Posted on 09/01/2015 1:27:28 PM PDT by The Looking Spoon
Mona Charen wrote a fantastic piece at The Federalist about the growing culture of campus rape.
It would be, and has been, easy for liberals to thoughtlessly write it off as the continuation of a culture of "patriarchy" (here's a fun game of "get-yourself-called-sexist," ask them to actually define that term).
Their solution to this has been to turn sex into almost literally a legal agreement at every base that gets rounded, thus giving some intrepid law student somewhere the idea to trail-blaze a whole new field of legal representation. ("Please back away from my client, those genitals are already under contract with another...firm...")
When that inevitably fails then we can all move on to their sham university tribunals which are totally unconstitutional and, in some cases, give legitimacy to merit-less accusations which subsequently wrongfully ruins the lives of wrongfully-accused students.
Conservatives explain "rape culture" away as the inevitable result of liberal hypersensitivity and sense of inherent victimhood that has been indoctrinated into every "historically aggrieved" minority. The problem with that is the problem is real. It was also inevitable given the big deal about sex now is when someone isn't having it.
When TV shows put casual hookups of high school teenagers on display as the rule instead of the exception (MTV's Scream is an example off the top of my head) what do people think is going to happen with hormonal 18 year-old college KIDS with their tanks full of alcohol and their good judgment left in the 50's (where it apparently belongs)?
Thus, according to Charen, both sides are missing the point, big time. That's because as with any problem you can't arrive at a solution if you fail to recognize it's cause.
She just NAILS it. Emphasis is mine:
Some geniuses at an Old Dominion University frat house rang in the school year by draping bed sheet banners out the windows during orientation. “Rowdy and Fun, Hope Your Baby Girl Is Ready for a Good Time,” “Freshman Daughter Drop Off,” and “Go Ahead and Drop Off Mom Too.”See Charen's entire piece here. It's lengthy, but absolutely worth a read.The outrage was nearly instantaneous...The proper response to the fraternity’s vulgarity is not to condemn men, or “rape culture,” but the sexual revolution itself. The agonies college campuses are now routinely experiencing are the result of a hyper-sexualized culture that has robbed the young of romance, courtesy, privacy, and, yes, love. The feminists call it “rape culture” and blame “traditional masculinity,” but they forget, if they ever knew, that “traditional” men were never encouraged to behave like this.
In the good 'ol days of patriarchy (I don't know what that means either), before everything was politically correct, people would've written off the signs as case of "boys will be boys..."
WRONG. The signs wouldn't exist at all, because it would be a case of "boys will be better."
Sometimes it's not about being politically correct, it's about being morally correct. As with "patriarchy," "morality" is something "progressive" liberals also have no clue about how to define.
Free love has come at a cost. Charen details in her piece that, basically, men have come to view sex as an entitlement and women feel trapped in a culture of feminist-making where if they want companionship they should settle for the "hook-up" and call it "empowerment."
Liberals are apparently totally unaware that women used to actually be empowered when they were the gate-keepers of sex. They just didn't like the gate, or where it led...
Marriage, family, Judeo-Christian morality, and tradition.
In their view such institutions are nothing more than cultural prisons for women, and the whole notion is sexist in the first place. Why don't men be their own gatekeepers (Answer: They should be, but "progressives" told them they don't have to be that either).
They would prefer a culture where women should feel sexually shackle "free," not realizing that for many of them that means going being perpetually single and going joylessly from one sex partner to the next, like a kid who figures out that maybe a diet of just candy isn't such a good idea after all.
Maybe they'll "grow up" when they get out of college and realize vegetables (dating, romance, love) are good for them after all...but how confident should any of us be about that when the foundation with which they form relationships is built on sand?
Conservative reaction (of which I've been guilty to a certain extent) to all of this has been knee-jerk and misguided, but understandably so. They'd rather not give in to totally tyrannical actions liberals have been taking to address an issue that belies how progressive their "morality" actually is. Too many accusations of rape are worthless, but (data suggests) they do constitute a minority that ends up getting magnified to combat the overreaction by liberals to this problem as a sign that it either is much more diminished or non-existent.
