The context of George Will's campus rape column

[Another headache for US conservatives regarding women and rape]

The silver lining in George Will's recent column decrying progressivism on college campuses is that he has accidentally trolled both the misogyny and rape culture and an ugly side of conservatism.

I have no doubt that there will be dozens if not hundreds of blog posts on George Will's  trivialization of efforts to deal with sexual assault at universities in the United States. Sadly, many of them will be in defense of the attitude expressed in the op-ed.

Despite the coverage that the column has received it is first and foremost is not about rape on college campuses. It is about painting an awful caricature of those who are socially and politically progressive.

According to the metaphorical analysis articulated by George Lakoff in his book Moral Politics, wherein Lakoff claims that US citizens subconsciously treat society as a really large family, US conservatism tends to favor a government that behaves like a tough-love disciplinarian  and strict father-figure. Spare not the rod so you don't end up with a helpless wuss who is defenseless against danger and temptation in a dangerous, sinful world. People largely deserve what they get and get what they deserve, and personal moral failures such as dependency and lack of ambition are the primary cause of social ills. Individual strength of will and character is the primary virtue.

The other side of the coin, which Lakoff associates with liberalism in United States, is the nurturing parent. Leading by example rather than demanding obedience is preferred. Tolerance and acceptance are lauded. Hard work is also promoted, but systematic inequality and discrimination means that some people do not in fact get what they deserve or deserve what they get.  In this view societal problems are linked largely with selfishness, and morality is as much of a community virtue as an individual one.

These are generalities about ideologies and not straight-jackets for individuals, but these generalities do seem to describe some fundamental differences in perspective and attitude that show up in national debates. Approaching societal issues from the strict father-figure perspective, the nurturing parent approach appears weak and soft. The liberal view is overly permissive. It does not adequately challenge the citizens to improve, instead coddling them and keeping them from the discomfort of the hard truths of life. Asking about inequality for women and minorities or the poor is whining and trying to correct such inequalities demonstrates an unearned sense of entitlement. Challenging the unearned privilege of those who benefit from their sex, gender, skin tone, religion, and so on isn't a fight for equal rights but a demand for "special rights". The liberal view is associated with a negative spin on Western cultural stereotypes of femininity, hence the term "nanny state" for anything that isn't sufficiently libertarian.

Following this strict father-figure view, all of the rules and regulations liberals want are just ways to prop up inadequate ideas, businesses, and people and to keep the latter dependent so that they in turn will keep voting for liberal candidates. Unless of course it comes to issues such as controlling women's bodies, denying equality to the LGBT community, or protecting the interests of the very wealthy, in which case government isn't interfering with personal liberty but rather acting to promote the proper view of morality. And while on the one hand this nurturing paradigm is naive and squishy when it comes to its ideas and attitudes, its governing wing is portrayed (when convenient) as a strong-armed totalitarian regime. Like the worst misogynist stereotypes of women, the liberal paradigm is either a dithering sappy ditz or a manipulative hard-assed witch.

This is the social and political context in which Will wrote his column and it is important to keep in mind to appreciate his choice of words and his examples. He talks about "the regulatory state" and how those in academia who support it are now being broken in "the government's saddle". People are so coddled by liberalism and its governing elite that it isn't just too easy to label yourself a victim  and get attention for you hurt feelings and a kiss on your imaginary boo-boo, but "they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges". If you have been traumatized in the past by violence, you should understand that your sense of "entitlement" to things like trigger-warnings on material that may cause you to re-live some aspect of your pain is just part of an effort to make everyone on campus "hypersensitive, even delusional".

Isn't that just like a clueless, soft-hearted broad--err, progressive? Hypersenstive and delusional?

This is the heart of the op-ed. It is not about whether some efforts at making college campuses safer are effective or whether other efforts are over-reaching. It isn't even about whether the campus rape epidemic is real or exaggerated. This piece is a screed against progressivism and how it is dangerously ridiculous and ridiculously dangerous to (college) men and common sense, especially in the hotbeds of liberalism known as universities. Or even more succinctly, life at universities is awful and getting worse because the faculty and administration embrace progressivism.  There is also the usual implication frequently made by conservative pundits that progressivism is once again making a mountain out of a mole hill and that liberal politicians and Washington bureaucrats are using that as an excuse for the federal government to intrude further into everything.

The trivialization of campus rape by the specific example and mismatched statistics are there to illustrate the larger point that progressivism is delusional, hypersensitive, and out of control. Will doesn't come out and say that women are lying about being raped. But what other idea are we to draw with his example of a woman who said "No" to sexual contact but who didn't fight off her former partner while screaming and fighting tooth and nail? That it wasn't really rape?  That she must not have been too certain she didn't want sex? Especially given that he prefaced that example by talking about "the supposed campus epidemic of rape" and followed it by

• putting "sexual assault" in scare quotes.
• suggesting that assault claims are being dug up rather than reflecting genuine complaints.
• insinuating that these claims are tenuous because of hormones and a hook-up culture (which fits well with the men can't control themselves when tempted/it's a woman's fault if she tempts a man kind of thinking on sexual assault).
• trying to make it look like the number of rapes isn't really so high after all, despite the numbers put out by the CDC as well as the fact that under-reporting of rape on campus is a known phenomenon.

There is much ado about the idea that George Will suggested that rape victimhood is a status coveted by women on college campus, and that this somehow explains the discrepancy produced in Will's arithmetic purportedly showing lower campus rape figures. But there is much revealed in that column, not only about Will's views and attitudes, but the views and attitudes of a segment of the population of the United States that continues to misunderstand and misrepresent sexual assault. Apparently in this view it is somehow OK to perpetuate such mischaracterizations in order to feed and maintain the negative stereotypes about progressivism, especially progressivism at universities. To diminish the legitimacy of sexual assault claims to make a stale political point.

There was an idea that briefly emerged after the national 2012 elections that Republicans and conservatives really ought not to talk about rape other than to say it is bad. Or as GOP strategist Kevin Madden put it, "If you’re about to talk about rape as anything other than a brutal and horrible crime, stop."

When is that message going to get through?