First: yes, the title is plural. I’ll get to that. Trigger warnings for discussion of sexual assault and rape.
I’m fairly certain I have a grasp now on why exactly there’s so much pushback against even the merest inkling that these allegations of serial sexual harassment might be true, most especially with regard to the allegations against Michael Shermer hosted presently at PZ Myers’ blog. It’s complicated, and nuanced, and will take a lot to unpack. Starting, of course, with human beings.
Humans are social animals. Every interaction requiring any level of trust therefore requires a commensurate history of social interactions one can rely upon that this trust will not be broken. Some small interactions like transactions at a marketplace use money as a proxy for that trust — exchanging money for goods and services suggests that you’re a contributing member of society by having obtained that money to begin with. It’s for that reason that so many people get hung up on the idea that if you’re poor, you’re morally failed somehow.
We are also political animals, and each of us wants our personal viewpoints on the world to spread and to fight for our respective causes. Every interaction we participate in is political in some way, even if not explicitly so. You participate in forums that involve topics you care about; you argue for or against viewpoints that are brought up. Even simple actions like buying media can be politically charged — you could buy games from indie developers in defiance of the big-budget ones which are often calculated to pander to the widest audience but that invariably ends up propagating societally-damaging memes, like that women are objects to be rescued and not autonomous entities. You could give money to movies that are otherwise terrible, just because they happen to star an actor you like; you could boycott movies by actors who do demonstrable harm to the world by espousing blinkered and antiscientific claptrap like Tom Cruise or Jenny McCarthy. Or even something as simple and seemingly apolitical as choosing one soft drink over another just because it tastes good, and you would be sad if it disappeared. Someone next to you might convince you to do otherwise, because of that soft drink manufacturer’s stance on gay marriage, for instance; overriding the one political message for another more important one in your mind. The politics of each interaction might be subtle but they’re there, always.
In computers, there’s a concept regarding privacy and encryption that uses a decentralized model for trusting one another’s private/public encryption pairs. Rather than having an authority storing all the keys that pair with a person’s personal encryption codes, each person you communicate with under the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) method shares the keys that that person trusts, and eventually by being trusted by a lot of people, you can be reasonably secure in the knowledge that newcomers into the network will already have trust for your keys. The better connected you are, the more trusted your keys are. However, like in meatspace, that trust could be violated by any one person, and the more trusted that person, the greater the breach of the trust web.
The entire concept of morality is based on trying to improve humanity’s lot without inflicting undue suffering on its members (or any other entity, to a lesser extent). The reason that sexual assault and rape are morally repugnant is that it is an abrogation of a person’s self-direction, and it does violence to another person in exchange for the aggressor’s pleasure. Even if that violence happens in such a way that the person is not physically harmed, it’s still violence — it’s the overriding of one person’s will for another’s pleasure, and it often comes with a gross violation of trust.
Humans place a high priority on preventing breaches of trust in interactions — the script goes, if someone is a known scam artist, we take pains to inform people to watch out for their tricks (and thus the entire skeptic movement was born). If someone is a known thief, we take pains to inform people to stow their valuables in their presence. But for some reason, when we talk about rape and sexual assault, the desire to warn people to be wary around them is superceded by fears that any particular warning might be *wrong*, because then you’re doing damage to a person without good cause. And when that person is popular, there’s a lot of trust, no matter how small the interactions individually are.
Except, that person may have done grievous damage to someone else, abusing that high level of trust. The saying “power corrupts” springs to mind. They may even have violated people’s autonomy, and we put a very high priority on discouraging that sort of action.
Only, somewhere that script got flipped: it’s more grievously harmful to name the person on the off chance that they fall into the ~6% of false rape claims than it is to screw up that person’s chances at harassing or raping even more people. The cries of “innocent until proven guilty”, which are appropriate in a courtroom or when facing jailtime, are brought up — which are never brought up when someone tells you to watch out for that person who picked your pocket. The cries for physical evidence drown out the testimonial and corroborative evidence that are brought forward. The victim-blaming for putting themselves in the position they were in where they got raped flow freely, where in a parallel situation where someone’s car is hotwired nobody blames the person for choosing an inviting colour of car.
It seems there’s a drive to create a false dichotomy where, because of the grievousness of the crime of breach of trust and breach of someone’s autonomy that rape represents, either the person is completely innocent and free of all charges, or is thrown in jail. Most rape and most assault and most harassment — while criminal — never results in true justice where the perpetrators are put behind bars, even if the victims do go to the police and even if there is physical evidence and even if there is a known suspect. Therefore, most rape and assault and harassment is entirely unpunished, and grossly underreported because everyone knows how the system is skewed.
People forget that there are not merely two options here. There’s not just “jailtime” and “completely innocent”. There’s not just “guilty” and “witch-hunts”. Another possibility is for people to be made aware of these creepers and to know that they cannot trust them as much as they might other people — to warn them that the trust placed in them might not be warranted.
Our ability to trust one another is built on a series of interactions with one another. Over time, you build up a reservoir of trust and if you trust someone enough, when they are faced with a claim that they are untrustworthy, it might be hard to swallow. It might cause you to backlash against the accusations. And when others trust a person, it can amplify that trust. If enough people trust a person despite the alleged breach, no consequences might come of a claim about a person — it might be dismissed as “so much locker room banter” or people “regretting their sexual exploits”. Or it could even legitimately have been an attempt to tear down the trust a community has in a person for no other reason than simple spite.
I understand this dynamic well. When I was 16, my first girlfriend accused me of rape in order to preempt any acrimony over her sleeping with someone else, and the only things that saved me — unpopular kid as I was — were the facts that she’d repeatedly and demonstrably lied to a lot of people about a lot of things very often, eroding anyone’s trust in her, and because she happened to tell a lie integral to her accusation that I could disprove.
