Random men speaking to you

[enimmead]

I'm sure men don't randomly speak to other men in the street. Strangers. So why the hell do they feel they have to speak to random women. I don't think it's got anything to do with chatting up.

Yesterday, I saw a 20 something bloke with his mates slip in front of me on the ice. As I got out, he said "Hi love, did you see that!!!" I'm could be his mum bit older than him. Why speak to me? I just smiled but I bet he wouldn't' have said anything if I'd been male.

Just walking down the street, other side of the road bloke smiles and says "Hi love". No idea who he was.

Do blokes do this to other random blokes?

" this is far cry from saying that most men leaving court are rapists. I'm sorry for being more balanced in my approach. "

You are not being more balanced in your approach. You are ignoring the maths.

We know from research, that only about 4% of rape allegations are false. That means 96% are true. That means that except for cases of mistaken identity, most men accused of rape, are in fact, rapists.

You can quibble with the figure - some put it as low as 2%, others as high as 8%, but basically it's about 4%. Half of those false allegations, do not name a perpetrator, so no man is affected those allegations.

In effect, we can reasonably say that 90%+ of men accused of rape, are guilty of it.

However, only 6% of rape allegations end up with a guilty conviction

That leaves 94% of men accused of rape, who go free.

Some of them will be the falsely accused and the wrongly identified. But most of them, will be rapists the jury was unwilling to convict.

That is not bias, that is simple maths.

Once a case gets to court, actually the chance of a conviction is higher than for most other crimes. That is because the cases which make it to court tend to be the ones with the stranger in the dark alley scenario - ie the ones everyone disapproves of, not the ones where women knew their attackers beforehand.

But most rape cases don't get to court. Because they are the ones where juries won't convict, because juries don't believe women or if they do, they think they deserve what happened to them and that a man's life does not deserve to be blighted by a spell in prison for a little bit of rape.

And in fact, most rapes are not even reported to the police (85-90%) because women don't behave the way victims are supposed to behave in that situation and they blame themselves and know they won't be believed. Many of them go into denial about having been raped in the first place and it might take them days, weeks, months or years to face up to it.

I just don't know why you keep on insisting that you don't know how many men accused of rape are guilty etc. - we do know. There has been loads of research on this and I keep quoting the figures. But still you don't know.

Sorry for getting back late in the discussion but most rape cases don't even get to court this can be due to a number of reasons. But of the cases that do go to court most end in a conviction so I wouldn't blame juries.

The cases which get to court are mostly the stereotype rape ones - the stranger in the dark alley.

They are not representative of most rapes, which don't get to court.

They are the "easy" ones - the ones the CPS is confident there's a good chance of conviction. They are the ones which happen in under 10% of rapes.

Most rapes have no chance of conviction.

Because juries won't convict rapists who know their victim and look respectable in a suit.

Juries are made up of the public.

It seems this has to keep being re-iterated.

Festivia I would consider myself a feminist and I'm trying to figure out why some of the things you say are irritating me so much. I think it's the many sweeping statements about how "most women" feel when you cannot possibly know this. I don't think, for example, that you can extrapolate from rape stats that most of us live in constant fear of violence from men.

I don't think most of live in constant fear of violence from men.

I think it's much more subtle and insidious than that.

I agree Festivia. If you'd asked me the question of whether men frightened me a couple of years ago I would have categorically said no. But having thought about it since then I do feel increased anxiety if a man approaches on a street when I am alone in comparison to a woman. I feel more intimidated walking into a room full of men than women. I would be far more likely to share a taxi with another (stranger) woman than a man I didn't know etc etc. It's all very low level and generally doesn't affect my life and the way I conduct myself. Except it does, doesn't it.

Abigail, I do understand why you feel that way, but what you are doing through this fear is believing that every single interaction with someone not of the same sex as you is a threat. That is what needs some deconstruction not that male violence is wrong.

