Just another quick thought on this question.Skep tickle wrote:Jumping ahead to ask people here, based on a twitter conversation just now:
What would it take for you to believe a claim of sexual harassment or assault?
Are there certain circumstances in which you'd be more likely to believe it (evidence, etc) & if so what type of circumstance(s) would that/those be, in general?
Do you think the person's gender would influence your likelihood of believing the claim?
If the claim were made by someone on one side or the other of The Schism, would the side she or he is on influence your belief in the claim?
I anticipate there will be rude answers, but am also interested in a couple of serious/straightforward responses. Thanks.
It occurred to me that the claims of sexual assault and harassment in the skeptical community seem to be skewed in a strange way.
Not only have almost all the claims come from the pro-FTB/Skepchick side against their non FTB/Skepchick opponents, but the claims of actual assault have not involved random skeptics who make up 99% of the skeptic movement, they have, rather, almost exclusively involved accusations against the people at the top or with power, the most famous skeptics - Shermer, Krauss, Grothe, Radford, Bora Zivkovitz, Bill Nye etc, and with further accusations of tacit support of Dawkins, Ron Lindsay and teh JREF in general.
In fact the only accusation of sexual assault that I can remember that didn't involve a famous skeptic, was made by Ashley Paramore against some former friend of hers, who she accused (without naming names) of groping her at some conference party.
Of note, I recall that there was a general acceptance of her claim from pitters at the time.
There was no clear 'agenda' behind her accusation and she gave the impression that this event had seriously affected her.
But this got me thinking.
Why, if the atheist/skeptical community is by and large a kind of drunken fratboy date-rape nightmare (if we are prepared to believe PZ and chums), why are almost all the accusations involving just the big names?
Why aren't there more incidents involving nobodies, like in Ashley Paramore's case?
So, to add another factor to Skep Tickle's original question, I think that the lack of an obvious political agenda makes an accusation more compelling.