Her accusation ruined her own reputation amongst her then circle of friends, but she moved on, built new trusts, violated them as well, and generally made a wreck of her life as far as I cared to follow.
I vowed then to be as honest as humanly possible with people, to the point of it becoming a character flaw. I have a reputation for being blunt with people. I can be short with people. I have no patience for people intentionally abusing one another — and I’m not talking about namecalling, I’m talking about advocating for ideas I deem genuinely ruinous for society, like religion, bigotry, or unchecked greed. I walk away from people who are damaging, even at great personal cost.
This has earned me trust and it has cost me trust with a lot of people in a lot of ways.
In that respect, I am a good deal like PZ Myers to a far smaller degree (in that I am less popular, and therefore have less interactions with which to build my web of trust). I have never seen him flinch or skulk away from a fight over what he believes to be right, nor — more especially — over what he believes to be wrong. Even where I disagree with him, he is a man with the courage of his convictions in my experience. He has earned a good deal of my trust in him to deal with certain issues with ferocity and calm rationality in equal measure. And as far as I can see, he is slow to come to trust others, having likely been burned a number of times by a number of people over the years. My own personal web of trust includes him as a result of my own dealings with him over the years, as do many other folks’. He has built up a strong reputation amongst most of us for being unflinching and self-sacrificing when faced with difficult decisions.
Except, some of these convictions come in direct conflict with some other community members’ own convictions. Some of the actions he has taken — disagreeing publicly and loudly with people over seeming trivialities (which are nonetheless important to him, and evidently important to people who agree with him on the matter), or banning people from his blog for harming the (rather free-for-all) discourse he governs there — each earn him enmity, cost him trust for some folks, even where it earns him trust with others.
There are people who are doggedly determined to prove that he is the secular Antichrist for daring to disagree with certain secular Saints, for daring to (extraordinarily infrequently) ban people from his blog. And these people think that those of us who’ve dealt with him and found his dealings to be fair, well, they think he’s hoodwinked us and that we’re hero-worshipping him in the same way that they hero-worshipped some of the people of whom he’s been critical. They think there’s some kind of cult like hivemind groupthink at play, when what they’re really describing is the fact that we trust him to act in accordance with our own personal beliefs. That we trust him to vet and thoroughly corroborate any claims he makes in public, that he would not stake his hard-earned reputation without damn good cause.
So when someone whom PZ trusts, who also trusts PZ to do the right thing, comes forward and tells PZ her story of having been coerced into sex by the big-name and well-trusted Michael Shermer, and he realizes that to do anything at all about it he has to risk taking a hell of a lot of splash damage to his own reputation in bringing it to the world at large. He’s fully aware that even putting it forward to the degree that he has, stripped of any identifying details that might result in retaliatory harassment of the victim by Shermer’s fans, he’s not only risking his reputation but he’s giving ammunition to the people who want his reputation to evaporate entirely, who will not hesitate to use this event to destroy him and everything he stands for.
There’s a lot of people complaining that these anonymous claims are ruining people’s reputations without sufficient cause or evidence. The deck is actually stacked against people ever coming forward with rape claims, though, and lowering the bar too far can make an environment that’s easily gamed by people who like the system the way it is.
Things like the anonymous tumblr “More Will Be Named”, which was deleted and replaced with a parody by someone who snapped up the domain when it became available after the deletion, actually are damaging to the cause of preventing these big names from taking advantage of the trust they themselves have built. These tiny and untrusted-because-anonymous voices coming forward and being given a megaphone to say what they will about big names might serve as innoculation against anyone ever believing the claim against a well-trusted person. The trolls time and again try to make sure that it’s impossible to ever come forward with a rape case by providing the very false rape claims they decry as the reason we can’t trust people to be honest about their rape claims. They fulfill their own prophecies to throw up chaff and keep people from taking rape claims seriously.
But there’s always another option, as I suggested. There’s “trust implicitly”, there’s “distrust”, and there’s “trust but verify”. And in “trust but verify”, you can know to be wary of certain people without necessarily pointing at them in horror and shrieking “rapist” every time they’re nearby; or throwing them in jail on the least unsubstantiated word.
This is all I, or anyone else fighting for victims rights with regard to rape, have ever advocated. The repercussions in this case are not that Michael Shermer will end up in jail — seriously, even if all six victims were to provide ironclad evidence that he did what they said, at this point so distant from the crimes, it’s grossly unlikely he’ll ever face any jailtime for it. All he has to do is throw up doubt that sex with an inebriated-beyond-consent woman is not actually rape, or that they only decided it was rape after they decided he was skeezy after the fact. He’ll get off on the charge of getting off on someone without their permission.
So the best we can hope for as far as repercussions are that because his name is so popular, the accusations against him will give his potential future victims pause against trusting him enough to drink with or spend time alone with him. This might hurt his feelings, but it will not ruin is career or his life.
And the reason I’m willing to trust PZ to have vetted his claims before making the accusation public like he has, is exactly because I know he treats these accusations seriously and trusts the victims but verifies the stories before putting his own sizable bank of trust on the line.
That’s why anonymous trolls’ stories against people, unverified and unvetted and impossible to corroborate, don’t gain as much traction as the big ones like this. The problem is, the same effect happens with regard to any claim that any rape victim might bring forward — there’s massive public pressure against ever coming forward with your own name, because you will face all the consequences of that interaction. People who don’t trust you will be horrified that you’re impugning the motives of the good decent person they trust, and they’ll rake over your life history looking for any shred of misdeed by which to dismiss you and the entire story. So most rape victims never come forward.
When rape victims DO come forward, it’s because they’ve found someone they can trust. And sometimes the person they trust with the story trusts them back, and sometimes they’re willing to fight that fight on their behalf. Remember, this anonymous accuser is only anonymous TO US.
