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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Police Reports ... Cluster of tiny earthquakes shakes terrain near Lakeview ... Emergency fishing closures go statewide, exempt parts of the Rogue ... Police Reports ... Cluster of tiny earthquakes shakes terrain near Lakeview ... Emergency fishing closures go statewide, exempt parts of the Rogue ... COMMENTARY Jeffrey Gillespie: Ditching the Western burka Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Apr. 10, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Apr. 10, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News Reading this week on the events surrounding the recent trouncing of Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely for incorrectly sourcing her story about campus violence, I was struck by how much media attention her journalistic blunder has received. Of course, her sloppy reporting warranted some scrutiny. But more glaring was the fact that, of the millions of women across America who have been victims of sexual violence, so few with legitimate claims have garnered anything like the mainstream media attention that has been heaped upon this one disclaimed article. It is a cruel irony to see a piece, written by a female reporter, about a "false" rape, being used by the establishment as a mechanism to further bolster our "blame the victim" culture. Violence perpetrated against women, in all its forms, is an epidemic in this country. The conspiracy of silence surrounding the sexual abuse issue is as American as apple pie. The only difference between us and "them" (those cultures where male dominance is a more visible affair in the form of public lashings, arranged marriages, clitoral circumcision, religiously sanctioned beatings, etc.) is that in those contexts the gender bias is more pronounced and therefore easier to comprehend intellectually. I say intellectually because God forbid anything is ever done on the ground to address the problem. We're hardly dealing with the issue at home, so we're certainly not about to spike oil prices by screaming at the Saudis for stoning their wives to death or whipping their daughters in the street. Some stern and well-parsed words, aimed at the female vote come the next election cycle, is about as much as any American dare hope for. Here in the good old US of A, according to the CDCP, nearly one in five females has been raped in her lifetime. That's 23 million women — a figure that doesn't take into account other forms of sexual violence; those who have remained silent, or those who, because of poverty or patriarchy, age or academics, may not even realize that they are victims in the first place. Breast cancer, which affects one in eight, has resources, treatments and support structures that the silent victims of sexual abuse can only dream of. On college campuses, the suggestion is that the figure is even higher; according to the nonprofit organization One in Four, well — one in four college women has survived rape or attempted rape on campus. The Rolling Stone profile, which reported on a now-discredited story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia frat house, has received much scrutiny. There is a tone to the backlash that is disturbing; much like the Bernie Madoff affair in 2008, which gave bigots nationwide the perfect anti-Semitic foil, the falsified UVA story is already being gleefully exploited by right wing elements in the press as an exemplar of the hysterical feminist agenda. In extreme cases, conservative elements in the media are attempting to conflate the issue to the point of suggesting that the rape culture is some fantastic invention, a simple effect of feminist propaganda combined with left-wing political maneuvering. But when you live in a country where 20 percent of women have been the victims of sexual violence, there's really no possibility for overreaction. There's only the need for a moment of silence, a moment to let that shameful statistic sink in, and then there's work to be done. We can't hope to live in a free society until such time as the veil of sexual shame and humiliation that so many of our citizens are living under is lifted. Resources from all sectors of the U.S. economy and culture must be deployed to stop the bleeding. There are 157 million women and girls in this country, so there couldn't be a more pressing issue. The time for escalated action is long past, and it should start now. Jeffrey Gillespie's writing has appeared in the Santa Fean and Art Collector magazines, the Portland Mercury and Willamette Week. He lives in Ashland. 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