Question for Pierce Harlan, the guy behind the False Rape Society blog: Do you really think this is the best way to fight false rape allegations?
The real problem here isn’t that he’s recycled an old rape joke; it’s that he’s pretending that rapists are somehow a species apart from ordinary men. His big complaint is that the PSA in question “passes off a criminal deviant as a typical guy.”
Pierce, what do you think rapists look like? They’re not villains out of some silent-movie melodrama, twirling their whiskers and cackling with glee. They don’t have giant R’s tattooed on their foreheads. No, they look like “ordinary” guys. Exactly like them. Rape prevention — and crime prevention in general — would be a lot more effective if criminals could be easily identified at a glance. But the world doesn’t work that way. Most criminals look pretty ordinary, actually.
But the problem with Harlan’s stance here go beyond that. The fact is that most rapists aren’t sinister strangers hiding in an alleyway; the overwhelming majority – something like 70% — are people known to their victims. As someone who writes regularly about rape, Pierce is presumably aware of this, which means either that he’s being completely disingenuous, or that he’s simply pretending that date rape (and non-stranger rape in general) doesn’t exist.
The PSA in question is far from perfect. Aside from the terrible acting, the main problem with it is that it it’s victim-blaming. Its depiction of a rapist as an ordinary-looking guy – and a friend of the victim — is the one thing it gets right.
To get an idea of the sort of person who reads (and agrees with) The False Rape Society blog, here are a couple of comments on the, er, “controversy.”
Here’s a comment from YouTube, posted by someone who obviously got there from Harlan’s blog (it appeared after the video was linked at the FRS; before the recent batch of comments, the video hadn’t had a comment for three years).
So the message is that if a guy is being helpful at a party, he’s probably a rapist? This is not a fair psa. It did better than some though, by highlighting the fact that the female friend ditched her.
Apparently, in this guy’s mind, trying to remove the clothes of a woman almost completely incapacitated by alcohol is just a way of being “helpful.”
Meanwhile, on the FRS blog itself:
Anonymous said…
Wow- just like TV- apparently the only people on earth who ever do ANYTHING wrong are white males- preferably fat ones to give feminists a little extra to hate.
While we’re on the subject of false accusations, here’s a strange bit of paranoid word-salad on the subject that I ran across recently from a Reddit Men’s Rightser.
Is it really possible that anyone – including the author and the people upvoting the comment — could actually believe this nonsense? If so, what a strange, sad world they must live in.
EDITED TO ADD: Holly Pervocracy just wrote a great and highly relevant post on what she calls “Slavering Beast Theory.” As she explains:
In the Slavering Beast Theory, there are two kinds of men. Two species, nearly. … There are ordinary guys and there are Slavering Beasts. And they are very, very easy to tell apart. They act different, even look different, to the point where any adult should be able to distinguish them in any casual social setting. …
This dichotomy is how someone can simultaneously believe that women shouldn’t go out after dark because rape is such a big problem and believe that tons of rape accusations are false. It makes perfect sense if you believe there are Slavering Beasts out in the dark, but if an ordinary guy is accused of rape, there must be more to the story. It explains why people are angered by rape prevention tips aimed at men–those are insulting to ordinary guys, and Slavering Beasts won’t listen. And it justifies the belief that abuse victims had it coming: either they were abused by a Slavering Beast and should have known better, or they were abused by an ordinary guy and must have done something terrible to provoke him.
LOL Blitzgal, I just read that story and immediately thought about MRAs and their constant claims that this type of stuff only happens to men. I was thinking of posting it here too but you beat me to it 😛
If anything it proves that the system can screw anyone over.
I can’t speak for the US, but in Britain it’s very common indeed for false rape accusers to get jail time. Indeed, the Court of Appeal recently (30 October 2009) ruled that “an immediate custodial sentence is inevitable when a false allegation of rape is made” – a statement made as a by-product of rejecting an appeal by a false rape accuser to have her two-year sentence reduced.
It’s also very common indeed for such convictions (and failed appeals) to get significant amounts of publicity – and it very much suits the anti-feminist agenda of tabloid newspapers like the Daily Mail to go along with this trend.
