Rape is now guilty before proven innocent.

I think it's great that a man who's never been raped can say that being accused of rape is far worse.

Because rape has zero psychological effects, right?

I already have covered all of them except for pregnancy (simply because I cannot get pregnant). Having a child is still better than having no friends, no family, no jobs, and people threatening to kill should I be accused of rape.

Also, that's the worst scenario. In a better scenario, I'd be a woman in a western country, meaning ever if the rapist is judged innocent, I could still ask for him to pay for my child.

The blame culture doesn't just affect the victim. The society judges both sides - the victim brings it on themselves, but at the same time they wouldn't want to associate or hire the accused rapist. This is also ignoring the fact that if you're raped, it's less likely for your mother to disown you than if you've been accused of rape.

This is especially true with my career as a teacher. I will never be able to find a teaching job anywhere if I've been accused of rape. And this would be the case whether I'm working in the UK, the US, Canada, the middle east, Africa, Hong Kong, Beijing, Japan, Australia, or Antarctica.

I didn't look at it in a black or white way, I've considered a wide range of scenarios and come to the conclusion that it's better to be raped than be accused of being raped. But at the same time, you're very one-sided and considered only one side but not another.

Well, I'd say the main distinction is reasonable belief; there's a more considerable scope in rape cases to say you had reasonable belief that the victim consented even if she didn't. But this isn't so much a difference in the nature of the crime as the likelihood of particular circumstances of it.

Yeah, had heard about it before, just couldn't remember the case name, thanks. Is an interesting one. Indeed, there's quite a lot of debate among anarchists about the nature of BDSM and to what extent it's authoritarian or coercive.

Are you suggesting that all the posters here who said being raped is worse have both been raped and been accused of rape?

I'd say there's a difference because consensual sex is a very normal part of everyday life, certainly compared to consensual beatings or owner-mandated car torching.

I've already said that I understand how damaging it would be to be falsely accused of rape. Completely, irrevocably damsging, but not comparable to rape.

Said child could be wholly unwanted.

You'd have to carry the child for nine months, give birth to it (which is extremely painful), and then raise it.

It could look a lot like your rapist too, which could make it difficult to love (every situation is different though, some woman might not feel this way).

And no offense but you're also being one sided

by not fully considering the implications of unwanted pregnancy, particularly with women who don't have the option of abortion/ contraception. And I know a lot of more traditional families would throw a daughter out for being pregnant.

The victim never brings it on themselves. That's a truly worrying view and it scares me that you're a teacher if you think that way.

With both accusations and rape there's a chance of mental health issues (depression, anxiety, isolation) because some rape victims alienate themselves and isolate themselves because they're scared it'll happen again or that they'll be judged (in a similar way to those who are falsely accused). However, at least with a false accusation you don't have nightmares of the incident and trauma for it. That can affect a person for years.

I don't think you truly understand how damaging rape is. Rape is damaging to men too and I guarantee you'd see what I mean if you were ever (God forbid) in that position.

No. I am sure that I hope you never find out how wrong you are.

Consensual sex is much more common than consensual beating, yes, which is why it's more likely to be reasonably believable that consent to sex has been given..

As if I cannot say the exact same thing to you.

A lot of sick and twisted women are gonna have fun with this...

A lot of sick and twisted men have fun raping, and then getting away with it.

That's not to say this is right, the tenet of 'innocent until proven guilty' is fundamental within our justice system, and for good reason. I do think something needs to be done about the levels of conviction when it comes to rape, I don't know what that something is but it's not this.

Also think any and all who try to disregard the opinions of others by screaming 'Feminazi!' are pathetic. That is not to say I agree with one side or the other, it's just to say it's pathetic. Engage, discuss, rebut (using your brain), that's how grown, clever folk do it.

How about the trauma of being unfriended by everyone you know?

How about the trauma of having all your beloved saying hurtful words to you?

How about the trauma of suddenly losing your career when you were climbing steadily and have a goal you would have achieved?

How about the trauma of seeing yourself in the headline?

How about the trauma of reading the comments under a YouTube video showing your arrest?

How about the trauma of going through a year-long court case?

You didn't think of any of that and simply believe that nothing happens if you've been accused of rape.



This is a meaningless comment.

I will then just say I guarantee you'd see what I mean if you were ever being accused of rape.

You really think this is a good idea? I'm sure many guys rape women and threaten to kill them or hurt them/their families if they say anything to anyone, so those men who rape and have fun getting away with it will still get away with it.

