Monday, February 02, 2015

Amanda Marcotte And The UVA/Rolling Stone Rape Hoax

   Hey, does anyone know whether Marcotte ever admitted that that was all a lie? How about Jessica Valenti?
   It all fell out of the news pretty quickly when it became clear that it was a hoax... I think it should continue to be part of the "cultural conversation" (gak, I hate that phrase). It says a lot about the current state of the liberal hivemind, and about web-and-campus feminism.
   (For the record, and once again: it should go without saying that this isn't as important as the problem of actual rape...but that's not my bailiwick.)

6 Comments:

Blogger Dark Avenger said...

1. Where is there evidence that the woman in question lied?

2. Where and when has Ms. Marcotte flatly stated that the woman in question is telling the truth?

P.S. I am not a crank.

1:46 PM  
Blogger Dark Avenger said...

1. Where is there evidence that the woman in question lied?

2. Where and when has Ms. Marcotte flatly stated that the woman in question is telling the truth?

P.S. I am not a crank.

1:46 PM  
Blogger The Mystic said...

lol, D.A...

1) Why do you keep saying "I am not a crank"?

2) The evidence that the woman is lying is quite hefty - her story is practically incoherent.

8:10 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

DA, come on man...

Neither of those points is worthy of you.

It's perfectly clear that Jackie was lying, and Marcotte made it perfectly clear that she believed her. There really is no doubt whatsoever about the second point, and no appreciable doubt about the first one.

9:12 PM  
Blogger Dark Avenger said...

Then you should have no problem linking to a story demonstrating that, Winston.

OTOH:

Ryan Duffin says that when they found Jackie, "it looked like she had been crying ... Her lip was quivering, her eyes were darting around. And right then, I put two and two together. I knew she had been on this date and people don't usually look like that after a date." She told her friends that she was forced to perform oral sex on five men. "My first reaction was, 'We need to go to police,'" Duffin said. "I wanted to go to police immediately. I was really forceful on that, actually. And I almost took it to calling (the police) right there." He said he pulled out his phone and was about to call 911, "but she didn't want to and," he thought, "'I can't do that if she doesn't want to do it.'"

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/everything-we-know-uva-rape-case.html

Doesn't sound like she was lying, Winston. Sounds like something happened to her.

9:58 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

C'mon DA, you know better than this.

First, you'd never buy evidence of that strength in an ordinary case.

Second,"Something happened to her" != she is telling the truth about the gang rape by seven Phi Psi frat boys etc. etc.

Third, that evidence is pathetically weak given all the other evidence--the evidence that she simply made up Drew, etc. If we *only* had that to go on, it would certainly count fairly heavily. But simply acting upset, against the background of the rest of the evidence, counts for virtually nothing.

Even the preponderance of the evidence in the story you yourself link to as proof points in exactly the opposite direction. It absolutely does not sustain the conclusion that what Jackie said happened actually happened, but, rather, seems to indicate that it didn't.

Of course you can play "raise and lower the justificatory bar so that I get to believe what I want and disbelieve what I want"...but the facts in the case clearly make "she made it up" the lead conclusion.

Marcotte's et al.'s unequivocal, vociferous acceptance of the story + their accusations against anyone who doubted it are simply irrational and unsustainable in the face of the evidence now available to us.

Your position here seems driven completely by ideology, not by the evidence.

You've got to decide, man. Are you going to let the evidence drive your beliefs, are are you going to let your ideological predispositions determine how you view the evidence.

But look...anyone willing to argue that Marcotte did not believe Jackie has thrown reason to the wind here.

12:40 PM  

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