It is unsustainable to say that ALL male's harm women. However what you and others are saying and feeling fear of is that all men are a threat. Thats a very broad brush given particular emphasis by the way that news outlets slant stories to focus on bad things happening in the world and very seldom on good things. This creates a sense of threat and fear which in my view has created division between young and old, male and female, straight and gay, disabled and able bodied.

Festiva

Because juries won't convict rapists who know their victim and look respectable in a suit.

Therein lies your problem. Your beliefs are so skewed, so warped that it isn't funny. That statement is as one sided as it gets and shows just how you posess the very things you dislike about the male species. You seem so coloured by your opinions that you see fit to make huge sweeping statements like this.

Do you want to know why I have no idea about the numbers of actual rape? It's because it goes like this:

A man and woman stand up in court. They both claim to have had intercourse but the woman says it was forced. The man says it was not. Both have statements that look equally believable. She screams 'yes'. He screams 'no'. They've been together for some time and have had consenting intercourse numerous times.

I guess I'll have to read up on that research because given the above scenario I can imagine it's hell on earth for any jury to swing either way. I think you do the public a huge disservice with your insulting manner, accusing them that they won't convict a rapist because he looks good in a suit.

For the last time, I don't like guilty men walking the streets either. Given I have a family of women it makes my blood run cold. However, you seem to be looking at it from an angle where your research indicates (NOT proves) that almost all men are guilty and therefore the jury should make more default convictions.

Fortunately the law doesn't work that way (whether we like it or not). See, you have to make a decision based on the merits of each witness statement. NOT on your coloured perception of ALL rape cases. I have no doubt the research could be used to help juries to look out for key elements in testimonies etc. but you simply cannot walk into court thinking that you're going to nail the bastard becasue you know that 90+% of men are guilty.

Look, we clearly have differing views on this so lets not keep going round the same old arguments over and over. It's as futile as the original post on this insane thread.

But sincerely, thanks for the discussion

I don't think anyone would ever say that ALL males harm women. However, it is undoubtable that some men will harm women. The trouble with being a woman, when we're out and about in our daily lives is that we don't know which ones. It would be handy if rapists went around wearing signs, but alas.

Schrodingers Rapist

FamilyGuy "I guess I'll have to read up on that research "

Please do.

There also seems a perception that if you consider the number of defendants who are acquitted with the fact that most rapes and sexual assaults are carried out by men, that adding these two things together gives you the answer that all men are potential rapists which is where I think some of the fear or anxiety that posters like abigail have spoken about.

In the same way runningforthebusinheels I am sure shop owners would love all those involved in shoplifting a crime with higher female to male participants, to be singled.

Leithlurker I think you're wrong to believe that some of us believe or behave as if "all men are a threat".

The point is, they're not - most men aren't a threat at all.

The problem is that we don't know which ones are and that the ones who are, are subtly and subconsciously and systemically supported by the rest of society. Society is on the side of the threateners, not the threatened. Our behaviour in the face of the threat is critiqued and analysed and pored over, while the behaviour of the threateners goes unremarked and uncritiqued. One of the valuable things we as feminists can do, is to try and tease out the subtleties and nuances of the threat and make it visible - so valuable, that as soon as we do, we are slapped down for doing it because people feel on a gut level, how threatening to the social order it is. If we all recognised what was happening every time there was a threat of male violence and every time a woman organised her life to minimise the threat of it, imagine how quickly our behaviour would change. Men would have to either give up holding that threat over us, or come right out with it in black and white and make it visible, tangible and undeniable (which is what they used to do before it became socially unacceptable to advocate violence as a means of controlling women).

FamilyGuy, my beliefs are based on evidence. 6% conviction rate, remember.

