Thought for the day

[bcholmes]

I recently posted about fighting street harassment using mobile phones. The idea has two parts: one, make it simple and fast to report street harassment. Two, take away the anonymity of harassers by taking a photo of the person doing the harassing (when safe) and posting it along with the harassment report.

To my flabbergastment (yes, I made up that word), the most common objection to this project was this: If you give women an easy way to post photos and stories about men who sexually harass them on the street, they will use it to falsely attack men they don’t like. Co-workers seem to be an especially big concern.

[...]

Several people don’t want to support the project at all because they believe the potential harm – of women lying in order to damage the reputations of men – exceeds the potential good – reducing the incidence of street harassment. In simple terms, better women harassed than men falsely accused of harassment.

— Followup: You can do something about street harassment