Content Warning: This page refers to allegations around sexual crimes and discusses them at a high level.

Oftentimes, when a member of a marginalized group reports a certain experience (harassment, assault, mistreatment), some people respond questioning the authenticity of the claim this person has made.

But when thinking about false stories, consider for example, the subject of a terrible crime – rape.

  • In the case of a crime like rape, false accusations are thought to range between roughly 2-6% of reported crimes. So even allowing for the fact that false accusations could exist, it is a comparatively small number.
  • These false reports are often higher because police sometimes log crimes where no provable corroborating evidence was found as no crime or unfounded due to systemic limitations, even if those officials were not saying no crime occurred. So even this small number may be skewed higher.
  • Coming forward to share a lived experience often results in opening someone up to all sorts of questioning, including lines of questioning that may have caused someone to link you to this page. It is rarely a celebrated moment, and any “positive” effects from sharing such a story are usually outweighed by the difficult after-effects of sharing the experience.

So it is important to consider that someone who is questioning a lived experience is considering the above, and still choosing to question or invalidate someone’s experience. This could be a strong indicator that someone is not responding in good faith.

Whataboutisms

“Yeah, but what about this one time someone lied about an accusation?” “What about this one time an innocent person’s life was ruined?”

This is a form of whataboutism. From Wikipedia:

Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. It is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.

Let’s think a bit about what this response says:

  • It rejects or devalues the experience of the vast majority of people who’ve experienced traumatic or painful events.
  • It usually de-rails a conversation that is happening, as people now feel the need to confront this absurd statement rather than continue their discussion.
  • It is clearly not a good faith approach; a point is not invalid just because every single data point does not line up in its favor.

Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

When we hear that something horrible has happened to someone, it may make us uncomfortable to consider a world in which that experience took place, and to want to push the idea of that world further from our consciousness. This is a reasonable human instinct and a way that many might choose to cope with hearing about traumatic events.

This feeling may be heightened if the perpetrator or “bad guy” in the story shares your characteristics. For example, if a white, cisgender1 man hears about an experience where another white, cis man behaved badly, it can increase the discomfort of taking in that experience.

However, the key in this situation is to ensure that your discomfort doesn’t translate into questioning that person’s experience. Just because you wish it should not have happened, does not mean that there is a likelihood it didn’t happen.

Other Links / References

  1. In case you’re concerned about the word cisgender, it simply means that one’s identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. If you were born a male and feel that aligns with your identity, you’re cisgender. It’s not a big thing. ↩

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