In the previous post on this topic, seven motivating causes of false accusations were suggested, based on various suggestions that already have been examined in the scholarly literature since Kanin 1994 and up to De Zutter et al 2017:
- Revenge.
- Concealment.
- Emotional instability (in particular, Personality Disorders).
- Third-party cajolement (includes sympathy and attention).
- Material and social gain.
- Regret.
- False memory.
The article quoted below aims to examine the matter from the point of view of behavioural ecology, a branch of evolutionary biology which often uses game theory. From “‘Believe the Victim’? The Biological Reason Why Accusers Aren’t Always Telling the Truth” by Harry W. Power, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Ecology, Rutgers University:
In recent years there have been hundreds of cases across the country of men having allegedly sexually assaulted women where there was insufficient objective evidence to determine whether a crime had occurred, and in some cases, whether any kind of sex or even encounter had occurred. Examples include the “Mattress Girl” case in NY, the Corey Mock case in TN, the Jordy Johnson case in MT, the Owen Labrie case in NH, dozens of “John Doe” cases in nearly all states, and most infamous of all, the Rolling Stone hoax about events that never happened in VA or anywhere else.
In all of these cases, some have asserted that the criminal justice system should always award women the benefit of the doubt on grounds that they always tell the truth. Although seldom stated, the implication is often present that women cannot lie under such circumstances, but men can and do. This claim (hereafter the claim) has been cited in many proceedings as if it were evidence that the female complainant is telling the truth, it may have affected jury decisions, it certainly has affected the outcomes of institutional proceedings (e.g., colleges and universities, most of which offer only kangaroo courts as their form of “justice”), and it has also affected the sentences of some of the convicted men.
This claim of unwavering female honesty in what are “he-said/she-said” cases cannot be treated as self-evident because it fails several common sense tests. For example, in cases where objective evidence tells whether a particular version is true or false, do women always say what the evidence proves? Which party is telling the truth in “she-said/she-said” cases? Both? Which party is telling the truth in “he-said/he-said” cases? Neither?
On what grounds would a rational person decide that in cases of alleged sexual assault involving a man and a woman that the woman would always tell the truth, but in cases involving members of the same sex that only one was telling the truth, neither were telling the truth, or both were telling the truth? Are we to conclude that all white women claiming to have been raped by black men in the Jim Crow era were telling the truth?
It should be obvious that determining who is telling the truth and who is lying must be based upon objective evidence, not competing versions of alleged events.
[….]
The proponents of the claim clearly do not understand that it is impossible to evolve obligatory truth telling in cases of alleged sexual assault or any other context since the “strategic liar” will always outcompete the obligate “truth-teller” over evolutionary/generational time. Consequently they do not understand that their claim is not true because it cannot be true.
Because it is a biological impossibility, the claim reduces at best to a folk belief, and at worst to a form of superstition equivalent to the claimed presence of spectres in the Salem witch trials. As a society, we cannot afford to return to using folk belief and superstition in lieu of evidence.
Adhering to the claim is a gross insult to women because it implies that they are too stupid to behave adaptively in changing and precarious circumstances. It ignores the fact that strategic lying is one of our best defenses against a hostile world for when it works, we are able to control one of the most important resources humans can have: information. If women were truly incapable of lying in he-said/she-said cases of alleged sexual misconduct, the concept that women are or even could be equal to men is preposterous. Since they would always be children in functional terms (the equivalent of adults forever believing in Santa Claus), women would always have to be wards of someone or something for their own protection. Thus the most insistent of the proponents of the claim are unwittingly demanding that women again have a reduced social status for their own good because they need to be protected from their own naivety.
Anyone favoring sexual equality under law will reject the claim as subversive to that goal, and a monstrous set back to the cause of women’s rights. Building up the legal status of women at the expense of men cannot result in a better, more harmonious society. It can only intensify the conditions it proposes to eliminate, including violence against women by men otherwise unable to protect themselves against lying women. This would be a case where the unintended consequences of an action would be the most common and most severe of all the consequences of that action.
Would eliminating the claim from all aspects of investigation, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing allow some sex offenders to go free? Undoubtedly. However, acquittal in such cases is only a mistake and may be rectified in time as forensic evidence technology improves, but assuming the claim to be true even though the assumed trait could never evolve is far worse:
- it inevitably results in the false conviction of some men;
- it is an open invitation to corruption and extortion by lying women;
- it is an act of tyranny contrary to our society’s long-held presumption of innocence;
- it is supported only by an act of pure faith contrary to logic and evidence and thus a violation of the First Amendment; and
- it is a form of sexual discrimination forbidden by both the Constitution and statute.
This ridiculous and impossible claim should be expelled from all aspects of the legal system, including the quasi-legal hearings conducted by schools and universities to “investigate” matters of alleged sexual impropriety. Freedom cannot stand when the law declares one party to be innocent and the other guilty solely on the basis of gender.
If we do not eliminate the claim from our legal system, future Americans will look back at this period of judicial history as vicious and shameful for unlike the Salem witch trials when people truly believed in spectres and witches, no thinking person can possibly believe the claim. Those who insist the claim is true do so entirely on the basis of politics and in direct defiance of logic, common sense, and scientific evidence. The rules of evidence must be changed to eliminate this form of sexual discrimination.
Critica 