peruvianskys said:
Therumancer said:
The contreversial thing about rape is that it's difficult to prove, and can be used as a weapon. Some girl who goes to bed with some guy and is ashamed, or has to justify it to daddy or a boyfriend or whatever can say "well he raped me" and put tons of pressure on the guy involved whether he did any such thing or not.
Jesus christ, in what fucked up world do you think this happens? The Justice Department estimates that fewer that 4% of rape accusations are falsified; considering that only about half of all rapes are even reported and fewer that 5% of all rapists face even one day in jail for their crimes, your view that somehow the justice system is tilted towards women instead of DRAMATICALLY AGAINST them is ridiculous and bizarre.
FBI had claimed 8%, putting it four times higher than the average for index crimes.
You also need to watch definitions: It's one of those rhetorical tricks where they use a specific definition of "false" that is unintuitive to define "falsely accused" then suggest that that rate has anything to do with the likelihood of an accused person's guilt.
For example, read: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-accused-20110626,0,7042051.story
He got a finding of factual innocence (that is, being found innocent beyond a reasonable doubt) for the rape he was accused of. He was not, however, "falsely accused" by the definitions commonly used for stats. Not "falsely" accused =/= actually guilty. In fact, in most studies on the topic, whether someone was "falsely" accused has nothing to do with the accused at all (let alone the guilt of the accused or lack thereof).
peruvianskys said:
Almost all studies done on the issue have come up with a figure between 3% and 7% for rape claims that are false - it should be pointed out that the highest bracket is definitely skewed by a few outliers. Overall, I'd say about 5% of rape claims being untrue is a good figure; please note that this includes both malicious claims, which the DOJ claims account for about %1-%2 of all claims, as well as the majority, which are claims made earnestly (almost always regarding events that took place under intoxication) that are later shown to be false.
Studies have ranged everywhere from ~1.5% to >40%, depending on the methodology used and definition of "false". To quote a convenient table from WP:
Wikipedia said:
A selection of findings on the prevalence of false rape allegations. Data from Rumney (2006).
| Number | False reporting rate (%) |
| Theilade and Thomsen (1986) | 1 out of 56 4 out of 39 | 1.5% (minimum) 10% (maximum) |
| New York Rape Squad (1974) | n/a | 2% |
| Hursch and Selkin (1974) | 10 out of 545 | 2% |
| Kelly et al. (2005) | 67 out of 2,643 | 3% ("possible" and "probable" false allegations) 22% (recorded by police as "no-crime") |
| Geis (1978) | n/a | 3-31% (estimates given by police surgeons) |
| Smith (1989) | 17 out of 447 | 3.8% |
| U.S. Department of Justice (1997) | n/a | 8% |
| Clark and Lewis (1977) | 12 out of 116 | 10.3% |
| Harris and Grace (1999) | 53 out of 483 123 out of 483 | 10.9% ("false/malicious" claims) 25% (recorded by police as "no-crime") |
| Lea et al. (2003) | 42 out of 379 | 11% |
| HMCPSI/HMIC (2002) | 164 out of 1,379 | 11.8% |
| McCahill et al. (1979) | 218 out of 1,198 | 18.2% |
| Philadelphia police study (1968) | 74 out of 370 | 20% |
| Chambers and Millar (1983) | 44 out of 196 | 22.4% |
| Grace et al. (1992) | 80 out of 335 | 24% |
| Jordan (2004) | 68 out of 164 62 out of 164 | 41% ("false" claims) 38% (viewed by police as "possibly true/possibly false") |
| Kanin (1994) | 45 out of 109 | 41% |
| Gregory and Lees (1996) | 49 out of 109 | 45% |
| Maclean (1979) | 16 out of 34 | 47% |
| Stewart (1981) | 16 out of 18 | 90% |
thaluikhain said:
It was only very recently (1992 in the US) that men could be charged with raping their wives, until then consent was assumed, and a lot of people still lean towards that view.