“Meanwhile, I’m thinking of the times that a partner has asked me to stop. Almost without exception, it’s because something hurts. In those circumstances, 30 seconds is a long-ass time.”
Sounds about right. These assholes think we just change our minds to piss them off.
If I understand his argument correctly, he seems to be saying that because the length of time that rape within marriage was legal massively dwarfs the length of time that it’s been illegal, it should therefore should be legalised again.
You could, of course, use exactly the same argument to justify stripping women of the vote, criminalising homosexuality or reintroducing slavery.
Fun facts time!
Lyssa:
Of course, no one knows exactly what happens unless they were there, but the woman dropped the case because she was receiving death threats, not because she didn’t have a credible case, and Kobe’s apology admitted that she didn’t see it as consensual, although he claimed he did.
Milkslave:
Out of all reported campus rapes and sexual assaults, out of the ones that go to a hearing where the accused is found responsible, only something like 10-20% of them are expelled as a punishment. Most of the time, punishment is writing an essay or deferred suspension. And the appeals process tends to be a de novo hearing for the accused without the accuser’s input. So yeah. Boo fucking hoo for your rapist. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve read the Center for Public Integrity’s report on college campus rapes? It’s really fascinating.
Wetherby:
This is kind of sub rosa true in a lot of U.S. states as well, sadly. Which is to say that even though the utmost resistance requirement has been eliminated, most triers of fact still think that if there are no bruises and tears, if she wasn’t kicking and screaming and punching, then it wasn’t rape.
Toy Soldier:
Fuck, man. You really don’t know what you’re talking about. When you’ve been raped, everyone questions your story. Hell, even if you’re talking about expectations, anyone who’s watched a police procedural knows that their story is going to be thoroughly questioned.
Seraph:
This is true in, like, two U.S. states. It should be true in all of them.
No wonder many of the false accusation stories I keep seeing appear in there. I saw one story linked on the False Rape blog, the false accuser got 2 years in jail. It appears to have happened in the UK too http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/9310344.Burnley_woman_jailed_over_false_rape_claims/
Agreed. It would be damn near impossible to prosecute without a videocamera and a stopwatch, though.
Spearhafoc:
Not hard for you, at any rate. But the not-an-object-of-attraction people aren’t automatically going to have trouble with consent, I just think people in that category are lighter on one aspect (of several) of understanding it. This is not insurmountable, as your case demonstrates.
Slavey:
In any swearing contest, how does one tell who is lying, if anyone is? In a fraud case, how do you prove reliance?
Lyssa:
Not directly. Someone I know has a relative who was one of those dudes who claimed he didn’t know she was underage.
I know one person I know to be a sexual assault victim, an incident that happened after we lost contact (I heard through channels) so I don’t know even the details she’s been willing to share.
Quackers:
I assume it’s the blackmail of, if he steps out of line, the nearest woman will say “rape” and he instantly loses his job, home, money, and friends, if any.
Mistress ozy:
It’s not even “preponderance of evidence,” not that it would be relevant if it were.
TS:
What is your source for this? How are you/your source defining “mak[ing] false rape accusations”?
I hope this isn’t too personal for all you fine people, but I have a chronic health problem I’m trying to get to the bottom of that makes sex–even gasping, writhing, incredible sex–often quite painful. It’s just as fun as it sounds.
Anyway, if I’m no longer enjoying myself, I ask my partner to stop, and he stops immediately, because why would he want to continue if I was in pain? I think you’d either have to be disgustingly callous not to, or someone who doesn’t understand that woman enjoy sex just like men do, it’s not just a treat they dispense. Sex is a shared experience of all involved, not something men do and women agree to permit. An attitude which of course ignores every other kind of sex beyond heterosexual, but I digress.
There have been times where I’ve been with a male partner and something wasn’t right for him so he stopped, because obviously consent isn’t just for women. The difference, of course, is given the physics of vaginal sex and the relative strength between me and pretty much any conceivable male partner (I’m a teensy thing), a man doesn’t have to ask, he can just stop. I can’t.
