To the Left, Lying About Rape Is Just Dandy

UVa FraternityThis week, Rolling Stone printed an editor’s note retracting one of the most highly praised pieces of investigative journalism in its history. That piece, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, alleged that several members of the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, had raped a 19-year-old student named Jackie, including with foreign objects, as she lay on a floor covered with broken glass. The article resulted in the university suspending the fraternity’s activities, and national outrage over the so-called “rape culture” on campus.

That rape culture supposedly leads to one in five women being sexually assaulted on campus — a faulty statistic from a poll that didn’t even ask women if they were raped or sexually assaulted, and instead defined sex while inebriated at any level as rape. With regard to reported rape, the federal government reports a rate of just 1.3 per 1,000 Americans. That is, of course, far too high. But it is not a rape culture by any plausible definition.

Nonetheless, the narrative of women as victims of brutish male society must be forwarded at all costs, for political purposes. If Americans are brutish sexists waiting to rape unsuspecting women, bigger government becomes a necessity. That’s why President Obama has cited that one-in-five statistic, and suggested that America experiences “quiet tolerance of sexual assault.”

In order to forward that narrative, all rape stories are treated as fact sans investigation of any kind. And so Jackie’s story of gang rape received plaudits across the media landscape.

Then it fell apart.

The Washington Post quickly debunked the story. According to the Post, the fraternity says there was no event the night Jackie was allegedly raped, Jackie’s friends “have not been able to verify key points in recent days,” and one of the men named in Jackie’s report stated that “he never met Jackie in person and never took her out on a date.”

As the Rolling Stone report collapsed, members of the left jumped to defend Jackie.

Sally Kohn of CNN.com tweeted that people should stop questioning Jackie’s story: “While aspects of UVA rape story now in question, still unsettles me that pouncing by skeptics mirrored sort of doubt rape victims often face.” Feminist Melissa McEwan wrote, “If Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn’t validate the reasons for disbelieving her.”

Under this logic, Atticus Finch was the villain in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” After all, how dare he question the rape allegations of a victimized woman and defend Tom Robinson?

But for the left, it’s narrative first, facts second.

The same holds true regarding allegations made by HBO star Lena Dunham, who wrote of her own alleged rape at the hands of an Oberlin “college Republican” named Barry. When it turned out that Barry, a readily identifiable person from Dunham’s days at Oberlin, did not rape her, the media largely went silent; Dunham still has not spoken on the issue.

Narrative first. Facts second.

Here is the reality: All decent human beings believe that rape is evil. They also believe that false allegations of rape are wrong. These two positions are not mutually exclusive. They complement one another. False rape allegations do actual rape victims a tremendous disservice: to lump in false accusations of rape with true accusations of rape makes people more skeptical of rape victims generally, a horrible result. Rape should be taken seriously; rape accusations should be taken seriously. That means taking factual questions seriously, not merely throwing the word “rape” around casually, without evidence, and without regard for truth.

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  • Dan Knight

    Ben, as you may recall from law school: Leftists believe all accusations of sexual crimes are true … if the accused is a conservative,
    if the accused is not a member of a protected class,
    or if the accused not an (actual) criminal.

    Just sayin…

  • Bash Brannigan

    And the corollary?? Somebody is doing the raping, right?? What are those stats??

  • tickletik

    The word for the behavior of these people is “Evil.”

    • Michael Garfinkel

      Other words that come to mind: infantile, resentful, and malicious.

      In Academia, these attitudes and behaviors are everywhere, as just evidenced at the U. V. A. and Columbia.

      The Great Liberal Crack-Up continues…

  • dwayne roberson

    Rolling Stone grew it’s readership writing about Led Zepplin. For some reason the left elevated the rock music rag to faux credibility, so kids and rap fans could get on the Progressive bandwagon. Why should we be surprised now that what we should have expected all along would be nothing more than Michael Jackson tributes and Miley Cyrus updates.

  • tagalog

    The Larger Truth and the Greater Good must be served. Lies can serve The Larger Truth and The Greater Good. So we are told.

    I notice that certain people badmouth religions, particularly Christianity, for claiming that it is evil to say that lies can illustrate truth, saying that such a claim is a mere myth, made up to keep the little people down. And yet, we are experiencing the truth of what religion says about that issue right now. Lies serve truth; I doubt it.

  • yportbill

    Sounds like Sharpton and Brawley all over again, lying scumbags, the lot of them. It seem the whole Democratic party is a bunch of liars. Can we get some honest representation in America?????????

  • Dennis Opihory

    by any means necessary, the cause over the truth. rolling stone’s realname is pravda

  • Cappy1437

    Lena Dunham is not only someone suffering with mental issues, she’s a lowlife scum who has no values.

  • Bandido

    What is being raped is the American justice system, gang-raped by Leftist savages.

  • laura r

    something is really wrong. something has changed. in all my years in school & social life (long time ago), no one was raped. the only first hand story happend about 30 years later. a younger woman i know was followed into her building & held @ knifepoint for 5 hours. she had to take a month off from work & go to a special rehab therepy group. she moved to a doorman secure building as well. no one goes thru a trauma like “jackie” & goes about their business. laying on broken glass, one would assume that requires a hospital visit then a police report.

  • laura r

    lena dunham writes fiction, not memoirs. its the “haha isnt this cool” kind of thing. she just blabs. ive heard her on howard stern making up stuff ad lib. idiotic teenagesilly stuff. how can anyone take her seriously? times have changed. here’s a girl who looks like flubber w/hanging tattoos, trailer trash meets punk. yet she is on the cover of many magazines (heavily photoshopped may i add).

  • Juan Pablo

    I wonder if the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault were similarly believed by these leftists.

    I know they were all seduced by dragging a $100 bill through the trailer park (as James Carver reminded us), but I’m curious if they’re being consistent here.

  • kasandra

    What do you expect from Rolling Stone? I was waiting to donate blood a few months ago and the only reading material I could find at the blood bank that was even remotely interesting to me was a Rolling Stone from September 2012. In other words, it was from before the 2012 presidential election. There was an article in it about Detroit, which is where I’m from. So I thought I’d read it. In the first two paragraphs was the statement that (and this is as close as I can recall to a quote) “If the Republicans win in November, they will do to the nation what they have done to Detroit.” I guess that no one had told the editors at Rolling Stone, and the author never looked up, that Detroit hadn’t had a Republican mayor since 1961.

    • tagalog

      Obviously it’s the delusion that counts, not the reality.

  • joe kulak

    It’s so chic to be a rape victim these days. In fact victimhood, ANY victimhood is cherished by the Left; it’s like a free pass, a status symbol, glorious martyrdom. And they use the claimed status of victim to justify anything and everything, as a cudgel with which to beat and batter those who would dare to doubt them, not to mention their supposed tormentors.
    They torment themselves… and the rest of us as well.

  • Wilkins Micawber

    There were actual gang rapes at universities lately-
    At Johns Hopkins, William Paterson University, and Vanderbilt.
    The Hopkins gang rape even happened at a fraternity! And Vanderbilt is a school full of privileged white southerners! Probably even some Republicans!
    Those are real cases of rape, not made up, that occurred on college campuses. Why don’t liberals want to talk about those rapes?
    (Looks at photos.) Oh.

  • Sprickoló Tömegek

    What feminists did is nothing more than swapping the buzzwords of mainstream Marxism.

    In this fantasy world, women (the proletariat) are kept down by men (the capitalists) by their mere existence, and “equality” will only come with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat WomenFeminists, until then, “they can only lose their chains”.