If you're the one being accused, you have to worry about the accusation coloring other people's judgement of you. Most people really aren't logical creatures. People tend to not remember the source or veracity of things they know. So even if you're innocent, others may automatically assume you're a jerk.
The problem is that if you are skeptical of the victims’ claims, you are accused as unempathetic or intolerant. Such a mentality is antithetical to “innocent until proven guilty.”
I feel like we're not hearing the full story here...
This is precisely why accusations are so damaging, even if one is acquitted. People assume that there must be more they don't know, and the accused's reputation is forever tainted.
Believe it or not, it's possible to be suspected or even accused of something you didn't actually do, whether through a misunderstanding or otherwise. And factors such as ethnicity and personal associations can influence the chance of this occurring.
There's something wrong with the way you think if you view an accusation directed towards a statement as an accusation towards the person who said it instead.
And 4. we do not and cannot really know whether the accusation is fully or even partially accurate, and therefore should keep all our mouths closed about it and let the legal system handle it.
I can't imagine a situation where I would spread an accusation against someone I don't know based on the word of other people I don't know. I'm frankly a bit confused why this is controversial - it seems like common sense to me, and nobody I know in real life has ever done this. (Of course, this is symmetric, so I wouldn't disbelieve the accusation either.)
I was responding to the part of your comment where you wrote:
> "I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly."
To me, this sounds like your default position would believe the accuser over the accused where no evidence exists. Apologies if this is not what you were trying to convey.
I do agree that vindictive individuals are probably rare, but I do believe that they are out there and I also believe that there are lot of people in the world who look to take offense in innocent situations as I have been confidants of such people in the past and things that I interpret as innocuous can easily be interpreted in a poor light if the person has their "default" mindset to interpret things in a negative light.
And yes, your point about vindictive people is a good one, but I still think that avoiding 1:1 situations would make it much more difficult for such accusations to have as big an impact.
I once had 11 different people, all friends, accuse me of doing something bad(littering). Literally everyone was confident I did it. They all saw me do it. Everyone piled on me to just admit I did it. I said I never littered, that I hate litterers, and that I have never even eaten the kind of food item that the wrapper came from. They got even madder at me for denying that I did it, as if I was trying to gaslight them all.
Email threads were started where one person collected everyone's recollection of the events, who was there, and what happened. Every response lined up perfectly with each other. I don't think anyone explicitly coordinated their accusations, but knowing there were multiple other accusers certainly made the accusers feel more comfortable and correct in their accusations.
I was presented with the evidence, literal written testimony of 11 people who I considered my friends at the time. I was given an ultimatum to admit it or be kicked out of the group. I said I wouldn't admit it. I started looking at each person's recollection.
You know what actually happened, that all 11 people missed? There were actually 13 people in the group that day. The 13th person, that absolutely everyone forgot about, was a person who didn't normally attend the group. He is 6'10" and 350 lbs. Hard to miss. But everyone forgot about him. I called him up, put him on speaker phone in front of everyone, and asked him "Did you eat <food item> last time we hung out?" His response "yes". I then asked him "Did you throw the wrapper on the ground?" His response "yes".
I asked my friends if that settled the matter, and everyone still believed that I was the litterer. So I stopped hanging out with them.
Nobody was vindictive at the start. But they were all so confident of their own recollections that they became vindictive when I said that they weren't remembering things correctly.
As someone whose been accused before of something I didn’t do, by people who were damn sure I had done it, it can be a very stressful traumatic experience, it doesn’t sound like a big deal until it happens to you. Don’t just hurl nasty messages at someone you don’t know and don’t even have 100% proof they have wronged you.
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