Eric wrote:

> Why would a woman falsely claiming abuse take the man to a police
> officer to be identified herself and go through with the false arrest
> and trial, which would be about the worst thing a false accuser could do?

I don't know, but there is at least one well-documented case where the man
accused insisted he was innocent and refused to pay the fine that would
allow him just to walk away. The man's wife stuck through him through thick
and thin (including a prison sentence) and finally (somehow) it was proved
that the assault could not have taken place in the way the accuser had
claimed. (This was the subject of a TV documentary which I didn't watch, but
my wife recounted to me.)

But that is not what I was talking about. I was talking about women who use
accusations of groping in order to blackmail men into going to the nearest
ATM and part with largeish sums of money. I have no idea of the scale on
which this happens, but it is persistently reported as something that does
happen.

> Why do you (among others) insist on casting doubts on women
> claiming abuse or on figures reporting abuse? Your assertion
> girls would do it to enhance their claims of being attractive
> or establish cred was particularly offensive.

Again, you misunderstand what I was talking about. I was not talking about
girls going to the police with false claims. That would be the act of a
highly psychologically-disturbed person and while there are highly
psychologically-disturbed people in the world one assumes they are very much
the minority.

What I was talking about is something much more plausible, even for fairly
well-adjusted people. I have clear memories of kids of about fourteen to
sixteen boasting of their sexual exploits when I was a schoolboy, and have
no doubt that there was peer pressure to claim experience of that kind
whether one really did or not. That was what I was talking about, the way in
which it is - in some schools and in some teenage circles - cool to be able
to tell one's classmates, "Had to fend off another groper on the train
today".

So let's get it clear that I am not casting doubt on women claiming abuse or
figures reporting abuse. I cast no doubts, for example, on Aljazeera's
report that:

"Last week, figures released by the Metropolitan Police Department showed a
leap from 96 reported cases of molesting incidents on trains in 1996 to 2201
cases in 2004."
(http://tinyurl.com/58h32)

If they report it, I'm sure it's true. By and large, I have difficulty
accepting that "women claiming abuse or figures reporting abuse" are pretty
accurate and - even though there may be the occasional false accusation in
there - they still fall far short of the total number of abuse cases.

You are twisting the issue, Eric, and twisting my words, because you say I
am "insisting" on casting doubt on these things, and yet I do not doubt them
in the slightest.

The issue is not "women claiming abuse or figures reporting abuse" (both of
which involve the police). The issue is questionnaires and surveys leading
to claims that most women have been abused (which involve the media, but not
the police). Stick to the point, will you?

As far as such questionnaires and surveys are concerned, I have little
difficulty accepting statistics indicating that "at least 17%" of women have
suffered some form of abuse, but you keep on insisting that the person who
believes the most inflated statistic is somehow the more politically correct
or has the more highly-developed social conscience. That's just silly.

As for your quotations from my posts of a couple of years ago, I don't see
what point you are trying to prove.

I will repeat the following, as it is really the final word I have to say on
the subject of statistics of chikan abuse:

>>Think about it like this. Suppose there are 500,000 chikan active
>>in Japan, with an average of one molestation per month and
>>active over an average period of 25 years. That would total
>>150,000,000 abuses (more than the total population - male and
>>female - of Japan), and would comfortably provide the statistic
>>that "over three quarters" of Japanese women have been abused
>>by chikan, but it would still leave the majority of Japanese men
>>completely guiltless.
>>
>>I repeat:
>>
>>>In japan, chikan is the rule for men, not the exception
>>
>>was an ill-considered and racist statement and I think you
>>were wrong to defend it.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com