These are probably the same people who think men can't be the victims of domestic abuse, usually on the basis of "but how can you be being bullied by the little woman".

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Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Well there's the opposite extreme, too: the sad clique of men's rights' activists who are persuaded that the majority of violence (especially domestic violence) is committed by women against men, but that reporting of this 'fact' is not allowed by the feminist-PC mafia. Viz:

Shades of grey don't compute with these people (which I could expand to Mailites in general). Everything is black / white.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

To be fair though, why shouldn't someone call for equality in domestic abuse situations?

Men get abused too, and it's a problem that they often suffer in silence through machismo or embarrassment. I used to do some work for an organisation who specialised in male depression. Men don't tend to talk about these things and suffer in silence.

See also the more recent camaigns about testicular and prostate cancer awareness.

Also, as I'd not seen this thread, I'm also not happy about not giving men accused of rape anonymity - at least until the case goes to trial!

I'm not for a minute suggesting that there are a majority of cases where the woman is making it up, but it DOES happen. I know someone it happened to and it dragged on for a couple of days before she admitted she made it up. A rape accusation is a nice tool for revenge for some (very small percentage) women and these women make it do much harder for genuine rape victims to get justice.

Take away the immediate nature of it and perhaps fewer will do it, which will ultimately help women who are genuine victims.

That it will stop a few poor sods having their names dragged through the mud and being tarred with the accusation (hey, no smoke without fire) then so much the better.

Regarding "only gays rape" mentality: up here in Glasgow, about two, three years ago, there were a number of stories regarding a trio of men roaming the streets of the West End grabbing young men off the street and violently raping them. When I say "violent", I mean violent. It's estimated that the three men - who I don't believe were ever caught - had potentially raped upwards of a dozen men - based on a comment made to one of the victims when he said he was going to go to the Police - and yet only something like four men came forward. The biggest fuck-up in societal response to rape is the assumption that rape is a "female-only problem". It's not. Another fucked-up assumption is that all the rape victims are gay. They're not. A co-worker of mine confessed - when I demanded to know what his problem was with gay men, me in particular - that when he was eighteen, he had been raped at knifepoint. He's the straightest guy I know. I know it sounds cruel, but if you're a woman and you're raped, you're seen as being brave and noble by coming forward and saying "I was raped". But the response by our society - and our media - is that if you're a man and you're raped, then you're somehow less of a man, and that comments can and will be made about your sexuality and just-what-were-you-doing-in-that-car-park-on-Friday-night and just-why-were-you-walking-through-the-park-alone. It's a poisonous mindset and one that is continued by the Daily Mail and it's "readers".

One thing that I will say though is that I do agree, wholeheartedly, is that we need to stop treating sexual abuse and domestic abuse as "his and hers" cases. A man can be beaten up by his female partner just as viciously as a man can beat up a woman. If you want equality in western society, then you don't get to pick and choose which crimes apply to which gender and why. Rape can be committed by a man against both genders. It's harder to say that rape can be committed against a man by a woman, but then again: you can certainly sexually assault a man with a household object. Say, a can of deodorant? Put it really bluntly for the chattering masses, but you don't need to penetrate someone to be in control, and it is argued that any penetrative sexual act can be classed as rape, especially if the recipient did not give consent. Even more so if there's the threat of physical harm - as was in the case of my co-worker, who had a Swiss Army knife pressed up against his throat during the entire event. Rape is already a disgusting act of cruelty and violence without that disgust being extended further by telling, say, a teenage boy, that what he experienced isn't really rape. Tell that to one of my former classmates who tried to kill himself after our PE teacher raped him after our sixth year dance.

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You couldn't make it up...that's what Littledick's for!

The post of the year so far. Bravo, sir.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Unfortunately, with a lot of rape cases being one persons word against another, the police are often relient on other victims coming forward.

