Why is this considered a standard example of something it makes no sense to do? Nutritional value, shelf life, cost, flavor… The two items could not be better suited to comparative analysis.
Being raped versus being falsely accused of rape is harder to compare, as there are too many variables to consider, but barring permanent physical damage from the rape (injury, pregnancy, or disease) or a false rape conviction, I would rank the situations as follows, from least awful to most:
Female falsely accused of rape: since females are rarely accused of raping anyone, I think there is less stigma attached to it and people would assume there was more to the story
Male rape victim: high stigma level, but if you don’t tell anyone, not a factor, and you can keep all the perks of being male. You have to endure the unpleasant rape, of course, but it’s only going to last so long.
Female rape victim: stigma variable, but again, you get to decide who knows, so at least you have some small degree of control over that. For these purposes, I will assume an equal level of unpleasantness with the male rape. After the rape, you remain a second-class citizen, so the raped male is better off.
Male falsely accused of rape (assuming this is a formal accusation and you are arrested, but found not guilty or charges are dropped): you get no say in whether or not this becomes public knowledge, so there is no opportunity to avoid external effects on your life. You may have trouble getting a job, as many now ask whether you have been arrested, not convicted. Many people will never believe 100% in your innocence. You are marked for life.
In spite of my aforementioned rankings though, I believe that an actual rapist is worse than a false rape-accuser. The actual rapist sees their victim’s suffering up close and personal, while the false-accuser may not fully grasp the implications of their heinous action. Plus the false-rape accuser can really only get away with this once a few times at most, due to the public nature of the accusation, while the rapist can repeat-rape indefinitely, so is more of a threat to the public.
I chose they are equally bad; I don’t know as I have no experience of either.
But then I read some of the replies, and I remembered I’ve been drugged and molested, but not raped (physically I could tell). I didn’t care for the Christian-savour areshole guy in China who drugged me and took me to a hotel, where I woke up in the hallway with half of my clothes missing, and sore nipples (lol), or drugged and raped by sexy prostitutes in Vietnam, after I’d been drinking with some expat locals in a bar in Saigon. Looking back, they were just waiting for a single, billy-no-mates to drink with them and rip them off for everything (except my passport) they had.
My brother’s had the same experience, almost freezing to death in an underground carpark in Canada. He woke before he died and crawled to his hotel. He knew he’d been spiked - we, as a family, like our drink and know our limits - and he has changed snowboarding alone to mountain biking with close friends. I won’t drink any beer I haven’t seen opened, even draught can be dodgy (especially in Bahrain). You need to be careful, whatever sex you are and wherever you are.
Yeah, I think the answer is “it depends” (though I’d think generally the rape would be worse). But how about going to prison for 10 years due to a false allegation?
I’m not saying they think they are doing something okay, only that to commit actual rape, your victim is right there so ignoring their suffering would be virtually impossible.
Do the rape victims there not have to testify in court?
While there may possibly be some extremes where I guess being falsely accused may be worse than a particular rape situation, I think that the vast majority of rapes are worse than the vast majority of false accusations of rape. Rankings like that by Anamen ignore the psychological effects like PTSD, which is extremely common. The falsely accused can flee the public stigma by moving–but you can’t run away from your own mind.
Note that this doesn’t mean we need to discount the possibility of false accusations. It just decreases the urgency of determining such, which is them further tempered by the fact that such are well in the minority, even by the highest estimates.
Ideally we’d forbid revealing both the name of the victim and the accused in the legal proceedings until a conviction is achieved, but there are too many rape victims who won’t go to trial, and thus too many rapists whose names we’d never know. This is especially a historic problem, but it still comes up today.
Bad comparison.
We’ve all thought of murdering someone. Very few of us have thought of raping someone. Also, strange as it may be, murder victims find it relatively hard to rebuild their lives.
I’ve never understood the need for these types of comparisons. What purpose does it serve? One thing is bad. The other thing is also bad. Who cares which is worse? It seems to me that the only thing it accomplishes is supporting other people’s attempts to minimize what happened to another person. “Well, you may have been falsely accused of rape. But at least you weren’t raped!” Then we dismiss the bad thing that happened because it’s not bad enough.
It reminds me of when my grandfather died: one of his sisters informed his daughters that her grief was worse, because it’s harder to lose a brother than a father. Since when is grief a competitive sport?
The OP in the referenced thread, compared what happened to him to being a victim of rape. As I mentioned in the other thread, as a close friend of someone that has been raped, I don’t think the two are comparable. Yet other’s chastised me saying, how could I make that determination. Well it’s my opinion, and I started this thread to see how others felt about it. Based upon the results of the poll, I’m not out in left field.
I agree it’s not appropriate to say, “at least you weren’t raped!” Just as it’s not okay for someone who broke their leg, to compare that to someone who lost their wife.
“The denial. The burial. I began to understand why rape victims don’t come forward. Even if you did nothing wrong, you’ll always be guilty in someone’s eyes.”
The comparison is implicit.
What’s wrong with comparing the two? Both are victims of a crime purposely perpetrated by another person. Both may suffer from a lifetime of stigma and mental anguish. Both may lose friends and the support of family members. Being falsely accused of rape is not like being an “almost-rapist.” If no rape occurred, the falsely accused person is the only victim present. No one is shoving aside an actual victim in favor of sympathizing with the accused party.
The problem here is that most people when hearing that someone is falsely accused of a crime immediately think that maybe the accusation was true after all. This is no better than assuming someone who says they are a rape victim is lying.
That’s not saying that one is as bad as the other; it’s just saying (as I said) that both are bad. They may be bad in similar ways (in particular, having stigma attached) but that is not the same as saying that they are “equally” bad. If I break my leg and end up in a wheelchair for a month, I may say “I understand how much it must suck to be permanently disabled.” I’m not saying my situation is “as bad”.
Your second paragraph is exactly my point. Any suffering that results from either rape or false accusation of rape exist entirely of their own accord. Comparing the suffering of one to the suffering of another serves no purpose.
I think that any time a man shares a story such as the linked one, there will be no shortage of people trying to derail the discussion, with imaginary rules violations, criticisms of writing quality, reframing it into a men vs women narrative, or any other shit they think will stick.
Oh, and creating a different thread to try to drum up support against the perfidious one. That’s another thing you can do.
The question is pointless. The only context in which the answer would be useful would be some overwrought hypothetical situation where you have to choose one or the other.
Maybe the problem is that some people use the actual definition of “compare” – to note the similarities and differences between things – while others are under the false impression that even proposing a comparison is saying that the things are equal.
They don’t have to be equal to have similarities, but if you are sympathetic to one and not the other, it is reasonable to wonder why and compare the two.
I was a victim of child molestation and it was awful. But it ended, it was just one person wronging me, and nobody knows about it unless I tell them. I wouldn’t trade it for a false rape allegation. In the latter case, you’re being wronged by the system. Your name is forever tainted… people have very long memories.
One thing is that when one is raped, the incident happens, then it ends, and one is then typically allowed to go ahead with the rest of one’s life. If you want to dwell on it, you can, or you can put it behind you. When one is falsely accused of rape, one typically has a long-term ordeal involving interrogations, court appearances, large legal bills, and potentially incarceration and long-term registration as a sex offender. In other words, it’s a slow rape, months or even years or decades of agony.