@ballsballsballs
Recently a poster turned up in FWR saying that he'd been falsely accused of rape. The scenario he described was remarkably similar to one that had been in the press that week. He seemed to think feminists would understand why his accuser was lying.
Despite reports it stood all night and apparently got really nasty.
My question: if someone turns up claiming to have been falsely accused of rape again, can MNHQ please immediately delete the thread?
Hey ballsballsballs - thanks for the question: we were aware of the thread you’re referring to, and came on to link to We Believe You early on. There was, though, nothing to suggest from what we could see at our end that the OP was a troll, and as he wasn’t specifically breaking our Talk Guidelines, we didn’t delete straight away. Plus, it seemed to us that many of the posters on the thread were explaining the aims of WBY extremely cogently/helpfully, and busting various myths around the question of the prevalence of false accusations of rape/flagging the fact that rape and sexual assault are the only crimes that appear to invite doubt when they’re reported (as Can’tBeBotheredThinking put it on the thread, "We believe you isn't about the accused, it is about the victim: it simply acknowledges that a crime took place, the same as would happen to someone who was a victim of mugging, or a burglary, assault."). By the following morning, though, it was clear that Talk Guidelines were being broken all over the shop, and the whole thing had descended to such a point that we figured everyone would be better off and happier if we got rid of it.
Hope this explains what happened in this particular case. On the question of whether we’d auto-delete any thread in which someone comes on to claim that they’ve been falsely accused of rape, though - we wouldn’t. While we can’t pronounce on the veracity of any single poster’s story, and therefore don’t feel in a position to auto-delete unless and until further evidence comes to light, what we CAN do (and what We Believe You does) is say that our position across the board is one of unquestioning support for victims of sexual violence - which, for the most part, was the position that came through strongly in that particular conversation. Obviously, if there’s a thread around the subject of rape and false accusations, we’ll take a very careful look as soon as it’s reported and it’ll stay high up on our radar, but we still feel that, with the exception of threads that specifically break our guidelines, we ought to take each one on a case-by-case basis. Hope this makes sense?