[HOTAIR] Or, maybe, Dunham just did not want to lie about someone with whom she had a consensual night of sex, a person who she regarded as a friend and with whom she shared similar political views, and thought that it would make a better story to turn him both a violent criminal and a Romney voter. That would, after all, be the simplest explanation. While it is morally repugnant, for someone who makes a living as a creative writer, it is a course of action that is not especially not difficult to envision.

Of course, the joke is now, “Sure, Dunham’s Republican rapist turned out to be nothing of the sort, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the Larger Truths about rape and Republicans exposed by her confession.” That larger truth is, as ever, the faith-based claim that American culture is also “rape culture,” and that sexual violence and repression are both embraced and advanced by conservatives. As with the collapse of the fabulist tale that has robbed Rolling Stone of much of its waning credibility, the implosion of this narrative, too, has dealt those who are married to ideological preconceptions about their own victimhood quite the blow.

The genuine victims of sexual violence should be horrified by their supposed allies who would profit from their abuse by falsely claiming to have shared in it.