Become the master of your own vagina

Wednesday, May 13, 1998

Become the master of your own vagina

FEMINISM: Responsible actions must take place of misguided
yapping

Last week, I had to drop off some flyers from work at the
Women’s Resource Center (WRC) in the basement of Dodd. As I was
waiting to be seen I saw this massive poster informing me that one
of every four college women will become a victim of rape during her
college career. I thought to myself, this can’t be right! With a
couple more minutes to kill, I examined the walls more carefully,
and then it dawned on me: I’d entered the MacDworkin Den!

I was fuming with anger! Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon,
America’s most influential (however terribly misguided!) feminists,
are mostly to blame for what has become, objectively speaking, rape
hysteria. Read on.

The infamous WRC poster owes its life to the best-known report
on the subject of campus rape, the Ms. Magazine "Project on Campus
Sexual Assault," published in 1985. It included responses from over
6,000 men and women from around the country, who answered a
questionnaire. Among the striking findings: that more than one in
four college-aged women had been the victim of rape or attempted
rape. The study presents a grim picture – much grimmer than need
be. The study’s central finding – that one in four students is a
victim of rape or attempted rape – is problematic. Seventy-three
percent of the respondents who were classified (by the researchers)
as having been raped – based on answers to the questionnaire –
didn’t classify themselves as victims of rape.

The ambiguity of the study could further explain another of its
more curious findings – that 42 percent of the "victims" said they
had sex with their attacker again.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the FBI statistics,
which refute feminists’ wildly inflated claims that one in every
four college women is a victim of rape or attempted rape. The real
number, according to the FBI, is no more than 5.1 out of 1,000
women. Sure, many rape cases go unreported because of the stigma
attached to this awful crime, but even if the FBI statistic is
underestimating the real numbers by, let’s say, 400 percent, the
rape incidence is still at a relatively low one-in-fifty – a far
cry from one-in-four.

So why am I so enraged? Rape is a horrendous, cowardly crime,
and if a real rape occurs, I will help lynch the guy from the
nearest tree. But in 1993, America got its anxiously awaited
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). MacKinnon drafted the final
language of VAWA, our new federal sexual-harassment law, the one
that defines sexual harassment as pin-ups, jokes, stares – anything
that creates "a hostile and offensive environment." VAWA, – like
the name of an avenging female demigod – has provided the
foundation for legally sanctioning traditional, romantic courtship
rites of decades past. The rites have now been replaced by wary
maneuverings more suited to opponents in a chess match.

In the dorms and fraternity houses, maybe even in remote corners
of the stacks in Powell Library, the accusation of rape could be
one touch away. This is ridiculous! VAWA claims to protect women
from unwanted sexual advances by men, but it fails miserably for
two main reasons. First, by wanting to regulate sexual courtship,
it tacitly shows that its drafters have completely divorced
themselves from some basic knowledge of human sexuality. Second, it
says de facto that women are inadequate, inferior and powerless
beings who need the letter of the law to become the masters of
their own vaginas.

The misguided feminist yapping perpetuated by Dworkin and
MacKinnon is creating the atmosphere in which we have just one
stupid, shrewish, puritanical, sermonizing, hysterical voice in the
rape discourse. Another feminist, Naomi Wolf (whom my hero, Camile
Paglia, calls "Little Miss Pravda") goes a bit further and labels
beauty as "a heterosexist conspiracy by men in a room to keep
feminism back."

Some of these women are tenured professors at major
universities! Once, on CNN, I heard of a teaching assistant who was
asked by the women sharing his office space to remove a discreet,
framed portrait of his own wife clad in a bikini because the women
at the office found it "offensive" and were "violated" by it. His
own wife! Ridiculous!

What MacDworkinism is doing is keeping the archetypal, prudish
Victorian lady with fat fingers, the one who faints at the mere
mention of a sexual innuendo, alive and well – over 100 years after
she croaked.

Under the auspices of protecting women, MacDworkinism robs young
women of the power that they, as women, have. Yet at the same time
it fosters a mentality in which white, middle-class women are
coming out of pampered homes, expecting to do whatever they want,
without assuming responsibility for their actions.

Any woman going home with a drunken frat boy "who just wants to
talk to her" at 3 a.m. is plain stupid. Sure, no means no. But
young women must understand that there is a sexual content to their
behavior, that there may be a subliminal sexuality, a
provocativeness in their behavior.

"Don’t say ‘provocative!’ Because then you’re blaming the
victim!" Well, women will never be taken seriously until they
accept full responsibility for their sexuality. You don’t get to
call it rape when you did something you didn’t really want to do,
but didn’t protest it.

Then there are the psychologists, who help the "victims" create
identities around these situations. It becomes, "Hi, I’m a
survivor." Paglia, the woman whom The Advocate featured on their
front page and called "The 50-foot Lesbian," wrote a great deal
about the rape issue. She, too, thinks that it’s all a big mess. To
paraphrase one of her lectures, what we have today is sanctimonious
and sermonizing talk about sex that is coming out of the rape
counselors, and people do not realize – with all their good
intentions – how oppressive it is to sex, what a disaster it is to
the mind, what a disaster it is to the spirit, to allow the rape
counselors to take over the cultural stage.

Now, the work that they do is good, and it’s wonderful that
they’re there. But we cannot have this scenario being projected of
male rapaciousness and brutality and female victimhood. We must
make women realize that they are responsible, that sexuality is
something which belongs to them. They have an enormous power in
their sexuality. It’s up to them to use it judiciously and to be
wise about where they go and what they do.

So what do I propose we change? Well, here at our own UCLA,
there is a lot of talk about gender and very little talk about sex.
Let’s stop sheltering young women and treating them like victims
before they become one. There is a pervasive puritanism in the way
sex is discussed and "managed" in the current ideology of women’s
studies. That must stop.

Let’s work together to address the problems of rape, anorexia
and other problems facing women, but let’s see if we can do it
without lying and without attempting to frighten every woman. To
quote one writer, ‘Truth is no enemy to compassion, and falsehood
is no friend."