As such everyone is missing the point.
Featured image via Daily Caller.
This article certainly misses the point.
bkmk
Enlighten me then.
Well, I tried to find the "the point" in this article, and couldn't.
So sex in college now needs to be contractual. . .a contract needs to be signed in order for consensual sex to not be “rape” when the woman is drunk, as there is no consent when drunk, allegedly. . .
We have come full circle as there is indeed a contract for sex already in our society. It is called marriage.
Bookmarked
Part of it is the definition change. In the past the term “rape” had a well understood definition. I don’t think rape as it was always known has exploded.
What has exploded is the idea that if a girl feels guilty, or drank too much, or got broken up with, she was “raped”. There are numerous cases where the woman keeps voluntarily dating her rapist for weeks or months. What an insult to actual rape victims.
All I can say is that young men today should be exceedingly careful. Even then there are still no guarantees.
I recently read an article about the hookup site Tinder, and “Tinderellas” and how young man brag they just go from hookup to hookup every night throughout their 20s and 30s, with no interest in love or relationships or marriage.
And the women agree to this, one reason being because men aren’t willing to wait anymore; they don’t need to; and will just go on to the next “Tinderella,” and so the cycle perpetuates. Also there are “Tinder food stamps,” which is when a woman agrees to a night of hooking up in exchange for a meal and a drink.
This is so sad to me. Is this what is ahead for my 10 year old daughter, and my teenage sons?
And I can hardly blame the men either for being wary of marriage, as their wife can one day cheat on them, run off with the new guy, and take custody of his children and force him to pay 40% of his salary for child support and 20% or something for alimony.
This whole thing is so sad to me. And all due to a lack of morality. It is always best and so much sinpler to always do the right thing, and refrain from sin.
Then everyone wins. We’d have love, intact families, good sex lives, and a nicer society.
“We have come full circle as there is indeed a contract for sex already in our society. It is called marriage.”
Not really, or there wouldn’t be such a thing as “marital rape”.
Years ago, when men could sue in court for “alienation of affection”, then you could call it contract for sex, but nowadays, it’s not even a contract, much less one for sex.
Colleges deliberately and intentionally set out to destroy the value system that the students learned from their parents and church. This is with full knowledge and intention. If they can get the new students to engage in any and all kinds of sex, they can be sure the students will throw away anything else they learned from their parents too. Colleges deliberately encourage students to drink alcohol to excess, knowing it will help them achieve their primary goal.
Someone needs to create the ‘consent’ app. It would make millions.
No no no has always meant yes yes yes.
Yes, but I doubt marital rape is all that common and I’d consider it part of other domestic abuse. In cases of marital rape and other domestic abuse I’d say the victim is generally wise to try to get out of that marriage contract.
I think about eight states still have alienation of affection laws—sometimes lawsuits brought by betrayed wives toward the cheating husbands’ affair partner, if they have $$—but I understand those lawsuits are hard to win.
So what are your ideas about how to change the hookup culture? I just feel so sad for present day kids. Love and intimacy is such a nice part of life; it’s too bad they seem to be avoiding it at all costs. Unintended consequences.
Fascinating article! Thanks for posting. It is long and covers a lot of ground but it is well worth reading to the end.
I encourage anyone to click through to the full article and print it out and read the whole thing.
By the way I was talking about the underlying article in the Federalist, which is linked in the article but I’ll paste the link in here to avoid confusion:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/31/what-the-left-and-right-dont-get-about-campus-rape/
The original Mona Charen piece has a point. That point is that back before the feminist revolution in the days of the evil patriarchy, men were expected to act civil toward women, protecting their persons, reputations and purity. Feminism has demonized the patriarchy and taught the female population to act as whores and now young men treat them like whores. The feministas are crying "rape culture" when they are at the same time advocating slut culture and feeding the beast.
Thanks for that!
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