Husbands, Brothers, and Sons

I don’t know why people keep repeating the line about false accusations against “husbands, brothers, and sons.” I just counted, and I know of 8 cases of false accusations of sexual misdeeds. When I say I know, I don’t mean I read or heard about it. I know these people and these situations extremely well.

Four involved men and four were against women. Seven out of eight started in the workplace. One started as a custody battle and ended with a denial of Full Professorship and a suspension. All 8 accusations were false and utterly ludicrous. Five of the accused are immigrants, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything given my field of work. All were in academia at the time of the accusations.

Eight. I think it’s a lot especially since I’m not sociable and don’t even know that many people. Men are women were affected in equal numbers. This is not a gender or race issue.

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33 responses to “Husbands, Brothers, and Sons”

Mike

October 7, 2018

Even though I believe much real sexual assault does happen, I’m also suspicious of the narrative that false sexual assault claims are extremely rare. I think they are only somewhat rare.

Like you, I’ve personally been around or know for a fact of the falsehood of at least three sexual assault allegations. And I also don’t know many people and am not social. In one case, I was with the person accused when the supposed “incident” occurred, and we weren’t even within 50 miles of the accuser! This occurred in the Army and I can’t give more details than that for risk of identification of some of the parties, but it was a completely false accusation, made because the woman in question was performing poorly and had been denied a promotion.

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Rhoda

October 8, 2018

It’s not that I think false accusations never happen, it’s that believing someone is the decent thing to do.
Yes, there are people who make false accusations just as there are people who burn down their homes for the insurance money. But if someone tells you about a traumatic event, then the first reaction should be believe them, not to say oh, they probably just set the fire themselves.
And yes, those investigating a case have to ask “Is this person lying?” But I’m no police officer, or even journalist.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 8, 2018
  
  Of course, when a friend tells you either about a traumatic assault or about a traumatic accusation, you wouldn’t question or interrogate the
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 8, 2018
    
    But the slogan isn’t “believe your friends.” It’s “believe women,” which sounds like it’s not about the women one knows personally but about all women.
    
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    1. Z
      
      October 8, 2018
      
      Because the standard m.o. is not to believe.
      
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Crystallizing Chaos

October 7, 2018

The NY Times is now calling women republican senators ‘gender traitors’. The funny thing is, they borrow the terms from the Handmaid’s Tale, which uses it for homosexuals in it’s fictional universe, who are being persecuted by a faux-Nazi state. 😀

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Shakti

October 7, 2018

“But even this horribly advantaged/privileged (whatever) person can be disbelieved/ill-treated, what chance do I, who has none of these advantages have in situations I’ve decided are similar?”
-every single fucking analysis that filters itself through public figures.

“Why aren’t you practicing group/group-adjacent solidarity?”
-people who are mad, for some reason or the other.

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Clarissa

October 7, 2018

Yeah, I read that one. Rivers of blood and blood traitors. Creepy as fuck. What’s wrong with these people?

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1. Dreidel
  
  October 8, 2018
  
  “‘Rivers of blood and blood traitors.’ What’s wrong with these people?”
  
  So suddenly the blanket enemy of progressive liberalism has gone from being “old white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee” to all “white women” everywhere?”
  
  Whatever the logic, I hope they keep it up for another 29 days, until the 6th of November!
  
  Mainstream Democrat Jerry Nadler, who will become Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if the Dems takes control of the House, is pledging to start immediate impeachment proceedings against Kavanaugh for being evasive –“lying” — during the hearing about the specific meaning of the coded words in his high school yearbook. Nancy Pelosi is demanding all the last FBI background check files so the House can search for potential perjury traps there.
  
  These cretins — the current leaders of the Democratic Party — actually believe that they can win next month by campaigning on continuing the LOST fight against already-seated Justice Kavanaugh, and by extension pressing for impeachment of President Trump, with the fancied help of whatever secrets Mueller is supposedly holding closely to his chest! These are their only campaign points, while waving away the infantile Democratic Socialist delusions of their kindergarten offspring like AOC.
  
  At the risk of being repetitive — I could never have imagined that it will be this easy! 🙂
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 8, 2018
    
    I wonder if Ford is going to be investigated for lying, too. She clearly lied once and probably twice. The first time was when she said she didn’t remember if she took the polygraph right after her grandma’s funeral or the day after. This was all just days before, and there is no chance she didn’t remember. Another possible one was what she said about her friend Leland lying because she was sick.
    
    I also wonder if anybody is going to investigate how Leland was pressured to lie by Ford’s lawyer. If we are investigating, let’s investigate the whole sorry mess.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 8, 2018
      
      Of course, the person who should reaylly be investigated is Monica McLean. That’s one fishy character.
      
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2. cliff arroyo
  
  October 8, 2018
  
  “What’s wrong with these people?”
  
  They’re addicted to defeat? Identity politics are not a path to electoral victory (ask Hillary) but they can’t let go. I would have like some frank questioning of Kavanaugh about those baseball tickets… but no luck.
  
