As in this comment thread over at Alas, some people keep insisting that women lie about being raped while insisting that men don’t lie about rape.
[Update (12/17): Per Daran’s request I am clarifying that my use of “insisting that men don’t lie about rape” incorrectly labels his words on the linked thread. If I understand his correction what he continues to assert is that it hasn’t been proven that men lie about rape.
I see that as playing word games. He disagrees.
Here is his own explanation of his position:
Feminist cannot object to the statement “Women do (sometimes) lie about rape-and men don’t”. Because:
1. Construing “lie about rape” to mean “falsely report to the police that they were raped”, the statement is true, or at least, feminists cannot show that it is false.
2. Feminists cannot object to that construction, because they were the ones who used that construction in the first place when they circulated the 2% false accusation myth.
Edited to add:
3. While it is debatable to what extent individual feminists can be held responsible for the actions of other feminists, feminists who make generalised group-based complaints about the actions of non-feminists, cannot object when they are hoist on that petard.
end update]
If challenged, they will explain that by denying that men lie about rape, they are referring only to a very specific scenario where the man is the alleged victim who filed a police report.
It’s a very useful redefinition for alleged rapists and those who want to dismiss the pervasiveness of sexual violence against girls and women.
I’ve been thinking about how this dual “statement of facts” creates an unfair bias against female alleged rape victims.
What “women lie about rape, men don’t” does is plant the idea that when a rape case comes up where a woman is the alleged victim she must be treated with open skepticism. Can’t take her word for what happened because she’s female and girls and women lie about being raped. If there is anything about her that people won’t like or won’t trust then it can seem like she must be lying about being raped.
However, if a rape case comes up where the man is the alleged victim he must be treated as a real victim. Heck, there’s no need for the word alleged. He’s simply a victim. No criminal trial needed to know who is innocent and who is guilty. All he has to do is self-identify as a sexual assault/abuse victim and everyone must believe him even if he makes that claim during a crank and obscene call to a rape crisis line.
“Women lie about rape, men don’t” also plants the idea that when it comes to a particular sex crime case where a key part of the evidence is testimony, men are always honest while women will resort to lies for a whole list of reasons.
This implication of male honesty vs. female dishonesty is nonsense, but because it is supposedly based on solid research many people never question it and let it color their perception of what they hear.
This is an attempt to misuse probability theory both in the determination of probability statistics and the use of those statistics. The probability when flipping a balanced coin is 50:50 that it will be heads. But that probability does not predict the outcome of the next flip of the coin.
What the “men don’t lie about rape” statement does is make people assume that statistics on false accusations predicts who you should believe in so-called “he said, she said” rape cases.
Unlike the probability of a flipped coin, accurate statistics of convictions for false accusations are not the same as accurate statistics for false accusations. Just as some of those convicted of rape are later cleared through evidence such as DNA mismatches, some who are convicted or charged with fabricating a charge of rape are proved to be innocent or are convicted based on judgments about the alleged victim’s character and honesty. She seems like someone who would lie therefore she’s judged as a liar.
I can almost hear the men who say, “men don’t lie about rape” screaming that I’m supporting their view that alleged rape victims should be assumed to be dishonest. If any women have lied about being raped then we must assume that this rape victim is a liar until there is enough evidence to prove she’s telling the truth. We can’t use the claim that only 2% of rape claims are false to show anything about this alleged victim.
What they want is a starting belief of, “she’s lying.” I not only don’t want this, I will show that this belief impedes justice. Instead, I believe there should be a starting assumption of credibility.
My support for the assumption of credibility in the report of a crime is not based on statistics. It is based on how assumptions impact the collection of evidence. Once investigators assume the alleged victim is no victim at all, they may feel justified in interrogating a real rape victim until she decides she won’t get justice and abandons her case or until she is treated so abusively that she breaks and tells her interrogators whatever they want to hear. Either way, the outcome is the illusion that the negative assumption has been proven to be fact. These cases are then classified as unfounded or false.
This injustice then reinforces the case being made by those who say that huge numbers of girls and women lie about being raped.
For rapists, this is a good thing since it increases the odds that they will get away with their crimes without being charged with even a misdemeanor.
