You've completely mischaracterized Occidental College's rape form and by doing so, you're hurting your own movement.

saint2e · 2013-12-17T19:38:05+00:00

So let's walk through this scenario:

I'm a woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted by Gerald.

I'm too embarrassed to press formal charges to the police, what can I do? I know! I'll log it in the college's rape form! That way, there's a record of him raping me, and he'll get a stern talking to.

Wait.

That's all he'll get? A stern talking to? But... if he gets talked to due to a rape claim, chances are he'll know who submitted it.... or at least have a good idea. But because I anonymously submitted the claim, the school will not know who I am, and therefore cannot protect me from any repercussions Gerald may or may not inflict on me.

And to top it all off, because all Gerald got was a stern talking to, no one else is the wiser to his bad behaviour. There's no formal charges laid, so his claim is not public, so he's free to continue his bad behaviour with other women!

Why the hell would I make an anonymous claim then?! For the sole purposes of making myself feel better? That won't last once I think this through and realize that he could seek revenge on me.... Or mistakenly seek revenge on someone else he was intimate with...

This is a bad idea.

logrusmage · 2013-12-17T20:21:08+00:00

ou're attacking a tool that has the potential to do a great deal of good for male rape victims.

How? With no accuser, there can be no evidence, and hence no crime in the eyes of any just system.

mean0dean0 · 2013-12-17T19:05:13+00:00

You're confusing anonymity in court cases with anonymity FROM EVERYTHING, including substantiation of any claim whatsoever.

What the "anonymous" rape form does is give people carte blanche to submit any number of egregious behaviors without any substantiation at all. It's a terrible form of unregulated unnecessary fear-mongering, and if people are actually kicked out of Occidental College simply because of a completely unsigned accusation, then the system is broken. Don't like your professor? Rape accusation. Think tuition is bullshit? Rape accusation against the dean of students. Think someone else made a rape accusation against you? Rape accusation against them! It's not like anybody would actually hold you to your word, so why not make up all the false allegations in the world?

If there is no moral hazard to acting immoral, then people will be free to act as immorally as they please. This is no better than having a "free crime day" for anybody who goes to corner convenience stores. Why not commit a crime if you can't even be prosecuted for it?

K-Li · 2013-12-17T18:49:27+00:00

You s seem to have confused actual equality with phantom advantage.

First, an anonymous claim naming a female rapist would not be given weight, given that such claims are already regularly disregarded when accompanied by physical evidence. So such a system does not provide the advantage you suggest.

Second, the right to face your accuser is fundamental to a system of actual justice. MHRAs and their ideological cousins are already familiar, often directly and intimately, with the abuses that inevitably arise when due process is abridged, and none are so native as to believe that that door would only swing in one direction.

TL;DR: Don't give me crap and tell me it's caviar.

PowerWisdomCourage · 2013-12-17T18:58:40+00:00

Anonymous reports are nonsense. When you can accuse someone of rape a year or more after the event has happened, anonymity has no place. What you seem to be missing is these students want to anonymously report a rape, have the accused punished, and not be any part of the process other than the anonymous report. No questioning, no examination, no proof required, only an anonymous online form and punishment. They don't want to be contacted in any way what-so-ever. It's an absolute load of bullshit. No reasonable person could think it was a good thing.

PennyCapitalist · 2013-12-17T18:55:22+00:00

Anonymous accusations, and presumption of guilt are NEVER merited.

CrotchMissile · 2013-12-17T18:54:57+00:00

I am afraid that colleges should not be involved with rape and sex crime allegations at all. It is for the Police and the courts to deal with. In the UK and Europe the education system and the judicial system are seperate. This is not the case in the USA.

PierceHarlan · 2013-12-17T18:59:47+00:00

Puh-LEASE! Spend a few weeks reading through my blog before you even think about opining about this subject again: http://www.cotwa.info/

dungone · 2013-12-17T19:00:35+00:00

Your understanding of the issue is fundamentally wrong. The concern is with due process rights of the accused. Nobody actually believes that feminists envision this as a tool for false accusations. What they're actually concerned with is that feminists haven't got the slightest inkling of or respect for other people's civil rights, especially men's. That's not withstanding that feminists have in fact already shown in numerous ways that they look at false accusations as a handy advocacy tactic.

