"but men get falsley accused of assault"

[loopysnooker]

Hello, I'm a regular poster on different topics but this is my first time on this board. I meant to post under just feminism rather than sex and gender so hopefully I'm not in the wrong bit.

Recently I've had a couple of men argue with me about feminism by saying, essentially "men get falsely accused of assault".

This really gets to me because it's such an obtuse thing to say, like implying because that happens we should just forget #metoo because it harms men or something?

The other reason it gets to me is that it seems like such an incel type of thing to say, erasing a problem that affects women by railroading it with a problem that affects men.

Obviously if someone is falsely accused then that's awful and it also harms every person (male or female) who gets assaulted.

What's a good thing to say back to this kind of statement?

I think they might also be as likely to be falsely accused by a man as by a woman too. (but for some reason men like your friend don't want to talk about those cases

Innocent until proven guilty is an important concept. But most miscarriages of justice have occurred because of mistaken identity than because of women making false accusations (and in high profile cases police incompetence plays a massive part).
All crimes carry a risk of miscarriages of justice. But as others have pointed out it's only rape that people use the existence of miscarriage of justice to argue against rape being taken seriously. Or to throw it I. The faces of women talking g about it. And it's not because "being accused of rape ruins mens lives" because it really fucking doesn't.

Compare and contrast the scale of reporting and the tone
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68828038
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-64950862

And bothare bad. But both are rare. Only one was used as an excuse not to take victims crimes seriously. Besides, if men were as scared of false accusations as women were of rape there would be men worrying about crazy women identifying as male to enter male changing rooms/toilets where they might be alone with men and then accusing those men of rape. Strangely this isn't a fear I heard vocalised by the "women make false accusations" crowd.

The data is available for anyone willing to do a little stats work. Let’s have a look shall we?

From April 2019 to March 2020, 8,377 men and 10,067 women reported sexual assault (of various sorts).

On reports of sexual assault, Home Office research suggests that 4% of those are found to be or suspected to be false (percentages throughout the EU countries vary between 2%-6% so this is about average regionally). Applying that to the 2019-2020 number would leave us with 403 of those 10,067 reports. (If, of course, all those reports suspected of being false were made by women rather than by a mixture of women and men. As it is, the statistics allow me to be “generous” to men here and still more than amply make my point).

Now on to the men. 98% of those arrested for violent sexual crimes are men, so for fairness’ sake let’s take 2% off the male victim number, leaving us with 8209. That’s 0.028% of the male population of England and Wales.

If 2% of violent sexual assaults are committed by women, we’ll adjust that for the number of assaulted women too when we turn this into population statistics, leaving us with 9866. Let’s be generous again and assume that of the false reports, they all occurred in reports about men, leaving us with 395 falsely accused men. That’s 0.00135% of the male population of England and Wales.

So in terms of ratios (when simplified and rounded down [though rounding to the nearest whole number would actually mean rounding up]): during the time period we’ve taken the stats from for every 1 man falsely accused of sexual assault, 20 men were sexually assaulted.

Rhetorical fluff? I don’t think so.

Stats on sexual violence in England and Wales:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/sexualoffencesprevalenceandvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales]]
Research into false accusations of sexual assault:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238713283_Home_Office_Research_Study_293_A_gap_or_a_chasm_Attrition_in_reported_rape_cases]]
Population data:
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/male-and-female-populations/latest/#:~:text=The%20data%20shows%20that%3A,up%2029.2%20million%20(49.0%25

From the US, 2-3% of rape cases involve a false accusation, which is the same proportion of false accusations in standard assault cases (i.e. someone gets beaten up). However, the discourse tends to overly focus on the false accusation of rape cases.

Frankly, if someone is overly focused on false accusations, they probably have bad ethics and are trying to cover up their own bad behavior. I would ask them why they have such a difficult time supporting and having empathy towards victims of sexual assault. It would be more functional of these men to turn their attention to other men who are behaving badly and call them out on it. Essentially act like an ally. Even if the sexist behavior is an inappropriate comment, it all contributes to rape culture. If sexist men see that other men will not tolerate their bad behavior, the amount of sexism will decrease and we will have a healthier culture. Sometimes peer pressure can be a good thing. Essentially tell these men they need to act like better allies towards women.

2-3% of rape cases, or 2-3% of rape cases that make it to court?

Exactly - data is all over the place. There is no reliable data - for any type of assault. Most go under the radar.

Thank you. So powerful xx

Hit them with stats.

{Link edited out. Somebody else provided it.}

Then ask them if they are equally concerned about false robbery accusations, false fraud accusations and false simple assault accusations, since the rate of false SA accusations is not higher than other crimes.

I was once falsely accused (by a vengeful psychopath) of physical assault myself, to the point of being thrown in a horrendously primitive jail for 18 hours and then spending over a year and a lot of money clearing my name. Since I know doesn't happen that often and that not everything is about me, I don't make a thing of it if people are discussing violence.
Imagine if every time an assault was being discussed I felt the need to remind people that some assault accusations are false. I'd not be well liked to say the least.

Methinks these men are hypersensitive and self-absorbed. Everything is about their poor little feelings. They have basically admitted that their hurt feelings are, to them, more of a concern than SA is. Gross.

{Edited to apologize for mistakely including the OP's quote. I know that annoys people.}

Love that one!