Believe the Woman?

My sense of things is that the current rash of claims of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh is having, and will have, the net effect of discrediting the whole “#metoo” movement.

Logically, we cannot let these current accusations influence matters. If we do, without requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt, what we do, given that there is no penalty for making a false accusation, is leave any man vulnerable to having his life or career wrecked at any moment by a mere accusation which any woman can lodge at any time for any reason.

It would over time take all males out of the running for any prominent job that any woman wants.

The proper and fair thing would be to bring it all into a court of law. But there is no time for that, and these charges are so old that even then, it is unlikely to be possible to assemble evidence one way or the other. In the ordinary course of events, there is probably nothing here that would warrant going to court: just accusations with no corroboration or supporting evidence. We can pretty well assume, if they went to court, that the cases would be dismissed.

Accordingly, the only fair thing is to ignore them and appoint Kavanaugh. To do otherwise would have disastrous effects in future.

And for the #metoo advocates of “believe the woman,” as somebody observed, this looks like Pickett's Charge. It has been a fatal if inevitable overreach. Inevitable, because it was always madness to assume all women were incapable of lying or even being mistaken. Even if they pull it off this time, and Kavanaugh is destroyed, they will overrreach the next time, or the next.

And then—most likely already, now—it will never again be a plausible argument to demand that people simply “believe the woman.” Indeed, from now on, given the Kavanaugh example, the base assumption is more likely to be the opposite. Not good for anyone who really has been sexually assaulted, but this is the fault of the feminists.