The Kangaroo Justice of Sexual Assault Cases
Hannah Gal, Lotus Eaters, 2nd October 2021

“My deplatforming has been just devastating – after forty-six years of appearing on television and radio and writing for all our major publications, as far as mainstream media is concerned, I am totally cancelled.”
“If an alien landed here tomorrow and went by mainstream news”, I told Bettina Arndt, “it would be convinced that rape is experienced by every woman, all the time. Why has rape become a prominent topic within our culture?” I asked.
“Rape is an extremely emotional issue”, replied the social commentator and men’s advocate. “It causes men to rally to defend women and to accept harsh penalties for accused men. It also enlists support from women who identify strongly with alleged victims. As such, it is the ideal issue for feminist purposes.”
Sexual violence has been at the heart of the cultural conversation for many years – from the Kavanaugh hearings and consent courses imposed on bewildered employees to #BelieveAllWomen and Lady Gaga rocking the Oscars stage with her campus-rape anthem Till It Happens To You.
Introduced by then-Vice President Biden, the singer’s performance prompted mainstream media talk of a ‘rape epidemic’, while her claim that one in five women endure rape on campus was unanimously accepted.
One lone voice to cast doubt over the alarming statistic was Reason‘s Robby Soave who argued that “there’s nothing wrong with educating people about the importance of consent”, but the campus-rape documentary, which Lady Gaga was promoting, wrongly scared people into believing that colleges are full of serial sexual predators.