Epstein sponsored lawsuits against women who accused others of sexual assaults.

And also based on the emails, because convinced made Epstein more respected in his circles.

Women get bitten by the vagueness of their own rules, since they want to keep all options open.

If it was a strict 'no workplace dating ever' it would have been easier for everyone.

Yes, all false accusations are bad.

But sexual assault is the one area that is almost always taking two parties at their word, and very very frequently, the only court is the court of public opinion. That makes it rife for abuse in both directions - people doing it believing they'll get away with it because it comes down to their word vs. someone else's if it ever even comes out, since so few people go to the police, and people know they can lob an accusation out there and do a lot of damage without having to prove anything.

I think the former happens far far more than the latter, but I'm also not going to wonder why people discuss the latter - it's real, and it happens. People discuss getting attacked by sharks whenever sharks come up, too, even though that's almost certainly not going to be something they need to worry about, either.

This sort of list is exactly the sort of place where those false accusations can be really easily inserted with minimal vetting. I'd also bet it is an almost entirely accurate list.

All these things can be true at once.

Shouldn't it be a good thing that we are presuming someone innocent rather than guilty?

Interestingly I have seen the opposite where if a guy is accused, it is automatically assumed he is guilty. Especially with sports players, which lead to the Duke Lacrosse false accusations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_rape_hoax

We have this concept in the western world of being presumed innocent until proven guilty. Something like a sexual assault accusation is typically taken extremely seriously (As it should), but this can lead it to being weaponized. Maybe a manager who is a rival for a position you covet, well a sexual assault accusation may make them conveniently go away.

Are you aware of privately-circulated lists of embezzlement accusations? I believe the reaction would be similar.

Its a societal thing.

Embezzling is universally bad, and can be proven with "objects" ie transaction and contracts and the like.

the pernicious problem with sexual assault is that first you need to prove the assault happened, which is hard, because its often in private with no witnesses.

Second you have to prove consent.

worse consent can be withdrawn, especially if things go too far or violent. so it might appear to witnesses that it look ok when they saw them.

Finally the elephant in the room. There is a taboo around non straight male sexuality which varies by region. Its very easy to paint the cliamant as someone with loose sexual morals, filled with guilt/loathing lashing out to smear an innocent party.

The problem for the victims is that agreeing to sex is vaguely taboo for non-straight men to do. Therefore they are at fault.

I wouldn't say "every instance" is is preemptively doubted, but there is a wikipedia page on false accusations for a reason. With most studies indicating double digit % of false accusations. (and some numbers far higher than I would have guessed [0])

I'd say a better phrasing is that innocent until proven guilty applies - just like with other crimes. Crowd sourced lists aren't that so treating them with some caution is warranted.

I can see how even an unreliable list may be of use practically to women though even if process wise it is quite dubious.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estim...

It's just an unbiased recognition of the system of SA.

Both men and women can have incentive to act amorally, and the context of the situation is often the best we have to weigh those incentives and feel out what really happened and the scope of the impact from it.

This is complicated by the fact that SA is largely subjective, and what some people get lifelong trauma from is another Friday night for others. So both the act and the outcome are subjective.

Those other crimes are pretty binary, where you did or you didn't do it. SA is different because often guilt is a confluence of many factors rather than a single verifiable action, and those factors are mostly subjective self-reported ones that can have incentivized bias (something the legal system works hard to weed out in other cases).

> not a primary part of the conversation for accusations of other crimes like arson, theft, embezzlement

I've never heard of anybody's life being ruined over an accusation of arson that was dropped for lack of evidence (or even later proven to be false). As long as the consequences of the accusation are greater, the scrutiny will be, too.

because it's not as common as people being cancelled over this stuff. your life isn't ruined instantly if you get accused of theft

Because this is the sort of thing that in most cases can’t be substantiated by hard evidence. Whereas all of the rest of the examples you have generally can be. Would you support punishment of anyone as an arsonist only on the basis of a claim that they committed arson and #believeallwomen?

