The Real Problem With Rolling Stone's Campus Rape Fiasco
The hysteria over "rape culture" is still alive and kicking.
It's great that those who value truth and reason finally won out over Rolling Stone, publisher of 2014's most egregious example of dime store fantasy journalism.
Through doing the things Rolling Stone flatly failed to—elevating fact-gathering over moral narratives; hunting down info; asking awkward questions—bloggers, journalists, and, now, the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism successfully exploded the myth of a gang rape at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 2012.
Truth, 1; Agenda-Driven Mythmaking, Nil. A clear win for fact over fallacy, objectivity over journalism more interested in telling a morality tale, however tall, than in communicating clear, proven facts. A victory for veracity. Right?
I'm not so sure. The Rolling Stone story might be dead, slain by an army of genuinely inquisitive observers. But the hysteria that made that fact-lite mess of a feature possible in the first place survives. It staggers on, bloodied but unbowed, Michael Myers-style.
Yes, Rolling Stone is reprimanded, but the unhinged panic about a "rape culture" on campus that made that mag so blind to the hollowness of Jackie's story is still getting away with it. Indeed, Rolling Stone's final withdrawal of its story this week, following Columbia's cool dismantling of it, has, perversely, given rise to a chorus of demands that we now focus on the true problem: the epidemic of rape on campus.
The hysteria is dead, long live the hysteria!
The most common criticism made of Rolling Stone in the past few days is that it has hampered the war against campus sexual assault. In publishing BS about a gang rape at UVA, it created a situation where female students, apparently under threat, might feel reluctant to speak out. In short: the problem with Rolling Stone's rape-culture mythmaking is that it made it harder to grapple with rape culture.
The Columbia report itself contains the seeds of this concern. It criticises Rolling Stone for spreading "the idea that many women invent rape allegations." In the section on "Reporting Rape on Campus," it doesn’t address the central problem with such reporting—that it too often buys into totally inflated stats about assault—but instead offers advice on how to sensitively cover rape stories.
In her statement on Columbia's report, the author of Rolling Stone’s rape tale, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, apologized to her readers and editors (but not to frats she so scandalously defamed), and she said sorry to the "victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article." Her main concern is ensuring that, even after her disastrous piece, "the voices of the victims" will still be heard.
UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan took a similar line, slamming Rolling Stone for distracting attention from the real problem, the "serious issue": sexual violence on campus.
Even as she rapped Rolling Stone's knuckles for publishing a scare story about rape, Sullivan promised to introduce "substantive reforms" to "improve culture" on her campus as a means of "prevent[ing] violence" and "ensur[ing] the safety of our students so they can learn and achieve their personal potential in an environment of trust and security."
So apparently there is a culture issue at UVA, a violence issue, an attitudinal problem that needs top-down fixing.
What these responses share in common is a desire to draw attention back to the alleged real stuff: female students not being believed; a warped campus culture that needs intervention; the need to turn campuses from alleged sites of violence back into "environments of security."
They're still buying the core misconception of Ederly's article, the really rotten part: the idea of a culture of rape, a culture of evil. According to Columbia's report, Ederly wanted to find a "single, emblematic college rape case" that would show, in Ederly's own words, "what it's like to be on campus now... where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there's this pervasive culture of sexual harassment / rape culture.” And much of the response to Columbia’s report is basically saying: Her emblematic case was hooey, yes, but she's right about the pervasive-culture thing.
Only she isn’t. And if we correct Rolling Stone without challenging the rape-culture myth, then we leave the colossal problems here untouched.
Media feminists have been even more explicit in their demand that we swiftly turn our eyes away from Rolling Stone’s failings and back to the alleged tsunami of sexual assault on campus.
Jessica Valenti frets that the Jackie fiasco will damage efforts “to end sexual violence on campus”—campuses where the “scourge of rape” is rife. Over at the radical lesbian magazine, Curve, Victoria A. Brownworth says it’s all well and good for Rolling Stone to have retracted its story, but “some things can’t be retracted”—like the fact that “Rape culture is real. There’s a pandemic of rape on college campuses like UVA.”
Feminist Suzannah Weiss says “we shouldn’t let Rolling Stone’s mistakes stand in the way of taking campus sexual assaults seriously,” since “campus rape culture is a very real problem.” This only says more openly what Ederly and Sullivan nodded to in their post-Columbia statements: that for all the faults in the Rolling Stone piece, the thing Ederly hoped to illustrate—the existence of a “pervasive culture of sexual harassment”—is still around and requires substantive action.
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Facts, shmacts. Rape culture is real, even if it isn't.
Orwell would be....well, I imagine he'd say, "I told you so..."
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Something something Hitler. . .
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I'm thinking the fix for UVA is to stop giving it tax money. Otherwise you would continue to subsidize rape culture (prog version) or a corrupt and inept administration (real world version).
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This insanity has saturated practically every university campus in the nation.
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it not just that. There also the fact that this insanity was insisted upon by the DOE's "Dear Colleague" letter.
The Obama administration is fighting for and very much wants these college witch hunts to continue.
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Honestly, I think you're on to the key. Perhaps the most intelligent response is "Wow, rape culture is totally out of control, we need to slash all government monies to universities and colleges immediately." Once we reply to every one of their invented calamities with a demand to cease funding to their pet projects, that will motivate them to turn on themselves and with any luck eat themselves.
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No need to do even that. The left are now trying to juggle so many different victim classes that it's literally unavoidable that at some point some of them will turn on each other. They've reached a level of insanity at this point, they're like a magnet to the unhinged and the perpetually aggrieved, that most people are going to start to shy away from them, or even run away as fast as possible.
