Mass Cognitive Dissonance over UVA Alleged Rape
December 2, 2014
ONE month after the gruesome discovery on an abandoned rural property of the body of 18-year-old Hannah Graham, the University of Virginia sophomore allegedly kidnapped and murdered by Jesse Matthews, a black non-student who had been kicked out of two colleges for rape allegations and had almost certainly also raped and murdered a Virginia Tech student, the UVA campus has been recently whipped up into a state of hysteria by an article, published in The Rolling Stone, describing the gang rape of a freshmen, identified only as “Jackie,” at a fraternity house.
Forgive me for not posting a link to the Rolling Stone piece. If you want to read it, you can easily find it online. It is trash journalism at its finest, a piece of political propaganda and soft porn. On both counts, it has gotten a lot of attention.
Take it from me, it is very difficult to believe all the details in this piece. The victim did not scream (except once) or kick and fight off her seven attackers or burst from the room screaming after she was allegedly attacked for hours. She did not immediately go to the hospital even though she was raped on a bed of broken glass or immediately call the police. Nor is there any evidence that she was physically injured.
If this story is true in all its details, then we must ask why this young woman did so little to defend herself and why it deserves so much attention given she did little to defend herself. We must ask the same thing about another woman featured in the article, who was vomiting drunk into a toilet when a student molested her. He was kicked out of school for putting his hand down her pants. She has been elevated to the status of victim and received no penalties whatsoever for being so drunk she couldn’t stand or defend herself.
The reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is being accused of journalistic malfeasance belatedly, after fraternity activities at UVA were suspended as a result of the article and the Charlottesville police launched an investigation. Other journalists have wondered why she did not interview the alleged attackers or identify the victim.
Here is her response to The Washington Post:
“As I’ve already told you, the gang-rape scene that leads the story is the alarming account that Jackie — a person whom I found to be credible — told to me, told her friends, and importantly, what she told the UVA administration, which chose not to act on her allegations in any way — i.e., the overarching point of the article. THAT is the story: the culture that greeted her and so many other UVA women I interviewed, who came forward with allegations, only to be met with indifference.”
She added, “I think I did my due diligence in reporting this story; RS’s excellent editors, fact-checkers, and lawyers all agreed.”
Ms. Erdely does not appear to think clearly. As we can see from these responses, RS’s “excellent editors” succeeded in covering up her stupidity.
According to Erdely, she “corroborated every aspect of the story that I could.” How reassuring. The entire story is based on Jackie’s account.
In any event, the purpose of the article is not to advocate any solution to campus misbehavior or help women such as Jackie. The real solution is easily found in reinstating moral order on campus and overturning decadent feminist standards of freedom and fun. Erdely’s agit-prop does not go anywhere near the obvious solutions. Its purpose is to nurture the quasi-religious cult of the female victim and institute the government and academic surveillance of men that is necessary to give this cult its ongoing meaning.
Meanwhile, this article has been a nice way of diverting attention from the depressingly real case of Hannah Graham.