Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke. This is presumably crowdsourced which is not bulletproof
There will of course be a secret mirror blacklist: anyone who does report sexual assault to the authorities will find it much harder to get a job and impossible to access the inner circle.
> Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke.
Not as likely as you think. The reason a list like this feels necessary to many (presumably mostly) women is that in SV culture there's a presumption that these sorts of claims are almost always baseless. That these women engaged in consensual activities and either regretted it after the fact or were trying to make a buck.
Maybe Robert Scoble should tweet about how unfair life is, put forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment, accuse women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, attack his own accusers, and plug his latest business venture again.
Interesting that every instance of sexual assault is preemptively doubted by default, whereas that's not a primary part of the conversation for accusations of other crimes like arson, theft, embezzlement, etc. False accusations of any crime could hurt the accused, that's more or less an unavoidable tautology of the legal system. There's just one kind of crime where public conversation obsesses about that, though.
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.
I'm not able to view the video, but based on the description, I don't know that it's relevant - I'm not claiming testimony isn't evidence, because it very clearly is?
My comment is almost entirely about the court of public opinion side of things, though, not what happens in the courts themselves - because the topic is about a list as an alternative to the prosecution of these people.
These things can all be true, sure. What’s also true is what the GP points out: the only time the preemptive doubt rolls out is for accusations of sexual impropriety, which can’t be disentangled from the fact that most accusations against the powerful of sexual impropriety come from women.
And given how abysmally low the rate of false allegations is maybe we should all do a bit better and stop running interference for our oligarch class, especially since sexual impropriety seems to be how they operate in a lot of domains, not just with adult women.
> These things can all be true, sure. What’s also true is what the GP points out: the only time the preemptive doubt rolls out is for accusations of sexual impropriety, which can’t be disentangled from the fact that most accusations against the powerful of sexual impropriety come from women.
Sure. But there's a variety of tones discussing this - there are some that are quite expressly political in nature of a certain bent, and those I would be skeptical of. There's more than one comment in here that gives me the ick. But that's not everyone, and lumping them in together isn't productive.
> And given how abysmally low the rate of false allegations is maybe we should all do a bit better and stop running interference for our oligarch class, especially since sexual impropriety seems to be how they operate in a lot of domains, not just with adult women.
How low do you think the rate is? Because its' hard to pin down, but ~10% seems to be a pretty defensible number based on the data we do have. That's definitely a minority, but 10% is enough that I am going to consider it every time. If 1 out of 10 times I lit my stove it would explode if not examined, I am still checking my stove every single time I use it.
I don't disagree that we have a lot of sick fuck oligarchs. I don't disagree that sexual assault is one of the things the ultra rich and powerful turn to for a variety of reasons.
But a rational position is a rational position. I'm not going to abandon it because some people will misuse it to cast aspersions on people. I don't think women are inherently more moral than men, and we have many many many examples of men using deception to harm others for their own advantage. I don't think women are incapable of doing the same.
I would also never suggest that the default is to assume every accusation is a lie. My general assumption is that any given accusation is probably true, but that if you're going to have an opinion on which way the outcome is, it's best to have as informed of an opinion as you can, rather than just assuming anything one way or the other. And in a court of law, presumed innocent, because that's a whole different thing than public opinion.
I mean you’ll never fully remove politics from the powerful conceptually, it’s just not possible, they’re too close to the levers of power. That said I think it’s a cop out of sorts to say because people “have political opinions” about the subject of an SA accusation that that would necessarily bias judgement. The real problem is the lack of investigative resources for these accusations, which itself leads to lists like these being published: when people can’t seek justice from the justice system they will do so in other ways.
We’ve had the Epstein lists for how long now? And how many on it have seen justice?
I mean, I'd argue that one party pretty expressly wants to protect the interests of these people. Largely the one that has been sitting on the Epstein lists despite campaigning on releasing them. Meanwhile, I can go read hundreds of pages of investigation on Clinton getting a blowjob. And yeah, he's a scumbag for that too, obvious power imbalance, etc., but it's pretty telling what gets released and what doesn't. I'd also argue there's one side that just generally gives less of a fuck about the rights of women.
But yes, if we could actually make going to the police an effective, safe, and as painless as can be process for the victims, it would solve a whole whole lot of this, and we really could go 'well why are you putting it on a list instead of going to the police and getting the scumbag put behind bars,' whereas there's a billion and a half legitimate reasons someone might not want to go to the police today.
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
This is assume SHE is guilty of a massive lie. The assumption is that she is trying to baselessly destroy him. Otherwise said, the benefit of the doubt is not symmetrical.
