WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

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OK, the story that was here is gone. Having heard from the girl in the photo, who made it clear that I misread her “SlutWalk DC” protest sign, I decided that a mere correction was insufficient.

Her sign said she “didn’t want to press charges,” and my concern was that the perpetrator (the 24-year-old who raped a drunk 14-year-old girl) had not been prosecuted for the crime.

The girl says that, while she had initially been unwilling to press charges, she changed her mind and the guy was prosecuted. So my concern was mistaken and, because of the inflammatory nature of my remarks — imagine that, me making inflammatory remarks! — it seemed to me that a mere correction was not enough.

Apologies for the error. — RSM

 

101 comments

  5. I posted what your board said. It should be more accurate. At least I hope so. And I understand your feelings about this issue.

  8. The first thing that goes wrong in this story is the drinking. It shouldn’t have happened. Adults who hold teenage drinking parties should be jailed. This story could have ended with a fatal car crash.

  9. I am a little disgusted that she’s saying “I’ve heard alot about you and you aren’t the greatest guy in the world” when, despite getting a few of the facts wrong from a difficult to read sign, are arguing for THE GUY WHO RAPED HER TO BE SENT TO PRISON.

    Its like, to these dopes, the ones seeking to punish the wicked are the bad guys!

    Kids are stupid. Kids are kids for a long time after they actually think they’re “adults.” Girls are notoriously obnoxious about flaunting their “maturity” and make dumb decisions. “I can handle my alcohol” is something nobody under the age of 21 should be saying. I’ll admit I did it, but the environment I put myself in was not one where I could’ve been hurt. Just be smart about it! If you just HAVE to drink at the party, don’t get drunk! Never accept open drinks, and never get out of sight of your friends. Never be alone with a guy! If you feel a guy is trying to separate you from your friends, get your friends to leave the party and go with them.

    If I could say anything to this girl, I”d say “Look, I know it sucks to be the one who isn’t doing the cool thing and sucking down copious amounts of alcohol at that party you’re at, but alcohol heavily impairs your ability to make good decisions and if you’re drunk, you’re putting yourself in a position to be taken advantage of against your will. Evil exists in the world in great amounts. This ‘not the greatest guy in the world’ doesn’t want you to be raped and wants the people who put you in the position to be raped to be punished too.”

  13. I disagree with taking the whole post down.

    While your presumption that charges weren’t filed was incorrect (but as it turns out your instinct was right, and she says she didn’t want to originally), it’s a perfect microcosm of the problem in the “War on Women”.

    She went – publicly – and protested – that’s a part of the record and she should be proud of it.

    Her confusion that “conservatives” and people who ~”don’t care about feminism or whatever” would somehow support a (statutory) rapist is incorrect.

    Yet she doesn’t seem interested in learning from this – and revising her bias.

  15. A lot of what you say is solid, but I’m the guy who ran with a badly mistaken story, so I’m not in much of a mood to bark about it right now.

    I will say that this feminist thing of blaming people who merely write stuff on the Internet, rather than blaming the guy who committed the crime, has been a pet peeve of mine for a while.

    You saw something similar in the Trayvon Martin case: Anybody who said a word that contradicted the liberal narrative of the case was accused of saying Trayvon deserved to be shot, and treated as if they were complicit in Trayvon’s death.

    In this case, feminism is trying to control the way we think and talk about sex, so that “slut shaming” (criticism of promiscuity) is made to seem like being “pro-rape.” But nobody is actually pro-rape, except perhaps rapists, and conservatives are certainly not pro-rape.

    It’s a rhetorical ju-jitsu, a kind of Orwellian mind-control game, and I refuse to be bullied that way.

  16. Well (a) I got the facts wrong, and (b) she’s just a teenager. Getting the facts wrong in such a situation … well, imagine if that was your kid.

    So, yeah, we can choose some other example to use as a “microcosm of the problem.”

    My apologies for getting it wrong.

  17. Stacy’s done the right thing. No need to comment on it further.

    I’ll save my real anger for the many many long overdue corrections from the State Media we’re all waiting for.

  18. I totally agree with this.

    This can be a rough room sometimes and she’s was 16. We can’t just treat her like we treat each other. I’m glad you said it McCain, because I was trying to figure out a way of phrasing it, without tearing out everyone’s ass. I’m sort of in that kind of mood right now.