When the assumption about the alleged victim is credibility (untainted by the “women lie about rape” bias) that allows for the ethical collection and evaluation of evidence, including testimony from the alleged victim. Sometimes there will be enough evidence to bring charges and sometimes there won’t be. With the assumption of credibility the mere lack of evidence doesn’t get twisted into confirmation of a lie.
For rapists, this is a bad thing since it increases the odds that they will be charged for their crimes and that they will be convicted and it reduces the odds that their victims will be labeled liars and criminals.
Despite what many people claim, assuming an allegation is credible and working from there does not doom innocent men to false convictions.
For rapists, busting the myth that “women lie about rape, men don’t” is a bad thing. They are counting on the power of this myth and the fear innocent men have of false rape convictions to keep rape laws from being enforced.
(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)
This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.
If you aren’t sure what that means, please read this before commenting.
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Somehow, I get the feeling that Abyss2hope doesn’t know jack squat about probability theory. I wonder why feminist morons always try to act like they know anything – except for being a victim (they’ve got that down pat, I’ll concede).
Why put probability theory in the title? You got me all excited that there would finally be something of content here.
Apros, your feeling isn’t reliable. I am no moron and in fact have a math minor which included statistics and probability theory. Others have been misusing probability theory to support beliefs and practices which are harmful to rape victims.
But I’m a moron wallowing in victimhood for calling them on their harmful misuse. Right.
If you can’t comment without including a personal attack, please don’t comment here again. Of course you are welcome to explain your training in statistics and probability theory.
Sure – I am, unfortunately, a high-school drop out, currently employed at Twisty Freeze Dairy Products Inc., but I read two books on probability theory last month.
So I think I’m up on it. I don’t have a high-falutin’ college education, but I was able to get the basic ideas of Bayesian/conditional events, integration under probabilistic distribution curves, Poisson and related distributions, continuous random variables and that kind of stuff.
And, like, other stuff like that. Kind of.
Anyway, got to get back to the ice machine.
Apros, those are all great things to know, but just as important is getting the right data for a particular analysis and then applying good data correctly. An example of getting the data wrong is the Challenger shuttle explosion. When calculating the risk posed by the O-rings, they omitted the data from warm weather launches since they were only interested in studying cold weather launches. Without that omission the statistical analysis of O-ring problems would have shown just how dangerous that launch was under the conditions that day and the scientists who opposed that morning’s launch would have had something to back up their feeling that the launch should be scrubbed.
This strikes me as a really good point.
this also strikes me as a really good point. I never (probably stupidly) considered the way in which the anti-feminst critique of “believing” women can conflate the attitude of investigators during an investigation with the presumtion of innocence in a court of law, something which is usually less of a contradiction when dealing with other crimes it seems to me.
the whole question of whether or not human beings lie about anything strikes me as odd. OF COURSE people lie. like rugs. all the time. The question is how to create a justice system or process that can deal with rape, which is something we dont now have and probably never have in human history. The question is what is the assumption starting out.
Funny thing is, Apros can’t read. Hah. Hah ha ha. Hah.
LMFAO
Don’t forget to tuck your brain back in, zip up your fly and wash your hands, too. And keep it that way if you return, Mr. Wonderful. Thanks.
Please hold the personal insults everybody. Thanks.
I wish all the “women lie about rape” people would just come right out and say that unless a victim can produce four uninvolved men to corroborate her testimony they won’t believe it.
They sure show up on schedule, that’s for sure. Even with this, “This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.”
Every. Single. Time.
And how about in return, the next time we see a very questionable, very public claim of rape, this blog doesn’t jump to the assumption the innocent until proven guilty men are in fact guilty, woman-hating pigs. Now that it seems more and more clear that it’s actually the men who are victims of a groundless accusation, there’s no apology – just more apologetics
I am a manly MAN, see me get the best of women without becoming dependent on them or taking their side against my buddies when they are proving to me that they are manly men.
crayz: just for the record, any man who purchases a woman (i.e. a stripper), is a man who hates women. And a pig. He may, or he may not, be guilty of rape.
crayz, you seem to be ignorant of the fact that defense teams are not reliable sources of the truth about who is innocent and who is guilty. Now if a defense team held a press conference before a trial to announce their client was pleading guilty, I might take some of what they say as reliable.
