The myth about false rape reports

I really enjoyed the last book I read (title omitted to prevent spoilers, but feel free to ask for it in the comments or email me if you want to know) until I got to the "girl who cried wolf" part. In a nutshell, a lust-driven 15-year-old girl chases after a married man, who turns her down appropriately, and then she (falsely) accuses him of being involved with her, i.e. statutory rape.

I'm really, really tired of the false rape cliche in literature and film. In this case, her motives were essentially revenge. It comes up all the time-- a female is rejected/scorned/broken up with and so she decides to get back by falsely accusing the male of rape, or the female and male have sex and she regrets it later so she calls it rape. False rape really doesn't happen as often as so many people think it does. Studies conducted worldwide (and summarized in this issue of The Voice, a publication by The National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women) point to a figure of 2-8%.

That's it. It's not 41%, as suggested by the severely flawed yet often cited Kanin (1994) study. Additionally, false reports almost always fit the stereotype of a sexual assault, the kind in which a victim can remain most "blameless" under society's flawed notions of what is considered sexual assault. False reports are almost never allegations against someone the victim knows, almost never "date rape" stories that are so often dismissed as acts of vengeance or regret. Actual false rape reports read along the lines of a "classic" (and actually very rare) scenario, involving a stranger or vaguely described acquaintance who is never named and use of a weapon and/or serious physical injury. The "assault" will only have included penile-vaginal penetration and the victim will say she struggled and physically resisted to the utmost. Essentially, the story painted will cast the "victim" in the most best light possible, with the least blame placed upon her by society. False rape reports are made mostly by mentally or emotionally disturbed individuals.

So this whole "women cry rape for revenge all the time" thing is complete and utter nonsense, yet people continue to perpetuate this harmful myth. When someone (a very brave someone) comes forth to report sexual assault by someone they know, one of the most common reactions is to doubt it, to look for other possible motives the victim might have to lie. Why? When someone reports being mugged, most people assume s/he is being truthful. What makes sexual assault so different?

The prevalence of false rape stories in literature and the media serves to keep this myth alive. It is always severely disappointing to me when "the girl who cried wolf" is used as a cheap plot point. False rape reports are not as widespread as most people believe, and they are almost never the ones people think are false (i.e. acquaintance rapes).


PS- The article I linked to above is a very good, worthwhile read.

Rape Jokes, Part 3 -- Confronting People

I am mentally and emotionally burnt out from the last two days. It has been a constant cycle between trigger-induced numbness and seething anger that I have had to control enough to do three problem sets for school. While I was waiting for my organic chemistry lecture to start this evening, I thought I would turn my exhausting ordeal into something productive. So, since my recent experiences have told me that some people need help with this, welcome to:


How to tell if you are using the word "rape" appropriately in everyday discourse (A Guide For Dummies)

It's so simple anyone can follow it, I promise. It involves asking yourself one question.

Am I trying to be funny (edgy, witty, ironic, sarcastic, etc.)?


If you are, then your answer is no. No. NO. You are horribly abusing the term. Rape is not funny. You are not funny (or witty, or cool). Being offensive is not "cool." Contributing your ugly, unwanted, unneeded two cents to a culture that is already violence-insensitive and victim-shaming is not "cool." Triggering rape victims and reminding them of the horror they survived is not "cool." There is nothing about being an ignorant jerk that makes you cool or funny. Capice?

Now let's say you slipped up, made a rape joke, and got called out on it. Let's talk about your choices now.

a) Apologize and don't do it again. (No, don't just promise not to do it again-- actually don't. Ignorance isn't an excuse after the first time you get called out on it.)

b) Call the person who asked you not to do it "selfish" and accuse her of expecting the world to revolve around her.

c) Tell the person who asked you not to do it that it's a free country and you can do what you damn well please.

d) Say that you think they're funny and other people do too so you're going to keep making them anyway.

e) Delete the polite Facebook comment asking you to use a different analogy and then proceed to "like" every other joke about or reference to rape in the comments following the post.


You might be thinking, hm, the last four choices seem awfully specific and full of bitterness, and if so, you are quite correct. Those are all responses that I've personally received after asking someone (in person) to stop making rape jokes or (online) requesting that they delete a particular status and repost using a better analogy.

