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This evening (March 25), there began an online backlash against a column published by Maclean's magazine about “an anything-goes sexual society.”

The article, an opinion piece by long-time Maclean's contributor Barbara Amiel, doesn’t so much make light of the Steubenville rape case as it callously uses it as a cheap ploy to attract the pageviews of angry readers.

With playful language, Amiel suggests that Steubenville’s convicted rapists should have been let off with a school suspension and that the victim should be punished.

We therefore give you this post so that you can read the worst of Amiel’s column without giving the Maclean’s website the traffic they’re after. Short excerpts are republished as fair use.

Here’s what one of Maclean’s regular contributors wrote about the Steubenville case:

“In Steubenville, a bunch of high school teenagers got drunk at house parties and one of the girls ended up sans her clothes, of which there were not many to begin with, and no memory of how she got that way…"

“Next day, the girl couldn’t remember a thing except that she didn’t have sex as we once understood it…”

“In a normal society, the girl’s mother would have locked her up for a week and all boys present would have been suspended from school and their beloved football team. Instead we had a trial and media circus…”

You can contact Amiel by emailing barbara.amiel@macleans.rogers.com, or write Maclean's editor Mark Stevenson at mark.stevenson@macleans.rogers.com.