Political Correctness and The Campus Rape Myth

Heather MacDonald of City Journal wrote a compelling piece that shoots a hole in the accepted wisdom that one quarter (25%) of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years. She writes:

If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience. Such a crime wave would require nothing less than a state of emergency—Take Back the Night rallies and 24-hour hotlines would hardly be adequate to counter this tsunami of sexual violence. Admissions policies letting in tens of thousands of vicious criminals would require a complete revision, perhaps banning boys entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergrads would need to take the most stringent safety precautions. Certainly, they would have to alter their sexual behavior radically to avoid falling prey to the rape epidemic.

The reality, she explains, is that this statistic is a myth promulgated by a campus rape industry that offers these bogus statistics and a serious dose of feminist victimology to cowed administrators in order to continue to garner funding for their projects. The studies suffer from seriously flawed methodology, and an inherent political bias against men.

I have heard this statistic going back to when I was in college and I remember thinking then that it was impossible. It would mean, likely, that one in every four men (assuming it wasn’t just a few bad apples) that I knew was a rapist. Maybe me. Maybe my best friend. Maybe the guy down the hall, or his best friend. Then, as now, I attributed the statistic, as MacDonald does, to the workings of political correctness gone insanely awry.

Political correctness increasingly dominates college campuses and curriculums in such a way that it stifles open and truthful discourse. Each substratum of cultural definition fragments the campus into ever-smaller factions that cannot be offended. Furthermore, the ambiguity of a lot of these new fields of study (porn studies, anyone?) allows for weak standards of scholarship to gain acceptance. It is a frightening state of affairs, and it seems to be getting worse.

Funnily enough, MacDonald’s article also covers the sex-positive movement on campuses and contrasts the two sharply to expose the hypocrisy and hollowness of the modern university education.

With such nonsense filling the heads of our brightest youth, is it any wonder that America is on the decline?

Why Men Won’t Commit II

It has become apparent that a number of women have read my earlier post, Why Men Won’t Commit, without fully understanding why their particular man won’t commit. Given that it is impossible to respond to each specific situation on this blog, I must write in generalities. I am providing what I believe is an honest assessment of male behavior.

Some women, however, are already past the position of the hypothetical young woman addressed in the first post. They are in a relationship; the man has, to some degree, already made a commitment, but they cannot get him to take the next step (whatever that may be).

My advice for women in this situation is: withdraw. If you are not getting what you want, pull back. Break up with him and tell him why. If you live together, move out. Make it clear that what you want cannot wait any longer. And if he won’t get on board, then you’ll set sail without him.

This will do one of two things.

1) He’ll freak out, realize what he’s got, and make the commitment you want.

Or,

2) He’ll let you go.

Number 2 sounds terrible, especially if you are in love with the man, but understand that you don’t want to have a deeper commitment with someone who doesn’t want to commit to you. If he’s willing to let you go, that means something. You should just take the hit - as hard as it may be - because, in the long run, you’ll have the opportunity to meet someone who will commit to you in the way you want.

Besides, the odds are that by making an ultimatum and following through on it, the man will comeback with an engagement ring (or whatever commitment you are seeking). We’re all creatures of habit and if you’ve made a man comfortable and given him a regular supply of sex, he’s going to miss that in short order.

By the way, it is perfectly okay to give him an ultimatum and call it that. If he resists because he “doesn’t like ultimatums,” he’s just trying to throw you off your game. If that’s his excuse for leaving you, then, trust me, you don’t want him anyway.

The last piece of advice I’ll give is that women have got to think of themselves as a golden prize, high on a pedestal. I don’t know if women ever thought of themselves this way, but I know they don’t now. Too many women suffer from incredibly poor self-esteem and men know it. They prey on it. You’ve got to convince yourself - fake it, if you have to - that most men are unworthy of you.

This is what men think when they first hit puberty. They can’t believe that women are actually interested in them. This is why teenage boys are such doofuses, why they don’t know how to act around girls, and why girls all think they are pathetic and weird.

But then, slowly, by degrees, the dynamic is inverted. As women make themselves more attainable and go to sometimes desperate lengths to do so, men realize that they’ve got power in the relationship. Soon, by the age of 25 or so, the dynamic has shifted and men hold the cards.

Don’t let this happen. You are now, as you were then, the holder of the power in the dynamic between men and women. And you should not accept any man who hasn’t earned you.

Men do fall in love. And they will fall in love with you. Make yourself seem above the fray and you’ll be the most coveted prize. It just takes discipline, self-appreciation, and a commitment to do right by yourself.

Men Will Be Boys

This piece from Kay Hymowitz in City Journal is about the extended adolescence of young men in our time. It’s heavy on pop cultural references and more than a little anecdotal, but it makes its point. Men are failing at becoming adults.

I’ve got my own theories about why this is happening, related to the visual impact and diffuse distribution of mass media along with the changed sexual mores of the last few decades. In any case, the piece is worth reading. The answer to the question, why don’t boys grow up, might just be because they don’t have to.

Why Men Won’t Commit

Aren’t any older women out there explaining men to young women? Don’t women gain any sense of wisdom about men after years of experience?

The popular Modern Love feature in today’s NY Times style section was disappointing. I just read it. It’s about a young woman who can’t get a man to commit. (It was ever thus, and thusly, disappointing.) She’s not sure why she wants this, but she just sort of does. In the article she reeled off a list of, at least, a dozen different hook-ups of one degree of seriousness or another.

