Story here, published 5/8/05
FIVE DAYS before the annual "Take Back the Night" march at the University of New Hampshire, 18-year-old freshman Stefani N. Duelfer of Exeter reported to police that a man wearing a T-shirt reading "Chicks dig me" assaulted her in a campus parking lot. A week later she reported that the same man came out of nowhere and assaulted her again. UNH issued an alert for all students to look out for the assailant, whom Duelfer described as a 6-foot-tall white man with broad shoulders. Last week police made an arrest in the case: Duelfer. Police have charged her with making up the whole thing.
It should come as no surprise to learn that Duelfer is a feminist activist. False charges of rape and assault regularly crop up on campuses across the country, often close to events such as Take Back the Night, and always by radical feminists. Exactly a week before Duelfer made her first false charge, Desiree Nall, the president of the Brevard, Fla., chapter of the National Organization for Women, was arrested for making a false rape report during Sexual Assault Awareness Week last fall.
At UNH, Duelfer's accusations were the height of foolishly hyperbolic efforts by campus feminists to bring attention to the real problem of sexual assault. By painting with too broad a brush, however, these activists have drawn scorn and suspicion instead of sympathy.
At the Take Back the Night rally, anti-fraternity rhetoric reportedly culminated in women using baseball bats to whack a piniata marked "frats." Never mind that fraternity members were among those who joined the march, carrying banners and wearing pink ribbons on their wrists.
Earlier this semester the Feminist Action League held a rally in which members wore scissors around their necks, sang about castrating men, and accused all men of being rapists. UNH's most prominent feminist activist, Whitney Williams, has made herself a household name in Durham by repeatedly railing against men and fraternities and positing that there is no such thing as a good man.
The damage these women are doing to their cause is hard to overstate. Sexual assault is a very real problem. By lying about its prevalence, radical feminists create an atmosphere of mistrust, which only makes things harder for real assault victims. Falsely accusing innocent people — whether through a fake assault claim or a blanket statement that all men are rapists — also enflames passions on both sides and creates a hostility that is unnecessary and dangerous.
Men and women are not enemies. The sooner UNH's radical feminists realize this, which the rest of the civilized world already knows, the better they will do at getting their message across.
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