Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePrince
What about the statistics on anonymous throwaway Twitter accounts falsely accusing victims of rape?
Like sure, it’s one thing if a victim comes out and files a lawsuit or publicly goes on the record to accuse someone of rape. They are putting themselves and their reputations on the line doing that, so I would expect the rate of false accusations to be low in situation. Conversely, I also understand why a lot of those victims wouldn’t want to come forward and subject themselves to that sort of pain and suffering and would rather just move on with their lives.
But that’s not what happened in this situation. And I’m not saying that the accusation was right or wrong. But you absolutely cannot equate a random anonymous throwaway Twitter post and someone bravely coming out and putting their life and reputation on the line to hold a rapist accountable. And you absolutely cannot use statistics from latter to prove your point about the former.
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You also can’t call it a “throwaway” multiple times just because you decided it was one. It was a fairly detailed account.
Again, though, this just a re-hash of “this supposed victim isn’t acting the way a good victim ought to act” which is just useless nonsense. The statistics give us the overall picture, one that this incident is part of whether anyone likes it or not, and can even provide context as to why the allegation was presented in the way it was presented. Statistics almost never “prove” anything, they’re statistics. They help form the bigger picture or support a position. Cam’s point was that automatically siding with the accused in these situations is an illogical thing to do, and the statistics support that (yes, even when it’s anonymous and online).
You’re suggesting that because there is nothing at stake for the alleged victim, the chances of it being false go up. But there’s also nothing to gain, so the chances of it being true would have to go up and then you’re right back where you started.
Since you posed the question about the statistics on it, what do you think the chances are of someone making up a detailed account of abuse against an entirely random, non-star NHL player, for reasons that had nothing to do with extorting money or costing said player anything? Do you think it’s likely to be higher than 90%?