The situation described in choice (e) happened on Wednesday and really pissed me off. I have been struggling to sit with my feelings and still function like a normal person and go to class and do homework the last two days, even though inside I feel like a cold, barren tundra filled only with painful memories and numbness or a raging inferno of anger and desire-to-introduce-person-to-my-fist-or-other-forms-of-pain-equaling-what-I-feel-every-time-someone-makes-a-g*ddamn-rape-joke. It's really hard to do that for two days. And it's all because of a careless comment made by someone who thought he was being cool and edgy, and the immature response to my polite request.

I sent a message to that person that reads as follows:

Dear X,

Yesterday you made a status update that I found to be offensive and in poor taste. I left a comment politely asking you to use a different analogy that would not trigger or trivialize rape victims. I was not alone in the sentiment-- two of your friends clicked "like" on my request. Yet your response was to delete my comment and "like" every other comment on your post that made a rape joke or reference.

I found that to be a hurtful and immature response. If you can find something funny about pain, shame, and terror, please enlighten me, because I just don't see it. You're probably thinking "it was a joke-- no one gets raped by elephants." Please remember that even careless and casual references you might make can affect people, even if it's not the exact situation and you think you're being edgy or witty or funny. Rape is not funny. Period. This insensitivity is one of the reasons we live in a culture that trivializes rape and shames victims.


Sincerely,
Me

If he writes anything back, I will post part II of this saga.


The point of this post (apart from letting me rant) was to ask you to help spread the word that rape jokes are inappropriate. Not only are they seriously not funny, but they are also hurtful to people who have already gone through more trauma than anyone ever should. Please, if you hear or see someone use "rape" in anything but a serious and sensitive context to mean nonconsensual sex, call them out on it. As demonstrated in this unrelated but still very awesome video, most people who have these attitudes are ignorant and/or cowards. If they were simply ignorant, maybe they'll realize the error of their ways. If they're cowards, then maybe they'll stop if enough people confront them. Either way, a changed mind or a shut mouth would do the world good.

Preaching from a pedestal is easy, isn't it?

I've started not wearing a watch unless I have to. It's very interesting to not be so caught up in the urgency of time anymore, instead just drifting along during the day, judging time by how light it is outside, and then realizing it doesn't actually really matter what time it is. Because of that, I just realized it's January 18. Happy half-birthday to me?

I've had a lot on my mind since graduation has given me boatloads of free time. However, I seem to be less good at regularly writing about it. There have been a few developments on the relationship front and the advocacy front (i.e. volunteer work with a crisis center), which I think I will talk about in future separate posts.

I was feeling ambitious tonight and planned on writing at least one post about trauma and relationships, but a few minutes ago I just ran into a post on a friend's journal that left me feeling emotionally overwhelmed and a bit triggered. My friend is strongly pro-life, with the view that abortion is murder and therefore unacceptable in all cases. That I can respect-- I talked a little about my views on that in this previous post. What irks me is specifically the "it's for your own good" argument. There are several studies that present findings that many women who experience an abortion develop depression and anxiety and other mental conditions. When I am in a calmer and less triggered mood, I will read those studies and return to this blog with my analysis. However, just for right now, I am going to approach this issue from an entirely personal perspective, academic impartial analysis be damned.

If I had become pregnant from either of the rapes I experienced, particularly the second one, it would have killed me to carry the baby to term. I mean that not only figuratively but also quite possibly literally. I would have spent all nine months hating the baby growing inside me. I had enough problems with harmful and self-destructive behavior without having part of my body act as a constant reminder of what happened. If just the memory of the event and later the aftermath with people's ignorance and apathy was enough to drive me to physically hurt myself, what do you think having his baby inside me would have done? I think it very well could have led to me killing myself, and thus the baby as well.

It is appallingly arrogant and presumptuous of anyone to badger, coerce, guilt-trip, or force a rape victim to carry the baby to term if she believes it is not in her own best interests to do so. Only misguided arrogance could make someone believe he or she knows better than the victim what she should do with her own body. In other words, the "for your own good" argument makes me want to slug someone. It's quite easy to wave around "scientific studies" and preach that the victim will regret it if she chooses to have an abortion. However, I wonder how many of those people would actually have the guts to say that directly to a traumatized rape victim.

