The "listen and believe" rhetoric has been around for almost a decade now (one of its most prominent and famous advocates being Anita Sarkeesian). The notion behind it is that, allegedly, modern patriarchal western societies simply tend to dismiss women's claims of having been raped or sexually harassed, very rarely taking it seriously, and often trying to defend the accused (because he is, after all, a man, and a patriarchal society defends men from the accusations of women.)
(As a side note, and quite ironically, this is actually very much the case, very exactly and literally, in many if not most Islamic countries. Yet good luck trying to make a SJW admit that.)
So the "listen and believe" campaign tries to change that. We should "listen" what the woman has to say and believe it by default. If she claims she has been harassed or molested, it's pretty much certain that something has indeed happened to her (even if, perhaps sometimes, she might be confused about who the culprit is). What she's saying must not be dismissed and disbelieved. A woman wouldn't invent such things willy-nilly, because it's a very stressful and scary situation, with all these dealings with the police and scary men.
Of course this completely and conveniently ignores the real examples we have from countries that have adopted a "the woman is always right, the man is always guilty, no evidence needed" policy, including countries like Spain, Italy and Israel, where false accusations are pretty much everyday occurrences. (I have written eg. about the situation in Spain here.)
Anyway, one woman accusing a man of sexual assault is one thing. But what happens if many women accuse the same man of having abused them? What happens if, for example, 20 women come forward and accuse a man of being a serial harasser or rapist?
This is one of the points that SJWs always remember to make when such things happen. How many women do we need before we believe them? They can't all be lying. It's not a "she says, he says" situation anymore. It's a "he says, 20 women say" situation.
This is a much more difficult dilemma.
In science, eyewitness testimony is pretty much worthless. We cannot make conclusions about anything based solely on eyewitness testimony and claims, no matter how many of them there are. Over the centuries science has, justly, determined that eyewitness testimony is so utterly unreliable that it simply cannot be the only justification for declaring something as fact, or even believing it. At the very most eyewitness testimony can be used as a starting point for further investigation, experimentation and testing, but it cannot be the sole argument to declare something as fact.
However, when it comes to the judiciary system, the role of eyewitness testimony is much more important. Many, many people have been convicted based on eyewitness testimony alone, with no other evidence of any kind. Eyewitness testimony is usually not considered absolute proof, but its value is much higher in the judiciary process than it is in science. The more eyewitnesses agree on something, the more value is put onto that testimony.
Have many (perhaps even most) of those convicted this way actually been guilty? Probably. Have there been cases where the innocent have been convicted because of this? Most certainly. There are many examples.
But would 10 or 20 women collude to lie about the same man having molested them?
I would say that in general no, but it's not impossible either. I'm not completely convinced someone should be convicted based on accusations alone, no matter how many people are accusing him. Some other compelling evidence should be required.
I'd say that there are two plausible main scenarios where several women falsely accusing the same man could ostensibly happen:
1) If they have something to gain. In other words, they are running a genuine scam. This is especially so if the man they are accusing is rich, eg. some kind of celebrity. It may well be that all the women have interacted with him, and perhaps even have had sex with him, and then years or decades later they decide to collude among themselves for monetary gain.
It may also happen that perhaps some of them convince the rest that they have been abused by the man, in which case this becomes a mix of this first scenario and the second one below.
2) It's becoming more and more common nowadays, especially among SJW ideology circles, that women are becoming convinced that their sexual encounter with somebody was "non-consensual", often because of very minor things. Perhaps she had a glass of wine. Perhaps she was slightly hesitant at first. Perhaps he was slightly rough during the act. Perhaps she simply didn't utter the word "yes" out loud at any point. Whatever the minor thing, the woman might be convinced, perhaps years later, by her SJW peers, that she was "raped" because of one of those minor things, and she's so indoctrinated into the social justice ideology that she fully believes it. It may even be that nothing particularly dubious happened at all, but she misremembers as something like that having happened (perhaps because she's confusing that particular man with somebody else, or because she has a false memory of the event due to, for instance, some movie scene, or a story told years earlier by another person, which she then misremembers as having happened to her personally.)
If the man has been particularly promiscuous, and had sex with lots of women, and several of these women end up within the same SJW circles (for example because they all study at the same university, for instance), they might start convincing each other that this one man abused them. One of them might "open up" about it, and the others will start making up similar stories because they want to reaffirm her experiences. "Yeah, you are right. I had sex with him too, and he was indeed like that!" It doesn't take much to have a bunch of them agreeing on it.
Does any of this happen often? Maybe not. Does it happen at all? I'm quite convinced it does, sometimes.