I have a friend who was violently sexually assaulted. He's gay but is sure his attackers weren't. It shouldn't need saying that rape is about power and not sex, but I wonder if there's any point in telling the tools in the comments that anyway.

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

Is anyone arguing the opposite? The law makes no distinction. Some men's rights' activists claim there aren't enough refuges and support services for men, but this is a) contested by organisations like Survivors and b) because in 80-85% of reported cases, women are the victims. The biggest obstacle to 'equality' is probably that men are reluctant to seek help when they've been abused (or don't know where to look), often for the reason outlined by bluebellnutter. It's not a stretch to suggest that this attitude — that rape and abuse don't really exist; that victims should pull themselves together and get on with it — extends to all incidences of abuse: men who think the idea of male victims is ridiculous are just as likely to believe female victims 'had it coming'. The problem is not, as Andy UK insinuates, that support groups are biased against men; it's the culture of (to brave a radfem term) toxic masculinity which prevents men from seeking help, as you say, through machismo or embarrassment. In other words, being attacked makes you a bit gay, so it must be repressed at all costs.


The objections to this are outlined here. To change the law, you must make the case that a rape charge is more damaging to a defendant than one for murder, paedophilia, stalking, or any other violent crime or sex crime. You also have to reject evidence that the special treatment of rapists and the (further) silencing of rape as a crime would discourage victims from reporting it.


The second half of that sentence doesn't follow from the first. Retracted allegations of rape are no more frequent than they are of other crimes — but nobody suggests that phoney accusations make it harder for victims of theft or hate speech crimes to get justice. What's more, there's a double standard:

The way to prevent false accusations is to put an end to rape culture. As the comments in the Mail demonstrate, we have far to go: plenty of people still don't recognise rape as a serious crime; many more accept it as an essential, if regrettable, offshoot of 'real' masculinity.

This issue was covered yesterday on the Whine show. As Jeremy cued up the topic, part of me dreaded the (I assumed) gitfest of comments from the listeners.

Surprisingly (or perhaps they were heavily moderated) the comments were very understanding and supportive. The point was made - repeatedly - that rape is not a matter of sexuality, but of a) power and dominance, b) opportunism, or c) both.

That said, the 'treat it all as a joke' culture is still out there, as the Unilad business showed (where an article suggested that with only a 15% conviction rate in M on F rape cases, that indicated 'pretty good odds') - OK< Unilad recognsed what they said was beyond the pale but the attitude is still out there. I know plenty of people who trot out the "It's not rape if you shout 'surprise!' first" lines, or joke that if a man is sexually assaulted by a woman he should just lie back and enjoy it while it lasts, or chuck about the term 'Frape' freely. If I distance myself from such things, I am accused of having no sense of humour; I need to lighten up; it's all a bit of fun; what, did you get bummed a bit too hard last night? and so on.

There is a double standard in popular culture here. Check the following link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... maleOnMale
for plenty of examples.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Well you claimed that the person who said this:



Was a member of a

Which was what irked me a bit.



I'd say that an accusation of rape is no more damaging than an accusation of paedophillia (another where anonymity of the defendant could be looked at. Another accusation that can be unfounded and wrecks lives regardless of guilt) etc, but there is a difference.

Of the others, the actual act itself is illegal. Assault, murder, sex with minors etc are all illegal and if you are found to have done any of them, you have broken the law. With rape, when you boil it down to the basics, you have one person who has had sex with another one. The legality comes from consent.

Two adults having consentual sex is legal. Only the two people involved can ever know. Because it is down to one word against another.

I don't mean the violent, stalking someone down a dark alley and attacking them incidents here. There will be lots of other evidence etc for that and the suspect will usually be unknown to the victim. The main reason people get away with these is because no one knows who the assailant was.

But the horribly named 'date rape' is where the issue lies. These are the crimes that go unpunished because it is so incredibly difficult to prove - either way.



People don't avoid reporting theft because they think 'no one will believe them'. If no one made these things up, no one would accuse people of making them up.



