Marginalizing the already marginalized
Sometimes, small percentages of the American people are worth fighting for. And sometimes they’re not, at least for the Left.
About 10 percent of the American people are uninsured and can’t get health insurance? Better disrupt the entire healthcare system to help them.
About 6 percent of U.S. residents are here illegally? Better disrupt the entire immigration system to make them legal.
Less than 1 percent of women are raped each year while in college? Better redefine consent to turn nearly all sex into rape unless nobody reports it.
But 10 percent of rape accusations are false? (One study suggests it’s as high as 40 percent.) That’s negligible and can be ignored.
Some feminists have argued that false accusations of rape are really no big deal and therefore shouldn’t be factored in to any conversation about combating sexual assault on college campuses.
But regardless of the true percentage — the number, as columnist Cathy Young wrote, is actually difficult to quantify — the people being falsely accused are completely ignored by today’s activists. Indeed, many proposals aimed at reducing the number of sexual assaults on campus will likely increase the number of innocent people being falsely accused, because almost all sex can now be defined as rape by default.
Point out to feminists that a small percentage of women are raped during college and you’ll be called a “rape apologist.” The new line of defense, via a senior at Roosevelt University, is to ignore statistics because “sexual assault survivors are people, not statistics.” This is true, but that also means that those falsely accused of rape are people, not statistics.
But that hasn’t been the feminist mantra to date. After the Rolling Stone story about a brutal gang-rape at the University of Virginia fell apart, the line was to not let fact-checking get in the way of a good narrative. The implication was that even if this one story didn’t turn out to be true, that didn’t detract from the “fact” that one in five women are raped during their college years.
But when the Bureau of Justice Statistics blew that argument out of the water, the narrative needed to shift again. Now, statistics don’t matter at all. Well, except for statistics that show false rape accusations are rare.
But apply this notion that statistics matter less than people to the falsely accused, and you'll find that the new policies governing our bedrooms are even more alarming than they first seemed.
The falsely accused don’t just get a slap on the wrist from which they can quickly recover. Their entire lives are often turned upside down. Ask Gary Dotson, who spent six years in prison based on a false story of rape and was cleared thanks to DNA evidence. Or Michael Phillips, who spentmore than a decade in jail after being falsely accused. He, too, was exonerated by DNA testing. Or William McCaffrey, who had served four years of a 20-year sentence by the time his alleged victim turned herself in and admitted to lying about the rape. Or the Duke University lacrosse team, whose young members are the real victims who faced false prosecution and have had their names associated with rape ever since.
Those falsely accused in college can be kicked off campus or even expelled without due process or evidence. That’s a substantial loss of tuition. The black mark on one’s record can prevent a man falsely accused from getting into other colleges or even finding employment after graduation.
If sexual assault survivors are people, not statistics, then the falsely accused are also people, not statistics. And, as such, they cannot be ignored for a greater narrative and policies that are poised to increase the number of falsely accused.
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