"Most prolific" rapist reporting - male vs female victims

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i've just done it.

Listening to it again, you can actually hear Murray's inject some incredulity into her voice as she reads it. She knows what we know. So why read it out?

Maybe she is given what to read out by the producers and she didn't know what it said until she was already reading it? I hope that's it.

It's extremely frustrating for listeners. I think it must be extremely frustrating JM & JG (and other feminist women at the BBC) to work there too.

Because the BBC has a lot of anti-women activists in positions of power and influence. They will let us have our "Women's Hour" programme, as long as it follows and promotes the 12 Rules Of Misogyny.

Did anyone hear the Woman's Hour feature on this yesterday?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d1tz

I tried not to shout 'But what about the women?' at the radio. At the end of the programme they read out emails that had come in on various subjects and Jenni Murray read one out (at 38.40 on) from someone who said he had been raped by a woman 20 years ago. Murray read out his words: 'the police need to be more alert to the fact that women are just as capable of being predatory and a rapist.'

Apart from the fact that rape legally requires the insertion of a penis, so a woman can't technically rape (this is what I've always understood, anyway) why did Woman's Hour broadcast such a misleading statement – because all the statistics and evidence show that women are far, far less predatory and inclined to commit sexual assault than men. Women still, despite this recent case, remain by far the majority of victims and rape is a crime that largely goes unpunished.

Why does Woman's Hour, ffs, feel the need to be constantly doing a 'but what about the men?' number and why did someone in the editorial team choose that email to broadcast? This isn't balance, it was a highly questionable statement and what it asserted should have been examined, not let go as fact. Listening to it again, you can actually hear Murray's inject some incredulity into her voice as she reads it. She knows what we know. So why read it out?

I actually don't see what is particularly unusual about this case.

There are loads of men who go out every weekend to nightclubs to prey on very drunk women, get them on their own, possibly then spiking their drinks, then raping them. It is also not unusual for men to video themselves assaulting these women, share the footage with their friends, or upload it to the internet onto porn sites.

What is unusual in this case is that the victims were men, and he got caught and found guilty. But let's not kid ourselves that this exact thing isn't happening to women.

My hope is that from now reporting on rape will focus more on the damage to the victim rather than how they got to be in that position, what they were wearing, if they were drunk, their sexual history etc (regardless of what happens in the courtroom)

My second hope is that the police, in future, will start to be much more open to believing victims of crime rather than dismissing it as "rough sex gone wrong" etc etc (for everyone)

Finally, i hope that rape victims - ALL of them - see how this has been handled and will come forward. People are almost universally shocked that this has happened and almost universally appreciative of the lengths the police/CPS have gone to to identify victims and persuade them to take action. The bravery of the victims can't be underestimated.

You keep insisting this thread must only be about discussing "this specific case". The OP started this thread to discuss the differences in the way this specific case is being reported in comparison to cases where the victims are women. That is: the lack of victim-blaming, despite these men doing the same thing on a night out which causes the media, society, the justice system, etc to suggest that women were either at fault, or consenting, when the same thing happens to them.

But this case is so unusual. I think many of the victims have still to be identified, many of them are probably only just realising what happened to them. It is a situation where the police are seeking out the victims rather than victims going to the police.
If you are going to compare examples from the past, perhaps you need to compare with cases such as those carried out by Stephen Port. ( I have given a link in a previous post). The police mismanagement of the rapes and murders of his victims can not in any circumstances be described as favourable.
The fact that an estimated 90% of make rapes go unreported shows that most men see little point in going to the police.
Hopefully the publicity given to this case will encourage both men and women to come forward and report rape

I think some of the media interest is because it's an abnormal story - man raping heterosexual men (and the numbers of course) in the same way that Joanne Dennehy was sensationalised because it's so different and unusual to the normal situation.

I still don't understand what Sonic means by showing my 'hand'? Are you implying I am male or are you implying I should not be making my points about this specific case for some reason?

