Consent is sexy, but false allegations of rape are decidedly not
Rape and sexual assault are heinous crimes: grave offenses that should carry with them reciprocally harsh penalties. These issues were tackled recently by the “Consent is Sexy” campaign which graced The Greyhound’s cover last week. The message is solid: no means no, ensure that your partner consents and foster an environment where victims feel safe to come forward.
I feel the need to make note of these relatively uncontroversial points because I fear what I say next will not be so well received. Ultimately, “Consent is Sexy” and initiatives like it are, completely unintentionally, “empowering” women at the expense of men’s basic legal rights. Admittedly these are strong words, but they are words I am prepared to defend.
I can already hear in the distance accusations of “rape apologist,” “misogynist,” “victim blamer” and the like. I assure you I am none of these things. I am not going to trivialize rape, and I am not going to shift the onus of responsibility onto rape victims. Moreover, I am certainly not going to be unfair: I believe wholeheartedly that the people involved in the “Consent is Sexy” campaign at our fine university are sincere in their desire to make the world a better place. But I fear that the initiative and others like it make the falsification of rape easier to get away with. This isn’t a result of any ill-will, but happens by virtue of these movements’ context among hundreds of other movements that create the impression that rape is more prevalent than it is, making distinguishing genuine rape claims from false ones more challenging.
So are there really so many false accusations of rape that it’s a problem worth talking about? Absolutely. A 1994 study by Eugene Kanin revealed that 41 percent of rape cases in a particular city were false allegations. Only cases in which the victim admitted they were lying were considered “false allegations.” As the report’s methodology explains, “[The victim] is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.” Kanin goes on: “These false charges were able to serve three major functions for the complainants: providing an alibi, a means of gaining revenge, and a platform for seeking attention/sympathy. This tripartite model resulted from the complainants’ own verbalizations during recantation and does not constitute conjecture.”
One may object to Kanin’s findings on the basis that they do not reflect the whole country by sampling a “small metropolitan community.” But even turning to the FBI’s more conservative, nationally comprehensive estimate of the false rape allegation rate, we’re still left with a staggering 8 percent. Alarmingly, the average false allegation rate for other index crimes is only 2 percent.
My argument that women lie about rape sometimes may sound appalling, as if it could open the door for genuine victims to be accused of lying. I have two issues with this sort of outrage. Firstly, if people are skeptical of a genuine victim’s allegation of rape, there is no one to blame save for the “victims” who falsified their rape stories. Secondly, I am personally not skeptical of rape claims. This makes statistical sense—only a minority of allegations are false—but also comes from my being a well-adjusted person with empathy. If anyone told me they were raped, I would immediately offer them all the support that I could provide.
The trouble is, the legal system is equally unskeptical with regard to rape, and accused men are practically presumed guilty from the word go. Juries are instructed that medical evidence is not necessary to prove a rape occurred, and that no witnesses are necessarily required other than the alleged victim. Unlike any other criminal charge, the de facto burden of proof is thrust on the defendant to prove his innocence, instead of on the state to prove his guilt.
Demanding evidence for the crime of rape isn’t “victim blaming,” it’s basic judicial fairness. A man falsely convicted of rape may spend the rest of his life in jail. A woman who is discovered to have made up the attack rarely faces any charges, or gets sentenced to only a few months or a couple of years under probation or minimum-security prison.
Look no further than the Duke Lacrosse scandal. The three athletes who were falsely accused of raping Crystal Mangum face public ridicule, threats and harassment to this day. Some of these threats of violence are directed at their families. On the other side of this coin is Mangum herself, who had already made and retracted a dubious rape claim in the past. She walked away from her destructive, bold-faced lie no worse for wear and as a free woman (that is, until she murdered her boyfriend in 2011).
There is nothing inherently wrong with campaigns like “Consent is Sexy,” but by perpetuating the meme that rape is some omnipresent hypercommonality, they tip the scales of justice toward the reckless assignment of blame. It is tragically easy to ruin lives with false rape claims, and while we decry the abhorrent crime of rape for what it is, we also must not condone the carte blanche presumption of male guilt in court.
Anonymous • Jun 9, 2020 at 1:53 pm
4.5
Anonymous • Oct 19, 2017 at 3:40 pm
0.5
Sarah • Feb 7, 2014 at 7:20 pm
Perhaps people would be more inclined to accept the points addressed in this article if it came from the mouth of a woman:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/17/opinion/jones-rape-claim-lawsuits/
greyhoundops • Feb 7, 2014 at 7:28 pm
Clearly this woman is a misogynist, and is actively trying to perpetuate rape culture!
Thanks for the interesting link Sarah; it’s a breath of fresh air to receive a comment from someone who isn’t seething in anger at me.
Megan • Feb 6, 2014 at 3:19 pm
Mike–
Besides the issues I have with your use of evidence, I find major fault with the fact that you fail to actually prove your point as a writer. The evidence you provide does not support your claim.
In an attempt to exaggerate the instance of false rape allegations (see: “staggering 8 percent”), you fail to actually make a connection between the Consent is Sexy campaign and any increase in false rape allegations. You say that campaigns such as this one “create the impression that rape is more prevalent than it is, making distinguishing genuine rape claims from false ones more challenging.” That claim is a leap if I ever saw one, but you did say that “they are words I am prepared to defend”, so I assumed if I kept reading I would find an (although misguided) at least slightly comprehensive argument.
