It’s bizarre and disheartening as we watch more and more evidence come out about women who have been assaulted or harassed and it seems like the more women and the more evidence, the less the public voice seems to believe them. We saw this with the Cosby case and many others. People even said that the fact there were so many women accusing him made them less likely to believe it.

It’s also weird that when you point out the bad behavior of a small percentage of men (only a small percentage of men commit violent crimes against women and these men frequently have multiple victims), men’s response is, “Not all men” or something to that effect. I.e., why are you blaming all men for this? But nobody is blaming all men. We’re pointing out that fraction of men and inviting the 95% plus men who are not in that category to be on the same side with us.

Instead we see men find any possible way to deflect from the actual abuse of women. Either they talk about the rare cases of women falsely reporting crimes (something we as a society seem to think is 1,000 times more important and more prevalent than actual crimes against women) or “Women do bad things, too.” Or they argue the exact statistics of an individual case and argue it as if the existence of the overwhelming trend is either proven or disproven by the adjudication of this individual case.

You can see each of these things going on extensively in the comments.

The response is never, “Wow, this is clearly a big societal problem. Let’s do something to change it.”

Women have felt on their own about this forever and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s up to us to protect ourselves and have each others’ back.