Lindy West Resigns From Twitter

In my pantheon of online annoybots, Lindy West is fairly far down the list. Unlike, say, Anita Sarkeesian, she hadn't proposed a centralized censorship regime for the Internet. However, she has endorsed the unprovable standard of "affirmative consent" in rape cases, has a history as a victimhood miner, and I suspect a bunch of other fairly middle-of-the-road (for modern feminists) policy nostrums. For a number of reasons, West has largely flown beneath my radar. So when I found a Vox piece on her voluntary exit from Twitter, I was not terribly surprised, given what I had read of hers. What interested me about that Vox piece was this passage (emboldening mine):

Rather, her breaking point — what made her feel she could no longer participate in the platform’s “profoundly broken culture” — was that Twitter has failed to acknowledge and deal with the alt-right’s use of the social network to spread its racist ideology, leading to severe, real-world repercussions:

The white supremacist, anti-feminist, isolationist, transphobic “alt-right” movement has been beta-testing its propaganda and intimidation machine on marginalised Twitter communities for years now — how much hate speech will bystanders ignore? When will Twitter intervene and start protecting its users? — and discovered, to its leering delight, that the limit did not exist. No one cared. Twitter abuse was a grand-scale normalisation project, disseminating libel and disinformation, muddying long-held cultural givens such as “racism is bad” and “sexual assault is bad” and “lying is bad” and “authoritarianism is bad,” and ultimately greasing the wheels for Donald Trump’s ascendance to the US presidency. Twitter executives did nothing.

Which is to say, she very expressly wished Twitter would have shut up those mean people over there with the temerity to disagree with her, in public, even.  This is not a surprise, and in fact there was at least one significant "tell" previous that she very much wanted her own echo chamber: her response to the Washington Post investigations showing the Rolling Stone story about a gang rape at U. Virginia was a hoax:

Turns out that the real #UVA rape "truthers" are @AmandaMarcotte, @JessicaValenti, @thelindywest and their hivemind pic.twitter.com/fPykKBZbVJ

— Yeyo (@YeyoZa) December 6, 2014

Or, you could just take her word for it:

Whenever I advocate for the safety of marginalized groups on the Internet, some genius always pipes up to say, “Oh, so you just want to live in your echo chamber?” And YES. OF COURSE I JUST WANT MY ECHO CHAMBER, DINGUS. If by “echo chamber” you mean “a space online where I can communicate in good faith with informed people who don’t derail every conversation with false equivalencies and rape threats,” then yes, I’m dying for a fucking echo chamber.

In fact, maybe that’s what we’ll call it: Echo Chamber, the first feminist social network.

Given that presumptive bestie (or at least sister-in-arms) Marcotte is on Twitter's Orwellian "Trust & Safety Council", her kvetching here takes an interesting color. The subtext is a bitter complaint that, if they can make Milo Yiannopoulos go away, why can't they get rid of all these other people she doesn't like, too? In that, it amounts to a positive sign for the beleaguered Twitter, which continues to struggle to find profitability. Chasing those eyeballs out en masse makes no sense. Bon voyage, Lindy, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Rolling Stone Loses The Nicole Eramo Defamation Lawsuit

Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone, and its publisher are all liable for defamation, which is not surprising because

Rolling Stone edited out information favorable to Eramo. The dean had tried to get Jackie to go to the police, but the final draft of the story made it seem as if Eramo was no more in favor of that then, say, an informal resolution.

It takes a certain amount of navel-gazing power to say this:

When Wenner testified, he said he wished the magazine hadn't issued a full retraction to the article, apologized to Eramo, but said that he had "suffered as much as" she had.

Molly Hemingway in The Federalist:

Erdely smeared someone and failed to do obvious due diligence with her sources. At every step of the fact-checking process, the magazine failed. The publication didn’t just fail to do its job, its staff didn’t seem to want to, putting a blockbuster story over basic journalism practices.

One key factor in the verdict, according to the jury, was the magazine’s delayed retraction and its decision to keep the article online with an editor’s note.

Further, this was not some one-off mistake but part of a pattern of the politically driven narrative journalism genre the magazine has paid Erdely and countless other reporters to do for decades.

I remain skeptical that anyone there has learned anything.

NOW, Emma Sulkowicz, And Modern Feminism

I have said elsewhere that combating the smaller voices in the culture war amounts to a losing proposition. So what are we to make of the National Organization of Women handing the vile narcissist Emma Sulkowicz its "Woman of Courage" award? This, apparently, was the same organization that wailed on Dean Nicole Eramo earlier this year for having the temerity to question the anonymous "Jackie's" hyperbolic story of gang rape that later unraveled under, you know, actual investigation. The politics of modern feminism, or at least in the dungheap that it has become, are about symbolism, perpetual victimhood, and a studied refusal to grapple with inconvenient yet glaringly obvious facts. In Sulkowicz' case, those facts would include damning (and seductive) texts after the alleged "rape" that make it clear she wanted a relationship with him (which he later rejected). What possible "courage" could attach to this award? Sticking to her idiotic and risibly false story despite having been found a fraud?

NOW's problems with the real world may stem from its age. Having lately turned 50, NOW opened shop in the age of sit-ins and complaint:

Betty Friedan, the Feminine Mystique author famous for leading the group, called for every woman to focus her work on what made her angry, recalls Muriel Fox, now 88, one of the group’s founders and its publicist.

“Everyone there knew that she wanted to work on what made her mad,” says Fox, now 88. “That’s the reason the movement was so successful. We had wonderful leaders, but we had thousands of people who all were leaders working on what made them angry about the situation at that time.”

Apparently, irrational rage is the only thing that matters anymore. NOW's irrelevance is, it seems likely, one genesis of the declining number of people willing to adopt the label "feminist". Whatever that label stands for, surely justice isn't part of it.

