Parts 1, 2, and 3 analyzed the comment itself, but there is a problem related to false accusations that anonymous didn’t attack. I touched upon it in my analysis, but it deserves more attention.
False and/or unfounded accusations against rape victims and those who advocate on behalf of rape victims.
Ironically, those who are most vocal about the problem of false rape accusations against men are often the worst offenders. I’m sure some people will see my analysis of the anonymous comment as an accusation or an attack, but I didn’t attack him, I challenged his statements and his insinuations about those who identify themselves as rape victims or survivors. If he didn’t want me to respond to his comment he could have chosen not to comment on my blog.
I was even accused of lying about receiving this comment and accused of writing it myself as a straw man I could then prove wrong. Because the comment calling me a liar crossed the line into an attack it was deleted — as the person who made the accusation stated would happen — I’m sure there will be those who consider me a double liar because I didn’t approve the spam comment on my post about the Duke rape case and because I deleted the personal attack.
Hey, I wish no real people spouted the beliefs contained in that anonymous comment, but they do and that is no false accusation. The person making the accusation against me apparently didn’t bother to follow the link I gave in part 1 to this comment or to do even a single search on chunks of that comment to find other copies of it with slight variations. In this linked variation of the comment anonymous has no problem making an accusation against the alleged victim in the Duke rape case and no problem deciding on her punishment.
Apparently, for anonymous due process is for men only.
When there is a report about the percentage of primary rape suspects whose DNA did not match the DNA from the actual rapists, there are plenty of people who will twist that data to make the accusation that the same percentage of rape victims have made a false accusation. They frequently go further and give that percentage of rape victims a motive like “gotta blame someone.”
When it comes to attacking rape victims and those who advocate for them, no proof is needed. All they need is something they can distort and turn into an accusation. On occasion, a few will take on the identity of an alleged rape victim such as in the Duke rape case in order to reveal the “truth” about that person.
Telling malicious lies with the intent to hurt others isn’t limited to those who file a police report. It’s a convenient myth that only women make false accusations about rape. But every time a rapist lies and says, “she asked for it,” he’s making a false accusation. If that accusation results in him escaping accountability (through no charges being filed or through a not-guilty verdict) and her being called a liar, real damage has been done and it shouldn’t be shrugged off as if it were nothing. It’s even worse if his lies result in his victim being charged with a crime or if those lies cause someone to feel justified in threatening or assaulting or murdering a rape victim.
We all deserve better than that.
(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)
Note: Comments are limited to feminists or those who can be respectful of feminists and their efforts to fight sexual exploitation. If you want to excuse or minimize the behavior of those who harm others, make the person exploited responsible for their own exploitation, call those who label their experiences rape liars, or tell us that we should be focusing on more important issues, please do so elsewhere.
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“Apparently, for anonymous due process is for men only.
When there is a report about the percentage of primary rape suspects whose DNA did not match the DNA from the actual rapists, there are plenty of people who will twist that data to make the accusation that the same percentage of rape victims have made a false accusation. They frequently go further and give that percentage of rape victims a motive like “gotta blame someone.””
Hmm, I’m not sure I’m with you on this concept. “Due Process” for a person accused of rape involves a trial with a huge chance of serious prison time. The number of people tried (much less imprisoned) for false accusations is vanishingly small.
And I’m not entirely happy with the “twist that data” concept either. While it is certainly true that some of the people freed by DNA eveidence were not victims of false allegations, I don’t think you can take as much refuge in that fact as you seem to. You pivot that ‘some’ into essentially the whole argument, and I don’t think that is legitimate. The wrongly convicted (and I use the term in the descriptive sense, not to assign blame to the accuser) are largely convicted on eyewitness testimony because that is how rape trials work. If they were wrongly convicted, a huge percentage of the cases are because the rape victim wrongly identified them in court.
Now I agree with you that we shouldn’t project into the minds of these people (whose cases we can’t review) by attributing “gotta blame someone” on a blanket basis. But I don’t think you are doing justice to the problem of rape accusations that are factually shown to be false by saying things like “When there is a report about the percentage of primary rape suspects whose DNA did not match the DNA from the actual rapists, there are plenty of people who will twist that data to make the accusation that the same percentage of rape victims have made a false accusation,” and then moving on without trying to figure for example what percentage of them were false accusations. Yes we can’t assume that all are, but ‘all’ is a big word. If “most” or “a majority” are, that is still a rather huge problem.
