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> If we were to compare this statistic honestly with what women experience, we'd find that women experience sexual assault at a much higher rate than men are fa

> If we were to compare this statistic honestly with what women experience, we'd find that women experience sexual assault at a much higher rate than men are falsely accused of it. It's hard for me to see this as a 'privilege' we afford "young women". This is a related, but separate problem. I'm not personally a fan of Injustice Olympics so I'm not going to compare the two and see which is worse; they're both terrible and they both need to be solved (as much as any such societal problems can be "solved"), but OP was specifically referring to false accusations against men which, granted, are asymmetrically punished. Consider the punishment a man receives when he is found to have sexually harassed a woman (both societally and legally) vs. the punishment a woman receives when she is discovered to have falsely accused someone (again, both societally and legally).

claudiawerner 6y ago
>This is a related, but separate problem. I think they're both side effects of how sexual injustice and rape is managed and treated by the justice system, and they concern violations of the same laws. However, the fact that to my knowledge false accusations are dealt with under other laws (relating to perjury, lying to law enforcement, fabrication of evidence), it's a lot easier to see why falsa accusations are prosecuted as they are, and why the law in this area focuses more on the justice system more than it does the effects on the accused. Compare to libel and slander cases which occupy the other end of the spectrum. >specifically referring to false accusations against men which, granted, are asymmetrically punished The person who has been accused has no choice but to go through the legal system to fight it. I'm not sure how we can compare the pre-judicial offences when, for example, an instance of rape may never reach the courts at all. And this is all on the assumption that rape laws both fulfill and properly execute their intenitions, with an appropriate meaning of consent, which I no longer believe to be true. In terms of frequency of the acts themselves, rape may be equally or less frequently punished (speaking proportionally) than false accusations are. This is because many rapes (rape defined according to how the law defines it) never reach the justice system. Almost all false accusations must go through the justice system, because the accusations are almost always reported to through the legal system (this is how they have their social effect). The accuser will be prompted to go through the justice system at every turn to prove their case. >vs. the punishment a woman receives when she is discovered to have falsely accused someone (again, both societally and legally). Firstly I want to question if this is empirically true or only folk observation/intuition. Are people judged to have falsely accused in a court of law treated so much better? How do we know how people respond to it? Generally, we all lie, and sometimes to get our own way. I'm not justifying egregious and life-ruining lies at all, and they should be punished - but lying is seen as a whole lot less serious, or at least sufficiently qualitatively different, for people to react in different ways to the matter. A rape may be seen as pathological, while a lie may only be seen as extreme. There are quite a few injustices (including ones I think are not dealt with correctly, or there shouldn't be a law at all), but some are greater than others (or perceived to be), as a matter of quality or scale. Rape is both more frequent, even though there is some disagreement if it is more serious (at least in all cases). Generally, we protect more against higher probability lower penalty events than we do against much lower probability debatably higher penalty events - and the legal system reflects that.
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claudiawerner 6y ago

>This is a related, but separate problem. I think they're both side effects of how sexual injustice and rape is managed and treated by the justice system, and they concern violations of the same laws. However, the fact that to my knowledge false accusations are dealt with under other laws (relating to perjury, lying to law enforcement, fabrication of evidence), it's a lot easier to see why falsa accusations are prosecuted as they are, and why the law in this area focuses more on the justice system more than it does the effects on the accused. Compare to libel and slander cases which occupy the other end of the spectrum. >specifically referring to false accusations against men which, granted, are asymmetrically punished The person who has been accused has no choice but to go through the legal system to fight it. I'm not sure how we can compare the pre-judicial offences when, for example, an instance of rape may never reach the courts at all. And this is all on the assumption that rape laws both fulfill and properly execute their intenitions, with an appropriate meaning of consent, which I no longer believe to be true. In terms of frequency of the acts themselves, rape may be equally or less frequently punished (speaking proportionally) than false accusations are. This is because many rapes (rape defined according to how the law defines it) never reach the justice system. Almost all false accusations must go through the justice system, because the accusations are almost always reported to through the legal system (this is how they have their social effect). The accuser will be prompted to go through the justice system at every turn to prove their case. >vs. the punishment a woman receives when she is discovered to have falsely accused someone (again, both societally and legally). Firstly I want to question if this is empirically true or only folk observation/intuition. Are people judged to have falsely accused in a court of law treated so much better? How do we know how people respond to it? Generally, we all lie, and sometimes to get our own way. I'm not justifying egregious and life-ruining lies at all, and they should be punished - but lying is seen as a whole lot less serious, or at least sufficiently qualitatively different, for people to react in different ways to the matter. A rape may be seen as pathological, while a lie may only be seen as extreme. There are quite a few injustices (including ones I think are not dealt with correctly, or there shouldn't be a law at all), but some are greater than others (or perceived to be), as a matter of quality or scale. Rape is both more frequent, even though there is some disagreement if it is more serious (at least in all cases). Generally, we protect more against higher probability lower penalty events than we do against much lower probability debatably higher penalty events - and the legal system reflects that.

deleted 6y ago
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