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MacDonald doesn’t mean it is inconceivable that a rape victim would not report the crime, because we know that individual rape victims are often reluctant or afraid to go public with accusations for all kinds of personal reasons. She means it is inconceivable that a full two-thirds of all victims would fail to report.

In 1950 many young women were ashamed to admit they had had sex out of wedlock. But they certainly aren’t ashamed today and they have all nowadays been continually exposed to well-organized campaigns of consciousness-raising on what does and what doesn’t amount to consent in sexual relations with men. Universities take such accusations very seriously – so seriously that young men on campus are rightfully fearful of injustice when they are accused of sexual assault, as universities generally privilege the word of the female reporting over the accused. It strains credulity that two-thirds of university women today aren’t reporting assault out of fear or shame.

So if they are not reporting in these huge numbers, perhaps we may assume that they might actually be telling the truth? That in their own eyes, the experience was not an assault, but more like regretted sex – or at the very least may we not give such a theory equal weight in assessing the numbers, as we would for any other crime?

The disparity between what feminist activists consider to be rape and what ordinary women think it is goes back to a famous 1982 survey by Kent State psychology prof and uber-feminist Mary Koss. Her findings were based on dubious methodology and typology, to say the least. For example, 73% of those she characterized as rape victims said they had not been raped. And 43% of the alleged victims said they had continued to date their alleged rapists. Inconceivable in the case of real rape.