Donna on Rape Apologism and the Presumption of Innocence
Immediately after Donna Provencher dropped her defamatory comments on Facebook (see here for the rest of the story), she published (on Jan. 26th) an infuriating post on her blog, entitled, “Is this the legacy Christendom College alumni want to leave behind?” In it she doubles down on labeling Christendom alumni “rape apologists.”
It is largely a collection of strawman arguments. (Donna: we don’t need patronizing lectures proving to us that rape is always wrong; no one in the entire conversation argued that rape is sometimes okay. We also don’t need patronizing lectures about the meaning of ‘apologist’; we perfectly well know what the word means, we just deny that the alumni you attacked were actual engaging in rape apologism.)
It also had some outright historical revisionism. (Donna: just because you chose to fill out an online police report form that requires absolutely no validation of any facts doesn’t mean that you “had to file a police report against a fellow alum for harassment and threats.” We have screenshots of the conversation in which you decided to file the report, and we have screenshots of what the individual actually said to you. He did not threaten or harass you. Maybe we can drop those shots in a later post.)
Thus far her blog post was just more of the sort of creative fiction and outright distortion we have come to expect from the VP of Communications for Dinah’s Voice. But what caught our eye was a little passage in which Donna comments on Christendom’s call for a day of prayer and fasting in which the school wrote: “We pray and fast for all victims, for the accused, for the administration, for current students, for ourselves, and for anyone affected by recent events,”
Concerning this line, Donna writes as follows:
So there you have it straight from the mouth of the VP of Communications for Dinah’s Voice: Anyone who has been accused of rape is ("let the record reflect") a rapist. And if you refer to a man accused of rape as the “accused” rather than as the “rapist,” the only explanation is that you don’t believe women.
Of course this is exactly what we showed in CASC: Advocates of Mob Justice. When CASC says, “believe women” what they mean is that one must always choose to believe one of the two sides, and the correct side to believe blindly is the woman's side. There is no room in Donna’s world for a presumption of innocence or a suspension of judgment. Not labeling those accused of rape “rapists” is by that fact disbelieving women and being a rape apologist.
You can’t make this stuff up.
 |
| Donna offers commentary concerning the alumni discussion of Simcha's article at the time. This is the level of discourse alumni were dealing with. |
It also had some outright historical revisionism. (Donna: just because you chose to fill out an online police report form that requires absolutely no validation of any facts doesn’t mean that you “had to file a police report against a fellow alum for harassment and threats.” We have screenshots of the conversation in which you decided to file the report, and we have screenshots of what the individual actually said to you. He did not threaten or harass you. Maybe we can drop those shots in a later post.)
Thus far her blog post was just more of the sort of creative fiction and outright distortion we have come to expect from the VP of Communications for Dinah’s Voice. But what caught our eye was a little passage in which Donna comments on Christendom’s call for a day of prayer and fasting in which the school wrote: “We pray and fast for all victims, for the accused, for the administration, for current students, for ourselves, and for anyone affected by recent events,”
Concerning this line, Donna writes as follows:
The victims and the accused. Whoaboy. This is a doozy. . . . Look, I’m a journalist. I get it if Christendom doesn’t want to call them “the rapists” on the front page of their website, even though (let the record reflect) that is what they are. . . . And don’t tell me it’s all semantics. The word “accused” was chosen there for one very important reason: to convey that they really don’t believe the women’s claims. [Emphases original.]
So there you have it straight from the mouth of the VP of Communications for Dinah’s Voice: Anyone who has been accused of rape is ("let the record reflect") a rapist. And if you refer to a man accused of rape as the “accused” rather than as the “rapist,” the only explanation is that you don’t believe women.
Of course this is exactly what we showed in CASC: Advocates of Mob Justice. When CASC says, “believe women” what they mean is that one must always choose to believe one of the two sides, and the correct side to believe blindly is the woman's side. There is no room in Donna’s world for a presumption of innocence or a suspension of judgment. Not labeling those accused of rape “rapists” is by that fact disbelieving women and being a rape apologist.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Comments
Post a Comment