I'm going to be brave and start a thread to discuss why we think that some false rape allegations are made

[ChickensHaveNoLips]

And has there been any research in to why? Because I don't buy that there are cackling women plotting and planning to ruin some man's life up and down the country for fun. I suspect that when it does happen, it says a hell of a lot about how disempowered women feel. I find it hard to articulate, but I think that if you are reduced to a sexual commodity, and you are constantly told that your attractiveness to men is your only value, then it might seem that you have very few weapons to strike back with. I'd wonder in what circumstances those claims are made, and what leads up to them.

I really hope that no one reads this and thinks for ONE SECOND that I am dismissing the fact that far more women are raped than make false accusations, and that far more rapists walk free than men are falsely accused. But the 'women lie about rape' gets thrown up a lot, and it causes doubt in general. Maybe if we could work out the how's and why's of false allegations, it would hold less power in a jurors mind.

has anybody seen the graphic oversharing over in AIBU, btw ? (the thread about BJ's)

I think that is a prime example of what we are talkign about here

Wouldn't dream of clicking on it AF. I don't want to know!

I haven't looked at it AF

I saw the title and thought I'd stay out of it. No one should feel like they owe a sex act!

This 50 Shades thingie - it's like the latest Pet Rock or something (okay, most of you are probably too young to remember those :)) I think women are reading it because everyone else is and they don't want to feel left out. That in itself is sad. If they absorb the message in it uncritically, that's worrying.

But, if anyone knows, is it true that it really contains the following line?

?His pointer finger circled my puckered love cave. ?Are you ready for this?? he mewled, smirking at me like a mother hamster about to eat her three-legged young.?

I've heart more plausible piss takes than that!

it starts off ok, lots of "you don't have to do what you don't want to do"

so far, so good

then a load of graphic oversharers swarm in

don't read it for my sake though, it's pretty uncomfortable reading

Nothing better then been looked at like a cannibal hamster!

A few friends are reading it but I'm not interested at all. I don't see why people want to read about a woman who is abused.

the thread, that is, not the book

although that is pretty uncomfortable reading too

Smirking like a mother hamster! I will be using that in RL

AF thought you were on about the book! Sorry my misunderstanding.

I posted about this on another thread or two: the 50 Shades phenomenon stems from the myth that women don't like sex, don't seek it out and if they do they are bad sluts therefore some women fantasize about 'rape' NOT TO THE POINT OF MAKING FALSE ACCUSATIONS but like the idea of a wonderful handsome man blah blah etc doing enjoyable stuff to them that they have no moral responsibility for - because to have said Yes to all this exciting stuff would have made them a Bad Slut, but if they said No and he did it anyway then it's guilt-free.

I am not saying the above as a way of 'explaining' false rape accusations, but as an explanation of the media phenomenon around 50 Shades - the emphasis on women liking a story about an abusive man who is also rich and good looking, and a heroine who is a vacuous passive hole is being used as a way to say Look! This is what women really like! rather than acknowledging that women who actively pursue the sort of sex that they want are stigmatized.

This is kind of why I am so supportive of the Yes Means Yes movement: the bare minimum we should teach our sons to ensure when they want or have sex is enthusiastic participation from their partners. Enthusastic participation means active response, touching, caressing, verbally encouraging etc. Not just lying there and Not Saying No.

What gets me about 50 Shades is, if anyone dares point out the bloke in it is abusive/manipulative, loads of women pile in to say how he isn't, and how the book is romantic. Even when confronted with facts/quotes from the book they still refuse to see him as a bad character. No wonder so many rapists get defended :(

cross wires !