Yes we give the accused the benefit of the doubt and require the prosecution to meet a high burden of proof to overturn that. It is not symmetric by design.
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.
Police will only spend resources on investigations if the serverity of the crime is high enough or there is political force that allows more resources to be used than the crime is worth. False accusations do not carry the same serverity as the crime being claimed, for reasons that people are very open about.
We are however seeing more action from police since metoo, with gps data, Google and ai searches being taken from those who report sa as well as the accused. Phone data allows for some basic checks, like if the two people were in the same location at the time the assault occured. Ai and search data can also verify if people search for relevant information days before the event occurred.
Absolutely; though in context of the article, names aren't being named and nobody's being accused. It's literally a private-ish list of "stay away from/be careful around these people".
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.
Your source doesn't really say what you're stating though. The ranges seem to be 4-13%, with the majority closer to 8. The one that was highest for the US (10%) was a self-reporting survey that asked people if they had been falsely accused -- surely not the most reliable method.
The criterion for being considered false accusations in that table seems to be 'no charges filed'. Even in those cases, the disclaimers are pretty strong:
> The police continue to misapply the "no-crime" or "unfounded" criteria.
> It is impossible to "discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations" because many of the studies of false allegations have adopted unreliable or untested research methodologies.
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 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.
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.
Sorry for writing from a throwaway account because there's still a lot of stigma to this, while I think it's a pretty average experience.
I had sex therapy to be able to understand where my fantasy ends, and where the real world starts, and how people in the real world aren't there to play the roles my fantasies give them.
It sounds obvious when I say it like this but there are many men like me, who didn't grow up emotionally, and having difficulty accepting the agency of others. Women had to be interested in me so that I could feel validated. I also had never stopped and asked myself "does she really want this or am I trying to manipulate her?".
You also see the same pattern with men who think it's their right to find a female partner and they feel wronged by the society when this doesn't automatically happen.
Try getting some help, fellow men. It takes a lot of weight from your shoulders and you become much less likely to end up getting on such lists.
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 think the question is: Does this list work better in secret, where the perpetrators don't know they're on the list; or does it work better in public, where the general public learns that these kinds of problems continue to happen?
The "missing stair" list exists in a lot of communities. The problem is that because it's not written down it relies on new women joining the scene being quietly taken aside and told who they should never be alone with, and sometimes the message isn't delivered in time.
The temptation will be to pressure people on a secret list with public disclosure. And there’s a grey zone, too. Imagine a messy divorce, in which one person’s name is conveniently found on a list that’s time stamped during some period of contended infidelity. I think that’s how these are supposed to work.
Because rent is expensive and options are limited, we've promoted the sigma grindset culture to an insane degree, and people like to cluster together socially, especially when doing something that scares them, like trying to launch a startup. Save on money, be around people experiencing the same things you are, potentially be able to collaborate if you end up working on the same thing, etc.
... but yes it's still weird from an objective standpoint and only makes sense when you insert yourself into the bizzaro world bubble of SV.
We have a geriartic toddler in control of the world's largest military, voted in by other people driven by their (to reduce it to 2 words) immature anger... biological age isn't mental age.
Is the system so broken that it is denying proper investigation to the victims? if not, i think this list will just waste a lot of time, energy and reputation.
Depending on who is asking, there is a different tang to that question.
If you see, hear, or think that one of your "bros" is abusing someone, fucking talk to them and tell them to stop. If they dont, cock block them so they can't abuse your friends.
This stuff continues on because its overtly, or covertly approved. Men dont cry or talk about feelings because "thats what girls do". Thats how powerful social pressure is.
"oh but women love a powerful man" they might, but they don't like being abused. All that shit you hear from pickup artists doesn't work. 90% of it is showering cash and cornering people to the point where they can't say no comfortably.
So many weird assumptions about men. Contrary to popular belief, we aren't all rapists or friends of rapists. And oh, by the way, some women do pretty awful stuff like this too.
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.
Considering the Epstein connections, why is it a shock that it is still happening? People in that position often feel they can do anything they want, including sexual assault. The fact so few end up being investigated is disgusting.
These kinds of things constantly come out. In the 1990s, (when I was a teenager,) and these scandals happened, everyone thought "never again, it's better now."
Then the me-too moment happened and everyone remembered the 1990s as a time where all kinds of nasty behavior was tolerated.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that a lot of the people involved were too young and/or not paying attention during the me-too movement.
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.
