# Is it time women took some responsibility for sex? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341 "2012-12-07T20:20:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/161 "2012-12-13T22:51:56Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > The police should probably believe that you believe what you’re saying, but suspend whether or not what you’re saying is objective truth pending investigation. Bravo. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/162 "2012-12-14T01:14:24Z")
> [@colander](#): > > It would be more instructive (although not definitive, given the unusual emotional weight that accompanies sex crimes in our society) to compare the rate of polygraph-induced accusation retractions across different crimes. That is not what this study did, however. The study says that the police precinct in question had a policy of always interrogating alleged victims of rape. There is no indication that civilians alleging any other crime were subjected to this procedure. Without looking into this, what occurs to me is that it’s possible that they did this to rape victims specifically because they commonly devolved into he-said she-said situations especially in the era before DNA was widely used. I’m not claiming that the polygraph-induced retractions are definitive, of course. But to say it tells us “absolutely nothing” about the veracity is a big stretch, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/163 "2012-12-14T02:20:18Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m not claiming that the polygraph-induced retractions are definitive, of course. But to say it tells us “absolutely nothing” about the veracity is a big stretch, IMO. Unless we have something to compare it to, I’d say that it’s pretty much worthless. I’d want to know how many other people who reported crimes were forced to undergo polygraphs, and what the statistics of retraction are for them. As things stand, we know that some people who report rapes will retract those accusations if they have to undergo a polygraph test. What we don’t know is how many people who report crimes in general will retract accusations if they are faced with the same situation. What if rape victims actually retract their accusations LESS often that people who are victims of other crimes? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/164 "2012-12-14T02:54:42Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Without looking into this, what occurs to me is that it’s possible that they did this to rape victims specifically because they commonly devolved into he-said she-said situations especially in the era before DNA was widely used. > > I’m not claiming that the polygraph-induced retractions are definitive, of course. But to say it tells us “absolutely nothing” about the veracity is a big stretch, IMO. What do you think it tells us? I think it tells us that it was the policy of this police department to badger women until they retracted their stories. That doesn’t tell us anything about veracity, especially when you consider how society has made women reluctant to report rape in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/165 "2012-12-14T03:36:58Z")
Did the police also interview the alleged rapists under polygraphs? If they did, I’d expect some innocent men to say they were guilty, especially if they’d been really drunk when it happened and were not entirely sure of their own version of events. Or if they already distrusted the system and were convinced they’d be found guilty. Or if they didn’t rape anyone, but did take illicit drugs the same night, and didn’t want to have the polygraph used in court for that offence. That applies to the women accusing them, too - that they might think they’d end up indicted for some other crime due to the polygraph. If the alleged rapists weren’t also polygraphed, that makes the results even more unreliable. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No; it’s heavily favored using men for guinea pigs since human experimentation is dangerous and people didn’t care as much if a male test subject died. Twice as much money is spent on female-targeted medical research _in general_ as on male-targeted research; but males were used as experimental subjects whenever that was an option because people didn’t care nearly as much if they got sick or died. They only started to change that when it became clear that men and women are different enough that it wasn’t working well, and have predictably had more problems with people getting angry over harm to the new female subjects. In the 90s, at least, based only on my own experience, women were not used in trials because it was felt that their regular monthly changes might affect the results. Several of my male friends volunteered as testers because another (female) friend worked at a company that did them and it was good money. When I pointed out that I was on the pill, she - quite reasonably - said that, even if her company allowed women to participate, they couldn’t if they were on the pill, because they never included anyone using regular medication. That would exclude a lot of women,especially since test subjects tend to be youngish. Unless, of course, it’s a test specifically designed to test the effects of older people, women taking hormonal medication, etc - but they’re not the types of tests we’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341/166 "2012-12-14T03:58:26Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Without looking into this, what occurs to me is that it’s possible that they did this to rape victims specifically because they commonly devolved into he-said she-said situations especially in the era before DNA was widely used. CSI notwithstanding, the same could be said of most cases of alleged wrongdoing. So why the special focus on rape accusers? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-women-took-some-responsibility-for-sex/643341.md?page=8)