People who think false accusation of rape is as bad as rape are arseholes. But saying 'people who use false allegations cause problems, but false allegations don't' is an argument on a par with 'guns don't kill people.. people kill people'

If there were no false allegations, no one would disbelieve the genuine victims.



Collateral damage is all well and good, unless you're the guy who can't show his face in his home town anymore after being splashed over the front page of the paper for something he didn't do. Hey. There's no smoke without fire. He must have done something - or it wouldn't have been in the paper. Look, there he is. Let's beat the shit out of him.



We're back to arseholes again. There's a long way to go with some people. But not the vast majority. But 'ending rape culture' (what exactly is 'rape culture' by the way?) won't do anything to stop a woman thinking 'I with I hadn't shagged that guy, he was a dick and buggered off first thing in the morning.. I'll claim he raped me, that'll teach the bastard' - which is exactly what happened to my mate at University.

There's no doubt whatsoever that the conviction rate for rape is horrifically low and there ha to be something that can be done to improve things (if the conviction rate was significantly higher, opportunists might be made to think twice) but allowing every and any accusation to become public immediately has it's own problems.

I've changed my mind. That was the post of the year. Hard to find anything in there I don't 100% agree with.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

But if there were no rape, there'd be no victims to disbelieve. Alas, neither is going to happen. Protecting the identity of accused rapists would increase the comfort zone of genuine rapists who gamble on being able to get away with rape, both by granting them anonymity and by making their victims less likely to report rape.

The problem is that the system for investigating and trying rape accusations has been (and still is) heavily weighted against the accuser. The burden of proof rests with the prosecution. The 'presumption of innocence' in a situation where, as you say, it's one person's word against another gives the defendant an advantage. Investigators and lawyers are still allowed to probe the defendant's 'character' and sexual history for use as evidence: for women the prospect of being slut-shamed — and for men the question of having their sexuality questioned and aired — in public is a massive deterrent to pursuing the allegation. So is the very small probability of securing a conviction. So is the horrendous, triggering experience of reliving over and over again a traumatic incident that the victim instinctively wants to bury and forget. So, above all, is the fear that nobody will believe you — a fear that's exacerbated by the 'objectivity' of the legal system; by centuries-old cultural biases which depict women and gay men as hysterical, irrational, sexually 'dangerous' and prone to fantasising (and straight men as impenetrable); and by the various Mailite myths that seek to justify rape or play down its seriousness. One of the effects of this is that rape victims who report their allegations feel desperately alone and vulnerable. They're terrified of retribution. They start to doubt their own recollection of the rape. Many feel ashamed about the very fact of making an accusation, especially (as in a vast majority of cases) when victim and assailant have mutual friends.

Protecting the identity of a man who has been charged with rape (the accused in rape cases are not publicly identified prior to a charge being brought) reinforces the accuser's fear that his or her accusation is hopeless, unfair and extraordinary. It prevents victims from coming forward to report rapes.

Policy becomes a question of priorities: do we want to concentrate on increasing the proportion of rapes that are reported and investigated, or do we want to emphasise the rights of a small number of people who've been falsely accused?

I can't begin to imagine what your mate went through, but I hope it was of some consolation that he was cleared by the law. Most rape victims have no consolation at all — worse, many of them have to put up with seeing their attacker about on a regular basis.

Bollocks

Bollocks

Far closer to being the post of the year.

The question of false accusation of rape is brought into these arguments in order to derail them. It turns the onus back onto women to prove they are not one of the "bad" women who go around claiming things that are not true, rather than ,as in other crimes, assuming the victim is telling the truth. Perpetuating the myth that women are likely to cry wolf when it comes to rape is patronizing and feeds into rape culture.

The very fact this thread has turned into a debate about false accusations shows how far we still have to go. The main reason for women not reporting sexual assaults is the fact the don't think they will be believed.

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