I was talking about the oversharing thread in AIBU

Never mind, shouldn't do talking about other threads, actually

bad form

I just thought that particular one this evening was a perfect example of what PARDY was talking about upthread

"I'm mad,me" being replaced by the "I'm cool, uninhibited and empowered by men jizzing on my face" schtick

Great post, SGB. Female sexuality is such a taboo.

sgb I've never heard of the "yes means yes" and I think it sounds like a much more positive and empowering movement. Sexuality should be positive, empowering and enjoyable for both parties, whether it's vanilla or bdsm, swinging from chandeliers, being swept of your feet by a handsome hero, or even having jizz on your face.

CailinDana,
My ex was thinking the same. No means nothing to them. Surely he still thinks he did no wrong, in his mind I told the police a bunch of lies because he never acknowledged himself he had raped and abused someone. That shows a dangerous attitude, which is also quite common unfortunately.

Worldgonecrazy, I don't totally agree with what you said because that's putting the blame on women. I know it seems the only way to prevent rape, if it's possible to have prevention against it, but it's not.
You've to change the ordinary people attitude, men and women. You can't tell your daughter that if her husband, one day, wakes up in the wrong mood and rape her on the spot, then she has to be careful. Then your daughter would grow up being terrified of any relationship. If something can be done to improve rape awareness between women, well... sending them to a course to build up self-confidence skills wouldn't be so bad. Through my experience I think that my worst problem was lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, which worsened things because I deemed acceptable to be abused (and then raped) in a relationship. I also regret I was so ashamed of what had happened to me that I waited 6 months before speaking to someone. If I had stood up for my rights immediately after the rape, uncaring of what could happen to my "lovely" ex, maybe my ex boyfriend was in jail instead of being free to abuse and rape someone else.

I'm probably way off the discussion point here but going back to the original post, I do know someone who falsely cried rape. Or rather, I know her friend who was raped and beaten up - they had both been out at a club, met up with some blokes, gone back with them to their van where the "friend" had consensual sex and left the girl I knew to be raped by his friends. She didn't want to and was punched into submission. Anyway - the false cry of rape was because the original girl didn't want her father finding out that she'd had sex willingly - so she created the rape story about herself and her friend. It all fell apart in court - there was little doubt that the girl I worked with had been beaten up (her face told the story!) but because the other girl had lied, it threw doubt on everything else.

Iirc, she was charged with wasting police time but I don't know what the outcome was.

Well Thumbwitch, I hope she got prosecuted too and she spent at least a long time in jail to understand what she had done.
I'm really in favour to jail a woman who uses rape as an excuse for something (whether she doesn't want to let her parents know about her whereabouts or she's accusing her ex out of revenge). Unfortunately, in rape cases the percentage of silly people using rape as a mean to hurt someone else damages the huge percentage of real victims. This is something rape survivors like me fight against.

Would that girl have used murder as an excuse to get away with her consensual sex? No, maybe she understands murder is a serious crime. It should be time to educate people that RAPE IS A SERIOUS CRIME too.

What that girl did was totally wrong and irresponsible thumbwitch, but isn't it quite telling that rather than just say "I had sex" she thought it would be easier to claim to be raped? She was so afraid of her father finding out she had sex that she was willing to jeopardise her friend's case and put herself through hours of questioning to avoid telling him. What a fucked up society we live in that a girl would rather claim to be a victim of something so awful than just admit to something perfectly normal like sex.

Just out of interest how do you know it was actually consensual? It could be the case that they didn't need to punch her, she "gave in" just from mere threats or pressure, but when she saw what happened to her friend she realised what was going on in her case and saw that it was in fact rape, even if she did say "yes" out of fear. Plus, even if she had said her sex was consensual it's a pretty safe bet that that would have ruined the case anyway - of course the defence would argue that if the men could have consensual sex with one woman why would they rape another?

The fact is, society would see the two girls going back to the van with the men as proof of the fact that they were "up for it." One girl actually consenting to sex would then reinforce that idea, putting doubt on the claim of the girl who said she was raped, despite the fact that she had clearly been beaten up.

Yes the girl should never have claimed to be raped. But if we lived in a society that didn't view women's sexuality with such disgust and didn't see women who consort with men freely as "sluts" then there would have been no need for her to claim that.

great post, CailinDana!!

