The Other McCain

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As UVA Rape Story Falls Apart, Feminists Try to Save ‘Rape Culture’ Narrative

Posted on | December 12, 2014 | 72 Comments

Reporting by the Washington Post and ABC News is steadily ripping to shreds the gang-rape story “Jackie” told Rolling Stone‘s Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a good summary of how the story is unraveling. It seems clear that editors at Rolling Stone did not adequately vet the story and, as Eric Wemple says, “Erdely’s mission appears to have been to present as sensational and damaging an account of fraternity excesses as she could gather.”

Ah, but if the story is not true, this doesn’t mean that feminists are prepared to abandon their precious narrative about how college girls live under a regime of sexual terror caused by savage males who brutally impose their phallocratic supremacy on helpless victims. At Slate.com, Amanda Hess coins the phrase “rape truthers” to describe “social media misogynists” she uses in a straw-man argument:

There are people on the fringe who believe that any rape story with any discrepancies is evidence of a vast feminist conspiracy aimed at inventing rapes and vilifying innocent men, but these rape truthers are not reasonable people, nor are they most people, and it is unwise to mold the conversation around their fantasies. I am, however, concerned with how some feminists and progressives have responded to the ever-expanding holes in Rolling Stone’s story.
At this point, it is clear that Rolling Stone failed to meet its basic journalistic requirements many times over. There is also compelling evidence that Jackie herself fabricated all or parts of her story. Neither of these scenarios serves to dismantle the anti-rape movement. Journalists have messed up reporting on rape since they began reporting on rape. In addition, there have been false rape allegations in the past, and there will be false allegations in the future. Any successful anti-rape activist or movement must be willing to accept that false accusations are not a “myth” and grapple with how to handle them appropriately. Whatever really happened at UVA one Saturday night in 2012 cannot possibly undermine a social justice movement because any understanding of justice must accommodate the truth. . . .

You can read the rest, but notice what Hess has done here:

  1. Imputed irrational paranoia to those of us “people on the fringe” who see evidence of “a vast feminist conspiracy” in the interminable campaign against “rape culture” that has, among other things, imposed a weird “affirmative consent” law on California campuses. To say that feminists engage in propaganda campaigns, and that they do this in an organized manner with the assistance of politicians and journalists, is merely to state a fact. Feminist rhetoric routinely vilifies innocent men, as the whole point of the “rape culture” meme is to say that any word or deed that offends feminists — from caustic sarcasm to “the male gaze” — makes men complicit in rape. And, as far as this Rolling Stone UVA story is concerned, whether or not a rape was fictionalized out of whole cloth, feminists did manage to turn an egregious example of biased agenda-driven “reporting” into a hysteria that caused the university to shut down fraternity life on campus. Like the old joke says, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
  2. Accepted as valid the need for an “anti-rape movement” organized around the concept of “social justice,” which is exactly how we get episodes like this UVA fraternity witch-hunt.

Could somebody ask Amanda Hess to identify the pro-rape forces in society which necessitates this kind of anti-rape movement?

Pardon me if I sound like a “rape truther” in asking such a question, but rape has been a crime under Anglo-American common law since time immemorial, and this crime is punishable by very long prison terms. All law-abiding citizens support rigorous enforcement of our nation’s laws against rape, and so the question of how “social justice” requires an “anti-rape movement” ought to be asked.

Nobody is denying that rape happens, nor is anyone denying that college girls are sometimes the victims of these crimes. The problem is that the prevalence of rape on campus has been deliberately exaggerated by feminist ideologues who claim 1-out-5 college females will be sexually assaulted during their undergraduate careers.

Critics have repeatedly exposed the problem with this bogus statistic, yet it keeps being repeated as gospel, while feminists denounce as “rape apologists” anyone who points out the actual facts.

In a report this week, the Justice Department made clear that rape is less common on college campuses than elsewhere in society.

According to the report, the actual number of rapes of college-age females is 6.1 per 1,000, a drastically smaller number than 1-in-5. Meanwhile, non-college-attending females in the same 18-to-24 age group had about a 20% higher rate of rape (7.6 per 1,000).

To put it quite bluntly, there is zero evidence to support feminist claims of a “rape epidemic” on U.S. college campuses.

To put it even more bluntly, feminists are lying about rape.

Whether these feminist lies are evidence of a conspiracy, or merely a common habit among feminists, I’ll leave for my fellow misogynistic “rape truthers” to debate amongst themselves if they’re not too busy. Oppressing women is a full-time job, y’know.




 

 

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism, Journalism, Media Bias, Sex Trouble

Comments

72 Responses to “As UVA Rape Story Falls Apart, Feminists Try to Save ‘Rape Culture’ Narrative”

  1. JaySwan
    December 13th, 2014 @ 1:00 pm

    it wouldn’t put it by frat boys to sexually harass female students though. It’s just that “macho” stereotypical male mindset at work. I’ll never quite get why some women go for that? i guess it’s the same reason men like cheerleaders, or strippers?

  2. RS
    December 13th, 2014 @ 1:09 pm

    It makes me wonder if rape claims are really that exaggerated, especially when dealing with the kind of guys you often find in frats?

    1. Read the DOJ link our host provides for the answer to that question.

    2. If you believe that fraternities are not aware of the current climate and further are oblivious to the concerns of parents of young men who attend college these days, you are gravely mistaken. My son’s fraternity some years ago went to an almost 1950’s social structure, where women are only allowed in the public areas of the house.

    3. See my comment above about crime on campus. Some colleges are going out of their way to assure parents that their campuses are safe for their children.