With Lewinsky things are slightly different because (a) there was DNA evidence and (b) the claim of wrongdoing didn’t revolve around consent but rather the fact that Bill was her boss.
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...
It may be difficult to find a decent historical accounting, but I can't think of any worse environment than the unaccountable all-male single-Party hierarchy of the Communist states for generating sexual assault on a massive scale.
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.
This is incredibly obvious and believable. The reason why American elites, particularly the SV executive class, went so hard for Trump is because he gives them complete lack of accountability. Whether it is sexual predation, financial regulation, crypto regulation, anti-gambling, it is all the same. Anybody putting any kind of rules in place for them is an affront to their 'freedom'.
Sad that they feel this is necessary.
Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke. This is presumably crowdsourced which is not bulletproof
There will of course be a secret mirror blacklist: anyone who does report sexual assault to the authorities will find it much harder to get a job and impossible to access the inner circle.
(Famously, Weinstein did this to actresses)
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.
Also Neil Gaiman trying to use NDAs against his domestic staff. There's a long and nasty history of this.
> Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke.
Not as likely as you think. The reason a list like this feels necessary to many (presumably mostly) women is that in SV culture there's a presumption that these sorts of claims are almost always baseless. That these women engaged in consensual activities and either regretted it after the fact or were trying to make a buck.
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.
Maybe Robert Scoble should tweet about how unfair life is, put forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment, accuse women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, attack his own accusers, and plug his latest business venture again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230597
Then all the other sexual assaulters can leap to his defense and circle the wagons around him again!
Interesting that every instance of sexual assault is preemptively doubted by default, whereas that's not a primary part of the conversation for accusations of other crimes like arson, theft, embezzlement, etc. False accusations of any crime could hurt the accused, that's more or less an unavoidable tautology of the legal system. There's just one kind of crime where public conversation obsesses about that, though.
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.
> it comes down to their word vs. someone else's
Legal Eagle made a good video talking about how there's a bit more to it than that, it was about the Platner and Salwell allegiations: <https://nebula.tv/videos/legaleagle-she-said-is-evidence>.
The video is more widely accessible on YouTube https://youtube.com/watch?v=KvanHITPNEc
I'm not able to view the video, but based on the description, I don't know that it's relevant - I'm not claiming testimony isn't evidence, because it very clearly is?
My comment is almost entirely about the court of public opinion side of things, though, not what happens in the courts themselves - because the topic is about a list as an alternative to the prosecution of these people.
These things can all be true, sure. What’s also true is what the GP points out: the only time the preemptive doubt rolls out is for accusations of sexual impropriety, which can’t be disentangled from the fact that most accusations against the powerful of sexual impropriety come from women.
And given how abysmally low the rate of false allegations is maybe we should all do a bit better and stop running interference for our oligarch class, especially since sexual impropriety seems to be how they operate in a lot of domains, not just with adult women.
> These things can all be true, sure. What’s also true is what the GP points out: the only time the preemptive doubt rolls out is for accusations of sexual impropriety, which can’t be disentangled from the fact that most accusations against the powerful of sexual impropriety come from women.
Sure. But there's a variety of tones discussing this - there are some that are quite expressly political in nature of a certain bent, and those I would be skeptical of. There's more than one comment in here that gives me the ick. But that's not everyone, and lumping them in together isn't productive.
> And given how abysmally low the rate of false allegations is maybe we should all do a bit better and stop running interference for our oligarch class, especially since sexual impropriety seems to be how they operate in a lot of domains, not just with adult women.
How low do you think the rate is? Because its' hard to pin down, but ~10% seems to be a pretty defensible number based on the data we do have. That's definitely a minority, but 10% is enough that I am going to consider it every time. If 1 out of 10 times I lit my stove it would explode if not examined, I am still checking my stove every single time I use it.
I don't disagree that we have a lot of sick fuck oligarchs. I don't disagree that sexual assault is one of the things the ultra rich and powerful turn to for a variety of reasons.
But a rational position is a rational position. I'm not going to abandon it because some people will misuse it to cast aspersions on people. I don't think women are inherently more moral than men, and we have many many many examples of men using deception to harm others for their own advantage. I don't think women are incapable of doing the same.
