A lot of what I write about is in regards to how narrative is used in the media. It's a common concept on the alternative right that the news media in particular tries to fit individual incidents into an accepted framework.
The most obvious recent versions of this are racial. The Duke lacrosse rape case, the Jena Six and, with the most hysteria, the Zimmerman trial have all been square situations that were forced into round holes. They are obvious because they are so ramshackle.
Incidents like those are dangerous for the powers that be. It creates cognitive dissonance, forcing supporters into fanaticism because the choice is to either believe their superiors or believe their own eyes. Each time this happens, it creates an opportunity for a supporter to shake his head, clear his mind, and go with the facts rather than the narrative. By pushing the narrative to the edge of plausibility, they risk losing their support.
But there are many fronts in the culture war. The news media attempted to build some momentum with other stories about white men shooting black people, but all the outrage available for shaky cases was spent. Rather than risk alienating the broader base, the attention shifts to the priorities of a different faction within the Cathedral. Contending for primacy with gay rights is "rape culture" feminism.
Back in the early 90s, it would have been unbelievable that the beliefs--if not the works--of Valerie Solanis and Andrea Dworkin would be ascendant in twenty years. They were simply too extreme, too beyond common sense. Solanis (satirically, it's claimed) advocated violence against men and said that the only place for men was as a "worm," confessing his misogynist sins and accepting punishment. Dworkin re-contextualized biology itself, defining intercourse as violence against women.
These ideas are by no means the dominant messages put forth by mainstream feminists. But they are the beliefs espoused by those that consider themselves "true" feminists, the simmering bottom level of the movement. A parallel would be the difference between a bomb-throwing revolutionary communist and a parliamentary Euro-communist. The ideas of the radical are always prodding the moderate from behind. The moderate, fashioning herself as an ideologically-aware thinker, takes the opinions of the radical into account.
In this manner the concepts on which radicalism is based seep into the mainstream, without the radical prescriptions. The Marxist accepts the concept of class warfare while not having the army march into factories. The feminist left does not propose punitive measures against men but accepts the idea that we live in a rape culture.
The idea that women in America are at perpetual risk for rape is gaining ground. So has the definition of rape in the media's eyes. Coverage of last year's trial in Steubenville continually conflated the details of story--which by themselves were repulsive and shameful--into the narrative of a gang rape, a term which implies forcible intercourse with many men.
This is manipulating the associative elements of the word, taking our understanding of "rape"="horrible trauma" and applying it to a broader set of acts. Take this situation, in which a young woman has announced that the entirety of her sexual activity with her boyfriend of three years was "sexual assault." ("Rape," of course, has a legal definition less broad than "sexual assault," so use of the latter is more flexible in journalese than it is in Tumblr rhetoric.)
The concept that women are always at risk of male sexual violence is better fixed in the media narrative than it has ever been. (The progress runs this way: women are to be restricted to the family-->women are to be protected--women can and should do anything men do-->women are at constant risk from men) The narrative is ready to reexamine the Woody Allen accusations.
As I've mentioned before, the coverage at the time was not instantly pro-Farrow. Allen's affair with Soon-Yi was the hot topic and I don't remember anyone saying it was a good thing. Farrow, like Allen himself, had a reputation as being strange, particularly for her affinity for adopting children, for adopting foreign children, for adopting disabled children and for adopting children as the single parent though she was in a long-term relationship with Allen (Allen adopted those children later). The accusations came, made headlines, and then faded when no trial occurred.
Allen went back to what he did, churning out a movie a year and his private life became so quiet that the allegations became a softer and softer whisper. He married Soon-Yi and started a family with her. No one else came forward with tales about his sexual behavior.
A generation has passed since the matter was dropped. In that generation, the media has grown more strident as its monopoly on consensus has weakened. The left is more fanatical about its view of the world. The crimes that Allen are accused of are no longer considered the anomalous acts of a depraved individual--the narrative being pushed is that those acts are part of the standard-issue male toolkit, available to every male in the service of a misogynist rape culture. Every man is a potential abuser.
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