Otherwise it’s spin, baby, spin.
The goal is to con the public into pushing the prosecutor to drop the case before a trial can reveal information the defense doesn’t want people to know.
Just as the defendents are legally innocent until proven guilty, the alleged victim is innocent until proven guilty of committing a crime. Yet, so many people don’t wait for pesky evidence before attacking alleged rape victims and labeling them as criminals.
My automatic trackbacks are still going AWOL, so I will take the liberty of being a human one. I have replied to Marcella’s post in an article with the provocative title: “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein“.
Also, if she has replied to my email, I cannot see it, as I am getting errors when I try to collect my mail.
I don’t think Daran understands this post at all after reading this in Daran’s post:
Arguing the second implies the first, whether intentionally or accidentally.
I just thought of a way that should, if anything can, make the meaning of Q grrl’s comment crystal clear.
Many of those who demand gender neutrality when talking about sexual assault victims, drop the gender neutrality when they talk about who lies about rape. To them it isn’t that some alleged rape victims lie, it’s “women and girls lie about rape.”
Here’s the implication:
The class of true rape victims includes men and boys.
The class of false rape victims excludes all men and boys.
Therefore boys and men are more honest when it comes to rape cases than girls and women.
Here’s what crayz (#11) wrote:
I believe his use of gender is significant and meaningful. This excludes women from the ranks of the innocent until proven guilty crowd. And it’s frequently more than just the use of the feminine or masculine pronoun, it’s the different value assignments given based on gender stereotypes.
When the subject is lying about rape, people tend to write stuff like this:
Women benefit from making rape charges. (gold diggers)
Men suffer when women accuse them of rape. (victims)
Men, unlike women, are humiliated when they report being raped. (victims)
This overall gender slant is IMO no coincidence but a reflection of deeply held beliefs.
Abyss, #11s comment does not seem seem to imply the points, indeed s/he appears to be talking about a specific case (female victim, male predator) which would automatically exclude women from being considered.
I think the reason for the focus is the same as the one feminists put forward, more women than men are raped thus a female victim / male predator scenario would be the standard scenario to consider.
Chris, you are wrong about gender in #11 only applying to one case and you are wrong that innocent until proven guilty is inherently gendered when it comes to sex crimes.
Abyss, I wasn’t saying I2PG is gendered, I was saying a male predator female victim makes the most sense in a scenario because of the imbalance in cases in real life. Sorry for any misunderstanding
Chris, you didn’t say innocent until proven guilty is gendered but crayz turned it into just that and you didn’t see it even though I quoted where he did so. In countries that have the legal presumption of innocence that presumption applies to everyone not just those charged with rape.
Crayz isn’t the only who turns alleged rapists into victims long before the trial, but like many others his insistence on innocent until proven guilty magically disappeared.
I specifically referred to men because there seems to be a theme on this blog of:
* assuming rapists are usually men (reasonable assumption – but don’t complain when others use it too)
* assuming claims of rape are usually true (I have no idea the actual percentages, but with any crime that tends to be private and personal, I would take a grain of salt about anyone’s story)
* posting negative comments/assumptions about specific accused men in specific rape cases, most notably the Duke case
In complete honesty, my first assumption when I heard about the Duke rape case was that the accuser was probably telling the truth – it seemed like a reasonable claim. But as more details came out in the days after the story broke, it seemed to become less and less probable that the accuser was telling the truth. Instead of commenting on the case in a fair and rational way, the commentors posting on this blog continued to support the accuser and bash the accused long after most reasonable people would have changed their minds
To me, this indicates a very strong bias against men, specifically against men accused of rape, regardless of the cicrumstances or the specific details of the accusation or accuser/accused.
And to top it off, when I mention this, Abyss2hope accuses me of being a woman-hater who just automatically assumes any *woman* making a rape claim is lying. Let me ask this: how many times has this blog ranted against woman-on-man rape? How many times have there been posts mock-quoting rapist women:
How many times has this blog picked up a woman-on-man rape accusation and assumed the man was telling the truth, and railed against the accused woman?
