My take is different. Even assuming the least charitable reading of Will's column, I very much doubt that a prominent septuagenarian columnist (who I can't recall writing about rape before, to say nothing of "pumping out" articles on the subject, but why be rigorous in any description involving an old, white conservative?) is driving rape culture among—wait for it–18-to-22-year-olds at places like Swarthmore. Nor do I think he plays any real role in the sorry behavior of college administrators who justify systematic suppression of sexual-assault statistics and incident reports by telling themselves something about fiduciary duties. I do think some of Will's words reflect spending seven decades in a culture with many problematic attitudes about rape, where many myths still persist. The conceit that he is the problem and that the solution is shutting people like him the hell up trivializes the depth and insidiousness of the problem.

What should the response to Will be? I'd recommend engaging him in constructive debate that forcefully articulates why he is wrong—and many people, progressive feminists very much among them, did just that. Do not imagine that Valenti's approach is a reflection on all feminists. Debate is useful because, regardless of whether Will himself can be persuaded—in fact, even if, as Valenti believes, he is just trolling—lots of people who read him, like him, and see him as an earnest columnist can be persuaded. I favor fairness for everyone. But this mostly isn't about Will. (I actually wish that instead of calls to be fired, he would have faced pressure to debate Hess or Emily Bazelon on national television, which would be less immediately satisfying for his critics and better for society. Forcing him to publicly defend his beliefs against people with solid contrary evidence would cause viewers to change their own opinions to better fit reality. And under the spotlight, he'd likely raise smarter caveats in the debate himself.)

Ann Althouse describes another way some people who find Will wrongheaded have responded. She did not write this about Valenti, but as a general critique of commentators who egregiously misrepresented what Will wrote. Althouse distinguishes between making ideas toxic and making people toxic (emphasis in original):

It's not just an idea that is put off limits ... it's the person who dares to say it. You are to be regarded as toxic. It's this fear of being regarded as toxic that inhibits many people from speaking. The problem isn't merely that the debate is chilled—that people don't get to hear the arguments on different sides—but that people are also influenced to choose their side out of a psychological need to be accepted by others and not shunned. Even if, in a chilled-debate environment, you sought out information and arguments on your own and even if you saw the value in them, you might still choose your position out of a desire to be thought of as one of the good people. So the argument "George Will is toxic" works even on people who think George Will makes a persuasive argument.



I'm using the word "toxic"—the poison metaphor—because I see it a lot, and because to me—someone who has lived and worked in a liberal environment for a long time—it expresses the threat of shunning so well: You are afraid that if you associate at all with the toxic person—if you offer one good word—you will have toxin on you, and others will have to avoid you lest they become toxic. I note that the focus on the person corresponds to Saul Alinsky's Rule #12 in"Rules for Radicals": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

This impulse is hardly unique to the left. Hawks tried to make opponents of the Iraq War toxic. Sarah Palin's fans tried to make Andrew Sullivan toxic. Fox News and talk radio tried to make Chris Hayes toxic. Much of the national-security establishment has tried to make Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Glenn Greenwald toxic. Right now, some are trying to make Will toxic. I've defended all those people. To hell with the anti-intellectual shortcut of trying to make one's adversaries toxic. And look how the toxicity effort extends to Will's "defender":

Writer @conor64 is more terrifying to me than a stranger in an alley. Journalists defending rape culture on a national stage hurt us all. — Ridley (@_Ridley_) June 24, 2014

That's an egregious misrepresentation of my work as a journalist that gives all who saw it out of context the erroneous impression that some dude at The Atlantic with 20,000 Twitter followers is a defender of rape culture. Here's another way to look at it: @_Ridley_ decided that I'm a white male writing wrongheaded things about rape; for that reason, felt characterizing me in the least charitable, most stigmatizing way possible is good, because if only people like me were toxic America's rape culture would fade away. In this view, polarization leads to progress.