Fact Checking Feminist Claims About False Rape Accusations: Part 3

In my prior two posts about this topic, I dissected LefthandedLunatic’s (LhL) citations regarding the frequency of false accusation. I continue my analysis below.

LhL cites a section from a report that states:

While false complaints do occur, approximately three-quarters of the incidents concluded by the police to be false appeared to have been judged to some extent at least on the basis of stereotypes regarding the complainant’s behavior, attitude, demeanor or possible motive. Suspicious file comments were made by the detectives regarding a woman who laughed while being interviewed, others who were seen as ‘attention seeking,’ and some who were said to be ‘crying rape’ for revenge or guilt motives.

This comes from one of the studies the author claims cannot be trusted, so presumably people should dismiss this comment outright. However, let us take it at face value. It is an officer’s job to discern whether a person is credible, and the officer does this by judging the person’s behavior, attitude, demeanor, and possible motive. When they file their reports, they will likely include their findings. So if it strikes them as odd for someone to laugh during an interview, the officer will make note of it. This is how officers do their job.

The author, however, disagrees:

That’s right. 75% of False Rape Accusations labeled as such by police were not because they were proven false but on the gut feelings of the police.

Again, this is how officers do their jobs. Their “gut feelings” are usually based on years of experience. It does not mean they do not make mistakes, however, it seems odd to dismiss their intuition when that is often the thing that makes them consider rape victims credible.

Which means we get plenty of false false rape accusations.

No, it does not. There is no evidence supporting that there frequent false claims of false accusations or this one:

This is probably a bigger issue then men being falsely accused of Rape.

Not only is there no evidence supporting this claim, but the implicit argument here is that is it more important to make sure police believe female rape victims than it is to ensure an innocent man does not go to jail. There is no moral or ethical defense for such an argument. You do not imprison innocent people just to make sure some cop does not disbelieve a rape victim. That is an absurd position.

There have been plenty of documented cases of police pressuring victims to sign false confessions claiming they made up their sexual assaults.

Those are terrible cases. The author, however, does not present any evidence showing that this is a common issue. For all we know, it could occur at a lower rate than discovered false accusations, and according to LhL, that would make them unworthy of concern.

Its why one of the major reasons why out of 1000 rapes only 6 rapists will go to jail while for robberies 20 will go to jail and 33 of assault and battery.

No, the reason is because it is easier to prove a robbery or assaulty happened. Thieves typically have the items they stole, and victims of assault and battery typically report the crime soon after it happened, making it easier to prove they were wounded. Contrast that with rape cases, which are often reported months later, with all the evidence gone, often include conflicting accounts from the accuser and the accused, and often have victims who may not be forthcoming. All of those affect the state’s ability to prosecute the case.

LhL then shifts to attacking the men’s rights movement:

Using Fear as a Weapon

Why do we talk about False Rape Allegations all the time, and how its used as a political weapon.

This is quite hypocritical considering how feminists turned rape accusation into a political weapon, as demonstrated during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. It seems that is acceptable, but arguing that men should not be falsely accused of crimes that never happened goes too far.

Though most rational people don’t see this as such a major issues within far conservatism and the Manosphere you tend to see false accusations be pushed as the major issue against men.

That is likely due to the number of instances of men accused of sexual violence who lost their jobs and reputations without even being charged with a crime. In some instances, the acts being described are not technically illegal. No charges could be filed, yet these men have been labeled as sex predators and treated as guilty of the worst sins. These men’s names are often made public, while their accusers remain protected. Should nothing come of the accusation–no charges, no lawsuits–the result is simply a man’s life destroyed based on the unsubstantiated claim of one woman.

One would expect most rational people to take issue with this, which is why one finds so many people on all sides of the political spectrum concerned about false accusations.

In fact I decided to do my own study where I went to /r/MenRights typed it “Rape” and look at the 102 top posts by /r/menrights on the subject. I only accepted posts of two categories, male victims of sexual assault and stories on false rape accusations. As expected /r/MenRights had more posts about false rape then male victims of rape.

Perhaps if LhL should have looked up more than one metric Had LhL looked up ‘male victim’ or ‘male victimization’ or ‘female abusers’, the author may have found more examples. The searches are also defaulted to sort by relevance, so if the key word is not in the post or the thread, it will not show up in the list. That does not mean there were not other posts discussing sexual violence against men or false accusations.

The author claims to have found 57 posts about false accusations and 44 about male victims. I do not think a seven-post difference proves that men’s rights activists do not care about male victims. However, inaccurate information about male victims does demonstrate a lack of concern:

As you can see despite the fact that men are 1 in 33 in odds of being raped, that 1 in 10 rape victims are male, and as stated before only 0.005% of rape accusations lead to a man being arrested as stated above.

