Was Bristol Palin raped?

That's the thing isn't it. It's not even an uncommon scenario. I've heard lots of women talk about how they lost their virginity to a man who "took advantage of them" when they were drunk.

Nobody is saying that women never lie. Just that the chances of a woman telling the truth about an incident like this are 90-95%. Normally, when the chances of something happening are so high, in general terms, people tend to talk about it as a given.

But when we're talking about teenage girls and rape (in the interests of fairness of course), people keep focusing on the less than 1 in 10 chance that it didn't happen. You have to ask why, if it's not misogyny.

I'm not saying women lie.

I'm saying people lie.

Bristol Palin is a person, who has every reason to lie.

You are the one applying a strange sexist view by saying that women do not lie.

But surely up until this memoir, everyone thought Bristol Palin had freely had sex? So she had actually nothing to lose or anything to be damaged by everyone continuing to think that.

Both women and men are equally capable of lying and both women and men are more likely to lie in situations where it would be more damaging for them to tell the truth.

For that reason alone, I don't see how anyone can say that a woman who says she can't remember having sex when it would be more damaging to her to admit that she had consensual sex (Reality and HRH's examples) would never lie.

In the case of Bristol Pailin, I agree with pretty much everything that SGM has written, in that it would be far more damaging for her to admit that she freely had sex than it was to say she was drunk.

I am not disagreeing at all that if someone has sex with you without your consent, or when you are too drunk to consent, that it is rape. However I cannot agree that women never lie when it may be more damaging to them if they tell the truth.

If Bristol had said that she had been raped I would have been much more inclined to believe her, because falsely accusing someone of rape is very serious.

Saying that you were drunk and don't really remember what happened (when actually you wanted to drink the alcohol and wanted to have sex) doesn't seem like a big deal, so it is more likely that it is a lie.

I'm not even saying that she did lie, just that it is possible, and there are good reasons why she might have.

Not sure if you've notced, but an allegation of rape has not been made.

Trillian,

People are talking about instances of women lying to counter the strange arguments that seem to be being put forward saying that we must always believe what women say, and if a man and a woman say two different things it is always the man who is lying.

HRH, I don't know, or much care, whether you are telling the truth. But I do find it comical that you dislike the fact that people are questioning your story when the whole point of it is to point out that teenage girls cannot be trusted and often lie.

People are talking about instances of women lying to counter the strange arguments that seem to be being put forward saying that we must always believe what women say, and if a man and a woman say two different things it is always the man who is lying.

No they are not. Why would they want to discredit other women? Are you sure you mean that? They are simply saying that in the case under discussion, one must be careful as one wasn't there, and that to assert, as some posters have done, that women never lie, is as dangerous and misguided as its opposite.

I think you are misunderstanding on purpose and it's really a shame.

People are talking about instances of women lying in order to discredit other women and paint a picture that women cannot be believed. Bristol doesn't have a history of lying, but we can discredit her by talking about other women who might have lied.

Levi, on the other hand, presumably lied a lot when he was cheating on Bristol but we can safely ignore that as we must always given men the benefit of the doubt, mustn't we?