MEGAN MCARDLE: Moral Panics Won’t End Campus Rape.
The sexual abuse of children is not an imaginary problem. It is one of the worst crimes known to our society, and it happens all too tragically often. But somehow, in the 1980s, we became convinced that it was an omnipresent threat, and that we must go to any lengths to eradicate it — up to, and including, believing in the impossible. Many people seem to have swallowed their doubts about these stories for fear of being denounced — just as folks such as Richard Bradley, who first raised questions about the Rolling Stone story, were accused of “rape denial” and being “truthers.”
When people are in the grip of a moral panic, going up against them to question the extent of a threat, even by doubting so much as a single case, can become dangerous. Questioning any expression of the panic is not seen as a logical debate over statistics or the details of a particular instance, but as somehow defending the threatening behavior. Note how careful many people who wrote skeptically about the UVA case were to say that they believe campus rape happens, and it is terrible. People who write that they think an accused murderer may be innocent rarely feel compelled to affirm that yes, they sure do believe that murder happens, and boy, are they against that. This ought to go without saying, and unless we are in the middle of a moral panic, it usually does.
Yet once moral panic sets in, an accusation can also become sufficient evidence unto itself to trigger a severe response: no need to see what the brothers might have to say, or to wait for a police investigation, before you write that op-ed article about rape culture — or start throwing bricks.
Unfortunately, our panicked determination to believe does not ultimately help the cause; in fact, such determination hurts the cause, as well as the innocent people whose names are tarnished along the way. As Judith Levine wrote in the aftermath of the UVA revelations, “feminism can handle the truth.”
Two points: (1) No, they really can’t, it seems; and (2) Solving the problem of campus rape isn’t the agenda here. Remember, “moral panics” don’t just happen. They are created.