I was wrong. You jump from the above claim to listing off exaggerated* statistics of false rape allegations, including some majorly outdated studies and out-of-context information. And the kicker? None of your “evidence” actually proves or even implies that this campaign will lead to more false rape allegations. For that matter, it even fails to prove that such campaigns give any impression of rape being more prevalent than it actually is. In fact, the only thing your argument successfully does is give the impression of false rape allegations being more prevalent than they actually are.
Furthermore, you fail to adequately support other claims you make in the article. For instance, you state that “the legal system is equally unskeptical with regard to rape”. This is a blatant lie, and it takes hardly any digging to find anecdotal, observational, and statistical evidence to back up the fact that society doesn’t trust rape survivors despite the only 2-8% “false” allegation rate. In fact, if you look at the numbers, the evidence is right there; 40% of rapes are reported to the police, but less that 3% of rapists ever spend a single day in jail. You want a “staggering” statistic? How about the 97% of actual rapists that walk away free without any consequences?
Every 2 minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted or raped. 1 in every 10 victims is male. Those are the official numbers. Do you know what that means? That means that even by the inflated number that you used in your article, men are more likely to be raped themselves than to be falsely accused of rape.
This article is at worst a narrative of misogynistic mistrust of women, and at best a red herring, distracting readers from the real issue at hand.
Do society a favor, and stop publishing your own uneducated opinions on a culture that you obviously haven’t made any real effort to understand.
–Megan
*Don’t believe me when I say your statistics are exaggerated? This article very nicely points out why the official number is anywhere from 2% to your “staggering” 8% (and why even that is an inflated estimate): http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/one-reason-why-false-rape-allegation-statistics-are-so-high/
greyhoundops • Feb 6, 2014 at 8:53 pm
Okay, let’s see why.
I never set out to exaggerate the rate of false allegations. I’m not sure where you got this impression. You seem to take issue with the use of the word “staggering” I guess, but 8% is a staggeringly high false allegation rate when the average is 2% for other FBI index crimes. In any case, my goal was never to exaggerate anything, and attacking my character in this way is a bit of a cheap move on your part.
Let me break down my argument in its most basic form.
Some allegations of rape are false.
Rape prevention campaigns are ubiquitous.
This ubiquity creates the perception that rape is more widespread than it is.
As a result of this perception, society and the courts often assume male guilt in cases of rape, and require little evidence to establish this guilt.
Courts should, in criminal cases, apply a standard of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt instead.
The current reality of male-guilt assumption is in opposition to the standard of guilt beyond reasonable doubt
Therefore, these standards ought to be changed, in reconciliation with this proper judicial standard.
My argument is coherent from top to bottom. Whether you disagree with any of the parts of the syllogism is irrelevant, each of my conclusions follow from their premises. Reading closely, you should have been capable of teasing out this “at least slightly comprehensive argument.”
So let’s take a look at that link of yours shall we?
This blog post is laughably bad. For anyone who doesn’t want to subject themselves to the winging tirade of a social justice blogger, I’ll give you the cliff-notes version. The author links to the Wikipedia page on false rape statistics, and spends 3 whole paragraphs preening about just how much of a logical smackdown she’s going to give those dirty misogynists who think women sometimes lie about rape. Then she links to a comment on another person’s blog which turns out to be an incoherent tirade about anecdotes being good evidence.
Then she says she will “point at studies” that refute the 8% statistic. Immediately afterwards she links to another blogger’s anecdote. Then she links to someone quoting a study in the comments of a blog, where no quantitative information is given save for a couple of interviewed police officers saying outlandish things. Then another blog comment from a “lawyer” asserting that Canadian lawyers perpetuate rape culture. Then another blog comment anecdote. Then another blog comment anecdote. Then another blog comment anecdote. Yes that’s three in a row; clearly she learned how to collect research at Tumblr University. Then she links to yet another blog comment that will show somehow that the false allegation rate is inflated, but she must not have read it because it quite clearly points out the opposite. She caps off the article with the RAINN.org statistics that I’ve addressed elsewhere in other comments, but will address again in this one later.
The blog post appears to be packed with sources, but of the 11 “sources” she cites, only 2 contain information from research, and only 1 provides any quantitative data. In debate theory, this tactic is called “spreading.” It’s when someone like Dana Hunter, the author of that post, floods the board with a massive quantity of “evidence” in the hopes that it will overwhelm would-be objectors. But applying even the thinnest level of scrutiny, her entire post collapses into a splintered mess of self-righteousness.
I agree that rape is under-reported, and said as much in several of my comments. Your statistic I bolded, on the other hand, is laughably dishonest. That number comes from RAINN, an organization whose definitions of rape have been thoroughly criticized by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, and RAINN compounded their survey-derived, self-reported rate of unreported rapes with the number of rapes actually brought to trial. The conviction rate for cases brought to authorities is drastically higher. Either you didn’t understand how they conjured this number, or you never bothered to ask.
I never argued that false rape allegations are a more serious problem than rape, and I’m not “distracting” from anything. Surely we have the attention span to be cognizant of two issues at once.