> Interesting that every instance of sexual assault is preemptively doubted by default

That's because that's the narrative people push out to their followers. It allows them to continue to abuse women and take advantage of men with their countless grift. So there is a strong incentive to push that narrative. It's helpful to remember that these people think women are lesser and objects, not people.

> Life-ruining? No, not at all. Not even close.

Indeed. Some privileged people confuse being denied opportunity (rightfully) with a life being "ruined". It's a telling behavior rooted in entitlement.

Those poors have to deal with this often, which is considered a "them" problem. Be it because of credit score, carried debt, criminal record, or loss of license, etc, as I have seen and experienced.

It doesn't matter. It really doesn't, but I'm only equipped to deal with my own stuff, I can't explain the "why" to others even if I wanted to.

Well, you might want to revisit your beliefs on how folks' in the US experience their world.

There is certainly no excuse for bad behavior, and it is certainly the case that for many folks they absolutely know what they are doing.

If your point is that people are culpable for their bad behavior regardless of their claims about knowledge, then I agree.

At the same time most of the culture that raised me runs on people denying to themselves what they are doing, ranging from highly individualistic sublimations of the "fundamental attribution error" to renouncing culpability for their direct work at building the torment nexus.

The entirety of the mode of production here relies on ignoring how we exploit the people around us in almost every exchange so it's not at all surprising to me that, looking towards the OP, men in this culture commonly are able to hide their bad behaviors in layers of fantasy so deep that they aren't able to consciously understand how they are treating their lovers.

I don't know your context here, but if that kind of self-deception is news to you you might want to review the behavior of the people you're around (or your own), because either your threshold for bad behavior or your perceptions of peoples' capacity for self-delusion is perhaps a little low.

I don't find it at all hard to believe, especially if the perpetrator is impaired with drink etc. Just as a drunk driver may fail to see a pedestrian that's in front of them, but that's not an excuse.

I never assaulted anyone, nor wanted to, just realized that I wasn't thinking healthily about the opposite sex. Maybe assault is the extreme end of the way I was going? At least that's what I always assumed. I don't know, but I think acting on such thoughts need even less empathy than what I had.

Don't get me wrong, I was being horrible and probably made someone or two uncomfortable.

Good thing about therapy is you don't get judged like the responses I get here.

I fear to google it, but what is the sigma grindset?

is this related to the whole alpha/beta male tediousness, or something tangentially related?

Did I say that all men are rapists? no.

Did I imply that all men are rapists? no.

I said that its up to us to police this. thats all. I don't think thats particularly anti-men.

its like saying, if you see your mate drink driving, you tell them not to do it. Its not controversial to do that, and its doing them a service. It'll stop them getting injured or injuring someone else.

do you want to see your mate's life ruined?

I was a bit older in the 90's.

Clarence Thomas had been appointed to the Supreme Court after a lengthy investigation into sexual harassment claims by Anita Hill. At the time, SNL seemed to think that the main problem was his lack of game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shkJfRpktGc

A few years later we found out that Clinton had been getting BJs from his interns. This time the Republicans wanted to make a big deal about it so Moveon.org was born. It started as a petition asking Congress to literally "move on" from the Clinton scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoveOn#Opposing_Clinton's_impe...

Neither Anita Hill nor Monica Lewinsky seem to consider either of those investigations remotely successful.

I think the U.S. needs to finally adopt the ERA into its constitution. Many people don’t realize that women still don’t have equal protection under the constitution in the U.S. It’s absurd in my opinion.

I feel like Joseph McCarthy’s list of <over 200 communists in the Department of State, or whatever> is particularly noteworthy. He couldn’t have contrived that list without Roy Cohn, and Cohn is one of the founding fathers of today’s ruling party. The legislative and executive branches legitimized giving attention to dudes with a secret list.

Maybe the answer is communism (trigger warning for the snowflakes). With a more equal distribution of wealth, there wouldn't be the rich and resourceful being able to build a fortress (with bought politicians, bought police, expensive lawyers) that would allow abuse against the less resourceful...

I am continuously left speechless by the takes on this platform. It's hard to imagine for me at times that there are people in the same sphere as me who think the way they present on here.