Your courtroom scenario is interesting but largely irrelevant -that sort of case very rarely makes it to court, because the CPS know they won't get a conviction. Also when it does get to court, it's not "hell on earth" for a jury to swing: they have no difficulty at all in swinging in favour of the man. The idea of him going to prison, is far more horrifying to them, than the idea of her not getting justice. The legal convention is for things to be beyond "reasonable" doubt, so it's reasonable to assume she's lying because women are weaker vessels and more likely to lie than men (according to misogynist convention). After all, she has a motive to lie about it, right? Why not make up a story about your husband or boyf whom presumably you esteem and respect (or have done) over the cornflakes, raping you. Women just do that sort of thing all the time - they're always making things up, what with their wombs and hormones making them liable to do that. Whereas men have no reason to lie about rape at all. Why on earth would he have penetrated her when she didn't want him to, I mean that never happens in any heteronormative relationship ever does it? And men are far more honest than women (because they're untroubled by hormones and icky women things like wombs which make them hysterical and prone to fits of untruthfulness) so if it ever did happen and she complained, of course he'd admit he'd done it. So you see, there's no hell on earth for any jury going on there.

Your indignation about the suit is misplaced - time after time it is shown that the way people dress in court makes a difference to the verdicts and the sentences they get (for all crimes, not just rape). In some cases, a suit is actually the wrong thing to wear, because it may prejudice a jury against you depending on the crime, but anyway that's another thread.

I don't know why you're telling me you can't walk into court thinking you're going to nail the bastard because I know that 90%+ men are guilty, I'm well aware of that. My point in banging on about the figures, is to refute your vague stuff about not knowing figures, he said she said, etc. I don't believe juries should come to default verdicts - I think that the public as a whole should be educated out of persistent rape myths (such as that women are always inventing tales of rape to make their lives more interesting) and should be educated to know that men don't have the right to penetrate women who don't want them to, even if they know them well and are in the regular habit of penetrating them consensually, so that the quality of juries is better and so that when it comes to reaching verdicts, they will not be influenced by the centuries-long weight of rape apologia that is the norm in our society.

Sure, Leith - if you happen to think that shoplifting is a crime comparable to sexual assault.

Or even if we happened to discussing shoplifting

I'm slightly confused about your maths there LL.

1 in 4 women are raped or sexually assaulted and we know that rapey men tend to be repeat offenders (average number of women assaulted between 14 and 20 based on last bit of reading I did.

So that doesn't mean that 25% of men will be sexually threatening. It will be fewer than that.

That means majority of men are not sexually threatening. They just benefit from and support, the ones who are.

Well, the thread did not start off as a discussion of sexual assault. It started as a moan by one OP about men talking to her in the street in a non-sexual way when she thought they wouldn't talk to other men in the same way.

Thank you for telling me how I should feel (and what you think I feel) Leithlurker. It's much appreciated.

There was a quote I saw on another thread. It seems to be appropriate here:

There are the occasions that men?intellectual men, clever men, engaged men?insist on playing devil's advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women's Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun?and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that's so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.

runningforthebusinheels

Although rather long at 150+ pages I did read a lot of the Stern review. Very interesting. I also found the following stats from her report.

Data from the work of the CPS in rape cases for the three years March 2006 to March 2009

Between March 2006 and March 2009 over 10,200 defendants were prosecuted for rape; 3,264 in 2006/07; 3,503 in 2007/08 and 3,495 in 2008/09.
Convictions rose from 55 per cent in 2006/07 to 58 per cent in 2007/08 and remained at the same level in 2008/09
99 per cent of defendants were men in 2006/07, 2007/08 and 2008/09.
88 per cent of victims were women in 2008/09, 1 per cent more than in 2007/08.
The proportion of rape cases in which the CPS took a decision to charge increased from 30 per cent in 2006/07 to 39 per cent in 2008/09.
Unsuccessful prosecutions remained unchanged at 42 per cent in 2007/08 and 2008/09.
Guilty pleas remained at 35 per cent in 2007/08 and 2008/09.

These are really quite interesting. In my wider search I also found this article about the 'true' rape conviction statistics, which would be in line with the Stern report.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/19/myths-about-rape-conviction-rates

Festivia thank you.
You have put in words everything I was clumsily trying to explain upthread.^^

That low level hum is something I am becoming more and more aware.
A sense of having to 'humour' random men who approach me - keep them sweet, despite my unease and therefore avert anger/ potential violence.

It pisses me off that I feel I must do this. Out of... Politeness? Obligation? Self preservation?

