Joanna Bourke ("Men, too, must work to take back the night") seems to be unfamiliar with the words "alleged" and "not guilty". I look on in dismay at the sight of what seems to be an otherwise liberal academic willing to drop her usual principles of innocent until/unless proven guilty when it comes to gender.
Is Bourke unwilling to accept that women, too, are capable of lying? Changes in the law over the past few years, adopted due to feminist lobbying, were designed to produce near-as-dammit 100 per cent conviction rates for men accused of rape. Despite this, juries - including many composed largely of women - have been finding increasing numbers of men not guilty. Surprisingly, increased CCTV and DNA evidence has in some cases revealed that there are, in fact, some women who are serial false rape victims.
I really thought the feminist manias of the 1980s were over. Let's try to treat the question of rape with the same rigour, and the same rules of evidence, that we would apply to every other subject, and not have sentence targets first, evidence after.
J. Green, Staffordshire