yeah, you know how it goes, when the people who say it’s a crisis act like it’s a crisis. It’s a cute throw-away line, but the bottom line ought to be that people who worry about boys being victimized by unjust sexual assault allegations ought to be telling boys, not just, “don’t rape,” but “don’t hook up with girls.”
Yes, it’s old-fashioned, but the only way for a college kid to protect himself from the risk of being expelled and putting his future in jeopardy is go back to some pretty old-fashioned sexual behavior: Don’t have sex with a girl that you just met. Don’t even go to third base with her. Even second base is somewhat iffy. Don’t have sex with a “friend with benefits.” Don’t have sex with that cute chick from your history class that turned out to be at your friend’s party, no matter how willing she seems to be. The rules don’t change if you’ve been drinking, or if she’s been drinking, or if both or neither of you have. If you walk her back to her dorm room, be a gentleman. You can probably make out with her, and then you can call her up and ask her out on a date, or two or there or more, and take her out to dinner and a movie.
Is that a double-standard? Perhaps so, in the same way as, if he gets her pregnant, it’s she and not he that gets to choose whether she has the baby, and he’s on the hook for 18 years of child support.
And, even with respect to the sexual-assault issue, and whether he’s accorded due process, yes, it’s true that it’s unjust and a violation of due-process rights to convict the male, and not the female, half of the pair for seemingly-consensual sex. But isn’t is as appropriate to give men common-sense advice on how to protect themselves, as it is to tell women not to get wasted at frat parties?
Quite a while ago, there was a piece in Slate in which the author ventured to suggest that college women who are worried about getting raped should be counseled not to drink to excess, and the author was excoriated for even suggesting that women change their behavior. Women, it seemed, had a moral right to get wasted. Are defenders of men equally afraid to suggest that men not engage in similarly risky behavior, because it’s unfair that they face that risk?
(That being said, it may be that men’s advocates are indeed giving this counsel, and it’s just that they do so in venues in which I, as a, let’s face it, middle-aged woman, don’t hear them. And I’d be pleased to learn that this is the case — but I’d be surprised.)
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