A HYPOTHESIS BECOMES HARDER TO REJECT.

There's nearly forty years of accumulating evidence that the campus rabbit culture is not good for your health.

Badger Herald editorial writers Michael Warner and Dorothy Freiberg looked at the scene on 21 April 1987, with the following:

So why should men marry and start families? It must be said that we know a fair number of college-educated young men in their late twenties, making good salaries, who seem never to have thought about marriage. They remain in a state of suspended late-adolescence, living and acting as they did as seniors in college, only now they have plenty of money for dates and toys.

"This is an enormous waste, and a shame. So many young men never grow up, never taking the responsibility of supporting a family and never knowing that God made families to draw each of us out of the selfish squalor of our personal lives and devote us to loving and helping others.

"One has to wonder how different things would have been if feminism had demanded economic freedom for women and denounced the sexual revolution in the interest of preserving womens' traditional role as the guardians of chastity. This would have gained for women the equal pay and opportunity they deserved while at the same time ensuring that women who wanted to raise families would find willing husbands-to-be.

"Such a situation would also have spread the gains from feminism. Today the only victors in the sexual revolution are those men and women who are good-looking and clever enough to enjoy multiple partners with a minimum of emotional and financial commitment. The dowdy and the not-so-clever (or not-so-unscrupulous) are used by the well-endowed, and find loneliness and frustration where, in a previous generation, they would probably have been able to start families."

That's from the early days of Cold Spring Shops, and we have seen that passage invoked a few times since.  It's not surprising that Rod Dreher would have called attention to the waste, and the shame.

It's not that things are any better today, notes Rod Dreher.  "The truth about the Bolshevik Revolution was to be found in the gulags. The truth about the Sexual Revolution is to be found among the poor in our inner cities and trailer parks."  He's basing his pessimism on a day chatting with people who work among the inner city poor, and on an essay by Mary Eberstadt.  "What the MeToo moment proves above all is that the time for magical thinking about the sexual revolution is over. Until now, many people simply accepted the realities of the post-Pill world as non-negotiable facts. It’s time to challenge that worldview as one that lacks moral and intellectual maturity."

That might be argumentation consistent with the priors of people running opinion shops such as American Conservative and Weekly Standard.

NO REASON TO PUT WOMEN ON A PEDESTAL.

Craig Newmark recommends Harvey Mansfield's recent "Feminism and Its Discontents."  One passage focuses on the emergence of the collegiate rabbit culture.

The feminine mystique was her ideal; in regard to sex, it consisted of women’s modesty and in the double standard of sexual conduct that comes with it, which treated women’s misbehavior as more serious than men’s. Instead of trying to establish a single standard by bringing men up to the higher standard of women, as with earlier feminism, today’s feminism decided to demand that women be entitled to sink to the level of men. It bought into the sexual revolution of the late sixties and required that women be rewarded with the privileges of male conquest rather than, say, continue serving as camp followers of rock bands. The result has been the turn for the worse that we see in the plaint of the Harvard student. What was there in feminine modesty that the feminists left behind?

In return for women’s holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I’m not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan.

By its fruits shall ye know it.

Without feminine modesty, however, women must imitate men, and in matters of sex, the most predatory men, as we have seen. The consequence is the hook-up culture now prevalent on college campuses, and off-campus too (even more, it is said). The purpose of hooking up is to replace the human complexity of courtship with “good sex,” a kind of animal simplicity, eliminating all the preliminaries to sex as well as the aftermath. “Good sex,” by the way, is in good part a social construction of the alliance between feminists and male predators that we see today. It narrows and distorts the human potentiality for something nobler and more satisfying than the bare minimum.

Without younger people grasping that lesson, however, we're unlikely to see a new norm emerge.

THE MORES OF THE HIPPIE COMMUNE, WITHOUT THE HIPPIES? First Things editor Joseph Bottum (via Stephen Bainbridge) has some scathing comments about Duke University, particularly the default position of much of its faculty when allegations of a lacrosse team party gone bad arose.

Sex and radical politics are supposed to fit together easily, but the Duke lacrosse case suggests that the casual hedonism of the nation’s campuses and a radicalized professoriate with real power cannot, in fact, live together. I’d just as soon lose them both. But one or the other has to change. It’s a good bet that most schools will see that protecting their students requires stripping power from the professors. A good start, but only half the lesson.

A Duke student working at First Things (via Hootsbuddy) takes a more measured tone. He agrees that some faculty members rushed to judgement.

In any reckoning of Duke’s actions during the lacrosse scandal, the actions of the Group of 88 must rank as particularly egregious. Rather than wait for the evidence, these professors took their all-purpose epistemology of racism, classism, and sexism and turned on their own students. Most of them defend themselves even now. Insofar as criticisms of Duke are directed at these faculty members, they are perfectly legitimate.

He goes on to note that not all professors still live their lives as if Bull Connor is Director of Public Safety and LBJ is sending your boy home in a box.

Thankfully, the Group of 88 does not represent the majority of professors at Duke. And as is the case in many universities, the loopy left at Duke represented by the statement was heavily concentrated in a few humanities departments. Recently, 26 members of the economics department signed a public letter in support of the lacrosse team, expressing regret for the actions of the Group of 88. Duke law professor James Coleman has publicly and frequently criticized Nifong and defended the lacrosse players. Any criticisms of Duke faculty members should be limited to the Group of 88 rather than the other 1,500 Duke professors who likely care very much about the students whom they teach daily.

And he makes a broader point about the collegiate rabbit culture.

Duke has in the past few years become something of a symbol for the libidinous, drunken social life that is supposed to characterize American universities. Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons (which takes placed at “Dupont University,” by which he obviously meant Duke) had much to do with this. A graphic Rolling Stone article followed, and the Duke lacrosse scandal of course fit nicely into the narrative. From what I’ve learned of Duke’s social scene, both from reading reports and from talking to students, it’s obvious that some of these criticisms are true. Many students abuse alcohol, much of it takes place in the context of fraternities, and the sexual libertinism that Wolfe so lasciviously chronicled in his novel does indeed have some resemblance to the truth.

And yes, the Rolling Stone survey is lurid. Long-term readers will recall that the Chicago Sun-Times did a series on the rabbit culture at Illinois, and once we get more daylight and more warmth, an enterprising reporter could probably find similar goings-on in DeKalb.

SAYING NO AND UPHOLDING STANDARDS.

Some years ago, I came across an image proposing immigration reform.

It was in the fever swamps of the so-called manosphere, the context and substance of the argument that accompanied it will be left to the reader's imagination.

FIRST, IDENTIFY THE ROOT CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM.

Inside Higher Ed reports on a conference of university administrators seeking to Do. Something. about sexual assaults on campus.

Rather than addressing campus sexual assaults directly, the first sessions of the weeklong summit largely focused on the broader context in which colleges must deal with sexual crimes – the federal regulations governing how colleges react to sexual assaults, as well as the larger culture that normalizes gender violence.

Round up the usual suspects.

“Sexual assault on college campuses is a public health problem that affects all of us,” said Jean Kilbourne, a media critic and filmmaker. “We need to pay attention to the environment. Just as it’s difficult to be healthy physically in a toxic environment, it’s the same with sexual assault in an environment that is culturally toxic.”

Kilbourne has been studying advertising and its messages for decades; she said she believes advertising has never been more problematic in its depiction of sexuality and violence. Women are constantly depicted as objects, as being in danger, or as disparate body parts, she said. Grown women are infantilized, young girls are sexualized, and men are often depicted as controlling and even violent.

When those depictions are targeted at college students to sell products like alcohol, Kilbourne said, the message can be dangerous.

“Marketers create a toxic cultural environment on college campuses that make sexual assault more likely,” she said.

Businesses, particularly businesses that aren't part of the university, and entertainers make easier targets than the pernicious notions of if-it-feels-good-do-it or transgressivity that provide the structure of gut courses and victim studies departments.

