I apologize that it’s taken me this long to respond, I’ve been at work all morning. I would just like to take a moment to agree with you. I DO believe that false allegations should be spoken about more often, and that men SHOULD feel supported to share their fears/concerns/etc about this sort of thing happening. I do think that just by saying “That happens so rarely it doesn’t matter”, that we’re hurting the feminist cause, because it’s just like people saying “Oh, rape abortions only account for 1% of all sought after abortions, so it’s a non-issue”. For the people affected, it’s absolutely a huge issue, even if they’re both technically statistical anomalies.
I think its important to be outraged about false rape allegations, as it not only ruined this young man’s life, and the people’s lives he’s close with, it now sheds a mistrustful eye on true rape victims. However, I do think it is telling that this story has resurfaced today as though it happened yesterday, when it is in fact over a decade old. I think it is telling that it is resurfacing during a time period where women’s rights (not even just to bodily autonomy, but there are people arguing to get rid of no-fault divorce as well, among other things) are such a hot button issue. I think it is telling that it’s resurfacing during a period where we’re seeing a surge in young men subscribing to manosphere style content (I honestly think these young men feel unheard/unsupported in their hopes/dreams/wants/worries/fears/etc, but that opens up a whole other topic around extremist feminism).
Yes, I’m angry that this happened. I’m empathetic. I’d like to think (and I’ll likely search it after this comment) that this young man received multi-millions in compensation, because not only did he lose 6 years of his life to the system, he’s also faced a loss in job and relationship opportunities, and not to mention the emotional and psychological effects of being accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit.
TL;DR - Yes, we can be angry that this young man was wronged, but we can also be critical and suspicious of how/why this story resurfaced now.
Edit: I looked it up, his name is Brian Banks and he was only awarded $142K by the state of California for this wrongful conviction. That makes me doubly angry on his behalf. In no way does that even begin to try and make things up to him (not that I’m arguing that money fixes everything, but holy fuck, only $142K?!). https://www.hawaiiinnocenceproject.org/brian-banks
Yeah, I feel you. It does seem suspect, but it’s possible this person just found out about it. I suspect I’ve seen this news story before, but I may have forgotten about myself since it wasn’t immediately familiar to me. I find it overwhelming what’s been transgressing with women’s rights lately. Especially since half of America’s potential voters… are women. What the heck is going on? I’ve been beginning to wonder if our “elections” might actually be rigged in more subtle ways than we hear about, for instance, the Republicans screaming about in relation to Trump. How else could we explain this slow decline of personal freedoms impacting literally 50% of our population? Anyways–I’m not trying to spin conspiracy theories or convince anybody that there is an illuminati-in-the-shadows play happening behind our backs. I’m just sitting here wondering what could possibly be the cause of the weirdness we’ve been seeing for the last few years.
I spend a lot of time talking to a good friend of mine who is a conservative, and it’s like we live in alternate dimensions of information. He’ll randomly hit me with accusations about Biden that mirror almost exactly the accusations I had for Trump four years ago… its unbelievable. I think the propaganda machine has been running on full blast for at least a decade now, and I would like to know who is behind that. I’m guessing this same propaganda machine is what’s responsible for the radicalization of young men that you referred to.
I apologize that it’s taken me this long to respond, I’ve been at work all morning. I would just like to take a moment to agree with you. I DO believe that false allegations should be spoken about more often, and that men SHOULD feel supported to share their fears/concerns/etc about this sort of thing happening. I do think that just by saying “That happens so rarely it doesn’t matter”, that we’re hurting the feminist cause, because it’s just like people saying “Oh, rape abortions only account for 1% of all sought after abortions, so it’s a non-issue”. For the people affected, it’s absolutely a huge issue, even if they’re both technically statistical anomalies.
I think its important to be outraged about false rape allegations, as it not only ruined this young man’s life, and the people’s lives he’s close with, it now sheds a mistrustful eye on true rape victims. However, I do think it is telling that this story has resurfaced today as though it happened yesterday, when it is in fact over a decade old. I think it is telling that it is resurfacing during a time period where women’s rights (not even just to bodily autonomy, but there are people arguing to get rid of no-fault divorce as well, among other things) are such a hot button issue. I think it is telling that it’s resurfacing during a period where we’re seeing a surge in young men subscribing to manosphere style content (I honestly think these young men feel unheard/unsupported in their hopes/dreams/wants/worries/fears/etc, but that opens up a whole other topic around extremist feminism).
Yes, I’m angry that this happened. I’m empathetic. I’d like to think (and I’ll likely search it after this comment) that this young man received multi-millions in compensation, because not only did he lose 6 years of his life to the system, he’s also faced a loss in job and relationship opportunities, and not to mention the emotional and psychological effects of being accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit.
TL;DR - Yes, we can be angry that this young man was wronged, but we can also be critical and suspicious of how/why this story resurfaced now.
Edit: I looked it up, his name is Brian Banks and he was only awarded $142K by the state of California for this wrongful conviction. That makes me doubly angry on his behalf. In no way does that even begin to try and make things up to him (not that I’m arguing that money fixes everything, but holy fuck, only $142K?!). https://www.hawaiiinnocenceproject.org/brian-banks
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Yeah, I feel you. It does seem suspect, but it’s possible this person just found out about it. I suspect I’ve seen this news story before, but I may have forgotten about myself since it wasn’t immediately familiar to me. I find it overwhelming what’s been transgressing with women’s rights lately. Especially since half of America’s potential voters… are women. What the heck is going on? I’ve been beginning to wonder if our “elections” might actually be rigged in more subtle ways than we hear about, for instance, the Republicans screaming about in relation to Trump. How else could we explain this slow decline of personal freedoms impacting literally 50% of our population? Anyways–I’m not trying to spin conspiracy theories or convince anybody that there is an illuminati-in-the-shadows play happening behind our backs. I’m just sitting here wondering what could possibly be the cause of the weirdness we’ve been seeing for the last few years.
I spend a lot of time talking to a good friend of mine who is a conservative, and it’s like we live in alternate dimensions of information. He’ll randomly hit me with accusations about Biden that mirror almost exactly the accusations I had for Trump four years ago… its unbelievable. I think the propaganda machine has been running on full blast for at least a decade now, and I would like to know who is behind that. I’m guessing this same propaganda machine is what’s responsible for the radicalization of young men that you referred to.
Anyways, I’ll get off my weird soap box lol