How Rolling Stone Failed Rape Survivors

[Content note: sexual assault]

My new Daily Dot piece discusses the Rolling Stone mess.









Read the rest here.

How Rolling Stone Failed Rape Survivors

4 thoughts on “How Rolling Stone Failed Rape Survivors

  1. 1

    Great piece, Miri.
    Thanks for writing it, and once again “ruining” all our fun so very professionally!*

    *my tiny little (femto-? atto-?) joke…I’ve always liked your “Professional Fun-Ruiner” tag!

  2. 3

    A really big problem that props up rape culture is the willful ignorance of what established science tells us about memory. But people should really know better without needing to see the studies since memory is pretty unreliable. People get details wrong. A person reports they went to Walgreens when it was really CVS. Or they thought they went Monday when they really went Tuesday. There’s no reason to assume memory would be more accurate from a traumatic event.

    People questioning rape victims should know that. I sometimes feel that cops question rape victims in a way that’s intentionally gas-lighting and sets people up for confusion. A friend of mine related how a cop wouldn’t let her just make a statement, but would constantly interrupt with questions that seemed more designed to get her flustered or frustrated so she would stop and that didn’t even seem relevant.

    The thing about a piece like this is, any journalist should know that anyone who talks publicly about being raped is going to face retaliation. They should have really thought about that with this one.

  3. 4

    I agree with pretty much all of this. It’s a shame, too, because I’ve read and appreciated Erdely’s stuff in the past – she has done good work. In this case, however, it appears as though she made several truly colossal mistakes. Yes, Rolling Stone’s ill-conceived disclaimer was awful, but none of this would have happened if Erdely had done her fucking job.

    “Charles C. Johnson” is a piece of shit.

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