    Maybe I should go troll hunting on twitter.

  19. I’d agree with revising, just not total removal.

    I think that you were following the right instinct – and with the facts as presented, and context, I don’t think you were wrong.

    Her clarification/corrections IMO demonstrate that you were right to highlight the problem here, and the disassociation of her (and so many more there’s) thinking.

    I’ve got a couple years til my daughters are there. I’ve considered – and considering – how to deal with it.

    But that my advice will be castigated (and already has been) as “anti-woman”, “Neanderthalish”, etc, etc..

    That also gives me pause, and it’s why I commented. There *is* a truth here, and you pointed to it.

  21. She’s a teenager.

    But go ahead. Interrogate her about her about a mistake she made. One that most of us have made in our youth. One that put her in a position of vulnerability. I’m sure she hasn’t tortured herself over it already. Yeah, go ahead.

    Oh wait…she’s not here anymore.

  22. Wow. The man who saw your sign and was outraged at the idea of a 24-year-old man raping you and getting away with it doesn’t care about women? Did you even read what you just wrote? I understand they don’t teach critical thinking in school anymore — it was years after I got out of school before I learned anything appreciable about it myself. But, from someone who wasted far too much of her own life as a Leftist parrot, I suggest you start trusting what you see with your own eyes rather than taking as gospel whatever (contradictory) “information” you get from angry misandrists with largely unjustifiable chips on their shoulders.

    You can’t control what other people do to you, and I’m truly sorry that that 24-year-old scumbag pervert violated you, and that anyone blamed you for his refusal to take “No” for an answer after the fact. But being horrible to Mr. McCain, a man who has shown you nothing but compassion, is not an act of empowerment, it is a show of unwarranted embitterment, and — again, from my own experience — that’s not a road that leads to anywhere happy.

  23. I didn’t know “slutwalkers” recognized that eventual victims can be stupid, can put themselves in bad situations, or that drinking makes a bit of difference. Instead they shriek that none of it matters and you ought to be able to do whatever, whenever, wherever, without pausing to look out for your own safety. Don’t even try to pretend that this *isn’t* the signal that’s being sent, and don’t ignore how dangerous this is. As a rape victim how can you get behind that? You should think more about the message you’re sending with your participation.

  24. She went in public with a sign, invited people to take pictures, and she’s commenting on a blog now. SHE’S BEING GRILLED, SAVE HER BET0001970!!!

  25. Okay, he’s the first one to admit that he’s a sexist pig, likes women and enjoys looking at attractive women. I don’t know if that’s a feature or a bug. I do know that he’s married and has several children. Some of them are girls; if you look at old posts, he posts about his daughter graduating from college, getting a job and getting married. He posts about his son in the military. He posts about random other kids and a younger daughter. He makes it clear that he loves his wife and kids.

    He’s not judging your younger self; he’s judging the asshole who raped you and the people who tell you it’s your fault.

    For me, the bigger mistake was taking this walk, informing everyone that you didn’t want to prosecute your rapist and not wanting to be judged for liking sex. You’re taking something that should be special, between you and a man with whom you have a commitment, and reacting to the fact that you were raped by continuing to have recreational sex. That isn’t healthy for your psyche and is potentially a way to get stds. Is that what you really want or is that what society tells you you should do?

    If you haven’t sought counseling for the rape, please do so now. You need to heal from that and throwing yourself behind the slutfest agenda isn’t healthy either.

  27. The “slutwalk” thing is so moronic. Of course they don’t “deserve it.” The question is whether certain behaviors increase your odds of becoming a victim. Answer: They do! Getting drunk, being in the wrong places, etc. make it more likely you’ll get raped (or mugged, or whatever).

  28. Amen, with a couple of caveats:

    There ARE people who, at first, seemed like they were rational people defending the rights of George Zimmerman to defend himself against physical assault. However, when pushed by leftists, they actually DID state that not only did they believe Trayvon Martin deserved to die, but that it’s a good thing for America that he was killed because he was going to be nothing but a thug anyway (all of this despite the fact that Martin had never been arrested, much less for felony assault like Zimmerman had). The disgraceful Todd Kincannon, for one, went trolling for hateback on Super Bowl Sunday by tweeting that had Trayvon survived that night, he would’ve become a male prostitute to support his drug habit.