That’s why PZ can’t give more details than he has; and that’s why the people who don’t trust either PZ or the anonymous (TO US) rape victim are fighting back so hard against the very idea that maybe, just maybe, Michael Shermer actually did it.
And as for the strength of the evidence at hand, the fact that PZ received post-hoc corroboration of the events in question, from someone well-placed within the community enough to be trustable themselves and to have been in a position to know the truth of the statement, from someone, I note, who even admits that they don’t much like PZ and the strength of their belief in the events is strong enough to override that distrust, is excellent evidence that the events actually happened. That’s why there’s a plural. It further cements in my mind that I was right to trust PZ, and that I’m right to trust Jane Doe, at the expense of the reputation of yet another so-called pillar of our community.
Sure, it’s not photographic evidence, but you know how well even THAT works amongst those primed to deny any rape allegations ever brought forward.
Jason, do you still believe in the “friend-zone”? While reading this post I clicked through the link about your ex falsely accusing you of rape and this description stood out to me:
I guess what I’m trying to find out is if you still agree with the way you framed the above situation. I ask because the post in question was written a long time ago and I know that a person’s perspective can change/grow over the years. I’m an on-and-off lurker of your blog and, while it might not seem like a big deal to you, knowing where you stand on this issue is important to me as a reader. Any response/insight you could give me would be much appreciated.
I don’t, Anonymouse. And in fact I believe I didn’t much believe in it at the time of writing that post, either. I don’t know if I intended it as a bitter joke at my own expense, or as a convenient shorthand for being considered only a friend despite, at least at the time, thinking I was making my desire to turn it into a real relationship quite plain.
I, of course, am almost twenty years removed from that time though. Memory is funny.
Xanthe: I absolutely agree that the apologetics in here is thick. And I absolutely believe the motivation behind such apologetics about alcohol is just playing a game of Zeno’s Paradox with the definition of rape to try to get their own indiscretions into the “not-rape” side of the equation.
darkwater, you have provided details that allow for at least some assessment of the situation. Had Shermer entered someone’s room without their permission and raped them while they were asleep then I would equally condemn his actions. FTR, yes, I see your drinking as being a problem. Personally, I don’t get drunk (I don’t even drink alcohol anymore) because I like to be in control of my actions and I want to be thinking as clearly as I can at all times. That is even more important to me now that I have children that I am responsible for. In my opinion, you should have reported it to the police, as embarrassing as that might be.
Xanthë, grey areas do exist, as much as people try to minimize them. Whether or not there was any criminal activity depends upon the facts of the matter, of which no one here seems to have access. Of course, that doesn’t stop people from drawing clear conclusions anyway.
Jason, “trying to get their own indiscretions into the “not-rape” side of the equation”? Heh, nice try. I was one of the rare people who didn’t even have sex until I got married. (I was one of those rare True Christians™ at the time.) I have only had sex with one woman and I hate it when she drinks too much.
Don’t be more stupid than you can help. Having sex with a person who is too drunk to consent ( don’t have to be passed out or too drunk to talk, they just have to be too drunk to consent – and if you don’t understand what that means, think of it as about the same level as too drunk to drive, or too drunk to sign a contract) is ILLEGAL and it’s defined in criminal statutes as RAPE. It’s NOT A GREY AREA. It doesn’t depend on how the person got too drunk to consent; it doesn’t depend on whether the person voluntarily got sloshed or was manipulated into getting drunk by some guy playing “party games” or was drugged with alcohol by some guy premeditatedly pouring straight shots into his victim’s mixed drink without her knowledge. The victim has no legal responsibility to avoid having drinks with some man, even some man (s)he doesn’t know at all, in order to claim (s)he is innocent of the “crime” of being raped.There aren’t any grey areas at all as to raping a drunken person, except in your ignorance.
It’s certainly a good idea for you to avoid ever ever drinking in public, since you know so little, and could so easily find yourself raping someone while telling yourself you were still in the “grey area” where you think it would be okay.
The other half of your often repeated and just-as-often refuted assholery is your idea that we care whether Shermer’s behavior was in fact “criminal”. Yes, it was criminal if he had sex with a drunk woman, no matter what. But criminal is actually beside the point, since it never was and never is going to be a criminal case (for lots of reasons). The point is – for the last time – to warn other women of his known skeevy degrading and dangerous (possibly criminal) behavior towards women at conventions. Women don’t want to have to go through that unpleasant kind of experience with a man who appears to be an intellectual hero, charming, a star speaker … even if they escape actual rape in the end. That’s all we care about. That’s all we’re trying to do: to get the warning out publicly about a known sexual harasser who has made many different women uncomfortable (and almost certainly, some raped) using the same predatory tactics which have worked for him over many years now. Time to stop, Shermer. Game over.
Time to stop defending him, anonymousasshole.
Next comments talking about how there are grey areas where rape is an expected consequence of alcohol gets thrown out on their ear. No more Zeno’s Paradoxes.
And no rules-lawyering about that. Stop saying anyone’s level of inebriation played any role in whether or not they got raped. It’s as irrelevent as what colour the car was across the street when it happened.
Capisce?
hotshoe, how are “people going to warn” all women who might be raped by Shermer? Well, I can think of one way. Report him to the police. That way there is an official record of the abuse and it lends credibility to the accusation. Whether or not women decide to do that is up to them, but it weakens the “no one warned me” defense considerably if they don’t. And of course they can wait years and then come forward anonymously and everyone can debate all the non-facts, but that doesn’t seem to address the confounding factors that led up to what happened or how Shermer got away with rape for so long (assuming he is even guilty).
