"I think both sides of the polemic have to begin to recognise that the absence of a conviction doesn't mean that the woman was automatically lying and thus falsely reporting, but also that just because a conviction has not been obtained and the woman was not making a false accusation that the man was guilty of rape."
That's incredibly patronsing MayorQ, everyone knows that some of the men who get off, will not have been guilty of rape. But you are wrong to pretend that if a man has not been convicted of rape, that means he is "not guilty" of it - if you commit rape, or murder, or incest, or burglary, or anything else, you are guilty of it, not legally but morally and it's wrong to pretend otherwise. Seeing as how only 3 or 4% of rape allegations are false, that means the overwhelming majority of rapists are guilty as sin, whether the law finds them so or not. Our legal system has been set up to allow rapists to walk free to rape other women and declare that they are not rapists at all, but I see no reason to agree with rapists on their own assessments of themselves. Most rapists do not even have their rape reported - no-one ever calls them to account for their vile actions. But they are still rapists, whether the society that protects them, calls them that or not.
And as for the nonsense that juries don't have enough evidence to convict beyond reasonable doubt - crap. They don't have enough evidence to convict beyond any doubt whatsoever. The bar is higher for guilt for rape, than for any other crime, including murder. And that is because deep down, most people really don't think a woman being raped is all that big a deal - that's what our hole is for. That's a vulgar and disgusting sentiment, but that really is how many people feel because we as a society are primed to identify and empathise with men and not women - do the Bechdel test every time you watch TV or go to the movies if you don't believe me - and juries find the real suffering of the rape victim, less moving and less horrifying, than the potential suffering of the rapist if he is sent to prison. And most of them subconsciously figure, you know what, rape's just a bit of sex gone too far, it's not pleasant, but it's not that big a deal, it's not worth ruining a (male) life for. Female lives just don't matter as much. And most juries are simply not aware of the damage rape can do, because the effects are so long term and nebulous. How many people know that rape victims are 3-4 times more likely to suffer depression than non-rape victims? And yet, that depression may happen ten or twenty years later and so seem unconnected with the rape. The fact that the woman may have dysfunctional relationships, may develop alcohol problems, may screw up her career, may develop problems with her parenting or with her marriage, may have all sorts of bad effects that are due to the rape happening, get lost because most people are completely unaware of the lasting and long term effects of rape and don't consider women's pain to be quite as awful as that of men anyway. Perhaps if juries were educated to know these things, then reasonable doubt rather than any doubt whatsoever, would be enough for them to convict; but I doubt it, because until women are portrayed as equally human as men in our culture, women and men will simply not feel as much empathy for a woman, as they do for a man.