Susan Brownmiller's Refreshing Views On Rape Prevention

Susan Brownmiller long ago wrote Against Our Will, a largely fact-free jeremiad that has since informed modern feminism's belief in rape as a political tool. That this is true only in distant lands populated principally by itinerant goat herders has not much changed the canon; if anything, it's gotten shriller and even more untethered from reality. Yet, despite her book's foundational status, Brownmiller seems to have views on rape that diverge wildly from modern feminist orthodoxy. Uncovered in a recent interview in New York magazine, they come as an utter shock to anyone aware of her earlier work. She recoils from developments in the theory she originated (emboldening in Brownmiller's responses are due to me):

I was wondering if you have been following the discussions of rape activism on college campuses.
Yes, very closely. In the 1970s we had an extraordinary movement against sexual assault in this country and changed the laws. They [the campus activists] don't seem to know that. They think they are the first people to discover rape, and the problem of consent, and they are not.

They have been tremendously influenced by the idea that "You can drink as much as you want because you are the equal of a guy," and it is not true. They don't accept the fact there are predators out there, and that all women have to take special precautions. They think they can drink as much as men, which is crazy because they can't drink as much as men. I find the position "Don't blame us, we're survivors" to be appalling.

Also, they [college women] are not the chief targets of rapists. Young women and all women in housing projects and ghettos are still in far greater danger than college girls.

Holy smoke, did you hear that? Men and women are different! Yikes! And the last, at least,  comports with empirical Bureau of Justice Statistics data showing young women off campus are much more likely to be raped than college students. And then, this:

And my feeling about young women trapped in sex situations that they don’t want is: "Didn’t you see the warning signs? Who do you expect to do your fighting for you?" It is a little late, after you are both undressed, to say "I don’t want this."

Interviewer Katie Van Syckle makes a weak attempt at a late save:

I guess the hope is that young men would respect [a naked woman in bed telling them "no"].
That would be nice. There is not much attention on them is there?

Predictably, Amanda Marcotte tars her with the epithet "former feminist hero". Break out the popcorn:

There's a real irony here, because our cultural allergy to focusing on men who actually rape also prevents us from having a productive conversation: one that should be had with both men and women—ideally starting when they are boys and girls—about why rapists rape. We would talk about how our culture valorizes male domination. How some men learn to feel big by putting women down. How both men and women often stand aside and let some men express toxic views about women without being challenged.

 This is, of course, the purest bullshit, because she's been one of the principle drivers pushing for an expansion of rape away from coercive sex. That is to say, while she presumably cares about men who actually rape, she's also eager to inflate the charge to include regetted and even imaginary sexual encounters, despite her own denials. Whether it's the Rolling Stone hoax set at the University of Virginia or Emma Sulkowicz's sordid lies ("rape apologists", LOL), she's only ever prepared to believe the "victim", even if the accuser has but a fleeting grasp of reality. To force everyone else to adopt the correct, guilt-stricken pose, she plans on "having a productive conversation", which we assume starts young and is indistinguishable from harangue.

She goes on to discuss the Steubenville rape case, which is rather atypical for her because it has actual perpetrators, clear evidence (along with video confessions), and a real victim.

If you want to see the cause, you have to look at the culture around the assault: the guys who made a video laughing about it, the spreading of the images, the unwillingness of anyone to interfere, the congratulations for domineering, abusive behavior. That is why assault happens, not because some girls drink too much. We need to help young people, both men and women, spot predatory behavior for what it is, and to push against it instead of laughing it off.

But having that conversation requires talking with and about men. As the Brownmiller interview shows, even for feminists, policing women and talking about their choices is just a lot easier to do. It's comfortable, like an old nightgown (one that hopefully doesn't show off too much thigh!). We've tried the woman-policing route for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years now. It's time to switch it up and start focusing on male choices instead.

 A number points worth mentioning here:

1. The sort of "culture" she describes derives from a number of poor choices by men. This is an ancient problem, and one that appears to have no ready solution, despite it being of obvious import. No OECD country has a per-capita rape rate of zero, though they vary quite a bit. This suggests the "just teach men not to rape" silver bullet beloved of modern feminists has been tried everywhere and found wanting. While she doesn't come out and say it, that's the only solution she appears to know.
2. I suppose we should be grateful she wants to talk to men at all.
3. The large majority of men do not, in fact rape. So her "don't rape" message there will do no good. In fact, it is liable to result in the opposite: contempt. This will likely have negative consequences in the jury box.
4. For the minority that does commit rape due to some combination of hormones, alcohol, drugs, poor impulse control, and misplaced or nonexistent empathy, this message will fall on deaf ears.

Because she does not understand male behavior and its underlying driving factors, she cannot reasonably prescribe preventative courses of action. (Indeed, it's unclear that there is much that can be done, outside of women taking defensive measures.) It has nothing to do with idiotic "men are taught to" nonsense, and everything to do with male nature. This is, of course, no excuse for rape, but modern feminists seem utterly incapable of distinguishing advice to minimize exposure to potential rapists from victim-blaming. That Marcotte savages the iconic Brownmiller for suggesting otherwise signals just how unhinged from reality she and her fellow third-wave sisters have become.

UVa Dean Nicole Eramo Sues Rolling Stone For Libel

Via Ashe Schow in the Washington Examiner comes a Washington Post story indicating University of Virginia Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo is suing Rolling Stone for $7.5 million.

“Rolling Stone and [Sabrina Rubin] Erdely’s highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court. “They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts.”

In addition to Erdeley's failure-to-journalize, it's significant that she never actually apologized to one individual prominently named in the story, i.e. Dean Eramo, or to any of the fraternity members she libeled (who are also suing, separately). Further, Eramo charges Rolling Stone Photoshopped her into a villain, as well:

The magazine also printed a photo illustration of Eramo that she argues is inflammatory; the lawsuit says the magazine turned a mundane Cavalier Daily photo of her addressing a classroom and turned it into a wild-eyed image of her sitting in an office giving a “thumbs-up” in front of distraught sexual assault victim as protesters hold signs outside. The lawsuit claims the doctored image “demonstrates the lengths Erdely and Rolling Stone were willing to go to portray Dean Eramo as a villain.”