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  1. Z
    
    October 8, 2018
    
    I’d have liked that, too.
    But I thought Trump got in on identity politics — let’s get rid of the brown immigrants and make “America” “great” (i.e. white). I thought it was all about white identity, Christian identity, etc.
    
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cliff arroyo

October 7, 2018

“false accusations against “husbands, brothers, and sons.””

Both the idea that mainly men are accused/suspected of sexual wrongdoing and that wrongful accusations by women don’t occur (or are exceedingly rare) are both part of the traditional model of sexual complementarity (victorianism) that feminists are running toward with all possible speed.

Women are human beings, moral agents who sometimes choose to do wrong and/or make very bad choices. The idea that they’re somehow above the petty sins of men is straight from the 19th (or 9th) century….

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Shakti

October 7, 2018

I don’t know why people keep repeating the line about false accusations against “husbands, brothers, and sons.”
Anecdata. They assume it’s women accusing men, or men accusing men but not that women are ever accused.

I’ve never been around any accusations of sexual misconduct in the workplace. So this is all very weird to me.

I told one person to her face that if she didn’t like the impromptu back rubs the IT guy liked to hand out that she could tell him that and I’d back her up. The dude left me the hell alone, for various reasons.

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Editor (Retired)

October 8, 2018

I am a lifelong liberal Democrat and a white man (now old) And I am very sad. I am sad because very many Democratic women Who until recently Advanced the cause of full equality for women, have now turned and embraced the proposition that all women are fragile and helpless people, and victims. And that therefore all men are sexual criminals, unless they can prove otherwise. I personally am prepared to believe and sympathize with any woman who has a story to tell about been personally victimized. It does not follow that some man must be chosen to be punished by incarceration or other means to atone for each story of victimization, regardless of whether there is any evidence or corroboration. “All women are presumed to be helpless victims, and all men are presumed to be criminals.“ Is that the story we want to believe and follow to its logical conclusion?

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Clarissa

October 8, 2018

This sums it up perfectly. I’m finding this very frustrating for the exact same reason.

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October 8, 2018

I think you’re mostly misreading. They’re upset, men and women, about men being accused falsely and not getting jobs because men are the ones with the lucrative jobs and who need jobs for self-respect. They are terrified that any misdeed by them, real or not, may knock them out of work. And it’s the patriarchal right wing, male and female but largely women, who are saying this. And these are women, but not feminists.

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Clarissa

October 8, 2018

I was the one who said this was about white-collar job wars from the start.

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1. Z
  
  October 8, 2018
  
  Yes, you were one of the ones who said the putative perps’ employability was the most important thing.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 8, 2018
    
    We are all putative perps if somebody finds us annoying enough. If there’s no standard of proof and no level of reasonableness that accusations should meet, then this can touch absolutely anybody.
    
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    1. Z
      
      October 8, 2018
      
      Yes, I know you think this is a slippery slope. I don’t buy it. It is very easy to get away with sexual assault and rape, and most people who commit these crimes get away with them — I think they’re quite safe to continue, especially now, and that they don’t need to worry, and that their wives and mothers don’t need to worry about them getting caught.
      
      Actually, in my dept. the 3 they got for sexual harassment were women and minorities and I don’t think the university would have been so excited about it, happy to lose them, had they been white men. They always feel it tragically if it happens to a white guy and it takes much longer. In my experience supporting big guys on this does NOT translate into solidarity from them with you.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        I absolutely agree it’s too easy to get away with sexual assault. And this whole spectacle is going to make it worse, not better. If pink postits and unhelpful tenure comments are sexual harassment, them nothing is sexual harassment. This is the problem with listening to every claim. Some claims should not be heard. There shouldn’t have been an investigation of the pink post-it claims.
        
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2. Shakti
  
  October 8, 2018
  
  This is a weird, weird place to make your test case/study about the job wars, especially with white collar jobs.
  
  Maybe it’s the circles I grew up. Maybe it’s the jobs people have in those circles. But I either know people who have absolutely no trouble getting and keeping jobs or they have problems for many other reasons that have nothing to do with fake or real sexual accusations being lobbed at them.
  
  People have problems because they are ex-felons or pregnant or they cannot afford daycare or they lack education or they’ve been out of work too long or they abused drugs.
  
  As for academia, it seems like you have so many more ridiculous reasons to be aced out of jobs before you get to allegations of sex crimes (not harassment, which is civil offense) so I do not get this continued spiralling. It’s displaced absurdity. You could make the case that academia is the canary in the coal mine for other white collar professionals because there are few jobs for very highly educated people and it’s not like getting more education gives you an edge.
  
  But seriously, this case is an fantasy world. I don’t know any white collar professionals who would look at this and think this is how my hiring process works.
  
  If you want to make arguments about job wars arising out of precarity and fluidity exacerbated by automation/AI and the fall of the nation state this is the worst, stupidest test case ever to get people to accept this argument. What is less precarious, less fluid and less likely to be outsourced/replaced by an AI/robot than a SCOTUS judge? I’ll wait for you to come up with that.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 8, 2018
    
    Of course, academic jobs are more coveted than many others. Look at the academic job market. It’s a blood-bath. Every other industry is the job seeker’s market. People are making cushy livings off teaching companies how to cajole white-collar workers into staying. (My sister does that, for example.) Not in academia, though. There are so many more seekers than takers. So of course we are experiencing this now and not later.
    
