A whirl around the wacky, wonderful world of false rape claims

●I read the Koss report last week for the first time in months, and I was reminded of an interesting fact. Here's a quiz: which scholar, who is cited on this site from time to time, was relied on in the Koss report?  That's right, Prof. Eugene Kanin.  Koss didn't rely on Kanin for his false rape report, of course, but for his other work. Kanin, many feminists don't know, was highly respected in the feminist community before his false rape studies. His studies on male aggression and acquaintance rape in the 50s and 60s made him a pioneering feminist icon, a sociologist whose writings were quoted without question. See, e.g., I Never Called It Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape (1994) at pages 13, 43, 86-87.  All that changed when people started publicizing Kanin's false rape studies from the mid-90s. Kanin went from being a serious social scientist whose pronouncements were not to be questioned to a complete nitwit who had no idea how to conduct objective and impartial research.

●Three teens won't be charged for an alleged sexual assault on a woman who ran topless out of Central Park, given that the woman's account of what happened changed several times.  But, of course, the presumptively innocent men are named in the news report.

●Consider that if the topless woman in the above story had been contacted by one of Mary Koss' surveyors or another rape pollster, the surveyors/pollsters would have automatically credited her assertion that she was raped. 

●Next time you hear someone defend the right of bars to have Ladies' Night pricing, consider that one of the arguments used to justify it in some courts has been that the lower charges for females are appropriate because they are intended to compensate for the generally lower salaries women are said to be paid.

●One of the frequent canards by feminists who've never read Prof. Kanin's false rape report was that his first rape study (and most feminists don't know he did more than one), which found that 41% of all the rape claims were "false," was invalid because the young women were threatened with -- horrors! -- polygraphs.  Never mind that men are routinely forced to take polygraphs (the falsely accused often are forced to take them if they want to be released from jail, and convicted sex offenders either take them or go back to prison), what the feminists don't bother to mention about the Kanin study is that polygraphs were not mandatory for the rape accusers. The accusers were merely offered the opportunity to take a polygraph.  Moreover, after the women recanted (and Kanin only concluded a claim was false if a woman recanted), "the complainant [was] informed that she [would] be charged with filing a false complaint, punishable by a substantial fine and a jail sentence. In no case, [was] an effort . . . made on the part of the complainant to retract the recantation."  The feminists also don't mention that Kanin did another false rape study (referenced in the same report) in which he found a 50% false rate, and that study did not involve polygraphs at all. Just sayin'.

●Another argument used to justify Ladies Night freebies for women is that bars want to attract more women, so they price accordingly. Great. When colleges and other places that attract far fewer men than women decide, and are legally permitted, to implement special male pricing, come and tell me what a great idea it is.  I won't hold my breath.

●Speaking of Kanin's landmark studies: if any of the recanting young women in Kanin's report had been contacted by by one of Mary Koss' surveyors or another rape pollster, the surveyors/pollsters would automatically credit their assertions that they were raped.

●An observation: why do mainstream news media gender articles that apply equally to males and females stick the article in the "women" section?  See, e.g., here.