Males:Were you ever threatened with rape/harassment charges?

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What about under 18, or 31-35? Those age groups are un-placed...

And, I'm autistic, and no, it hasn't ever happened.

Wow, what's going on here.

I'm a female Aspie, who, by the way, has never been a victim of anything close to sexual harassment.

I am 100% sure that yes, of course there are women who accuse a man of rape/harassment just for revenge, or to ruin their reputation. Anyone who really thinks that this never happens.. well.. you're just wrong.

Of course no means no. But there is a difference between actual harassment and just "making a woman feel uncomfortable".

I'll clarify. Harassment is when someone deliberately makes someone else feel uncomfortable. In the vast majority of cases, it's usually the man making the woman uneasy. I've had this problem since high school. Every time I try to befriend an aspie male, they get too attached and obsessive. Then when I tell them to stop, they get really childish. That's the point when it turns into harassment. They can't play the "I didn't know any better game" because they have been told. The OP was saying that it could be due to social difficulties, but to me it's just a lame excuse for rude and intrusive behavior.

I agree that being autistic does not mean a no is a yes.

It happens as often as any other false criminal accusation happens, which is to say it is not really common.

However, many men want everyone else to believe that false accusations are common, so they can frame accusations directed at them as false and get other men to believe them because of course "false accusations happen more than people realize" even though they actually happen much less often than people realize.

Of course it happens. It just does not happen that often. It does not nearly happen often enough to dominate discussions about sexual harassment and rape the way it often does. Considering this is a culture where women are often blamed for being sexually harassed and raped, it is not hard to see why it is easy for people to believe in the "false accusations" myth.

You're probably right, it doesn't happen too often, I guess. Even if it did, of course, every accusation has to be taken serious.

People often infer intentions that I don't have from what I do and say, so it is possible that autistic people could be misinterpreted and wrongly accused of sexual harassment. I have also noticed that once people have misinterpreted me, they become convinced that they are correct in their misinterpretations, so it is impossible to change what they think about what I think, even after elucidating the mechanisms of their misinterpretations to them.

This is a good point, and I think it's not impossible for such things to happen to autistic people of any gender.

Im a magnet for the sexually aggressive woman. One night some woman came home with me...........she is LEADING me out the club. I had a change of heart before anything really happened - didnt explain it that well I admit but she left in a huff. Few weeks later my car had paint stripper and the word "Rapiest" written on the roof in pink. She could have at least learnt to spell. lol

The discussion is not about rape or sexual harassment. The thread is about people with a ASD being accused of it whether the allegations are true or false. The conversation went to 'men are pigs' very quickly. When people believe that making someone uncomfortable constitutes harassment there is a problem.

I don't understand this thinking where people believe that taking false accusations seriously somehow diminishes the seriousness of real crimes. If 10% of the accusations are false that is thousands of people who's lives are destroyed or at the least turned upside down for years. Why not just admit that both are a problem instead of trying to downplay one to highlight the other?

I don't think victims of false allegations deserve any less consideration than victims of the real offenses, even if they are a minority. Crime is crime and either way someone has lost their freedom. We also live in a culture where the mere accusation of a sex crime follows someone for years even when they are exonerated.

At least read up about actual false accusations before downplaying the seriousness of it.

I wanted to see how your current age relates to the votes (not your age when the charges were made) and under 18 is pretty much too low of a life experience.

'No' does in fact not mean 'no', it entirely depends on the context. If you observe, especially during your early teens, how males approach females and how they react, you will very likely conclude that it is part of the normal courtship ritual to 'convince' the female, and that she says 'no' to quite a few things until she finally agrees. If you don't see that, in lack of social skills/comprehension for example, you will just simply see the facts, which are that 'no' doesn't always mean 'no', especially if approaching women.

If you still think 'no' means 'no', no matter what, or if you cannot think of other social examples (arguments, father vs. mother, mother vs. child, child vs. dog, etc.) then your opinion is simply biased and so limited there is no point in arguing. Probably some people here will still be so biased, they can't even read this text not to mention think for themselves. I am really frustrated arguing against walls all the time. I write all these texts with much effort, for people to either ignore them so that they can keep their bias in coherency or to question the most mundane facts of life in refusal. I am doing it for the latter now btw. I really cannot understand, how you can even get the idea that in social contexts no always means no, if you are autistic, because it pretty much tells that you have never even consciously thought about all the conflicting misinformation people throw at their heads all the time, believing that it makes sense as a whole, when it is in fact mostly bogus information arising out of whatever social and emotional impulses that form no rationally coherent picture at all. But you need that rational picture, because there is nothing else, if you have to survive in a world where you don't have the same of those virtually identical impulses as all the other people have by default.
There are of course a ton of other explanations, why you could have believed that no means no, but none make any sense to me. For example you could have said it because you argued within the one context of a female socially signaling in a serious enough way that she wants to be left alone. But that for example makes the entire argument in this topic nonsensical, because the context of the topic was that autistics (or anyone) have to interpret those signals and construe the social context of the situation correctly in the first place for it to make sense, which tends to go wrong a lot in autistic people. None of this makes sense to me. Why did you say it? You must have realized, but then you clearly did not. I don't understand. I really wish I would know, because I see such irrationality all the time. But this time its pretty much cut clear and easy to explain. Please tell me. I am in despair of understanding this.