I don’t have time to stop publishing things long enough to heed your regurgitation of talking points and statistics you “haven’t made any real effort to understand” as you so aptly worded. Feel free to keep commenting though! I’m interested to see how you twist my words and impugn my character next!
Megan • Feb 8, 2014 at 9:46 pm
My anger in the first letter was unfortunately quite unprofessionally obvious. I apologize. I have many friends and even family that have been impacted by misguided mentalities such as this one, and therefore I am very personally invested in this. I should have taken more time to calm down and to handle this issue civilly.
Anyway, although your line of reasoning may appear to be sound, I still believe your evidence doesn’t support your claim. When I said “it even fails to prove that such campaigns give any impression of rape being more prevalent than it actually is,” I meant that rape and sexual assault are incredibly prevalent; they impact 1 of every 6 American women, 1 of every 4 American women in college, 1 in every 33 American men, and of course families and friends of said survivors. A campaign that spreads awareness of rape and sexual assault and promotes consent culture—even many campaigns that do this—are not creating an impression of rape being more prevalent; they are creating awareness of the fact that rape actually is very prevalent. This is not the same thing as creating an impression of exaggerated prevalence, which is what you claimed.
What your evidence did support: false rape allegations happen. False rape allegations are bad. No one in the feminist community is going to argue with this; as you stated, when someone actually lies about being raped, this is detrimental to real survivors. However, there is a lot of controversy about what the percentage of false allegations actually is and also about what in fact is considered a false rape allegation. The National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women (http://www.ndaa.org/ncpvaw_home.html) provides the number 2-8%, and in this article, it explains very well where much of the controversy comes into play: http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/the_voice_vol_3_no_1_2009.pdf . This even talks about and analyzes the 1994 study you cited in your editorial.
As I mentioned before, your claim that “the legal system is equally unskeptical with regard to rape” is incorrect. The prevalence of skepticism toward survivors is incredibly high in society and in the court systems, and it results in a process that is called “re-victimization” or “secondary victimization” in academic circles, as survivors must face a process that traumatizes them once again. For some anecdotal proof of this, I recommend http://www.projectunbreakable.tumblr.com, where survivors write and take pictures with quotes from their rapists, but also at times from friends, family, and professionals such as doctors, detectives, and school officials. The skepticism these survivors and others have met in response to their claims has resulted in a silencing of survivors. There are other projects similar to this one; in one project, survivors write the numbers of people they have told, supporters versus skeptics, and whatever other numbers they think are relevant to their experience. These anecdotes are easy to find. From a less anecdotal viewpoint, the article I linked to above addresses much of this, and http://www.bustle.com/articles/2675-science-explains-why-people-dont-believe-rape-victims explains fairly nicely how and why there is so much doubt. If you search through the Loyola/Notre Dame library database, there are also plenty of peer-reviewed scholarly journals there that talk about and analyze the skepticism faced by survivors of rape and sexual assault, and how it impacts them psychologically.
Also, you talk about the presumption of male guilt in court, which is not a fairly supported assertion. In court, there is still maintained a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. This is vital to our court system. As evidence that individuals accused of crime are not given this basic legal right, you mention: “Juries are instructed that medical evidence is not necessary to prove a rape occurred, and that no witnesses are necessarily required other than the alleged victim.” Whether or not this is true, it is taken out of context. That is like saying that in order to prove a murder occurred, a confession is not necessary and forensic evidence is not necessarily required. Of course it is not necessary to have either of these things; that does not, however, mean that with the absence of both and without enough evidence that the crime occurred, that the accused should be sent to jail anyway. Once again, the relatively low number of rapists that are sent to jail indicates that there is no presumption of male guilt in court.
I hope this has more calmly explained some of my assertions in the other comment. Furthermore, I hope you will take the evidence I provided and try to maintain an open mind toward what I have to say, instead of continuing to response with sarcasm, condescension, and dismissal. I have taken the time to amend my tone and attitude toward you, and I hope that you will extend me the same courtesy.
Finally, I will not be able to respond to this article again, as this topic and the lack of sensitivity being displayed in this discussion has become quite triggering for me, and I must worry first and foremost about my own mental and emotional health.
Megan
greyhoundops • Feb 9, 2014 at 12:06 am
That’s quite alright: my reply to you could have done with less bite too.
I’m pretty sure this was unintentional, but you’re essentially equivocating my discussion of the issue of false rape allegations with rape itself. I must point out, and quite emphatically so, that this is unacceptable.
I provided evidence and reasoning in my reply to you which explained how RAINN’s statistics are overestimates; they do make rape seem more prevalent than it really is. But even if the statistics were entirely accurate, the ubiquity of these campaigns creates an atmosphere where that impresses upon people that most men are dormant rapists, and are probably guilty if taken to court. In the end though, as I’ve said multiple times both in the article and in other comments, I believe these campaigns are good on the net. My point is that this is an unintended consequence of them that shouldn’t be ignored.
The blog you used in your last comment said, “Men, even good men, believe women lie about rape.” There really are people who think that no women who allege rape (a small enough amount that it can be ignored) are lying.
Someone else has already brought up the Lisak objection to Kanin, so I’m copy-pasting my response here.
