A satirical article (and now a video) claiming that a woman named Cassidy Boon has decided to sue the man who saved her from drowning on a rape charge is spreading across the Internet, especially Twitter, with many mistaking it for a genuine account.
The article – titled A man saved me from drowning, but now I am suing him for rape because he touched me and published originally on The Stately Harold website (though since moved to The Portly Gazelle) by a self-identified feminist under the name Cassidy Boon – tells a first person story of how the author – whilst jumping off a floating tower on a lake, hit her head and knocked herself unconscious.
The story continues by describing how a man jumped in and rescued her as her body began to sink beneath the water. The tale takes an odd turn when the author claims that she is now suing her rescuer under the grounds of rape. The author urges users to use the #SaveRape hashtag. An excerpt of the article reads –
To grab me forcefully and pull me in what ever direction HE wanted to go. He took control of my body down there in the cold water, when I was unconscious and unable to look out for myself, he touched my all-but-bikini bare body when I was KNOCKED out and unable to struggle.
Certainly an absurd notion, to sue the person who attempted to save you, as most would agree, and the story has certainly outraged plenty on social media.
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However, the more perceptive of readers would have likely picked up on the true nature of the story – a satirical piece that pokes fun at feminism by both exaggerating and ridiculing feministic concepts. There is no woman suing a man for saving her from drowning, at least not related to this article there isn’t. The entire piece is nonsense, not least because it derives from a self-confessed satirical website. A hard to find disclaimer on The Stately Harold reads –
The Stately Harold is a satirical website. None of the stories have a grain of truth to them and the opinions do not belong to real people.
Thus the character Cassidy Boon – who has her own Twitter account and is the author of other controversially-sounding satire pieces including Why male suicides do not matter as much as female ones and Why it’s okay for women to cheat on their boyfriends – is more than likely a pseudonym rather than an actual person and it is rather unlikely that she (or he) genuinely believes in the ideas they describe they assert.
Heroic rescuers be not afraid – even if the article outlined were true (it’s really not) – there isn’t much realistic chance of such a tale ever occurring. For one, many countries have legislation in place that many dub the “Good Samaritan Rule” that provides legal protection for those who make ‘genuine and reasonable’ attempts at saving someone in peril, so it is unlikely that someone saving a drowning victim would ever realistically be prosecuted for rape (or anything else.)