"That sucking sound? That’s us being dragged back into the last century."

I still blame Rolling Stone for that giant sucking sound. Thanks to their abject failure, all the MRA trolls are crawling out of the woodwork, armed with what they consider a prime example of women lying about rape.

That sucking sound? That’s us being dragged back into the last century.

Can we please not go there? Jackie’s story might not be real, but a bigger one is. One in five women say they have been raped. One in 20 say they have experienced other forms of sexual violence. About 19 percent of undergrads say they experienced rape or attempted rape. In a fall survey of MIT students, one in six of the women who responded said they’d been sexually assaulted, but only 5 percent had reported it. It is everywhere, including at august New England universities.

Even without Jackie’s story, there is plenty in the Rolling Stone story to alarm: UVA is one of scores of schools being investigated by the federal government — and one of 12 receiving extra scrutiny — for its handling of sexual assaults. Other UVA students described their own rapes in the article, and the alarming unresponsiveness of school officials who seemed more concerned with the college’s reputation than with student safety.

Maybe all of these people are lying, too, you and Bill Cosby might argue. No. Various studies show false rape report rates ranging from 2 to 8 percent. There are no more fabricated reports of rapes than of other crimes, says Toni Troop of Jane Doe Inc., as much as some would like to believe otherwise.

“People don’t want to believe rape happens in the first place,” says Troop, whose job just got harder.

And why is that? Why is there such a resistance to even acknowledging that rape is a real thing that happens to real people? Or that we are stewing in a culture that allows it to be shrugged off, mocked, or joked about?

If things like GamerGate and the renewed interest in the allegations against Bill Cosby have taught us anything, it's that no matter what a woman does, attacks or threats against her are always her fault.

Even on this site, both Jackie and the alleged victims of Bill Cosby are condemned for not reporting the rapes so that they could be "properly" investigated. This is usually, though not always, wrapped in concern about "innocent until proven guilty," which is horrifically funny because that same principle doesn't apply to the victims. They are by default lying about the rape until they prove otherwise.

That's one hell of an idea of justice, isn't it?