So do I think that rape is prevalent and too often goes unpunished, or do I think that rape is a crime that’s unusually susceptible to false accusation and conviction? Both, actually. There’s nothing remotely contradictory about believing both those things. It’s just hard. It’s just terribly painful to believe that both are true. I think we have an epidemic of rape and sexual offenses in our culture, and a bad habit of excusing them, and I think we have an incredibly aggressive police and prosecutorial system that enables racial and class inequalities. And I think the nature of sexual offenses means that the system will always be forced to rely on the testimony of individuals who are involved in these crimes, and that in a situation such as that, what will always matter is the relative power of those individuals in a deeply unequal society. That will not change, no matter how we might alter the law to make arrest and prosecution easier. In a caste system like the one we live under, it will never be the Woody Allens of the world who are at risk. It will always be the Timothy Coles.

So do I think that rape is prevalent and too often goes unpunished, or do I think that rape is a crime that’s unusually susceptible to false accusation and conviction? Both, actually. There’s nothing remotely contradictory about believing both those things. It’s just hard. It’s just terribly painful to believe that both are true. I think we have an epidemic of rape and sexual offenses in our culture, and a bad habit of excusing them, and I think we have an incredibly aggressive police and prosecutorial system that enables racial and class inequalities. And I think the nature of sexual offenses means that the system will always be forced to rely on the testimony of individuals who are involved in these crimes, and that in a situation such as that, what will always matter is the relative power of those individuals in a deeply unequal society. That will not change, no matter how we might alter the law to make arrest and prosecution easier. In a caste system like the one we live under, it will never be the Woody Allens of the world who are at risk. It will always be the Timothy Coles.

—[rape culture and the juvenile theory of the moral universe

Fredrik deBoer](http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/02/08/rape-culture-and-the-juvenile-theory-of-the-moral-universe/#comments)