This post from The Bewilderness explains the low prevalence of false rape accusations.
“Anon asked: Tonight I was speaking with a female coworker about rape culture and how terrifying it is to live with fear of knowing that if I was raped, it’s a high possibility that no one would believe me or take me seriously. She then said that she doesn’t have a problem with that because “most girls lie about being raped”. What would you say in response to that? I’ve heard many people say that but I have no idea how to respond.”
And the response – (TW Rape)
Your female co-worker doesn’t know anything. I hate that she said that.
There is zero benefit to “crying rape”. There was a study out last year, I believe, that cited of all rape accusations, .5% of them were false accusations.
The reason? Because once again, there is zero benefit in doing so. When you claim someone has raped you, what that means is you are about to get dragged through the mud. Every decision you’ve ever made, “relevant” or otherwise will be questioned. You will be called horrific names, so on and so forth.
And that’s why so many women and girls who are raped choose not to come forward. In doing so, they are re-traumatized, and they will likely have nothing to show for it; meaning, no one will believe them, and their loved ones will often turn on them.
Rape is a kind of horror, but the aftermath of it within a rape culture, is another beast all together. xx
That is the way the myth is created.
If you report a rape they don’t believe you because denial is the first response to bad news.
Then they bargain. Maybe it wasn’t really rape because you weren’t beaten half to death by a stranger. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.
Misdirected anger comes next for you saying such a terrible thing about such a “nice guy” or famous guy or friendly guy. And what were you wearing, you probably were asking for it.
By now the rape victim has usually been silenced. They sure as hell won’t be talking to you about it ever again.
So it must have been a lie they told for sympathy, or meanness, or attention, or any one of the many reasons for lying that we ascribe to victims of abuse for having the unmitigated gall to speak of the abuse they suffer.
So they repeat the myth that most girls lie and that perpetuates the myth that most girls lie.
It never seems to occur to them that most boys lie, most men lie, most rapists lie.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
5 comments
January 18, 2014 at 7:21 am
john zande
And then you have garbage like Dick Black saying marital rape is OK.
LikeLike
January 18, 2014 at 8:03 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
Garbage indeed.
LikeLike
January 19, 2014 at 4:16 pm
sn0rkmaiden
I sometimes wonder if women disparage or dismiss rape victims do so in the belief that they can somehow ward off the same fate?
Many years ago I was working somewhere where this really arrogant girl piped during a conversation: ‘If a woman goes home with a man and he rapes her, I say well done to the man!’ Her conclusion being that a woman who does that is stupid and deserves the worst. She was an arse and I quickly gave up trying to reason with her. But what disturbed more was another co-worker also female, who said she didn’t think date rape was any big deal and women should just move on if it happened to them. I think they lacked imagination as much as anything else, could they seriously avoid any situation where they might be alone with a man they hadn’t already decided they would be willing to sleep with unconditionally? Did it never occur to either of them that someone they knew but didn’t know too well might lie to them, and then lie about them?
Over the course of my life almost a dozen women have confided in me that that they’d been raped in the past, and not one of them had gone to the police over it. Not one of those women had any reason to lie to me.
LikeLike
January 20, 2014 at 11:16 am
The Arbourist
@Snorkmaiden
I cannot speak to the individual aspects and motivations of women, but it would seem that any strategy taken is going to be dictated by the bounds of the rape culture we live in –
If every solution is going to get you muddy, then one then comes up with some pretty extreme ways to avoid the mud altogether, so to speak.
What horrible thing to say. Yet, you can see where it comes from.
We all swim in poison, every day, every second of our lives. The poison maims us, disfigures us but… but.. Here is the insidious part, if women willingly accept some of the poison and internalize it, they are rewarded by not having to swim in quite so much of poison, personally, every day.
I cannot think of a reason other than internalized misogyny for the actions of the person you describe. The patriarchy is guileful and malicious in the bargains it forces on women.
“It will never happen to me,” is always dangerous thinking.
The mud is horrible and deep. :(
With the system, the culture and the people around you all not on your side, choosing the mud is a direct transfusion of salt into the open wound of the trauma already having been experienced.
I would contend that choosing the muddy salt option takes a level, that can only be described as supererogatory, of fortitude, courage and determination for the possibility that justice might be done.
Meh.
LikeLike
January 21, 2014 at 4:02 am
Snork Maiden
‘With the system, the culture and the people around you all not on your side, choosing the mud is a direct transfusion of salt into the open wound of the trauma already having been experienced. ‘
I agree, of the women I’ve known over the years who have been raped, their immediate responses were to want to put it behind them and therefore not tell anyone until it was too late to do anything about it. Something similar happened when a girl I knew more recently got punched and kicked to the ground by a bunch of guys for being gay. She lied at the hospital telling them she fell, thinking if she told the truth she would delay getting treated. She then refused to go to the police despite my best efforts to convince her to at least file a report so the police would know gay bashing was going on in the area, saying there was no point.
‘I cannot think of a reason other than internalized misogyny for the actions of the person you describe. The patriarchy is guileful and malicious in the bargains it forces on women.’
She just liked saying things for effect, somebody reported to me that this same girl thought paedophiles were super human. I think she had some weird Nietzchean thing going on.
I also believe that a lot of people don’t realize the extent to which another person can lie. Around this time (mid-ninetie) I was having a few conversations about rape and date rape, and there seemed to be a belief that a date rape was largely a misunderstanding, where both parties agree upon the chain of events but have conflicting perspectives. Interestingly during this same period another incident occurred which illustrates this:
Another girl at my job (we had a high turnover of young women) was only 19 and had been seeing a much older guy, platonically, as she wasn’t one to rush into anything. Anyway, one evening they were out and meant to be going somewhere and he said he just needed to stop at his flat and pick something up. Assuming that her friend was telling the truth she went with him up to his flat. Next thing she knows he’s coming out his bedroom naked, and clearly expecting some action. Fortunately for her he wasn’t a rapist, and after some unpleasantness she left and never saw him again. But the fact is if he had raped her instead just clumsily trying to coerce her, she would’ve had a very hard time in court given that she had willingly entered his home, and it would have been her word against his that he had used a false pretext with her.
LikeLike