren\u2019t good for anyone, including the victims they\u2019re trying to protect.<\/p>\n

In the early days of the University of Virginia rape scandal, when questions were first raised about Rolling Stone\u2019s story, battle lines developed between those who wondered about the rather cinematic details, and those who asserted “#IBelieveWomen.” In truth, even many of the people asking the questions confessed how uncomfortable it made them to do so (and you can add my confession to the list). How can we risk adding insult to the already-grievous injuries of a woman who has been raped, by also demanding that she prove she\u2019s not a liar? And yet, if we don\u2019t, we risk convicting people who are innocent, and damaging our own cause.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the norm of reflexively believing every accusation, and meting out harsh treatment to every man who is accused, does grave harm to the cause of fighting rape and harassment. #BelieveAllWomen elides the messy reality that women, like the rest of humanity, aren’t always telling the truth \u2014 and that even when they are, their interpretations of events is not always the most reasonable one. If we reify too many weak or false claims, the norm will quickly slide toward “believe no women.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle on the dangers of believing all accusations of sexual impropriety and eliding mere crass behaviour with violent sexual assault: Unfortunately, when we accept no limits on what constitutes a crime, and when we lower the standards of evidence for believing a crime has occurred, we aren\u2019t necessarily furthering the cause of crime-reduction. Of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,9,28,53],"tags":[931,303,255,43],"class_list":["post-41279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-law","category-media","category-politics","tag-moralpanic","tag-sexism","tag-sexuality","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aJN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41280,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279\/revisions\/41280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}