Sebastian Holsclaw
You seem to be supporting the idea that those accused of rape should have due process protections but those accused of lying about rape should not. Am I reading you right?
Sebastian Holsclaw:
But the DNA mismatch data used to “prove” women lie about being raped made no mention of wrongful convictions it only gave the percentage of mismatches between DNA on file and the DNA of the primary suspect. Primary suspect does not equal charged with the crime or convicted.
As for the claim about the number of women convicted of making a false claim when their alleged rapist says the sex was consensual, that number is not vanishingly small.
All you have to do is go here for a recent example.
I wonder how many people who claim: “In so-called he said/she said cases you can never tell who is lying and who is telling the truth” will stand behind the notion that this woman should not have been convicted?
If men should never be convicted in these cases, neither should any women be convicted in relation to those cases.
“You seem to be supporting the idea that those accused of rape should have due process protections but those accused of lying about rape should not. Am I reading you right? ”
No. I’m saying that you are comparing due process in a criminal setting (where a rape trial occurs) to that of social setting (where disbelieving a person whose says he or she was raped typically occurs). Those are two different settings with two different types of process. For example, I fully believe that OJ Simpson killed Nicole Brown. But for purposes of due process under criminal law, he has been found not guilty.
“But the DNA mismatch data used to “prove” women lie about being raped made no mention of wrongful convictions it only gave the percentage of mismatches between DNA on file and the DNA of the primary suspect. ”
The typical way of becoming a primary suspect in a rape case is by witness identification.
“As for the claim about the number of women convicted of making a false claim when their alleged rapist says the sex was consensual, that number is not vanishingly small.
All you have to do is go here for a recent example.”
First you are interchanging my claim about “false allegations” with a completely different claim about consensual sex. I was talking about DNA evidence proving the suspect could not have been the rapist. I don’t see how a consensual sex claim could easily fit in to that scenario. Second, one example wouldn’t contradict me anyway even if I was talking about consensual sex defenses.
I see that I have been confused by your title: “Anatomy Of A False Rape Accusation” and by the first entries. You don’t seem to want to talk about even the possibility of false rape accusations. You seem to want to talk about how the existance (or maybe for you it is the alleged existance) of false rape accusations is a club (and you might say ‘merely’) a club used by people who want to minimize the real harm of actual rape or the punishment for actual rape.
I agree that such people do use it as a club. I am not such a person. I think the reason the club is rhetorically effective is because there is some truth or something that resonates with a lot of people in the problem of false rape accusations. I think we aren’t as likely to defuse the club’s power by attacking those who use it as we are if we examine the true (or at least socially resonant) parts of it and see how they work or why they seem believable. You seem to want to attack why it is believable to people who don’t even understand why rape is such a horrible thing. I think that is a losing proposition. I suspect it would be more fruitful to examine why that club is rhetorically effective even with people who do understand.
You seem to want to classify all people who are troubled by the problem of false accusations as people who don’t understand the evil of rape. I don’t think you are right in that.
Sebastian Holsclaw:
No, I wasn’t comparing criminal charges with non-criminal charges. Those who accuse alleged victims of criminal behavior rarely concern themselves with the same protections they demand for alleged rapists.
Many rhetorical clubs resonate because they help club users rationalize harmful actions and/or beliefs. As I showed in the first 3 parts, the so-called proof given by anonymous is no proof at all. That doesn’t stop people from repeating the claim that half of all women who report being raped are liars.
Sebastian Holsclaw:
Correction, I classify those who inflate the problem of false accusations as people who either don’t understand the reality of rape or who don’t want others to understand the reality of rape.
“Many rhetorical clubs resonate because they help club users rationalize harmful actions and/or beliefs.”
Yes, and I said this is clearly the approach you are taking in analzying it. That is why they resonate with the club users. That does nothing to explain why they resonate with lots of other people.
“Correction, I classify those who inflate the problem of false accusations as people who either don’t understand the reality of rape or who don’t want others to understand the reality of rape. ”
I’m not sure that is a correction. Do you believe that people can be concerned about false accusations AND understand the reality of rape? Or do you believe those are mutually exclusive sets? If you believe that someone COULD have both, do you believe that very many people actually do?
It sounds like you want to classify people who worry about false accusations as presumptively people who don’t understand the problem of rape. I think that is both analytically unfair and factually incorrect.
Sebastian Holsclaw:
Since I’m one of those people that is both concerned about false accusations and who understands the reality of rape, they are not mutually exclusive.
