GWU Prez Should Not Apologize for Remark About Drunk Girls and Rape

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president
emeritus of George Washington University, is in trouble with his
campus’s feminist alliance, Jezebel, et al., for remarks he made
about the causal relationship between intoxication and rape. His
comments came during a panel discussion about campus sexual assault
and how to stop it on the
Diane Rehm Show. Here is what he said:

I think it turns out that there are good and bad in fraternities
and out of fraternities. What we’re focusing here on is a general
situation. I think what we’re doing is creating a false
correlation. For example, we point out that the women don’t drink
— don’t have sorority parties which have alcohol. They don’t have
to. They go to the parties at the fraternities. So it’s not as if
the women aren’t drinking. They are, in fact, without taking —
without making the victims are responsible for what happens.

One of the groups that have to be trained not to drink in excess
are women. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the
nose if they misbehave. And so part of the problem is you have men
who take advantage of women who drink too much. And there are women
who drink too much. And we need to educate our daughters and our
children on that — in that regard.

Co-panelist Cailtin Flanagan of The
Atlantic challenged Trachtenberg on that, saying women
generally can’t overpower male assailants no matter how sober they
are. Trachtenberg replied that he “didn’t anticipate being taken
quite so literally” and was “astonished that somebody would attack
me for suggesting sobriety” as a remedy to the campus rape
problem.

Jezebel attacked Trachtenberg for being “jaw-droppingly
stupid” and a “buffoon.”
He eventually gave the following response to
Mother Jones:

Jezebel has a world view that informs their prose.
They are an advocate for an important cause and they take every
opportunity to make their case. Sometimes in their enthusiasm they
may get a little overheated. It’s hard to resist an apparent
opportunity when you believe you are on the side of the
angels. 

I don’t think Trachtenberg should apologize for these comments.
It’s clear from his other statements he accepts that the
blame for sexual assault falls squarely on the
assailant. One can—and should!—hold the rapists responsible while
still giving practical advice on how to deny would-be rapists the
opportunity. And while his line about punching rapists in the nose
to frighten them off may seem like a stretch, it’s certainly the
case that some rapists strike when their victims
are immobilized from blackout drinking, and would be deterred if
their victims could resist at all.

As my colleague
Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote in response to criticisms made by
some feminists against a nail polish that detects date rape
drugs:

At the crux of most of these complaints is the axiom that we
should teach men not to rape instead of teaching women not
to be raped. And that’s an important message! Too much
cultural focus for too long has been on how a women’s own conduct
contributed or may contribute to her assault, in a way that winds
up absolving assailants of culpability.

But teaching men not to rape and helping women avoid rape aren’t
mutually exclusive options. It’s been said so many times already so
as to be a cliche, but no one accuses security cameras of
encouraging “theft culture”. And neither do most people blame theft
victims for getting robbed just because
they didn’t have security cameras.

On the whole, I don’t think Trachtenberg’s comments are
offensive. But that doesn’t mean his advice—drink less—is
particularly helpful, either. Instead, he should advocate a clear
policy change that would actually reduce binge drinking (and by
extension, opportunities for rape): lowering the drinking age.
Since drinking any amount of alcohol is illegal for most
undergraduates, they have an incentive to cram all their drinking
into short windows of time. They can’t just order a drink here and
there; they have to go to parties where alcohol is being consumed
recklessly, secretly, and illegally.

It seems likely that allowing more college students to consume
moderate amounts of alcohol—in public, during the hours of
daylight—would
decrease campus rape, just as repealing Prohibition decreased
violent gang crime.

Trachtenberg, however, is not a signatory to the Amethyst
Initiative, which calls on lawmakers to “rethink the drinking
age,” nor is any other past or current GWU president. According to
this column in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, his opinion on the issue is
decidedly mixed.

He should change his perspective and fully align himself with a
lower drinking age. He shouldn’t apologize to Jezebel, though.

Read more from Reason on efforts to combat capus sexual assault

here.

Hat tip:
Inside Higher Ed