In today’s LinkSwarm, I mentioned how the Rolling Stone accusation of a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia was unraveling. Well, shortly after that it collapsed completely. So much so that even Rolling Stone itself is backtracking on its allegations, albeit in a weasely “we were taken in” fashion:
In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.
At this point, the only way Rolling Stone could be more embarrassed is if “Jackie” turned out to be James O’Keefe in a wig.
As the central premise of the article collapses, it’s interesting to look at the tantrums thrown by some of Twitter’s more notable feminists. Take, for example, Amanda Marcotte:
Here Marcotte has managed to put on a veritable clinic in how to cram as many logical fallacies into a single tweet as possible:
Smear those who doubt the truth of the now-discredited Rolling Stone piece as “rape apologists.”
By extension, Marcotte is smearing everyone who has every doubted any rape allegation, or who insists on the English common law doctrines of innocent until proven guilty and right to due process, as “rape apologists.”
“Rapes are hoaxes”: Again, Marcotte uses rhetorical slight-of-hand to conflate people doubting this particular allegation of rape to a universal strawman that people are calling all rapes everywhere “hoaxes.”
“Why oppose investigating them” Once again, Marcotte constructs a strawman put forth by none of the story’s critics; indeed, she is accusing conservatives of espousing exactly the opposite opinions of what they’ve actually espoused, namely that every accusation of rape should investigated by the criminal justice system.
The problem is that Marcotte and so many of her feminist allies want campus rape allegations investigated not by the criminal justice system, but by star-chamber campus tribunals where the accused will not enjoy the rights of innocent until proven guilty and due process under the law. This is in response to the myth of a “rape culture” so pervasive on college campuses that (under pressure from the Obama Administration) many have adopted due-process-violating “sexual assault” tribunals. As liberal lawyer Alan Derschowitz put it: “Harvard’s policy was written by people who think sexual assault is so heinous a crime that even innocence is not a defense.”
Not to mention the fact that these policies have “defined rape downward” to the point where “campus sexual assault” now includes “having consensual drunken sex that they regret later.” Opposition to star chamber prosecution of fake rape is in no way the same as opposition to real rapes by the criminal justice system, in the same way that opposition to feminists’ radical far-left ideological agenda is not the same as “hating women.”
And many on Twitter were quick to call Marcotte on her BS:
I guess Marcotte learned nothing from the time she called people skeptical of the Duke lacrosse rape-accuser: “rape-loving scum”.
Marcotte was gardly alone in her freakout. Take, for example, Sally Kohn:
Or Jessica Valenti:
People would be a lot more likely to believe feminists on rape if they weren’t using it as yet another excuse to wage culture war for their far-left wing Social Justice Warrior/Victimhood Identity Politics goals.
Finally, via Twitchy, comes this gem:
