Rape is universally condemned. Actually, wait no scratch that, there are some people who still think men can have sex with women whenever they want, regardless of the women's choice in the matter.
But we're not here to discuss that.
We're here to discuss about LYING about raping, and before I begin, I would like to direct you to 2 links.
1) News story, followed by the video I heard it from (it only talks about that story from after 5:15 mark)
2) "I was raped" "No, we had sex"
While rape has always been clear in definition when it comes to "violent rape", or the first kind of rapey non-consensual sex we think about where a lady walks alone in a dark alley and a man forces himself on her. That, in and of itself, is very hard to misinterpret. The fuzzy definition comes with "sexual assault between non-consenting people." Assault means that there is an element of physical violence or at least the threat of physical violence ("if you struggle, I'll stab you"). That definition however, does not encompass cases like date rape where one is not consenting but there's no violence because she's unconscious from the drugs in her drinks. So some countries broaden the definition to simply non-consensual sex. Simple enough.
Before I get to that minefield, let's tackle the issue of blatant lying in rape accusations. Currently, our system is completely tilted in the woman's favor. It has been documented that men get up to 10 times more severe punishments than woman in cases of similar severity. And it's easy to see why. Think about a man who molested 10 kids. You get pretty disgusted with that scenario, but when a woman molests 10 kids, it does not come off as revolting. So our natural instincts already fail us in this regard. (Note: this is a completely biased/unscientific poll. This is a completely fallacious conclusion stemming from a fallacious train of thought)
Personally, I'm okay with men being treated worse. Call it payback, if you will. What really rustles my jimmies is the assumption of guilt on the father. The fact that when men become accused for raping women, it takes a ridiculous amount of convincing to prove his innocence. In fact, accusing men of rape is actually a threat used by women, particularly when there are no eyewitnesses or alibis (i.e when the 2 people are in the same room or house alone.) In the first case, it wasn't well investigated and police simply took the girl's word for it.
The fact that she would not be charged for this is... I don't even know what or how to feel about this. The official reason for this is not to scare away potential victims from reporting the crime, which by the way is a real problem, particularly in Japan where as many as a quarter (completely unverified statistic) do not report such incidences out of shame or fear. That "sort of" makes sense but then again, shouldn't there be less stigma for reporting cases. This entire issue is very fuzzy and while I don't think she should be free from charges, the fact that she was only 11 should be considered as well as the fact that there will be no restitution (compensation) for the father.
The second case shows more clearly the idea of non-consensual. When women do that, it not only "makes it hard for real rape victims to be believed, but also insults women who have really experienced rape. If one changes their mind after sex, does that mean that the sex was non-consensual. Wouldn't that be the same as failing to get a degree after studying in college for a few years and then telling people you never attended it? At least that never hurt anyone's reputation. When the woman started to regret sex that night, she cannot call it rape anymore.
Rape is a very serious issue and it cannot be used as a weapon or an excuse. I'm so messed up by this whole issue that I can't even formulate my sentence english like.
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