... so he needs protection in case his lawsuit fails for lack of evidence and the defamer maliciously counter-sues him for defamation.
That's exactly parent's point. "Real" victims refers to victims of crime that actually happened and wasn't just made up, not some classification of crimes as serious or not.
Basically, the OP forgot to mention that harsh punishment should be reserved for cases where it can be solidly proven that allegations were made up and people started to nitpick on it.
> Why do people not see
> men as victims?
> This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing.
Well, this man appears to be a victim who is filing charges. You seem not to consider him a real victim. Don't we want victims such as him to defend themselves? As I understand your quote, you can answer your question better than I can: why didn't you consider him a victim?
You may have other reasons not to consider him a victim than that he is male, but I'm just using your quote to illustrate. A quick search returned this page at the top -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm. I don't know its credibility, only that it suggests a trend, cites many sources, took less than 1 minute to find, and there seemed plenty more such pages.
> You seem not to consider
> him a real victim
Why do people not see men as victims? His reputation could be ruined for the rest of his life, even if he is innocent. People take the law into their own hands and could physically hurt him as a result of a false accusation amid a system that disregards due process.
This community -- Hacker News -- is considering creating a list to name people accused of harassment without due process -- in other words, a vigilante system that could lead to innocent people, generally men, being victimized like this man, a real victim.