Erdely also manufactured quotes from Eramo:

The lawsuit further claims that Eramo is misquoted in Rolling Stone and that she also never told Jackie that the administration does not publicize sexual assault statistics “because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school,” as the Rolling Stone account reported.

There is no small irony that the person most affected by this reckless attack is the one whose job is to deal with sexual assault, as defined under Title IX. Which is to say, if we owe the existence of Title IX sexual assault bureaucracies in large part to the wholesale manufacture of rape statistics, it should surprise no one to see the same disregard for objective truth consume one of its beneficiaries.

Update: Schow points out in a subsequent tweet that one of the parties not being sued is "Jackie". One wonders how that would even work, but one of the named parties is Erdely herself. I do hope she has another career lined up, because she'll need it.

Know Your IX And Their Orwellian "Fair Process"

Know Your IX, an activist website dedicated to the elimination of due process in campus rape cases, on Wednesday published an open letter to university presidents on their Orwellian "fair process". This requires not a little deconstructing.

April 15, 2015

To University Presidents:

We, advocacy groups run by and fighting for student survivors of gender-based violence, write to you about the importance of fair process in university disciplinary systems.

By starting with the loaded word "survivors", they have already established their victimhood cred. No one needs to investigate this, no one needs to consider the prospect whether such charges are true; they just are, axiomatically.

That this is the opposite of "fair" should be immediately transparent.

We come to this issue out of concern for all student victims who have been betrayed and overlooked by their universities,

Like "Jackie"? Like Emma Sulkowicz?

deprived of the chance to learn and thrive by administrative inaction in the face of assault, harassment, and abuse. Our movement has made great strides in the last few years, but there is much more work to be done. Across the country, colleges and universities still fail to support survivors and take meaningful action against students who harm their classmates and communities.

I.e., have not been expelled from universities even despite rigged and secret mediations. How else do they explain Paul Nungesser?

We recognize that, now that schools have finally turned their attention to violence on campus, we are collectively tasked with answering the hard questions about how disciplinary procedures should work, given the particular challenges and opportunities of the campus context. And, we know first hand, the success of these procedures will depend on their fairness to all parties involved.

Their understanding of "fair" is, shall we say, slightly compromised? Because, how does one reconcile "fair" with the actions of their signatories, No Red Tape and Carry That Weight, who recently engaged in the puerile stunt of projecting the words "Columbia Protects Rapists" on a campus building, long after Sulkowicz had been exposed as a fraud? Which "rapists", particularly, were being "protected" by Columbia?

We are dedicated to ensuring fair process for four primary reasons:

First, many of the same procedures criticized by accused students hurt victims as well.

I would love to hear examples of this. That they may be criticized for exactly the opposite reasons as sexual assault advocates — i.e. a total lack of transparency, inability to retain legal counsel during proceedings, and lowered standards of proof for what is in fact a criminal felony— tells me the lack of examples here are rather noteworthy for their delusional failure to grapple with the situation as a whole.

Second, the authorities to which student victims turn for support in the wake of violence will only be effective if they are perceived as even-handed and legitimate by all.

And as Ms. Sulkowicz has already demonstrated, if the authorities reject those claims upon investigation, then what?  "Perceived" apparently isn't even enough; the only person for whom those perceptions matter, in this telling, is the accuser. Moreover, the secret nature of the proceedings means two things, both inimical to actual justice:

1. Actual injustices will remain hidden from the light of day. Imagine a world in which Emma Sulkowicz's claims were true, and Columbia had ignored her. We have no way to establish specific failures of law or evidence because the cases are sealed from public inspection.
2. Fraudulent charges cannot be aired to clear the name of the accused for exactly the same reason.

So "even-handed and legitimate" cannot apply to secret tribunals.

Third, we understand our fight as part of a broader struggle for equality in education, and worry that barebones procedural protections leave room for discrimination, including on the basis of race and class, in investigation and sanctioning.

I would think more of these claims if they, you know, were actually willing to expose the results of these procedures to the light of day. Throwing a spurious "because, racism!" charge in the middle of this makes me think this letter is more about sounding the right, politically correct notes than actually engaging in any meaningful search for justice — especially when making it easier to convict will inevitably result in more minorities getting convicted, because that's just the way it works. At best, this graf is naïve; at worst, it is hypocritical, delusional, and even monstrous.

Fourth, as students whose educational opportunities have been imperiled and limited by violence, we understand too well the harm of unjust deprivations of the right to learn.

You mean like the law school whiners who can't handle learning rape law?  Just wondering how expansive their definition of "imperiled and limited by violence" really was.

There is no conflict between, on the one hand, our recognition that student victims of violence continue to face unconscionable barriers and administrative indifference, and, on the other, our conviction that schools must provide procedural protections for all students.

The insistence upon the soundly rebutted "one in four" figure on their "Basics" page establishes the authors as serial liars. (When even Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a liberal senator in a liberal state, is obliged to remove such calumny from her own website, it's a Sign.) It's a tipoff that an inflated sense of what constitutes "rape" and "violence" informed by hysterical moral panic that has only a tenuous connection to reality.

Some who advocate for accused students’ rights have done so at the cost of truth and justice, confusing student discipline for criminal law and perpetuating a myth that universities now favor alleged victims over respondents — a myth we affirmatively reject.

Does it really bear repeating that Title IX tribunals punish too much the innocent man wrongly convicted, while leaving the guilty one free to engage in predations elsewhere? What kind of perverse sense of justice countenances that? And why is it a "myth" that secret tribunals favor complainants over the rights of the accused? As the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management wrote last year,

We hate even more that in a lot of these cases, the campus is holding the male accountable in spite of the evidence – or the lack thereof – because they think they are supposed to, and that doing so is what [the Office of Civil Rights] wants.

This is entirely consistent with the approach KYIX favors, namely, that every person complaining is a "victim" and a "survivor". Moreover, "Jackie" and Sulkowicz are not rare; NCHERM mentions "complainants who genuinely believe they have been assaulted, despite overwhelming proof that it did not happen."

