So in the wake of a massive public spotlight on rape, the priority apparently is to protect the reputations of the tiny % of men falsely accused of rape

No more than for any other crime joyfulpuddlejumper.

There will always be people who report crimes that don't exist, until we live in a perfect society. Just as there will always be people who fiddle their taxes, or the benefit system or whatever.

The question is how much of the public discussion should focus on that tiny percentage of dishonest people, versus the much bigger percentage of honest ones.

The other day there was a story in the news about a bunch of fraudsters who were responsible for a woman dying in a car-crash because they wanted to collect the car insurance that would be paid out by causing a road traffic collision.

Should we start treating every single motorist in a traffic collision, as if they are fraudsters who engineered the collision deliberately to collect on the insurance?

Would that be a reasonable, proportionate response to the undoubtedly serious problem of people who do this?

I don't think it would be. We all know it happens, we know it's a problem, but we also know that it is a tiny problem compared to the number of road traffic collisions that were genuinely unintentional. But why don't we just focus on it while ignoring the huge number of genuine traffic accidents? Because we're not mad for a start and because we don't think that motorists are a particularly dishonest and untrustworthy category of human beings. While women who say they have been raped, are.

False allegations don't cause anywhere near the amount of havoc real rapes cause SF.

25% of women are raped or sexually assaulted.

85-90% don't report.

Of all reported rapes, only between 2-6% are false allegations. Of that tiny number of false allegations, half of them are not "false" they are either cases of mistaken identity or women who say they have been raped but don't name an alleged rapist.

But you carry on thinking that it's a bigger issue than a quarter of all women being raped or sexually assaulted. Because of course it is, it affects men and their lives are so much more valuable than those of women, aren't they?

Thejoyfulpuddlejumper I don''t think that was a waste of a post. I think it's good to air your thoughts around it and throw things out there to get feedback.

No SF it isn't.

It's not difficult to grasp unless you're quite hard of thinking.

Feeling indignant and outraged by another man raping someone you care about, doesn't conflict with having a generally indifferent attitude to other women in the world being raped.

And again, what comes out in force is the horror that an innocent man might be falsely accused (he's more likely to be raped by another man) and no horror about the horrifically high level of sexual violence men inflict on women.

Priorities.

Masses of rape victims confirm that the reason they don't report is because they know they won't be believed.

That's not because a tiny percentage of women falsely allege rape. It's because of the disproportionate focus on that tiny percentage in all discourse about rape.

No-one's afraid to report their car being stolen or their house being burgled, because public discourse doesn't disproportionately focus on those arseholes who make false allegations about those crimes.

And yet they are just as likely to be lying, as the average rape victim.

"Every woman who falsely cries rape puts every other woman in danger. Because they are then at the risk of not being believed. The women who falsely cry rape set any femminist cause back a millionfold."

Bullshit. Another rape myth. Why aren't you saying that about men who lie about being burgled, or having their car stolen?

Those who are horrified about the man who was murdered are missing the point:

He was murdered because of male violence.

It wasn't women who murdered him - it was other men.

Start addressing the problem of male violence and you start addressing the problem of vigilantism.

For that matter, start giving women justice for rape and yobbos like this won't feel that the only way to get justice, is by going in for horrific violence in the first place.

"Why don't you, just for once, discuss the women who falsely report rape? Because if these individuals didn't falsely report, then it would'nt be an issue would it?"

Because it's not "just for once" is it?

It's all that's ever discussed around rape.

It absolutely dominates the public discourse on rape.

And yet it is an absolutely tiny problem in comparison to the very real problem of 25% of all women being subjected to sexual assaults.

And by saying that it is false allegations that are stopping women from reporting, you are repeating a rape myth, which is against Mumsnet rules.

It is not false allegations, it is the disproportionate attention paid to them in the public discourse around rape.

Women don't come forward because they know they won't be believed. Not because a tiny minority of people lie, but because the public discourse is determined to keep that tiny minority as a huge bogey man in the public consciousness.

A tiny minority of people lie about being burgled, being mugged, being the victims of all sorts of crime.

But the public discourse around those crimes, is not dominated by that tiny minority.

The reason rape is, is because of sheer misogyny - the idea that women are liars and men never lie about rape.

It is a rape myth and those of you coming on here to repeat it, are repeating rape myths.

You already have a 1 in 4 chance of being sexually assaulted up to and including rape, if you are a woman. Those of you who are men, the females in your life who you love, have that 1 in 4 chance. Every time you repeat a rape myth, you are contributing to the culture which makes it easy for men to rape women and so you make your female loved-one's life (or your own) that little bit less safe from sexual attack.

Well done you.