George Will: Socially Stupid, Generally Clueless, Simply Misogynistic, Or Worse?

I know that it is regretable to respond to someone you know shares none of your values, but really George Will?  The op/ed piece that ran in the Washington Post this past week is really out of bounds, even for someone with your record.  To suggest that there is some kind of status in being sexually assaulted is beyond insulting.  Many women graduate from college without experiencing sexual violence, but the vast majority of those who do not are targeted by sexual predators, and there is no glory in that story.  Stop with the 'they asked for it' and stop thinking of sexual violence as sex--it is not.  Additionally, the prevalence of sex on the college campus that I teach on seems to be no more prevalent than when I went to college 35 years ago.  What has changed is not how often sexual violence occurs, but how often people tell what happened to them.  Duh.

I am baffled by the conservative opinion of women.  We do constitute half of the eligilbe voting population, and while there is plenty of evidence out there that voters do not vote in their own best interest, and that married women are more likely to vote for conservative candidates, there is a limit to the amount of abuse the gender will tolerate.  Saying not only are women to blame for being assualted but that they glory in it is one example of putting your foot over the line.  The Todd Akin line, for example, where it is impossible to ignore the fact that this man lacks respect or admiration for women.  Maybe he even crossed over the line with a woman when he was in college, I do not know.  Is it the conservative columist's equivalent of the pedophile's excuse that the children enjoy sex with them, but that society just won't tolerate it?  I do not know.  No matter where it comes from it is deeply offensive.

White men in general and old white men in particular appear quite fearful of the changing world.  Hopefully his ideas will go just as he has predicted the opposition to gay marriage would go--that they are literally dying away.  Good ridance.