Btw Rascal77s, I respect your effort, but I pretty much believe it will be left ignored by the overwhelming majority. If people were to approach the issue with an open mind in the first place, they wouldn't even have their opinions to present here.

....I think this is some seriously dangerous thinking. I would definately not want to be "convinced" like that. And I don't think a lot of other women do.

Also, yeah, maybe Aspies might get into some situations that aren't clear to them. But nobody can seriously tell me that an Aspie would be so extremely oblivious to everything that it would lead to a (justified) rape accusation.

Hello.

There are many things that I want to say here. But I will try not to be too lengthy. I am a male myself.

Firstly, I agree with Rascal77s and see his points. I feel so sorry about his horrible experiences with nasty women. It's frustrating that some don't get his points.

I think people tend to love to think that "men are oppressors and women are victims" and some women do take advantage of that. People tend to assume many men are sexual predators. That's one of the reasons why men tend not to pursue a career that involve being around children, though this is in a little different context. If a man is around potential sexual crime victims, he has to be very careful even if he has no intention of doing anything sexual.

I have never been threaten with any sexual harrassment accusation, but I do have some unpleasant experiences. For example, when I simply tried to help (not anything involving physical contact) a classmate who happened to be a woman, she went around and said to other people that I was making unwelcome sexual advances. I was shocked to hear it because such an idea never even crossed my mind. I didn't even see her as a woman. Just a person who needed help. I am always very careful about personal space and never go too close to people. I realized that she was seeing me as a desperate man and was interpreting me unkindly (and she wanted to be seen as a sexually desirable woman). Though it's sad, I tend to hesitate to help women nowadays because I tend to be easily misinterpreted. I also know other men's examples.

I realize when a man is not liked, a woman could easily interpret him unkindly. Having AS makes one a not very popular person, and makes him/her behave in a way that can easily be misinterpreted. So, I think it is a reasonable assumption to think that being on the spectrum makes a man more prone to false accusations. And I think that's what happened to me on those occasions.

It's way too long now. So I stop here.

That's not really what the thread is about. It is about being charged for whatever reason (e.g. misinterpretation on both sides, false accusations with intent, false accusations without intent, unclear situations, personal subjective fudge factor, etc.). There is such an array of possibilities of what could go wrong.

And yes, of course I can seriously tell you that in an unclear situation, at least in (quite) some countries and states of the world, an aspie can get convicted by justified rape accusations, without being able to be aware that it was rape in any way. Just imagine, male 16-18 years old, no sex experiences, goes to a club maybe with his friend encouraging him or not and with a drunk woman to his home, has sex, woman wakes up maybe barely remembers a creepy acting guy influencing her somehow, aspie has no social skills or empathy to ease her and explain the situation, is a very weird stranger with 'rapist eyes', etc. That is considered rape in mentioned parts of the world and then it is all about what the woman beliefs and what she decides to do. Think about what an NT would do if she wakes up: be very social and friendly, make a good and calming impression, be understanding and empathic about what happened if she is concerned, make social gestures like inviting her or offering someone to talk or whatever. Now an autistic person: silent, staring at her, she maybe freaks out but he is entirely devoid of her emotional state, his home looks like a mess, she feels like she has been abducted, etc. etc. And if the woman exaggerates in lack of memory or based on emotional impressions (e.g. because the guy was so creepy), even everywhere else. Maybe it makes perfect sense for the woman, maybe she knows him and he has been creepy all along and 'targeted' (as in having a crush on her and acting weird about it, but she never said anything but maybe made body signals or whatever) her before for month and he just waited for an opportunity.

If you were normal maybe you would get all that correctly enough to not let that situation go into the extreme. But if you aren't socially very active and cannot figure out peoples minds whatsoever, it might set off very badly eventually. Of course not likely, but likely enough to happen to some considerable minor percentage maybe.

Last edited by C0MPAQ on 09 Jan 2013, 8:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Please point to where anyone said that men are pigs. I certainly did not say it. I did not even try to imply it. I said that some men profit from the assumption that most such accusations are false by capitalizing on that assumption to dismiss valid accusations brought against them.

And yes, often, making someone uncomfortable and refusing to stop when one is informed that one is making someone uncomfortable is harassment.



I have never heard of anyone's life being destroyed by a false accusation of rape or sexual harassment. I have heard of men who were legitimately convicted of rape and sent to prison for it claim they were falsely accused and imprisoned, but anyone who understands how rape cases are treated by police and in the courts would see that such a claim that imprisonment stems from false accusation is highly unlikely.



This is BS.



I believe I have read far more on the topic than many. What I have seen is that false accusations rarely go to court, and even more rarely result in any kind of convinction. In fact, a significant number of true accusations get dropped for various reasons, many of them questionable. Those that do go to court tend to become a commentary on the woman's virtue and worthiness, implying that if she has "questionable morals" that in some way she either deserved such treatment or brought it upon herself.

Most of what I have seen about false accusations is "men's rights activists" propaganda about the topic and not in any way reflective of real world situations.