Sebastian, your question also raises the question about why people assume that those who understand the reality of rape and advocate against rape can’t be concerned about false accusations?
Rejecting lies and unfounded claims about false accusations is not the same as not being concerned about genuine false accusations.
“Sebastian, your question also raises the question about why people assume that those who understand the reality of rape and advocate against rape can’t be concerned about false accusations?”
If you are talking about me, I make no such assumption. I note only that in this discussion you have made four posts and numerous comments without particularly attending to concern about false accusations. I have no idea if this is your general approach. But in the context of this discussion you have focused only on the (in context presumably false) allegation of false rape accusations used as a club by people who do not understand the reality of rape and/or who use it to justify horrible actions.
You have not focused on the horrible position of a person who is actually not guilty of rape and who is nevertheless accused of it–sometimes to the point of being put in jail because of it.
Upon rereading your first entry in light of the rest of the discussion I see that I misinterpreted the title “Anatomy Of A False Rape Accusation Comment–Part X”
I read it as a comment on False Rape Accusation. Really it is a response to misuse of False Rape Accusations raised in the comments. That’s ok. It is a great topic. I just let my misreading of the title steer me in the wrong direction. Since I read it wrong, I tried to talk about False Rape Accusations in general. I see now that wasn’t the topic.
Sebastian Holsaw:
Yes, these 4 linked posts are a response to a specific comment sent to my home blog. One of the problems with that comment that I pointed out in part 3 is that his only recommendation to deal with false accusations was to open up the alleged victim’s entire history.
Sebastian Holsclaw:
You are correct in that I haven’t focused on this to the level you seem to desire, but to expect me to do this is like expecting all those who have been injured by drunk drivers or lost loved ones to drunk drivers to focus equally on the horrible position of a person who gets a DWI but is actually not guilty of drunk driving.
No one, I hope, would expect those combating drunk driving to give equal time and attention to people arrested on DWIs. The fact that they don’t give those arrested on DWI charges equal attention doesn’t mean they don’t care if the innocent are arrested or convicted.
Here’s an article that brings up some of the issues being discussed here:
Juries are ‘unsympathetic’ to women who claim rape after drunken binge
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2490449,00.html
I never asked for equal attention. Dissmissal isn’t the same as lack of attention.
Sebastian, if you read all of parts 1, 2, 3 you will see that I did NOT dismiss the reality of false accusations.
I already published this comment on A2H’s own website, but as this one seems to be a little more widely read, I thought I’d put it on here too. Only because I think the Mackinnon quotation is so good:
Very interesting series of posts. I haven’t read them as carefully as I might have, so I don’t know if you actually brought up this point, but I thought it was worth pointing out that this whole discourse of ‘real’ or ‘false’ rape accusations, black or white, objective or subjective, is a very male one too. It’s a classic move. Control the discourse and you’re most of the way there already. Power/knowledge and all that. Catherine Mackinnon puts it far better in her excellent piece “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence”. I’ll quote the passage in full if I may:
“But the deeper problem is the rape law’s assumption that a single, objective state of affairs existed, one which merely needs to be determined by evidence, where many (maybe even most) rapes involve honest men and violated women. When the reality is split – a woman is raped but not by a rapist? – the law tends to conclude that a rape did not happen. To attempt to solve this by adopting the standard of reasonable belief without asking, on a substantive social basis, to whom the belief is reasonable and why – meaning, what conditions make it reasonable – is one sided: male-sided. What is it reasonable for a man to believe concerning a woman’s desire for sex when heterosexuality is compulsory? Whose subjectivity becomes the objective of ‘what happened’ is a matter of social meaning, that is, it has been a matter of sexual politics. One-sidedly erasing women’s violation or dissolving the presumptions into the subjectivity of either side are alternatives dictated by the terms of the object/subject split, respectively. These are alternatives that will only retrace that split until its terms are confronted as gendered to the ground.”
“Sebastian, if you read all of parts 1, 2, 3 you will see that I did NOT dismiss the reality of false accusations. ”
I read them before I entered my first comment on part 3 and I see almost exclusively dismissiveness of false accusations. But since I now understand that my interpretation of the point of the series was mistaken it isn’t worth getting in to. You are attacking a commenter who was using false rape allegations inappropriately not trying to address the problem of false accusations. That is fine. I will withdraw from that discussion since I have already provided too much distraction from what you desired to talk about and I defer to you right to control the conversation.