I would also never suggest that the default is to assume every accusation is a lie. My general assumption is that any given accusation is probably true, but that if you're going to have an opinion on which way the outcome is, it's best to have as informed of an opinion as you can, rather than just assuming anything one way or the other. And in a court of law, presumed innocent, because that's a whole different thing than public opinion.
i don’t like the common programmer behavior of doubting things we don’t want to face while requesting speculation on easily available data
making a list like this is hard in ways that most of us will never understand
if you aren’t a victim then you’re the guy who loudly doubts victim self defense
I mean you’ll never fully remove politics from the powerful conceptually, it’s just not possible, they’re too close to the levers of power. That said I think it’s a cop out of sorts to say because people “have political opinions” about the subject of an SA accusation that that would necessarily bias judgement. The real problem is the lack of investigative resources for these accusations, which itself leads to lists like these being published: when people can’t seek justice from the justice system they will do so in other ways.
We’ve had the Epstein lists for how long now? And how many on it have seen justice?
I mean, I'd argue that one party pretty expressly wants to protect the interests of these people. Largely the one that has been sitting on the Epstein lists despite campaigning on releasing them. Meanwhile, I can go read hundreds of pages of investigation on Clinton getting a blowjob. And yeah, he's a scumbag for that too, obvious power imbalance, etc., but it's pretty telling what gets released and what doesn't. I'd also argue there's one side that just generally gives less of a fuck about the rights of women.
But yes, if we could actually make going to the police an effective, safe, and as painless as can be process for the victims, it would solve a whole whole lot of this, and we really could go 'well why are you putting it on a list instead of going to the police and getting the scumbag put behind bars,' whereas there's a billion and a half legitimate reasons someone might not want to go to the police today.
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
This is assume SHE is guilty of a massive lie. The assumption is that she is trying to baselessly destroy him. Otherwise said, the benefit of the doubt is not symmetrical.
Yes we give the accused the benefit of the doubt and require the prosecution to meet a high burden of proof to overturn that. It is not symmetric by design.
1.) There is no prosecution involved here.
2.) The actual prosecution of a crime does not start with the assumption that whoever is reporting the crime is lying.
A claim with no supporting evidence is just that, a claim.
And the list being discussed in this thread will help gather the supporting evidence that you demand.
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.
While we can easily find a ton of documented cases of sexual assault, cases of false accusations seem relatively sparse.
Police will only spend resources on investigations if the serverity of the crime is high enough or there is political force that allows more resources to be used than the crime is worth. False accusations do not carry the same serverity as the crime being claimed, for reasons that people are very open about.
We are however seeing more action from police since metoo, with gps data, Google and ai searches being taken from those who report sa as well as the accused. Phone data allows for some basic checks, like if the two people were in the same location at the time the assault occured. Ai and search data can also verify if people search for relevant information days before the event occurred.
Sucks to be one of the 'relatively sparse' cases then.
Lots of cases are ultimately thrown out due to lack of evidence. Even Kevin Spacey was acquitted.
Absolutely; though in context of the article, names aren't being named and nobody's being accused. It's literally a private-ish list of "stay away from/be careful around these people".
i think that people should reflect extremely carefully on whether they want to be the person following this line of logic publicly
[flagged]
Do you mean it should be guilty unless proven otherwise?
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...
Your source doesn't really say what you're stating though. The ranges seem to be 4-13%, with the majority closer to 8. The one that was highest for the US (10%) was a self-reporting survey that asked people if they had been falsely accused -- surely not the most reliable method.
I was looking at the table further down - UK results. Even ignoring the studies marked dubious it's still averaging well into double digits
The criterion for being considered false accusations in that table seems to be 'no charges filed'. Even in those cases, the disclaimers are pretty strong:
> The police continue to misapply the "no-crime" or "unfounded" criteria.
> It is impossible to "discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations" because many of the studies of false allegations have adopted unreliable or untested research methodologies.
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.
> Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke.
Life-ruining? No, not at all. Not even close.
> 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.
You don't end up on a list like this for a single mistake.
Sorry for writing from a throwaway account because there's still a lot of stigma to this, while I think it's a pretty average experience.
I had sex therapy to be able to understand where my fantasy ends, and where the real world starts, and how people in the real world aren't there to play the roles my fantasies give them.
It sounds obvious when I say it like this but there are many men like me, who didn't grow up emotionally, and having difficulty accepting the agency of others. Women had to be interested in me so that I could feel validated. I also had never stopped and asked myself "does she really want this or am I trying to manipulate her?".
You also see the same pattern with men who think it's their right to find a female partner and they feel wronged by the society when this doesn't automatically happen.
Try getting some help, fellow men. It takes a lot of weight from your shoulders and you become much less likely to end up getting on such lists.
This is terrifying but I am glad people like this are self aware enough to get help. Kudos.. I think?
are we talking about weird fantasies / bdsm or just "having a partner" here
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.
Thanks for sharing. And well done admitting you need help and getting it.