Having already read both Lisak’s critique and Kanin’s report before writing this article, I am confident in declaring that Lisak’s “refutation” is severely lacking. He criticizes Kanin’s methodology essentially on the grounds that he didn’t conduct each and every criminal investigation on his own, and instead made the decision to analyze the police’s investigatory protocols. It is beyond unreasonable to force academics who study crime statistics to ignore the police and invent their own criminal-investigatory methods. Furthermore his most famous grievance that police “threatened to use the polygraph test in every case” is at worst a bold-faced lie, and at best a creative interpretation of the facts. To quote Kanin’s report: “The investigation of all rape complaints always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects.” Note the use of the word “offer.” No one was ever forced to take a polygraph test in any of the 109 cases Kanin studied.
Looking at the rest of the analysis, the only way they’re getting the 8% down to 2% is by re-evaluating the studies with a much broader altered definition of rape. This is the exact same problem present in RAINN’s evidence.
There are many problems with this.
Firstly, as you readily admit, that tumblr is only anecdotal. It’s all pictures of people holding up pieces of paper they’ve written on that say others were skeptical of their rape claims.
Secondly, almost every one of these stories is about one person who treated them with skepticism. This does nothing to show that many people, much less more than one person, doubted their story.
Thirdly, people should almost never treat a rape claim with skepticism. Any person with even a little bit of empathy should support people who say they’ve been raped, and expressing doubt would be awful. This applies to responding officers too. But once in court the accused should be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt; not only because the Constitution demands this, but because holding any lesser evidential standard for a crime that carries sentences up to life in prison and execution would be a travesty.
This is actually less useful than anecdotal evidence, it’s a speculative piece. It hypothesizes that maybe, sometimes, normal police questioning techniques cause victims to give incoherent or inconsistent stories. Though an interesting line of speculation, there is no useful evidence here. Furthermore, the Kanin evidence quite clearly points out that cases in which the victim’s story was inconsistent were not considered to be false allegations in the study.
It’s not like that at all. It’s more akin to saying to prove that someone is a murderer you don’t need forensic evidence or witnesses, just a body.
Allow me to quote Washington state’s jury instructions in rape cases: “The burden is on the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the sexual intercourse was consensual.” This bears repeating. The burden is on the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the sexual intercourse was consensual. You agree with me that there should be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and that said presumption is vital to our court system. Again: the burden is on the defendant. That’s not a de facto presumption of guilt, it is de jure.
Furthermore, university hearings on matters of rape and sexual assault are horrendously slanted against the accused, and it’s not unreasonable to posit that the prevalence of “stop rape” movements on college campuses may contribute to the lack of rigor applied in these hearings.
I’m refreshed by our mutual shift toward a more positive tone, and I’ve made a sincere effort to be fair and courteous in this reply. I’m also sorry if my last comment came across too harshly; the demand that I stop publishing rubbed me the wrong way.
Yes, I agree that this is probably a good time to wrap up our back-and-forth. By this point, this far down in the comments section, people are already: convinced by you, convinced by me, convinced partially by both of us, or continue to hold whatever view they came in with. Overall, I’d say this discussion has been a fruitful one.
Jack • Feb 7, 2014 at 5:29 am
From your personal attacks towards the author and without your elaboration of your objections, it’s clear to me you started reading this article and within the first paragraph you decided you hated the author and that he was sexist. Then, you devoted the rest of your time reading the article to nitpick and find a reason to hate every point, no matter how sound or statistically backed. If you intend to convince someone of your advocacy, doing so through personal attacks, false accusations, and an angrily worded response leads to nothing but resentment by whomever reads your comment. Please keep this debate civil.
Emily • Feb 5, 2014 at 8:49 pm
Mike–
Once again, I take issue with your comments. Maybe it is because you have never been fearful of being assaulted, groped against your will or scared for the protection of your body. But, Mike, your article, though very highbrow and rational, has an extreme lack of empathy that many find more offensive than the subject matter itself. I would like for you to understand a very REAL issue that you have chosen to ignore: the emotional upheaval associated with an assault or rape. You, in one of the comments above, hope that those who are “triggered” simply stop reading. That doesn’t seem to hold with your other desire of having a productive dialogue about the issue. Instead, what you have done (hopefully unintentionally) is further ostracized members of our community who have been assaulted, placing more of a stigma on them as unimportant members in this discussion, a discussion where they truly bring the most insight.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 10:30 pm
A lack of empathy towards whom exactly? I have nothing but empathy for victims of rape, and will not abide any assertion to the contrary. For those who lie about rape though, my empathy is understandably lacking.
What you’re essentially seeking, whether you view it this way or not, is a kind of forced lip-service to how horrible rape is as some kind of conciliatory measure for those who’ve been raped. Victims of rape deserve support, but the purpose of this article is not to provide support, and it has no obligation to that end. Right now you’re playing a game of, “Well you didn’t mention this horrible aspect of rape!” in an effort to both avoid discussing the uncomfortable focus of my article, the falsification of rape claims, and to impugn my decency as a person.
And furthermore, your implicit characterization of rape victims is somewhat troubling. Through all of your proxified outrage you’ve managed to portray rape victims as harrowingly fragile people who lack the emotional fitness to make judgments about what they find offensive or not.
