That powerful and obnoxious odor of bullshit you may have noticed in the air? That’s just Camille Paglia, evidently aiming for a bit of a comeback.
One of the first-generation of antifeminist feminists who came to public attention in the 1990s, Paglia is less a scholar than an intellectual entertainer, astonishingly adept at generating controversy by packaging rather conventionally reactionary ideas as bold contrarianism. And then getting everyone to talk about her rather than the issues at hand.
If Paglia was feeling a little starved for attention, the short piece she published on Time.com yesterday (donotlink version here) with the portentous title “The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil” should fix that problem in a hurry. An appalling bit of rape apologia gussied up as a bold meditation on human evil, it’s already generating applause from Men’s Rights and Red Pill Redditors, The Daily Caller, and fellow antifeminist feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.
If you removed a brief swipe at conservatism and added some incoherent references to hypergamy and “whores,” it’s a piece that would fit right in on any “dark enlightenment” blog.
Paglia’s thesis is that female college students and campus administrators alike are, by focusing on the issue of rape, obsessing over the wrong kind of human evil.
Wildly overblown claims about an epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses are obscuring the true danger to young women, too often distracted by cellphones or iPods in public places: the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder.
You might think it makes sense to focus more on rape than on “the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder” because, well, rape is appallingly common on college campuses while kidnapping and murder, horrific as they are, are rare.
Paglia answers that obvious objection by simply redefining date rape as not-rape, essentially little more than a bit of sexual awkwardness stemming from inexperience and horniness.
Despite hysterical propaganda about our “rape culture,” the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides.
Oh those blurred lines!
Having thus waved away the problem of date rape – and Time magazine’s own reporting on the subject – Paglia takes a swipe at those actually trying to do something about it:
Colleges should stick to academics and stop their infantilizing supervision of students’ dating lives, an authoritarian intrusion that borders on violation of civil liberties.
As Paglia sees it, college students, professors and administrators have simply forgotten “what evil lurks in the hearts of men,” to borrow the famous catchphrase from a radio drama popular in Paglia’s youth, instead blaming the ills of the world on “racism, sexism, and imperialism — toxins embedded in oppressive outside structures that must be smashed and remade.”
Paglia, despite her earlier snide remarks about “hookup melodramas,” is no stranger to melodrama herself, and she ends the piece with what is essentially a pretentious, extremely long-winded restatement of the old cliché “boys will be boys.”
The gender ideology dominating academe denies that sex differences are rooted in biology and sees them instead as malleable fictions that can be revised at will. The assumption is that complaints and protests, enforced by sympathetic campus bureaucrats and government regulators, can and will fundamentally alter all men.
But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. …
The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey. …
Misled by the naive optimism and “You go, girl!” boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.
So apparently, in Paglia’s mind, the only thing that can be done about this “evil that lurks in the hearts of men” is for young women to stop dressing like sluts.
In the end, it’s hard not to conclude that it is Paglia, not campus anti-rape activists, who misunderstands the nature of evil. By hand-waving away date rape and focusing attention instead on the comparatively very rare cases of strangers who stalk and murder young women – the “animal eyes glowing … in the dark,” it is Paglia who fails to see the potential for evil that lurks in the eyes of young men (and women) who look like everyone else.
One of the real accomplishments of the feminist movement of the past twenty years is that it has enabled us to see and take seriously the predatory sexual behavior – from sexual harassment to rape – that is inflicted on women (and men, and non-binary folks) by people they know and trust.
By pretending that date rape is little more than a kind of “ oafish hookup melodrama,” it’s Paglia who is not only blinding herself to human evil – but also helping to perpetuate it.
*man-haters
That was probably a slip assuming the writer as the subject…
I think the “date rape isn’t rape” stuff stems from a black-and-white view of the world, so people who can’t process shades of grey need to push everything to the “attacked by evil depraved rapist with a knife!!!” end of the spectrum or else dismiss it as “regretting the sex/mixed messages”. For those of us in the real world, it’s pretty easy to see the spectrum of predation goes a lot further than that.
NicknameNick, I must admit, I also heard it quoted from that American Dad! episode as well. I think that’s the first time I had ever heard of Paglia. The more I delved into feminism the more I learned about her and Hoff-Sommers. I would think they’d be the “feminists” MRAs would want women to follow. In that they’re basically in line with their bullshit only hey! These people have ovaries! You ladies LOVE ovaries!
I sometimes think giving date rape a different name would make it easier to prosecute. There would be less “Well, are we sure that’s rape” going on.
@marinerachel:
There seems to be a move towards referring to it as “acquaintance rape” instead, to try to avoid the not-really-rape associations of “date rape”. While I like the fact it emphasises that a lot of women are assaulted by people they know, it’s not an ideal term. But I don’t really know what would.
She dismisses “The gender ideology dominating academe” – i.e. peer-reviewed sociological theory from people who are more qualified to speak of sex and gender roles than Camille Paglia.
She’s just another anti-intellectual black-is-white reality-denier.
“But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. …”
Clearly NOT a criminologist, or indeed a psychological pathologist. Of course there is a language for these phenomena. That’s what psychologists DO – express these things using language!
“The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures…” Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Armchair psychoanalysis as rape apologia, how insightful. -_- ‘Dorks will rape, whatchagonnadooo? Maybe he wouldn’t have killed all those women if one of them had had sex with him…’
Damnit, why do these wimmin get a platform in major publications when there are so many excellent, erudite feminists whose voices would be much more valuable to the conversation?
@AltoFronto:
Because they protect the status quo by being the member of the minority/oppressed group that reassures those in power that everything’s fine.
I’m having kind of a problem with the conversation here about what to tell young girls so that they can avoid rape. Let me see if I can articulate it. This is kind of TL;DR and it might be kind of triggering. It is certainly triggering to me, and I’m the one who wrote it.
My problem starts with this: It is not actually inherently dangerous to become intoxicated at a party where other people are also present.
We had a party at my house a couple of months ago. People were falling-down, blacking-out drunk. There was a funny incident in which a couple of people were trying to read Wikipedia upside-down and through a mirror. Hangovers were had. It was a mix of women and men and the women were pretty damned drunk (so were the men). No sexual assaults occurred. Because this is not actually like getting into a car with a drunk driver – driving drunk is an inherently dangerous activity, but there is no inherent danger in being intoxicated around other human beings.
Here’s the problem I have with the formulation that women are in unavoidable danger if they drink at a party: if you know that Activity A is inherently dangerous, that means that there is an unavoidable risk (not a certainty, but a knowable, quantifiable risk) that A will lead to Bad Consequence B. If you then choose to do A anyway, knowing the risk, and B happens to you, you may not deserve B, but you were certainly at fault because you knew B was likely if you did A and you did A anyway. If you hadn’t done A, then B would not have happened to you. The fault belongs to you. Modus ponens. If you didn’t want q, you shouldn’t have made p true.
I think we can all agree that this would be a perfectly okay formulation if someone jumped off the roof and broke their leg. “You didn’t deserve a broken leg, but what the hell were you expecting? You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck. Nobody is to blame here except you.” This is the interrogation that often follows a rape. It comes from onlookers and it comes from law enforcement and it comes from the victim. It would be a legit formulation if getting drunk were actually inherently dangerous in a similar way to how getting into a car with a drunk driver is inherently dangerous.
It’s not an okay formulation when it comes to drinking -> rape, and we need to remember why a difference exists: because rapists are not like gravity, and they are not like drunk drivers.
Telling girls (and only girls) that it’s stupid and dangerous if they choose to do a thing, a thing that plenty of young people do safely and which is not inherently dangerous, erases the rapist, and it erases the agency of the rapist.
There is no danger of rape in a bottle of bourbon. The bottle is not drawn by impersonal, unthinking, universal magnetism toward a woman’s vagina the moment it is emptied. And there is no danger of rape in drunk people as a rule. People who are drunk don’t just kind of swerve at the wrong moment because their coordination is impaired, and accidentally crash into someone else’s genitals.
The danger in rape comes from the rapist who chooses to rape. Getting drunk does not cause rape. The “if drunk, then rape; drunk; therefore rape” line of reasoning is not valid because the premise is untrue. So I think it would be best if we did not contribute to the lie that the premise is true. Avoiding rape means avoiding rapists, not avoiding bourbon.
