“A Woman, With No Evidence, Can Send Any Man to Jail Whenever She Wants”: Men’s Rights Activists’ Digital Narratives of a Culture of False Rape Allegations

Abstract

A dominant narrative among men’s rights activists (MRAs) is that rape culture does not exist. Despite statistical evidence that men are more likely to be sexually assaulted than wrongfully accused of assault, false rape allegations are the most frequently discussed topic on MRA forums and websites. In this study, we analyzed comments about false rape allegations posted to r/MensRights, a popular MRA forum. Just as the larger MRA movement emerged as a reactionary counterbalance to a feminist movement that MRAs believe has purportedly achieved equality, we found that MRAs construct a culture of false rape allegations to counterbalance a purportedly non-existent rape culture. Using a grounded theory approach to examine the narratives deployed by MRAs, we discovered that these men construct what we call a “compensatory culture of injury.” We found that MRAs are driven by “aspirational oppression,” which we theorize as a sense of grievance surrounding a group’s diminishing privilege and desire to achieve the guise of subjugation that warrants reparations to restore the status quo in the ostensible pursuit of fairness and equality. This co-optation of victimhood may be challenged by structural conversations about gender as well as the explicit identification of the misogynistic nature of MRA narratives.