If you are a feminist, you are a rape hoaxer even if you have not concocted a false sexual assault story about yourself, you are an accomplice: you have likely advocated that we believe someone else’s rape lie, regurgitated distorted, bogus rape statistics like the “1 in 5” lie, or benefited from the legal fallout from rape hoaxes like the Roe v Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. Yes, even feminists admit that Roe began as a rape claim made (and later retracted) for political gain.
[I should note at this point that AVFM takes no position on the controversy over legal abortion other than to insist that the legal rights of both men and women should be equally respected and enforced when it comes to reproductive rights and indeed, all legal rights and obligations. Any attempt to debate legal abortion in the comments will be deleted.]
As we enter the autumn campus rape hoax season on universities around the world, a review of the various types and motivations behind rape hoaxes and rape hoaxers will help us understand this feminist phenomenon and, it is to be hoped, lower the damage they cause to men, women, and society as a whole.
To feminists, rape hoaxes are a political ploy that functions like a well-made multitool: it can work like a screwdriver to screw men over, a pair of pliers to tear money out of men’s wallets, a blade to cut off men’s penises, or a wire cutter to sabotage communication lines in men’s social, educational or professional relationships. Rape hoaxes bring attention to lonely feminists, validate the victim status they crave (for a little while, anyway, unless the hoax is detected) and inevitably undermine the general opinion of actual rape victims, creating a vicious cycle that feminists can exploit in perpetuity to the detriment of actual rape victims and innocent men.
As I write those words, it occurs to me that they might be seen as sexist, since certain genders may not be familiar with multitools or even tool use at all. For those folks, let’s say rape hoaxes are as useful to feminists as an immigrant handyman, skilled at a variety of mundane tasks and repairs that feminists are too lazy, entitled or incompetent to consider performing themselves.
Last year saw a number of feminist rape hoaxes unravel on the public stage, including, most notably, Jackie Coakley’s gang rape hoax at the University of Virginia as reported, and then, retracted by Rolling Stone magazine, and mattress mule Emma Sulkowicz’s rape hoax at Columbia University which ended with a thud when Sulkowicz used it as a stepping stone to launch her NSFW artsy if ugly porn star career.
The collapse of the feminist rape hoaxes caused a panic in their ranks and then disaster for feminists: at first, the feminists insisted that we should “believe the victims” uncritically: not question their accounts at all. As the truth started to come out, the feminists pivoted slightly to the meme “there is no perfect victim” in an effort to gloss over the deep and fatal flaws in the hoaxers’ rape stories while trying to maintain their greasy-fingered grip on the fading narrative.
Recently, feminist Amanda Marcotte revealed the next feminist jerky juke move: in a book review, Marcotte posited a distinction between the generic rape hoax targeted at no specific man (like this new alleged one) and the specific rape hoax targeted at a specific man as the alleged aggressor. Here is what Marcotte, writing about the book Asking For It by feminist Kate Harding:
The typical false reporter, [Harding] explains, is not “an evil minx who wraps the entire justice system around her little finger, just to hurt some poor, innocent man.” Instead, a false reporter will more likely claim a stranger rape, and because her story is more lurid and sympathetic that the “typical rape cases” involving alcohol and a victim who knows her assailant, the false reporter will end up getting more attention—and more sympathy—than the vast majority of reporters who tell the truth.
Stranger rapes are fairly rare, so Marcotte seems to feel no reservation about throwing women actually raped by strangers under the bus. Likewise, acquaintance rapes almost always have complicating factors (like the “victim” continuing to date or even marry the “rapist”) that Marcotte is quick to discount.
Marcotte, of course, goes on to describe one rape hoaxer (Coakley) as a “troubled young woman” and not the vile miscreant that she is. Marcotte also does not identify the false reporters as ardent, strident feminists (as both Coakley and Sulkowicz are).
Furthermore, Marcotte is implicitly trying to minimize the perceived damage rape hoaxes do by spreading the fictional perpetrator(s) over the whole of all men. Instead of leaving her burning bag of shit on your porch (and possibly burning down your house), Marcotte tosses her shit into the nearest water reservoir, potentially sickening everyone, and then claims, “see, it is not that bad when feminists do it to no man in particular.”
There are many reasons (sometimes combined) for women to make rape hoaxes:
- The jilted lover, taking revenge on the man who left her or cheated on her. There is evidence that Sulkowicz was such a case.
- The walk-of-shamers, using a bogus rape claim to cover their own lascivious behavior once it is discovered by a spouse, steady lover, parent, or other morally judgmental person.
- The wannabe lover who fabricates a rape to trigger sympathy in another man or woman she has (perhaps unrequited) romantic designs on. There is some evidence that Jackie Coakley was one of this type.
- The gold digger who uses a rape claim in a get-rich-quick scheme, as happened in the Brian Banks case.
- The academic/professional rival, who fabricates a rape to sabotage a rival in order achieve some sort of advancement.
- The misandrist/man-hater feminist who does it out of spite, or the desire for the coveted feminist victim status.
- The attention whore.
Janet Bloomfield has more information on why women lie about rape here.
On college campuses where men and masculinity are culturally demonized and feminists inflate rape claims to gigantic proportions, it is no surprise that the rape hoax has become a staple crop instead of the poisonous weed that it should be.