You say women don’t want to go to the police where drinking was involved? I can understand that, given this scenario, for the reasons I have already discussed. And notice I said that they should go to the police EVEN IF THE POLICE DO NOTHING. Why? Because a report is filed and a history of complaints is being built. You are right that I don’t understand what is so brutal about going to the police. Are the police going to beat the woman up and jail her? (This isn’t Saudi Arabia, is it?) Yes, she will have to share the details of what happened. That is a given. But what is the alternative? Let a rapist continue to rape without anyone knowing what is going on? Honestly, I fail to see how women are getting excused from the slightest bit of responsibility for even the smallest part of what happens in this scenario or what they do afterwards. I’ll repeat what I said earlier. Risks exist and not taking reasonable precautions is stupid.
Here’s what I take from the discussion so far: Women have zero obligation to drink responsibly and don’t have to assume any responsibility when they drink and go to bed with a guy. Also, they are free to do nothing if they feel they were raped and then years later they can anonymously claim anything they want and not provide a shred of evidence. I can assure you that I won’t be teaching my daughter to behave so recklessly or in such a negligent manner.
I’m not that deeply involved in the free thought community, but if this is indicative of the attitude there, it is no wonder men are literally getting away with rape. Playing the blame game at every turn isn’t going to fix the problem. BTW, the burden of proof is always on the prosecution. This principle doesn’t just apply women who were sexually assaulted. It isn’t only a matter of victim blaming, it is a matter of only the victim can come forward and press charges. Of course, if you voluntarily drink and go to a room with a guy you just met, you are going to have a more difficult time making your case.
Lastly, I believe I have been fairly civil in the discussion, but you have turned rather rude. Of course, for all I know you have been drinking so you can’t possibly be held responsible for your actions. ::shrug::
Starting now. (You got that one bit of leeway because you crossed me.)
Jason, well, I wrote that before I saw your last post. You don’t have to kick me out. I consider myself a guest here and will voluntarily leave if you ask me to.
Anonomouse13, do you actually know anybody who has been raped and who has gone through the legal system in part or all the way. If you had you wouldn’t be spouting such crap. For over the years I have known quite a few women and a couple of men who have been raped, some are personal acquaintances and some are from when I was a volunteer in homeless shelters. The vast majority of them who went to the police all said that the questioning, though interrogation would be more accurate, was often as bad or even worse than the original rape. If they then went to court, being questioned and their character routinely impugned by the defense was again as bad or worse than the rape. Even more so in those cases where there was no conviction and the further attacks that often brought about on their character.
This by the way is in the UK were nowadays we are supposed to have a better way of handling rape victims with explicit guidelines about how tape victims should handled. In those police areas were this has been done with the concomitant training of police officers handling any type of sexual crime, then both the victims cope better and conviction rates go up. Even then, our legal system, including both judges and prosecutors have a long way to go, e.g. a recent case were a 13 year old was branded as a sexual predator by the prosecutor and the judge and the paedophile got away with a suspended sentence, and that isn’t an isolated incident.
So tell me, when women hear and see what the prosecution and the judge said about the victim who was still a child what incentive is there for them to go to the authorities.
Damn, are you deaf, and blind as well? We’re doing it right now. Right here. We’re publicly naming Shermer as a known danger to woman, using a social medium with hundreds of thousands of ears and eyes. Word is spreading now. Of course there’s no way to warn ALL the women – hell, there’s no way to even guarantee that everyone in the country knows the name of the president, much less the names of which atheist leaders are sexual abusers. But atheism/skepticism is a quite literate and connected community; now that the name is published in this atheist-skeptic community, we’ve done what we can reasonably do.
No. Just no. Stop being so stubbornly stupid. What do you think happens when you go to the police to report a crime? Honestly, do you think they warn everyone in town about the person you say did it? Really? Bullshit. Not on your life. The person’s name goes in some report in some file somewhere that no one else will ever hear. No one will be warned. No one else in your community will know who to watch out for unless YOU tell them.
Yes of course it’s up to them, and since they will get absolutely nothing but grief from it, they should decide not. Disbelieved, interrogated as if the victim were actually the criminal, with little or no investigation of the criminal suspect, no arrest made … if an arrest is made, in the majority of cases charges are dropped before trial … if the case by some miracle manages to get as far as going to trial, there’s only a 3percent chance that the convicted rapist will do even one single day in prison. The average rape victim would be a total fool to involve the authorities with those chances of outcome.
only to dishonest scum like you who must pretend there’s magic in going to the cops, since going to the cops is never an avenue for warning any other women in reality
only to dishonest scum like you who must pretend a woman’s testimony is not a fact, not real evidence, because, well it’s a real important real man we’re talking about here. Because who cares what the woman says about her own experience – that doesn’t count!
Yawn. He gets away with it the same way every other serial sexual abuser got away with it for so long: because everyone like you refused to listen to the women! Stop that right now. Start behaving like a decent trustworthy human being and start listening.
JT,
In an effort to gain a better idea of where you’re coming from, I wonder if you would help me out by giving me your (brief) assessment of the following hypothetical (but realistic) scenarios.
1. Woman goes to a party at her friend’s house and has 4 drinks in the first 2 hours. Meets a guy she likes. They share a few drinks over the next couple hours. She’s got a good buzz going but certainly has the capacity to resist if accosted. She asks her friend if she can use a bedroom, and takes the guy upstairs and has sex with him. Again, she has a good buzz going. She wakes up the next morning and the guy is gone, but she remembers the whole thing fondly.
2. Next scenario: Same as #1, only this time she wakes up the next morning and thinks to herself, “Man, if I hadn’t had that much to drink, I would’ve probably gone to second base… but that would’ve been about it. Oh well, guess I need to learn my limits!” She reproaches herself mildly and hopes she doesn’t run into that guy again.
3. Same scenario as #2, with one huge difference – she wakes up and thinks “Holy shit! I can’t believe I did that! I never would have gone all the way if I hadn’t been drinking. I was way too drunk to consent… I can’t believe I let myself get taken advantage of that way!” She leaves the next morning fully convinced that she had been taken advantage of in her weakened state.