You misunderstand. My point was that victims of rape whose emotional trauma is so severe that discussing these issues will trigger the psychological horror of their attack all over again should probably not read articles related to rape. This is an entirely reasonable point for me to make, because it is not my intention to wreak that kind of emotional chaos. To those not triggered in this way, to the merely “offended,” then read on! Comment back! That kind of dialog, the sort we’re engaged in right now, is without question productive!
I haven’t done this: intentionally or unintentionally. I’m sure this is what you’d like to be true, because it would cleanly draw a line in the sand between being for rape victims and not, but in the end viewing this discussion in this way is facile and unengaging. Not unengaging in the sense of not being interesting, but unengaging in that it doesn’t engage the meat of the issue I raise in the article.
Your perception that I’m “placing more of a stigma” on rape victims by not making this conversation about them is way off the mark. Rape victims have immensely valuable insight to offer when it comes to rape, and I’ll not deny that for a second. But on the issue of false rape accusations, they don’t have much more to offer the discussion than the average person, at least insofar as their having been raped. This is mainly because they were actually raped. They did not make a false accusation, and they were not accused falsely.
At every turn you’ve attempted to make this discussion about victims of rape, and I don’t blame you. Tapping into that pool of political and emotional charge would give you a great deal of rhetorical ammunition. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is extra-topical: An evasive misdirection that serves to wind people up and get them passionate about a different issue.
Emily • Feb 5, 2014 at 5:53 am
Mike–
I have many issues with your article concerning the “Consent is Sexy” campaign. But the most alarming to me was the outdated language that you used throughout your piece. Not only was your article exceedingly herteronormative, but you consistently used the term “victim”, which is my primary issue. Had you taken the time to come to the Loyola University Women’s Center, attend a panel on sexual violence or attend an event through Take Back the Night, you would have come to realize that the term “victim” is antiquated and offensive. Instead, you might have used the term “survivor”. The term survivor promotes healing after a sexually based crime and does not continue to define the members involved by the horror of their circumstance. I would ask that in your further discussion of this topic that you do justice to those who have been assaulted and raped, male or female, and that you do not continue to define them by their trauma.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 6:54 am
Going point by point:
This is a misguided dip into the social justice lexicon. I never once alluded to heterosexuality being a preferred state of being and, quite frankly, the issue I’m discussing has almost nothing to do with LGBT issues. Let’s look at the realities of the matter. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 99% of convicted rapists (1997) are men. The vast majority of rape is committed by males against females. I have yet to find a single case of a man making a false accusation of rape in court against a woman. These aren’t “heteronormative” expressions of privilege, they are salient facets of a very real issue. Shoehorning in references to LGBT issues would have cluttered the article, and muddied the discussion.
The term “victim” is not antiquated. When talking about the crime of rape in a criminological sense, there is a perpetrator and a victim. And I would counter by saying “survivor” is an inferior alternative to “victim.” The term “survivor” serves as a label that makes reference to the event which was “survived,” and further carries the implication that it was a potentially lethal event. You still haven’t solved the labeling problem the word “victim” supposedly has. But I’m certainly conscious of the power of labels, and I’m not without tact. I wouldn’t harangue the surviving family of a murdered person by talking to them about the “victim” they lost, but if making a reference to the crime of murder in a societal or judicial context I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word. I’m not going to sacrifice accuracy or clarity to avoid offending the odd person. If someone was sensitive enough to the issues I’m discussing that my word choice could trigger them, then they should have stopped reading when they read the article’s title.
But this argument is trivial. By putting the political correctness of my semantics under a microscope, you deftly ignored every one of my article’s substantive points. Let’s argue about things that matter, instead of over lines in the linguistic sand.
Matt • Feb 5, 2014 at 4:09 pm
I agree completely with Emily on her points. The fact that you are unwilling to “shoehorn” in issues of rape in the LGBT community highlights your lack of care in writing an article on a topic that deserves such intentional treatment. If you are unwilling to write a comprehensive argument, that says a great deal about you as a writer.
I hope you reconsider your analysis of the victim-survivor discussion. You argue that labeling someone as a “survivor” is misguided because it implies a potentially lethal event. In what world do we live in that rape is not a lethal event. Rape is a physically brutal act that is often accompanied by assault and in many cases, murder. You cannot argue that it has no lethal potential. “Survivor” acknowledges this potential, as you mention, while promoting a healthier response focused on healing, something you seem to ignore completely. It is so incredibly underreported (60% go unreported, and 97% go without a conviction) and the trial experience is often nearly as damaging emotionally as the rape itself, because of the stigma that comes from the majority of our society with being a survivor of rape.
“Let’s argue about things that matter”? You do not mention once anything about the campaign you have issue with, merely that you are worried men will have legal rights stolen if women feel as though they can come forward with rape allegations. I assume either you haven’t taken the time to see what these campaigns typically look like, or your issue is the fact that a group of college students would attempt to tell the entire campus that they ought to promote relationships of mutual trust and respect. If you have an issue with that, I don’t know what to say. 1 in 4 college women have survived rape or attempted rape in their lifetime–think about that and your opinion in relation to that the next time you sit in a classroom or walk across campus. Things like “Consent is Sexy” are absolutely necessary to create any kind of change in our campus culture regarding this issue. Thank you for, if nothing else, validating the presence of this campaign on campus–their primary audience should be precisely people with opinions as misinformed and hurtful as yours.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 6:47 pm
Putting “shoehorn” in scare-quotes doesn’t make LGBT issues more relevant to the discussion of false rape allegations. Rape in the LGBT community happens. How does this fact impact my point? It doesn’t. The evidence is quite clear: most rape is males raping females, and almost all false accusations of rape are made by women. It’s also pretty amusing that you say my alleged lack of comprehensiveness somehow speaks to my writing ability; I’d have been happy to write a 2500-word piece on the issue, but we are a newspaper –a small one at that– one that doesn’t have the kind of inexhaustible space you demand. Despite these limitations, I made sure to find space to print a letter to the editor in next week’s issue that critiques my article in depth.
