Take Back the Night marchers have traveled a long way since 1978, when thousands of women united under the slogan to force San Francisco pornography stores to close shop. Feminists are against pornography, because it treats women's bodies as sex objects and inflames social pathologies like rape — right?
Well, not anymore. This spring, the Organization of Women Leaders (OWL) played hostess to CAKE New York, which recently announced, on its 18-and-over website, its "first-ever porn party" featuring "erotic visual montage" on "30-foot screens."
Changing sides with alacrity matched only by John Kerry, self-proclaimed feminists now embrace explicit sexuality with terms like 'empowerment' and 'emancipation.' In recent memory, OWL table tents featured a female model on the runway and praised "our sexy dresses and don't-mess-with-me shoes." Morality is out, and eroticism is in. Now, "Take Back the Night" (TBTN) focuses on the one pathology to which feminists can still stake a moral opposition: rape.
Let's briefly examine their claim.
TBTN claims that 12 percent of female Princeton students are sexually assaulted. Of some 2300 female undergrads, we might then expect 280 sexual assaults over four years, or seventy per year – a truly astounding number. However, the University reported ten or fewer forcible sex offenses per year in past years, most reported not to Public Safety but to other University officials.
Do Princeton students — arguably the most assertive and goal-oriented in the country — report sex crimes to officials at a rate of only one in seven reported to advocates like TBTN? Perhaps. But it's more likely that TBTN is exaggerating, and it wouldn't be the first stain on TBTN's credibility.
This newspaper in 1991 carried a confession from a TBTN marcher who, "overcome by emotion," claimed to have been brutally raped. She said she reported the incident to the administration, only to have the dean of students ignore the incident and launch a cover-up. She then repeated her allegations in this paper, confessing to fabricating the entire incident only after the unfortunate man filed counter-charges for defamation and harassment.
Ruth Shalit, a former writer for the liberal journal The New Republic, observed: "Instead of recounting the specifics of what happened to them, the victims began to ideologize their stories. . . . What happened in the spring of 1991 [at Princeton] was inevitable. . . . Rape victims in this society have enough trouble getting taken seriously, without this kind of thing."
Though this marcher's fabrication seemed to come straight from the Wife of Bath's Tale, most reported sexual assaults on campus are of an entirely different nature. The culture of the "hookup," that term beloved for its ambiguity, has contributed immeasurably to "date rape," rape's predominant campus manifestation.
The prominent sexual assault cases among University of Colorado football players center around consensual hookups but (allegedly) non-consensual sex. In police reports of at least one case, the victim admitted consenting to all but the last of what adolescents euphemistically refer to as "bases."
Law enforcement was never meant to be able to prevent this sort of bedroom crime — as in other areas, the law relies upon the application of common sense to risky undertakings. TBTN's chants of "Safe Streets" are totally inapplicable to this sort of rape. Rather, TBTN should look at making the Street safer. To do so, it should address the feminist ethos of sexual liberation that fuels the expectations of de-civilized men in their hormonal primes.
For TBTN to address the Street means revisiting its 1978 founding and examining whether women ultimately benefit from a Street culture of crudely sexual music, erotic dancing, and casual hookups. Alone, the calculus of consent cannot answer this question. TBTN's conclusion might be heresy to those who have expropriated the feminist label: that irresponsible conduct has real consequences.
Shalit concludes that "the march has been hijacked by a group of activist feminists whose goals are radical and millennial," and that their goals include casting date rape as an instrument of the male oppressor. Realistically, these men are decent people made criminals by a potent mixture of natural desire, the culture of free sex, and the cult of female victimhood, all hypocritically fostered by the so-called feminists. OWL can't have its CAKE and, well, you get the idea.
It's time for real feminists to take back Take Back the Night.
John Andrews is an ORFE major from Oliver Springs, Tenn. He can be reached at jandrews@princeton.edu.
Read More
The CPUC must not gut its Judicial Committee
Bill HewittEnding the Judicial Committee’s jurisdiction over initial complaints would embolden abuses of power, allowing the administration to evade accountability for University rule violations without the pressure of student and faculty authority.
Ending the Judicial Committee’s jurisdiction over initial complaints would embolden abuses of power, allowing the administration to evade accountability for University rule violations without the pressure of student and faculty authority.
Princeton, let’s adopt a digital prox
Jorge ReyesTo prevent pointless replacement and lockout charges, maximize convenience, and create better access to meals and facilities, Princeton should follow the precedent set by some of its peers and adopt a digital prox system.
To prevent pointless replacement and lockout charges, maximize convenience, and create better access to meals and facilities, Princeton should follow the precedent set by some of its peers and adopt a digital prox system.
What is a Princeton degree really for?
Joel IbabaoSo what, in the end, is a Princeton degree really for? I take a more moderate view: Students should prioritize earning potential — unless they feel irresistibly called to something else.
So what, in the end, is a Princeton degree really for? I take a more moderate view: Students should prioritize earning potential — unless they feel irresistibly called to something else.