I still blame Rolling Stone for that giant sucking sound. Thanks to their abject failure, all the MRA trolls are crawling out of the woodwork, armed with what they consider a prime example of women lying about rape.
That sucking sound? That’s us being dragged back into the last century.
Can we please not go there? Jackie’s story might not be real, but a bigger one is. One in five women say they have been raped. One in 20 say they have experienced other forms of sexual violence. About 19 percent of undergrads say they experienced rape or attempted rape. In a fall survey of MIT students, one in six of the women who responded said they’d been sexually assaulted, but only 5 percent had reported it. It is everywhere, including at august New England universities.
Even without Jackie’s story, there is plenty in the Rolling Stone story to alarm: UVA is one of scores of schools being investigated by the federal government — and one of 12 receiving extra scrutiny — for its handling of sexual assaults. Other UVA students described their own rapes in the article, and the alarming unresponsiveness of school officials who seemed more concerned with the college’s reputation than with student safety.
Maybe all of these people are lying, too, you and Bill Cosby might argue. No. Various studies show false rape report rates ranging from 2 to 8 percent. There are no more fabricated reports of rapes than of other crimes, says Toni Troop of Jane Doe Inc., as much as some would like to believe otherwise.
“People don’t want to believe rape happens in the first place,” says Troop, whose job just got harder.
And why is that? Why is there such a resistance to even acknowledging that rape is a real thing that happens to real people? Or that we are stewing in a culture that allows it to be shrugged off, mocked, or joked about?
If things like GamerGate and the renewed interest in the allegations against Bill Cosby have taught us anything, it's that no matter what a woman does, attacks or threats against her are always her fault.
Even on this site, both Jackie and the alleged victims of Bill Cosby are condemned for not reporting the rapes so that they could be "properly" investigated. This is usually, though not always, wrapped in concern about "innocent until proven guilty," which is horrifically funny because that same principle doesn't apply to the victims. They are by default lying about the rape until they prove otherwise.
That's one hell of an idea of justice, isn't it?
I will continue my rant later, but first, let's look at some facts:
There's a lot of talk about Jackie's story being fabricated, and yet no one even knows if that's true. Some discrepancies have been reported. But look at that link. It's WaPo uncritically passing on a statement that the fraternity released. And much of the reporting that WaPo has since done regarding Jackie's story have come from the fraternity.
Not all of it, mind you, but most of it.
The idea that because there are some discrepancies in the case does not mean that the whole story is a lie, but since some of Jackie's story has been brought into question, the default assumption is that the whole thing is a lie. This despite the fact that rape is traumatic, and trauma often affects memory. Given that, it's unreasonable to insist that anyone's story of rape will be 100% accurate.
And why don't people like Jackie or the women who've spoken out against Bill Cosby report their rapes so that we can offer them the dignity of being believed?
Well, there's this.
Most rapes go unreported. The source that RAINN cited is noted as
Justice Department, National Crime Victimization Survey: 2008-2012 but a
2013 study by the National Research Council puts that number closer to
80%.
That is not a typo.
But let's use RAINN's more conservative number for our purposes here.
If a woman does report a rape, her rapist will likely never be arrested. If she is one of the minority of victims who does get to face her attacker in court, the odds are that he will not be convicted. That means that a woman will face all of the scrutiny that comes with reporting rape, often being re-victimized by the defense, all for nothing.
Does that sound like something you would put yourself through on the off chance that you might get justice? And that is only the legal aspect.
That is setting aside all of the stigma of being a rape victim.
Because, see, "why didn't she report it?" is only the starting point for the MRA trolls. Up next is likely the statistic that between 2% and 8% of reported rapes may be false. That teeny tiny number is somehow pertinent to 100% of reported rapes.
Let's do some math, shall we? Again, let's again use RAINN's more conservative numbers for this practice, and let's round that 2%-8% number to 5%.
That means that for every 40 reported rapes, two are fabricated. Two.
And yet that number is used to discredit 100% of women, all in the name of "innocent until proven guilty."
For victims of rape, it seems, the opposite applies. We are guilty of lying until our story is heard in a court of law. And when the inevitable happens (i.e., nothing), we are still guilty of lying, aren't we? Because it was heard in a court of law, so the defendant is innocent and the victim is guilty.
Jackie's story may or may not be fabricated. We simply don't know yet. But the problem of rape on campus continues to be a very real one. The problem of rape continues to be a very real one.
And the same culture that allows rape to be largely a problem for the victims/future victims/potential victims to figure out is the same culture that takes a story about rape that is not 100% accurate, deems the whole thing a lie, and uses it to discredit every woman who has been raped.
That's what it looks like when we fall back into the pre-women's equality days. This is what it sounds like.
And if you're one of those men who carry around that 2% to 8% statistic as though it's proof that most women lie about these things: that sucking sound is coming from you.