Crystal Gail Magnum: Criminal

Well, Ace is on a righteous tear and he is absolutely right: the only victims in the Duke Rape Case were the three accused and the woman who started all this, Crystal Gail Magnum, committed a heinous crime:

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she plunged the nation into yet another spasm of racial recriminations.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she made it more difficult for any woman actually raped to find justice in court.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. She plunged the Duke innocents you obviously emphatize so much with into a waking nightmare.

Why does society back off a woman criminal? Ace suspects it's because she's poor and black. Her color may explain the pass society seems to be giving her, but it doesn't entirely explain why she accused and had good reason to believe she'd get away with it, to begin with. This crime could be committed because she's a woman. Women do not carouse in groups and attack grown Chippendale men. Have you heard of that crime yet? I haven't, and we live in a pretty heinous society.

Crystal Gail Magnum exploited a situation. Her game is actually rather routine. Female strippers take their money, fore go providing the service they were paid for, and what will the guys do? She can blackmail them. She can walk away. If they get pissed off, she can yell rape. Even a woman of ill repute, who puts herself in a situation where she may decide to give the men sex for some extra cash, can accuse the men and on her word, their lives can be ruined. Can you imagine if one of these guys had consensual sex with her? Life over. The men, especially young, horny, stupid men, don't get this until they've been had. I'm guessing that the Duke lacrosse players steer clear of in-home strippers from here on out.

No woman with any sense whatsoever puts herself in that situation. No man with any sense whatsoever would put himself in that situation, either--if he's thinking. If he wants a future.

Part of the reason people don't want to name the crime and name the criminal, Crystal Gail Magnum, is because they figure she must have had a tough life. She must have been poor or abused or suffered somehow. But that reasoning is bigoted and offensive, too. There are plenty of poor, black, women who don't resort to a life of crime. For every Crystal Gail Magnum, there are hundreds of women who get educated, work hard, move up in the world without resorting to stealing or cheating or lying or killing. Can the bar be set any lower for women? Only if the woman is a woman of color.

Do we expect women to be a little crazy, a lot helpless and easily induced into criminal situations? So the female teacher predators, the female mother mutilators, the female stalkers, the female murderers, the female liars who use their ovaries as cover for their sins are let off the hook?

I don't buy it. If women want equal rights, they need to support equal treatment under the law. Nothing besides anger, avarice, greed and no character influenced Crystal Gail Magnum. If she were a white male and yelled "fire" and people died, she'd be in prison. If she were a white male and got caught extorting, she'd be in prison. If she were a white male, and had consensual sex with a black woman and the woman claimed rape, she'd be in prison. For life.

She did not commit a small crime. And if she were white and male, she'd be in jail.

Ace has lots to read, and you should be reading it. He's rightfully outraged. More here, here, here, here and here.