<p>I would put my e e cummings phase to a rest now. I would like to also present my take on the current situation.</p>
<p>There is absolutely no doubt the rate of rape and sexual assault has been dropping for years in the USA, just in line with violent crime. This is simply a fact, and anyone who wants to be seriously undersdtand the situation would do well to spend a couple days pulling statistics from the Justice Department Web site. That people do not do that and go for sensational magazine stories instead prove the failure of basic logical thinking, research abilities, and a clear, unbiased, independent mind in the American populace.</p>
<p>However, the media know one and only one maxim. If it bleeds, it leads. You wouldn’t know that violent crime is dropping by listening to your local TV station. You will hear of the story du jure akin to the attack of the killer bees. Because it sells. It is the bread and circus of contemporary times.</p>
<p>So what has really happened in the case of rape?</p>
<p>First the good news. The incidence has dropped by half. Whether it dropped from 4 in a thousand to 2 in a thousand one can debate. But directionally the incidence rates have halved. No criminologist or statistician would argue otherwise after seeing the data which is freely available in the Bureau of Justice web site. The credit for this drop entirely goes to rape activists which with the No is No campaign has taught an entire generation of young men to respect limits. My hat goes off to the the feminists who led this movement.</p>
<p>Next, the bad news. The incidence has dropped, but it is still not 0. However, trend analysis shows that it is likely to keep going down. Of course, crime - any crime and not just rape - will never be 0. That is am impossibility. At some point, it becomes low enough and society declares success. This, however, is anathema to a large group of rape activists, who want to root it out completely. I applaud their spirit but criticize their practical thinking abilities. We can extend life, but to aim to be immortals is a fool’s chase. </p>
<p>Anyway, be that as it may, these activists need to still draw the attention of the populace, in the face of falling incidence rates. They still need to show a crisis. The way they are achieving this is by expanding the definitino of rape. That to me is a dangerous precendent, and not for men. It is actually for women. </p>
<p>For, instead of celebrating the success achieved, they are refusing to acknowledge it, which is a recipe for certain backlash. By defining all sorts of normal mating behavior as rape they are diluting what rape really means - and what rape really means is rather ugly. If they conflate rape with sexual assault, and then define a guy flashing at them as sexual assault and therefore in turn rape, they simply lose credibility in the minds of sane, reasonable people, who natually suspect them of having an agenda. That really doesn’t help rape activists. </p>
<p>By the same token, false rape allegations, even a single one, is going to roll the wheel down the mountain. It may not be fair, but it is the way it is. There is really no need to make false allegations anyway. There are still quite a few incidences of rape and sexual assault that needs to be rooted out - and the BoJ thinks it’s close to half a million each year. </p>
<p>A homesick girl, whose parents sent her to UVA when she wanted to go to Brown, gets coerced into giving a BJ, feels lousy about herself (I do feel for her) and then lashes back perhaps at her parents by claiming a brutal rape (look what happened to me after you sent me to this godforsaken college!) and perhaps always as excuse to her won self as to why her grades were poor (she used to be a honors student in school), makes a story up. It is understandable. She doesn’t blame any individual, so she is not doing any harm either. She gets some support, some comfort, and if not for the brutal rape, any sad 18 year old should have a support group in her first year of college.</p>
<p>The things change when she is made into an icon by a rape activist journalist. The journalist completely used her. The journalist had gone campus to campus searching for a case that matches the brutality described by campus rape activists as rape culture, which is largely imagined, and failed to find a single matching case. Till Jackie.</p>
<p>Now we are all caught up in a big lie, and the group that will suffer most are true rape survivors. It does no good for rape activists to claim that the facts in Jackie’s stories are irrelevant. They are far better off just admitting that they were wrong, they placed their trust in a depressed, out-of-balance kid. They are far better of trying to solve the problem at the margin as has worked for nearly 40 years now - hey, a 50% lower incidence of rape is a cause to celebrate!</p>
<p>But this whole smokescreen of claiming that there is a rape culture without facts weakens the hands of activists. Why do that? And it is time to get Jackie into counselling, and showing her case as a prime example to other young women that they should not lie about something as serious as rape. Not for their own sake, but for the sake of other young women who do, actually, get raped.</p>
<p>Though, not at the rate of 1 in 5. The numbers are pretty clear on that.</p>
What rape activists want is students <em>accused</em> of rape getting kicked out. It will happen for poor and may be middle class kids, but not for rich kids who will immediately lawyer up. So why not let the courts do their thing? Why just punish the middle and lower SES kids?</p>