I can say with great confidence that all of those numbers are wrong, and based on sexist methodology that excluded various types of male victimization, with the exception of the last statistic, which the author made up.

MRAs post more about and care more about false rape accusations then male victims of sexual assault. Why is that? Why do we even talk about false rape so much if its more rare than males being raped? I get a suspicion that plenty who champion this cause are arguing disingenuously.

There are more posts about feminism, toxic masculinity, men embracing femininity, and trans issues on Men’s Lib than there are about male victims of sexual violence. By the author’s own logic, the members of /r/MensLib express disingenuous concern for male victims.

False Accusations are rampant enough that only segregation can solve it

Yeaaaa… This covers harassment as well. Plenty of people have been using the fear of false rape accusations against men as proof that women should be “isolated”.

It would have been helpful if the author provided evidence of this, however, no link was given. Fortunately, I know to use a search engine, and I found this: Women-only co-working spaces are the newest rage in the #MeToo age. It would appear there is someone arguing women should be isolated from men: other women.

They also openly brag to each other that they “won’t hire more qualified women because I am too scared of a lawsuit”. As stated before the case of someone falsely accusing someone else in the workplace environment is ultra rare as most false rapes come from children or the homeless, and the vast majority don’t name suspects.

Harassment and rape are not the same thing. This is conflation is one of the reasons that men fear hiring women. Secondly, in the conflation, LhL states that children are responsible for most false rape accusations, yet the author also said:

Also it is noted that half of the False Rape Accusations are made by Parents of children. Either by pressuring the child to go to the police or accusing someone of rape without the child knowing.

As I have stated before, feminists are consistently inconsistent.

If anything men should be worried about sexual harassment from coworkers as it is way more statistically likely that men will be a victim of sexual harassment then falsely accuse of harassment themselves.

That is a curious argument. Women are more likely to sexually harass men than falsely them. One would think such enterprising women would exploit the threat of a false accusation to ensure their victims did not report them. After all, who are we more likely to believe: the man claiming a woman harassed him or the woman claiming the man harassed her?

So the people who say that this is a measure that must be taken to protect men are flat out Neo-Segregationists.

How fortunate that no one argues for such a thing, however, the author will not be deterred from burning this straw man argument to cinders:

Flat out they don’t really care about false accusations but want to use it as an excuse to treat women as second class citizens at work or to push them out of the work force entirely. If you truely fear false accusations have a third party witness. Simple enough, its common practice within the medical profession to have a third party for sensitive treatment so both sides are calm. A third party benefits both those who fear harassment and false accusations of harassment and assault. Jumping to pushing women out of the workforce is straight up sawing your foot off over a hangnail.

That makes sense. If a man fears a potential false accusation, having a third party present would help, although the woman could still argue that of course the third party would support the man’s story or accuse the third party of assaulting her as well. It seems like a better idea would be to discourage women from making false accusations.

False Rape Accusers should get same length sentence as Rapists

This is a common cry for those within the MRA movement is that these false accusers are getting off to easy. That they ruin countless men lives and only get slap of the wrists. But that shows a great error in their thinking is the trust that the criminal justice system gives just punishments to rapists in the first place. If we are going to punish false accusers the same way that we do punish rapists then false accusers should get:

10 Years of probation

3 Months of Jail

5 Years of probation

That would still be significantly more than the ‘no charges’ false accusers typically receive. It is also a disingenuous argument. Most rapists do not receive probation, and using the most egregious examples is dishonest.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, sex offenders receive an average sentence of 12.2 years and serve 61.9% of that sentence, or about 7.5 years. That is not a slap on the wrist.

That of course doesn’t count the countless who have sexually assaulted and get away with it.

It is interesting that LhL wants to count unknown rapists, but does not want to count unknown false accusers.

If MRAs called for this guideline I can’t help to feel they would be even more disappointed in the sentencing expecting 20 years but IRL only getting a few months. If we treated false rape accusers the same as rapists then we as a society wouldn’t take them that seriously.

This is perhaps the oddest straw man argument I have ever encountered. We as a society already do not take false accusers seriously. That is literally the men’s rights complaint. Contrast that with how we treat men and boys accused of rape. As I noted above, we plaster their names in the media, we socially ostracize them, we threaten them with violence, and we assume they are guilty.

Should they be arrested and jailed, they face physical and sexual violence from other inmates. Should they be convicted, they will likely serve several years in jail or prison. Upon release, we require them to add their names and photos and essentially any contact information to a sex offender database so that they can be tracked. This database includes the most violent offenders with people who masturbated in public.

Does that sound like society does not take rape, at least the rape of women, seriously?

Also I want to quickly address the other MRAs call for those who have been falsely accused to be placed on the Sex Offender Registry Lists. Uuuuuuuhhh What?!?

