Soraya Chemaly Made Rape a Joke

You, Soraya Chemaly, are the reason high school and college males consider rape a joke. Every time you cite an unfounded and inflated statistic like “one in four,” every time you call a college campus a “rape capital,” every time you explain away your utter lack of real evidence with the logically bereft meme that all the unseen rapes must just be unreported, every time you conflate a couple getting drunk and having a one-night stand that the girl later regrets with forcible assault, or decry a puerile email as an integral part of an ominous yet intangible “rape culture,” you trivialize sexual assault and you trivialize its victims.

You made rape a joke. You continue to make rape a joke by constantly attempting to expand the definition of rape beyond its logical and observed boundaries, by denouncing male behavior as “toxic” and “shameful” when it crosses your preconceived notions of acceptability, by celebrating the utter trashing of due process in modern Title IX campus assault investigations.

“Boys” aren’t as stupid as you seem to think, Soraya. They know the difference, even at 17, between “the 80% of reported rapes” that “involve alcohol” and often feature two drunk parties manifesting consent, and a girl being forcibly raped and murdered in a dorm, even if you manipulatively link them in an article. When you continually tell people that the sky is falling – that a massive problem exists all around them that belies their own direct observational experience – you devalue not only your own message, but the real and horrific instances of rape that you lump in with far more harmless actions.

You made rape a joke. That you’re making a career off that joke by railing against what you wrought is the height of disingenuity. Enjoy your work.

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