    Also: You wrote:

    In this case, feminism is trying to control the way we think and talk about sex, so that “slut shaming” (criticism of promiscuity) is made to seem like being “pro-rape.”

    I think it would be more accurate to say that some feminists are trying to control the language. At least one left-wing celebrity — supermodel Chrissy Teigen — didn’t back down after being accused of “slut shaming” after slamming Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham as a “whore” following Farrah’s quasi-mysteriously leaked home video with a porn actor (for which she was richly rewarded by an adult film studio). Teigen, whom I disagree with most of the time, won my favor when she tweeted: “Ladies: you aren’t a super feminist for okaying super whores. You don’t need to defend EVERYone with a vagina.”

  29. I’ve tried in the past to make that distinction, in the high-profile case of Julian Assange. I totally hate that dude. If Obama decided to drone-strike Assange tomorrow, I’d cheer the decision. But the two Swedish women who say Assange raped them had actually invited him to spend the night with them. The first woman, it seems, was OK making out with Assange but says he took it too far. The second woman says she had sex consensually at night, but when he woke up the next morning and expected second helpings — without a condom — she said it was non-consensual.

    Well, OK, “no means no.” I get that, and if Sweden can ever get its hands on Assange, I hope they prosecute him to the max, because I hate him. But … what were these women thinking? Inviting a total stranger over to your house, especially a guy who has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t think the rules apply to him? To say this is not to defend Assange, but is it “blaming the victim” to say that these women showed very poor judgment? Does pointing out the obvious mistake made by a rape victim make you “pro-rape,” even when you simultaneously demand prosecution for the rapist?

  30. The problem is, it’s just so freaking awful that someone was raped that even noting, privately, using your inside voice, that the woman might just have used a little less than the very best of judgement just…stop that thought right there.

    It’s not that anyone doesn’t understand that sometimes a woman used the very worst judgement in the world and it worked out OK, but another time, not so much; it’s that rape is such an awful thing that people flip out at the slightest hint that the victim might not have been doing the wisest thing she ever could have. Sort of like that poor girl in Aruba – she maybe shouldn’t have gone off with her murderer, no. But seriously, how many young people go off, slightly tipsy, with some guy they barely know, and the worst that happens is unsatisfactory sex?

    The problem is the criminal, not the poor judgement. It’d be nice if poor judgement never had bad consequences, but that’s not life. People just cringe, I think, when it’s such a horrific consequence.

  31. It’s not that they’re “content” to raise awareness; they’d much rather have the issue than any solution. Easier to whip up continued outrage, money, and votes that way.

  33. I’ve seen (in fact I have) Trayvon’s street fighting videos. Thug is correct.

    Nor DO feminists defend everyone with a vagina. Just the ones it is politically advantageous to defend.

  34. I wish there were blogs and stuff when I was growing up. I might have avoided a bad train wreck if I had had access to insight like this. Where were all of you forty years ago?

  35. It seems to me that feminism rejects the theology (or the taboo, if you prefer) which is the (only?) rational basis for distinguishing rape from crimes like assault, battery, robbery, slander, fraud, etc. Rape is an outrage because it attacks the way in which we are “made in God
    ‘s image,” i.e. it attacks our means of procreation. Adam was not in God’s image until Eve was taken from his rib. He was sterile (unlike God) without her.

  37. You know, a great many of us care very deeply about feminism-and the utter destruction it’s inflicting on women at large and especially young women. Perhaps you need to get out of the little pre-defined box that feminism has put us (and you) in and actually get to know who we are and what we actually believe.

    As a personal aside, I am glad that Stacy’s initial report was wrong, and pleased that the scumbag who attacked you got not what he deserved, but at least punishment. I hope you are able to continue to move past such a horrible incident, and wish you a happy and productive life.

  40. Yes certain behaviors increase your odds of becoming a victim. I don’t understand why you are asking what is factually known. Should not the question be stated as ‘Is a woman, or even a little girl, required to know what triggers rape in some men?’

    Factually, millions of men “got drunk” without ever suffering a rape -I think these girls are legitimately asking why our society thinks they must abide by the drunk or ‘slutty clothing’ rules, or accept responsibility for a crime that really has nothing to do with sexuality in the first place?

  41. hi Stacy, if you hit the delete button only, it may be possible to recover the pix. most of the time, :delete” only erases the file index, to allow new pics to be recorded over them. there are some free programs which can recover the pics, if you have not recorded further.

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