False Rape Accusations and Rape Culture

[Odin2005]

Ran into this on another message board:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/17/false-rape-accusations-and-rape-culture

SNIP...

Both rape and rape accusations are products of the roles assigned by rape culture. In the traditional seduction scenario, a woman is expected to not desire to have sex, and to only submit after the man has successfully coerced her into submission. When the preferred model for consensual sex looks a hell of a lot like rape, an array of fucked-up scenarios are inevitable: the woman never wanted to fuck the guy, refuses to submit, and is raped; the woman submits to the man’s coercion in order to avoid other negative consequences (like being raped); the woman had desired the sex all along, but must defend her femininity by saying that she had been coerced into sex. Thankfully, a good deal of modern men and women reject these antiquated ideas, but they’re far from being banished from the sexual landscape. Especially when that landscape involves four men, one woman, and freshman year of college.

And yet, even the people who care most about false rape accusations seem to find ways to keep rape culture going strong. In his coverage of the case, Men’s News Daily editor Paul Elam writes:

>>>"In what has become a more or less common turn of events, the female Hofstra University student that accused five men,
>>>including one classmate, of gang raping her in a school dormitory bathroom has recanted the charges. That’s legal and
>>>media speak for admitting she cheapened herself by taking on five men willingly on a men’s room floor and lied about it
>>>later out of what little capacity for shame she had."

Elan admits that even if the woman hadn’t accused five men of raping her, she still would have “cheapened herself” by having sex with the men “willingly.” Meanwhile, the four released men in the case carry no such group-sex stigma when they pose triumphantly outside the jailhouse doors. In case you’re interested, it gets worse.

This is exactly what I am talking about with regards to fucked up memes about sex as conquest and exploitation