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Notes -
Russell Brand Accusations
Russell Brand has been accused of sexual misconduct and/or rape by four women in a large exposé by the Sunday Times [2]. The mainstream consensus online is that the testimony of these women is absolutely correct. I wonder, though, how many false accusers we should expect given the context of Russell Brand.
Russell Brand is not just some guy, he was at one point a party icon in the UK. As such, he has slept with 1000 women. And these are not just some women, just like Brand is not just some guy. This is not a sample size of the median woman in the UK. The women he slept with would differ psychologically from the average woman: more likely to make poor choices, more likely to be partying, more likely to be doing things for clout (like Russell Brand), more likely to be involved with drugs and mental illness. A study on the lives of “groupies” in the heavy metal scene found that groupies were more likely to use sex for leverage, to come from broken homes, and to have issues with drugs and alcohol. (This is not a one-to-one comparison; heavy metal is different than the rock n roll persona of Brand).
Scott has written that up to 20% of all rape allegations are false. But with Brand, we have a more complicated metric to consider: how many false accusers will you have sex with if you’ve had sex with one thousand women who make poor choices? Scott goes on in the above article to note that 3% of men will likely be falsely accused (including outside of court) in their life. If this is true, we might try multiplying that by 125 to arrive at how many accusers Brand should have. That would bring us to four, rounding up — but again, this would totally ignore the unique psychological profile of the women he screwed.
There’s yet more to consider. Brand is wealthy, famous, and controversial. His wealth and stature would lead a mentally unwell woman to feel spite, and his controversy would lead a clout-chasing woman to seek attention through accusation. What’s more, (most of) these allegations only came about because of an expensive and time-consuming journalistic investigation, which would have lead to pointed questioning.
All in all, it seems unfair to target a famous person and set out your journalists to hound down every woman he had sex with. It’s a man’s right to have consensual sex with mentally unwell and “damaged” women, which would be a large chunk of the women Brand bedded. Of course, this cohort appears more apt to make false accusations. Quoting Scott,
Just for an example of media incompetence, I saw a (presumably serious?) online celebrity rag publicising a FistedbyFoucault tweet mocking the witness.
https://wegotthiscovered.com/celebrities/why-did-russell-brand-and-katy-perrys-marriage-end/
This is so surreal. The rest of the article doesn't look like a joke. Some kind of next-level joke? (Admittedly effective) clickbait to get more views? Total credulity on the part of the journalist (perhaps they don't know FbF's general slant on things)? Epic fuck-up by the intern in charge of linking tweets? Editor was high on crack and thought it was fine? OK, the editor probably doesn't even exist in this kind of 'journalism'.
Makes you wonder how many people will read and believe this nonsense. I had a lecturer credulously reveal to the class some so-fake-even-Snopes-condemned-it nonsense about how Trump called the Italian President 'Mozzarella'. Ironically she taught history...
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