RAPE is definitely a reality and a problem on American campuses, which is not surprising given campus culture. But the epidemic touted by Obama and other feminists is not based on reliable evidence. From Kevin Williamson at National Review:

The fictitious rape epidemic is necessary to support the fiction of “rape culture,” by which feminists mean anything other than an actual rape culture, for example the culture of the Pakistani immigrant community in Rotherham in the United Kingdom. “Rape culture” simply means speech or thought that feminists disapprove of and wish to suppress, and the concept has been deployed in the cause of, inter alia, bringing disciplinary action against a Harvard student who wrote a satire of feminist rhetoric, forbidding politically unpopular speakers from speaking on campuses, and encouraging what often has turned out to be headlong and grotesquely unjust rushes to judgment, as in the case of the Duke lacrosse team. Feminism is about political power, and not the Susan B. Anthony (“positively voted the Republican ticket — straight”) full-citizenship model of political power but rather one dominated by a very small band of narrow ideologues still operating under the daft influence of such theorists as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, each of whom in her way equated political opposition to feminism with rape.

This has some worrisome practical results, not the least of which is muddying the water on the issue of sexual assault itself. For example, feminists energetically protest that advising women to take such precautionary measures as moderating their alcohol intake at college parties is a species of rape-culture victim-blaming (rather than reasonable advice), and so it is no surprise that, as the DoJ notes, many surveys inquire of rape victims whether they believed their attackers to have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol but decline to ask the victims whether they were under the influence. Evidence very strongly suggests that rapists frequently use intoxicants, openly or surreptitiously, as part of a strategy conceived with malice aforethought to render their victims vulnerable. It might be useful to know how often this is the case and how often it works or fails to work, but we will not know if we refuse to ask the question.

Our policy debates are dominated by relatively narrow-minded and self-interested elites, and so it is natural that our discussion of sexual assault focuses on what might be happening at Villanova University rather than what’s happening on Riker’s Island or on Ojibwe reservations. But the way we talk about rape suggests that we do not much care about the facts of the case. If understanding and preventing rape were our motive, we’d know whether the victimization rate was x or 11x, and whether elite college campuses are in fact rather than in rhetoric more dangerous than crime-ridden ghettos and isolated villages in Alaska, a state in which the rate of rape is three times the national average. [Read the whole article here.]

— Comments —

M. Jose writes:

I think Ex-Army has a good take on this: Multiculturalism and Rape Culture. In particular I liked the Countenance quote:

“‘Rape culture’ is how the left blames white men for black men raping white women on college campuses.”

Paul writes:

Obama and the other liberals are pandering to their female base by focusing on date rape.  Assuming a date rape culture is more or less present at American universities, it is minor in comparison to the widespread rape going on in Rotherdam, America, and many other countries by non-whites (and whites) on whites.  But liberals like Obama cannot criticize their allies.  Elect a Democrat no matter what.  Grotesque.  It is the ability of liberals, as Steve Sailer points out many times, to hold two contradictory principles in mind at the same time: Victimization of females is intolerable, but allowing allies to victimize women is tolerable for the greater good.

There probably is some date rape going on.  As a Roman Catholic, I was dumbfounded when a close friend’s future wife told us that when she was on a casual date in high school with a boy in a car, he took IT out and asked her to do something.  No exaggeration.  My circles of male friends would never conceive of such an idea.

And leaving a poker game in college, two close friends told me the host (or maybe it was only the host’s older brother and friends) and his friends enjoyed the “brown starfish.”  I am sorry for the frankness.  It is evidence of the depravity that a few college students are capable of and is consistent with the proposition that date rape is going on.  The two close friends became highly successful, which should help others to believe I am not misinformed about depravity.

I disliked the smart-ass host before the story, but I did not attack the guy for his comments to me because my close friends liked him.  This was before I gave up fighting.

Please follow and like us: