When faced with the choice of trusting a stranger, you turned it down, then made the decision about the lack of trust in the world?

Trust in strangers has never been easy in the US. If something is to change, it has to start individually.

This falls into the domain of the ethics of care. Sure change needs to start some place, but it doesn't need to be done recklessly. Nobody does anybody any favours by putting themselves in dangerous situations. To care for other people, to give them the attention they need you need to prepare yourself for it first.

Just making the point it’s a bit like someone in traffic complaining about all the other ppl on the road! :)

I believe you are understanding the opposite of what was said.

I understood it as "there cannot be trust anymore" - mostly because different people are at risk of becoming a victim in different ways: from a crime itself, or from being falsely accused of committing a crime.

Individuals will act in a way that makes sense for them. Asking them to "just trust more" does not solve the problem - it needs to be addressed at the root (education, communities), which goes far beyond the individual level.

Happy that you were honest about it, but paranoia is not healthy.

That much paranoia sounds healthy to me. It is exactly what I would tell my kid when he's old enough to drive. And if I had a daughter (there still a chance!) then I would tell her a bunch of CYA stuff also, probably much of the same things but also different things.

You can always offer to call them a cab or contact the police for them, or give them some money for the bus if its an option. If it is out in the middle of nowhere, the local police will probably help out since this kind of thing probably happens a lot.

Absent any useful context about the situation at all, it’s very strange for a girl to ask a random guy for a ride home. Most women I know would 100% ask a girl. I think it’s very reasonable to think something is up here.

The world we live in is one where women being assaulted is an order of magnitude larger problem than women falsely accusing someone of assault.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

True, but I can control the order of magnitude of women being assaulted by me, I can't control the order of magnitude of women falsely accusing me of assault.

You need to develop some empathy and learn that false accusations can destroy lives and families. You have no right to force someone accept even a 1% chance that something like that happens, even if it's less prevalent than assaults.

they didnt say false accusations dont happen, or that they arent harmful, or that anyone should be forced to do anything.

you read what you wanted to read, instead of what was actually written

It looked to me like RajT88 was participating in a rebuttal of SoftTalker's comment. I don't think that interpretation is "reading what you wanted to read". The place you put a comment has implications for what you're arguing.

The suggestion I was "forcing" someone to accept a risk is reading what they want to read into my comment. I cannot force anyone to do anything, I am mere lines of text on a screen.

Whether I was rebutting their comment depends on the subtext you think their comment had. There could very well be a subtext for such a well worn talking point.

> The suggestion I was "forcing" someone to accept a risk is reading what they want to read into my comment. I cannot force anyone to do anything, I am mere lines of text on a screen.

That meaning of "forced" is very unreasonably literal. The meaning of "forced" here is that it's the only socially acceptable option, not that there's a gun pointed at them.

> Whether I was rebutting their comment depends on the subtext you think their comment had. There could very well be a subtext for such a well worn talking point.

They were saying it's reasonable to refuse the trip because of their false accusation worry. I don't know if I would even call it subtext, it seemed to be pretty upfront.

The subtext of your comment, if any, seemed to be that it's not reasonable to refuse for that reason.

I'm not 100% sure if that's what you meant, but whether it means that is entirely based on you. It's not based on their subtext. You should just tell us if that's what you meant.

Edit: In another comment you put> 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.

I bet SoftTalker already does dedicate negligible bandwidth to that issue. A stranger coming up to you and asking for a ride is a very rare occurrence.

You can refuse a stranger a ride if it feels off to you.

If you are telling a personal anecdote to threadjack a topic, there are several potential reasons why - if that is what you are trying to do. It is open to interpretation as to that poster's intent.

I have my own opinion having read dozens of discussions like this. YMMV.

> If you are telling a personal anecdote to threadjack a topic, there are several potential reasons why - if that is what you are trying to do. It is open to interpretation as to that poster's intent.

So whether you were rebutting their comment is based on the reason they "threadjacked", and not the contents of their post? That means no rebuttal for what they explicitly said. And what they explicitly said was refusing a ride because of gender. Okay, that clarifies things. But it would make everyone's lives easier if you made your implications more direct from the start.

So could a car accident, but you still drive. There are lots of risks in the world; they need to be assessed by their likelihood x damage.

It may be surprising to you, but I don't drive (I don't live in the US, but even when I did I didn't really have to), and there was a period of time I resorted to not even taking taxis because a crash in those times would have been much messier than just myself dying. But my own private life aside, driving, to many people, is a necessity, sometimes even for survival, while lending a hand to a stranger, however nobel that may be, is not.

I've got to ask. Is this kind of violent crime common or perceived as common in the US? If a stranger asked me for a ride home here my first thought wouldn't be that they want to attack me.

The US has a pervasive culture of fear. It's a big part of why guns are so popular.

I have had countless discussions with americans about guns that go along the lines of "What happens if (insert extremely rare violent incident) happens?" and they all literally seem unable to comprehend that these are just not things I even think about at all, and they really shouldn't either given how extremely rare they all are.

But a huge percentage of the population does worry about being victimised constantly.

It is the main reason that despite the obvious financial benefits and my love for certain landscapes/areas of the US I've never had the slightest desire to move there.

I think, due to a lot of reasons including skewed media reporting, a lot of uncommon things are perceived as common in the US, and vice versa.

Maybe this video[1] helps you understand this better: a lot of Americans live in constant fear. They live in one of the safest countries on Earth, but if you see the discourse around safety there, you would think that USA is a big cartel neighborhood.

Maybe the 24 hours news cycle is responsible for that, I don't know. It's pretty weird, though. And I say that as someone who has lived in unsafe neighborhoods in my native country.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpgrd6sTGFo

Depends on the area. I grew up in a bad neighborhood and everyone was grifting. If you gave a random stranger a ride you would get to take a tour of the roughest places in your city and maybe a "friend" that sees you as a free taxi driver. It was rarely malicious, mostly just people were poor and didn't have access to transportation. But their friends and family can sometimes be pretty dang nasty.

This is called being a "Soft Touch."

Interesting

One of you is afraid that YOU are going to get assaulted or worse.

The other is afraid you’re going to get ACCUSED of it.

What has this society become?

A low-trust society.

> But, to not give a ride because of some perceived idea that they would claim you assaulted them or something is a bit "this person should go touch some grass" or whatever.

Pretty much the same advice any normal person gives their son; a single baseless claim from a woman is enough to ruin a man's life.

"Unless you already know the woman, don't spend time alone with her" is pretty good advice.

I am pretty sure "any normal person" does the exact opposite of this advice. This advice to a son seems constrained to the terminally online. It's a really good way to ensure your son doesn't have success with women, especially.