1. Women Want To Be Believed About Rape And Sexual Assault
Believe rape victims" is a fraught phrase, but what I mean is that when a woman first claims she has been raped, we should give her the same credibility as a typical car theft victim.
When someone says their car has been stolen, few people respond, "Alright, I want to believe you, but let's wait for all the facts first," or "Let's hear the car thief's side of the story." You usually go, "Oh shit. Are you okay? Do you need a ride?" Or if you just read about it in the news, maybe: "How awful! Crime is sure getting out of control in this country!" If it comes out in the news that someone lied about a car theft, you go, "What a weird twist!" and not, "You can't trust car theft victims! I am going to ask some hard questions next time!
Is this increased suspicion needed because people alleging rape are more likely to be lying than people alleging other crimes? This seems improbable. False claims are estimated to make up anywhere from 2 to 8 percent of rape reports, while 10 percent of car theft reports are false (see previous link). Also, 10 percent of insurance claims are fraudulent. I wanted to find stats on false reports of more crimes, but even a Google search like "false burglary reports percent" returns results about false rape accusations, because apparently nobody gives a rat's ass about falsely-reported crimes if they are not rape.
To make things worse, a lot of rape victims don't "act like rape victims." In one notorious case, an 18-year-old woman named Marie reported being raped by an intruder, and was disbelieved by the police and even her closest friends because of her odd behavior. She reported the rape with no emotion (Shouldn't she be hysterical?), she immediately called all her friends and talked about it (Shouldn't she hate reliving it?), she giggled and flirted the day after (Shouldn't she be traumatized?), and did many other "non-victimy" things. Marie ended up being publicly shamed in front of her counseling group for teens transitioning out of foster care, and prosecuted for false reporting, which she confessed to. Two years later, police in another state caught a serial rapist with photos of five rapes on his camera, including a picture of Marie, gagged and bound, with her driver's license on her chest. Oops!
As if rape wasn't bad enough in itself, brain science has recently discovered that trauma can have the perverse effect of making you behave in such a way that people won't believe you about it.
The near-impossible demands on rape victims lead to ridiculous situations like the Bill Cosby case. Cosby stands accused of sexually assaulting about 60 women at this point, some of whom attempted to press charges solo at various times in the past, but were dismissed and paid little attention to until Hannibal Buress, a male comedian, brought it up years later. His video clip became viral, "Bill Cosby and rape" became a hot topic, and when it became clear that people were taking it seriously, many former victims stood up and shared their stories. Only after the count had reached about 40 accusers did many people in the "This is just some greedy women" camp start to come around to thinking "There might be something to this." Which is great, but shows you how massive the credibility gap can be: It takes 40 women's statements to carry the same weight as one man's word.
And don't forget the overwhelming support for Roman Polanski by Hollywood celebrities, despite the fact he is still wanted in the U.S. for raping a 13-year-old girl. Over 100 Hollywood people signed a petition in support of him, including Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Tilda Swinton, and other people you may have less respect for now.
I just feel like unless you are a cop or a prosecutor or a claims adjuster, it shouldn't really be our main job to catch the few liars in a vast ocean of genuine victims. Or alternatively, we should be consistent and also grill everyone who claims to have been in a car accident.
2. Women Want To Be Believed About Not Being Believed As Much As Men Are
That title will make sense in a minute, I swear.
People talk about the "wage gap," wherein women are said to make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes (a hotly debated subject for another time), but we have an even broader problem of a "credibility gap," wherein every statement a woman makes gets 70 percent (or less) of the credibility of a man making the same statement. A man complains of excruciating pain? It's probably excruciating. A woman complains of excruciating pain? Well, wait, we need to run that through the hysterical woman filter to find out how much pain she's REALLY in. Because you know how they get.
The hilariously frustrating thing is that when women bring up the credibility gap, that itself is a statement by a woman, and is filtered through the negative credibility multiplier. "It's probably only 70 percent (or 50 percent, or 30 percent) as bad as she is saying it is." This comes out in statements like, "It's only a tiny number of weird sexist guys who do that, so don't act like it's a big problem that's everywhere," or "It's not nearly as bad as it is in Iran," which collectively come out to, "It's almost all better, so we don't need to do anything about it."
This pushes women to use stronger and stronger language to get their issues on the radar ("complain more," as the doctor advised my mom), which skeptics just use as "proof" that women blow everything out of proportion and you have to mentally dial back everything they say. So women get louder and angrier ... etc.
Depressingly, it seems like the most effective way for a woman to get a problem taken seriously is to have a man repeat it, like in the case of Buress and Cosby. Alright, whatever it takes.
source:http://www.cracked.com/blog/you-wont-believe-these-5-things-about-women.-literally./?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-weekly-20170201
No comments:
Post a Comment