I just looked up the case of Stephen Port because I saw a documentary some years back on these rapes and murders. I remember the families of the victims claiming that the police failed to take these cases seriously and missed so many opportunities to catch the perpetrator
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/23/stephen-port-convicted-of-of-four-men
Surely the right approach is to push for better policing with regards to all sexual assault.

BBC article on the fathers comments also contains two separate links

One if you’re directly affected

One if you’re affected by the issues. That page goes through to a range of helplines.

I hope this becomes standard when the BBC publish any articles about a woman being raped.

The reason the police took these 159 rapes seriously was because they had hard evidence in the form of the videos. If the videos of the rapes had not been found would any of these cases reached the courts?

I don't know what you mean by showing my hand, Sonic? I just find many of the claims on this thread unsubstantiated. I found it distasteful that one of the first posters on here claimed that the men in this case were believed. That was not true. I am being specific to this case because that is the focus of this thread. It is an horrific case and I am sure that if the these rapes had been carried out against women, the outcry would also be huge.
Do remember that the focus of this thread is this specific news story. It feels that some posters are trying to diminish this case by saying worse things happen to women. I am sure there are many terrible cases of female rape but the focus is on this particular news story. It is not a competition.

And where has anyone "minimised the crime"? What we've all said from the beginning is that this extremely serious crime appears to have been taken very seriously (by the police, CPS, media, society), which it should be, and it should be taken just as seriously when it happens to women.

I think you're showing your hand rather too much here, muddles.

There are not specific articles which state "rape is worse when it happens to men".

There is, however, a marked difference in the way this specific case has been reported and the way it discusses the events without any suggestion of blame towards the men (which is correct), in contrast to the way rape cases are reported when the same series of events (meeting outside a club, too drunk, lost friends, decide go back to a strange man's home) happens to women.

But this thread is about a specific case. In fact there were at least two threads that were conflated to discuss this specific case. Male versus female reporting
@SonicVersusGynaephobia says the perception seems to be that it is worse because they are men.
I have asked for specific links to articles that claim that these rapes are worse because because the victims are men. Rape is a terrible crime and there does seem to be an attempt by some posters to claim that these victims have somehow been treated more favourably because the victims are male.
Where is the evidence?

11th rule of misogyny: Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men.
The police and the courts demonstrate this on a regular basis.

Where does it say that these multiple cases of rapes are worse because it is men? Please give the actual links otherwise it sounds like the poster who claimed that these men were believed and women are not believed. It sounds as if you are trying to claim something without evidence and it is therefore supposition.

SonicVersusGynaephobia, your comment also sounded like victim blaming. This thread is focusing on this most prolific rape case and there seem to be a lot of posts minimising the crime because the victims were men.

Nobody is minimising it because the victims are men. We are saying it is NOT WORSE because the victims are men. Yet the perception seems to be that it is worse because they are men. And the reporting is markedly different, because they are men.

@SonicVersusGynaephobia, your comment also sounded like victim blaming. This thread is focusing on this most prolific rape case and there seem to be a lot of posts minimising the crime because the victims were men. I am sure that a woman in this situation might have been arrested as well but the point was that one of the opening posts suggested that the reasons the victims were believed was because they were men. In this case, that statement is not true.

I am still shocked that, one of the first posts on this thread, claimed that of course, the men were believed. In fact, the only victim to come forward was immediately arrested and not believed

To be fair, he was arrested because he phoned 999 and said he thought he'd just killed someone, and when the police and ambulance turned up the rapist was very seriously injured.

If a woman phoned the police and said "I have just been raped and I've stabbed him and I think he's dead", she'd likely be arrested too.

BUT statistics aren't really the point here. I mean if one man says to another man 'what are you looking at?' and the second replies 'you', and then the first man punches him, then the second man has defended his masculinity, rather than choose to de-escalate.

So it's the victim's fault, then. Thanks for clarifying.

FFS.