Anyway thank you for explaining what I know to be true, but couldn't quite verbalise.

FamilyGuy, what point are you trying to make by quoting those figures? It's not clear.

Is it, (glancing at the article you linked to), that you trying to say that rape convictions are not actually as tragically inadequate as the oft quoted 6%? Would that be fair?

The real problem with rape convictions is firstly, the lack of women reporting rape. Generally accepted figures are that fewer than 1 in 10 women will report the rape - reasons cited are predominantly that they won't be believed, or that they blame themselves for the rape. Because they may feel that 'they put themselves in that situation'.

The second real problem with rape is that so few cases get to court in the first place. Festivia has already talked about this upthread - so I won't repeat.

Linking to an article that says '58% conviction rate for rape" as you have done, does not address the issue.

Apologies, my data was extracted from page 85 of the following document

Stern Review

Perhaps this is the thread where the 6% conviction rate myth is finally put to bed and that women visiting this site will feel more confident about taking a potential rape case to court.

I openly put my hand up to not being an expert at anything but it really saddens me when people blatantly throw stats about for people to believe.

Festiva, I have as much respect for you as I do for anyone on here. However, something has gone slightly awry if you've read Barones Stern's review, recommended that I read it and are still publicly supporting this mythical 6% conviction rate.

As the Guardian article states:

Last week, Mumsnet released a survey of its users as part of its We Believe You rape awareness campaign. Sixty-eight per cent of respondents said low conviction rates would make them hesitate to report a rape due to low conviction rates ? clearly they had heard the 6% figure too.

What my earlier post also tells us is that 35% of pleas were guilty. If I've read that correctly then 35% of men actually own up (thank goodness). The picture is getting less bleak the more I look into it.

That isn't to say I'm giving these scum credit for fessing up but that women need to know the 'facts' and that, as Baroness Stern has written:

We hope the preceding chapters have made some things clear. First, in dealing with rape complainants a considerable amount of change has been introduced by all the public authorities that carry these responsibilities. The description in Chapter Two of the way the police responded to a woman reporting a rape 30 years ago,28 in a television film that caused an uproar and started the reform process, shows how much has changed, fundamentally and for the better. Attitudes have changed. Policies and practice have changed. In England and Wales we now have a system with specialisation in dealing with rape at the police, prosecuting and judicial level. In many places those reporting rape to the police are treated respectfully. We have measures in the courtroom to minimise the trauma of the trial. We have everywhere a programme to provide state-of-the-art medical centres where victims of rape can be examined and assisted. In the extensive literature about rape, most of the suggestions made for ways of increasing the number of rapes that are reported to the authorities and undertaking successful prosecutions have been adopted as policy. Official figures show that the number of convictions has increased from 1,778 in 2006/7 to 2,021 in 2008/9.

runningforthebusinheels

The point of the stats, if you haven't read the Guardian article, is that 68% of people surveyed here on Mumsnet said that they wouldn't report a rape case due to the low numbers of convictions i.e. 6%. Do you not see how this is significant in what has previously been posted by Festiva? It's patently obvious to me.

The true 58% is almost 10 times higher so paints a much more positive picture for everyone. It says to women that they are much more likely to win if they take their case to court and also tells men that they are much more likely to go to prison if they rape someone. Why is this so hard to understand?

The problem I have is wondering why both you and Festiva advised me to read the review, potentially knowing that the figures splashed around were complete BS. Have you read the review yourself? Why are these figures still being banded about or is it a convenient way to still make out that men are the complete problem.

Well, from my POV it looks like some feminists are also part of the problem; perpetuating the myth that women have absolutely no chance against men.

Less bleak 'Family' Guy?

FGS will you STOP misrepresenting figures.

I said clearly that once a case gets to court, rape has a higher conviction rate than for some other crimes

But most rape reports do not get to court.

That 6% figure is accurate. It is the conversion of reports of rape to guilty verdicts. NOT the % of rape cases which are actually taken to court.

Is this a genuine misunderstanding or sheer disingenuousness?