Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will wrote in The Washington Poston Sunday that being sexually assaulted has become "a coveted status that confers privileges" such that "victims proliferate." His remarks hit at the core of the misunderstanding and denial that condone sexual assault in its most common form. Here is the example Will cites to imply that rape is not rape when it doesn't involve force:
Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. "sexual assault." Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student "was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months":
"They’d now decided—mutually, she thought—just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. 'I basically said, "No, I don’t want to have sex with you." And then he said, "Okay, that’s fine" and stopped. ... And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.'"
Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of "sexual assault" victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol, and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.
That Swarthmore vignette is sexual assault—not "sexual assault." Most sexual assault is perpetrated by an acquaintance, not a masked man in the bushes with a knife, and its definition hinges not on physical force but absence of consent. This is a quintessential example of the shape sexual assault takes when it goes unreported and unpunished. Apart from editorial missteps like using skeptical quotes around sexual assault, and accusing an entire generation of faux sophistication while using "herewith" in a thoughtless take on a critical public-health issue, citing the Philadelphia rape story is fraught in that its resonating importance comes in the paragraphs just after Will stops quoting it. That story, by Simon van Zuylen-Wood, is really about the systematic underreporting of sexual assault and tradition of grave indifference from college administrators. It continues: Full Article Here
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