I’d be curious to know what your view of the moral status of the male in each of these scenarios is. Is it different for each scenario? Is it the same? How would they be different?
I would also be curious to know what your view of the moral status of the woman is in each scenario.
Note: These questions are not intended to refer to the Shermer accusation. I realize that no one here can speak to what did or did not happen with that, and I find it useless to speculate. We only know that we’ve heard what we’ve heard.
I ask these questions to get a better understanding of where you (Thebeault) are coming from where the issues of alcohol, sex, men, and women meet. (I will not presume you speak for anyone but yourself).
[…] gjerne også Lousy Canucks blogginnlegg om hvordan vi bør forholde oss til slike […]
– hjhornbeck
And BOOM.
drops the mic
– signed just another world weary cultural Catholic Victim of the Vatican
Kacyray,
Do you realises that “is it rape if” and pondering the various entirely subjective and arbitrary responses to outcomes is what trolls commonly do to avoid considering the impact on the victim?
In your scenario, what was the guy doing? Was he thinking, “Hey, this chick is drunk, and therefore easy”? Is he the kind of guy who knows that girls who would not normally sleep with him are more likely to sleep with him when he is drunk? Why have you left the guy out of your scenarios?
Why are you focusing on the raped and not the raper? Are you aware that a tango is danced by two?
I learned (during my teenage years) that girls who are interested when drunk have no interest in me the next day. If I had bedded one, then there is a good chance she might have had regret. Knowing this, I refrain from hooking up unless it has been at least three drinking sessions with friendly hands on both sides. Incredibly, I have never been accused of rape, and have instead been complimented on being a nice considerate guy.
Even more incredibly, I still get laid! And no one gets hurt! Shocking!
kacyray
all kinds of people (babies, men, grannies, pro-sex workers, teens, pregnant women, sober, not sober)
are raped by rapists.
why do people like you focus so heavily on those cases where alcohol is involved…as if that were the vast amount of cases?
hjhornbeck # 67
I didn’t mean to. I tried listing out what I thought were the most realistic scenarios, but by all means, if you think that trickery is a more realistic one, go ahead and list it and we’ll talk about it. No need to presume that I did it on purpose. I’m not out to defend Shermer’s honor and I don’t pretend to know what really happened there.
But keep this in mind, if you believe that what you’ve said – that the most realistic option is that “Shermer may have used a combination of tactics to slowly reduce people’s ability to resist” – then it would be nice to know what you think those tactics are. I’ve been around a while, but I’m personally aware of no effective way to slowly reduce people’s ability to resist (other than my obvious charm!). Not unless you’re suggesting roofies or GHB or something like that – but remember, PZ did NOT say drugs. He specifically said it involved alcohol.
My own personal experience is that women decide how much they want to drink, and that’s how much they drink. Just like men do. So… what tactics or combination of tactics are you aware of by which someone can slowly reduce someone’s ability (against their will) to resist using just alcohol?
Jello shots? Beer pong? Do you somehow trick them into drinking when they don’t realize they’re drinking? How exactly does this work? How do you force someone else into a position where they are unable to consent using only alcohol? I’m not saying it can’t be done… I’m just wondering how!
kacyray, jaqing off. Read the account of third woman added to the end of PZs grenade post, and while that one worked out OK thanks to a friend, you can see how a powerful, if only in his niche, and authoritative person can coerce someone and how he works his ‘pitch’.
@162 –
That isn’t what I’m doing. I’m trying to get a more firm cognitive grasp on what the blogger’s position is. There’s not a lot of use in engaging someone in a discussion before taking the time to fully understand their position, is there?
In my scenario, he’s just a guy who met a great girl at a party and accepted her invitation upstairs. A guy no different than myself or most of the folks here, I guess.
Are you reading a rape scene into my scenarios? I’m puzzled by this question, but I will tell you that questioning whether someone was victimized is not the same as focusing on the criminal versus the victim. For one must establish there there was, in fact, a victim. Only then can one choose where to put one’s focus.
Good on you. Lots of guys don’t learn that lesson. It’ s good that you’ve managed to remain above reproach all these years. I’ve never been accused either, by the way, and I’ve been far less careful than you.
Indeed. 🙂
Kacyray,
I am reading a rape scene into your scenario, because this is a thread about rape and sexual assault. Are you on topic?
Questioning whether or not someone has been victimised inherently minimises what the “victim’s” feelings on the matter are. If someone had sex with someone else who didn’t want to, then there is a victim. You don’t get to question that.
You put all this weight on the girl to asses her morality and responsibility, but there is no call for the guy to do the same. Why would you do that? We get lots of information about the girl in these hypothetical situations but how about the guy? Was he pushy or was he relaxed? Is he a slightly famous individual? Was he filling her drinks faster than he was filling his own? was he isolating her from her friends? would one of the other girls at the party have warned her about this guys creepy behaviour at a previous party, but didn’t because he would have branded her a lying bitch? These are all points actually relevant to the topic.
Anyhow, that’s not the point of this thread. Remember, we are not talking about casual hook-ups here. we are talking about how women are running out of avenues to make themselves be heard when making these complaints (especially about a big name individual). We are talking about large organisations actively sheltering these individuals who have been accused of abuse leaving other women to be abused. We are talking about the relative trustworthiness of anonymous reporting.
When you wade in with “but what about these hypothetical situations?” you are derailing the conversation. It troubles me that you require these clarifications of morality in order to engage with these points. Why do you need them?
In my scenario, he’s just a guy who met a great girl at a party and accepted her invitation upstairs. A guy no different than myself or most of the folks here, I guess.
