(POSSIBLE TW)

And so the age-old story goes – a woman brings rape charges against two footballers, one is jailed, and the people of Twitter begin to cry ‘GOLD DIGGER! PUBLICITY SEEKING WHORE!’

No, wait, this isn’t any age-old story. This is happening right now. Well, you see, the woman in question accused two men of rape in order to gain publicity and make money. Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? You report a rape and the world celebrates you and throw money at you? Right?

Wrong.

I’m not sure what world you have to be living in to imagine that a woman accuses a man of rape for her own personal gain. We live in a society that normalises rape and, in doing that, blames victims rather than rapists. So, when a woman accuses a man of raping her, and he is then jailed for it, a lot of people will immediately jump to the conclusion that the man is innocent and the woman is a slut, a slag, a whore. They will wail that she was drunk, therefore raping her would be an impossibility – as though drunkenness equates to a state of permanent consent. They will moan about how the complainant was apparently seen out in public shortly after the incident – perhaps because there is a period of time in which a rape victim has to stay indoors, of which she (and everyone else) was not informed. They will compare rape to a mugging, to drink driving, and bizarrely to eating takeaway food. They will pose the argument that ‘girls cry rape’ because they ‘love cars and money’, then joke that the footballer made a mistake by not killing and burying the woman afterwards.

You know that old trope, of a ‘gold digger’ who ‘cries rape’ in order to make money and achieve something? It’s a myth.