We can and must value procedural protections for both parties without losing sight of the mistreatment of campus survivors, and the very long way we have to go to achieve equity on campus.

The use of the loaded word "survivors" implies accusers are in fact victims before any investigation whatsoever. This betrays exactly the kind of biased, brainless approach used by the Red Queen: sentence first. The "procedural protections" here represent their total absence, pretty words that mean nothing.

Unlike some critics, we recognize that replicating criminal procedures and unequal evidentiary burdens on campus is not only unnecessary but dangerously counterproductive and contrary to Title IX’s commitment to equality in education.

I.e. there's no point in having actual trials if we already know the outcome.

And we want to be clear: We do not espouse an ideology of mandatory forgiveness, in which victims, most often women, are expected to “move on” and sacrifice their own healing for their abusers’ convenience and comfort.

Right, so someone like Emma Sulkowicz can indefinitely go on and slander a man who has not, in fact, raped her? Because she's a "victim", a priori? So organizations like No Red Tape and Carry That Weight can persist in slandering a university president (and all their Title IX administrators involved in sexual assault adjudication) with no apparent basis?

For the four reasons stated above, we call for colleges and universities to ensure procedural rights for both parties, the accused and the accusing student. Many of these rights are already afforded by the Department of Education. Procedural rights should include:

• The right to timely and clear notice of the allegations, parties’ rights and responsibilities (under both school policy and law), procedural updates, and the final determination
• The right to review all materials used in the investigation and hearing with adequate time to consider and respond
• The right to guidance from a trained advocate
• The right to submit evidence and recommend witnesses and questions for the other party to decision-makers
• The right to be heard by neutral decision-makers with professional expertise
• The right to a safe and sensitive investigation and hearing
• The right not to self-incriminate if criminal charges are possible or pending
• The right to an explanation for the final decision
• The right to fair and proportionate sanctions
• The right to internal administrative appeal

I notice here that there is no procedural right to discovery by the accused, nor a right to confrontation of the accuser, nor a right to public proceedings, nor a right to representation by the accused. But more importantly than any of this is the fact that under Title IX the university is policeman, judge and jury. We separate these functions in criminal law for the good reason that allowing one entity to determine guilt is to concede a host of evils and abuse. This is of no interest to KYIX because they insist that "Title IX is about civil rights, not criminal justice" on the grounds that, among other things, "they may fear skepticism and abuse from police, prosecutors, or juries". Which is to say, to achieve their ends, they simply must dispense with rules of evidence that interfere with their witch hunts, and the shortest path thenceward is declaring the matter a civil matter, rather than a criminal case.

Student survivors of gender-based violence still face unconscionable barriers to safe educations.

I.e. they can't yet just expel arbitrary male students upon the vexatious and unsubstantiated accusation of any woman.

Those who assault, abuse, and harass deserve to face sanctions.

What does Ms. Sulkowicz deserve by this standard? What about all the signatories to this letter, many of whom have abetted her behavior?

(Hyperlinks in the text below added by myself for reference and convenience. They did not appear in the original letter.)

For the integrity and well-being of our communities, including those harmed, our systems of investigation, deliberation, and sanctioning must proceed with meaningful protections for all involved.

Sincerely,

Know Your IX
Carry That Weight
No Red Tape
Our Harvard Can Do Better
CalArts Sexual Respect Task Force
7,000 in Solidarity: A Campaign Against Sexual Assault
Phoenix Survivors Alliance at the University of Chicago

---

As of the time of writing, 57 lawsuits now pend over the risible "student discipline" which is supposed to stand in place of actual rape criminal proceedings. One of those appears to have been dismissed Wednesday, but the John Doe plaintiff will appeal.  Here, I am uncharacteristically an optimist. Not all of these suits will fail. More, one gets the sense that KYIX's open letter takes place upon a background of increasing awareness of the actual dangers of Title IX to innocent men. As the NCHERM letter (PDF) attests (emboldening mine),

We fear for the mental health issues impacting many students, but in particular for those whose reality contact issues manifest in sexual situations they can’t handle and campuses can’t remedy. We hate even more that another victim-blaming trope – victim mental health – continues to have legs, but how do you not question the reality contact where case-after-case involves sincere victims who believe something has happened to them that evidence shows absolutely did not? How do campus and community mental health resources help someone who is suffering from real trauma resulting from an unreal episode?

What Camille Paglia rightly called the "tyrannical surveillance of students' social lives" cannot continue. These policies harm too many, amid utter indifference to evidence and facts on the part of those advancing them. It is the hallmark of totalitarians.

Update: FIRE, who really should be on the legal section of my sidebar, also has a long-form response.

Saturday Link Dump, Mostly Sexual Assault/Due Process Edition

More links for your Saturday enjoyment:

• Added to the sidebar in a new section on legal matters: Community Of The Wrongly Accused, opening with a piece on the University of Illinois' remarkable discovery that it's much easier on the accuser if no hearing at all takes place:
  

  The University of Illinois is taking college sex hearings to the next level in order to protect rape victims. The school is "moving toward an investigation process that may not require a hearing so an assault victim doesn't have to testify in front of a large committee."
  
  Finally! A school with the courage to cut through the bullshit! This ingenious plan will spare rape victims the indignity of having impartial adjudicators consider their accusations with an open mind. It will also spare schools the bother of introducing evidence to actually prove the young rapists are guilty. And it will spare the young rapists the bother of putting on a defense to avoid a life-altering expulsion.

  I'm sure that this won't result in more lawsuits against the University...
• A bit of good news from Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice blog comes in the news that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has taken down a sentence repeating the false-but-frequently-cited 1-in-5 rape victimization statistic. You may recall that Gillibrand was pleased to have the liar Emma Sulkowicz as her guest at the presidential State of the Union address in January. Sit down, Emma, you've had your fifteen minutes.
• Leslie Loftis at The Federalist makes the case that Phi Kappa Psi has a good case for libel against Rolling Stone. There's a lot there, but the big takeaway seem to be that Phi Psi is suing mainly for honor, not monetary damages, which are capped at a very low $350,000 under Virginia law. I really hope they open a suit in New York, which does not offer such protections.
• Here's another roundup of campus rapes that were less than they seemed, including several I've previously written about in this space, if only in passing (h/t @Anneeliz1).
• And finally, another piece of good news from Mr. Greenfield: a woman refuses to act like a victim when discussing a (female!) law professor inadvertently pasting a porn site link into a mass email to her students.
  