It makes me wonder what would have happened had I become pregnant after the rape. I want to know how many people would have tried to guilt-trip me into carrying the baby to term. I want to know which of my friends would have dared tell me to my face that it was for my own good. With the way things actually went, already most of the people I knew wanted nothing to do with me and my trauma and my struggle to heal. How many people would have tried to coerce me into making a decision that would directly contradict my understanding of how I could best heal and then left me to my own struggles? The apathy I faced from "friends" was bad enough. No one would have wanted to deal with the extreme self-loathing that would have ensued had I been forced to carry his baby for nine months. I had enough problems with starving myself for days, standing into the cold (yes, New Hampshire winter, snow and all) with no protection, and physically marking and scarring myself. [Self-destructive behavior: another post for another day.]

I felt so dirty after both times I was raped. Think of the shower scenes you see in movies after someone has been so irrevocably violated (e.g. in The Lives of Others). I felt like I could never be clean again. What genius could think that having my rapist's baby inside my body for nine whole months is going to help me heal? How much more of a constant physical reminder of the trauma that already plays itself over and over in my head do I need? How can you possibly tell me that you know better than me what will help me heal-- and better yet, use that as justification to try to prevent me from making any kind of choice whatsoever?


Dear pro-lifers:

Feel free to try to educate rape victims about the potential mental health risks of aborting their rapist's baby. I support the concept of fair and impartial education. However, you have absolutely no right whatsoever to take away the woman's choice by shutting down abortion clinics or making them unaffordable. Furthermore, if you ever intimidate, coerce, or guilt-trip a woman into carrying the baby against her will, you are no better than her rapist.


No love,
Me

Dealing with Privileged People

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

This link was shared with me by a wonderful friend of mine in response to my last post. It educates the Privileged Person on how to derail any conversation with a Marginalised Person in the most arrogant, ignorant way possible. It includes tactical gems like:

You're Taking Things Too Personally

Similar to You’re Being Overemotional and yet with particular uses of its own. You see, when you say “you’re taking things too personally” you demonstrate your ignorance that these issues ARE personal for them!

That’s highly insulting and is sure to rub anyone up the wrong way. That you're already refusing to consider their reality is giving them a pretty good indication of how the conversation is going to degress, yet the natural human need for understanding will probably compel them to try and reason with you, or at least to point you in the direction of some educational resources that will help you gain insight into their experiences.

By denying the conversation is personal for them, you also reveal your own detachment: there’s really nothing at stake for you in getting into this argument, you’re just doing it for kicks. They will be all too aware of this, and it will begin to work on their emotions, preparing them nicely for the next steps you will take them through.


You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact

If you really want to excel as a Privileged Person® you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above Lived Experience©. You can pretend you are oblivious to the fact most studies have been carried out by Privileged People® and therefore carry inherent biases, and insist that the Marginalised Person™ produce “Evidence” of what they‘re claiming.

Their Lived Experience© does not count as evidence, for it is subjective and therefore worthless.

This is very important because it works in two ways: 1) it communicates to the Marginalised Person™ that their personal testament is disbelieved and of no value, causing them great hurt; and 2) it once again reinforces your privilege.

You see, the very capacity to conduct studies, collect data and write detached “fact-based” reports on it, is an inherently privileged activity. The ability to widely access this material and research it exhaustively is also inherently privileged. Privileged People® find it easier to pursue these avenues than Marginalised People™ and so once again you are reminding them you possess this privilege and reinforcing that the world at large values a system of analysis that excludes them, and values it over what their actual personal experience has been.

The process of valuing “fact” over “opinion” is one very much rooted in preserving privilege. Through this methodology, the continued pain and othering of millions of people can be ignored because it’s supported by “opinion” (emotion) and not “fact” (rationality).

It is also important because it calls on the Marginalised Person™ to do something that is simply impossible, and that is summate the entirety of their group’s experiences into a definitive example. It is important that you establish this precedent for the next couple of steps.

Believe it or not, people--my peers, no less--actually do use these kinds of tactics whenever I bring up topics related to sexual assault and PTSD (that is, if they even deign to listen to me in the first place).

Way to go, Privileged People!

Once Upon A Time, There Was A Bully.

There's someone I hate more than the man who raped me. This person has done his very best to insult and degrade me each time I've had to tell him about the traumas I've been through. He was in a position of power over me each time-- once as a significant other, once as an officer of the fraternity to which we both belonged. He has spouted every kind of vitriol ranging from accusing me of liking it to asking me if it was "really rape, not like the last time" which was also rape, just one he didn't believe, to telling me to keep quiet because if word that a rape occurred in our fraternity, it would ruin our reputation on campus and no one would want to come to our house anymore.

