Yes, all false accusations are bad.

But sexual assault is the one area that is almost always taking two parties at their word, and very very frequently, the only court is the court of public opinion. That makes it rife for abuse in both directions - people doing it believing they'll get away with it because it comes down to their word vs. someone else's if it ever even comes out, since so few people go to the police, and people know they can lob an accusation out there and do a lot of damage without having to prove anything.

I think the former happens far far more than the latter, but I'm also not going to wonder why people discuss the latter - it's real, and it happens. People discuss getting attacked by sharks whenever sharks come up, too, even though that's almost certainly not going to be something they need to worry about, either.

This sort of list is exactly the sort of place where those false accusations can be really easily inserted with minimal vetting. I'd also bet it is an almost entirely accurate list.

All these things can be true at once.

Shouldn't it be a good thing that we are presuming someone innocent rather than guilty?

Interestingly I have seen the opposite where if a guy is accused, it is automatically assumed he is guilty. Especially with sports players, which lead to the Duke Lacrosse false accusations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_rape_hoax

We have this concept in the western world of being presumed innocent until proven guilty. Something like a sexual assault accusation is typically taken extremely seriously (As it should), but this can lead it to being weaponized. Maybe a manager who is a rival for a position you covet, well a sexual assault accusation may make them conveniently go away.

Its a societal thing.

Embezzling is universally bad, and can be proven with "objects" ie transaction and contracts and the like.

the pernicious problem with sexual assault is that first you need to prove the assault happened, which is hard, because its often in private with no witnesses.

Second you have to prove consent.

worse consent can be withdrawn, especially if things go too far or violent. so it might appear to witnesses that it look ok when they saw them.

Finally the elephant in the room. There is a taboo around non straight male sexuality which varies by region. Its very easy to paint the cliamant as someone with loose sexual morals, filled with guilt/loathing lashing out to smear an innocent party.

The problem for the victims is that agreeing to sex is vaguely taboo for non-straight men to do. Therefore they are at fault.

Are you aware of privately-circulated lists of embezzlement accusations? I believe the reaction would be similar.

I wouldn't say "every instance" is is preemptively doubted, but there is a wikipedia page on false accusations for a reason. With most studies indicating double digit % of false accusations. (and some numbers far higher than I would have guessed [0])

I'd say a better phrasing is that innocent until proven guilty applies - just like with other crimes. Crowd sourced lists aren't that so treating them with some caution is warranted.

I can see how even an unreliable list may be of use practically to women though even if process wise it is quite dubious.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estim...

It's just an unbiased recognition of the system of SA.

Both men and women can have incentive to act amorally, and the context of the situation is often the best we have to weigh those incentives and feel out what really happened and the scope of the impact from it.

This is complicated by the fact that SA is largely subjective, and what some people get lifelong trauma from is another Friday night for others. So both the act and the outcome are subjective.

Those other crimes are pretty binary, where you did or you didn't do it. SA is different because often guilt is a confluence of many factors rather than a single verifiable action, and those factors are mostly subjective self-reported ones that can have incentivized bias (something the legal system works hard to weed out in other cases).

> not a primary part of the conversation for accusations of other crimes like arson, theft, embezzlement

I've never heard of anybody's life being ruined over an accusation of arson that was dropped for lack of evidence (or even later proven to be false). As long as the consequences of the accusation are greater, the scrutiny will be, too.

because it's not as common as people being cancelled over this stuff. your life isn't ruined instantly if you get accused of theft

Because this is the sort of thing that in most cases can’t be substantiated by hard evidence. Whereas all of the rest of the examples you have generally can be. Would you support punishment of anyone as an arsonist only on the basis of a claim that they committed arson and #believeallwomen?

> Interesting that every instance of sexual assault is preemptively doubted by default

That's because that's the narrative people push out to their followers. It allows them to continue to abuse women and take advantage of men with their countless grift. So there is a strong incentive to push that narrative. It's helpful to remember that these people think women are lesser and objects, not people.