You missed my point entirely. I never denied that rape is a lethal act. What I argue is that in labeling those who’ve experienced rape as “survivors,” you bundle the lethality of that event with their identity, which is strikingly similar to the problem you and Emily claim the word “victim” has. “Survivor” doesn’t solve for your objection. I’ll also add that I’ll talk to surivors/victims of rape using whatever terminology they prefer, that’s basic decency, but the assertion that the word “survivor” accomplishes the goal of healing doesn’t change the criminological necessity and accuracy in saying “victim” when dealing with the crime of rape in a judicial sense.
I agree that rape is under-reported, and never denied this fact. But it’s patently false that the majority of our society stigmatizes rape victims. The majority of people, myself included, are very open and ready to assist those who’ve endured rape.
This is for a reason: I don’t have any specific issues with the campaign. My argument is that the cultural prevalence of such campaigns, on the whole, turn the discussion of false rape allegations into a taboo, and make the justice system apply an unacceptably low level of scrutiny to rape claims.
This is a flagrant and shameless straw-man of my argument. I never said I have a problem with women feeling safe to come forward with true rape allegations, and I never will. I commended the campaign’s messages quite explicitly in the first paragraph of the article. And since when did I attack the notions of trust and respect in relationships, or attack the campaign for rallying for those principles? It is absolutely possible to apply reasonable standards of evidential preponderance to rape charges and not make victims of rape feel unsafe to come forward with their true claims of rape; these aren’t mutually exclusive states. There’s not a thing wrong with disagreement, but I ask that you exhibit some intellectual maturity and address arguments I actually make.
As Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, points points out in The Better Angels of Our Nature, grossly inflated statistics like this are often the result of overly broad definitions of rape which include sex under the influence of alcohol. Still, whatever the rape rate is, I don’t deny that the rape problem is severe and deserves our committed attention.
Barring the question of whether or not these campaigns actually reduce the occurrence of rape or sexual assault (which little to no evidence suggests that they do) one thing your reaction to my article has made clear is how intellectually toxic our campus culture is becoming. The atmosphere on campus is such that the mere suggestion that people be cognizant of false rape allegations triggers tempestuous outrage. The intimation of an opinion that isn’t in line with the popular, safe, and approved political views incites facile skimming and derision instead of an actual examination of ideas.
I will return your underhanded thanks with a reciprocally smarmy piece of gratitude. Thank you, if nothing else, for validating the need to dismantle the impenetrable palisade that those unwilling to discuss real issues have constructed around uncomfortable topics like the ones this article touches on.
Thea • Feb 5, 2014 at 5:04 am
Do you know what is sexy? Intelligence.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 5:09 am
Ouch. You wound me. If you would, phrase your next witty jape as a knock-knock joke.
Jack • Feb 6, 2014 at 5:11 pm
*Knock Knock*
Animefan69 • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:56 am
Everyone in this comment section is wrong, rape doesn’t happen that often in my 2D animu world. If it does really happen that much it would be against the rules of nature and that would be terrible.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:58 am
What are you trying to say? Also, good to know we’re read in Australia I guess…
Animefan69 • Feb 4, 2014 at 7:05 am
Well, what I am trying to say is that it would be a complete tactical screw up in the real world if sexual assault of any kind was that common. I honestly hope our government does more to combat this issue tactically ᶫᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵖᵉᵗˢᶰᵃᶻ.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 7:07 am
What’s “our government?” You’re Australian. Also, what? The Spetsnaz are Russian.
Animefan69 • Feb 4, 2014 at 7:12 am
Well, my family has a background in military and special law enforcement. My uncle was in SOBR and he tackled the rising number of sexual assaults in the Moscow area. He has about 138 confirmed arrests on sexual assaulters. My Dad is currently in the Australian Federal Police Specialist Response Group and has also tackled the rising number of sexual assaults.
Kate • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:40 am
“Thirdly, there isn’t an abundance of evidence available on the matter of false rape allegations…”
That statement alone tells me that the conclusions made in this piece are invalid due to the lack of evidence to support these claims.
Also, I think the idea that rape and sexual assault do not happen very often is false. Every 2 minutes, another American is sexually assaulted. Honestly, I’m shocked about how frequently these crimes do occur.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:48 am
What I said was there isn’t “an abundance of evidence.” There is evidence though, and I provided it. I also hypothesized why this abundance of evidence might not exist. This seems like an attempt to throw out my evidence without addressing it.
