To Comfort The Afflicted
And Afflict The Comfortable

To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Observercast

They Give Pulitzers For Will’s Kind Of Logic?

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BY KAREN WEBB

Progressivism is creating false rape charges on campus?

Columnist George Will thinks that addressing the problem of sexual assault on campuses is creating false rape claims. I suppose that we can assume that he also thinks that addressing sexual assault in the military, on the street, in back allies, in homes or anywhere is creating false rape claims.

“Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous [“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere], and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.”

“Broken to the government’s saddle”?

This coming from a guy who may or may not have been victimized in college by a girl sleeping, in her own bed, next to him and her not knowing that just sleeping there, in her own bed, infers a definite, “let’s have sex, Georgie … I know I said I didn’t want to earlier, but whip me, George, break me to the government saddle. I want to be a rape victim because girls who are and report it will be privileged to be dragged through the mud and I like that because we are all just wanting to be assaulted and accused of asking for it by guys, knowing what we want even when we say other wise.”

George Will has gone round the bend, over the cliff and down Niagara Falls in nothing but a blind-fold and a Speedo.

The one example he uses is the usual one: she says “no,” but lies down beside him, in her own bed, and it is her fault because he fell asleep in her bed. No mention of whether or not he may have been pretending to be asleep.

I know we are required to trust guys when we say “NO,” to think we actually mean it. I know there are guys, like George, who do not know what “no” means and assume that we have to dress a certain way or we get it anyway.

I have news for you, George – we have all heard the old line that girls need to dress a certain way to prevent rape or not drink or not walk that way or look that way because “your lips say ‘no,’ but your eyes say ‘yes.’”

No, George, when someone says “no,” you should assume they mean “no” – and what you may think they are thinking doesn’t count.

I’ll admit that allowing him to go ahead because she wanted to sleep is a bit much. I would have shoved his butt to the floor and told him to go home. But fighting it can get you killed and giving in means you wanted it so it can be lose-lose.

It’s the math, George.

“Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12% reporting rate is correct, the 20% assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12% of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9% – too high but nowhere near 20%.”

I think he may be assuming that 12% were reported which would give him the 817 total assaults. Forget the idea that if one in five girls said they had been sexually assaulted out of 28,000 the number would be 5,600 assaults. Everything depends on Mark’s and George’s definition of assault and whether or not 12% of assaults were reported at Ohio State, but maybe only 2.9% were reported.

Do I believe there could have been 5,600 times in four years that an Ohio State female student said “no,” but according to him her eyes said “yes” and that she didn’t report it?

Without a doubt, it is not only possible, but also very probable.

Remember, it could happen to the same female more than once. You do understand, when the locker room gossip says, “she gives it to everyone,” then maybe not everyone, but a lot of them will give it the old college try.

Oh, George, your pesky temperament overshadows your “pesky arithmetic.” I have no idea why saying “males and female survivors” is a problem.

“Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also non-consensual touching.”

Now, I know why George thinks there is a problem: Maybe it is because he is the son of a professor of philosophy, majoring in epistemology which is the critical study of the validity, methods and scope of knowledge itself. That would certainly have wrecked my sense of everything.

You might not think so, but George Will, the geeky looking guy, does have a grown daughter, along with a couple of sons by his first wife. He also has a 22-year-old son by his second wife.

His daughter is old enough to be the mother of his youngest son, but this exercise can still work. He is saying that if someone, male or female, were just non-consensually touching either his daughter or his 22-year-old son that would be OK.

Say the 250-pound right tackle of the Ohio State football team is non-consensually touching the genitals of his 22-year-old son or his 40-year-old daughter – it would be OK?

What if the female head cheerleader were non-consensually kissing or groping either one of them? Would it matter if any of them were gay or straight? Maybe both the tackle and the son were gay or straight? What if the tackle were straight and the daughter wasn’t?

You know how confused macho-heteros, like George, can be. She wants it or she wouldn’t have worn his favorite color, sat next to him in class, shared her umbrella on a rainy day, bought him a taco, or fell asleep on his sofa – she wants his body.

“Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape.”

My gosh, George, they gave you a Pulitzer for this sort of logic? We all know that a male, who has been drinking, needs all the protection he can get from females who should know that female drinking justifies all sorts of liberties. If she drinks she needs to know that she loses all her rights because his drinking excuses anything he does.

You know, George, if any of this crap were new it would be different, but blaming the victim isn’t new. Calling victims delusional or hypersensitive is the same as saying, “just relax and take it like you want it.”

Let me put it to you as simply as possible because of your lack of any sense of compassion: “No George, I do not want you or anyone else, male or female, forcibly penetrating me, my daughter, or anyone else, male or female, gay or straight, without permission. Nor am I OK with you just feeling anyone up, patting anyone’s butt, grabbing anyone’s boob or giving anyone a big, wet non-consensual kiss.”

Georgie, Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie, who thinks it is okie dokie to kiss the girls, even if it made them cry, because he knew they wanted it, even if they said, “no.”

It isn’t OK, not ever, even on your birthday.

Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is a frequent contributor to The Oklahoma Observer

 

Arnold Hamilton
Arnold Hamilton
Arnold Hamilton became editor of The Observer in September 2006. Previously, he served nearly two decades as the Dallas Morning News’ Oklahoma Bureau chief. He also covered government and politics for the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Times Herald, the Tulsa Tribune and the Oklahoma Journal.