Thus Spake Zaramarinerachel:
I humbly disagree. We already have enough people inventing imaginary distinctions between “rape” and “rape-rape.” Separate terminology would only serve to reinforce the mistaken notion that non-violent rape isn’t rape. If you called it foo, the new refrain would be “So he fooed her. So what? It’s not like he raped her!”
Policy of Madness — Yes. I articulated this a while back when Emily Yoffe wrote her awful piece advising college girls not to drink and get raped (she also claimed she was being feminist to give this advice) — but “watch yourself when you drink” advice is completely useless, and they would know it was completely useless if they thought about it for five seconds from the standpoint of the young women they’re supposedly giving this advice to.
From a risk assessment standpoint, it might be true that most sexual assaults involve alcohol, but it is NOT true that most situations with alcohol result in sexual assault, and it is NOT true that ALL sexual assaults involve alcohol. So, from the perspective of the young college woman, she has two choices 1. Never have any fun, and maybe get raped, and 2. Party as you like, and maybe get raped. At that point, who wouldn’t choose #2?
As a young college woman myself, I “knew” that passing out at the “wrong” party could lead to trouble, but I passed out at all sorts of parties anyway. I didn’t think they were the wrong parties, because I was there with my friends, and I trusted my friends.
If my friends had turned out not to be trustworthy, though — that would have been the problem. Me being drunk might have presented the opportunity, but it would have been far from the only opportunity.
something I wish someone had told me explicitly when I was a girl is: you have a right to have your (sexual) boundaries respected in an intimate relationship. and if your partner does not respect them, there is something very wrong with that relationship and you need to talk to someone about it.
I mean, of course I knew that on an intellectual level. but when I had my first boyfriend and he kept pushing my boundaries again and again I really had no idea what to do or to say to make him stop or if I really could say something. I was well aware of what “boys” and “young men” today watch online regularly. all of us girls were. so when my boyfriend kept trying to persuade me to do things I refused to do again and again because they were “normal” et cetera et cetera, I was desperate because I was convinced there was something wrong with me and I was being subborn and selfish. and this went on for several years and we did things I did not want to do and I still feel violated when I think back.
I don’t think he is aware that he was being a total asshole – although I don’t know how that is even possible, because I was sitting right next to him, crying, so many times because of those things. when I finally broke up with him he was completely surprised since he thinks he has been the perfect boyfriend.
so, I guess what I am trying to say is this: I really wish someone had told me about the importance of drawing your own sexual boundaries, and that you don’t have to let someone violate them, no matter how much you love them or how much they think it is “normal”. should I ever have a daughter or a son this will be something we will definitely talk about.
Agreed. That’s the logic behind the way sexual assault laws work in Illinois – there is no crime called “rape”, just different variations on “criminal sexual abuse”
AltoFronto: “But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. …”
Clearly NOT a criminologist, or indeed a psychological pathologist
No. She’s a “Culture Warrior” The Subtext there is, “Liberals want you to think everything is a “lifestyle choice” married to an anti-intellectualism which says expertise and nuance are bad.
Damnit, why do these wimmin get a platform in major publications when there are so many excellent, erudite feminists whose voices would be much more valuable to the conversation?
Because pandering to drama sells magazines, which sells ad-space.
That’ll solve the problem of men committing sexual violence on women on college campuses. Women just need to be more afraid of men raping and murdering them. Tone it down ladies! Stop acting like you shouldn’t walk around in constant fear of men. All this independence and freedom is putting you in danger. Just go hide in your homes, find a male protector and make him sandwiches. You didn’t need that degree anyway. Women get sexually harassed in the workplace and you know how we can solve that.
/s
I will bet real, actual money that Paglia thinks that the feminists talking about rape culture all have wandering uteri because they’re not breeding.
*sigh* “Mixed” signals mean, “No.” “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know” aren’t good answers if you’re wondering if someone doesn’t want sex. If your partner is acting uncertain or actively trying to leave, that means, “No.” And being unable or reluctant to say, “No,” is not imprudence. It’s the product of years of female socialization to be polite (or, in the case of a young man in a similar situation) years of male socialization that tells you that you should always want sex and that you’re not a real man if you’re not in the mood or aren’t attracted to the young woman who happens to be coming onto you way too aggressively. It’s also quite possibly a tactic meant to help you get away from the situation without causing the other person to react violently. And yeah, I’ve known guys who understood that and acknowledged that (because hey, people actually do understand soft no’s) as well as one who didn’t.