Here’s my advice to that young woman and others like her:

Men and women are different. They want different things. In general, men want sex. Lots of it, with lots of different women. Particularly when they are young. Now men will often settle with a woman to get a regular supply of sex (and the companionship), and men, too, fall in love. But banking on these random, and in the case of the former, unsavory, possibilities is strategically foolish. Trust me on this: men can see you as nothing more than an object (look at pornography if you don’t believe me), and they can have sex, in fact, strongly desire sex, without a shred - and I mean nothing - of emotional intimacy.

To get sex, men will lie to you in a way that will make you curse your gullibility later. They will tell you that you are beautiful, that you remind them of their grandmother, a famous celebrity, whomever. They will let you think you’ve figured out things about them so that you’ll fall more deeply for them. And then they’ll get the hell out of there.

Now, why do they do this? Why won’t men commit?

Ultimately, it because women have the potential to get pregnant. This understanding is absolutely inherent; procreation is the fundamental purpose for our existence. Any appeal to reason, feminist logic, or modern contraceptives cannot stop the male’s unconscious, “genetic” perception of sex. The same idea informs the female understanding of sex (which is why most women want commitment).

Why do men fear making women pregnant?

Because it forecloses male options, it makes commitment necessary. Ultimately, it reduces the likelihood of additional sex with other women. And that, right there, is the rub.

(Now here’s a qualifying remark for those women who take exception to, or who are doubtful about, this biological reductionism.)

All people evaluated on all scales fall on a bell curve. Some women don’t want commitment and desire sex like a man. Some men want stability and desire commitment like a woman. But these people are on the extremes of the bell curve. Most people are in the middle. Most women want commitment and some sex, and most men want sex and some commitment. If you’re a woman, it’s up to you to find out where you are on the bell curve. What do you really want? What do you really value?

If you really value commitment, then what can you do to find a man who a) is on the extreme (or nearer the extreme) end of the male sexual bell curve, or b) will fall in love with you?

Now, here’s the hard part. The part every woman I’ve ever said this to hates. Make them WAIT.

I know women need sex too, but again, for most, it’s not the kind of sex that men need. So have that fling with the hot dude if you know that’s all it is. Go for it. Bonk his brains out! But don’t expect him to call you. Don’t expect him to commit to anything. Accept that you’re just fulfilling a physical - not an emotional - need.

Otherwise, you’ve got to make men wait. Here’s what that will do. It will improve the odds that a man is either an (a) or a (b). If he waits around for six months while you freeze him out, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll call the next day. Pretty good. It’s not guaranteed. Nothing is.

I don’t want to go on forever, so I’ll just wrap up by saying this:

If this sounds terrible to you, don’t do it. You’ll very likely end up falling mutually in love with someone and getting married (though not necessarily to the same person). The only thing that you will gain by doing what I have suggested is that you will be less likely to get hurt.

But if you feel the pain is worth it; that experience builds character and you’ll be better for it, do whatever you want. Just know that anticipation can be amazingly hot, and give you plenty to obsess about too.

In either case, that’s the advice older women should be giving to younger women.

Already in a relationship? Read: Why Men Won’t Commit Part II

Sex Differences: Men and Women Are Not the Same

What seems like common sense to most people is a matter a great debate among scientists and social scientists. Mainly because the cause(s) of the differences between men and women is hard to identify. Susan Pinker’s book suggests a strong biological trigger for patterns of male and female behavior and the resultant differences between the sexes. Louann Brizendrine’s recent book essentially posits the same thing.

This, to me, seems like a no brainer. There is an important but poorly understood relationship between nature and nurture, but nature certainly is at least a co-equal part of development. The simple fact is that, biologically-speaking, women’s brains and bodies develop differently from men’s.

And that’s…okay. It’s really okay.

Apart from that, there is a political battle being fought here. It’s not that women are different, it’s that they’re discriminated against because they are different. This no longer holds water in the face of the continued advancement of women in our society. If women are not equally represented at the top of certain fields, it is not because men (or society) wouldn’t let them get there.

No one is going to stop a female Einstein from solving the deepest problems of the universe at her desk in the patent office, or for that matter, the nursery.

Bill Clinton’s Affairs?

She faced this question once in, I think, the YouTube debate. Chelsea has had it a few times in a round about way. But what I want a debate moderator to pursue, or for Obama to bring up directly (and he won’t), is how do we know that Bill Clinton hasn’t spent the last eight year’s hound-dogging it around the globe?

You know he hasn’t kept it in his pants. So the question really is, how low did he go? That is, will the woman, or women, come out publicly?

The reason why this is an important question is not because he’s unfaithful. About that, who cares? The reason it’s important is because it will really remind people of the Clinton mess of the late 90s and they’ll reject her outright. It will become the ultimate media circus, and the people won’t want to go through that again.

Hillary assures that it’s all under control, but the fact is, no one controls Bubba’s appetites but Bubba.

The Reason Great Women Can’t Find Men

This post on Slate by Mark Gimein posits that it’s a function of basic game theory. Great women hold out, waiting for the perfect man, until it’s too late and find that there are no even suitable men left - they’re either married or dead.

I know that the ratio of men to women shrinks the older we get but I don’t believe this explanation is entirely accurate for one simple reason. It assumes that all the remaining women of a certain age are “great.” Smart, beautiful, accomplished, and well-groomed.

This is a fatal flaw. I know that women are taught to positively affirm their greatness but, ladies, just because Maureen Dowd can’t get a date too, doesn’t mean you’re Maureen Dowd.

There are plenty of unsuitable women too; lazy, fat, uneducated, and unattractive. So before you start wondering why there are no good men left, you might want to ask yourself if you’re really a “great” catch.

To put a spin on Dowd… are women necessary???