Ages ago I posted saying that I thought discussing Bristol Palin in this way was inappropriate. If we want to know what happened we should read her account in the book (not promotional extracts). The book offers her account, not ours. By debating Bristol?s account (from the various angles on this thread), the language she uses, her background, you undermine Bristol?s authority to own her own narrative. Maybe she will describe the events differently in the future, use different language, but she has given voice to her experience and that should stand alone. She owns that experience, it is her right to tell us about it, not ours. Women?s voices are silenced enough, their narratives ignored or questioned. Should posters on the feminist section do this, too?
But on the broader argument on the thread?
A feminist would see rape in the context of a patriarchal society. The prevalence of rape, the consequences for the raped and the rapist, etc. is derived from the patriarchal structure. The feminist position is to challenge that patriarchy and the belief system that it promotes.
In our society women who have been raped are sometimes not believed ?by the police, juries, friends, the media. We know this ? the patriarchy wants us to know this. Newspapers report false allegations of rape (some of which of course may not be false anyway), cases that collapse. They do not tell us how rare this is. Newspapers do not report rapes that are not reported to the police because the woman thinks that even if the police believe her, that there is deemed to be enough evidence to charge the rapist, a jury might not believe her. We are supposed to know that if raped we might not be believed.
A feminist challenges this view by necessity. By focusing on women who lie about being raped you simply support the dominant view. This is political. Taking the position that a woman who says she was raped was raped runs counter to the patriarchial world view that indoctrinates/indoctrinated us.
Right-wing media like to focus on how white people can be the victims of racism, to encourage white readers/viewers to think, ?Black people can be racist, too. It?s not fair to focus on racism by whites against blacks, whites are victims, too.? That totally distorts how racism operates in society, how it is directed against people of minority ethnic groups. It undermines people from minority ethnic groups who have been the victims of racism and misrepresents how power functions in society.
It is not possible to state that no white person has ever been racially abused by a person from a minority ethnic group. But to discuss one incident of that abuse and hold it up as an example, is to distort the reality and play into the hands of white racists. Apply that to the ?some women lie about rape? view and see how by presenting examples, forming an argument around them, you are playing into the hands of a society that stacks the odds against a rape victim being believed. From a political point of view, that is not feminist.