Personal Investments in the Narrative of False Allegations of Sexual Violence

[Content Note: Rape culture; sexual violence; rape apologia.]

A friend asked me recently why it is that so many cisgender, heterosexual men are obsessed with the idea that false rape allegations are extremely common, especially when it's so demonstrably not true. Why it, she wondered, that even lots of otherwise reasonable and persuadable cis-het men will completely dismiss out of hand facts about the rarity of false rape allegations?

Well. That's a complicated question with a complicated answer—because there is a spectrum of motivations for why a cis-het man might be invested in the narrative of false allegations.

On one end of the spectrum are the men who are invested in defending rape culture in all its aspects, because they are rapists—and no one benefits more richly from rape apologia than rapists.

On the other end of the spectrum are the men who are invested in denying the ubiquity of sexual violence out of some misguided chivalrous instinct that minimizing its scope somehow shields its victims, or some inability to process that women live in a world where sexual violence is such a pervasive part of our lives, or some need to justify inaction because an acknowledgment of the reality of the pervasiveness of sexual violence would make their indifference inexcusable.

(And there are, somewhere on the spectrum or outside of it, cis-het men who have themselves survived sexual violence and use denial as a coping mechanism, not unlike a woman who survives sexual violence and then polices and victim-blames other women, as a way of distancing herself from the abuse.)

But it's the cis-het men occupying the broad middle of that spectrum whence comes most of the vociferous rejections of the fact that false rape allegations are not extremely common, as is frequently asserted.

And to understand why so many of those men, who are neither conniving repeat predators nor quivering philosophical deniers, it's important to understand that many of them have had sexual interactions that were borderline or actual sexual assaults.

Dr. David Lisak, who is a prominent researcher in the field of sexual violence, compiled here [pdf] the results of multiple studies where men were asked "questions about sexually violent behavior without labeling such behavior as 'rape' or 'assault.'" In other words, a participant may have been asked if he ever "had sexual intercourse [sic] with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances," a question to which respondents are more likely to answer "yes" than if they are asked straightforwardly if they've ever raped someone.

And the estimated percentages of men who acknowledge committing "rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault" in these studies ranges from 9-15%.

(The lowest percentage any study found, asking only about rape and not about attempted rape or sexual assault, was still 5%.)

So somewhere between 9-15% of men, by their own admission, have raped, attempted to rape, or sexually assaulted a woman at least once. And the vast majority of them have not been reported for these offenses.

That's a lot of men. And a lot of incidents of sexual violence that have never been reported.

That's a lot of men against whom truthful allegations could have been made, but were not. And one of the things we can infer from the fact they will say, "yes, I have had sexual intercourse [sic] with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist my sexual advances," but won't say, "yes, I raped someone," is that they don't think a lot of what constitutes sexual violence should be considered criminal behavior.

That means that a lot of men who insist that false allegations are common are really arguing that allegations of sexual violence are bullshit. It's not that they think nothing happened; it's that they think what did happen doesn't constitute sexual violence.

Sometimes, these are things they have done themselves.

There are a lot of men who have raped, attempted to rape, or sexually assaulted a woman at least once, and have not been charged. Many of them have never even been told by their victims, "You harmed me," no less had to face official allegations.

Some of them, perhaps especially the cis-het men who are sympathetic to feminist/womanist causes and acknowledge the existence of the rape culture on some level, may have a lot of guilt about having committed or attempted an act of sexual violence.

Sometimes a guilt like that manifests as anger or resentment, at oneself and/or at the very idea that what they did is considered assault. Sometimes it's accompanied by a sort of anxious relief, which itself can emerge as a sort of anger, that charges were never brought—and a reverberating unsettledness with the knowledge that they could have been.

And sometimes there is fear that "it will happen" again, a passive fear that deflects a man's personal responsibility for understanding and respecting meaningful consent, substituting in its place garbage tales about how sex is a messy business and "misunderstandings" happen. A fear that flourishes in the absence of responsibility; a fear that "it will happen" again, but next time he might not get so lucky as to escape consequence-free.

A guy who knows what he did was considered criminal sexual assault might be mired in a toxic stew of guilt and anger and anxiety and fear and haunting thoughts around what if charges HAD been brought. And that begets a reflexive need to defend the narrative of false rape allegations, because he's defending himself against a Sliding Doorsian alternate timeline where he was charged, and defending himself against viewing himself as a person capable of sexual assault.

It just becomes really fucking easy to say "a lot of women make false rape charges and ruin men's lives" instead of admitting "I am one of the many, many men whose lives were not even minimally interrupted after I sexually assaulted a woman who didn't even try to hold me accountable."

It is the ultimate projection, made by men who cannot sit easily with having harmed women.

And, yes, there are also a lot of cis-het men who have committed such acts against whom allegations have been made, either just person-to-person or in official reports to agencies ostensibly tasked with giving a shit—and have suffered no consequences. And they tell themselves, and everyone who will listen, that this was a "false report."

And, yes, there are also a lot of cis-het men who have never physically harmed a woman, but hold us in absolute contempt—the rank misogynists who believe with fervent resolve that every woman is a liar, a manipulator, a vengeful destroyer of men given half a chance. And they are invested in any narrative that casts men as the victims of women.

There are many reasons an inordinate number of cis-het men are invested in the narrative of false rape allegations. This is certainly not an exhaustive compendium.

It's just an attempt to bring some additional context to the discussion around the narrative of false rape allegations—most crucially, that the men invested in defending that narrative are most keenly aware that it's false. They have other reasons for mounting a defense.