Why thank you Merlin .

I also agree with what you said about people not considering rape a serious crime - chances are that girl made the claim thinking nothing would come of it. Like you say, she wouldn't have claimed murder in the same circumstance because that's something that actually gets thoroughly investigated and of course a victim of murder is very obvious, being dead and all. A girl beaten black and blue is still doubted as a rape victim though.

I completely agree CD. But why is still dubious?
More or less we always get back to same concept... People and also the police always try to dismiss rape as a serious crime or they even try to prove something else happened... if you get beaten up, your clothes are shredded, people will try to say you had a strange encounter with a grizzly bear instead of getting to the obvious and say you were raped... why is that? Do you know that my injuries weren't admitted as evidence for prosecuting my ex? Ok.. how many people do you know that injured their neck bones and intimate parts at the same time falling from the stairs? (that's the excuse used by police officers telling me I couldn't use that as evidence for rape)
I had a chat with various counselling services in the last months, some of the volunteers admitted that even cases where the victim had been beaten up didn't lead to anything later on.

To be honest, I've read countless statements online encouraging victims to report but... is that something advisable with our laws?

1. young girls think that reporting rape is like a joke 2) police takes their cases as serious but fails to take seriously the ones that concern real rape victims 3) if you don't want to be a victim of the justice system, you need to "scream" and make your voice heard and that blows your anonymity up 4) people think raped women are liars. If they reckon that's not the case, they isolate the victim like she had the plague

Mmm... could go on and on.... Sorry to the OP if I went off topic

To get back on topic, I really think that in many cases, like the girl mentioned by Thumbwitch, it's appalling that there's so much ignorance about rape and subsequently what you have to get through if you make false allegations.

Well, people DO think rape is a serious crime, but only if it fits the classic 'stranger in the alley' or 'evil burglar attacks sleeping homeowner' paradigm. Anything else is too confusing, apparently.

If we got statistics on rape convictions broken down by context, I bet you'd find 'date rape' (hate the term, but you know what I mean by it) convictions were abhorrently poor, rape by husband/boyfriend not much better, estranged partner rape slightly less bad, stranger rape convictions not actually that awful (assuming there was an investigation in the first place-Warboys etc).

False accusations reflect that reality, don't they? If you read the reports on it when it happens, you find the details made up are about being dragged into bushes, women faking injuries etc. Women know what 'counts' as rape and what doesn't, so some may feel if the attack doesn't fit the accepted version, they can lie to make it fit.

Mmm.. I agree with what you said Eldritch but even if you're attacked by a stranger... is it so "automatic" to be taken seriously? Police will ask you if you were drunk, if you were scantily dressed... I'm not joking because you'd be surprised I was asked the same although it seems quite weird when that happened in a relationship...

As concerning people's attitude, I agree, anything out of the 'stranger in the alley' classic myth is too much of a grey area to be even discussed.
Statistic... in England it's going slightly better, in Scotland it seems you've to be a serial rapist to be convicted in a serious way... it was all over the papers that a rapist on bail assaulted and raped an old woman in her house... do they think these people are going to change?

Yeah, I also agree about what you said about false accusations but... if you knew what counts or not, would you lie to the justice system knowing you'll go to jail for years? Mmm.. for me these women think they're too smart to be caught lying or they're ill-informed.

Cailin - just to answer the question you asked - the girl who had consensual sex went into the van first; the other girl, the one I knew, had to be forced in. So no, she didn't see her friend being punched first - that happened after she had started her own sexual act. The liar girl was the one who set up the situation that left her friend, the one I knew, in a more vulnerable position. Which makes what she did even worse, IMO.

HOWEVER - I do need to point out at this stage that I only have information from the girl I knew (and some of it from the local paper) - so there is no guarantee that she was telling the absolute truth either - but I had no reason to doubt her.