In March, a 56-year-old California woman named Tara Reade publicly accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993. The issue caused an awkward rift among Democrats, one that has only widened since Biden became the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Many Democrats fear the accusation will weaken their chances of removing Donald Trump from the White House, while others are more worried that dismissing the accusations outright might alienate the party’s base. In April, a number of notable female Democrats and feminist progressives who usually align themselves with the #BelieveWomen camp declared their support for Biden, and explained that “believe women” actually means “listen to both sides.”

Last week, this theater of the absurd got slightly more surreal when a prominent feminist wrote in the New York Times that she thinks Biden is a rapist, but will vote for him anyway. Linda Hirshman, a retired professor of women’s studies and philosophy, and a prolific author (most recently of Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment), explained to Times readers that she believes Reade, but also believes that “the cost of dismissing Tara Reade—and, worse, weakening the voices of future survivors” is justified on purely utilitarian grounds, since (as she sees it) Trump is the greater evil. Hirshman argued that the Democrats’ current strategy of defending Biden’s innocence is both cowardly (since it avoids the “hard work of moral analysis”) and harmful, since it means “casting a reasonably credible complainant as a liar.”

I don’t know if replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket at this stage would be as “suicidal” as Hirshman claims. But to argue, in effect, vote for the rapist—at least he’s our rapist seems like a dismal pitch to voters unversed in the finer points of “moral analysis.” What’s worse, Hirshman suggests that Biden’s female supporters, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, are merely pretending to believe Biden’s vehement denial of Reade’s allegations. By casting the Democratic leadership as dishonest and cynical, Hirshman is kneecapping the party she says she supports.