  It may be that Tabo is still being a bit overly forgiving, in that it might not matter whether “he meant to do it,” as intent is a courtesy no longer in favor.  As I recently quipped on the twitters, “there’s a reason why they call it ‘mens’ rea.”  This was immediately misunderstood and seized upon as demonstrable proof of the patriarchy, rather than a joke.
  
  And that’s where Tabo’s refusal to condemn others, even though she has long enough blond hair to justify it, betrays her failure to appreciate her victimhood.  Does she not get it?  Is she a disgrace to her gender, a traitor to the cause?
  
  Or does Tamara Tabo just have a sense of humor, an appreciation of irony, an ability to laugh off a theoretical harm done by mistake, by dumb chance, rather than leap up to the podium and demand that we burn the witch?

Weaponizing Suffering: Clinging To "Jackie"

New (to me) blog Jacobinism, back in December, when all we had was the WaPo and Washington Times reporting:

Herein lies the value of 'Jackie' as a pawn of gender warfare, and the reason why Marcotte, Valenti, and like-minded allies steeped in their reactionary cynicism were not prepared to give her up without a fight, no matter how ridiculous it made them look in the short-term. Contrary to their own pious and self-serving claims, the interest of these activists lies not in alleviating the suffering of women, but in manufacturing and instrumentalising it.

 Or, for that matter, weaponizing it. The rest of the post is just as well written; I just wish I could do as well.

Megan McArdle Responds To The UVa Rape Hoax

Megan McArdle breaks out the clue hammer on Rolling Stone, taking to task her former pupil (who knew?). There's a couple points here I want to highlight:

3. Privacy laws and the norms of survivor support groups created the illusion of institutional verification. Erdely first heard the story from Emily Renda, a rape survivor and alumna who now works on the issue at UVA. Renda mentioned the alleged attack in congressional testimony. Erdely seems to have assumed in some way that this meant the university had confirmed the attack. This impression was heightened by various privacy laws, which make it virtually impossible for the university to discuss specific cases. Erdely was operating under the assumption that the university knew this had happened and was stonewalling. In fact, Renda had the same information Erdely did: the story she heard from Jackie. The university did not have enough information to take action, but it also could not discuss these details with Erdely. The lack of disconfirmation seems to have been taken as positive proof that it happened, rather than what it was: a legal prohibition on sharing information. [emboldening mine]

In other words, because university Title IX rape procedure is sealed, it is also unverifiable — which makes the fabulist's life easier and the reporter's work harder. But the most interesting thing in McArdle's essay is the following bit of speculation as to why "Jackie" might have manufactured the whole tale:

Erdely's reporting suggests at least two reasons Jackie might have made it up: She first told her story to the school when she got in trouble for failing classes, and connecting with anti-rape groups on campus plugged Jackie into a social network that gave her a feeling of purpose and fellowship. Had Erdely tried harder to contact the friends whose behavior she maligned, she would have heard a third reason: Jackie had a crush, not returned, on one of the friends she called for help that night.

Yikes. Talk about spiraling out of control.

"Jackie's" Last Defenders

With yesterday's unapologetic (to those that mattered) retraction in full of the Rolling Stone UVa hoax story, I thought it would be useful to review some of the reaction from that cluster of modern feminism exhorting us to "believe" all charges of rape, regardless of merit. I first turn my attention to Shakesville, which once upon a time called the opinions of "Jackie" skeptics "[not] worth a smudge of dogshit":

Earlier this week, writing for the Washington Post under the headline "Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape," Erik Wemple said: "For the sake of Rolling Stone's reputation, Sabrina Rubin Erdely had better be the country's greatest judge of character. ...Rolling Stone bears a great deal of responsibility for placing the credibility of the accuser in the spotlight, thanks to shortcomings in its own reporting. Consider that: Erdely didn't talk to the alleged perpetrators of the attack."

Katherine Reed has written a thoughtful response [H/T to Jessica Luther] to this particular criticism, from the perspective of someone who covers sexual assault cases, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Unsurprisingly, Reed's "thoughtful" remarks include this graf:

I also understand the fairness argument when names are involved. But in this particular case, the names of the accused are not included in the Rolling Stone story.

In other words, Reed takes the position that, so long as no particular individuals are named as perpetrators, anything goes, i.e. the same position taken by Rolling Stone editor Will Dana. That Melissa McEwan confuses this with something like responsible journalism comes as no surprise; she continued in this vein for literally months, condemning in harsh terms anyone daring to do the actual investigation that Rolling Stone had not, or who shared Wemple's skepticism. From December 5, 2014 (emboldening mine):

Robby Soave, writing under the headline "Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?" for Reason, does not find it credible that Jackie's friends could have discouraged her from going to the hospital or reporting out of self-interest.

If the frat brothers were absolute sociopaths to do this to Jackie, her friends were almost cartoonishly evil—casually dismissing her battered and bloodied state and urging her not to go to the hospital.

Failure to support a rape victim is something that could only seem "cartoonishly evil" to someone who has never survived an assault only to be met with indifference from friends, law enforcement, and/or even one's own family.

If "Jackie's" story were even remotely like true, in the real world, her friends should have immediately driven her to the closest emergency room. But of course, in McEwan's tortured cosmology, it's much more likely that they're monsters; she cannot imagine a good rape tale being false, ever. It's the same reason she justified Erdely's failure to contact the assailants on the grounds that "there was nothing meaningful they were going to add" to the story, never mind that their very existence would be a good starting point.

