Danger Zone

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he believes the reaction to the allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh makes it "a very scary time for young men in America."

"It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of," Trump said. "This is a very, very -- this is a very difficult time. What's happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a Supreme Court justice."
Jeremy Diamond. "Trump says it's 'a very scary time for young men in America'" Tuesday, 2nd October, 2018.

More recently, "The USC chapter of Young Americans for Freedom set up a table on Trousdale Parkway Wednesday, displaying a poster that read, 'It’s a Dangerous Time for Men — Change My Mind'." So much for profiles in courage.

These comments have sparked heated discussions about what "dangerous" means or what should count as "scary." Or what is a person justifiably afraid of. But perhaps all of this misses the forest for the crooked, frightening shadows of trees.

President Trump and the University of Southern California's Young Americans for Freedom are basically saying that the current culture that demands greater accountability for sexual assault and misconduct makes it dangerous to be a young man (although the cynic in me questions the degree to which the President and USC YAF are referring to all men) and as a result, men have legitimate reason to be afraid for themselves.

Being a Black man (although no longer a young one) myself, I am acquainted with this concern. But I'm also well aware of the difficulties in quantifying this concern. Between 1980 and the mid 1990s, the rape conviction rate per 1,000 male population doubled, from about .1 to about .2. Now, I haven't been able to find any more recent numbers than that (although I'm sure they're out there and my Google-fu is simply weak), but let's suppose that in the intervening 20+ years, the renewed focus on sexual assault and misconduct has lead to that rate doubling again, to .4 men out of every 1,000. That's about 1 in every 2,500 men. Of course, this is an annual number, so it doesn't give us lifetime statistics. And it's both a snapshot in time and a wild-ass guess, so it's not particular useful to long-term estimates. But it's the number that I was able to come up with, so I'll work with it.

Wikipedia tells us that "In 1994, African Americans accounted for between 45 percent and 50 percent of crimes for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault." Of course, this is likely inaccurate, since I doubt that the clearance rate for crimes in 1994 was a) 100% and b) completely accurate. In other words, there's no way of knowing these percentages for actual crimes - you can only work with arrests and convictions, or other items that are statistically counted. But since convictions are basically what we're after, this will work with our back-of-the-text-file calculations. As Black people are about 13% of the population, a rate between 45 and 50% represents being over-represented by a factor of somewhat over three and a half. So our .4 per 1,000 rate jumps to about 1.46 per 1,000 or about 1 person in every 684. Given an overall exoneration rate of about 11.6% or a little under one in eight, and my chances of going to jail in any given year these days for a sexual assault that I didn't commit, is somewhere in the area of .17 out of one thousand. That becomes 1.7 out of one hundred, or about 1.7%. Of course, this doesn't take into account the fact that Black people are also over-represented in exonerations, but this is wonky and inaccurate enough as it is.

Now, the point of that exercise was to attempt to put an actual number on my chances of being incorrectly convicted of sexual assault. It's not a simple task, as you can see, but it comes up with a fairly low number, that's still likely on the high side. Of course, that 1.7% annual chance, compounded over time, becomes fairly substantial, but not likely enough to keep me up at night.

But what if it was? What if my chances of being convicted of a rape that I didn't commit were high enough that it felt like a clear and compelling risk? Well, there wouldn't be much that I, as an individual, could do about it. (Which is part of the reason there's no really point in losing sleep over it.) But if there was, the most effective path would likely be to understand what lead to that elevated chance and address it.

Dealing with the uncertainties of criminal prosecutions would be one way to approach the topic. Are police and prosecutors doing everything readily available to them to weed out potentially innocent parties when choosing who they are going to arrest and prosecute? Are they incentivized to do these things? If not, why not?

And that's where we get to a deeper part of the problem. President Trump and the University of Southern California's Young Americans for Freedom are attempting to push back against the current social drive to do more to hold people accountable for sexual misconduct by pointing to the fears of being wrongfully accused, rather than addressing the fears of being subjected to sexual misconduct. In other words, they're focused on their own fears of someone else's fear response. But if women were less afraid of being assaulted...

Of course, that's a tall order. Changing someone else's emotional response to the world around them is difficult. Once a woman has come to understand that any given man may be ready, willing and able to attack her sexually, it may be too late to substantially alter that perception. And, as so many other things, safety is a perception. I had it drilled into me from a young age that I was not safe from accusations of sexual misconduct. And even having an understanding of how one would go about calculating the numbers (even though I don't have accurate statistics at hand) doesn't completely remove the concern. And I will admit that my day-to-day behavior reflects those concerns.

And that's in part because no-one cares about them, which doesn't leave me room to ignore the causes of those concerns. People being afraid of me is bad for me, and so I have learned to take steps to mitigate those fears. But this isn't a new thing for me. USC's Young Americans for Freedom, on the other hand, may be coming face-to-face with this for the first time. And they're young people. Learning to understand why other people may be afraid of them, rather than afraid for them in the way they they're afraid for themselves takes time. And a willingness to take responsibility for people's fears of them, in the absence of personal fault for those fears take longer. (And the President isn't helping.)