[ SECRET POST #2686 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2686 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 059 secrets from Secret Submission Post #384.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Controversial opinions

[ariakas]

Hahah thanks for the vote of confidence.

On the flip side, you don't seem like someone with a vested interest in the worldview that women are lying bitches/etc., so let me ask you: do you question the rates of false allegations for other crimes? To be sure, "the nature of the crime" as you say, makes it particularly difficult to prosecute (e.g. if there's a murder there's ostensibly a body, if there was arson something burned down) but it is far from the only crime for which this is the case. Mugging, for example, frequently has less evidence than rape, as victims are often verbally threatened and not physically assaulted, and there's no way of proving that they didn't just dump their wallet/belongings somewhere. People can, and do, trump up false mugging allegations for attention, pity, to get out of something, as an excuse for having lost said belongings, etc. As most mugging victims don't know their attackers and most rape victims do, "revenge" can't be a motive, but on the flip side, there's a great deal less to lose to file a report for mugging, whereas rape victims who chose to prosecute are branded sluts, liars, "asking for it", etc. - often by the police themselves. They become targets for vicious harassment; mugging victims do not.

As for "legitimate sources" - the majority of police and criminal justice departments in OECD nations give rates of 2-8%, including the FBI, the RCMP, Interpol, CPS, the AFP, and others. This is in line with false allegation rates for other crimes. The data were also collected in the same manner as other crimes; there is no reason to doubt the statistic for rape and not for other crimes for which the evidence is often circumstantial. These are not feminist organizations; they have no vested interest in social commentary, either, unlike many academics who've pursued this kind of research (some openly "to debunk feminist claims".) But again, these are not "feminist" claims. To be sure, retracted claims may have been false even if the justice department or the accused chooses not to purse charges, but this is true for retracted claims of all crimes - i.e. if rape dropped charges are suspect, all dropped assault charges (which are also frequently dropped) are also suspect.

Yet, rape is the only crime onto which this degree of aspersions are cast. If false allegation reporting by various justice organizations are bunk, to you, then rationally they're all bunk - not just rape. That the focus, then, is on rape to exclusion of all other crimes with circumstantial evidence is extremely telling.

Re: Controversial opinions

[(Anonymous)]

Yay votes of confidence. FWIW, I'm really REALLY not vested in any view of women or anyone as lying bitches, honestly. What I am is (scum alert) a lawyer and yeah, actually do very much question the rates of false allegations (with a particular concern for wrongful convictions, which I have had some professional background in) for other crimes as well. The only sense in which I feel rape is actually different is not so much from a moral perspective such as "oh, falsely accusing someone of rape is WORSE than falsely accusing them of mugging," but more an issue that I don't actually know a good solution for, in that we as society (and/or we as an increasingly social justice oriented online generation) treat it differently in so many ways, not just those that you totally rightfully point out re what often happens to victims who do come forward, but (more and more as we make important progress in destigmatizing and caring for victims better) in how we sometimes view and treat anyone against whom even so much as a whiff of an accusation is made.

I think overall we need to be very careful about crime statistics in general, because they're really complicated but REALLY easy to manipulate with devastating effects on people. While it wasn't particularly relevant to the topic of this conversation, I am actually JUST as bothered by, say, mugging or murder or drug crime rates being distorted to make some supposed point about "those" people, whoever they might be. And I'm bothered by not actually having a comfortable sense of the right direction to go in since there's something of a rock and a hard place involved -- we absolutely need to ensure that victims of any crime can be safe and secure in their ability to come forward and seek both help and justice, but at the same time I feel we need to at least be realistic and honest about the fact that people DO lie about rape just like any other crime, and the consequences can be terrible for real people (not just faceless numbers), and I'm very, very bothered by what feels to me to be a growing radical myth of "believe every accuser no matter what" that is making it completely taboo in many circles to even suggest otherwise. Case in point: I'm a highly educated woman with a fairly broad range of professional legal experience dealing with things directly impacted by and involving these issues, and I do dare consider myself a pretty decent person and a feminist to the extent that radicals these days are not making me sort of uncomfortable with openly aligning myself with the actual "movement" -- but most of the time I point these things out I get accused of being an "MRA" right off the bat. I'm genuinely not, I just think that justice starts with honesty, and it's unfortunately the crime of rape that's particularly prone to having gussied up infographics with laughable claims bandied around the internet for political and/or ideological (which is not necessarily to say invalid -- my beef is with the means, not really the ends as long as we're not talking about the very small genuine radfem whacko minority) purposes.

I'll go check out those various organizations, thanks btw. It's been awhile since I updated myself on what reputable sources are reporting, anyway. Like I said, it's the manipulation of perfectly good, if complicated, data that gets to me and THAT seems to happen more frequently with rape in social justice culture these days than other crimes. So I do admittedly have some bone to pick with it.

(Also, thanks for a pleasant and calm talk about this. NOT usually how this conversation goes for me online.)