Today, The LA Times has published a “Blowback” response from Nora, a SAFER blogger and student activist, to the atrocious Sunday op-ed “What Campus Rape Crisis”. I think that she did a good job using the space she had and the language she could while both writing for a mainstream newspaper and representing her organization. So I encourage you to check it out.
There are some points that she missed, namely the illogical and ignorant nature of MacDonald’s argument that if a woman doesn’t define her experience with non-consensual sex as rape, it could not have possibly been rape. This is understandable because there was a hell of a lot of offensive and misleading arguments all in one op-ed. My point here isn’t to criticize Nora — in fact, Amanda managed to pick up on several points that I missed. My point is that this is why it’s important for the paper to print letters on the subject from readers. From reading comments here and on other blogs, I know they got some good ones. But as of this morning, they have yet to appear (though at the moment, letters for 2/27 aren’t up).
Of course, the Times also hasn’t issued any kind of apology — nor do they exactly seem apologetic. Today, on Nora’s op-ed, the discussion at the bottom is framed thusly:
Is the college rape crisis a vast left-wing conspiracy? If not, what should campuses do about it? Discuss today’s Blowback.
Well it’s good to know that they’ve taken the concerns of women, including those from experts on sexual assault, so very seriously. There aren’t any comments there at the time of writing, and I haven’t got the strength to participate in that discussion. If you do, though, I encourage it — particularly if you can get in before the rape apologists start swarming. (A question for MRAs: why such strong desire to disprove rape statistics if your goal isn’t to portray rape survivors as liars, deny their experiences and just generally have the right to rape with impunity? Answer: that is the point, and they’ll even generally admit to the first part.)
If you haven’t yet written a letter, it’s not too late, and I hope you’ll take the time. I just noticed today that they have a form for those who have “concerns about The Times’ journalistic standards and practices (such as story coverage in general).” I sure as hell do, and I hope that you do, too — take a minute to fill it out. The other day, a reader also suggested writing to the paper’s sponsors. Any thoughts?
While I’m on the subject, I’d like to take a moment to highlight the SAFER blog. You may have noticed by now that I’ve been using them as a source a lot, recently, and it’s for a good reason. In addition to being a great and important organization, the people who work on the blog are tremendously good at digging up the stories that would otherwise be buried by the media (particularly, of course, those revolving around sexual violence on campus). I strongly recommend adding them to your blog reader.
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I wrote a letter to the editor and even if it isn’t published, whoever has the job of reading those letters may learn something.
I pointed out how the opening of MacDonald’s op-ed uses “you wait” was deceptive. Her rhetorical device implied that she was once a dedicated volunteer at a college rape crisis line.
We can hope so. I provided quite the schooling in my letter, and I doubt that you and I are the only ones. I bet that all up, we covered a huge range of topics. The letter-reading lackey is going to be a sexual assault expert (assuming that person actually takes anything we say seriously).
Thanks for turning me on to yet another great blog.
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