Oh great. We have a “rape is a biological adaptation” argument, don’t we?
http://thinkpyxl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Throws-out-computer.gif
Oh, also, this article contains a good explanation of why “rape as a reproductive strategy that worked in the Stone Age” isn’t a good argument, biologically and anthropologically speaking.
http://www.newsweek.com/can-we-blame-our-bad-behavior-stone-age-genes-80349
Relevant portion (though the whole article is a good overview of critiques of evolutionary psychology from real scientists):
It already has rape in the name. It doesn’t get any clearer, and the people who don’t get it are people who are invested in not getting it.
^This. Forced sex, whether the force was physical, verbal (i.e. threats), or drug/alcohol-assisted, is rape. Rapes committed by someone whom you were dating or whom you knew can be just as physically violent as, if not more so than, rapes committed by strangers. The “date” part merely serves to shed light on the truth that rapists often know their victims. It doesn’t mean that one type of rape is less bad or worse than another type of rape.
@ alaisvex
Ooooohhhh, that article was very interesting! Thank you for positing it 🙂
I do feel like changing the phrase “date rape” to “acquaintance rape” would make it clearer that this doesn’t always happen when someone is on an actual date.
But it is kind of a weird distinction, based on the assumption we can’t get people to understand that people can be raped by people they know, which bothers me. Is it playing into the common assumption that raping someone you know is a different (lesser?) crime? I don’t mean among us; clearly no one here seems to think it’s a lesser crime. But in general?
Thank you for all of the thoughtful replies 😀
I’ve read and am digesting them all and plan to respond when I can sit down with my laptop.
Quickly re: alcohol, drugs, & parties: I agree that it’s not helpful to label them as x then y – that quickly leads down the path of “Well, what did you expect?” – but that it’s probably useful to address both as possible means / venues for intentional boundary pushing and/or assault.
More later.
There were a lot of wonderfully salient points (and links!) in the posts.
I tend to just call acquaintance/date rape plain old rape. No subcategory needed. Rape is rape. No matter who the rapist is.
@weirwoodtreehugger, that’s what I’m thinking too.
In honor of the late great Molly Ivins, I give a selection of the documentary Dildo Diaries, in which she took part:
RE: Dennis Jernberg
second-wave feminism had long since curdled into a rigid Stalinism
Ah yes, however could we forget the feminist gulags and five year plans? I remember when my dear friend Molly Ann was exiled to Siberia (AKA: Maine) for daring to say the regime had gone too far! They say she went mad, fled into the backwoods, never to be seen again. Last I heard, she was eating squirrels. RAW squirrels.
RE: teaching daughters about rape
I don’t have much to say about this, because we did all the “right” things, and still ended up raped and molested many times. (Which perversely, made us behave even “better” in the efforts of desperately trying to avoid MORE rape.) And on the surface, our parents did all the “right” things: they gave us the stranger danger talk, ‘watch your drinks’ thing, told us that if we were drunk to call them and not drive, etc. etc.
They never once told us it might be someone we know and trust who’d hurt us.
They didn’t tell us about the child-molesters in the family, who we saw all the time. They acted as his rape babysitters. They sent us on a road trip with him, which is the only reason they told us his predilections. They gave us permission to “date” our rapist, and our mother even later admitted she suspected what he was doing to us, but didn’t do anything for fear of “making it worse.”
All resulting in, we learned very quickly that if we got raped or creeped on, DON’T TELL THE PARENTS. At best, they’d do nothing. At worst, they’d punish US and actively cover it up so we wouldn’t make them look bad. Their actions and their words were completely different. They’d say all the right things and do all the wrong ones.
…sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if I’d actually had fun at parties, instead of constantly being in hypervigilance about more attacks.
That dildo video reminded my of one of Molly’s jokes — that the Lege (as she called it) had officially banned any physical contact whatever between its members because it voted to make it a crime for a prick to touch an asshole.