According to an article in the National Journal, the U.S. government is starting a new program, called It’s On Us, to “try to shift the burden of combating rape culture from women to men.” It is predicated on male college students taking collective responsibility for women on campus.
The article says that, in addition to the new program, the Justice Department will award $6 million in grants to 18 colleges “to develop comprehensive campus sexual-assault prevention and response programs.”
This program, besides being a potential breeding ground for rapists, is based on a false dichotomy that rape is caused by either women or men. Rape, a horrible crime which is better understood as an act of force based on lust for power more than lust for sex, is complicated by the fact that it is hard to prove. Also, false accusations, as in the Duke la crosse, Brian Banks, Gary Dotson and Tawana Brawley cases and scads of other cases, have the potential to destroy innocent people’s lives.
Women’s advocates make the point that telling women Don’t get raped ought not to preclude telling men Don’t rape, however, they should remember that women rape men, too, and that rape is, in fact, not a culture, it is foremost an act which is a crime. To the extent rape is condoned or sanctioned in popular culture, and I think it is, especially in hip hop and rap subcultures (leaving aside rape in African, Asian, Arab and predominantly Islamic countries), people concerned about rape should scrutinize themselves. They should consider whether feminism and multiculturalism—both egalitarian-based ideas that sexes and cultures are equal in every sense, which is not true—contribute to glorification of rape.
I am not a sexual abuse expert but it strikes me as a cultural observer that using the new term “rapey” (“it’s a bit ‘rapey'”), for example, minimizes rape. Politicizing rape on the grounds that it violates once-controversial government dictates, such as President Nixon‘s Title IX (9), clouds the topic and confuses otherwise rational people, leading them to a false sense of security that the state will regulate rape out of existence. Those who accept the ‘rape culture’ fallacy, a corollary of anti-rape statism, have an incentive to tune out rape’s warning signs, signals and predispositions.
Regarding male rapists, one should also ask: who raises the boys that become the men who rape?
So, when the topic is rape, there are blurred lines—consider Brian Banks, pictured here, the Southern Californian who served time in prison for a rape he did not commit—with real, devastating consequences for victim and falsely accused. The blurring originates with the government, which pushes an anti-male, anti-sex that amounts to a crusade against mankind and civilization.
Rape is a horrific crime that should be dealt with severe punishment within the judicial system, not propagandized by the government by turning men—or women—into campus vigilantes harassing everyone with heavy-handed, government-subsidized messages imposing unearned guilt upon the innocent.