    4. You cannot draw any valid conclusions about the prevalence of something by observing a single occurrence.

  3. boyd2
    December 13th, 2014 @ 1:29 pm

    No it’s not the same as that at all.

  4. JaySwan
    December 13th, 2014 @ 2:06 pm

    4. I can most certainly draw a conclusion that street harassment exists, is demeaning, frightening and should be criminalized in some fashion. If they can’t criminalize it then women should have the right to raze, or mace their harassers without charges. Women across the board deal with it, and to say it’s either non-existent, trivial, or exaggerated belittles their experience and is sexist to the extreme.

    2. I’m sure frats are aware of their current climate, but that doesn’t mean assaults aren’t prevalent, and go unreported. Women risk a lot when filing a rape claim, and are often shamed for putting themselves in a bad situation so instead sweep it under the rug, and keep it to themselves. Having been around frats, and this is going back 20 years, and seeing, and hearing the way these guys think, and act, I wouldn’t put it past them and their jock culture which endlessly seeks to puff up its fragile male go in order to live up to the “macho” male ideal.

  5. RKae
    December 13th, 2014 @ 2:08 pm

    How ’bout a huge historical epic?

    Rape-Hur!

    (Or would that be Rape Her?)

  6. JeffS
    December 13th, 2014 @ 2:37 pm

    Easy. You sit near by, drinking a cold beer, and supervise her making it.

    Yeah, it’s extra work. But you get the reward of a sammich made by a feminista.

  7. JeffS
    December 13th, 2014 @ 2:41 pm

    4. Instead of overcriminalization, the better response is to shoot the harassing assholes in the foot. Or taze the bastards.

  8. Daniel Freeman
    December 13th, 2014 @ 3:17 pm

    4. What does that group say when two young white men walk past, and would a reasonable person (i.e. non-feminist) consider it harassment? There is more than one way to interpret what you witnessed, and the feminist one — that it is about men in general exercising patriarchal dominance over women in general — is utter nonsense.

  9. RS
    December 13th, 2014 @ 3:32 pm

    I’m sure frats are aware of their current climate, but that doesn’t mean assaults aren’t prevalent, and go unreported.

    Quite convenient. You create an irrefutable argument, the validity of which is not connected to any evidence.

    As for your response to item 1. you drew the conclusion of prevalence, not existence. No one disputes that bad things happen. The dispute is whether they are ubiquitous. It’s a convenient sleight of hand and typical of the “debate.” Label anyone who states the facts don’t warrant the appellation “crisis,” a “denier,” or “racist” or “sexist” or whatever ad hominem invective you can pull out.

  10. Daniel Freeman
    December 13th, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

    You need to add some nonsense to distinguish yourself in today’s crowded indignation marketplace. For example, you could say that guns are something that robbers use, and are often targeted for being stolen, therefore true anti-robbery Americans are against guns. Also, it’s victim-blaming to tell people to lock their doors, so you need millions of dollars for your new foundation to run an ad campaign teaching robbers not to rob.

  11. JaySwan
    December 13th, 2014 @ 5:03 pm

    Men typically yell “I eat ass”, and I’ll pound that pussy, baby!” when other men walk by? WTF kind of argument is that? I never uttered the word “patriarchal”, nor is this a feminist argument, but that shit happens, and it’s repulsive. The fact that you’re basically arguing against those being harassed, and trivializing what they’re dealing with is sad.

  12. JaySwan
    December 13th, 2014 @ 5:06 pm

    That’s exactly like what I would like to see. Truth be told, I’ve argued that women make too big a deal out of this, but seeing it really pissed me off, drove home what that must be like, and I found it repulsive.

  13. Fail Burton
    December 13th, 2014 @ 6:45 pm

    We still prosecute crimes after they happen, not after someone makes stuff up out of their head about I wouldn’t put it past them.

  14. Earl T
    December 13th, 2014 @ 6:45 pm

    Jay,
    White-knighting as you are obviously doing, merely establishes your bona fides as a mangina and it ain’t gonna get you laid in an easier fashion!

    So, man up, Bucko!

  15. Fail Burton
    December 13th, 2014 @ 6:49 pm

    So do I, but you still have to limit it to people who actually do it, not smear it around onto others.

  16. Kirby McCain
    December 13th, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

    But but but Jessica Valenti believes Jackie http://kirbyatlanta.blogspot.com/2014/12/fanning-flames-of-discontent.html?m=1&zx=835a13b34213fbb

  17. From Around the Blogroll | The First Street Journal.
    December 13th, 2014 @ 11:18 pm

    […] Robert Stacey Stacy McCain on the Other McCain: As UVA Rape Story Falls Apart, Feminists Try to Save ‘Rape Culture’ Narrative […]

  18. Daniel Freeman
    December 14th, 2014 @ 12:47 am

    Obviously, they would say something else to start a conflict with men. It’s cute how you’re unaware of that fact. Bless your heart.

  19. Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove
    December 14th, 2014 @ 10:30 am

    […] The Other McCain notes feminists trying to save “rape culture” […]

  20. Daniel Freeman
    December 14th, 2014 @ 8:57 pm

    Jessica Valenti would believe Number Six, who doesn’t even exist.

  21. Daniel Freeman
    December 14th, 2014 @ 9:30 pm

    I just want to add, preemptively, that (if you’re telling the truth) they were trying to start a conflict with those women. I trust that as their behavior lead to consequences, their actions followed intention. The consequences were intended. If you disagree — if you think that they meant to get laid — then you have to tell me whether you’re racist, agist or misandrist.

  22. Daniel Freeman
    December 15th, 2014 @ 1:58 am

    Doesn’t sound worth it. I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.