I have a friend who was accused of sexual harassment. He is the vice-president of a 200 + chain store. He had two very attractive sisters working for him and dated one of them while he was in the middle of a divorce. He didn’t know that these sisters both had the same mental illness (manic depressive) and were coached by their parents to black mail people since they were teens across the country.
It was dirty however his staff were behind him 100% and eventually the sisters were both fired and everyone got on with their lives.
You’d think that my demographic would be high on the list of running into things like this but honestly this is the only example I can think of.
It took me ten seconds to understand it wasn’t his sisters.
I don’t understand, how does being maniac depressive fit in you story? Is it relevant?
Citation needed
The blood of thousands of falsely accused men will never wash off of the hands of feminists.
Feminists respond to everything that they don’t like with “citation needed”.
My response to that is: we will provide citations when we have 600 university departments working on behalf of fathers, boys, and men. Currently, there are ZERO. There is a tiny “male studies” institute in New York, with zero public money. Compare that to the billions of dollars of tax payer money that annually support feminists and their social poison.
You know, kind of like the 600 university departments that tirelessly work to provide “citations” to support your feminist fantasies?
I like how Toysoldier is a rape victim with a story that is somewhat difficult to believe, yet pushes the false rape accusations are common angle. I still believe him, but it’s fucking hilarious, and by hilarious I mean horrifying. Seriously, dude, fuck you.
And you prove you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, as usual. You and Slavey should both just go off and get the fuck off the grid, for the sake of the rest of humanity.
FTFY
Antz – a bit of advice on debating tactics: when you got nothin’, try not to draw so much attention to it.
No, sensible people respond to claims that seem to contradict their own position with reasonable requests for evidence.
Which is, after all, no different from the position taken by courts, academics, journalists and anyone else with a reputation for veracity to protect.
I don’t see much point in responding to the rest of your comment, since it seems to have no connection to the bit that I quote above.
You make unsubstantiated fact claims that frequently, that everything you say is responded to with “Citation Needed”?
AntZ, we know what your hobbyhorse is, you’ve inserted it into nearly every thread you comment on. Please now tell me how it is in any way relevant to the discussion of FRA, because I see none. Asking for citations means we don’t think you have any evidence for what you claim are facts. What is taught in schools is beyond irrelevant to the topic of the post.
Protip: Gender studies is a gender neutral term, btw. But this nonsense is still hilarious.
Oh, those silly feminists with their facts and desire to have proof to support points.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/24039/october-17-2005/the-word—truthiness
If there is evidence to support the claim that false rape accusations are incredibly common, a dedicated men’s studies department at a university shouldn’t be necessary to prove it. You should be able to track it through reports compiled by law enforcement agencies like the FBI.
WHOOOOOOOOOSH! There go the goal posts!
Until MEN get exclusive rights to deny women access to universities like they had been for hundreds of years, MRA’s won’t bother to back up their wild eyed fantasies that women are jumping out of dark alleys accusing men of rape who are then dragged off to Fymynyst Gulags without trial.
Personally, I prefer a more grown up approach and just build forts out of coushions and blankets and go “Pew! Pew! Pew!” at the cat.
Excuse me, I have to go bang my head repeatedly into a wall for a bit.
Quote the MilkBoy: Maybe it’s the slavering beast within me. I do have it, from a reliable source, that while I may seem like a decent chap by the people who know me
One wonders if he shares his theories on the proper role of women (available for fucking at 14, slaves for the rest of their lives, required to obey any man they see) with the folks who think he seems (telling choice of word there) like a decent chap.
Has everyone noticed his question is built around the premise that the presumption is no rape took place? That in a “he said/she said” the only, fair thing to do is just dismiss it, because, “we can never know”.
In short, he thinks rape should be legal.
I guess that means he thinks that any murder which has no one to see the crime shouldn’t be prosecuted. Just the cops’ word against the accused.
Same for simple theft. The shopkeeper says the stuff was stolen. The accused says he had it all along.
I think our Inventerate* MilkMan has solved the entire problem of court backlog… no third party present, no crime.
*intentional… a play on words, given he DaVinci-like prowess NWO has with mechanical devices… he says so, then again, we say he doesn’t, and we’ve never seen these things he made… so who can say… it’s he said/she said, writ large.