This is exactly the reason why the Democrats got trounced in 2014. And with the SJW crowd running amok and lighting fires, it's going to get worse for the Democrats.
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Is every single feminist pushing this "fake but accurate" horse shit? Do I need to explain reputation to them ala Play It to the Bone?
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They would just explain the real problem with rape, that men control the judiciary, police included, and rape is not a serious crime in their eyes, so RAPE CULTURE!
The real problem is that rape is more or less just assault, a he-said she-said problem, without evidence if the rapist uses a rubber, and sometimes without evidence precisely because the victim cleans up before reporting it. How many victims of a fist fight go to the police or hospital immediately after the fight? What would have happened to George Zimmerman if he had cleaned up before the police showed up?
And because rape is mostly men attacking women, it is easy to advance the narrative that men (the police, prosecutors, and judiciary) ignore it, when they pretty much ignore all evidence-less assaults.
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I also think the accusation of rape is a pretty effective cudgel within a relationship. If you're a nineteen year old kid, is there any way to prove your innocence against such a charge? Especially since in the eyes of some states, merely imbibing proves you're a racist if you're male and incompetent if you're female?
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Errr...not "racist", I meant "rapist". My Freudian slip is showing.
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Rapey is the new buzzword. If you're male, then you're rapey. All males are rapey, thus guilty by default.
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it is heartening to see backlash against things people used to stay quiet about: the rape culture claim, forced celebration of things you don't like, the UM decision to American Sniper after all, the lessening impact of yelling 'racism!".
Feminist Suzannah Weiss says “we shouldn’t let Rolling Stone’s mistakes stand in the way of taking campus sexual assaults seriously,” since “campus rape culture is a very real problem.”
Except that nothing substantiates either claim. Sexual assault has always been taken seriously; what problem exists is with academia trying to handle a law enforcement matter, often with kangaroo courts that serve no one.The rape culture myth will continue to be mocked for the sophistry that it is. No parent would send a daughter to college if the one-in-five claim was remotely close to true and what young woman would willingly enter that situation?
Even worse, this has deeper implications going forward. Take a cohort increasingly populated by beta males, add females steeped in the notion that men are predators or evil or otherwise bad, and tell me how well this works in a society where most men and women alike aspire to one day settle down and marry a member of the opposite sex. This is its own version of the junior anti-sex league where personal relationships will be discouraged and sex will be purely for population maintenance and/or replenishing.
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It is funny that, in the 21st century, "feminists" are the source of prudishness and Puritanism.
And damn do the progressives love them some disease metaphors. Gun violence is an epidemic! A pandemic of campus rape! Don't stand too close; you'll catch it!
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They're more like Nazis than Puritans. Although, some of their behavior is Puritan like, especially all of their witch hunts.
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"Forget it, he's rolling."
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The SJWs are the unhinged lunatic fringe of the left. If the left do not reign in these people, they are going to suffer tremendous damage from it. So I hope they just let them run loose.
Go to Steam forums and say you are an SJW and don't like a certain game becuase blah blah blah. See what happens. A lot of people hate SJWs with a burning passion.
You cannot just run amok in society attacking everyone in insane ways and not have serious blow back.
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the left won't rein them in because the left needs them, it feeds off of them. Without a ready congregation of the aggrieved and offended, the church of progressivism would die out. What is necessary and what is happening, is for people on the other side to no longer sit by idly. Backlash against these folks and their toxic way of thinking is necessary and may be the only way of combating them.
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I find myself a bit depressed because of the lack of blowback. If you go to any of the comment sections on the Rolling Stone article, you'll find the same army of nitwits suggesting that the story was totally true, because men are evil!! Uggh...
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I've recently seen even the regular commentariat on Salon in-fighting because of the level of crazy that some of the SJWs have reached. I mean they're literally saying that every man is a rape monster just waiting for the next victim.
Just because I like to drink, doesn't mean that I want to hang around with a bunch of chronic alcoholics.
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Trigger warning:
Hover : Revolt of Gamers is a singleplayer & multiplayer arcade free run / parkour game that takes place in a futuristic alien city. The city is under pressure because of the Great Manager who decided to ban video games and condamn all people having fun.
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No jail time for teacher who confessed to have threesome with 16 year old student
A sleazy 32-year-old Louisiana English teacher admitted to bedding her 16-year-old student but got off with a deferred sentence and will not be required to register as a sex offender.
Shelley Dufresne, 32, was so excited about the light sentence that the married mom of three posted a smiling selfie, one armed raised victoriously, to Instagram immediately after court with the caption: “My mood today” followed by three smiley faces.
[snip]
Dufresne is not out of the woods just yet. Though she admitted to sleeping with the teen last August and September at a home in Montz, she still could face charges from a group sex tryst she’s accused of participating in with another 24-year-old teacher last Sept. 12.
Authorities in Jefferson Parish say Dufresne and Rachel Respess seduced the same boy, now 17, after a football game.
Kenner cops say the menage a trois lasted from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Authorities say Dufresne “enticed and transported” the boy to Respess’s Montz apartment where Respess had sex with the teen while Dufresne “began intimately kissing (Respess) in an attempt to arouse all parties involved, all who were complete(ly) disrobed.”
The teachers were caught when the boy bragged about the sexual encounter.
Weird, I don't see a victim in this case.
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There has to be a victim. That's what laws are all about, duh! I think they've got it backwards though. The teacher, by virtue of vagina is the obvious victim. And the 16 year old male? Why he's male, so obviously rapey. Male = rapey.