November 29, 2014
The Alleged “Rape Culture”
Scott Lazarowitz
Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy participated in a debate (video here) at Brown University with feminist Jessica Valenti. McElroy of course, being the more sensible of the two, asserts that there really isn’t a “rape culture.” She had this article in Reason regarding this debate and the statistics which just don’t back up the alleged existence of the so-called “rape culture.” I think that mainly they are talking about such a culture being on college campuses. But given the attitude against diverse points of view on college campuses these days, we can guess how this sort of debate will go, especially when some activists organized a response event to occur at the same time as this debate in a different room at the university. In fact, after McElroy gave her talk for about 23 minutes, her debate opponent Valenti came up to the podium and stated, “I think like a lot of people I’m exhausted of having to talk about rape culture in a framework that assumes its existence is up for debate.” Well, from what I’ve heard and read in recent years, there is more of a “hate men” culture than a “rape culture.”
In my view, if the activists are so insecure in their beliefs regarding the existence of “rape culture,” then why do they seem so intolerant of its being challenged? Why do they have to schedule another discussion in a different room at the same time as this debate, just because such a debate might “trigger” hurtful emotions? And another issue is the problem that some people have with the English language. To some people, “rape” includes several other behaviors, or even words spoken by men, that don’t even involve actual physical acts of force and violence against a woman.
Another problem now is that the younger people are brainwashed to be hypersensitive about everything. Certain forms of speech cause them to perceive and interpret such speech as “acts of aggression,” or as “threats.” Many people in Amerika are easily threatened now by opposing points of view in many different topics of discussion, as Brendan O’Neill pointed out here. And it isn’t just on college campuses, it’s everywhere. (Such as talk radio. If a caller challenges the neocon or American Exceptionalism view, that call will not last very long. Unlike in the old days with David Brudnoy and Gene Burns. But I digress.)
But sadly, college campuses really are places of intellectual intolerance and censorship, and thank God I went to college in the early 1980s and not the 2000s or 2010s. There was none of this **** back then. Back then, there was actual freedom of speech. But, I think that this attitude and culture of intolerance on campuses is merely a reflection of society as a whole, and how it has declined in maturity and intellect.
November 30, 2014
re: The Alleged “Rape Culture”
Thomas DiLorenzo
Several years ago on one fine spring morning I noticed that a lot of the female students at my university were wearing t-shirts with “ONE IN FOUR” on the front in giant letters. When I asked one of them what that meant, she told me that one in four female college students is sexually assaulted. This seemed really bizarre, since I equated “sexual assault” with rape. A fourth of my female students have been raped?! Then I looked into where the one-in-four statistic came from and, lo and behold, it came from some crazed left-wing, man-hating feminists who also claim that consensual marital sex is a form of “rape.” They simply made the one-in-four statistic up. For example, they had a very long list of actions that they claimed constituted “sexual assault.” This included a female student sleeping with a male student after the male student bought her one drink during the evening. Even if it was totally consensual, they said, it was still rape. The definition did not apply, however, if it was the female student who paid for the drinks.
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