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Because rape is rape; the harms of a false accusation aren't over and done with the moment it is made. On one extreme, they could lead to a lengthy prison sentence or even death. On the other, they could result in no damage at all to the falsely accused, and nobody cares at all. This being said, it does seem wise to counsel young men to not get themselves involved in ethically or morally ambiguous or murky sexual situations. At least, not without a very good reason.
*Something like, say, Loving vs. Virginia might qualify; the Southern racists of the day might well have argued that interracial sex and marriage were morally wrong or unethical.
There are essentially two points being made here.
a) Moran says
The word "need" there shows a mindset that I normally see from Far Eastern shame cultures, where it's considered socially acceptable to commit crimes to cover dishonour as long as it winds up with you getting away with it. Here the girl doesn't want the true reputation of being a girl who gets drunk and sleeps with strangers, so she does something far worse - slander at the very least, quite likely perjury - but this is something she "need[s] to" do because it leads to her looking better in the eyes of society. No. This is evil behaviour and shouldn't be excused.
b) The point of the analogy to wearing revealing clothing is that there's a difference between positional and absolute goods: if you get everyone an absolute good, everyone is better off, but if you get everyone a positional good, that's wasted effort because only relative quantities of it matter. Wear less-revealing clothes as a society and the (rare) marauding rapists consider more skin covered to still be "asking for it". Give everyone a year-12 education and the bar simply rises to "do you have a tertiary education".
Londondare is (AIUI) saying that "avoid situations where you might draw the Eye of Sauron" is a positional good; the Eye of Sauron can and will target a finite number of men, so avoiding its gaze merely causes someone else to bear it instead, and telling everyone to avoid its gaze won't achieve anything (the Eye will merely lower the bar for what's objectionable).
Of course, then you get into the question of "is it better if there are more or less drunk hookups". I'm leaning toward "more" if only because romance is good and necessary and drunk hookups probably help somewhat with starting relationships (assuming neither party's cheating), but there's legitimate room for disagreement on that.
I mean, consent is murky when you are drunk.
Were they both equally drunk? If they weren't, did she deliberately get drunk in order to sleep with someone at the party? Was the guy mostly sober and deliberately targeting drunk women? What are the facts around this? It is possible that the guy is an asshole; it might even be that he is deliberately predatory and at best in a rather dark grey area.
He is at best...a little careless, and at worst a predator and genuine rapist. Guy's not a Boy Scout, but he's also not necessarily an evil rapist. Using the law to call this guy a "rapist" seems...disproportionate, there are a lot of legal ways to be a predator/asshole/piece of shit.
However, talking about "the defense of her reputation"...seems to imply an interesting culture, being charitable. Basically someone in a shitty situation who will face genuine victimization for getting a reputation as a "slut" and as such winds up getting a guy who's maybe half innocent tarred and feathered to save her own hide. Maybe if you're in high school and moving isn't exactly a live option, or if your family's going to honor kill you or something, that could be pardonable. Other than that I agree with you, more or less.
TL;DR doing this to go after assholes/rapists is a grey area and disproportionate unless he's actually a rapist, not just an asshole engaging in legal assholery. Doing it to defend your reputation is a shitbag move if you're a Westerner.
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I can't imagine such scenario. Maybe in the 90s, but I can't image any institution, be it school, employer or the police to downplay a rape accusation and not to start an investigation immediately. As soon as accusation is investigated, it gets public and it causes lot of damage - even if the accused has strong evidence to his favour, which is rarely the case in a he-said, she-said situation.
How about this one: a patient in a psych ER accuses a resident or attending of rape. Cameras everywhere. They go through the cameras, realize it's bullshit, and nothing happens.
Ok, an extreme example, here is an extreme answer: before they review the tapes, the resident will be sent home, maybe put on administrative leave. Even after he is cleaned some people will keep whispering about the accusations. That is not a "no damage at all".
More realistically: Guy filmed a gal begging him for sex and preventing him from leaving. He left. She accused him, he submitted the video as evidence but was expelled anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Feibleman_v._Columbia_University
Or this one: Mr Hawker, who had been at Devonport High School for Girls in Plymouth for five years, was suspended, arrested and then fired for 'gross misconduct' – despite reports that the girls had admitted they lied about everything 'because it was fun'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12635681/Male-teacher-sacked-sex-assault-wins-45000.html
This is not what I have seen as a medical student at a US teaching hospital. Patient in the psych ER accuses resident of having raped her; IIRC, it was in an interview room. Of course it was utter and complete bullshit. I don't recall whether the resident was sent home for the day or not, but the tapes were reviewed within hours. By the end of the day the next day, the resident was cleared and all concerned just called it bullshit.
The resident had a couple things going for him:
He had video footage of all his interactions with this patient; he never even touched her, and that was corroborated by the tapes.
He was a resident; she was a schizophrenic psych patient brought to the local psych ER by police.
As far as I know, nothing happened to the resident - not even rumors. There were plenty of witnesses and plenty of videotape to prove his innocence.
Ok, you are right. That being said, I don't think your extreme example brings much value to the discussion.
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Is it? Because whenever one of these is publicly litigated, the outcomes range from "being forcibly violated" to "I retroactively withdrew consent because he didn't call me back".
If you don't have enough rape to keep the donations into non profits flowing just extend the definition of rape until you have enough. Same with racism.
I ‘do’ think women get pressured into having sex they otherwise wouldn’t have, if they didn’t have an instinctual hesitation to tell a larger, stronger and more violent and anger prone gender “no.”
When you go around living most of your life in deference to men, and with the knowledge any one of them could overwhelm you at any point, you’re not going to be as forthright in saying or doing something that puts you potentially at greater risk of physical violence by not falling in with their suggestion.
The problem to me isn’t inherently the concept, but it’s about as workable in practice as installing cameras in everyone’s home to prove child abuse.
There was a time when men were primarily tasked with safeguarding the virtue and modesty of women. Then that came under attack for its sexist and controlling excesses, but the basic logic at play was sound. If men are to be held responsible for policing other men’s behavior to ensure the playing field was safe for women, then women are obliged to follow men’s rules at the end of the day.
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