As someone who has been the target of false accusation by a woman twice (separate women, and luckily I was proven innocent in each case), I think this article minimizes the threat that men face.
Yes, women face a huge problem as a group, in that they are often the victims of male sexual predators. Something needs to be done about that. I have always been an advocate for women (not just since MeToo), and fully support equality and also protection from abuse, and believe that when women claimed to have been abused, they should be listened to and taken seriously.
At the same time, we need to not rush from one extreme to the other. Men can — and often are — falsely accused by women. False accusation is a very powerful weapon for harming someone. If we don’t require proof, we make men vulnerable to female predators: women to seek revenge against former partners by falsely accusing them of something. As I said, it happened to me — twice. I think it goes under-reported.
This means that we cannot assume we are safe all the time. Women cannot assume they are safe when alone with a man who they don’t know well, because some men are predators. Men cannot assume they are safe (from future false accusation) when alone with a woman who they don’t know well, because some women can become vindictive later on. That’s the unfortunate reality.
What if the situation with Robert Foster were reversed? What if a married female candidate were asked by a handsome reporter if he could “shadow her”? Could that be misconstrued? Could the notoriously vicious press, which seizes every opportunity to mis-characterize every interaction and create suspicion about public figures, use the opportunity to portray the woman as possibly having an affair with the male reporter who she has been “see with so much”? Would photos of one whispering to the other, possibly with a hand on the other’s shoulder, appear on front pages, out of context, with the caption, “Is something going on?”
You wrote, “…isn’t just that the appearance of their interaction may seem untoward, but rather that any woman would automatically condemn him.” No, it is that he believes — correctly — that others, such as the press, might mis-charactrize things, which they often do.
