On ‘false’ accusations of rape and other outrageous claims

I, for one, would like to meet a woman (or man) who had drunken (or sober) sex with someone, regretted it the next day, and then decided to try and prosecute that person for rape. We are often told that this happens, and that it accounts for all those failed rape prosecutions, but really, I’m deeply sceptical. Let’s take stock for a minute, shall we? What is involved in reporting a rape? -
a. First of all, you have to phone the police.
b. Next, you have to get the police to believe you, bother turning up to interview you, and do all that evidence-gathering, inquiry stuff. Tricky that.
c. Then you might (if you’re lucky) have to undergo a vaginal examination. We all know how much us gals enjoy our cervical smears.
d. At some point your friends will find out. If any of them know the person you are accusing, they will most certainly take his/her word that there was consent, over your claim that you were raped.
e. If it gets to court, people will automatically suspect you are lying. Especially if the person you are accusing seems like a nice young man/woman, has a job, knows about personal hygiene, has friends, and is in short, like most people, rather normal, and not a wild-eyed freak in a dirty trenchcoat with drool dribbling down his/her chin.
f. You will be cross-examined by the defence, who will ask you lots of intimate questions about your personal life. It will not be like on Oprah Winfrey.
g. The defence will have tracked down your past partners and other people who know you. They will have provided lots of information about your sexual practices and fantasies. If you had a sex life previous to the rape – or fantasised about having one – the judge and jury will think you are a slut, and assume that you consented to sex.
h. If you were drunk, on drugs, wearing a short skirt, agreed to go home with the accused, or in a gay club, the judge and jury will think you are a slut and assume you consented to sex.

Now, given the above, is there anyone in their right mind who would accuse someone of rape just because s/he regretted having sex with them in the morning? Surely on a par with those women we are told about who get pregnant so that they can get to the top of social housing lists. Yeah right, because pregnancy is such an easy option, doesn’t take an enormous toll on your body, give you backache, titache, bellyache, make you tired, give you morning sickness, turn you into a watermelon on cocktail sticks*, require you to undergo vast amounts of pain to push a baby out of your vagina, and then become a mother. Admittedly, I’m not in possession of any data. But if it should – shock horror – turn out that I’m wrong and women do get pregnant as a means of procuring a house, perhaps the thing to consider is how desperate they must be for a roof over their head. Oh hark at that, I’ve gone and got all bleeding-heartish and liberal on your ass.

And just in case you were wondering what prompted this little outburst, feel free to check out John Redwood MP’s wonderful addition to the blogosphere. As reported in the Guardian and the excellent Feminist Philosophers, Mr. Redwood criticises Labour for holding that date rape is on a par with stranger rape. He writes, ‘None of us want men to rape women, but there is a difference between a man using unreasonable force to assault a woman on the street, and a disagreement between two lovers over whether there was consent on one particular occasion when the two were spending an evening or a night together’. Yes, John Redwood, because that’s exactly what date rape is. Not when a man you met in the pub violently attacks you on the way home, or when a former boyfriend has anal sex with you when you are asleep at a party thrown by close friends. Maybe talk to some people who have been raped before throwing your prejudices around in public?

Oh, and one last thing, John. I know you’ve been moaning about how the left-wing press has twisted what you’ve said, and people are getting all hot under the collar without having read what you’ve written. So just for the record: yes, I know you said that rape is bad and should be punished. Our complaints are not to do with how you feel about rape, but about your understanding of who perpetrates ‘real’ rapes (strangers), and when they are perpetrated (in the street, using ‘unreasonable force’.)

*Cheers, Sylvia Plath.