I don't believe in We Believe You

[PoochSmooch]

No, settle down, I totally do!

But I got into a terrific argument with an old friend over this the other day. He thinks it's a terrible campaign, an injustice to men, and an invitation to miscarriages of justice.

I tried to put the viewpoint that actually, there's no legal weight to it at all, that it makes no difference to the legal process if people not involved in it decide that they believe the person who says they've been raped or assaulted. But it's a kind, human thing to do in a world that tends to blame women for being raped, and to disbelieve them without compelling evidence outwith their own ability to know whether they consented or not.

I tried to explain that women in general don't lie about rape, that there's very little motivation to do so, and conversely there is much more motivation to lie about having raped someone. I wheeled out some of the stats on the under-reporting of rape, the reasons why that happens, and what I see as the need to address that by talking about how we treat rape.

He was adamant - rape can only ever be treated as a 50/50 he said/she said situation, with equal weight being given to the possibility that either person may be lying. It is harmful towards men to believe anything else. People should never take sides by believing women, because that is unfair to men. It then came out that he thought the word "rape" was far too "harsh" a word to use for any encounter other than a stranger in a dark alley - so basically there is "real" rape and "just date rape". He really squirmed when I directly asked "do you think it is common for women to lie about rape", but I got the sense that this is what he believes.

I was so lost in the debate to be honest. I find it a struggle to think that someone could object so vociferously to the simple act of telling someone that you believe that what she says happened to her, happened to her.

We parted friends, but I was like, fuck, I wonder how many other people think like this? What would you have done in my shoes? What arguments would you have used? Is "We Believe You" unjustly harmful, when set against the harm caused by rape being so woefully under-reported, under-prosecuted and rarely resulting in any kind of punishment?

I'm glad you can say no to your partner. I can say no to my partner too - however, I have had a boyfriend where if I said no, there would be repercussions - silence, breaking something of mine 'by mistake', being mean to me when out with friends (hard one to explain, but he'd find something to say about me that made me look silly, or incompetent), staying out and not coming home.

Now, yes, I could have left him - but I was on my own with him in a foreign country (I moved for my work), and I would have had to hope that he would have left my (work provided) flat without damage or fight. I would have been alone, with no friends and that was scary, so often I gave into that cajoling.

Cajoling on it's own, where there is equality - probably not rape. Cajoling with implicit threat - probably is rape.

I think that I can tell when I wanted to have sex but just needed a nudge, vs. when I didn't want to have sex and gave in for a quiet life. I think most women can.

MissKG, I'm not sure which post you're referring to, but if it was mine, I did not say cajoling was rape. I described a particular situation in which cajoling was deeply frightening because I didn't (and indeed couldn't) know whether my attempts to resist the cajoling would lead to physical violence - and said that although I escaped from that situation unscathed, it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine another woman freezing with fear in the same situation, at which point, yes, I would describe what happened to her in that particular situation as rape.

Personally, I don't think the dictionary definition someone gave upthread: "persuade (someone) to do something by sustained coaxing or flattery" is a particularly good one. Even at its most comedic and benign (Mrs Doyle in Father Ted for instance) it goes way beyond persuasion - it carries connotations of pestering someone to do something they don't want to. Sometimes the pestering is relatively harmless, albeit still irritating, sometimes (as in the situation I described) it becomes downright scary.

Pestering someone for sex is still creepy as fuck though. I don't understand why people want to defend pesterers just because it's not illegal.

Pestering is annoying, often unpleasant and deeply unattractive. However, if it's purely pestering with no fallout for not having sex, it remains just that.

'Cajoling', by itself is the same. Cajoling with a consequence if you don't give in is coercive sex.

It's what happens if you say no which makes it go from 'annoying but ok', to rape.

And PERSISTENT pestering can become sinister quite quickly. Never ending pestering is a consequence in itself.

The reporting of false allegations is way out of proportion Lulu. A few years ago Radio 1 spent at least a whole day featuring a story about false rasped allegations in their news bulletin, so every hour on the hour. That would have been bad enough, but they also had in depth news features on it during the early evening, at a time when the programming was explicitly aimed at young adults.

I complained that the tone was damaging, that it might deter a young and nervous rape victim from reporting an attack. Response was that they needed to feature this for journalistic balance, as they did news and features on rape too.

When I used the stats the BBC had itself reported on prevalence of rape and prevalence of false accusation to show that the reporting was heavily skewed. That they would have to feature coverage of rape and it's consequences at least every day. But that was met with a blanket assertion that they believed the coverage was balanced and that false rape accusations ruin lives.

If that was the internal attitude/culture just a few years ago, just after the Saville scandal broke, when they were under intense scrutiny and were public ally proven to have a serious problem, then I have no doubt the climate over past decades was one where the sexual abuse of young people could thrive and be easily covered.

I see why you raise that point, Batteries. I don't really want to go into that too deeply though, as I wouldn't feel quite comfortable pontificating on my friend's sexual history in a public forum like this.

But I do agree in principle that people's views on rape are shaped by their own experience of the world, and there's a lot of cognitive dissonance around caused by people not being able or ready to face up to their own experiences or actions.

I think where "cajoling" becomes much much darker is when it crosses the line into being part of a pattern of coercive control.

I wouldn't automatically "believe" a perfect stranger just because she's a woman talking about rape any more than I would automatically believe a man who said he hadn't done it.

But that is not a 50/50 situation, the two are not equal.

No man is ever going to admit he raped someone, the chances of conviction are so low and they also have the option of pleading guilty to another charge instead.

Would you believe a man who said he was raped? A child?

Biscuit that is awful. What's worse, is that it doesn't even come as much of a surprise!

I read a news story a while back (way over a year, think 2014) about the number of women prosecuted for "false allegations" of rape...it was staggering really that some of these women had reported a sexual assault to the police, and then had it turned back around on her.

I honestly trully believe that if people fully understood the entire process of reporting a rape - from beginning to end - they really wouldn't be so quick to accuse victims of "making it up" or "playing the rape card" etc. It's not a nice or easy experience, and I will personally never understand why anyone would instantly assume a woman is lying and putting through that unnecessarily. Yes, it happens. But it's rare.
And I feel obliged to point out that if a victim withdraws their statement, or the perpetrator is refused charge, or acquitted. It does not mean that the victim was lying, nor does it definitively mean that the perpetrator didn't do it.

That's the really sickening thing, that's it so mundanely usual.

It's the thing that makes me get what Germaine Greer was on about when she said sexual assaults should be treated like any kind of assaults, there should be no stigma or shame.

But intuitively, sexual assault is different from other types of assault, so I struggle to reconcile it fully. There is a horror and violation to it that goes beyond (at least most) physical assaults. It might be the possibility of there being a child, so the assailant "gains" a permanent hold over the victim. It might be the total disregard for agency, although there is that in all types of assault. I also think physical assault carries stigma and shame in many cases, for both men and women, and goes unreported to, but to,a far smaller,degree.

But then anything that would make conviction and reporting rates go up would be a step forward.

No sorry Pooch I wasn't expecting you to answer the questions. I just think sometimes we spend a lot of time discussing 'we do people think like this' coming up with all sorts of reasons when really it boils down to - because they are lying to themselves. And until they stop, discussion is borderline pointless.

*why not we

Exactly duck

I agree, batteries.

Good point duck. I wonder if there's data from insurance companies about faked burglaries, and have they been compared?

Are people prosecuted for false accusations of assault? I guess they must be, we probably just don't hear about it, because it's not leveraged in the same way that false accusations of rape are.