I am a survivor, and this is my story.

With all of the recent drama surrounding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, there seems to be this relentless social current that demands we elevate women to something above human and follow all of their leads without question. While I do believe all women deserve to be heard, this dangerous precedent has serious consequences. I know. I can speak about them firsthand.

In March of 2014 I received an odd email one morning. Someone had gone to a website designed for consumer complaints, and proceeded to anonymously accuse me of sexually assaulting my female staff. Dumbfounded (and pretty sure I knew who was behind it), I ignored it. Because the poster was completely unhinged and over the top, I figured most others would ignore it also. I was wrong.

After a few months I began to notice my business being affected by this person’s evil behavior. Patients who I had a good relationship with all of a sudden left to go elsewhere. New patients decreased dramatically (who can blame them). Colleagues and friends began to distance themselves from me. The attacks continued and began to attack my staff and my staff’s family as well. Keep in mind this was all being done from the shadows, an anonymous accuser so intent on keeping their identity hidden they went to extreme lengths to hide it going so far as using proxy servers and other methods to mask her IP address. Things were going bad and after having a thriving practice the year before, I now started to prepare for bankruptcy.

I quickly realized I needed to fight back or this was going to destroy me. I hired a quality lawyer who could help me use the legal system to thwart my anonymous accuser. I began to publicly speak out and fight back. Eventually a judge declared a judgement in our favor. The constant character attacks stopped. I could finally breathe a bit. My practice bounced back, my reputation in my community re-established, and my life got back to normal. Sort of.

I’ll be 100% honest: I was incredibly lucky. I had several things going for me in this situation. I had established a reputation as a skilled and caring dentist in my community. I was my own boss and was unwilling to fire myself to stave off a PR headache. I had developed solid respectful relationships with many of my patients and staff, people who knew my character and believed me. I had the ability to pay over $40K in legal fees (though barely). Most importantly, I had a father, who had his career destroyed by similar events, that instilled in me the bulldog drive to never quit fighting, never give up, never give in, always fight back. Always. Things began to turn around and my practice began to grow again. To this day I’m still amazed my career and my practice survived. However there have been profound long term consequences, both to my reputation, as well as my emotional wellbeing.

All of this was possible, because we live in a culture which has a ridiculous double standard when it comes to matters of this kind. We repeat the mantra that “all women should be believed”, elevating them to diety status, while refusing to acknowledge that women do lie, they lie about this very thing, and they do it maliciously in order to hurt men. I do not believe it occurs a majority of the time, but having survived it myself I do believe it happens more often than we’re willing to think about.

In this day and age, it’s important that we take a step back and remember the TRUE purpose of the original movement of feminism is EQUALITY. When a woman can say anything and destroy a man’s career, and he has zero ability to rebut or fight back, we are as unequal as we have ever been. We need to remember that there is a difference between listening… and believing. Listening is required. Every woman who makes an accusation should be heard. But listening and believing are different things. Each case should be judged on its own merits, not the genitalia of the involved parties. Man does not automatically equal oppressive ogre, and woman does not automatically equal truthful deity. The story of Jezebel is as old as time for a reason, because there have been evil women since time began.

I have made the conscious decision to not let what happened to me destroy me. Part of that means not letting a few evil women destroy my belief that most women (and most men) are good people. But I would be remiss if I said it hadn’t changed me. I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t go on a date without worrying if she’s going to accuse me of something later, or that I don’t specifically avoid being in a room alone with a woman I don’t know and trust. But a few years and tens of thousands of dollars later, I’m surviving.

I’m a survivor, and this is my story.

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I've emailed this to various news outlets, we'll see if it gets any traction. I'm not holding my breath honestly.