These numbers rely on definitions of rape and sexual assault that are far too broad. But even if I accept those numbers (which I do not) throwing in the “unreported” rate like that is an error on your part. The unreported rate means unreported to the police or authorities. The way they calculate the rate of unreported crime is through surveys. Surveys were the sources of the 1 in 6 and 1 in 33 statistics, and those surveys also asked if the victim reported the crime to the police. You apply the 60% to the rape rate reported to the police, not to the rape rate reported in the survey. Trying to apply the 60% to the survey is a severely invalid application of statistics.
But I agree about how shocking these crimes are. Any rate at which they occur is too fast. But cognizance of this fact doesn’t prohibit us from being aware of the issue of false allegations.
Jack • Feb 4, 2014 at 1:54 pm
Yes. there isn’t an abundance of evidence.
Not a lot of evidence doesn’t equal NO evidence. The evidence provided is still valid.
Kate • Feb 5, 2014 at 8:15 am
Alrighty let’s address the evidence that you provide then. The Kanin study focused only on a small community, so I’m hesitant to believe that the findings presented in it can be generalized. This study is also very dated. It was published in 1994, but the data was collected from 1978 to 1987. I know that more current numbers are difficult to find, but the lapse of time and the small sample size make it difficult for me to accept Kanin’s findings without questioning them. Also, several critiques regarding this study have been written. I would encourage you to read one written by David Lisak at http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/SARFalseAllegationsofRape.pdf. Lisak presents some interesting points that object to the validity of Kanin’s methodology.
I also take issue with the statistic that you give from the FBI stating that 8% of rape allegations are false. The FBI actually says that these 8% are unfounded. An unfounded allegation and a false allegation are not the same thing.
I do agree that false allegations need to be taken seriously, and this makes for an interesting discussion. I also appreciate the research that was done while writing this piece. However, the flaws in the evidence that you provided make me wonder if the lack of research on this topic is due to it being so difficult to objectively study.
P.S. Sorry for the lengthy comment.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 8:45 am
I already addressed this exact objection in my article. I never intended to generalize Kanin’s findings, but to say they illuminate nothing is even more off-base.
Though I can certainly appreciate this concern, I very much doubt that the human propensity to lie has changed much in 27 years.
Having already read both Lisak’s critique and Kanin’s report before writing this article, I am confident in declaring that Lisak’s “refutation” is severely lacking. He criticizes Kanin’s methodology essentially on the grounds that he didn’t conduct each and every criminal investigation on his own, and instead made the decision to analyze the police’s investigatory protocols. It is beyond unreasonable to force academics who study crime statistics to ignore the police and invent their own criminal-investigatory methods. Furthermore his most famous grievance that police “threatened to use the polygraph test in every case” is at worst a bold-faced lie, and at best a creative interpretation of the facts. To quote Kanin’s report: “The investigation of all rape complaints always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects.” Note the use of the word “offer.” No one was ever forced to take a polygraph test in any of the 109 cases Kanin studied.
This is a fair point, and I’m glad you brought this up. National surveys and data concerning rape, whether about false allegations or the rape rate in general, are a tragic pastiche of conflicting definitions, contradictory standards, and inconsistent practices.
Thank you! In the end, I’m just trying to convince people that this is something worth taking seriously. And you are all too right; rape is such a thorny subject with such emotional and political charge that studying it is a tall order indeed.
Don’t be! These discussions have been the liveliest, most thought provoking engagements with The Greyhound’s readership I’ve had since taking the editor’s position! I’d never deliberately provoke for provocation’s sake, but overall I’m very pleased with this dialog.
greyhoundops • Feb 5, 2014 at 3:17 pm
What I said was there isn’t “an abundance of evidence.” There is evidence though, and I provided it. I also hypothesized why this abundance of evidence might not exist. This seems like an attempt to throw out my evidence without addressing it.
These numbers rely on definitions of rape and sexual assault that are far too broad. But even if I accept those numbers (which I do not) throwing in the “unreported” rate like that is an error on your part. The unreported rate means unreported to the police or authorities. The way they calculate the rate of unreported crime is through surveys. Surveys were the sources of the 1 in 6 and 1 in 33 statistics, and those surveys also asked if the victim reported the crime to the police. You apply the 60% to the rape rate reported to the police, not to the rape rate reported in the survey. Trying to apply the 60% to the survey is a severely invalid application of statistics.
But I agree about how shocking these crimes are. Any rate at which they occur is too fast. But cognizance of this fact doesn’t prohibit us from being aware of the issue of false allegations.
Bridget Targonski • Feb 4, 2014 at 3:01 am
This is the most disturbing article I have ever read in The Greyhound. It terrifies me that someone actually thought this was okay.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 3:03 am
Hi Bridget,
What exactly did you find disturbing about the article?
-Mike
Bridget • Feb 4, 2014 at 4:05 am
Well, Mike, I think it’s a little disturbing that you wrote that the 8% of falsely accused rapists need to be defended more than the 92% of people who are actually raped (according to your statistics).
You also fail to mention that men can be raped, which is huge because according to rainn.org, 1 in 33 American men experience attempted or completed rape.
I also do not see how promoting consent would increase the number of false rape accusations. Wouldn’t the promotion of safe sexual practices decrease the amount of people who are confused about what consent is or when a person cannot consent?
