[foxyv]

In addition, your chance of being falsely accused is low. Your chance of being prosecuted if you are falsely accused is low. Your chance of being convicted, if you are falsely accused AND prosecuted is low. Also, the accuser's chance of being prosecuted for making the false allegation isn't that low.

We're talking about less than 100 cases per year. The real thing to be worried about is a false conviction for drugs or DUI. That happens way more often.

[RajT88]

Nailed it. The amount of bandwidth men should dedicate to this is far lower than what women should be dedicating to it in terms of absolute risk.

That isn't to say you should not be thinking about making sure you don't put yourself in a situation where you could be falsely accused of something. I would say, if you are thinking in that way - spending some time making sure you don't do anything to make women uncomfortable is a good way to spend some of that energy as well - same goal, different thought process.

[bulbar]

That's pretty much whataboutism. Also, people who fear false accusations are usually not the same that make women uncomfortable. The majority of men has totally fine behavior when it comes to women.

[foxyv]

Hate to say it, but this is a response TO a whataboutism. The original topic was Uber letting women choose to not drive with men. The whatabout was males being falsely accused of rape.

> The majority of men has totally fine behavior when it comes to women.

Yeah, about 75% ish. Not a great number. We don't educate young boys about ideas like consent so it isn't very surprising. Especially with the enduring rape culture in media and our government institutions.

[RajT88]

Accusing someone of whataboutism when they are pushing back against it is pretty standard for this topic.

[odshoifsdhfs]

I've been falsely accused of sexual harassment by a manager (woman) when I was the victim myself from her(I rejected her, next day she accused me of grabbing her in the ass and some nasty words, which I NEVER DID) and even had a witness that could corroborate that she was the one doing it. I was fired and didn't even have a chance to defend myself. (and no, trying to use legal means would be an uphill battle that my lawyer recommended against).

I do believe women when they say they are assaulted/harassed, I don't victim blame, but after that experience I just avoid any situation that could cause someone to cause me harm by lying, so yeah, no being alone with women that aren't family, no giving or helping women that are alone, etc.

[foxyv]

Yeah, we live in a democracy where we are innocent until proven guilty. But every single corporation is it's own little fiefdom. This is why unions are important. Sorry to hear about this.

[dchftcs]

The impact of false accusations don't start just with prosecution. People lose jobs and friends with it before that stage. I've personally seen people fired for a mere police investigation into something much milder that was eventually dropped.

Also, I did some checking and I can't find sources supporting "100 cases per year".

Various sources say unfounded allegations are estimated to be 5-20% in different research, while there are hundreds of thousands of sexual assault cases in the US alone. This gives an estimate of multiple thousands to tens of thousands of cases per year.

I'm also not sure why you think worrying about false conviction /allegations in DUI and drugs should preclude us from worrying about something less prevalent. Can't people take precautions on all these things that threaten one's reputation and livlihood? There are many things that could have killed you with a 0.01% chance if people didn't bother to fix them, such as battery explosions, and letting them pile up because there are other things to worry about is not the way safety engineering works.

[foxyv]

This is why we need unions. You can be fired for chewing gum too loudly or just being around when the boss is pissed off. We need to band together to defend each other against malicious employers.

With regards to the 100 cases per year. I was using UK statistics for false rape allegations. Ironically, men are more likely to be raped by other men than be investigated for a false rape allegation.

> Can't people take precautions on all these things that threaten one's reputation and livlihood?

Of course! But if their "precautions" mean they are also being nasty to people I'll be happy to call them out on it.

[dchftcs]

I don't think denying a ride to a stranger in a sketchy situation counts as being nasty. If it's not false accusations, it could be a knife at your throat or whatever (your example about male rape definitely doesn't help your case here).

Let's have a thought experiment.

If we take the prevalence of false accusations be several thousands a year (the lower end of the estimate), it would be between 1 to 2 incidents per 100k population in the US. For your UK statistics, I can't find a citation either - in terms of prosecuted cases you're perhaps right, again the buck doesn't just start with prosecution. Reported rape incidents can be up to 70k and prosecuted incidents is less than a tenth of that, and it's probably similar for false accusations - what I can find is an estimated prevalence of 3%, so in the UK it would be up to 2.1k among reported (not necessarily prosecuted) cases.

Incidentally, 1 to 2 per 100k is in the ballpark of rape statistics in low-crime areas, such as Hong Kong, Japan or Singapore. So the risk of rape in those areas is similar to the risk of false accusations in the US.

With this in mind, if a woman denies a ride to a strange man in Hong Kong in the middle of the night, does that mean she was nasty to the man? If you say yes, it's probably not the prevailing sentiment in those areas; if you say no, perhaps that can point to some cognitive bias.

For unions, sure let me know when you're able to set them up. Similarly, you can tell women in Hong Kong or Singapore to not worry about rape because you're going to do something to make the world better for them. But another important nuance is that unions won't help as much as you think they would. In the case of false accusations of pretty much anything, a lot of the damage is social, for people who are not already powerful; rape is an especially touchy topic that you would find fellow union members, especially female members, and sometimes spouses, to be less than sympathetic.