No, I did not misunderstand MacDonald’s argument. But it is she who is muddled. She wants to criticise women’s “sluttish” behaviour, by claiming it leads to bad consequences. But it doesn’t, or at least not to consequences felt by the women themselves to be bad.
The most she can claim is that the “rape crisis people” are making too much of it. Women should never get drunk or act in a sluttish way, not because they will be raped, but merely because “rape crisis centres” will make something of it that isn’t there.
She claims that if women behaved better there would be fewer “pseudo-rapes”, as defined by “rape industrialists”. But there wouldn’t, because women are not reporting those experiences as rape. So women’s behaviour will make no difference, either to stranger rape or date rape. The only thing it will do is reduce the amount of casual sex.
Maybe reducing casual sex on campus is a Good Thing. Students should spend more time in the library and less time in the bar and in bed with each other. But, if you think that, then why address yourself to only half the students, namely the female half?
Whichever way you look at it, MacDonald has a double standard, and one endorsed by all but one of the posters here.
Another glaring issue is MacDonald’s assumption, again shared by nearly everyone here, that there is simply no such thing as date rape. If women drink and act sluttish then it simply isn’t rape. Yes, it’s hard to prove, but to claim that it never happens is absurd. I thought such attitudes went out with the ark. I was wrong.
you seem confused about the author’s intention when she suggests sexual restraint as a way to reduce the amount of drunken sex.
No, no confusion at all. At the risk of repeating myself, yes sexual restraint would reduce the amount of drunken sex. But why only on the part of women, not at all on the part of men?