I hope in the future you will conduct more research before writing, as one of the articles you cited in your defense was 20 years old, and the other focused on an isolated individual who does not represent the population at whole.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 4:34 am
Allow me to address each of your points individually.
I never said and never would say that false rape accusations are more serious things than rape, or deserve prioritization over rape. Of course the majority of women who are actually raped deserve defense! What I do argue is that it’s not an insignificant problem, and not one that can be ignored. Surely we can be cognizant of both issues.
Though it’s true that men can be and are raped, the vast majority of rape victims are women. Furthermore, each of the 109 case studies in the Kanin evidence had an alleged male rapist, and an alleged female victim.
It’s not the promotion of consent that I posit may exacerbate the problem of false rape allegations, it’s the cultural ubiquity of anti-rape movements. They create the impression that rape is more common than it is, and the judicial system reacts inappropriately to that impression. This doesn’t mean that these movements are bad on the net, but this is an unintended consequence they have.
To your jab at my research, I have three responses.
Firstly, 1994 is certainly recent enough for the research to matter, and you haven’t pointed to any confounding factor that would problematize the research.
Secondly, I presented two points of empirical evidence. The first was the Kanin evidence, and the second was the FBI evidence. The “isolated individual”(Crystal Mangum) was not meant to be a piece of evidence, but rather a case which illustrates how justice can be miscarried in these situations. I believe it accomplishes that goal quite well.
Thirdly, there isn’t an abundance of evidence available on the matter of false rape allegations, and that, I believe, is a result of its political thorniness. Case in point, you said that you were “disgusted” by the article, and that it “terrified” you. The article itself just calls attention to a very real issue in a fair and researched way. The fact that the mere discussion of these issues can induce feelings of “terror” in readers leaves me unsurprised that not many academics are willing to stake their careers on this kind of investigatory research.
I appreciate you voicing your concerns though; this kind of open discussion is very productive!
Katherine • Feb 4, 2014 at 5:58 am
“Thirdly, there isn’t an abundance of evidence available on the matter of false rape allegations…”
That statement tells me that you really can’t be making any of the conclusions offered in this piece due to the lack of evidence to support these claims.
Also, I would like to point out that 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men are victims/survivors of rape or sexual assault. These numbers are probably even higher since so many of these crimes (60% of them) are unreported. Stating that rape and sexual assault don’t happen that often is just wrong because every 2 minutes another American is assaulted. I’m actually shocked by how frequently it does occur.
Bridget • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:09 am
I appreciate your politeness, but I also do not believe that you can discount men who are raped because your supporting article does not mention them. If anything, you could have mentioned that research on male rape survivors needs to be conducted as it is apparently lacking.
I cannot agree with you that the Kanin article can be applied to 2013 because 20 years is a sizable gap. To paraphrase a point on rainn.org’s page “How often does sexual assault occur?”, had the rates of sexual assault in 1993 stayed steady through 2013, 9.7 million more Americans would have been sexually assaulted over the past 20 years. 9.7 million people are the difference between 1993 and 2013. If you find any evidence that disagrees with the evidence I have presented please share it, because I would not want to base my arguments on faulty supports.
I would also like to address your comment of “It’s not the promotion of consent that I posit may exacerbate the problem of false rape allegations, it’s the cultural ubiquity of anti-rape movements. They create the impression that rape is more common than it is,”
I do not believe you ever specifically addressed how anti-rape movements claim that rape happens more often than it actually does. What kind of claim makes rape out to be too common? I recently found a statistic on Rainn.org stating that “an American is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes.”So, how often is too often. I acknowledge that this statistic is for sexual assault, not just rape, but it is still significant. So ultimately, my question to you is “What are these groups claiming about the prevalence of rape and how different are their claims from the accurate, verified claims of rape prevalence?”
I must also add that I never used the word “disgusted” in any of my posted comments.
I also hope that you do not believe that I am accusing you of being a “rape apologist,” “misogynist,” or “victim blamer”, as you made that particular point in your article very clear in multiple areas.
I appreciate your efforts to defend your article. While I agree that those falsely accused of any crime should receive justice, I cannot agree with the rest of your reaction to the “Consent is Sexy” article.
greyhoundops • Feb 4, 2014 at 6:36 am
Again, going point by point.
When did I discount their experiences? What I said was there aren’t terribly many male victims of rape. Compare 1 in 33 for men to 1 in 6 for women. But even then this is if I accept RAINN’s data, which I’m not sure that I do. Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, criticizes these numbers because they rely on definitions of rape that he considers to be overly broad: specifically they count sex under the influence of alcohol as rape.
I can’t make sense of this objection of yours. You’re saying that if the sexual assault rate remained the same as it was in 1993 that 9.7 million Americans would have been sexually assaulted up to 2013, and that somehow this calculation proves that fewer people lie about rape today than did in 1994? That argument doesn’t follow.
I already addressed RAINN’s overly broad definitions of rape and sexual assault, but there’s another problem with this point. These groups aren’t making patently false claims or doing anything malicious. However, the public sphere is inundated with these messages to such an extent that people with legal authority start to apply weak standards in the courtroom in favor of dealing with an epidemic of rape.
My mistake: the word you used was “disturbing.” My point remains the same.
That is good to hear!
And I appreciate your objections! This kind of discussion is the fuel that participatory democracy runs on!