I trust you would not be in this thread if your last sentence was not true, Phantomwolf. It is true we cannot wholly understand another's experience: but I think we can listen and learn from each other and understand better than we do now. I appreciate you are trying to avoid an annoying cliche, but what I am hoping is that we will make the honest effort to hear what each is saying. It is not easy. I imagine I will always pay greater attention to some aspects because of the things I have been taught: as will you, to different aspects. The ability to truly see everyone as fully human and to give their perspective as much weight as our own is vanishingly rare: we call those who can do it "saints" and they are not 10 a penny. But we can try.
I think that with a lot of things we are in agreement, I suspect that in some things we likely agree, but are getting the wrong end of each other's stick.
I do not think this is true. If that is the case then how do you account for the attrition rates in rape cases? I gather you are in NZ? Gumboot has shown some indication of the climate there and what I take from what I read in his links is that you began the process of changing the law etc quite early: and you are now in the middle of a major backlash. That is to be expected; social progress is not smooth.
I suspect here you might be misunderstanding me. I understand that rape cases are hard to prosecute, but, at least in NZ, the police believe and proceed with more then half of them, only failing them if the claiment lies to them in some way that would make her statement less believable. However, I am not talking about a female victim being more believed than a suspected male attacker, but rather a female victim is more believed than a male victim. Female victims at least have a 55% chance of getting the trial, more if they don't lie about how much they were drinking and such, males don't even get that much because the claim is pretty much one that won't be believed from the very start.
You assert that when a woman is raped there is generally a lot of evidence that we now know about. You mention "the types of injuries". This merely reiterates the myth of the violent stranger rape: and as the evidence shows this is a very, very small proportion of perpetrated rape.
I think here you misunderstand me again. Without getting into the details, I am sure you are aware that any sexual intercourse will result in minor injuries to the woman, mostly tears to delicate tissues. The intercourse doesn't have to be rough to do it, and it's one of the ways that coroners can determine if a female murder victim has been sexually active before her death. The pattern of the damages differes between rape victims and consentual sex and this can be used to show rape vs not. It's not foolproof but it certainly is a marker.
You go on to say there is DNA. Well DNA certainly exists and in some ways it has made the position of the rape victim harder. Its absence is taken as an indication that no rape took place. I am not an idiot, Phantomwolf: I was not unaware of the advice to rape victims. Yet if you read my OP every move I made meant that any complaint I made would fail:
I don't think you are an idiot, and I certainly hope my posting didn't come across that way. However had you laid a complaint then there likely still would have been DNA evidence, especially nowdays where very little is required to get a result. Bedding and clothing may have contained traces of semen and even skin cells as well as pubic hairs etc. While showering certainly destroys the best evidence, I can certainly understand doing so, wanting to wash the offender off, and I have heard of women almost rubbing their skin raw to get the smell off of themselves, but there are other sources of DNA that can be used even when such actions are taken by the victim.
I took a man home - instant reason to doubt my account, because I stepped outside of role, and because what possible reason could I have for doing that if I did not want sex. Can you hear the police questioning? Can you hear the defence lawyer? I can
Taking a man home isn't an invitation to sex. The police may certainly have considered you silly for doing it, but they wouldn't turn you away for that action, at least not in NZ. Even Prostitutes whop are raped (yse it can happen) get the same treatment and right to be heard out as everyone else.
I offered no resistance - what self respecting woman would not make even a token attempt at physical resistance? you said it yourself - we are looking for injury. After all it is a fate worse than death, isn't it? Well not to me, actually, but what do I know?
This would likely count against you in a trial, but it is also explainable. A lot of victims freeze. The account of "Mike" reports the same thing. He was a marine, strong fit quite able to throw his attacker off, but instead he froze. Behaving in a way that many victims do doesn't make you less believable to those that regularly deal with it, rather more.
I destroyed the evidence - it is a well known principle of law that the one who destroys the evidence is more likely to be lying is it not? But knowing that I went and showered. For a long time. And I was not thinking about how that would be seen at all: though I know how important it is if a case is to be brought. The advice about this is there because this is what a lot of women do. And I do not think I could have done anything else. I am even more suspect: I washed the bedding too because it stank of him. Obviously no honest woman would do that, and so the defence would say if it ever got to court. But it wouldn't. That is what attrition is all about
Again this would have hurt the case, and may have prevented it being able to go forward, not because the police would have disbelieved the story, but just because they may have felt they simply wouldn't have the evidence. Having said that, had they been called in, they may have found DNA on the matress cover, we honestly don't know. Again, doing something a lot of victims do won't reduce your believablity, though it could certainly reduse any possiblity of conviction. Often in these case the Police in NZ will call the offender in and read them the riot act to give them enough of a scare that they won't dare do it ever again. Not the perfect solution, but when they simply don't have the evidence to proceed despite believing the incident occured, it is a good option.
