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Wednesday 25 November 2009

Concerned about rape

No no - nothing's happened to me. I'm still reading Steve Moxon's book - The Woman Racket and I'm starting to get annoyed. In two consecutive chapters he has demolished domestic violence and turned it into a wholly female on male crime and stated that anything up to 70% of rape allegations are false and that no one suffers serious after effects from being raped.

I fully accept women are not the only 'victims' of domestic violence and that men probably don't report it when they should for fear of ridicule. I also don't like the plans announced today to teach children that domestic violence is wrong but only when it comes to beating up women and children They should be taught that all violence is wrong - not just male on female violence.

As for rape - I know there have been several cases recently where women have been jailed for false allegations but it seems the author's definition of false is any case which doesn't result in a conviction and I have real problems with this. He also says if there are no signs of violence then it wasn't rape. Which does not square with anything women are told about self defence - if he's stronger than you don't struggle as you could end up dead or seriously injured. Better be raped and alive than dead - which seems like common sense to me.

He's also saying that the justice system is skewed against men in rape cases because they can't now bring in a woman's previous sexual history. In spite of this only 6% of cases result in a conviction - a result, I would say, of a jury trying to make up its mind beyond reasonable doubt about the defendant's guilt when it's often a case of one person's word against the other's. This to me is not a justice system unfairly biased against men. I do think that there ought to be anonymity for both - or neither - until after the trial.

The book concerned started off well with much evidence cited to back up his conclusions but the last couple of chapters seem to contain a lot of conclusions not backed up by verifiable data. He does talk briefly about male rape but doesn't seem so keen to suggest any of the cases which get to trial are false allegations. Which of course may be correct. I can understand why male rape could be more traumatic than female because many heterosexual men seem to be somewhat homophobic. But I don't think this should be used to suggest that women are not adversely affected by rape.

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