This law won't help those cases at all, all it will do is allow women to accuse men of rape without needing to back it up.

Only a feminazi would think this is a good idea. What they need to do is increase convictions of false rape claims if they go ahead with this, but that won't happen of course. Women will continue to get away with that.

Let's ask some people who had plenty to lose when they were accused of rape. Say, Neil Hamilton and Jim Davidson.

Would they rather go through that again or be raped themselves? They don't get to chose who they're raped by, or when, or how long it lasts, or whether or not they get something like HIV as a result. They are told there's a big chance that lots of people won't believe it was non-consensual, or will say that they asked for it, and it's extremely likely that their attacker(s) will never be convicted. It's quite likely that they'll never feel secure in the sort of place it happened ever again, and may have PTSD including flashbacks of it happening for the rest of their life. Of course, you can also tell them that if they feel upset afterwards, there's a psychiatrist who says that "people contribute to their own upsetness" and, apparently, that's not blaming them for being upset.

I bet they'd say, horrible time that they both had, that they'd rather go through the experience of being accused again...

I wasn't going to bother but then I got to your little list of questions. You think the trauma of 'oh, my mates won't play with me anymore' compares to being raped?

As someone who has been raped, victim blamed and failed by the justice system I could not say nothing when foolish people like you run around, spewing ignorance. For each and every question you posed, it is far more horrific on the other side.

How about the trauma of being violated so badly you don't know who you can trust?

How about the trauma of having near enough everyone saying hurtful words to you? (Victim blaming)

How about the trauma of suddenly losing your career when you were climbing steadily and have a goal you would have achieved? PTSD? Especially prevalent among women in the armed forces. They lose everything because no one believes them, and many suffer injuries from the level of violence in the attack.

How about the trauma of seeing yourself in the headline? Yup.

How about the trauma of reading the comments under a YouTube video showing your arrest?

How about the trauma of going through a year-long court case? Yup. And then having to live the rest of your life with what that man did to you. Remembering how sweaty and fat he was, how disgusting it sounded when he grunted in your ear, while you cried, screamed, begged for him to stop, bleeding for days after.

There will always be people like you around, thinking women are merely chattel, even in this day and age.

There was I hoping the Evans fan club had gone away...

When she woke up in the urine soaked bed - she'd been so drunk, she wet herself while unconscious - she didn't think she had been raped. She couldn't remember a thing and thought she'd been robbed. So she went to the police about that. It was clear that two men had been in that room, McDonald and Evans. So the police interviewed them both. Based on what they said, including that they'd both had sex with her, and the evidence of witnesses who'd seen how drunk she was, they were charged with rape: the case being she was so drunk as to lack capacity to consent.

Unless you're suggesting the jury - who saw and heard all the evidence - tossed a coin to decide their verdicts, that McDonald was acquitted and Evans convicted is a sign that they did follow the route to verdict that they were supposed to do.

Did she have the capacity to consent? No. (If the answer had been yes, both men would have been acquitted.)

Despite that, did McDonald have a reasonable albeit mistaken belief in her consent? Yes, he may have done. He had actually talked to her outside the hotel, and she'd gone with him to it, for example. So he was acquitted - as others have said already, a reasonable belief in consent is enough.

Did Evans have a reasonable belief in her consent? No! He turned up, uninvited, unexpected, and unwanted in the room, having lied to get the key and very probably sent his brother and another friend to the window where they were trying to film what was happening. His only contact with her before then turned out to be stepping over her body as she was literally falling down drunk in a kebab shop. Both he and McDonald gave evidence that they didn't ask if he could have sex with her, but he did so anyway. No-one - including the pair outside the window or the night porter who listened at the door at one point and could hear what was happening inside the room - heard her "repeatedly" "calling out" "**** me harder" as he claimed she did. He left as though he knew he'd done something wrong. Basically, he was convicted on what he said he did and didn't do...

The Evans case shows the jury doing its work properly.

A lot of sick and twisted women are gonna have fun with this...

There's an inherent sexism to these guidelines. They seem to be working under the assumption that no woman would ever ever be nasty or smart enough to abuse it, despite the fact we're meant to treat genders equally. Attitudes like this segregate and demean women.

Personal experience of this from watching my flatmate get drunk, pull a guy at a club, sometimes go back to his but often bring him to ours, sit and have fun with him for hours, go back to her room with him, then in the morning tell us all she'd been raped and followed home.