I did not report it at once. I did not report it at all, as it happens, but if I had it would not have been immediate. It took me a long time to process this event and to come to a place where I was sure I had not been at fault. And that is not so unusual either. What DH Lawrence called "the voices of my education" were very loud, and they drowned out my reason for a time.
Not reporting it immediately is one citera that police do look at in trying to evaluate the truth of the claim. It certainly isn't the only one, but it is a factor. Given that there was no reason for them to believe you had lied about any of the other events of the hight of the attack though, this probably wouldn't be enough to cause them to disbelieve you.
You assert that police departments will go out of their way to accept a complaint unless there is good evidence it is false. Go and read the attrition thread again. In many jurisdictions that is what is supposed to happen: in the real world we have made progress: for example the complainant is no longer required to take a lie detector test (yes those tests that don't work were standard in many jurisdictions for complaints of sexual assault: but curiously not for burglary - no idea why. Well I do actually): but when you have senior police officers telling the press that 50-80% of complaints are false then I am afraid I do not believe that the rules about what should happen are a reflection of the real practice. And the evidence bears this out. The police are people. They are subject to the same myths as all the rest of us: training helps but we have a very very long way to go. You talk as if it has all changed on the ground: it has not.
I actually read the documentation posted in the thread that explained why and how they reach a conclusion of whether a claimant is telling the truth. Unlike Gumboot's figues the study that was posted had about 35% they considered false and pointed out quite clearly why they would do so, mostly because the claimant lied somewhere in the testimony mixed with other signs such as the rape being "historic".
The rules for police response are identical. Why do you believe they are not followed when the complainant is a man, yet are followed when she is a woman? Do you have evidence for this? It is a curious belief on the face of it.
While the response should be identical, the first wall a male has to get over is the disbelief that a) a man didn't really want sex with a female, and b) that a female can force sex onto a male. Females don't have to first convince the officer that woman aren;'t always wanting sex with anyone and that men are capable of forcing women to have sex, those beliefs are already set. Fighting the disbelief from the start makes the entire claim less believable from the word go and more likely to be rejected or at least written off as unprovable in court.
It is the attitude women face now. I refer you again to the attrition figures
The problem is pointing at the figures doesn't tell the entire story. The police can believe the complainent, but decide they can't get a conviction. This adds to the attrition figures, but doesn't indicate they weren't believed. The case can go to trial but the jury can decide that there wasn't enough evidence to find guilty beyond reasonable doubt, again it adds to the attrition figures, but not because the police refused to believe. Simply saying "only 12% of complaints lead to conviction and therefore the rest are considered false" simply isn't true.
I am going to say something which will probably confirm all your suppositions now, and I am sorry for it but I know no other way to respond: that would be a perfectly reasonable expectation if: 1. Women had won their own fight and 2. Men had articulated what they see as the problem and had provided the evidence as women did and do.
If men get themselves organised and direct their complaints to the right quarters- the law and the culture- then I, for one, will support their struggle because then "they" will be "us". . But it is hardly reasonable to expect women to fight men's battles for them when they will not take the first step; and when so much of what they complain of is directed at taking away new and hard fought rights from women. For that is what is happening. Can you see that? I do not direct this at you personally: you have stuck to a call for the rights of male victims to be recognised and that is fair. But men did not initiate the fight for a change in women's position and they were in a good position to do that, having greater representation in the law and in government. Once women started it many men did help and I do not take that away: but they did not do it for us and nor should they have, necessarily.
I can understand that men have to be willing to stand up and fight for their rights as well, and unforunately you are correct that often the louder voices are those that seem to want to clamp dopwn on the "false claims" thogh in a way I can understand that too as real false claims hurt both women and men. Nothing frustrates me more then when a real fraud has been exposed and shown to be a 100% no doubt lie and rape crisis, instead of coming out and saying, "we all need to work together to say no to false claims", closes ranks about the "victim" and basically says "oh but she really was raped at some stage, and he probably would have done it if he had the chance cause he's a man." As such I can certainly understand where the call for clamping down on false allegations is coming from as well, but to me the more important fight is for equal justice for the groups left behind. In that area it is even worse to see people already victimized, revictimized by the people one would think should be the first to help them when they do actually stand up. I'm not asking women to fight the battle, merely to stand beside those that are out there trying to fight it, instead of stamping on them like they are an enemy.
