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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

> when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim.

This is by definition cancel culture. Unfortunately some bad actors will abuse this as a way to hurt someone. I've seen this happen twice, and fear of this happening is enough for good men to be unnecessarily distant towards women. That said, people getting away with sexual assault seems to be significantly more common.

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i mean, 1 in 3 women have a chance of experiencing sexual violence in the US. it sucks that some men now fear interacting with women because of n=2 false accusations, but a grassroots movement was literally created because women aren't getting justice for the egregious crimes which are committed against them at alarmingly high rates (and who themselves are ostracized and whose careers are destroyed for just reporting those crimes).

Men are more often victims of violence in general than women by far yet sexual violence if given precedence because society likes to be sexist and group all men together. It doesn't matter if I'm a male victim of crime because most criminals are men and that makes me somehow complicit.

I never liked playing society's hetero games.

As a man who will never rape a woman, I care a little about the possibility of a random stranger having a small possibility of being raped, but I care much more about myself getting potentially unjustly accused of sexual abuse and suffering consequences. If engaging in any interaction with a woman will get me an acquaintance at best and ruin my career at worst, then this sounds like a very bad deal.

>If engaging in any interaction with a woman will get me an acquaintance at best

So you're saying you don't have and never will have any friends who are also women?

Eh, that's a difficult one. When I was a kid I'd often be friends with girls, I usually had more friends who were girls than boys. Now as an adult I have more friends who are men than friends who are women, and I have to say, I don't see why I'd expand on the latter, even ignoring all of what I wrote above. Dealing with a person of the opposite sex is just so much more demanding. I'd really need a woman to give me something unique if I were to be friends with her. When I started hanging out with dudes, it surprised me how easy it is. I pretty much put my brain on autopilot mode, whereas with a woman I need to actively engage my brain for successful communication. This is particularly important considering the fact that I suffer from chronic exhaustion.

men are also victims of sexual violence.

This is a ridiculous take. Defamation suits still exist. Not interacting with colleagues of a different gender, on the other hand, will get you disciplined and eventually fired. Just don't be a creep like Joel Kaplan, allegedly.

It is a morally disgusting, but very rational take.

It is morally disgusting because of the relative harms between the parties, but very rational because of the personal risk/reward calculation.

It's precisely the risk/reward calculation that is wrong. If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. If you stop interacting with people, you will get fired.

> If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit.

Are you aware of anyone who has successfully done this and maintained their standing in life?

The example that comes to mind for me is Steven Galloway, a UBC Professor who was accused of sexual assault in 2015 and filed a defamation lawsuit about it in 2018. That lawsuit has spent the last 7 years making its way through the courts; after many attempts to have it dismissed, it will finally proceed to trial. Meanwhile Galloway's career basically ended: he went from being a celebrated and award-winning author and professor to doing manual labor like cleaning swimming pools. His publisher cancelled a three-book contract in 2018.

Even if the defamation lawsuit succeeds, how will he ever be made whole? He will never get the last 10 years of his life back.

His case wasn’t just sexual assault, and he admitted having an affair with a student which even if it’s not a criminal offense is a career-limiting move at many universities. I think he deserves his day in court but it sounds like there’s more to it than a single accusation.

As I understand it, all of the allegations were investigated by Madame Justice Boyd who found that none of them were substantiated except for the affair, which I agree is far from advisable, but on its own seems unlikely to have ended his career so completely. There is no way to go back to 2015 and find out what would have happened if the affair had been the only accusation.

Galloway, by his own admission, did far more than interact with a woman at work. That's not what we're discussing here. Getting in bed with somebody requires far more vetting than simply interacting with them, and this has always been the case.

Fair point. But I think it does illustrate that defamation lawsuits are unlikely to be an effective defense in the (admittedly unlikely) case that you are falsely accused of something.

I'd say this is a naive take, it probably happens but I've never heard of someone getting a defamation lawsuit through in Sweden. And even if you end up being right and winning all bridges will be burned and some excuse to keep you fucked will be made.

It's a losers game, and you don't have to play. Which doesn't necessarily mean "don't interact with women" but maybe "keep it to the bare minimum, don't be alone and cover your ass"

Considering how fucked up things are everywhere on so many levels I think any way to get through the day with a positive end is a great way to do it

Any data on what percentage of these suits succeed and how much it costs?

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