Feminists are demanding Washington Post columnist George Will be fired for a Sunday column on campus sexual assaults. Politico media reporter Hadas Gold wrote “the reception from progressives went about as well as expected when an older, white, male conservative columnist writes about college sexual assaults.”
So an old white guy can’t write about the excesses of liberalism? Free speech for everyone, except the race-and-gender-privileged? Gold repeated herself a few sentences down: “Will's own identity — older, white, male and conservative — made him especially prone to liberal criticism on the subject of sexual assault.” Her piece was loaded up with angry lefties.
The only conservative quoted was a tweet from Michelle Malkin:
Will did have at least one defender, conservative pundit Michelle Malkin, who tweeted, “The Left can't handle truth-tellers exposing hype & agenda of WH & femme-a-gogues. That's why they attack George Will.”
Meanwhile, Politico readers were treated to a conga line of outraged liberals:
“His editorial is basically, 'I Am Mad That We Are Now Talking About Sexual Assault and Sexual Entitlement. These Conversations Make Me Uncomfortable and Threaten Me. Please Make Them Stop,'” wrote Katie McDonough in Salon...
The Wire’s Connor Simpson blasted Will’s use of one example to justify his point, writing that “these situations rarely fit squarely into a fixed box definition.”...
And in typical acerbic fashion, Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan went with the headline “Ladies Love Being Rape Victims, Says Asshole.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who’s been an advocate for stronger programs to help eliminate campus sexual assault, got in on the hashtag, tweeting on Monday that Will “owes an apology to survivors, victims, and all college students for his column today. -RB #survivorprivilege.”
Here’s how Will began his column (and the outrage):
Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.
Gold utterly missed what this conservative would have raised in response: where were the feminists when the victims of sexual assault and harassment were victimized by Bill Clinton? Weren’t the liberal journalists the first to spread the insensitive theme that the Clinton “bimbos” sought privilege for themselves, and the conservative media’s thirst for bimbo stories caused the bimbos to proliferate?
Will cited an example from liberal Swarthmore College where a woman claimed her boyfriend “raped” her months after what he certainly felt was a consensual sexual encounter. (That’s the example Connor Simpson protested.) But it makes the point that these assault allegations are allegations, not a case of verdict first, evidence afterward.
It’s also ludicrous that the entire flock of progressives now calling for Will to be fired had zero outrage when Juanita Broaddrick charged President Clinton with sexual assault before the impeachment vote. The Clintonites always planted the thought that Clinton’s sexual harassments were goaded and consensual. The “progressives” of any age or color are all hypocrites in the eyes of history.
There’s a Fire George Will petition at the site Ultraviolet -- founded by MoveOn.org and People for The American Way activists -- that flagrantly miscontrues Will’s column :
The Washington Post actually just published an opinion piece mocking sexual assault survivors and saying that women want to be raped.
The author, conservative columnist George Will, goes so far as to write that colleges are making "victimhood a coveted status" by taking public steps to curb sexual assaults on campus.
He even implies that non-consensual sex is not rape, when in fact it's the very definition of rape!
George Will makes his living writing columns that many people disagree with. But his latest column has gone too far. Rape is a serious crime--accusing women of making it up and arguing schools shouldn't be addressing sexual assault puts both women and men at risk. By publishing George Will's piece, The Washington Post is amplifying some of the most insidious lies that perpetuate rape culture. It's not just wrong--it's dangerous.
Will certainly did not say “schools shouldn’t be addressing sexual assault,” and his example suggested that consent is a very fluid concept in college relationships, given “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.”
According to Politico and the progressives, millennials can not be mocked if you're old and white and male.