I notice that you focus solely on female on male rape here too: you acknowledge that most male rape is by other men: that in those cases the kinds of evidence (injury and dna) you lean on so heavily is just as available: yet you do not make a start with that: instead you focus on the far rarer situation. Have you asked yourself why that is? It is important and I have acknowledged that: but nobody here is arguing it is very common (well actually you might be: not sure). Why this focus?
Because it generally isn't recognised. I tend to be someone that likes to fight for the underdog no one else will, I have been fighting for equal recognition for men suffering from DV for years, and that battle is finally starting to make head way. Male victims of female rapists is another under reported area where people's lives are ruined and offenders are getting away scott free. Generally people are well aware now of male-male rape and it is treated seriously. Female-male rape really only gets treated seriously when the victim is a minor. When I first became aware of and started fighting for male victim DV awareness, it was believed that this was very rare as well, but through talking to victims and even people weren't apparently victims to begin with, it soon became clear this is actually very common, just that no one would reported it, and when they did, few people believed them. Now studies are starting to back up the figures. In the same way, while I don't expect the numbers to be anywhere near those of male-female rape, if it includes the numbers for men emotionally or just plain blackmailed into performing sexual acts, I expect that people will be surprised by the number of female offenders who force by threat or physically force men to have sex with them. Allowing them to come out about it and talk about it without fear is the first step to healing for them, and for our society.
I have already agreed to all of this. But again I say, it seems to be quite rare. I do not resist the notion that women can be predatory: but they are not so in huge numbers, at least insofar as male rape is concerned. You cannot honestly expect women to divert attention from their own ongoing and big concerns to address the needs of a small number of men until their own struggle is much further forward. Is that hard to understand?
I tend to be less concerned by them not helping at all as I am by them diverting attention from their own ongoing and big concerns to actually actively oppose male victims getting equal recognition.
Again the point of this thread. Let me unpick a bit.
"all women are duplicitous liars" is a thread which runs through our culture. It is deep and it is simplistic. It is part of the unexamined narrative, because it goes in before we are conscious. And it has enough truth to allow it to persist. Like all powerless groups women have had to be economical with the truth in the past: without money or freedom they are still people. That means they have wants and desires they will try to meet: and consequences they will try to avoid. Powerless groups do not tell truth to power if the punishment for doing so is severe: that is true of all people. And so there is some justification for this charge, historically.
And now I will get jumped on by some, because that will be enough to make some of our more simplistic thinkers fall back on stereotype and breathe a sigh of relief. I have no wish to deny facts which do not help my case and I think that is always a mistake: but I see this as a feature of people: not of women. The charge of dishonesty is always levelled at the poor and powerless: so the english said it of the irish; and the americans said it of native americans; slave owners said it of slaves: and they were all correct for the same reasons.
But it is a stereotype to tie it to people rather than circumstances, if you see the distinction: and the fact that lie detectors were used in rape complaints: that judges were required by law to warn juries that women often lie in these cases: and all the other stereotypically based "safeguards" which have served to disadvantage women is in no way justified. And we both know that
"all men are potential rapists" is a different thing. It is also a thread which runs through our culture though not as widespread as the other. It is manifest in all the unspoken and unconscious precautions I have mentioned before: but unlike the "women as liars" it was not stated explicitly in mainstream culture until the feminist movement brought it out. It was implicit in the way women were raised and it was an underlying assumption in the whole hydraulic theory of male sexuality: but you did not get the insult in your face till relatively recently. When feminists made that statement we were talking to each other. And the way we understood it was this: in our lives we had to act as if it were true because there are a lot of rapists and we do not know who they are, That is what underpins the precautions we take. It is not saying that every man will rape given opportunity but that some will: and they exist in high enough numbers to restrain our freedom. That is not what men heard, however, so far as I can tell. And since they are not so used to being insulted it obviously hurts.
I cannot address the rest now for I must go to work. I hope that others will continue this conversation and I wish to state again: I am trying to improve our understanding: not to bash anyone. So if this has appeared combative then I am sorry: my intent is to explore the points you have raised and to show where we disagree.
To be honest I have never been exposed to the idea that "all women are duplicitous liars" which is supposed to be out there, but I have encountered the "all men are potential rapists" numerous times. From my personal experience, I honestly think the second is the greater ingrained myth in society today.
)