And if that doesn’t happen, then don’t go around slamming commenters here for using the same framing of the discussion that you do
I checked and then double-checked – yep, the following WAS posted (in English, no less):
This post is a feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly only thread.
Perhaps a flashing neon pink font would better get the message across.
Sigh.
crayz:
I did not accuse you of being a woman-hater. I did point out how you used gender in your comment and you have agreed that you did so intentionally and explained why you felt justified in doing so.
You want to reverse the situation so women are the rapists and men are the victims for rhetorical purposes, but I doubt you’d want to reverse the rape statistics so instead of 1 in 33 American men being victims of sexual assault, 1 in six men would be victims of sexual assault.
If you’re not biased against women or alleged rape victims (using your own standard), then you must be opposed to those who post negative comments/assumptions about specific alleged victims in specific rape cases, most notably the Duke case.
I guess we can all agree then that:
Women lie about rape, and so do men.
Case closed.
Next?
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There’s a link to Daran’s response so anyone who wants to read it can.
Daran, I didn’t say you were doing anything proactively or reactively. You may find playing word games a fun hobby, but those word games have a real and damaging impact on the way female rape victims are treated inside and outside of the criminal justice system.
That’s what I care about.
FYI per a request from Daran, I have added a direct quote of his words as an update to my post. He felt my characterization misrepresented what he had written (some of which has since been deleted) before this post was published.
Did anyone see the awful Saturday Night Live on Nancy Grace and the Duke Rape Case. The are making a joke out of this. I have been commenting on the NBC / SNL Blog site.
http://boards.nbc.com/nbc/index.php?showtopic=720319
(They just keep coming at you.)
In response to a harshly-worded update to an earlier post, and an email saying the same, Marcella has updated her post, (also here) which I accept as a sincere attempt to set the record straight. Therefore I have stricken the harsh words. Unfortunately she still continues to apparently misunderstand my position, and consequently to present it in a misleading way.
She quoted from my comment to a now blanked out post, which she describes as “[my] own explanation of [my] postion”. I blanked the original post because it was unclear, was being misunderstood, and was itself based on a misunderstanding. The comment was written before I did that, and, as I explained here, it was written with the intention of serving as a summary, a conceptual map if you like, of the logic of the argument I was making in that post. It was never intended to be read separately from that post.
In particular the sentence “Women do (sometimes) lie about rape-and men don’t” did not appear within the post with or without the “(sometimes)”. Nor was there any sentence equivalent to it. The sentence was curiousgyrl’s misunderstood version of my argument, which I accepted solely for the purpose of creating the summary conceptual map.
With the post blanked out, the map serves no purpose, and is misleading itself with respect to my views. In retrospect, I should have blanked it when I blanked the post. However, I think the time for that has now passed.
Marcella further characterises my view saying that I “continue[] to assert […] that it hasn’t been proven that men lie about rape.” In so far as “lie about rape” is construed to mean “falsely report to the police that they have been raped”, and in so far as it makes a general rather than a universal claim (so that individual cases of men “lying about rape” are insufficient to refute it) then I consider the claim neither proven, nor disproven. However I do not “continue[] to assert” this because I object to the “lie about rape” framing altogether, for reasons that ought, by now, to be obvious.
Putting those objections aside for the moment, I also consider the claim that “women lie about rape”, similarly construed, to be neither proven nor disproven. The feminist 2% statistic is bogus, while the various statistical claims made by antifeminists appear to be all either unsupported by the sources they cite, (example), or are otherwise unconvincing. Likewise their anecdotal evidence is insufficient to support a general claim that false reporting by women is prevalent.
Finally, if “lie about rape” is construed, for example, to mean “falsely deny having committed rape”, then of course I consider it proven that a significant proportion of rape denials by men are false.
Posted on my blog, shortly as a comment to Marcella’s and I’ll also attempt to post it to Alas.
Why is it that errors remain invisible until just after you post something somewhere you can’t edit it.
It should of course read: “[my] own explanation of [my] position”. The position is mine, not Marcella’s.