In other words, in your scenario he’s blameless no matter what anyone says about his actual behavior. And it’s the “girl’s” fault for being such a great girl to meet, and for inviting him “upstairs.” Yep, typical victim-blaming.
Whilst in the past we may not have seen eye to eye on certain matters, I completely agree with your post here Jason.
Without the facts being in my grasp I am not going to make any supposition as to the allegations or their truthfulness, as that would be very foolish.
Suffice to say I do hope justice is done where it is due.
I’m very disappointed. Shermer’s books were a gateway to skepticism for me and finding out that he’s such a creepy predator considerably reduces any enjoyment I got from them, even years after reading. I feel bad for his victims, and hope the warning will help other women avoid him. In a good world, this will also reduce his demand as a speaker and further reduce his chances to be a predator, and in a better one he would realize what an asshole he’s been, apologize and try to make amends in some way (not going to happen, but hey, let’s throw that out there). The vague “skeptic speaker who is a creep” really isn’t much of a warning, and pretty useless for anyone who isn’t privy to back channel talk.
I’m trying to get a more firm cognitive grasp on what the blogger’s position is.
Um…he explained his position in a lot of detail (more than I thought necessary, but that’s just me). If you still can’t get your head around it, that probably means you’re just too ignorant to participate in this conversation.
But keep this in mind, if you believe that what you’ve said – that the most realistic option is that “Shermer may have used a combination of tactics to slowly reduce people’s ability to resist” – then it would be nice to know what you think those tactics are.
We’ve been explicitly discussing said tactics, and you still don’t know what they are? Did you actually read ANY of this thread or any of the numerous OPs dealing with this incident? Or do you just make a habit of looking for posts about topics like this, and barging in to grind the same old axe regardless of what anyone else says?
I’ve been around a while, but I’m personally aware of no effective way to slowly reduce people’s ability to resist … but remember, PZ did NOT say drugs. He specifically said it involved alcohol.
First, for someone who brags of having “been around awhile,” you’re pretty amazingly ignorant of things I was at least aware of back when I was 15. And second, yes, PZ mentioned alcohol. Alcohol is a drug, remember?
My own personal experience is that women decide how much they want to drink, and that’s how much they drink.
Yes, they decide based on their assessment of how safe it is to drink and let down their guard in this or that particular venue. And in this case, this particular woman had reason to believe she was in a safe place to get a bit tipsy — and her trust was betrayed. Yes, she made a choice, but the choice was based on information that turned out to be false. It’s not her fault for drinking, it’s Shermer’s fault for betraying her trust. Why is this so hard for someone who’d allegedly “been around awhile” to understand?
I don’t drink, so maybe I’m off-base on this, but it seems like it’d be really hard to keep track of how much you’ve had to drink if someone’s continually refilling your glass, especially if they do it before you’ve finished it off. Seems like it’s probably a lot easier to choose how much you’re going to drink if you have to order a new one each time you finish.
Anonymous13 @134:
Let’s see if I got this straight. You:
1. Ignored my explanation for why the rates exhibit so much variation, then
2. Linked to a webpage which shows reporting rates exhibit variation, which
3. Includes the same explanation I gave, plus several more.
Given your history of ignoring my arguments, I can’t say I’m surprised you’ve branched out into misunderstanding.
False reports must be low. Why? Because in private surveys such as the GSS, we consistently find far more unreported sexual assaults than reported ones. There is no motivation for false reporting in those surveys, as the accused will never hear about the accusations, let alone be punished. What’s the most likely scenario?
1. Legitimate rapes are rarely reported, because the victim does not want to seek justice.
2. Legitimate rapes are rarely reported, because they are difficult to prosecute, bring shame to the accusing person, are frequently dismissed by police, will lead to retaliation, or some combination of those four.
In scenario 1, you’d expect to find a consistent of false reporting rate, because the factors which determine it are simple and depend only on the victims. In scenario 2, you’d expect to find a wide range of variation in the false reporting rate, as the factors are complex and depend far more on the attitudes of people other than the victim.
So which scenario do you think is true, given the data?
A lot of people seem to interpret stories like “Shermer got me drunk and raped me” as quite possibly meaning “Shermer and I were having drinks together and I begged for sex until he reluctantly obliged, but it doesn’t count because my BAC was .09%.”
Nothing in PZ’s account of the story suggests that she did consent at all. Interpreting it as meaning that it was basically normal, consensual sex, but her reaction time were a we bit below what would be needed to drive a car safely is disingenuous. He and his source both described it as rape. What’s the point of trying to imagine something that technically fits the description of what happened (which he said was intentionally vague to hide his source’s identity)?
Ace of Sevens, are you asking what is the point of evaluating possibly slanderous hearsay from an anonymous person regarding an event that happened years ago for which there is no evidence and was never reported to the police? I guess my standards are just a tad bit higher than that. I’m not going to just throw someone under the bus. The reason is because I wouldn’t want someone to do the same thing to me. Instead, I am going to consider that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And by proven I mean at least some sort of reasonable confirming evidence for the allegation. So far there is nothing, yet people seem to have no problem preparing the noose.
Consider how the principles of the Sixth Amendment come into play: the right to a speedy and public trial, an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; and to be confronted with witnesses. The skeptical community is undermining itself when it ignores principles like these and it is rightfully receiving a lot of criticism for what looks very much like a witch-hunt.
Just so there is no misunderstanding, if Shermer is guilty of rape then I believe he should be punished.
hjhornbeck, I accept that there is variation in the reporting for a number of reasons. You can’t use the statistical data to validate any given rape claim.
Anonymous13 @175:
Because if a woman says she was raped, that’s not evidence.
So high that you expect a community of people to act just like the Federal government.
Because two other women providing corroboration isn’t reasonable evidence, either. What would be “reasonable evidence,” in your mind?
Because public shaming is exactly like a brutal execution.
