Fraternizing With The Enemy
by John J. Xenakis

 

Rape

How Do Rapists Get Away With Doing What They Do?

Rapists exhibit a range of violence, depending on their own motivations and history. The most dangerous is the "anger retaliatory rapist," who is furious at women for real or imagined wrongs, and lashes out periodically by raping a woman victim and often killing her afterwards. However, it's more common for rapists to simply threaten violence, or to employ a small amount of violence, just enough to get his victim to comply sexually.

In most cases, a rapist is a skilled con artist. Women love him because he's so charming, which gives him the ability to convince a woman to be alone with him so he can victimize her. It's typical for rapists to attend rape prevention seminars or read detective magazines, to learn what techniques police use to catch rapists.

How Frequently Do Women Lie About or Mis-Identify Rapists?

Unfortunately, false and mistaken accusations of rape are not uncommon. Four to seven percent of all rape charges are simply lies -- brought by women either seeking attention for themselves or to get even with a man for some real or imagined wrong.

When a woman is raped by a stranger and subsequently identifies the rapist, 25-30% of the time she identifies the wrong man. (This is actually not a surprising figure: Over 25% of eyewitness identifications in all crimes are wrong.)

Many men who were wrongly identified and jailed as rapists in the 80s are now being freed from jail as they use newly developed DNA technology to prove that they could not possible have committed the crimes of which they were convicted.

What's The Feminist Position On Rape?

Feminists and women activists, seeking additional funding for social workers, rape counselors and counseling centers, frequently wildly exaggerate the incidence of rape. The most famous of these exaggerations is the claim that one in four girls gets raped in college, even though the actual rape incidence is a small fraction of 1%. It's not uncommon for researchers to receive pressure or threats to force them to report much a higher incidence of rapes than actually occur.

Most feminist rape policy has the side effect of harming real rape vicims by making them less credible.

In order to further inflate rape statistics, feminists use a variety of arguments to claim that ordinary consensual sex is sometimes rape. Some feminists claim that any sex is rape unless the woman initiates sex, and does so out of desire. Others claim that any consensual sex between a male boss and female employee is "constructive rape," since the employee has no choice. (We don't hear this so much any more since the Clinton sex scandals occurred.) Another claim is that consensual sex is rape if the woman has had even a single glass of wine, since the alcohol makes the woman incapable of giving meaningful consent to sex.

Feminists use such arguments to inflame supporters and generate monetary contributions and government funding of feminist counselors, but these arguments also trivialize rape, and make the real rape victim less believable, and more likely to have her claims of rapes challenged.

Finally, feminists destroy the credibility of real rape victims by claiming that rape is a "political crime," used by men to keep women down. For example, feminist Marilyn French claims (without evidence) that rape is "normal," and that it's "so automatic is society's acceptance of male rapists as a fact of life that journalists often conceal this form of male predation." Remarks like these, which are very common among feminists, imply that rape is not even a real crime (since political crimes are not real crimes), and further hurt real rape victims.

My view is that real rape victims have been terribly hurt by false and exaggerated feminist claims, and that women's organizations should reverse direction and start treating rape as a serious crime, rather than just a fundraising tool.

What Happens To Women Who Lie About Rape?

This situation is made even worse by prosecutors who refuse to prosecute women who make malicious false charges of rape, thus creating the impression that a woman looking for vengeance can make a false charge of rape essentially "for free."

Once again, it's real rape victims who suffer. Since a woman who makes a false rape accusation, even one that destroys a man's life, is simply forgiven and sent on her way, she makes it appear that all rape claims are false. A man accused of rape can simply say, "This is just like the situation with Jane Smith two years ago. She made wild rape accusations that turned out to be false, and no one even punished her. Women are always making false rape claims, and the one against me is no different."


Copyright © 1986-2003 by John J. Xenakis