Comment on 40% of teenage boys believe women lie about domestic and sexual violence: new research
Zozano@aussie.zone 1 day agoAlright, I’ve evidently written my comment with poor phrasing.
It was supposed to be a joke at the expense of guys who think “all women are liars” being the guys who are the type to commit sexual assault in the first place.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I don’t think any guys say “all women are liars.” That’s certainly not the claim in this article, although it’s presented as if to indicate that misleadingly.
Zozano@aussie.zone 1 day ago
I’ve certainly met misogynists who will make bold claims like that.
In any case, I know it wasn’t the claim of the article, it was supposed to be a joke (also at the expense of the ambiguity of the title)
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Okay, well those people are uncouth, uneducated troglodytes deserving of ridicule and scorn.
But we shouldn’t conflate making an absolute claim such as “all women are liars” with making a particular claim such as “that particular woman is lying, because I didn’t do the thing she is accusing me of.”
Too often people treat any claim to innocence by an accused man as some misogynistic attack on all womankind. If a guy is innocent and gets accused of something, it’s not misogynist to say “No, that’s not true. I didn’t do that.”
The converse is also true about making absolute claims such as “No woman is a liar.” It’s simply divorced from reality, and all that it would take to disprove it is one example of a woman who lied. Emmett Till’s accuser lied, did she not? That’s just one famous example, but studies have shown that upwards of 5% of reported, official cases turn out to be demonstrably false accusations. That’s 1 in 20, just of cases that make it to court.
The lesson is to avoid making absolute statements. It’s not about “all women lie” or “no women lie,” because both are false statements. It’s about assessing the credibility of accusations on a particular, case-by-case basis. But people don’t like when the answer is “it depends” or “it’s complicated.” They want some blanket solution which will always apply in every case, but that’s just not how reality works.