Because the skeptical community obviously has all the powers of a national government and is not only capable but willing to kill people for raping its citizens.
Because just like witches, rapists aren’t real.
Ace of Sevens, are you asking what is the point of evaluating possibly slanderous hearsay from an anonymous person regarding an event that happened years ago for which there is no evidence and was never reported to the police?
No, you pig-ignorant git, we’re saying the person is not anonymous, but is well-known to the person passing on her story. (And no, it’s not “slander/libel” unless there’s RECKLESS DISREGARD for the truth.) This basic simple fact has been repeatedly stated and explained, so you have no excuse to keep on repeating the same ignorant PRATT over and fucking over again.
Consider how the principles of the Sixth Amendment come into play…
We HAVE considered it: it only comes into play if you’re trying to deprive someone of life, liberty or property, as punishment for a crime. No one here is trying to do any such thing to Shermer, so the Sixth Amendment doesn’t come into play here at all. This has also been repeatedly explained here. Please try harder to keep up.
Bzzzt, wrong. that is a limit on the government. Thank you for playing I don’t know jack about what applies to the government and what applies to private citizens.
Anonymous13:
With reference to your comment:
I’m wondering, if you desire to avoid misunderstanding, why then are you bending over backwards to create or perpetuate misunderstanding?
With reference to your other comment:
This seems like pretty questionable argumentation to me. I mean, strictly speaking, you can’t use the known statistical relationship between smoking and lung cancers to prove any single case of lung cancer is related to smoking, nor can you use the known statistical relationship between global warming and extreme warm/storm weather events to prove any single such event is causally related to global warming.
Nevertheless, such statistics mean something, because the relationship is too well supported overall to engage in nitpicky denialism like “you can’t use the statistical data to validate any single [X] claim”.
Just as it is with smoking and global warming, so it is with false rape claims.
@Anonymous13: That’s beside the point. I didn’t ask why people tried to evaluate where the claims were true. That’s obvious. I asked why people look for situations where the accusations are true, but it still isn’t rape. This would seem to be too absurd a possibility to waste time on.
Maybe we should once again have a discussion about where the onus of rape belongs. It belongs on the attacker NOT THE VICTIM. Instead of saying “you should be aware of your surroundings and not drink so much.” Maybe we should tell rapists “You know, you’re looking a little rapey tonight. Maybe you should hang with some friends who will make sure that you don’t rape” or “Call a friend if you find yourself in a situation where you might rape and they can come get you before you do something that you’ll regret”
If you want people to listen to you, stop of the self serving, sanctimonious, pedestal sitting loads of crap! This is not a trial. No one has prepared a noose. PZ Myers stated that he talked to a friend who told him about an incident. He let others know that this happened. Others came forward and said “Yeah, he did the same thing or something similar”. Something that I might add has been quietly whispered about at cons for a while. I heard about MS’s proclivity for plying with alcohol and to be careful around him when I was at Texas Freethought 2011. So rather whispering into people’s ear, PZ came right out with it. He said “This happened to someone I know. I have no reason to distrust her and in order to protect her from further backlash, I’m not revealing her identity. Please be careful when hanging out with this individual”
Yes, she should have gone to the police but considering how the police frequently treat people who come forward (especially if it isn’t a stranger jumping out of the bushes type incident) is appalling. Maybe if the con organizers had been anything but dismissive then that might have happened. And you want to know what happens when someone has been raped or sexually assaulted? Read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/comment-page-5/#comment-664372
Since I doubt that you will, I will provide the reader’s digest. 14 year old girl (my niece) was sexually assaulted by her best friend’s father. Up until the time that the doctor who performed the rape kit said “Yup, she is a virgin and we found signs of digital penetration as well as semen on her buttocks” did the cops take her claims seriously. Even after that it was two years of hell because the man who assaulted was a pillar of the community, a church elder (who tried to throw both of his sons under the bus for the act!) as well as navy NCO…. She was vilified in school by her former friend, was told in church that she was mentally unbalanced, etc. He was convicted of his crimes and sentenced to 7 years in prison. And you know what, the family was asked to leave the church because “it made people uncomfortable to have her sitting in church”.
So. Just. Stop. Blaming. The. Victim.
If you do not know the meanings of the words “libel” “slander” or “hearsay” you should not use them.
I guess my standards are just a tad bit higher than that. I’m not going to just throw someone under the bus.
That’s exactly what you’re doing to the victims in this case. So stop pretending you have such high standards of “justice.”
And you know what, the family was asked to leave the church because “it made people uncomfortable to have her sitting in church”.
We should all remember that every time some wankapologist tries to tell us how much good religion does.
I suppose I should clarify. Shermer bought her some drinks, then they had sex. This could indeed describe any number of scenarios, some of which re rape and some of which aren’t. However, this isn’t a situation where some third party, armed only with that info, is accusing Shermer of rape. The only way this makes sense as an objection in this case is if you think that the story is true, but both she and PZ are somehow mistaken about it being rape. I’m not sure how that would happen.
I remember it every time it’s “his word against hers”. More often than not, the victim has far, far more to lose from a rape accusation that the rapist does.
@175
One of the amusing (in a fucked up way) things about the whole demand for evidence crowd is how much similar to the fundamentalist Islamic society such views are.
What that ? Its a woman’s word against a man? My standards of evidence are much higher! Other independent women have also warned about this man? My standards of evidence are much higher! its unreported (even though various studies show why this happens)? My standards of evidence are much higher!
Anonymous13 @176:
If I may quote myself:
The claim of rape is not extraordinary, in other words, and should be accepted as probably true unless there is sufficient reason not to. I, and others in this thread, have shown there is insufficient reason to reject it. Are you going to refute those arguments, or concede that this anonymous person was probably raped by Shermer?
