The Campus War on Rape (and Free Speech)
In a new post at Minding the Campus, Cathy Young profiles the “War on Rape” and the loss of free speech that comes with it.
‘Rape Culture’ and Free Speech
Much has been said about the campus “war on rape” and the way it imperils students’ due process rights, but there is another casualty as well: the free exchange of ideas on college campuses when it comes to the subject of sexual offenses.
A particularly revealing recent example comes from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. On November 5, Katherine Krueger, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Badger Herald, ran a long piece explaining why the previous day’s edition had featured a letter to the editor from a student named David Hookstead questioning the existence of “rape culture.” Krueger wrote that she had made the decision to run the letter “after careful deliberation and debate with our managing editor and opinion editors.”
The fact that Krueger felt the need to justify the letter’s publication is remarkable enough; but the reason she gave for publishing it was even more striking. Hookstead’s letter, you see, was an object lesson in “what rape culture looks like,” since it expressed “morally repugnant, patriarchal and offensive” views that are “an embodiment of rape culture” itself.
Asking for It?
And what exactly are those abhorrent views? Krueger wrote that Hookstead “peddles the horrifically misguided beliefs that sexual assault victims were asking for it with their clothing or behavior, were drunk or are flat-out lying about being raped.” But in fact, the letter says nothing at all about victims “asking for it.” As for “drunk” and “flat-out lying,” here’s what Hookstead wrote:
Not everything that is claimed to be rape is actually rape, and false accusations only take away from the credibility of real victims.
For example, I’ve heard many women tell me they regretted having sex with somebody, and that if anybody asked them they’d just lie and say they were too drunk to remember. It’s people like them that are huge problems. Why are women so desperate to demonize men that they’ll lie about being raped?
Comments
I was falsely accused of rape when I was in college. I wanted to start off by saying that so I had full disclosure. Clearly this is an important topic to me – as it hits home. 20 years later and I still think about what I went through at my college on a weekly, if not daily basis.
I have had many debates with feminist women on this subject. I have gotten very good at breaking through their typical debating styles – shaming language, trying to put your on the defensive as a rapist/rape-apologist, their verifiably false statistics, and the myriad ways they try to derail the thread. Over the years, as I have debated self-identified feminist women I noted a serious and twisted characteristic of feminist women: they are often the first ones to fling a false accusation to hurt “an enemy”. IMO they justify this as part of a “larger good” – as anyone opposed to their agenda is evil, and lying to combat evil is morally acceptable to them.
Here is an example, one of many I have, but will share this one for the sake of brevity. Some will dismiss these as “simply anecdotal”, but I find that those that find the anecdote not compelling, or not proving anything, are often perfectly willing to use anecdotes when it suits them. My point in using these anecdotes however is very compelling: When these false accusations were flung at me the self-identified feminist, who hotly denied that false accusations even existed, used one, and later even BRAGGED on the same feminist BBS where the original debate happened that she had “taught me a lesson”.
I got into a debate on a moderate feminist website on the subject of the “wage gap”. I would not take her baiting catty comments and reply in kind (feeding into her desire to turn it into a snarling personal attack), nor would I accept her premise that since I was white and male that my argument was, in and of itself, based solely on my gender and color, invalid.
In short I kicked her ass in this debate, albeit politely. Without rehashing it, I pointed out women’s choices, life/work balance, and when she tried the race card, I pointed out that as a white woman that she was at least as responsible for any discrimination as I was, and if she truly believed what she said that she should give up her job and give it to a person (preferably a woman) of color. I swear she’d never even considered the idea that she should apply the same standard to herself as she wanted to apply to me.
At the bottom of each post she published was a link to her personal website / blog – and I went there to see the thoughts of the person I was debating. She was a hardcore man hater. She honestly felt that equality was not enough, but that men should have to pay reparations, that outright wealth confiscation and redistribution based on gender (and race) was the STARTING point for what men owed women, and that men should have limited rights for a generation (or three) to balance the playing field. Despite all of this I wanted to extend an olive branch. I wrote her a polite letter thanking her for the debate, complimenting her intelligence, and saying that, while we disagreed on this particular subject, that I hoped on future debates we could find common ground.
The reply I got was snippy, mean spirited, condescending, and rude. I knew it was bait, and while I was less cordial in my second E-mail, I let her know that I was open to a discussion on any issue she chose to engage me in. Her second E-mail was more snotty, full of factoids, and, true-to-catty-feminist-form, then told me to not write her back. She wanted to say crap to me, make assertions, do a turn and a hair-flip, make a dramatic exit, and end the discussion on her terms. I sent one last E-mail, in which the worst I called her was “cupcake” and told her that while I would not contact her further, that she was not in control of me, seemed to have some serious control issues, and that she was provably a sexist.
She then sent my E-mails #2 and #3, and mailed them to my bosses / the authorities and made up a story about how I had stalked her on the internet, found her blog (somehow), had hounded her relentlessly, and how she was now in fear for her life. Then about a day or so later – she BRAGGED about how she’d figured out how to track ME, contact my bosses, and put together a “in fear of my life” story to “teach me a lesson”. Her feminist sisters cheered her on. They thought it was awesome. They felt she was completely justified in using a false accusation to take down an “enemy of feminism”.
There were NO condemnations from her fellow feminists.
My POINT is that I have many stories like this, both from my own life, and from others I have met. While feminists will say this is “anecdotal” and proves nothing, I disagree: When those women did this they did not even bother keeping up the appearance of their lie in front of their feminist sisters. They knew their audience and knew that such a tactic would not be condemned. And, they were right.