After the election, a lot of us were rattled. My echo chamber of a Facebook feed reflected my feelings of hopelessness, fear and anger. Growing up in California and attending a so-called “liberal” university, most of my friends align themselves on the left side of the aisle, but there are a few who don’t share the same feelings as me about our new President-elect.
I refrained from engaging in most of the Facebook comment wars because I know how unlikely it is to change someone’s mind through social media. I accidentally started a huge argument over the Electoral College, but I bowed out before seven people and 56 comments embedded themselves on my post.
But the one place where I couldn’t hold my tongue, the one time I had to speak, was on a picture of a tweet shared by a friend. The tweet was originally made by user @Paxmee on Nov. 9 and reads, “Tell me again how rape and sexual assault allegations will ruin a man’s career” in reference to the various allegations levied against Trump.
Before I came along, a commenter had shared a link to the assault allegations at Duke University that were proven to be false. He had also argued that there are no negative consequences for the women who accuse men, but men face massive repercussions for crimes they didn’t even commit.
I put him in his place, or so I thought, but he replied to me, revealing that I was right all along. You can’t change someone’s mind with a Facebook comment. So here’s a newspaper article intended to give myself more credibility as I share all of the reasons why that commenter was wrong.
False accusations of sexual assault are rare. A study published in the Sage Journals reported that only about five percent of rape allegations are proven false. Fewer than half of all reported cases actually proceed, because in most cases, the accuser is not cooperative or an investigation is not made. The problem with sexual assault allegations is not that women are lying, it’s that people aren’t listening.
Women aren’t children trying to get their classmates in trouble. Women don’t cry rape to get attention.
Okay, Facebook commenter, let’s talk about how there are no negative consequences for women who make sexual assault accusations. Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that these women are lying, that they haven’t experienced the terrifying, traumatic, life-altering assaults they say they have. Let’s pretend they’ve just accused men for the hell of it. For the attention. To get the men jailed. Because they can.
Those women are going to be isolated. They’re going to be ignored, because rape culture permeates society, because people like you believe that women are liars. They’ll be told it was their fault because they were too drunk or too scantily clad or too alone or too pretty. They’ll be ousted by society, because sexual assault is something “othering.”
And you know what else? Those men they accused? They’ll very likely never go to trial. They’ll never be punished, because there’s no evidence. There isn’t enough evidence in almost half of all legitimate sexual assault accusations, so why would there be enough in the case of a false accusation? Your example, the Duke accusations? Congratulations, you found one example, from 2006, 10 years ago.
Find me more recent false rape allegations, and we’ll compare them side by side with the allegations that went to trial, and the allegations that were left alone. When your list is longer than my list, we can talk about how the criminal justice system benefits victimized women to such an extent that they choose to play the victim to reap the rewards.
Rape culture is, unfortunately, real and alive, and believe it or not, you’re part of it. When you argue that women lie about sexual assault, you’re part of rape culture. When you argue that you won’t believe a woman who claims to have been assaulted, you’re part of rape culture.
Rape is not a joke. I don’t care how many times you say “that test raped me.” Rape is not a joke.
I’m not saying that we should ignore the mantra of “innocent until proven guilty.” I’m not saying we should imprison the accused right after women have released their statements. I’m not even saying that women never lie about sexual assault.
I’m saying that we, as young people, as Americans, need to stand up for and with victims of sexual assault. We need to listen to the voices that our pervasive rape culture silences. We need to support, we need to believe and we need to pursue proper investigations. We should pay as much attention to rape accusations as TSA agents do to bomb threats at the airport.
Gillian Lelchuk is a junior Writing Seminars and Mathematics double major from Los Alamitos, Calif. She is the Opinions Editor.
