I feel like the practical problem with this is it’s be hard to prove that the rape DIDN’T happen, and that the accuser was indeed lying. When someone is found innocent in court, at least in America, all that means is that the suspect was not evidenced as guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, for example, if someone really did rape a woman, and she took him to court for it, but he couldn’t be convicted due to lack of evidence, what steps would the court then take to make sure that she was 100% lying? That’s where we run into problems, because imprisoning a rapist accuser because it is possible that they were lying is just as bad as imprisoning an accused rapist because there exists a possibility that they really did rape someone. There needs to be undeniable evidence.

If you can prove one or the other beyond a reasonable doubt, then yes, the punishments should be about equal. However, you’d very rarely have full on convictions of either due to the scarcity of solid evidence in most rape cases. This is why some feminists think we live in a rape culture, because every time a man is accused of rape, he’s given due process rather than immediately being hauled off to serve a prison sentence, which is sometimes mistakenly interpreted as rape-apologetics. The accused deserves due process, and the accuser deserves a right to be heard. We cannot rely solely on the word of one over the other 100% of the time.