The mother of all battles

One of the most infuriating themes emerging in the ongoing feminist rape scare campaign is the facile notion that women have a right to feel safe at night. We’ve seen endless women complaining they don’t dare walk alone in the streets in the dark, something they see as all men’s fault. Here’s the SBS even taking up the ludicrous suggestion from a British MP proposing a 6pm curfew for all men.

The reality is that men have far more reason to feel unsafe on the streets at night than women do. The latest AIHW figures on show male rates of assault injury hospitalisations are almost twice that of females - 64% (14,085 cases) compared to 36% for females (7,972 cases).

Many Australian men as well as women are wary walking the streets in dubious neighbourhoods, particularly very young or frail older men. But let’s not forget this is comparatively a very safe country and overall violence rates are on the decrease. The AIHW statistics show assaults have gone down significantly, with a 3% annual drop since 2007-8.  The ABS’s Personal Safety Survey shows a drop in experiences of physical violence, falling from 7.5% in 2005 to 4.5% in 2016.

Naturally, men’s experience doesn’t rate a mention in the current narrative. We simply don’t care about men being bashed or beaten or stabbed. The only time we get upset about men being attacked seems to be when young men are king hit, taken out in a one-punch assault by a stranger. When a few cases of this started happening some years ago we were happy to close down the night life of Sydney.

But that was an aberration. In the current manufactured outrage about protecting women, men’s safety is irrelevant.

At least most people seem to have twigged to the fact that the whole campaign is a cynical exercise to take out the Coalition government. How revealing that the organizer of women’s march was blatantly tweeting back in January, seeking ideas to damage the Coalition.

As the weeks have rolled on, we have seen more evidence that the rage about women’s safety is blatant political opportunism.

While many women have been seduced into signing up to this cultural event, I’m also receiving a flood of mail from female correspondents who see through the whole charade. Like an 80-year-old retired GP who wrote saying she “is fed up with all the stuff in the media about Grace Tame, and the discussions about rape etc…. The message feminists are giving is very dangerous for our society.”

Or the female project manager who said she is “sickened to see the push by modern feminists, activists, and SJWs to ostracise, sedate, and punish men so unfairly to the extent of removing their right to fair legal processes.”

Our failed criminal justice system

Many have written suggesting I put together data to dismantle the lies being promoted about the supposed failure of our criminal justice system to deal properly with rape accusations. I’m keen to do that and would welcome your help in taking apart the statistics but a complete analysis will take time.

As a starting point, let’s have a quick look at the latest voodoo statistics being used to fuel the current debate. I’m reminded of Andrew Lang’s telling comment that some people use statistics as a drunk man uses a drunk post – for support, not illumination.

Helen Trinca in The Weekend Australian claims the conviction rate in rape court cases “sits at a shockingly low 2 per cent.” This is total nonsense. Latest figures from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics BOSCAR show 66% of sexual assault cases result in a guilty verdict.

Just how the feminists have conjured up the oft-quoted 2 % figure remains a mystery – but it appears they inflate the numbers of rape victims by not using assaults reported to the police but rather self-defined victim figures from the ABS Personal Safety Survey, which includes a wonderfully broad definition.

In fact, that survey is pretty illuminating, telling us a great deal about why so many of these cases don’t end up in court.

Here’s some of the facts about those rape statistics they won’t tell you.

·       We’re not just talking about what most people think of as ‘rape” but any sexual act involving force or coercion, including attempts to force someone into sexual activity.(PSS) 

·       Many of these cases involve young women - over a quarter (29%) of female victims were aged between 15 and 19 years. (Recorded Crimes)

·       Most victims (87%) knew their offender – so chances are many are date rape cases revolving around the murky complexities of consent. (Recorded Crimes)

·       Half the women believed that alcohol or another substance contributed to the sexual assault. (AIHW)

·       Only 13 % reported the assault to police. The major reasons for not doing so included a third who felt they could deal with it themselves, and another third who did not regard it as a serious offence. (AIHW)

·       Almost half the women didn’t see what happened to them as a crime. Twenty two percent saw it as something that just happens. (AIHW)

Back in 2009 BOSCAR investigated why fewer cases were going through to trial and found the major reason was there had been an increase in cases where the victim knew the offender and didn’t want to give evidence against the accused person.

While it is certainly true that many women who are raped don’t trust the criminal system to provide them with justice, this is the other side of the picture that is never discussed. The fact is that many young women who have experiences now being defined as sexual assault don’t see what happened to them as particularly serious and feel they can deal with it themselves. And thankfully, many don’t see a confusing drunken hook-up as reason to punish the man for what happened.

Many of these young women know these cases are not going to stand up in court, yet the arrogant feminists are telling them that they know better. That they should be pushing the justice system to give them a hearing, even if a jury then throws the case out. Of course, if a jury decides the evidence isn’t there to find the man guilty, this fuels feminist outrage about injustice towards women. Pretty neat, eh?

Naturally, the feminists are arguing women’s recalcitrant attitudes towards their own experiences simply point to the need for educating women that all sexual assault experiences are serious criminal offences, and the men deserve to be punished.

That’s actually what they will achieve unless we start to speak out, encouraging young women to make more sensible decisions about how they conduct their sexual lives. It’s so dangerous allowing sexual consent courses to be taught in schools and universities where intoxicated women are regarded as not to be able to give consent – so her drunk partner is always the rapist. And she has the right to change her mind afterwards.

We all must join the conversation, parents must write to schools, talk to other parents. We need to challenge the anti-male rhetoric dominating current discussions, adding comments to online articles, or joining debates on social media. Think about the generations of young men growing up in these troubled times. We owe it to them to fight back.