E. Jean Carroll is said to be or to have been an advice columnist. Well, here is some sound advice for her, next time something like this happens to you in a department store, scream.
As rape is a violent crime that attracts serious punishment, perpetrators usually commit it in private, that much is acknowledged universally. On January 3, 1993, a woman claimed to have been raped in a San Diego department store, and unlike E. Jean Carroll she reported it at once. The crime was so outrageous that it was said to have generated more media coverage than all the rapes committed in the city the previous year; it also attracted a $10,000 reward. And like Miss Carroll’s rape, it never happened. How can we be so sure of the latter?
Because what we are witnessing here is not the so-called #MeToo Movement but the weaponisation of sexual lies. Having said that, #MeToo is cut from the same cloth. Laura Loomer has summed up #MeToo poetically in a live hangout on YouTube, March 12 this year. It is valid, but only in the moment. A woman who comes forward and claims to have been raped thirty years ago after trading her sexual favours with a man has zero credibility. Those were not her exact words, but for the sake of decency the abstract will suffice.
Donald Trump went on record saying he had never met E. Jean Carroll. What he should have said was he had no recollection of ever meeting her, because he was photographed with her in 1987, her and probably several hundred other people at the same event. While Trump’s memory lapse is understandable, what is not understandable is why so many people give any credence at all to such claims. Actually, that is only part of the story, the idea has been around since at least the 1970s that rape is so uniquely traumatic an experience that most victims don’t report it, heck, some don’t even realise they were raped until years or even decades later. Are these claims credible? Of course not, but to understand how they became so we need to examine the propaganda of second wave feminism and the fallacious concept of rape trauma syndrome.
Second wave and now third wave feminism would have us believe men are never trustworthy and women always are. Furthermore, when women commit bad acts, be they acts of dishonesty or even murder, they have no agency for them. It was all the fault of the patriarchy, men, or perhaps one man. Anyone who believes this to be an exaggeration should read Phyllis Chesler’s essay on female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, A Woman’s Right To Self-Defense, which, incredibly, was published in a peer reviewed journal.
The phrase rape trauma syndrome entered the literature in September 1974 when Ann Wolbert Burgess and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom published an article so titled in The American Journal Of Psychiatry. Over three hundred and sixty-five days in 1972–3, they interviewed 146 patients admitted to Boston City Hospital including 92 adult women who claimed to have been victims of forcible rape. It is reasonable to assume all these women were in fact raped, although faux victims do on occasion seek medical treatment.
So what did these women say? People who suffer trauma, be it physical, psychological and especially both, seldom feel good. Burgess and Holmstrom went on to list a wide number of symptoms these women suffered and continued to suffer. They also made a claim that although still widely believed is not supported by any credible evidence:
“Since a significant proportion of women still do not report a rape, clinicians should be alert to a syndrome that we call the silent reaction to rape.”
Obviously some rapes do go unreported, usually when the victim is a genuinely vulnerable woman, like those preyed on by the corrupt Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, but the ludicrous statistics thrown around like confetti by feminist activists have no basis in fact. Furthermore, the list of symptoms garnered by Burgess and Holmstrom is sufficiently broad to allow them to “diagnose” rape trauma syndrome in almost any woman.
In spite of its having no basis in fact, rape trauma syndrome still manages to find its way into courtrooms on occasion. Most significantly, Burgess made a fool of herself testifying for the defense in the trial of the odious Menéndez brothers who tried to mitigate the murder of their parents by claiming to have been repeatedly sexually abused.
The greatest use of rape trauma syndrome is to explain away delay in reporting. It has often been said that rape is a he said/she said crime, in reality she said/he said. Mostly though rape is she said plus physical evidence/he said. If there was no sexual contact at all, there can be no physical evidence. (See the shocking 1982 case of Pedro Figueroa for a rare exception). A false allegation that is sufficiently backdated is almost impossible to refute, therefore there is no downside for the false accuser. That being said, on occasion false accusers do leave themselves open to refutation. A striking example of this was the recently deceased Louisa Moritz, one of the myriad false accusers of Bill Cosby. She gave a specific date and place for her oral violation by the comedian, as did the much younger accuser, Chloe Goins. Though neither of their claims had or has any credibility, the gullibles including credulous journalists who should know better continue to claim they were victims.
Therefore, in the absence of strong corroboration we should reject any and all historical allegations by any woman against Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Justin Fairfax, or any man be he a politician, an entertainer, famous or not so. An historical allegation requires no evidence, only words, and perhaps a few tears. That is all it takes to ruin a man’s reputation, and in certain jurisdictions to trash his life totally.
While feminist activists continue to plug the nonsense of rape culture, we should all remember that depravity has no gender, and should heed this warning from 1919:
“Sex is woman’s strongest weapon. She uses it as a weapon of defence and offence. She uses it to attract and to repel, to reward, and to punish. When intent upon punishment, she is utterly without scruples, and there is no vileness, no falsehood, at which she will draw the line.”
[The above article was first published on Medium, June 25, 2019].
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