I would say that no matter how many women accuse the same man of misconduct, it should always be investigated properly. The number of accusations may be more compelling, but it shouldn't be the only reason to convict someone.
(As a side note, and quite ironically, this is actually very much the case, very exactly and literally, in many if not most Islamic countries. Yet good luck trying to make a SJW admit that.)
So the "listen and believe" campaign tries to change that. We should "listen" what the woman has to say and believe it by default. If she claims she has been harassed or molested, it's pretty much certain that something has indeed happened to her (even if, perhaps sometimes, she might be confused about who the culprit is). What she's saying must not be dismissed and disbelieved. A woman wouldn't invent such things willy-nilly, because it's a very stressful and scary situation, with all these dealings with the police and scary men.
Of course this completely and conveniently ignores the real examples we have from countries that have adopted a "the woman is always right, the man is always guilty, no evidence needed" policy, including countries like Spain, Italy and Israel, where false accusations are pretty much everyday occurrences. (I have written eg. about the situation in Spain here.)
Anyway, one woman accusing a man of sexual assault is one thing. But what happens if many women accuse the same man of having abused them? What happens if, for example, 20 women come forward and accuse a man of being a serial harasser or rapist?
This is one of the points that SJWs always remember to make when such things happen. How many women do we need before we believe them? They can't all be lying. It's not a "she says, he says" situation anymore. It's a "he says, 20 women say" situation.
This is a much more difficult dilemma.
In science, eyewitness testimony is pretty much worthless. We cannot make conclusions about anything based solely on eyewitness testimony and claims, no matter how many of them there are. Over the centuries science has, justly, determined that eyewitness testimony is so utterly unreliable that it simply cannot be the only justification for declaring something as fact, or even believing it. At the very most eyewitness testimony can be used as a starting point for further investigation, experimentation and testing, but it cannot be the sole argument to declare something as fact.
However, when it comes to the judiciary system, the role of eyewitness testimony is much more important. Many, many people have been convicted based on eyewitness testimony alone, with no other evidence of any kind. Eyewitness testimony is usually not considered absolute proof, but its value is much higher in the judiciary process than it is in science. The more eyewitnesses agree on something, the more value is put onto that testimony.
Have many (perhaps even most) of those convicted this way actually been guilty? Probably. Have there been cases where the innocent have been convicted because of this? Most certainly. There are many examples.
But would 10 or 20 women collude to lie about the same man having molested them?
I would say that in general no, but it's not impossible either. I'm not completely convinced someone should be convicted based on accusations alone, no matter how many people are accusing him. Some other compelling evidence should be required.
I'd say that there are two plausible main scenarios where several women falsely accusing the same man could ostensibly happen:
1) If they have something to gain. In other words, they are running a genuine scam. This is especially so if the man they are accusing is rich, eg. some kind of celebrity. It may well be that all the women have interacted with him, and perhaps even have had sex with him, and then years or decades later they decide to collude among themselves for monetary gain.
It may also happen that perhaps some of them convince the rest that they have been abused by the man, in which case this becomes a mix of this first scenario and the second one below.
2) It's becoming more and more common nowadays, especially among SJW ideology circles, that women are becoming convinced that their sexual encounter with somebody was "non-consensual", often because of very minor things. Perhaps she had a glass of wine. Perhaps she was slightly hesitant at first. Perhaps he was slightly rough during the act. Perhaps she simply didn't utter the word "yes" out loud at any point. Whatever the minor thing, the woman might be convinced, perhaps years later, by her SJW peers, that she was "raped" because of one of those minor things, and she's so indoctrinated into the social justice ideology that she fully believes it. It may even be that nothing particularly dubious happened at all, but she misremembers as something like that having happened (perhaps because she's confusing that particular man with somebody else, or because she has a false memory of the event due to, for instance, some movie scene, or a story told years earlier by another person, which she then misremembers as having happened to her personally.)
If the man has been particularly promiscuous, and had sex with lots of women, and several of these women end up within the same SJW circles (for example because they all study at the same university, for instance), they might start convincing each other that this one man abused them. One of them might "open up" about it, and the others will start making up similar stories because they want to reaffirm her experiences. "Yeah, you are right. I had sex with him too, and he was indeed like that!" It doesn't take much to have a bunch of them agreeing on it.
Does any of this happen often? Maybe not. Does it happen at all? I'm quite convinced it does, sometimes.
I would say that no matter how many women accuse the same man of misconduct, it should always be investigated properly. The number of accusations may be more compelling, but it shouldn't be the only reason to convict someone.
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