'Women don't lie about rape': Men accused of rape are automatically 'guilty by reason of penis'

It's a holiday weekend in the United States -- Monday is Labor Day, traditionally viewed as the unofficial end of summer. I thought this might be an appropriate time to reach into the archives in order to motivate the troops, sort of remind us all why we're here. Head back with me to 1993, and the celebrated date rape trial of college student Austen Donnellan.

Now follow this closely. After a seven-day trial, Mr. Donnellan was found not guilty by a jury of nine women and two men who deliberated for just more than an hour. The following portion in italics is from the news article:

Mr Donnellan had always protested his innocence, saying that he felt as though he was 'being picked up'. 'This was not a dead piece of meat I was having sex with. This idea that she was in a drunken stupor was a lie. I think she was very aware of what was happening. If she was not aware, I would not have proceeded with sex.'

Summing up, Judge Geoffrey Grigson said: 'A person who is drunk, and because she is drunk consents to an act which she would not when sober, still consents. Drunken consent is enough. But a woman who is so drunk that she has no understanding of what is happening cannot consent.'

During a testimony lasting four hours, Mr Donnellan had described how the woman had grabbed him by his T-shirt, pulled him on to her bed and repeatedly begged him to have sexual intercourse with her.

Later in the night, he awoke to find the woman stroking his back and body. He responded by undoing her night shirt and climbing on top of her. But when Mr Donnellan saw her eyes close and her head turn to one side, he assumed she had gone back to sleep. Moments later, she sat up, said 'I can't believe you just tried to screw me,' and walked out of the room. Mr Donnellan left a few minutes later.

Mr Donnellan described how the couple had kissed at the party, so passionately that at one point they fell to the floor. The woman had earlier drunk what one witness called a 'lethal cocktail' of cider, vodka and Drambuie. Mr Donnellan said he escorted her outside to get some fresh air and seeing that she was in no fit state to return to the party, carried her back to the room in a university hall of residence.

The court also heard how Mr Donnellan and the woman had become close friends over the previous 18 months. Despite kissing him passionately on several occasions, the woman rejected his offer of a relationship, preferring a series of one-night stands with other men, the sexual details of which she relayed to Mr Donnellan.

The woman admitted she had been so drunk that night that she did not remember leaving the party or going home. In cross-examination, she denied ever consenting to sex, but pressed by Michel Massih, for the defence, conceded that she could not remember anything. During legal argument in the absence of the jury, Judge Grigson asked counsel: 'If she cannot be sure it was rape, how can the jury?'
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Well, Judge, the jury wasn't sure, or perhaps it was sure that it wasn't a rape. The jurors certainly didn't take very long to come to that conclusion after a seven day trial.

But that didn't stop Siwan Hayward, founder of the "No Means No" anti-rape campaign, from "overruling" the verdict. According to a news report: ". . . [D]espite the verdict in favour of Austen Donnellan, she still believed his accuser. 'Women don't lie about rape,' she said."

Did you get that? Remember, the accuser couldn't even say if she'd been raped -- but Ms. Hayward -- believed her? Um . . . come again? In any event, to Ms. Hayward, everything Mr. Donnellan said under oath was automatically invalid -- unworthy of belief, jury verdict be damned. Before the trial even started, Mr. Donnellan was Guilty By Reason of Penis in Ms. Hayward's eyes. No rape defendant can ever be believed according to this "logic," because a rape accuser says otherwise. Every man and boy victimized by a false rape claim that we feature on this site is, in the eyes of people like Ms. Hayward, a rapist. Why not just dispense with the trial altogether? As soon as they are accused, take them out to the town square, tie a noose around their balls, and hang them high -- as an example to other young men who might someday come within the cross hairs of a woman angry enough, for whatever reason, to cry rape.

The fact is, women, like men, lie about everything under the sun but, mirabile dictu, according to misandrists who claim women don't lie about rape, the subject of rape acts as a truth serum, a magic elixir, that forces anyone not possessing a Y-Chromosome to speak incontrovertible truth. When it comes to rape, one gender is incapable of telling a lie while the other is incapable of telling anything but lies. (Except, of course, when the woman recants her rape claim -- in that instance, she automatically reverts to being a liar -- double-X chromosome be damned.)

"Women don't lie about rape" is up there with "one-in-four women are raped by the time they go to college/while they're in college/before Thanksgiving of Freshman year/in their lifetimes" (take your pick), and "recantations of rape are suspect." On and on they blather, one feminist mantra cascades atop the next until they collapse upon one another to form a sort of Rorschach inkblot of unmistakable misandry.

And that, my friends, is why we're here.