She does this sort of toe dance repeatedly, here, and here, and finally here, pretending that the Charlottesville police investigation and reporting from the Washington Post and Washington Times (which latter she does not mention) indicated that "Jackie" was anything other than a serial fabulist. (Mean old facts.) So at last, what does she take away from this? Why, of course, that Rolling Stone "threw Jackie under the bus" when they credulously and unquestioningly believed the supposed victim, just as McEwan demanded, and this now amounts to "victim-blaming". "Always believe" got Erdely to publish the story, just as it got her in trouble when "Jackie" turned out to be a liar. And I use that term without reservation, because who gives out multiple burner accounts to "friends" when trying to establish the identity of a supposed date? Why could no one confirm literally a single detail of "Jackie's" story?

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The same approach, i.e. it's really Rolling Stone's fault for doing what I told them, pollutes Jessica Valenti's reaction at The Guardian, initially established by her December 9 piece in which she announces that

I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so, even if I’m later proven wrong – but at least I will still be able to sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma.

It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument that should invite derision and contempt from anyone interested in justice or actual facts. Surprisingly, Amanda Marcotte's followup is remarkably subdued in comparison; she's the only one of the three — to her credit — who calls "Jackie's" prevarications "lie[s]". Even so, she partially lets Erdely off the hook for want of "guidance and support". That said guidance should have been obvious — get on the phone with the friends, and track down and interview the alleged perps — is almost beside the point. It's nearly a monumental victory to cross the low bar of calling a lie a lie.

Rolling Stone Story Annihilated By Columbia Journalism Report, Nobody Fired

I reckon we shouldn't be too surprised that the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism report on last November's Rolling Stone article, "A Rape On Campus: A Brutal Assault And Struggle For Justice at UVA" was both damning of virtually every action taken by managing editor Will Dana, and immediately followed by an abject refusal to take any responsibility for changing things so this can't happen again:

Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.”

In which case, it's necessary to actually question what the real, not titular, points of those procedures really are, viz. bias confirmation of their most loyal readers and clickbait/issue sales. The Pressthink deconstruction is a lot more succinct, and especially, their point 7 about how "[n]one of those schools felt quite right". That is to say, none of the other stories fit the narrative as well; Rolling Stone knew their audience and knew their point, true or not. Likewise, Sabrina Erdely's bad faith apology which does not even mention Phi Kappa Psi, to whom her story had done real reputational and even physical damage. Rolling Stone's lawyers must be pretty sure of their case that they don't sense a libel suit coming, because indeed nobody will get fired for this mass indiscretion. Similar sentiments apply to UVa president Teresa Sullivan, who has refused to apologize for her actions of shutting down all frats in the wake of the article. The future is clear: so long as you don't libel specific people who can sue, bias-confirming, fact-free, unchecked articles will keep getting published.

Update: Phi Kappa Psi has initiated a lawsuit against Rolling Stone. I hope they win big, but I am rather doubtful.

What Investigative Reporting Of Rape Looks Like

This isn't perfect — Rasheed Sulaimon's refusal to go on record is pretty damning against him, as is the anonymous nature of the accusers for their case (although in the circumstances, understandable) — but it's a big step forward compared to the hysterical and airy Rolling Stone story, or Emma Sulkowicz's empty slander.

Rape Charges, Now With Secret Evidence

Jezebel has its heart on the "always believe rape victims" bandwagon, of course, which is to say, actual investigation of charges is right out. Anyone paying attention during the University of Virginia/Rolling Stone fracas got to watch in slow motion as the Washington Post wiped the smirk off their faces upon digging through Sabrina Rubin Erdely's hyperbolic and false tale. So it's no surprise to read that same snark in their piece today willfully refusing to accept any contradicting evidence in the Emma Sulkowicz rape charges introduced by Cathy Young's fine article appearing in The Daily Beast. Author Erin Gloria Ryan's claim that "There is not, by these students' accounts, much ambiguity in their experiences with Nungesser" couldn't be more wrong; the evidence Cathy Young uncovered of friendly Facebook interactions days afterwards and the length of time between the purported rape and its report to authorities make for a pretty open-and-shut case against Sulkowicz's version of events. Ryan also goes so far as to purposefully misquote Christina Hoff Sommers as saying "rape isn't real"; whether intended as a summary or not, it's the sort of red-meat hyperbole that exposes the author as endorsing kangaroo courts and conviction upon mere charges, i.e. lynch mob justice.

There it would have stayed, except for the "context" she provided Jezebel:

So, Paul's comment that "this room is a mess, I mean there is no chance I'll be moving tonight. but would have been nice to see you" she reads as "Paul guilt-trips me for not helping him".

What?

So, here he asks her to bring "some peepz" to a party, which she reads as "girls" — and agrees to do so! What kind of deranged lunatic would expose other women to someone she personally knew to be a rapist? The answer is pretty obvious: she didn't consider him a threat.

And so, back to the final insult I want to discuss here, the exchange between Young and Sulkowicz, in which Young tried to get Sulkowicz to verify the conversations as authentic. Sulkowicz responded:

If I gave you the post 8/27 screenshots plus annotations, would you still publish snippets of the earlier conversations in your article? If you publish even a snippet of the earlier conversations without context, it will be out of context, and thus misleading.

I just want to understand one thing. You wrote, "unless of course they contain material that violates the privacy of a third party, which would have to be redacted." Do you just mean that you would have to redact their names? You are unwilling to violate the privacy of a third party, yet you are willing to violate mine? If you are only publishing conversations that you have both parties' consent to publish, I do not give you my consent to publish any of what he has sent you.

Lastly, about your deadline. If I don't get this to you by tonight, you are just going to go ahead and publish what you have? I may need more than a day to complete this. This is not easy work for me. How dare you put a deadline on the moment at which you violate my privacy and carve out my private life in order to gain publicity for your website. I think that is despicable.

What in fact is despicable — the most despicable thing — is the idea that any exculpatory evidence whatsoever constitutes a violation of privacy on the part of someone who is making very public accusations of a felony. Sorry, but you don't get that. What Sulkowicz is really demanding here is the right to do exactly what Brett Bellmore claimed in discussions of proposed rape criminal law changes: reduce the standard for conviction to mere allegation.

