The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminist Logic

Posted on | December 26, 2014 | 16 Comments

Never let facts get in the way of a useful narrative:

When President Obama announced in September his “It’s On Us” initiative to combat college sexual assault, he declared that “an estimated 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted in her college years.” . . .
But now, in the wake of a new federal Department of Justice report showing the incidence of rape and sexual assault on campus at far lower levels and trending down over the last decade, that statistic is being called into question.
An initiative to combat college sexual assault, led by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., also is under fresh scrutiny. . . .
“Frankly, it is irritating that anybody would be distracted by which statistics are accurate,” said McCaskill, whose legislation also calls for a national survey of campus assault. . . . “This will always be an underreported crime.”
Using data from the Census Bureau’s Crime Victimization survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ new report, released earlier this month, states that between 1995 and 2013, 6.1 female college students of every 1,000 reported being a victim of rape or sexual assault the previous year. The 2013 report of 4.3 rapes or sexual assaults of college women per 1,000 was half the roughly 9 per 1,000 reported in the early 2000s.

Glenn Reynolds observes:

Old narrative: The statistical proof of our argument is overwhelming!
New narrative: Our argument is too important to be undermined by mere statistics!

Feminist ideology requires that rape be a pervasive problem — “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear,” to quote Susan Brownmiller — in order to justify their continued war against patriarchal oppression. Therefore, it does not matter if a highly-publicized atrocity tale turns out to be a hoax, nor does it matter what actual trend the data show. Facts and logic are tools of the patriarchy, and disagreeing with feminists is hate.

 

Comments

16 Responses to “Feminist Logic”

  1. Jim R
    December 26th, 2014 @ 11:25 am

    If it’s always an underreported crime and there’s no sense arguing about statistics, then why is she sponsoring a bill to… gather statistics?

    I smell another “heads I win, tails you lose”:

    — If the statistics show lots and lots of rape (and you can bet that nobody in MiniTru will scrutinize those statistics, who gathered them and by what methodology, or even how “rape” is defined), then she’ll tout them as proof that “We gotta do something!!!” i.e. ANOTHER federal law / program

    — If the statistics DON’T show lots and lots of rape, then she’ll point to this as proof that women are too terrified to report, even one rape is too many, and… “We gotta do something!!!” i.e. ANOTHER federal law / program

    Rinse and repeat.

  2. CrustyB
    December 26th, 2014 @ 11:35 am

    They’re jumping on the “waaah waaah, I’m a victim, give me attention and cheap pity” bandwagon. Children in Africa are sipping water out of dung-holes on the ground but American women are sitting around fantasizing about rape.

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2014 @ 12:30 pm

    It is all about emotion. Logic really has nothing to do with it.

  4. darleenclick
    December 26th, 2014 @ 1:05 pm

    Contemporary feminism is nothing but a wholly-owned subsidiary of the collectivist Left. Facts are not allowed to interfere with the narrative or agenda. Just as Leftists see no hypocrisy in denying any relationship between the crowd chants of “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.” and the assassination of two NYPD cops vs the immediate rush of every Leftwing pundit to hold Sarah Palin responsible for the shooting of Gabby Giffords, so too, left-feminists see no hypocrisy in maintaining rape-culture-epidemic-hysteria regardless of reality.

    Because their agenda isn’t about rape or assault or racism — their agenda is POWER.

    Don’t get lost in the weeds about this. They are totalitarians regardless of what ever RaceGenderClass nugget they wrap in Social Justice(tm) trappings.

  5. Neo
    December 26th, 2014 @ 1:11 pm

    Yeah. Let’s send in the whambulance

  6. joethefatman
    December 26th, 2014 @ 1:20 pm

    Figures often beguile me,
    particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the
    remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force:
    “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

    – Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American
    Review

  7. richard_mcenroe
    December 26th, 2014 @ 1:48 pm

    Rape on campus trending down = Men look at Womyn’s Studies majors and saying, “not with my worst enemy’s dick…”

  8. richard_mcenroe
    December 26th, 2014 @ 1:49 pm

    The Fourth and Fifth Lies: Gender and Ethnic Studies

  9. Fail Burton
    December 26th, 2014 @ 3:01 pm

    If statistics are inaccurate, why appeal to them, and how can a thing be underreported in that context? Once again we have a predetermined outcome from an Orwellian Ministry of Statistics based on a male enemy, not reality.

    In equal rights feminism, law is both the problem and the solution; it is a legalistic issue. Gender feminism is way of life, a true blanketing ideology based on hate and faith in that hate and which opposes unbelievers. It is like Muslim sharia. You can live unmolested under feminism if you confess and become an “ally” to women.

    That means acknowledging your privilege and the existence of rape culture. That means never participating in a Table of Contents or panel discussion that is all male or all white. That means fawning over and acknowledging the oppression and superior wisdom and insights of women – especially women of color – and gays. That means submitting to the idea that gender is “performed” ala Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler and promising to not pink/blue color-code your children or genderize xmas gifts. It means acknowledging that artificial “performed” masculinity is toxic, oppressive and deadly. It means the end of the “male gaze” and seeing women as sex objects – no more Playboy or video games as we know them – the complete overturning of popular culture as we know it.

    Just as the Koran is a book dedicated to the spiritual management of one’s own life and conquered populations of Jews and Christians, feminism is a supremacist ideology dedicated to one’s own spiritual and sexual management and managing conquered populations of Western white heterosexual men to submissively exist under a feminist umbrella of lofty disdain.

  10. jakee308
    December 26th, 2014 @ 3:06 pm

    Feminist Logic. Now THERE’S an oxymoron to conjure with.

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2014 @ 3:09 pm

    I feel therefor I am justified in dictating to you how it is going to be. Descartes was just an old white dude anyway.

  12. Fail Burton
    December 26th, 2014 @ 3:13 pm

    “Feminism is the solution, Audre Lorde is our Prophet.”

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2014 @ 3:34 pm

    Darleen is right, the leaders of the feminist movement know exactly what they are about and what they are pursuing (and the ends in their minds absolutely justify any means). Their feminist followers are all about emotion, which is why they are so easily led.

  14. Daniel O'Brien
    December 26th, 2014 @ 5:23 pm

    “Fake, but accurate,” said Dan Rather.

  15. Jeanette Victoria
    December 27th, 2014 @ 10:59 am

    We have several generations of people who haven’t a clue how to think they have been trained to reaction to emotional manipulations of the left and are assuming that is in fact “reasoning”!

  16. Dangerd
    December 27th, 2014 @ 10:42 pm

    I think you’re missing the bigger story here. Seems President Light bringer has single handedly retroactively reduced the incidents of sexual assault merely by giving a speech.
    In the beginning their was Barack…