Reason contributor Wendy McElroy and
liberal feminist Jessica Valenti debated campus sexual assault,
rape culture, and due process at Brown University on Tuesday
afternoon. The debate preemptively generated student protests,
alternative events, and even a statement from Brown President
Christina Paxson.
These reactions had one thing in common: disdain for McElroy’s
perspective that rape is the work of a small number of serial
predators, rather than a cultural phenomenon. Paxson lamented that
view in her campus-wide email, writing, “I disagree. Although
evidence suggests that a relatively small number of individuals
perpetrate sexual assault, extensive research shows that culture
and values do matter.”
McElroy’s contrarian perspective on rape was in fact so
traumatizing for certain members of the campus that they felt they
needed to create alternative events. Some students organized a
“BWell Safe Space.” According to
The Brown Daily Herald:
Students who may feel attacked by the viewpoints expressed at
the forum or feel the speakers will dismiss their experiences can
find a safe space and separate discussion held at the same time in
Salomon 203. This “BWell Safe Space” will have sexual assault peer
educators, women peer counselors and staff from BWell on hand to
provide support.
No student should feel the need to be protected from an opinion.
But those who sought further insulation from McElroy’s perspective
were invited to attend another alternative event, which
promised “The Research on Rape Culture.” Samantha Miller of the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
explained why this nonsense is insulting to students, as well
as the debate participants:
Given the debate organizers’ prior arrangements to provide
support to anyone who actually felt the need for it, Paxson’s
choice to counterprogram the event makes little sense in terms of
“emotional safety.” But it makes all the sense in the world if you
assume the real goal is to provide an intellectual cocoon for
students—an effort to create a ideological bubble on campus in
which students’ beliefs will be free from challenge.
It’s a miracle the debate even took place at all, considering
how allergic Brown seems to be to constructive discussion of
controversial topics, but McElroy and Valenti were able to make
their points. McElroy’s main argument, according to
The Herald:
McElroy said rape culture exists in places like parts of
Afghanistan where “women are married against their will” and
“murdered for men’s honor” but not in North America, where “rape is
a crime that’s severely punished.”What’s more, those who politicize rape and assert the existence
of rape culture imply that all men are guilty or that the accused
do not deserve due process, McElroy said.It is unacceptable that men can now be disciplined for rape
through college hearings based on a preponderance of evidence
rather than the traditional criminal justice standard of guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt. “Let’s not build justice for women on
injustice for men,” McElroy said, closing her talk.
And Valenti’s:
Valenti never tackled the question of whether a preponderance of
evidence or guilt beyond a reasonable doubt should be the standard
for conviction of men in college hearings, but she did talk about
other aspects of sexual assault as it relates to college campuses,
such as the fact that alcohol plays a role in most sexual assault
incidents.“Alcohol is not the problem,” Valenti said, chuckling at the
notion. “What we need to discuss is the way rapists use alcohol as
a weapon to attack and then discredit their victims.” Rapists
benefit from others’ insistence that a victim’s inebriation is to
blame for his or her assault, she added.Both speakers addressed how students might move forward in
eliminating rape and sexual assault on campus.“Stopping someone from telling a rape joke or saying they got
‘raped’ by a test” would be a start, Valenti said, but she also
urged students to hold university administrators responsible for
addressing rape on campus.
Since the college already saw fit to rebut McElroy, I will only
deal with Valenti. I find her view on rape not only misguided, but
positively deleterious to the cause of lessening sexual assault.
The idea that stopping someone from telling a joke is “a start” to
preventing rape is utter nonsense. People jokingly say, “you’re
killing me,” when they don’t get what they want; it doesn’t mean
they anticipate being murdered. When I say that I was beaten up in
an argument, I don’t mean that I suffered physical pain. Professing
to have been “raped by a test,” may be an off-color remark, but it
has nothing to with actual sexual assault. Pretending otherwise is
ludicrous.
Valenti’s cavalier attitude about alcohol abuse is even worse.
No one paying serious attention to the campus rape problem could
conclude that “alcohol is not the problem.” Binge drinking and
alcohol-induced incapacitation are the conditions under which
campus rape occurs. In fact, Valenti knows this, since she admits
that alcohol is the rapist’s weapon of choice. A teen culture of
responsible alcohol consumption would be the best deterrent to
sexual assault, and we should be discussing strategies for
fostering that (like
lowering the drinking age!). Telling students that dangerous
drinking is just random some side effect is not merely dishonest,
but actually dangerous.
Only in the warped world of the modern college campus—where
protecting students’ delicate feelings and upholding liberal
orthodoxy is more important than giving them the truth about rape
and alcohol abuse—could Valenti’s views escape criticism while
McElroy’s earned an official condemnation.
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