Of course, I am referring to the vast majority of Feminists, excluding only the few who sympathize with MRA, as I actually have some of those sympathizers as friends.

Let me answer the most relevant, easy-to-understand aspects of this question first.

The psychological meaning that drives these statistics is simple. Feminists who dismiss false rape accusations as uncommon do so in order to invalidate victims of false rape accusations or otherwise delude themselves with the notion that false rape accusations are no big deal. And that alone should be reason enough to discourage others from using these statistics.

Even the most moderate Feminists seem to think that false rape accusations are not worth focusing on, even if a few of them do in fact believe that false rape accusations are severe.

But there are also a lot of questions to ask aside from the obvious. One of the more obvious observations is that they can't even stick with a particular number. Is it 2%? 5%? 10%? Just insert any magic number, really. It's almost like as if they pull these numbers out of thin air! In other words, the exact percentages mean absolutely nothing other than "not common enough to matter much"

Here are some more technical questions I have which I doubt most Feminists or even many of us MRA have thought of:

  1. What do they count as rape? i.e. does miscommunication count as rape, does it have to involve physical violence to count as rape, or does it have to involve the victim physically resisting as best they can to count as rape?
  2. What do they count as a rape accusation? i.e. same logic as question #1.
  3. How do the differences in what they count as a woman raping a man vs a man raping a woman factor into this false rape accusation rate?
  4. If someone (say a woman) tells a police officer that a man had sex with him in a way that their government defines as rape, but she insists it was NOT rape, then does this count as a false rape accusation?
  5. Different regions define rape differently. How does that factor into false rape accusations?
  6. Does a rape accusation have to be conveyed to the police to count as a false rape accusation, or does it also count if false rumors are spread around one's friend group?
  7. Suppose a false rape accuser falsely accused a man of raping them on 25 different occasions, all of which are completely fictitious and/or consensual. Suppose these were all reported to the police simultaneously. Does this count as 25 false rape accusations, or just 1?
  8. Suppose that a feminist claims that the false rape accusation rate is 10%. 10% of what? Seriously, if you consider the above questions, that blurs the numbers a lot.

I could go on listing a bunch more of these questions, each of which occurs very frequently in real life. And there may be concrete answers to some of these, but as a whole, the answers are highly convoluted, subjective, and/or region-based.

My main point is that I think rape statistics outside of "rape and false rape accusations are both bad and too common" are an empty load of crap that should be completely disregarded. Thoughts?