Update 2/7/2015: Cathy Young has a Twitlonger update on the only question I have heard raised by the Jezebel piece that makes even the slightest bit of sense, and that is, why is it that Nungesser now has three accusers?

Sulkowicz comes to feel that she was coerced into anal sex by Nungesser. When she talks to his ex, "Natalie," and concludes that Natalie's experiences with Paul were abusive, this conversation reinforces them both in the belief that their sexual experiences with Nungesser were non-consensual. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this was all happening in spring 2013, just around the time of the Steubenville trial, when there was a huge upsurge of "rape culture" rhetoric, especially on college campuses.) However, Sulkowicz decides to embellish her account with violent details (choking and hitting) because she has heard that rape survivors often have a hard time securing a conviction unless they report a violent attack.

She goes on to speculate (because university proceedings are under seal) that both "Josie" and the anonymous male student file complaints on the grounds of arriving at a warped sort of justice. 

The "Serious" Zombie Returns

Glenn Greenwald —fairly early in his career — criticized the "serious" pundits then supporting the Iraq war, whose sole rhetorical arrow in their quiver was the ad hominem. On the eve of a potential Iraq war, Jim Webb mentioned the very specific problems associated with that war: "wars often have unintended consequences", and "occupation of Iraq... is the key element". After the invasion,

Each and every one of the dangers about which Webb warned has come to fruition. But thoughtful, sophisticated, rational and -- as it turns out -- prescient analysis like this was haughtily dismissed away by the tough-guy political and pundit classes as unserious and wimpy, even when coming from combat heroes. Instead, those who were deemed to be the serious, responsible, and strong national security leaders -- and who still are deemed as such -- were the ones shrilly warning about Iraqi mushroom clouds over our cities; handing out playing cards -- playing cards -- with pictures of the Bad People underneath their comic book nicknames; and making predictions about Iraq which the most basic working knowledge of that country should have precluded.

As with the Obamacare disaster, I get the same sense reading a series of columns from the frequently reasonable Freddie deBoer that I did with Greenwald's then-current criticisms of the likes of Marty Peretz, Mark Steyn, and George Allen (not to mention Tom "Suck. On. This." Friedman). That is, "serious" is basically a synonym for "agrees with me", and is not to be taken, well, seriously, as in, an actual argument. The first such I want to treat is his commentary about a Darren Orf Gizmodo post discussing how shutting down the website The Pirate Bay has done nothing to stop actual piracy. This, I think, is really the nucleus of his post:

Gizmodo specializes in a kind of aggressive moral childishness, but the tech culture is full of this stuff: I’m going to take what I want whenever I want it because I want it and I won’t ask or care what the costs of that behavior are.

Yet, deBoer frees himself of this very same restriction. He spends not one sentence considering the consequences of an Internet that could constrain writing, audio, or video to a centralized authorization scheme. That such a world would be amenable to all sorts of studios and tyrants both (and would be of dubious real utility, as the original Gizmodo piece makes plain) should be trivially obvious. Yet he sees only future (and likely, present) paychecks vanishing. I have heard from others in the film/TV business who tell me that they consider their "right" to make a living an absolute, not to be interfered with at any cost. Yet I wonder if they would be willing to trade 100% of their right to free speech for a centralized copyright system that could suppress any speech the operator thought noxious, or infringing, or illegal, for whatever reason. To label these real and significant arguments "childishness" only reveals the author's own superficiality, at least in this matter. He does a better job discerning the differences between North Korean pressure on Sony Pictures and Chinese soft censorship, but it's hard not to notice how there, he has no commercial interest.

 The second post I want to shine a light on is deBoer's commentary about the status of public employee unions, the public schools, and police. It's worth pausing early on for this, because it's illustrative of the progressive tribalism that all too frequently infects deBoer's writing:

Now, looking at the tendency of the state to murder its most economically and socially disadvantaged people and declaring “you know what the problem is? Unions” is inherently self-parodic for libertarian types, to the point that I’m almost content to let Wilkinson’s post undermine itself.

In other words, I don't have to actually answer any of the arguments Will Wilkerson employs about the adverse consequences of the public employee unions upon poor people, I can just smirk at those silly libertarians. But let's take a look at the soft-pedal job he does do in rebutting Wilkerson's essay. He doesn't apply a word toward the smear job done to a Costa Mesa city councilman by that city's police union after he threatened to reduce police pensions, nor Miami's recalcitrance toward police cameras by their police union, not to mention the real sense of entitlement from the NYPD Patrolmen's Benevolent Association on the subject of killing subjects citizens; apparently, these things simply don't exist, and all one needs do is ignore them, along with FDR's reasoning for rejecting public employee unions. Even in his linked New Yorker backgrounder on Corey Booker and Newark's horrid schools,

There was no question that the Newark school district needed reform. For generations, it had been a source of patronage jobs and sweetheart deals for the connected and the lucky. As Ross Danis, of the nonprofit Newark Trust for Education, put it, in 2010, “The Newark schools are like a candy store that’s a front for a gambling operation. When a threat materializes, everyone takes his position and sells candy. When it recedes, they go back to gambling.”

The ratio of administrators to students—one to six—was almost twice the state average. Clerks made up thirty per cent of the central bureaucracy—about four times the ratio in comparable cities. Even some clerks had clerks, yet payroll checks and student data were habitually late and inaccurate. Most school buildings were more than eighty years old, and some were falling to pieces. Two nights before First Lady Michelle Obama came to Maple Avenue School, in November, 2010, to publicize her Let’s Move! campaign against obesity—appearing alongside Booker, a national co-chair—a massive brick lintel fell onto the front walkway. Because the state fixed only a fraction of what was needed, the school district spent ten to fifteen million dollars a year on structural repairs—money that was supposed to be used to educate children.

How did this happen? deBoer doesn't say, and apparently doesn't care. Teachers' unions, it seems, weren't on the scene, and had nothing to do with and didn't benefit from it if they were. Never mind that compelling contrary evidence about the deleterious effects of public school unions isn't too hard to find, and supported by government data, too. If there's an argument to be made here, deBoer again shirks it.

