Not a Scary Time for Men: Trump’s words about sexual assault fuel a dangerous fire

We’re in trouble, boys.

Trump sounded the metaphorical sirens earlier this month in a warning to the young men of America, saying in an interview that “it’s a very scary time” for us in terms of sexual assault accusations.

But to say that young men are at risk right now implies that women are out to get them, ready to wildly throw about accusations for a personal agenda. But the only men who have something to fear are the men who are “grabbing [women] by the p—-” or forcing them into sexual acts, and that’s a good thing.

On Oct. 2, Donald Trump said the following quote in reference to the Kavanaugh accusations:

“This is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be found guilty of something you may not be guilty of.”

Sparked by the #MeToo movement, we’ve reached a point in time where we’ve finally decided that it’s no longer okay for powerful film executives to rape women, for team doctors to abuse athletes or for students to take advantage of their peers under the influence — and in fact, it never was.

Society isn’t just starting to change the culture of overlooked abuse through increasing sexual assault awareness, though. We’re retroactively removing abusers and assaulters from positions of power and holding them accountable for their actions no matter how long ago they were.

It doesn’t matter that they committed a sexual assault on someone way back in high school or at some party — the fact of the matter is that they did it. Even if the culture was different and these actions were normalized back when they were committing their crimes, that’s no excuse for years of abuse and sexual violence.

It’s a “take no prisoners” mindset, and while it’s unforgiving, it’s imperative to set this precedent and kill this old culture.

But even during this shift in society, no sensible man should need to be living in fear of their actions. The mindset that young men should be afraid to function in sexual relationships, social events or society in general is based on the idea that false accusations are common.

That sentiment is blatantly false, however, and it’s a dangerous degradation of a serious form of abuse.

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that over the past 20 years, false sexual assault accusations occurred anywhere between 2 and 10 percent of the time. However, that statistic is inflated due to inaccurate reportings of sexual assault cases and investigations by law enforcement agencies.

Outside of reports proven to be false, baseless reports and substantiated reports — reports that do not meet the standards of a sexual assault crime or do not have enough evidence to confirm or deny the allegation — are often inaccurately placed into the “false report” category.

On top of this, only 35 percent of sexual assaults are ever reported to police, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. Based on these statistics, if every sexual assault was actually reported including false reports, false reports would occur between less than 1 percent and 3.5 percent at most.

This isn’t to say that false allegations are not important and shouldn’t be addressed, though. False accusations can destroy someone’s reputation and livelihood because of the stigma associated with being involved in this type of case, but sexual assault victims often face the same social side effects on top of the lifelong mental and emotional trauma.

Why isn’t our president speaking out against sexual assault and acting to protect those victims rather than ignorantly warning people about the less prevalent problem of false accusations?

The fear of the minuscule chance of a false allegation belittles the seriousness of sexual assault crimes as well as the strength and bravery needed to come forward with a case. Sexual assault isn’t just some misdemeanor, it’s the objectification and dehumanization of a person for someone else’s selfish sexual pleasure, and that’s a serious offense.

Society isn’t out to get men, it’s out to get abusers. Society and the #MeToo movement have made incredible progress in ending an archaic sexual assault culture through increased awareness and the takedown of over 200 powerful and influential abusers — not through witch hunts of innocent men.

So no, it’s not a scary time for young men in America — it’s a scary time for sexual assaulters.