Longtime readers will know that I’ve spent a lot of time arguing against race science, the claims that intelligence is distributed unevenly between races, with black and Hispanic people tending to be less intelligent and Asian people tending to be more intelligent. I think this claim is flat wrong, and in multiple dimensions. I also think that it is definitionally racist, as it asserts the inherent inferiority and superiority of different races. Like I said, I’ve written tons about it, and I don’t want to rehash it all. But I do want to mention an argument against race science that I always reject: the claim that there are some subjects we just shouldn’t study because the potential consequences are too dangerous. (Here’s a John Horgan piece on this idea.) That strikes me as politically disastrous, playing directly into the hands of those who insist that race science is simply a truth we are too polite to acknowledge. But it’s also disturbing on its own terms because it invites the question: what are you so afraid of? Are you convinced that black people are equal to white people, or aren’t you? Forbidding the question doesn’t make your case seem strong. It makes it seem impossibly weak. I argue against race science, and I do it by reading and evaluating the arguments of people who promulgate it, precisely because I am confident in the inherent moral and political equality of all people. I’m not afraid that, like, I’ll see some chart and say, “Oh! All the time I argued that black people are equal to white people, I was wrong! Sorry, everyone!” I’m not afraid to look because I’m not afraid that the case for equality is so weak as to not survive the attempt.

I think something similar has taken hold of almost the entire contemporary left when it comes to rape and our efforts to fight it, and the controversy about the Rolling Stone article on the University of Virginia is a perfect example: we have the rise of people on the left who are so utterly  convinced of the fairness and accuracy of the reporting that they feel it should never be questioned at all. And that doesn’t make any sense.

On my Facebook this morning, someone shared this Erik Wemple piece criticizing Rolling Stone‘s reporter, Sabrina Erdely, for not attempting to interview the accused rapists in the case in question. The response was immediate and angry; commenters on the link demanded to know why the person who shared it would do such a thing, arguing that Wemple’s criticism amounts to rape denial and that no one who cares about fighting rape would take these criticisms seriously. If you think that this is a rare occurrence, I encourage you to search for the link to Wemple’s piece on Twitter, or for the link to this piece from Hanna Rosin and Alison Benedikt at Slate that asks similar questions.

Pause and contemplate where we’ve gotten to, here. Not only is asking for discretion and care in how we talk about rape accusations now sufficient to cast yourself as a rape denier, but sharing a piece by a media critic asking why standard journalistic practice wasn’t followed in an article about a rape accusation is, too. Saying that Erdely failed to engage in ethical journalistic behavior by failing to interview the accused rapists is not, by any stretch, denying even that the specific incident in that reporting is untrue, let alone a broader denial of campus rape writ large. In the broader sense: what does this attitude say about the people who hold it, and their conviction about campus rape and the need to fight it? If the reporting in the story is accurate and fair, then it can withstand basic media criticism. And even if the story has deeper problems, it wouldn’t change the fact that we have a terrible problem with rapes on campus and in our Greek system and a clear need to fight that problem. So the question is, why are people so resistant to giving these stories a rigorous and skeptical review, the way we should do with any reporting? What are you so afraid of?

The standard response is that countenancing questions about reports of rape helps denialists, who will seize on problems with reporting and use them to agitate against anti-rape efforts in general. But that doesn’t make any sense, to me. In order for that argument to hold water, you’ve got to prove that preventing these questions from being asked actually defuses rape denialism. That seems to be literally the opposite of the case; denialists are emboldened by such refusal. They seize on such resistance as evidence of conspiracy  and weak evidence. I think it’s profoundly naive to believe that we can hold the line against critical review of rape narratives in such a way as to prevent denialism. Rape denialism is a sad fact of life, but it can be combated with evidence and careful argument. Denialism is an argument for being skeptical and rigorous, not an argument against it.

When Ezra Klein says that the campus affirmative consent law in California is a bad law that we must pass because rape is such a terrible crime, he thinks it shows that he takes rape as seriously as anyone. But what it really suggests is that he thinks our case against campus rape is so flimsy it can’t survive going through a fair and impartial process. When Cathy Young writes a piece pointing out that we know for a fact of rare but real incidents where women made false accusations of rape, and people excoriate her despite the fact that she explicitly calls those false accusations rare, it demonstrates that those people think our moral case against rape is so weak it cannot withstand exposure to the facts. When people react to the phrase “due process” as though it in and of itself amounts to rape denial, they don’t send the message that the case for arresting and prosecuting rapists is strong. They act as though it is so terribly weak it cannot survive in a world of basic liberal values and fairness.

I think we are compelled to recognize that rape is a terrible and prevalent crime, and compelled to combat it, and I am so certain of this, I do not fear those who would subject individual accusations to the typical standards associated with any accusation of a crime. Our moral duty to end rape can survive due process. It can survive fair questions. It can survive rigorous reporting. It’s a fact of human nature that those who are confident in their beliefs are willing to subject those beliefs to reasonable review, while those who are doubtful reject any questioning out of hand. When activists compel Christ Church to censor an anti-abortion event, they don’t make the case for abortion seem strong. They make it seem so weak that it cannot withstand contact with alternative opinion. That’s folly. So let’s be strong, because we’re right. We can be skeptical, we can embrace journalistic ethics and due process, and we can fight rape. We have to.