PierceHarlan · 2013-12-17T20:23:24+00:00

The brilliant Prof. Alan Dershowitz once said:

People who have gone to the police and publicly invoked the criminal process and accused somebody of a serious crime such as rape must be identified. In this country there is no such thing and should not be such a thing as anonymous accusation. If your name is in court it is a logical extension that it should be printed in the media. How can you publish the name of the presumptively innocent accused but not the name of the accuser?

Feminist Naomi Wolf also thinks it is time to end anonymity for women:

Feminists have long argued that rape must be treated like any other crime. But in no other crime are accusers kept behind a wall of anonymity. Treating rape so differently serves only to maintain its mischaracterization as a 'different' kind of crime, loaded with cultural baggage and projections.

Finally, there is a profound moral issue at stake. Though children’s identities should, of course, be shielded in sex-crime allegations, women are not children. If one makes a serious criminal accusation, one must wish to be treated – and one must treat oneself – as a moral adult. . . . . It is wrong – and sexist – to treat female sex-crime accusers as if they were children, and it is wrong to try anyone, male or female, in the court of public opinion on the basis of anonymous accusations. Anonymity for rape accusers is long overdue for retirement.

phySi0 · 2013-12-19T16:48:01+00:00

Let's calm down, take a step back and assess what's happened here!

When I first came across the post, I was upvoting both sides, the ones advocating flooding and the ones saying it's wrong. There are a bunch of criticisms of the attack that I'm gonna address.

This is the original post.

Criticism: Many are claiming that to make false accusations when it's the very thing we fight against is hypocritical (not to mention, ironic). Hold on a second.

Response: It's ironic, I'll give you that. However, hold on a second.

Many of the false reports used false names and some were blatantly false ("I was assaulted by Occidental College", "I was assaulted by Fatty McFatfat"?).
We fight against false accusations because they can ruin lives. The whole point of this exercise was to demonstrate just how easy it is for a system like this to be abused. If you're putting in real people, you're doing it wrong. That's like, as one poster somewhere put it (can't find it now), "lighting a chip shop on fire just because you can". Except…
The whole point was to be found out (not personal details, but the fact that it was orchestrated). This would have been useless otherwise.

Criticism: None of the accused were going to be convicted. They were simply going to have a talk with the dean.

Response: This is a joke, right? As mentioned elsewhere, what victim would report their rapist, knowing they get near-zero repercussions and might actually exact vengeance in response? Not to mention, this just invalidates the previous argument (not necessarily your argument, but the argument) that us falsely accusing people is hypocritical. If they aren't convicted and their names aren't published, then our false accusation has no effect. If they are, it would have been 400 bogus claims. Most people would cotton on that it's fake. As mentioned, that was the point. If they didn't know it was false reports, then how the hell have we demonstrated how this can be abused?

Criticism: This would have helped men, since a lot of men are scared of coming forward due to sexist societal attitudes. This anonymous tool could help.

Response: If that's true, by your logic, it would have helped actual raped women too. That's irrelevant. First of all, as mentioned, no, it just makes them open to revenge. If we assume it does help them, that doesn't matter. One of the things we fight against is anonymous reporting of rapes from women against men. It would be supremacy to stop fighting against anonymous reporting of rapes if it all of a sudden started helping men. We don't just fight for equality. Though that is our main goal, most of us here are against anonymous accusations towards men or women, coming from men or women. If you're going to put a name out there, yours should come out too.

rightsbot · 2013-12-17T18:40:17+00:00

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ghebert001 · 2013-12-17T20:20:29+00:00

Rape is the most terrible crime to be accused of next to paedophilia so while some may feel it to be intimate or embarassing to experience giving people a way to annonymously accuse someone of a crime can only end badly for due process and constitutional rights. The intention may not be to make false accusations easier to make but the results are inevitable.

BuncyTheFrog · 2013-12-17T18:48:12+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause

Title	You've completely mischaracterized Occidental College's rape form and by doing so, you're hurting your own movement.
Author	CrotchMissile
Upvotes	0
Comments	101
Date	December 17, 2013 6:39 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1t3tb8/youve_completely_mischaracterized_occidental/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/youve-completely-mischaracterized-occidental.1155910 https://theredarchive.com/post/1155910

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