[Corrected. –Amp]
Daran: Trackbacks or faux-trackbacks are okay. But other than that, please don’t post in this thread again. Thanks.
It turns out that Daran posted here with Abyss2Hope’s permission. So disregard my previous comment, please; sorry ’bout that, Daran.
Please someone tell me of a case where a man was maliciously falsely accused of rape then later proven by DNA to be innocent.
Men do rot in jail on false rape charges in stranger rape cases where the cops get the wrong man or the victim does not know the identity of her assailent and mistakenly identifies him.
I have never heard of a deliberate malicous lying case where the man was cleared by DNA.
Women often withdraw charges because of lack of evidence and not being able to go through with the trial. Once a man has been publicly named I imagine the woman is forced to withdraw the accusation or face legal action for defamation so is then forced to recind her claim of rape.
THIS DOES NOT MAKE THE WOMAN A LIAR IT IS SIMPLY HER ONLY WAY TO CANCEL THE TRIAL. HER FALSE ACCUSATION TRIAL
At least from a British perspective a false accusation only exists if the accuser voluntarily declares the accusation as such. So finding cleared men who were falsely accused would in general be difficult.
Again in Britain something like 42%+ of cases are dropped either by the accuser or due to lack of evidence (could not find / identify the accused), again not many defamation cases seem to come to trial based on these cases,at least that is reported in the media. Again as you note this does not mean that the woman is lying, but it does cast some doubt on her case from a purely legal perspective.
Semantics are important. See the other thread where we discussed what I’ll rfere to as “moral” and “criminal” rape…
“False” accusations are equally vague. the problem stems from the fact that criminal rape is a SUBSET of moral rape. So a lot of folks who “feel raped” may not have satisfied the of rape.
Is a woman who honestly feels she was raped but whose experience does not match the definition of criminal rape making a “false” accusation by bringing a formal rape charge?
SHE certainly wouldn’t think so. SHE thinks she was raped, and in a moral sense she was; there’s no falsity to that feeling. I have a lot of trouble telling her she is making a “false” accusation.
HE, on the other hand, has been accused of a crime which (for the purposes of this example) he didn’t commit. HE feels like he was “falsely accused.” I don’t want to stand there and tell him he’s wrong, either.
they’re both right.
Another attribute of “false” accusations is one where false is taken to mean “malicious.” We all know that one–plain old lying to get someone else busted.
And then there’s the issue where SHE believes, correctly, that she has both moral and legal justification for her charge, but the court disagrees. I’ve never referred to that as “false” but I’ll include it anyway for completeness.
So we end up with a continuum of rape cases:
1) Maliciously false accusations (unjustified)
2) morally justified accusations which ARE “criminally false”
3) morally justified accusations which MAY be criminally false
4) morally and criminally justified accusations which nonetheless don’t result in a conviction
3) morally and criminally justified accusations which result in a conviction.
When rape advocates talk about an extremely low level of false claims,they’re IMO usually only talking about #1. This makes sense, since they tend to use a female (victim subjective) perspective: and morally speaking, only #1 is a truly “false” claim.
When non-MRA men and some other folks talk, they usually include both #1 AND #2. this also makes sense. From the perspective of the accused, getting accused of a crime you didn’t do is damn straight a “false accusation;” it doesn’t become less false just because the accuser thinks you’re guilty.
the problem is that this creates a big difference in the numbers. I won’t even hazard a guess about specifics–but IMO, relatively speaking #2 is likely to be quite a bit bigger than #1.
It’s also worth noting that rape is one of the few places where this type of disagreement can even EXIST. most people don’t disagree about whether a theft or an assault or murder took place.
Better semantics, which allowed people to discuss the various possible forms of “false” things without getting confused, would help.
**Oh yeah: i’ve run into some MRAs who think #1, 2, 3, and 4 are “false” claims. Oy vey.
grrr. sorry re italics.
There are also cases in which the man was convicted in a court of rape and it turned out to be false. Many instances involve a false identification (those cases are coming to light with the Innocence Project and DNA testing), some instances involve a knowingly false claim, but a conviction was obtained anyway (for instance the Gary Dotson case, to pick a famous one).
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