I remember that conversation well. It was a conversation I was forced to have, as he wielded his officership over me and demanded to know what had happened. His words bit deep into my memory, reminding me of the traumatic few days that followed the rape. I vividly remember the tears of anger and frustration that stung my eyes as he lounged so nonchalantly, so arrogantly in the chair across from me. I remember telling myself that he and I have a rocky history, that he despises me-- a fact that he declares publicly to anyone who cares to listen-- which means that I shouldn't take his words to heart, but I can't help it, and the words sink in anyway.

Over the course of the next few months, my fraternity does nothing to prove him wrong or hold him accountable as an officer for trying to silence a rape victim. When I'm not crying my heart out in pain or lost and dissociated for hours on end, I seethe and I rage at the apathy that has alienated me so. In many respects he represents all that was wrong with how my fraternity handled the situation, and even much of what is wrong in the world. Victim-blaming, victim-shaming, ignorance, and the arrogance to believe he is always right-- these are the very seeds that sow rape-culture.

I cannot think of him without the strongest mental repulsion, stronger than that against thoughts about my rape or my rapist himself. I still see him because he is still here. We tend to ignore each other as much as possible. However, today he said something so dismissive and minimizing of my story that the dam broke and my pent up rage abruptly came back. So I did the unthinkable: I informed him that I wanted to speak to him.

I confronted him tonight. I told him how it was absolutely not okay to tell a rape victim to not share her story because it would ruin the reputation of the house. The same faint sneer I am so used to seeing appeared on his face, his expression of total indifference. His claim was that he was thinking solely of legal liability and being sued by the rapist. Yeah, right-- that's total bullshit, because his words to me a year and a half ago were that if news of this got out on campus, people would no longer come by our house and we as a fraternity would be ruined.

He claims he was acting as a high-ranking officer in the house and doing what he thought was appropriate. But I confronted him about his well-publicized dislike (or rather, "completely lack of respect," as I have the honor of being one of the few people he says he has ever lost respect for in his life) of me, and if he would have acted differently had the survivor not been me. His answer? Yes. So first he claims to be acting as an officer of the house, but then admits that it was really about his personal feelings about me. Fantastic! So I informed him that I was glad he would not be so misogynistic against other women and he stalked out of the room.

I was intensely riled up after that fail of a conversation. I raged and I cried and I dug my nails so hard into my palm that I left angry red crescents in my skin. I don't know exactly what it is that bothers me-- the immaturity, the arrogance, the refusal to believe any part of his belief is wrong, the injustice of it all. He actively despises me, a fact I have been informed of repeatedly by his royal highness himself, and has pretty much done everything he can to bully me, guilt me, and hurt me. I absolutely hate him more than I hate the man who raped me. Somehow, though, he remains a welcome member in the house with whom my friends interact on a regular basis. He saves his vitriol only for me, in such a way that no one really believes me or cares enough to intervene. When I vent to them, one moment people are nodding sympathetically, and the next they are conversing friendlily with him.

I feel alienated, even more so than when I was struggling through my intense PTSD last year. People were genuinely sympathetic then, and they shared my anger and hatred of my rapist. It was too easy to hate the man who raped me, as he was someone people were prone to disliking anyway for his personality and prior behavior, someone who lived in another state and would never come back. People united behind hating my rapist; that was the extent of the effort they were willing to put into supporting me. But asking them to judge a current brother of the house for his behavior was too much for me to ask, apparently.

And so I try to deal with my frustration on my own. I don't understand how to handle this; I don't understand how to let this go.

Abortion Of A Pregnancy Resulting From Rape

This video was posted on Facebook by someone I knew growing up. (For what it's worth, she is devoutly Christian, married, and pregnant.)

This video made me sputter and flail angrily.





Great. So after that fantastically guilt-trippy wank about "not making the child a victim," a woman in that audience is totally going to go talk to the pastor about how her life was just ruined by a man. Rape is a crime of power, and clearly being guilt-tripped by someone you trust into keeping a child you never wanted from a man you didn't want to be involved with as a reminder of something you never asked for is a GOOD IDEA.

*slow clap* Wow. Giant massive idiot wankery. I like how he framed his entire answer in lots of fluffy "but I really actually care about your feelings!"

It's late, I have an exam tomorrow morning, and so I should go to bed, but this is the first of probably several posts that will express my HULK SMASHY RAGE over this. I will try to be more coherent and less sputteringly angry in the future.