I spend more time than most looking at headlines and reading stories about men who are accused of sexual violence or harassment. It’s ugly reading. Based on statistics alone, most of those accusations are likely true, although until it’s gone through the courts and there is a trial verdict, the accused is still innocent.
But the label of rapist, or predator, is attached to the accused from the moment the arrest is made public, long before there is a trial. Speaking from my own experience, the labels alone are enough to kill careers, destroy marriages, and ruin reputations. My life was flattened within hours of my arrest, and finding work is impossible, still. The jury took about an hour to acquit, not surprising, and I was free, but I was also damned forever.
In a recent episode I wrote about the idea of being referred to as a “known predator,” of having been “credibly accused.” Admittedly, the number of people who use these terms against me is low. However, if my name comes up in some group discussion, it isn’t long before the heretics are out with branding irons and fire.
That has led me to question the lexicography of ugly memes. If I’m a “known predator,” then why can’t I label my accuser a “known _ _ _ _”? I know, it could be very provocative, but no less so than calling me a predator. What is the equivalent of a “known predator”?
I understand that sexual violence is about power, and men have the upper hand. History is replete with stories of women who have been abused, raped, used, preyed upon, and manipulated. Countless women reported crimes and were questioned about their motives, their dress, the “did you ask for it” sort of thing. Women were accused of lying, of covering up behavior that could be judged as “loose.” Some women have seen their attackers arrested only to see them acquitted for lack of evidence, or by a jury that simply didn’t believe her story. Many more women have lived in the shadows of guilt and fear, never reporting a crime, but living with the self inflicted shame. All true. All bad.
But there are also those of us who have been falsely accused, and our lives ruined. By some estimates, six to eight thousand wrongful accusations are made per year, maybe more. And when we object to the moniker, our motives are questioned. If we ever dare say she, he, or they are lying, we risk more legal trouble. If we point to the lack of evidence, we’re quickly reminded that rape happens in private, and the absence of evidence proves nothing. We will never see our accusers brought to justice, acquitted or not.
But we get labeled, in social and news media, and those labels stick. To give you a sense of the rhetorical challenge, here is a list of a few words used against men like me. It’s worth noting, nearly all of these were used to describe me, on social media, in legal documents, or in news stories:
Rapist, sexual assailant, sex offender, sexual offender, perpetrator, attacker, assailant, abuser, sexual abuser, predator, sexual predator, exploiter, groomer, harasser, serial rapist, serial predator, monster, beast, deviant, pervert, creep, pig, menace, dangerous, accused rapist, alleged rapist, suspected offender, defendant, respondent, the accused, accused abuser, known predator.
So I went looking for a word that I could cast at the woman who accused me, something that might stick to her life like all of the words above have stuck to mine.
There should be some equally charged words standing on the sidelines, just waiting to be put into this game of epithets. I need a big brute of a word, something with knuckles and jaw. I went looking because some nights I wanted a word that would follow her around, taunting her.
The first problem is, she’s never been publicly named. It’s ludicrous of course, so the first thing I would do is post her name. So, then what?
I thought about liar. But that’s too small a word, as common as pollen. We all lie. Only a chosen few are predators. You can be a liar and still get invited to the party. You can lie routinely, as a brand, and get elected to the White House. I digress.
Fabricator. Nope. Sounds like shop class, something knocked out of sheet metal.
Serial accuser. Meh. Not a potboiler, and it doesn’t even fit my case. As far as I know I’m the only one she’s ever accused. Also, nobody’s making a monster movie about a serial accuser.
Predator, obviously, doesn’t work. It’s been trademarked by the accusation industry to describe, almost exclusively, criminal men. It simply doesn’t attach easily to women. Sorry, it’s true.
More than half a million words in the English language, and not one of them is truly dressed up and suitable to hang on my accuser. We built an entire vocabulary, forty plus terms deep, for what a man might be capable of. Rapist. Predator. Monster. Beast. For her, there is nothing. It doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like being handed a knife with no blade.
I’m a kind human being, but there has to be something. I spent a night trying to build the word out of spare parts, let’s see, there’s liar, slut, fraud, snake, and others that bubble out of the bilge of abhorrent language, but none of them held. Not because I’m a better man than the people who called me a predator. I’m not sure I am, some nights. They failed because the language just doesn’t fit the feeling, and it doesn’t belong in the room. The ugly words feel more comfortable in my presence when I’m acting small and petty.
But then it hit me. While I don’t have a word for her, I have a better word for me, one that has weight.
Innocent.
And it wasn’t pulled from my stupid big dictionary set. It was a gift of sorts, given to me by twelve strangers who heard the testimony, saw the evidence, watched her testify, and took about an hour to decide none of it was enough. It’s real. It’s also not enough, most days, to fill the hole the other word left.
I decided long ago I wasn’t going to say her name in my writing, I wasn’t going to give her some nasty honorific. I know exactly what a shitty name does once it’s loose in the world, I watched it happen to mine in real time. Using it on her wouldn’t be justice. It would just be me, finally, joining the mob. I’m not willing to become the thing I’m angry at, even on the nights I want to.
I’ll never get over what happened to me, so I looked for the word. I wanted it so bad. I didn’t find one, and even if I had, I don’t think I’d have used it anyway. Some doors, once you go through them, don’t let you come back out the same size you went in.