I don't want to lay out deBoer generally, because he frequently enters the orbit of planets where actions have consequences, and not always the ones you want, as witness his analysis of the Rolling Stone rape story, or his clear-headed observation that stripping due process protections from individuals accused of rape will eventually be used on the most powerless in society, i.e. young black men. I just wish he would do it more often.

Journalistic Malpractice, Rolling Stone's UVa Gang Rape Story, And Lena Dunham

It's been one of the busiest weeks I can recall for peddlers of the notion that college campuses are rape factories, and not in a good way. First, the Washington Post came out with a second fact-check of the now nearly month-old Rolling Stone story outlining a horrific gang rape at the University of Virginia. This, of course, was in addition to an earlier WaPo story that the friends "Jackie" (the victim of the story) spoke with that night recalled details that differed significantly from her account. (Emboldening below is all mine.)

...photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a junior at a university in another state, confirmed that the photographs were of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hasn’t been to Charlottesville for at least six years.
The friends said they were never contacted or interviewed by the pop culture magazine’s reporters or editors. Although vilified in the article as coldly indifferent to Jackie’s ordeal, the students said they cared deeply about their friend’s well-being and safety. Randall said that they made every effort to help Jackie that night.
“She had very clearly just experienced a horrific trauma,” Randall said. “I had never seen anybody acting like she was on that night before, and I really hope I never have to again. . . . If she was acting on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, then she deserves an Oscar.”

The texting of a photograph of someone who hadn't actually been in the area for years (and was out of state at the time) and misrepresenting him as a date is the most important single piece of this article, because it indicates "Jackie" is a serial fabulist, and more, appears to have been at the time of the event. More in that vein came from the presumably less reliable and more partisan Washington Times, which noted that

The friends say among their concerns is the fact that the woman, named only as “Jackie” in the article, gave them a cellphone number so they could text a man she said she was seeing about three weeks before she alleged she was gang-raped at a fraternity house.
Eventually, the friends ended up with three numbers for the man. All are registered to Internet services that enable people to text without cellphone numbers but also can be used to redirect calls to different numbers or engage in spoofing, according to multiple research databases checked by The Washington Times.

While we can't say with any certainty, this particular detail speaks to a rather elaborate hoax, albeit one not terribly well-constructed. But what is consistent in all of this is that author Sabrina Rubin Erdely did no research on the key parts of the story — something she apparently is "re-investigating" — by failing to speak to any of the friends "Jackie" encountered that night, i.e. she engaged in journalistic malpractice.

Rubin Erdely is deeply compromised by her original shoddy reporting, and she is now part of this story; it makes no sense for her to be a part of “re-reporting” it. What if she subsequently writes that Jackie made the whole thing up? That would obviously be to her benefit—and we couldn’t possibly believe it.

The imagination balks at what Erdely might report next. One hopes the recently re-hired Matt Taibbi's defense of the magazine's fact-checking turns out to be accurate. I presume that verification will be turned on for this bout of journalism, though whether her revised story gets past that gauntlet is a different matter.

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If Erdely fell down on her job in its most important part, i.e. actual journalism, she still has her followers in the world of doctrinaire feminism where actual facts have no bearing on the veracity of charges*. And yet, some of these media outlets have, to their credit, changed their tunes in a remarkably short time. Jezebel, who to my mind probably forms the centerline of modern feminism, went on December 1 from running a headline of "'Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?' Asks Idiot" to a deeply conciliatory "Alleged UVA Rape Vic's Friends: Rolling Stone Didn't Even Talk To Us" on December 11, after the latest WaPo piece eviscerated the original story.

So there is hope of sanity in Virginia, which may be spreading to other outlying areas. These provinces include the world of Lena Dunham's late autobiography, Not That Kind Of Girl. It's not clear exactly why or how a 28-year-old might get greenlit to write such a tome; but as we might surmise, it's full of salacious details, including a purported rape at the hands of one "Barry", another student at Oberlin while she was enrolled there. The Breitbart media empire, via reporter John Nolte, deconstructed the charges and discovered a "Barry" at Oberlin who vaguely (but neither conclusively nor compellingly) matched an actual Barry at that school. This later became such a mess that the individual felt it necessary to crowdfund a legal defense, which ultimately resulted in Dunham making changes to future versions of her book. In that, we hear echoes of "Jackie", to the extent that a competent editor would have performed background checks on the source material prior to publication.

The importance of rape as an animating factor for third-wave feminism cannot be overstated. From Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will to the present day, the belief in rape as a political force forms a core tenet of that branch of feminism that insists western civilization is as benighted, and frankly violent, as the outer reaches of Iran or Pakistan or Somalia. It renders men vulnerable to false charges, openly asserting they all benefit from this brutality. That this is obviously and trivially rebutted is immaterial, especially given the considerable redoubts this religion has in academe, particularly in the Department of Education's shift to a "preponderance of evidence" standard for "proving" what was hitherto a criminal charge. The secrecy that the alternative forums for adjudicating sexual grievances amount to a star chamber. We are, supposedly, to "automatically believe" all such charges, or so says Zerlina Maxwell, herself an attorney. Yet, if such charges cannot be defended against, if they cannot even be rebutted by high-profile individuals (i.e. quarterbacks on football teams), imagine how much worse a road ordinary men might have to travel.

I have long said feminism, at least the kind in general public display these days, is a self-limiting disease in that it must ultimately enlist men in its defense. Men and women are stuck with each other, and whether or not we like it, must separately come to terms with the consequences of sexual reproduction and its disparate effects on each gender. That means we all need to employ intelligence and empathy. Scattershot accusations and slander simply aren't beneficial, to anyone.

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* I have not returned the favor to shakesville.com of using the ref=_nofollow modifier, as it has the side effect of making their nonsense less visible. We should encourage such monomanias with full-throated abandon, so as to allow the general public to see them and deliver the ridicule they so obviously and richly deserve.