    Automation and AI are threatening the blue-collar jobs and I talked about it a lot. But white-collar jobs aren’t that threatened by it. In academia specifically, online education is already dead. My online course that used to be overenrolled at 70 now barely gets 20. While the same course in a traditional format easily gets 70+. So yeah, it’s different issues for different kinds of work. Automation is the last thing I worry about. This kind of job wars, however, is a real threat in my world.
    
    We are not among the folks who have to worry about felonies or unsupported pregnancies but that doesn’t mean that our concerns are any less important to us. Neither I nor Kavanaugh will be outsourced or replaced by robots and with all the obvious differences between us, this is one thing in common.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 8, 2018
      
      I just thought about it, and I don’t think I even know about anybody whose job is threatened by automation. Not because they don’t exist but because where would I meet them, realistically?
      
      My dad’s profession was pulverized by AI but he’s in the creative classes, so he easily transitioned into another one. This is one more thing about the creative classes. We aren’t as emotionally attached to our professions. Every person who contributed to super dramatic academic quit lit I know is making a great living doing something else right now. I know many people who had to quit academia because there were no jobs for them and they are fine. Except those who were thrown out because of allegations of sexism, racism, and harassment, of course. Those are in the toilet.
      
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      1. el
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        \ Except those who were thrown out because of allegations of sexism, racism, and harassment, of course. Those are in the toilet.
        
        Why? Do all other places with good jobs refuse to accept them because of a stupid scandal? Or has something psychological happened to those people? If they are creative and not as emotionally attached, what is the problem?
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        Both. If you read my Pedro story, Pedro isn’t getting over what happened even though it was years ago. He’s a shadow of the person he used to be. Lost 60 lbs, and not in a good way but because of severe depression. The shame, the humiliation. This is a guy who taught performance arts. Now he steps on a stage and he thinks everybody stares at him because they think he’s a child rapist. The same psyche that is sensitive to professional transformations and can adapt is slaughtered by being a pariah amidst his peer group.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        Or take this story, for example: https://kfor.com/2018/10/02/university-of-oklahoma-college-of-law-associate-dean-resigns/
        
        Of course, this professor’s ideas about “the veiled form” and stuff sound completely crazy to me. But so what? He should be allowed to be religious and publish any crap he wants if he can’t find a publisher. Ridicule him, make fun of his writings, but don’t force him out to the sounds of this ridiculous crap about inclusivity.
        
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    2. valter07
      
      October 8, 2018
      
      I am sorry, I still do not understand how this job war thing works on a purely technical level. We get 100+ applications for every faculty position, so it should be sufficiently cutthroat… But who is supposed to have this job war with me? I mean not personalities, but the positions in the hierarchy. Who would possibly gain anything from eliminating or at least distracting me by an accusation of sexual misconduct? A graduate student? But they obviously are not going to be given my professorship with tenure… A young female faculty member? Why? The number of tenured faculty positions is not fixed, she does not need to eliminate me or anybody else to get tenured. What if I oppose her tenure? Why should I? We actually hire based on merit, and make tenure decisions based on merit, not on licking anybody’s ass, so the young female assistant professor is doing perfectly fine, and most likely will get her tenure and I am happy for her… The only motivation left is some sort of personal conflict / personal dislike…
      There has to be some other common denominator there, some other reason why you witnessed eight cases and I have witnessed none…
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        In the Pedro story, a chair wanted the job for her close friend. In the pink post-it note story, it was a fight for an administrative position. Two people ended up having to leave the university as a result. In the “unhelpful comments” story, somebody wanted a job for his wife. Didn’t get it, grew upset, decided to take revenge. In the story where allegations were made on my behalf, we were hiring a new person, some people voted against him but lost the vote. So they decided to use these allegations to get rid of him. I refused to participate, he was hired, and got his revenge – guess how! – yes, by creating false allegations about those who opposed his hiring.
        
        Everybody gets in somebody’s way. I know, for instance, that I stick in a colleague’s throat like a piece of broken bone because of the changes she wants to make in the program. And she sticks in mine. It’s gone on for 9 years. We are both decent people, so we haven’t concocted any such story against each other. But we could if we wanted to.
        
        I don’t know your situation in great detail, so I can’t say who’ll be happy to get rid of you. But I know very well who’d love to get rid of me and who I’ll love to get rid of.
        
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        valter07
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        But most of it is a result of seriously considering hiring not on merit… Wives, friends… Looks like discipline culture to me… We have a member of the hiring committee leave the room if he/she knows the applicant better than through the conferences (like been in the same group 10 years ago)…
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 8, 2018
        
        I always declare bias, whether positive or negative, and remove myself, like you describe. I hate this academic bickering and intrigues. But over the years, I have learned to intrigue and manipulate. When we meet in person, I’ll tell you about my best work in this arena. It’s a masterpiece. I never do it to hurt anybody, I promise. I’m a good witch. 🙂
        
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