Their rejection of immutable sex differences has contributed to the “rape culture” they now decry.

There’s really only one thing that progressives get wrong: human nature. This leads them into error on economics, where they imagine they can micromanage billions of individual decisions every day; foreign policy, in which they overestimate the appeal of “talks” and underestimate the ferocity and opportunism of aggressors; and sex, in which, well, where to begin?


California proposes to stop campus rape and sexual assault with a law redefining consent. Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation last week specifying that verbal consent must precede all sexual activity. Further, consent cannot be given if someone is incapacitated by drugs or alcohol.

Twenty years ago, Antioch College promulgated similar standards requiring verbal consent to each and every sexual act, starting with “May I kiss you” and moving on. Antioch, which closed its doors a few years later, was universally mocked, but it seems it was ahead of its time.

The Obama administration, which believes that there is no problem so intractable that it cannot be solved with a hashtag or a celebrity spot, has produced a glitzy, star-studded PSA called “It’s on Us” aimed, Newsweek explains, at “eradicating sexual assault on college campuses.” That should do it.

Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced the SOS Campus Act, which would require every institution of higher education that receives federal funding to designate an “independent advocate for campus sexual assault prevention and response,” and fund a panoply of therapies and investigations.



You don’t have to believe the one-in-four figure floated by activists to agree that women are experiencing a marked degree of sexual assault and battery in the liberated hook-up world liberalism has created. But this is progressivism chasing its tail.

For centuries, men have lied to women to lure them into bed. Parents warned their daughters about such men. In recent decades, it’s women who’ve been lying to other women. Feminists peddled the notion that women wanted exactly the same things from sex that men did. They rejected modesty and its cousin chivalry with contempt and welcomed the sexual free for all.

They were wrong about human nature — in this case immutable sex differences — but cannot admit it.

It goes without saying that rapists should be severely punished. Most men are not rapists, but more than a few are sexually aggressive and inclined to interpret almost anything as encouragement. Is there a better possible environment than the modern college campus for serving up vulnerable young women to predatory men?


The binge-drinking culture that facilitates these rapes and assaults is tamely accepted and even encouraged at many colleges. As Pepper Schwartz writes at CNN.com, the American Sociological Association reports that men have a mean of six drinks before a hook-up and women a mean of four. Why aren’t colleges reminding young women to keep their wits about them when dealing with hormone-charged young men?


Women who lie to other women conceal the facts. For example: The National Institute of Justice reports that among the risk factors for sexual assault on campus is “having numerous sexual partners,” getting “drunk or high” on a regular basis, and attending fraternity parties.

Pointing out these realities is rejected as “slut shaming” or “victim blaming” by feminists.


For all their bold talk about empowerment, feminists seem always to demand that they not be forced to deal with reality. They preach to young women that they’re just like men sexually, and when they find, to their horror, that lots of women are getting raped, they respond that women shouldn’t be cautious about who they get drunk with, men should “be taught not to rape.”

Imagine you’re an administrator at a college near a really bad neighborhood. Do you warn the students about the nature of the neighborhood and urge them to travel in groups, stay away from certain streets after dark, and keep their cellphones with them in case of danger? Or do you tell them that the neighborhood is fine, just like the suburb in which they grew up? And when students get robbed, raped, or murdered in those neighborhoods, do you insist that the message was fine; we just have to teach people not to commit crimes?

Feminists have been lying to women for decades, thereby contributing to the “rape culture” they now decry.

— Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. © 2014Creators Syndicate, Inc.