Fearing For Sons In The #MeToo Era

As someone who has studied crime and criminal justice, I’ve worried about my children being wrongfully accused of any crime, and specifically, being wrongfully accused of a crime while unable to afford to prove it. Considering if our criminal justice system gets it wrong at a very low estimate of 1% of the time, there are still more than 20,000 innocent people incarcerated right now, it’s a fair concern. However, also as someone who has studied crime and criminal justice, I ask myself why the sudden panic specifically over males being falsely accused of particularly sexual assault. But it is rhetorical. The alarm is disingenuous and I know it. Were it genuine, collectively, we would be far more concerned about a boy sitting in jail for three years because he was accused of stealing a backpack and he could not afford justice (Kalief Browder eventually died by suicide).

Kalief Browder

Were it genuine, that would not have happened— or at the very least, the broken system that created his situation and so many like his would have been fixed across the country by now. It has not been. Because protecting males from wrongful persecution and prosecution is not really the goal of those most fearful.

It is as both a former student and a decent human being, I am far more concerned about raising a son (and a daughter) in a society that wants us to believe boys are natural born perverts with uncontrollable urges that sometimes turn them into rapists. I’m far more concerned that should someone sexually assault my son (or my daughter), he’s going to not only have to prove he was a victim, but a worthy survivor, and even then, someone in power just might tell him neither he nor what happened to him really matters because hey, people happen to like the person who hurt him.  Disbelieve, discredit, dismiss, and that’s the standard, unlike in any other crime. I’m far more concerned about raising a son (and a daughter) in a culture with such a dysfunctional response to sexual abuse that it demands he (or she) believe victims who come forward are to be so generally distrusted that the mere idea of offering them the same courtesy as any other victim of any other crime is a dire threat to our sons’ lives particularly. Well, it is a dire threat, but not to our sons. It is a dire threat to both a system designed and a society of people brainwashed to protect predators. If it wasn’t, and if they weren’t, no one would have to explain any of this.

False accusations of sexual abuse happen, but hardly often enough to warrant the level of distrust a victim automatically faces, and to be frank, I'm surprised it does not happen more often.

We can't tell high school girls sexual abuse is the result of boys just being boys, and college women that even when their rapist is caught in the act, we won't really punish him if he can swim well, and then expect anyone to understand how horrible it is to make a false accusation, can we? Apparently, we can, and I am guessing we've gotten away with the low numbers of false accusations we have because somewhere around one in four females and one in six males understand exactly how damaging sexual abuse is and especially how difficult it is to come forward with the truth. Afraid for your sons (and daughters) right now? You should be, because we have absolutely failed to protect them. We have absolutely failed to protect them all and they will continue to endure our failure as long as we remain committed to fearing the wrong things.