The stereotype that smart and crazy are equivalents has been invaluable to everyone whom I have met in my nonvirtual life for the years during which I have futilely reported sexual harassment, stalking and voyeurism.
I'll paraphrase what seems to be the thought process of everyone who has ignored me, condescended to me or punished me for those reports. With the exception of the police and of one school administrator, the people to whom I have reported the incidents are female authority figures.
"Lena always pays her bills on time without prompting from anyone or having anyone else manage her money. That is not enough of a sign of cognitive functioning to cause me to take her report seriously."
"Lena maintains her apartment without prompting from anyone or having anyone else cleaning it. That is not enough of a sign of cognitive functioning to cause me to take her report seriously. Although I don't know it and wouldn't believe her if she told me, the tidiness of her apartment has caused her to be the target of even more jokes, about OCD, from the people watching her from the hidden and illegal cameras that I refuse to believe are there. The jokes range from trivially malicious to what the jokesters seem to think is warm and harmless teasing, to fictionalized but recognizable accusations of inherent, murderous and even genocidal tendencies, which those slinging the accusations hasten to emphasize don't mean that they wouldn't like to fuck her brains out. Maybe Ben Affleck and Tom Hanks can do a movie together about that theme, since they have already done movies separately about it."
"Lena has straight As. Not only does that mean that she is crazy, it also means that she is a raging bitch who won't even allow other people in the classroom to ask questions because it disturbs her ability to concentrate. Her side of the story, which is that she never has and never would try to prevent other people from participating in class and that the people who harass her in class are always also the people who are the least interested in the subject, who never ask questions or do their homework and who frequently don't even have their own school supplies such as assigned workbooks or even calculators during the tests, which they don't feel that they need since more than one of them have borrowed said supplies from Lena before starting to harass her, is a crazy lie. Obviously, the way to deal with her inability to get through a semester of school without making a false accusation of harassment is to suspend her, force her to fail 4 classes by taking her out of them, and ban her from school property as if she is a criminal. If she weren't such a crazy liar, she wouldn't be homeless; we have to protect our students from people like her."