Ironically, just a couple of years ago a French court gave a woman a financial judgement in their divorce because he wasn't sleeping with her (so apparently a man actually *does* have a duty to sleep with his wife, at least in France?). I can only imagine the news coverage if a judgment was made along those lines against a woman though -- we'd be talking about whether it's OK to be fined for not being raped.
thaluikhain said:
Shortly before that, the cheerleader in Texas kicked off her cheerleading squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist, was harassed by her community because she brought them into disrepute.
To be fair, in the case you are talking about, the rapist in question had been brought up for indictment for that incident, and the prosecutor failed to indict (this means that after an initial investigation the prosecutor, unopposed, could not present sufficient evidence for the court to formally charge him). So, for all intents and purposes the court had ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to warrant charging him with a crime.
So what should the cheerleading teams rule have been? You don't have to cheer for anyone you don't particularly want to? Anyone you've accused of a crime? Draw the line for me, but remember as far as anyone who wasn't that girl was concerned, he was a guy who had been accused of rape which an investigation did not turn up enough evidence to charge him with (this eventually changed and he was found guilty, but not until *after* the whole refusing to cheer thing). Should the accusation alone have any formal power?
Of course now, by not assuming her accusation is true unless there's significant evidence to disprove it (and not merely not enough evidence to formlly charge him), they'd be discriminating against her in education with respect to sex, and falling foul of Title IX (yay for the Dear Colleague letter and making it a preponderance of the evidence to destroy someone's education).
thaluikhain said:
Hell, look at people like Mike Tyson and Roman Polanski. There's no question that they are guilty, but they've got plenty of apologists and they've gone on with their film careers. That's exactly what would not happen if the mere accusation was enough to stigmatise a rapist.
Someone else already covered what's happened to them, though it's fair to note that we don't generally hold celebrities to the same standards as everyone else anyways, as messed up as that is too.
Ken Sapp said:
Calibanbutcher said:
it would be great if all men would learn that rape is fucking wrong.
It would be great if all humans would learn that rape is wrong. By explicitly stating
men you are falling prey to, or at least implying, the stereotype of it always being men forcing themselves on women. Having known several rape victims I know it is not a matter to be trivialized in any way and by focusing only on women who are raped we do ourselves and the ignored victims a great disservice.
To be fair, thanks to the rhetorical trick in which we alternate between colloquial and technical/legal definitions whenever it helps our case I can say this: In a hypothetical world where 90% of sexual encounters completed through force, the threat of force, or while the victim is unconscious, intoxicated, or otherwise incapable of consent were female perpetrators forcing themselves on male victims, most rapists would be male. Why? Because penis.
boots said:
With regards to the "don't get blind drunk!" advice, I feel that bringing this up specifically with regard to rape prevention is pointless, and again puts the responsibility on women not to become "targets" for rapists. This advice should be given to everyone, not just women, and when you give this advice to women only it implies that men can consume dangerous amounts of alcohol or drugs consequence-free. Getting completely and utterly off your face can lead to a whole mess of things - from alcohol poisoning to wandering out in front of cars or jumping off high stuff for a dare, all of which is just as likely if not more likely to occur as being raped.
And finally, giving all this advice to women just contributes to the wide misconception that only women can get raped. All of these precautions should be taken by men as well.
I agree with everything you just said here. "Don't get blind drunk, you're likely to do something you'll regret when sober!" is good general advice for everyone. What I find interesting is the underlying idea that women, and only women, doing "something you'll regret when sober" are victims in a way that doesn't apply to men (I'd once seen an article on Shakesville that literally in the same paragraph stated that a high/drunk woman was incapable of consent and thus raped but being high/drunk does not excuse her boyfriend of responsibility for raping her and that the reverse view [that being high/drunk meant he was incapable of consent and her being high/drunk did not absolve her of her actions] was misogyny and rape apology -- the woman in question was agreeing to testify to rape as part of a plea bargain). There's a term for it, where we assign women less agency to and responsibility for their actions than we do men (also one of the reasons women get lesser sentences for a given crime), but I can't think of the word.
