As someone's already pointed out, that last sentence contains a non sequitur. Nonetheless, I do sort of see what you're saying. Not because it can be used against women regardless of their honesty (this is just as true for "false accusation" or any synonym), but because it could imply commonality, because in the story of the boy who cried wolf (where the term presumably comes from), the problem is that the boy cries wolf too frequently. Your complaint makes sense if we view the crier as women in general. I (and some others I suspect) were only looking at the "false call for help" aspect. I think this is an honest mistake, maybe not even worth noting, but more on that later.
This is precisely the problem with the term "cry rape"; it
is used as a cudgel against women making allegations of rape "in general". And while you said that my example left you unconvinced, it speaks to precisely this sort of ignorance. In this case, it is you who are apparently unaware of how the term "cry rape" is loaded.
And I do want to clarify something for you about your comment about my explanation: This argument is
not about the accuracy of the term "cry rape" (though it is less accurate than "made a false accusation of rape"); it is about how the way we talk about things impacts the way that we think about things. If you respond to what I said by saying "But it's accurate!" you haven't understood the argument.
Don't do the "who really thinks that" thing. I'm just following your lead here. Who really is led to feel that rape is acceptable purely from the use of the term "cry rape?" The whole rape culture argument is based on these subtle connotations and mental effects that you can't possibly prove with hard data. I'm willing to accept the argument to a point, and I'll try to explain my own point better. Hopefully we can see eye to eye.
Okay, here is what I mean. You're trying to attack rape culture. To do that, you have to accurate identify instances of rape culture. I (for example), your potential ally, am with you so far. Then I hear some claims along the lines that we can stigmatize instances of rape culture such as dirty jokes or the use of the term "cry rape." Now, what do I think of this "rape culture?" I think it's some oversensitive BS. The next time you try to inform me of rape culture, even if you're talking about frat boys discussing how best to get a woman drunk, I'm more likely to ignore you before even hearing you out. You've done damage to your cause by focusing on silly little things with little or no real impact.
That's what I mean. This stuff you're talking about, does it really matter? I doubt it. If you spend effort on the wrong thing, then you've lost effort you could have spent better, and you've made your cause look ridiculous. This is not constructive.
You know what I think might be good? Education. That "teach men not to rape" thing. Sounds like it's worth a shot. Maybe that is worth focusing on, not subtle details of how people phrase things.
It seems like you have this idea that rape culture is "Joe hears someone make a fratboy joke. Joe hears someone say a girl cried rape. Joe now thinks he can rape."
In the case of the word "cry rape," the idea is simply that by creating an atmosphere in which every rape allegation is painted with the accusation of the term "cry rape" and it is assumed by a sizeable number of people that rape accusations are a fairly common or significant event, it makes it even less likely that there will be a conviction even if she does go to trial. It is not that the term "cry rape" does this alone; it is merely a part of a much larger emergent system that normalizes sexual assault of women.
And if one looks at the reality of rape in the United States - the rampant underreporting (e.g. 90,000 rapes in 2008; estimated 75,000 unreported rapes), the even lower likelihood that there will be an arrest (25% in 2008); this is precisely the sort of effect that rape culture is supposed to have. It makes it less likely that rapes will be reported and less likely that there will be an arrest in the first place. Given that the arrest rate alone is only 25%, even if the conviction rate were 100%, it would still mean that 3/4s of all reported - and 13 percent of reported and unreported rapes - go unpunished. Do you think this makes it more or less likely that someone will rape? This isn't reliant on subtle connotations and mental effects. And once more, for emphasis: No one is saying that the term "cry rape" does this all on its lonesome. It's merely a small part of the Gordian knot, and we're actually giving it no more time than it deserves.
First of all, see above for an explanation of what I mean about what exactly you deem important. Put forth the solutions that can actually work, not tiny things that might have some marginal impact. This gets the cause taken more seriously, I think. Furthermore, reacting to people basically just discussing facts is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Rape is not so important that you get to do fundamentally wrong things in order to stop it. Censoring true information is not acceptable. Thought police is bullshit. Killing a tiny, recently-conceived person is just plain wrong, if you believe it is possible to be a "person" while being recently-conceived. Rape changes none of this. You can still only fight it within the realm of acceptable actions. I say again, education. Great. Go. Do. Awesome. That is a thing you can do and maybe it could work, so great.
Rape culture is
generally not about "big things." It is more about a lot of little individual attitudes and cultural ideas that together create a larger effect, an emergent system. Unfortunately this means that people who are not as well-versed in the subject of rape culture will tend to be dragged kicking and screaming on each individual issue, because they don't see how that single issue can cause all of rape culture (which it doesn't). So they will complain that it - whatever it is - is not relevant because they don't see the forest for the trees.
It's an unfortunate effect of the forum environment, I think, where I have realized over the years that many peoples' first impulse is to argue a position rather than to see if they have something to learn about a subject that they haven't done much to educate themselves about.