Washington Post changes ‘we should automatically believe rape allegations’ headline after Twitter furor

An opinion piece in the Washington Post brought on so much scorn on Twitter that they changed the headline in a matter of hours. Professional idiot and occasional Democratic strategist* Zerlina Maxwell’s piece was entitled “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims,” but after tons of Twitter mockery, the headline was changed from “automatically” to “generally.”

Here are some of the better tweets about the piece:


https://twitter.com/Matthops82/status/541260970236993536


https://twitter.com/GOPMommy/status/541265019778781184
https://twitter.com/TMZ_Politics/status/541271792372166656


https://twitter.com/Neal_Dewing/status/541275686758277120

And this is no exaggeration, she is literally saying that someone accused of rape faces few consequences, so these claims should be accepted without scrutiny:

Many people (not least UVA administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters, and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, UVA should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation.

I wonder if she believes that all white women’s rape allegations against blacks should be automatically believed? And is this what “equality” means, that women will be believed over men?

Yeah that’s kinda stupid.

*As was pointed out on Twitter, Zerlina isn’t a lawyer yet, as I had originally written.


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