I want to clarify that, before anyone reads this post, I'm not attacking anyone or saying women have it easy in this country. They're certainly in a shittier place than men, but there's a few thing with this OP that need to be cleared up. In fact, before you read ANYTHING in this post, you should watch this video to see where I'm coming from.
Sexual harassment and assault is a very serious crime, and, while it can be perpetrated by anyone, to anyone, there's no doubt that, due to a multitude of social and cultural factors, sexual assault and harassment is largely perpetrated by men against women. According to RAINN, women account for 90% of adult rape victims and 82% of juvenile rape victims. 1 in 6 American women will experience attempted or completed rape at some point in her life.
The misconception behind this is pretty simple, and is actually the one I have an issue with personally. Yes, currently women account for a significant portion of rape victims. However, the reason for this is
bullshit. A Majority of states actually refuse to recognize the idea that women can rape men. These states only specify rape as being "forcible penetration using a sexual organ," which if you know about the human body, isn't really possible for women. Due to this, and the fact that there's absolutely no kind of support group or out reach involving male rape victims, means male rape victims are virtually unreported. You know what happened to my male friend that was drugged and raped? He called a rape hotline because he felt he needed help. They gave him the address for a local support group. He arrived to find a support group......For men that had abused their partners and wanted to stop.
For the vast majority of women, this knowledge is something that hangs over us constantly. I'm not trying to be overdramatic here. 1 in 6 American women.
This statistic gets thrown around a lot, and people tend to not know where it comes from. I'll the video, but I'll go ahead and define the notes. This statistic is misquoted quite often as meaning multiple things from "raped," "sexually assaulted," and "sexual harassment." The statistic itself comes from a phone survey of cold-calling women and asking them questions such as, "Have you ever had sex while inuder the influence of alcohol?" If you answered "yes," they you were categorized as, "having been raped," regardless of any sort of context for that answer. This is utterly ridiculous, because anyone over the age of 21 who has had sex, has probably had sex while inebriated. I'm not going to go terribly into detail here because I have a video that can do that for me, and I'm pretty shit at articulating my points.
And I can't speak for others here, but living with the threat of harassment and assault hanging over my head constantly, there is nothing more disappointing and infuriating than coming online, to a supposedly progressive forum, and finding that threads about sexual assault are almost universally overrun with discussions of the danger of false rape accusations, how women should stay silent, how they can't be believed. I've seen some posters claim that they will never believe a white woman's claim of sexual harassment/assault because of cases like Emmet Till.
Do you know why these kind of discussions get overrun with worries about false rape accusations? Because most most of us aren't rapists. The current number of incarcerated criminals in the united states is 0.7% of the population. Even if we multiply that number be five times, and assume everyone of them is male, you're talking about less than 10% of the male population. So
assuming every criminal is a male rapist we're looking at only 10% of the male population. With that absolutely bullshit statistic in mind, guess what most males are worried about? We aren't worried about how to not rape, because we aren't pieces of shit, we're worried about accidentally doing the wrong thing and getting accused of a heinous deed. Which, if you keep up with the news, is about equivalent to a summary execution.
In some ways, I get it. The majority demographic of this forum skews male, and while, yes, men do face sexual violence, it is not nearly to the same degree as women. RAINN states 1 in 33 men will suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes, as opposed to 1 in 6 women. A man walks down an empty street at night, he's probably more concerned about getting mugged than raped. And I think that, because for most men this is not a constant threat hanging over them, they are unable to empathise with women on this point. Because while yes, false rape accusations do happen, and yes, they are terrible, to respond with skepticism to every allegation is disingenuous at best. Imagine reading threads full of men talking about how they won't be alone in a room with a female coworker, because "one false accusation is all it takes", even though millions of women who have suffered sexual violence have never seen and will never see justice.
Here we have that aforementioned statistic come up. Are women raped more than men? I'm absolutely god damn sure of it. But what I want to ask is: Is women being raped an endemic, or does it stem from certain people being
massive sacks of shit? If a man and a woman both get mugged in a dark alleyway, the woman is clearly more likely to get sexually assaulted. But that isn't indicative of the male population, that's indicative of the pieces of shit waiting in a dark alley way for a victim. It's like the push for colleges to hold "anti-rape seminars." The people you're reaching with that kind of shit are maybe 1 out of every 100. Those rape cases where the man was just completely unaware that he was pushing a boundary are pretty freaking rare. Most men are intelligent enough to recognize the word "no," and those that don't stop are usually making a conscious decision.
Imagine being a woman--perhaps one who has suffered sexual harassment or assault--coming into these threads, and seeing all these posts about false rape accusations and lying women. It tells me, "I don't believe women." It tells me, "I believe all women are spiteful enough to falsely accuse a man of rape over the smallest insult." It tells me, "I have no empathy for women." It hurts, it does, and it's part of what drove so many women away from GAF, near the end.
If you are worried about this happening,
you are in the wrong website. This is not a website for survivors of sexual assault. This is a video game forum. By posting stuff like that, you are opening yourself up to the opinion of anyone interested in playing a video game.
These are not the people that feel care about your feelings, these are people that care about videogames. If you need a place to talk about whatever terrible experiences you have with no critique, you need to alt+f4 right the fuck out of here and find a legitimate support group instead of this place. Because while I'm never going to make any heinous accusations that you "deserved it" or some terrible shit like that, I'm also not a female who has been a victim of sexual assault, and me and 90% of this forum aren't going to have being a support group in mind when you talk about it. We are not your online therapist, we're a bunch of assholes that migrated from [website redacted]. At this point, I'm going to end this point on the final paragraph from your post, because I feel it's important that you get the last word in, not me, because this
is an important issue, despite whatever I might say.
So all I'm asking, really, is when you see a thread about sexual assault allegations, before posting, just stop and
think. Think about the 1 in 6 American women, and millions more across the world, who have experienced or will experience sexual violence at some point in our lives. Think about the constant fear women experience, knowing that there's a huge chance of us being raped, or harassed, or assaulted, and a tiny chance of us ever seeing justice. Think about whether we would really be willing, en masse, to subject ourselves to abuse, and threats, and scrutiny, all for the sake of... what? A small chance of money? Attention? It's not worth it, I promise you that. Our lives are hard enough already.
Thanks for reading.
(RAINN statistics:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics)
