UK: 'False rape belittles victims'

... it also places men in jeopardy as well, of their reputations and freedom. But guess that isn't that important, is it?

What they state is a half-truth: it does affect real victims of rape in a negative way.

But it severely affects the lives of the men falsely accused. But we all know that men don't matter in this issue--just the women folk. Women are the center of the universe, or so it seems.

I won't say I told you so, but...

This argument - that false rape accusations are only bad because they harm real victims - is an example of what I said before, that women only care about these issues insofar as they affect women. If it could be somehow proved that false accusations of rape have no negative impact on genuine victims women wouldn't care less. It would only be men being deprived of their liberty so, well no harm done eh ladies?

Bullshit. It does not harm female rape victims in the slightest. It fuels the rampant rape fears and paranoia that drive gynocentric politics and hatred of men.

actually, it does, with the help of the feminist DV groups. Those false reports end up padding the "reports without conviction" statistics. Feminist DV groups then point to that very statistic to say "rape isn't taken seriously by police, not all rapists go to jail" (clearly a dishonest picture, but when has feminism ever been accused of being honest). True victims then begin to believe they have no hope going to police and so endure silently, never getting justice.

I personally hold the DV industry even more accountable for this harm as the false accusers themselves (whose greatest harm is done to the men they accuse, if a man is accused), because the DV industry both protects the false accusers that pad their stats, as well as promote those known false accusers as true victims who didn't get justice.

So while I don't think false accuser's greatest victims are true victims, I do believe they do do them some degree of harm. But I will agree with others in that the harm done to men is far too often ignored.

@Kratch, I over reacted a little bit. Rape paranoia does hurt women intensely, essentially by making women believe that sexual assault is the worst thing that could ever happen to them, worse than a gruesome murder. This in turn deepens the psychological pain of real victims.

I don't know if it really lowers the number of real victims coming forward. I am skeptical of the idea that it's even a real problem, as there is a clear conflict of interest with political groups who want more laws and more funding for their cause. Yet, it's only common sense that some women have better coping mechanisms than others and not every rape as traumatic as others, so long story short is that we shouldn't actually expect every single woman to come forward. In the meantime, there are tons of violent crimes where the victims are incredibly unwilling to come forward and sometimes the police have trouble convincing a witness to testify. These crimes are usually against men and these crimes greatly outnumber rape while causing potentially just as much if not more harm.

"I don't know if it really lowers the number of real victims coming forward."

I would argue that, when people who are claiming to be working in rape victims best interests are saying "you won't be believed" and "they will make you live it over and over again for nothing, the attacker will go free anyways" and other similar statements, then follow up by showing padded statistics, they are very likely to scare off (some) real victims who would have otherwise come forward. As I said above, false accusers alone wouldn't do this, it's those false accusers being used to pad numbers so rape hysteria industry folks can justify their existence.

Otherwise, I don't disagree with much of what you said, and I need to reiterate, I was only questioning your assertion false accusers don't hurt real victims. I spoke nothing of how many should or shouldn't report, or about other crimes reporting rate.