THE University of Virginia gang rape story published by Rolling Stone has proved to be, if not a hoax, so suspicious that even the Washington Post and the New York Times have taken notice and a public apology of sorts was issued by the junky journal. However, the story fit so well into the script of privileged, white villains and innocent, deflowered maidens (characters who do exist in real life but whose numbers are exaggerated for political purposes) that we can still treat it as true.

The Times says the story, exaggerated as it is, is still basically true.

Whatever happened or did not happen to Jackie, campus sexual violence remains all too real, and false reports are rare.

Karen Straughan writes by e-mail:

The UVA circus will end as it always does—once all the dust has settled, the school will release a statement saying the incident was a hoax, it will reaffirm its commitment to keep [female] students safe from sexual assault, and will enact more mandatory “consent training” for male students, and more regulations and procedures that allay the panic people feel when they ask themselves, “Okay, but what if it HAD happened? What if it WAS real?”

This seems the go-to strategy for colleges and universities.

It’s always better safe than sorry when it comes to the safety of women. The psychological cost to most people of under-reacting to or failing to neutralize a threat or harm to women that turned out to be true will always be greater than that of overreacting to or preemptively punishing a threat or harm to women that turned out to be false.

The UVA gang rape, even if it turns out to be entirely fictitious (as in, there was no sex of any kind at all, and she made the entire story from whole cloth), will only serve as a cautionary tale as to what COULD have happened if it HAD been real. Measures will be undertaken to deal with the potential that at some point something like it might happen, and by god, we won’t fail to deal with it properly.

I’m sorry, but that seems to be the pattern of these things. Look at the child sex abuse scandals of the 1980s (McMartin being exemplary of the witch hunt). It all turned out to be manufactured panic and bunkum, yet in the wake of it, we never went back to baseline, did we? Thirty years later, and we have men being asked to move seats on planes when they’re next to unaccompanied minors, grandfathers being ejected from the kids’ sections of bookstores while birthday shopping, and random people accosting men taking pictures of their own children at shopping malls.

— Comments —

James N. writes:

UVA has sadly lost (at least) two white female undergraduates in recent years to rape and murder by black men. Black men are greatly over represented among convicted rapists. And, according to FBI statistics, rape of white women by black men is 115 times more common than the rape of black women by white men.

The story of “Jackie” was a transparent lie. But the kerfuffle over her lies, the Rolling Stone article, and the subsequent actions by the UVA administration has neglected the most important part of the tale by exchanging white women’s natural protectors (high status white males) for those much more likely to be their rapists (black criminals).

This has the effect of propagandizing young women to fear when they should not, and also to lower their defenses when they should not.

This inversion of reality is unlikely to be accidental.

Laura writes:

I know of only one UVA student, Hannah Graham, allegedly raped and killed by a black in recent years. (Morgan Harrington, possibly also killed by Jesse Matthew, went to Virginia Tech.)

In 2010, a female UVA student, Yeardley Love, was murdered by a white lacrosse player.

Perfesser Plum writes:

I must be turning into something heartless.  I’m supposed to feel  outraged and saddened by what happens to dopes.

“Oh, you went into the woods and a bear ate your face?  Stay away from bears, fool.”

“Oh, you charged a cop and got shot 10 times? Gee, whoda thunk?  Lesson. Don’t charge cops.”

“Oh, you’ve been arrested 30 times and have six outstanding warrants; cops (five of them) tell you you are under arrest; you’re so tough you don’t submit.  Dropped dead, huh?  Meanwhile, some little girl is dying of a brain tumor.  So, my sadness is tempered.”

“Oh, so a couple of ferals knocked you out as you sauntered down the sidewalk in a semi-hypnotic state? In future, don’t saunter; carry a .45; use it.”

“You say Bill Cosby raped you 30 years ago.  And you’re just now getting around to it? Pardon me while I yawn. Go visit a children’s cancer ward.”

Paul writes:

Many of us have been hearing that one in five college females were raped.  I can’t find a reputable study to support this contention.  [Laura writes: One of the Times articles linked above admits to no reliable study to confirm this oft-quoted statistic.] I picked a supposedly respectable source, a CDC study.  But the CDC study not only failed to support this conclusion but is junk.  I suspect the other “studies” are also junk.  The CDC is usually responsible.

The CDC study is based on a 2011 survey.  In human subjects research, which this was, surveys are not closely examined unless there is a risk of harm to the respondents such as questions to those with PTSD or other psychological disorders.  I am on a human subjects research board that scrutinizes every facet of proposed studies at two large medical centers engaged in a lot of research.

Some board considered this study presented minimal risk of harm to the research respondents, as far as I can tell; but I bet some psychiatrists and psychologists would debate me on this.  It therefore was approved expeditiously, I suspect.

The questionnaire has parts for many to giggle at based on its bull:

Sexual Violence

* * *

I will also ask you about situations in which you were unable to provide consent to sex because of alcohol or drugs . . . .

How many people have ever . . . fondled, groped, grabbed, or touched you in a way that made you feel unsafe?

* * *

Please remember that even if someone uses alcohol or drugs, what happens to them is not their fault.

When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people have ever . . . [followed by a list of acts repulsive to many of us except perhaps] put their fingers . . . in your . . . [deleted] . . . ?

Um, don’t people go to prison for drinking and driving?  “Perhaps” is used because I expect many high school and especially college women have had this attempted by their boyfriends.  Males don’t get anywhere near third base without consent.  So pushing the envelope a little further is not some repulsive act.

In addition, the questionnaire is so wordy that the poor telephone respondents (garnered from a darn random sampling of telephone books) could not have fully consented to it.  (I am often called on to review whether consent forms will result in an informed consent.  They often don’t, but we correct them, almost always in only small ways because my institutions comprise rigorous physicians and research support experts.)  Ironic isn’t it that the survey purports to distinguish consent from force?

How much effort do any of us put into telephone surveys?  Not much.  We are anxious to get on with what we were doing.  The CDC’s convoluted questions speak for themselves.

Concerning the conclusion that one in five college females have been raped or even sexual assaulted is not asserted or supported in the CDC’s 2014 report.

Probably a major cause of confusion in the sexual violence discussion is the inappropriate use of the legal term assault.  Assault is the placing of another in the immediate apprehension of a battery.  Assault is not touching.  Battery is touching.  The usage of rape is beyond-the-pale when talking about assault.  So whatever study is being used, the statistic should differentiate male attempts to touch, “feel up,” a female’s taboo regions as opposed to battering her.

And even then, many jurisdictions define battery as the unprivileged touching of another.  I expect most mistaken, adventurous college boyfriends would fit into the privileged category, when put before a jury that must decide whether to send the hapless boy to prison where he will be raped beyond belief, and be found not guilty.  (Tragically the college kangaroo tribunals are victimizing these boys based on Middle-Age procedures.)  So unless the reporter cites the study that is available online, we can’t give it any more credence than the endless studies proposed by the Media.

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