Which men’s rights activist wants falsely accused men placed on the sex offender registry? That makes so little sense that I must assume the author meant false accuser. Either way, I do not know of anyone arguing for putting false accusers on registries.

This is improper use of such a list number 1, and 2 that publicly available list would then create a public list of people you can rape without repercussions.

If that is the case, would not the existing registries already create a list of rapeable people? There is no one lower on the human ladder than a sex offender. One would expect that if people were so inclined to abuse this list, they would have done so by now.

Think about it. If you publicly branded people as “False Rape Accuser” then which people would rapists target?

I am fairly certain that this is not how rape works. Some rapists may look for targets via government registries, however, I do not think it is often. I do not think most rapists put that much planning into their actions.

Putting extra laws and punishments on this mush smaller issue of False Rape Accusations put more pressure on legitimate victims of sexual assault.

No, it does not. It simply requires the state to actually punish those who knowingly try to put innocent people in jail.

Under the existing law there are cases of legit victims being classified by police as false victims. If you add additional punishment then we will punish legitimate victims of rape 20 years in prison for just reporting their rape and police not believing in them.

That is not how the law works. In order to file charges, the police would need some evidence of a false accusation. In order for a conviction, the state would need to prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt. It is highly unlikely that a rape victim will face a 20-year sentence for the police disbelieving a claim.

And that will have a chilling effect on the rest of victims of sexual assault out there. Its hard enough as is, but if you are unable to prove it and you “act like a slut” then you could face jail time.

Again, that is not the law works, at least not for false accusers. If you are accused of rape, however, yes, the law will take someone’s word over yours, regardless of the lack of evidence supporting the claim. That is how someone like Brian Banks could end up in jail and on parole despite never committing a crime.

To me this ultimately proves why these issues come up in groups like /r/Menrights more often then male sexual assault. Because its being used as a weapon to try to push society and law to a more regressive state then before.

How is it regressive to ask that false accusers face a harsher penalty that they have never face? To bear false witness against a person is a morally reprehensible act. To do this with intent of imprisoning someone is even worse. Why should such a person not face the same penalty she wanted to inflict on someone else?

Men Rights Movement is a Regressive Wolf in a Progressive Sheep clothing. They don’t really care about victims of false allegations. More its a means to justify “Moving the burden of proof to a reasonable level” that makes it impossible for many legitimate victims to seek justice.

The burden of proof should always be beyond a reasonable doubt. If you cannot provide enough evidence to meet that standard, then the accused person should not go to jail. The reason for this standard is to prevent innocent people from being imprisoned. That is the moral and ethical standard because it is a gross violation to take away someone’s freedom. If we are going to do that, we must be sure that person deserves it.

Similarly, if a person commits a crime, they should face a fair punishment for it. It unfair for someone to claim she was raped by Henry Ballister, have his name and picture plastered on every social media site, every news channel, every online magazine, and then when we discover that she lied, she remains anonymous and faces no penalty at all. She gets to go on with her life as if nothing happened, while Henry’s name will forever bring up articles about being a rapist.

I genuinely do not understand why LhL thinks this is a fair outcome.

For Tucker Carlson and other ultra conservatives its just a means to justify removing women from the workforce and back into houses. That’s what this whole issue is to the far right, just a vehicle to push for radical and extremist policy.

This is an utterly irrelevant argument designed to trash the right. It has no bearing on false accusations, although Carlson was a victim of one himself.

That’s why /r/MenRights and Reddit as a whole under reports on male victims of rape. Because admitting that rape of men is a common thing only helps prove that rape in general is a very common affair and that the 1 in 6 statistic was right the whole time.

Until recently, the /r/MenRights was the primary place on reddit where one could find any mention of the 1 in 6 statistic being treated as legitimate. Feminists routinely dismissed the number as a MRA lie. The only reason feminists accepted the number, at least in public, is because the rest of society actually began to listen male victim advocates.

So there is a deep irony in watching a feminist attempt to use this statistic to attack the very people who introduced it to them.

That Rape is a real problem in western society and forces them to stop ignoring it.

So remember this TL;DR when you think about False Rape Accusations.

Yes, false accusations are not real problem. There are no victims. It is completely harmless. In fact, it never happens. The real problem is that bad things happen to women.

That is the feminism I remember. The dismissive, dishonest, disingenuous, misleading ideology that regards any problems men face as illegitimate unless they can somehow blame men for causing those problems.

It is possible to care about two issues simultaneously. One can want to prevent sexual violence and want to prevent false accusations. One can acknowledge that many women do not report their assaults and that many women lie about being assaulted. One need not choose one issue over the other.

This is precisely the same false dichotomy feminists presented when I began this blog. I see that while feminists have learned, to a degree, to dress themselves up, it does not take much to get them to reveal their true opinions about men’s issues.