When crying "Rape!" can be crying "Wolf!"

Heather MacDonald has an excellent article in City Journal Magazine (see blogroll) called The Campus Rape Myth. MacDonald deconstructs the oft-repeated claim that one in four female college students have been raped or sexually assaulted at some point during their time in college. As MacDonald points out, the violent crime rate in Detroit works out to only 2.4% of the residents being victims, so you can imagine how far-fetched is the possibility that 25% of all college coeds have been rape victims. What the vast majority of these claims of rape turn out to be are actually pangs of regret for getting drunk, getting naked, and "hooking up" with a guy. As MacDonald explains it:

But suggest to a rape bureaucrat that female students should behave with greater sexual restraint as a preventive measure, and you might as well be saying that the girls should enter a convent or don the burka. “I am uncomfortable with the idea,” e-mailed Hillary Wing-Richards, the associate director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Women’s Resource Center at James Madison University in Virginia. “This indicates that if [female students] are raped it could be their fault—it is never their fault—and how one dresses does not invite rape or violence. . . . I would never allow my staff or myself to send the message it is the victim’s fault due to their dress or lack of restraint in any way.” Putting on a tight tank top doesn’t, of course, lead to what the bureaucrats call “rape.” But taking off that tank top does increase the risk of sexual intercourse that will be later regretted, especially when the tank-topper has been intently mainlining rum and Cokes all evening....

All these false claims of rape/sexual assault accomplish is to trivialize the actual rapes that sometimes take place on or near college campuses.

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