WTF, I find it hard to believe that during a sexual assault, the perpetrator doesn't know what they are doing. WTF is this?
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.
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I think the question is: Does this list work better in secret, where the perpetrators don't know they're on the list; or does it work better in public, where the general public learns that these kinds of problems continue to happen?
The "missing stair" list exists in a lot of communities. The problem is that because it's not written down it relies on new women joining the scene being quietly taken aside and told who they should never be alone with, and sometimes the message isn't delivered in time.
The temptation will be to pressure people on a secret list with public disclosure. And there’s a grey zone, too. Imagine a messy divorce, in which one person’s name is conveniently found on a list that’s time stamped during some period of contended infidelity. I think that’s how these are supposed to work.
Ok can we see the list? And then prosecute the people? Or it’s a secret for some reason?
Yeah, that's how this stuff should work. Accusations published then publicly crucify the "guilty". Who cares if any of this is accurate, right?
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As an aside, this is the first I heard about [tech houses](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/technology/agi-house-ai-c...). So far, they don't. . . sound great.
There was an article posted about this earlier today but then the OP was quickly deleted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831269
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/st-paul-mayor-called-mi...
Just read the article. Why are adults living in frat houses? Is this a thing now?
Because rent is expensive and options are limited, we've promoted the sigma grindset culture to an insane degree, and people like to cluster together socially, especially when doing something that scares them, like trying to launch a startup. Save on money, be around people experiencing the same things you are, potentially be able to collaborate if you end up working on the same thing, etc.
... but yes it's still weird from an objective standpoint and only makes sense when you insert yourself into the bizzaro world bubble of SV.
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?
We have a geriartic toddler in control of the world's largest military, voted in by other people driven by their (to reduce it to 2 words) immature anger... biological age isn't mental age.
Critical information missing from this article: The List.
Grain of salt, folks. Wait for something other than the NYPost.
How about a borderline personality disorder false accusations list?
Surprised nobody else brings this up, but then again I lived to 49 before I figured out what BPD was.
Is the system so broken that it is denying proper investigation to the victims? if not, i think this list will just waste a lot of time, energy and reputation.
Quite often, yes. You may have heard of this Epstein guy everyone's talking about, or the Weinstein guy who recently got convicted.
Putting names on the list and releasing it publicly like this can have very serious consequences.
"Media Men Lawsuit Ends in Settlement"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/style/media-men-list-sett...
I can't quite tell from the linked article - are the accusers themselves anonymous here? I'm not sure there's anybody to actually pursue.
So how do we stop these lists?
Depending on who is asking, there is a different tang to that question.
If you see, hear, or think that one of your "bros" is abusing someone, fucking talk to them and tell them to stop. If they dont, cock block them so they can't abuse your friends.
This stuff continues on because its overtly, or covertly approved. Men dont cry or talk about feelings because "thats what girls do". Thats how powerful social pressure is.
"oh but women love a powerful man" they might, but they don't like being abused. All that shit you hear from pickup artists doesn't work. 90% of it is showering cash and cornering people to the point where they can't say no comfortably.
So many weird assumptions about men. Contrary to popular belief, we aren't all rapists or friends of rapists. And oh, by the way, some women do pretty awful stuff like this too.
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?
Considering the Epstein connections, why is it a shock that it is still happening? People in that position often feel they can do anything they want, including sexual assault. The fact so few end up being investigated is disgusting.
These kinds of things constantly come out. In the 1990s, (when I was a teenager,) and these scandals happened, everyone thought "never again, it's better now."
Then the me-too moment happened and everyone remembered the 1990s as a time where all kinds of nasty behavior was tolerated.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that a lot of the people involved were too young and/or not paying attention during the me-too movement.
Can we ever figure out how to break the cycle?
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.
With Lewinsky things are slightly different because (a) there was DNA evidence and (b) the claim of wrongdoing didn’t revolve around consent but rather the fact that Bill was her boss.
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...
It may be difficult to find a decent historical accounting, but I can't think of any worse environment than the unaccountable all-male single-Party hierarchy of the Communist states for generating sexual assault on a massive scale.
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I'm sure everyone would rather the legal recourse to be successful at yielding justice for victim of sexual assault.
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Yeah dude sexual assault is exactly like Python governance
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.
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This is incredibly obvious and believable. The reason why American elites, particularly the SV executive class, went so hard for Trump is because he gives them complete lack of accountability. Whether it is sexual predation, financial regulation, crypto regulation, anti-gambling, it is all the same. Anybody putting any kind of rules in place for them is an affront to their 'freedom'.