@162 BLar –
Kacyray,
I specifically stated that my scenarios were constructed to gain a foundation of information from the blogger and NOT related to the Shermer accusations.
Because I don’t know Mr. Thibeault and I have no interest in making assumptions about what he believes based on a single blog post. There’s a good chance that he and I agree on many things and that the point of disagreement might be a mere point of clarification. I’ve found this to often be the case.
I realize that he, along with most of FTB, is a feminist. I am not one. But I’m damn sure not okay with sexual predation, rape, or any exploitation of the vulnerable. The scenarios I laid out (if answered) were intended to
indicate a baseline point of (probable) agreement – a point of departure from where to start.
Once two people establish where they agree, its a lot easier to pinpoint the specific point of disagreement. This is a pretty common method of discourse…. when you disagree with someone, you reel back and reel back until you find the point at which you both agree, and then move forward from there.
That’s what I was hoping for, but I no longer expect that. You and a couple others have already received my comments in the most uncharitable way possible, assumed my motives, and poisoned the well.
This is why commenting on blogs is so frustrating. Sitting over a cup of coffee, I’d have been able to have a great conversation. But with you people taking pop-shots from the cheap seats… there’s just no way.
I withdraw the questions. I wish you all well.
I’m with you on all of this with the sole exception of the bit where you suggest people aren’t victim-blamed when their cars are stolen (see Miri’s post concerning this), but that analogy is just a minor detail. Bravo!
Kacyray:
Glad to know that you are not “okay” with sexual predation, rape, and exploitation. But your misogynistic- rape apologist attitude can go away. We aren’t the ones who poisoned the well…. you did. Speak about the issues at hand, not a bunch of fucking hypotheticals. And FYI: A feminist is someone who believes that women should be treated the same as men. So by your own admission, you’re a sexist
Leaving the R word out of it, what one of the women said Shermer did was keep her wine topped up, so she never reached the bottom of her glass.
I had a neighbor do that to me once. He wasn’t trying to seduce me. He was just trying to be a good host. I knew I was drinking a little more than I usually did. But it was a community party, where the table crew put out another bottle as soon as one was emptied, there was no water to drink, and I was just sipping…. And sipping….
It wasn’t until I stood up to leave that I realized I must have drunk a *lot* more than usual. I tried not to make it obvious I was clinging to my husband’s arm as we left. I fell down as we walked home. (Fortunately, no car travel was involved.) My husband excused it with, well, dark night, uneven pavement. I knew better. For the only time in my life, I was literally falling down drunk.
And the thing was, I really didn’t think I was drinking that much. Because my glass was never empty.
If that’s Shermer’s technique– or anybody’s technique– whether it’s legally rape or not, it’s something women should be very suspicious of. At least in my case, it was really difficult to judge how much I was drinking when I never got to the bottom of the glass.
The thing is, when you’re literally falling-down drunk, you are not legally capable of consent. A person having sex with you at that point is committing a legally-defined rape due to your inability to consent.
So, yes, if Shermer did in fact have sex with a falling-down drunk woman (even if it wasn’t his fault that she had too much to drink in the first place) then he did indeed commit rape as defined by criminal statute, due to her being too drunk to consent.
Since several women have spoken of Shermer manipulating the situation to get them drunk when they didn’t expect to, then it’s premeditated rape on his part. That is, if we believe the women. And why wouldn’t we believe the women? What has any woman to gain by admitting that she was manipulated by Shermer into getting drunk? They’re not going to get justice, only slut-shaming, lectures about responsibility, accusations that they’re the criminals, not him …
So, after a good night’s sleep and a day’s worth of Internet issues, I find that my “cut-and-dry” rape, according to Anonymous13, isn’t so “cut-and-dry”, according to Anonymous13. Honestly, I was kind of expecting that.
Anonymous13 thinks my drinking the evening of my rape is a “problem.” But, in what way is it a problem? Is this “problem” at all mitigated (or, dare I say, minimized) if I say that there’s a decent chance both my rapist and I were sober by the time the assault occurred? What if one or both of us weren’t? In what way does this matter or not matter? Or is it the drink itself that’s the causal agent? Then, the question is which drink: did my second Jack & Coke cause me to get raped? Did my second Jack & Coke cause my rapist to rape me? But why limit it to drinks? I listed a bunch of items in the description of my rape that might be factors; for instance, my rapist needled me throughout the year about being uncircumcised, so maybe my foreskin caused him to rape? (What other events could my foreskin be responsible for — the mind boggles!)
People have brought up Xeno’s Paradox in explaining the motivation of the rape minimizers in this thread. It’s a possibility, but in this particular case, I think it’s desperate clinging to the “just world” fallacy. Anonymous13 doesn’t drink; he gets upset when his wife drinks “too much” (although earlier in the comment he says that one drink is one drink too much); I think he really is grasping for a set of rules that will keep him and his loved ones safe. The fact that the particular rule he’s settled on (don’t drink) dramatically constrains perfectly legal and moral actions of others (but not his own — funny, that) is a price he’s willing to pay.
(I also find it interesting that the only factor he thinks contributed to my decision not to report is “embarrassment”, but other commenters have addressed that issue.)
Back in the thread that PZ just yanked down, I was thinking how hard it’d be to set up a fake campaign of accusations, compared to how easy it would be to mouse-trap someone who’s maybe not very smart about staying out of compromising positions. If you had 3 fake accusers, they’d risk exploding their stories by getting a material fact wrong about what happened at which conference, when. You’d have to have research about the target’s behavior going back years and you’d have to build a set of fictions that were consistent with what happened because all the defender would have to do is blow a few smoking holes in the claims and it’d look pretty bad in a hurry.
The observation that Shermer’s first tactical response was to try to silence the accusations rather than trying to address them, tells me that he’s probably not so confident of his ability to confront the stories head on. I take it as rather revealing, really.