An editorial executive at the Harvard Crimson is decrying all people who believe in due process as “rape apologists.”
In an article on the Harvard Crimson, Nian Hu laments over the allegedly “stymied” progress for alleged sexual assault survivors.
While admitting, “practically everyone agrees that rape is bad,” Hu writes those who believe in due process for individuals accused of rape are “rape apologists”:
Who is upholding this broken system, and protecting sexual assault perpetrators at the expense of survivors?
Rape apologists are. The problem is, they don’t consider themselves defenders of rapists. Instead, they call themselves defenders of liberty and due process before the law. They are the self-proclaimed champions of “innocent before proven guilty.” All they want is fairness and equality—that is, for the men who are accused of rape.
Hu explains these alleged “rape apologists” include people who support things like the Campus Safe Act (which requires students to report their alleged sexual assaults to law enforcement before a school can investigate the matter) and people who think a woman could ever falsely accuse a man of rape.
While Hu notes that false rape accusations are a real thing, she would rather people ignore them because they apparently make people less likely to report rape:
[T]he focus on false rape accusations is not only misguided, it is deeply harmful. When we spend so much time talking about these rare occurrences, we make it harder for actual survivors to muster the courage to report their rapes. We contribute to a structure that doesn’t take survivors seriously when they do report their rapes.
Hu also attributes an unwillingness to report rape to a “collective consciousness” that normalizes rape through songs like “Blurred Lines” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
Ironically, despite writing about the problem of “rape apologists” who simply believe in innocent until proven guilty, Hu is apparently a fan of former President Bill Clinton.
Some of Hu’s other articles include her attacking the word “crazy” for being sexist, comparing a preference for Asian women to imperialism, and saying there is no such thing as definitive masculine and feminine traits... except, apparently, the urge to rape.