The worst of Barbara Amiel’s Maclean’s column about the Steubenville rape and “sexual landscape”

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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.

      Comments

      28 Comments

      Nadine Lumley

      Mar 25, 2013 at 8:24pm

      She just a CON doing CONs a favour trying to get Tom Flanagan off...

      wait, that didn't come out right...

      wait, that's a problem too... shoot..

      Chris Ryan

      Mar 25, 2013 at 8:54pm

      Maclean's has been tawdry for years.

      Jennifer Robyn

      Mar 26, 2013 at 4:28am

      Just wrote a letter to the editor. This is one of the most tasteless pieces of writing I've read in a long time. Macleans reputation is at an all time bottom right now.

      Jonathan Dresner

      Mar 26, 2013 at 7:38am

      I commented there: I regret giving them a page view, but I don't regret leaving this comment.

      "This is a career-defining column. Barbara Amiel will always be the person who wrote this vicious, thoughtless challenge to decency and fairness. This is clearly deliberate, thoughtful, and inexcusable. This isn't conservativism, or traditionalism: it's nostalgia for a specifically inhumane past."

      In a sane world, she would immediately become a fringe figure, at best, someone whose friends and colleagues work to avoid being seen publicly with.

      Bill

      Mar 26, 2013 at 11:09am

      I commend Barbara for athought provoking article.Give her a break,this is Canada a land I thought we have fredom of speach even if we don't agree.Sure the boys were wrong but so was the girl.When will we recognize that drunkeness is no excuse for stupid and rekless behaviour.We are always responsible for our behaviour ,drunk or not.My daughter would have been grounded for a year for such behavior.Are you bold enough to print this or do you only print Anti Barbara propoganda.

      To Bill

      Mar 26, 2013 at 12:13pm

      We do have a free society, and we are able to speak freely,which is what allowed Amiel to make a jackass of herself, and what allowed numerous others to point it out. In a free society, none of us are forced to buy Macleans or support their subscribers. In a free society, we are able to tell Macleans why we stopping our support.

      gmm

      Mar 26, 2013 at 12:26pm

      She doesn't have children according to her Wikipedia article. She really has nobody other than her poor Conrad and a platform for her shoe fetish and whining about how life is so unfair at Macleans. And she has no contact with the reality of 2013. The problem is that the world has changed and she has not. What once was something to be hidden under a rug and forgotten is now something to be exposed, which you would think a so called JOURNALIST would know......but it is much easier to stay in one's sick and twisted comfort zone rather than figure out how to live in a new millennium. She is irrelevant. And she knows it. So she writes inflammatory things to provoke reactions because negative publicity is better than none. Whatever. Dear Macleans- you have become a repository for classism, racism, and sexism over the years, and not even your back page can make up for it any longer. I will be sure to cancel my family subscription to your toilet rag as soon as possible. I am thoroughly and utterly disgusted. You used to be a magazine that brought Canada together. Now you just polarize and inflame and disgust.

      Lord Babs of Snotharbour

      Mar 26, 2013 at 1:34pm

      Not to mention that it's a badly written imitation of her tubby hubby's ponderous style, full of rambling confusion and bewildering leaps of logic hidden beneath pedantic pretension and some seriously bad craziness. You'd think Macleans would be able to hire an actual writer with real arguments to make.

      Emma

      Mar 26, 2013 at 4:21pm

      Actually, we don't have freedome of speech in Canada. That's an American right. In Canada we have hate speech and here there are limits on what one can and should say. Therefore, Ms. Amiel should not be excused on some notion that she's exercising her free speech rights.

      Kat

      Mar 26, 2013 at 5:27pm

      Is anybody surprised? Macleans has been a conservative rag for years...

      I'm hardly surprised they're apologizing for the criminals, or that Amiel is taking the side of the criminals, seeing as her husband is one...she probably believes there is such thing as "legitimate rape"