Sut Jhally, a media critic and communications professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, compared colleges’ growing awareness of the issue to “getting fish to see the water.” It’s slow, but the good news is that more people in higher education are starting to “see the water,” said Jhally.

The bad news? Colleges lack the political will to pursue any substantial change, he said.

“No one has been prepared to take up that challenge,” Jhally said. “If universities wanted to do it, they have the power to change the culture on their campus. If they can change one campus, then it will be easy to change others. But that requires political will.”

Perhaps because it isn't simply taking on beer companies that make their money selling colored water in blue cans to dumb guys, or the Greek letter organizations with influential alumni, or even the culture-studies faculty.  It might be easier to organize presidential task forces, as new Northern Illinois president Doug Baker has, and say the Right Bromides.

"We want to be proactive and on the leading edge to see what we can do to improve our policies and procedures to prevent violence against women and also to deal with anything that does occur," Baker said. "We’re just trying to get out in front of this issue and really show some ethically inspired leadership."

Right.

You must remember this.

And the enrollment bonanza that followed.  "Football-inspired enrollment in quest of beer-'n-circus may not be best for our campus."

But it sells.  Thus, cleaning up the rabbit culture becomes more difficult.

THANKS, FEMINISTS.

"A Hypothesis Becomes Harder to Reject" concludes,

Fifty to sixty years ago the second-wave feminists, seeing only the upside potential of the Pill with abortion-on-demand as the backstop plan were all about those "casual sexual encounters," with or without "an ethic of care," and the "alternative lifestyles" fetish offers quite the diversity of sexual encounters.  And cracking down on the Greek letter organizations?  Sometimes that's all the rage, sometimes it's not.

Because culture is a type of shared consciousness, it is an emergent phenomenon, and it might be simpler to bet on emergence, and let the evolutionary dead-ends, whether of the rabbit culture or the Consciousness Revolution or of privilege-shaming, collapse of their own inconsistencies.

Nothing has changed in the eighteen months since that post, or in my evaluation of those fifty to sixty years of allegedly progressive social change.  The inconsistencies go on and on and on.  Combine an alternative lifestyle version of a casual sexual encounter in a Cornell fraternity house, and when the election cycle demands a new outrage to rile up the women of the fevered brow, the rage resumes.

You can be certain that nobody involved in the Cornell U fraternity gang-bang circus is going to come out looking good, not the frat boys, not the girl, not the county DA, not New York AG Letitia James, and not NY Governor Kathy Hochul. The latter two have decided to showboat what has become a rape case in an election year when both are up for another four-year term.

First, the incident itself: October 19, 2024, a Saturday night when upstate New York is at its fall color peak and the campus is jumpin’, 20-year-old “Jane Doe” starts drinking at her sorority, Delta Delta Delta (Δ Δ Δ, “Tri-Delt”) whose motto is Let Us Steadfastly Love One Another. Around eleven o’clock Jane goes into downtown Ithaca to do more drinking at a bar. She’s legally underage, but manages to get served.

Meanwhile, messages are zinging around on social media, Snapchat, etc. There’s a party going on at the Chi Phi fraternity (ΧΦ). Jane communicates with one of the members there. He cordially invites her over for “a threesome.” Jane apparently has a reputation as a lively girl around campus. She accepts and heads over to Chi Phi with a load on, “five out of ten” on the intoxication scale, she later writes in a nine-page statement she gave to campus police.

She arrives at Chi Phi around midnight. More drinks. Pretty soon she’s in that threesome in a bedroom. The frat boys are also pretty hammered. Things get even wilder. Four other frat boys enter the picture. On top of the alcohol, they start doing ketamine, known to produce a dissociative “floaty, out-of-the-body feeling.” One’s judgment is not too good on it, even worse when mixed with booze. The scene at Chi Phi is Animal House plus. Various shenanigans ensue. Eventually, Jane Doe gets home.

The story, sans the obligatory home videos you know 'phone owners are recording, and the ketamine, is one of long pedigree.  The cause years ago was "date rape," perhaps modified to "acquaintance rape" in order to portray the woman involved as being deprived of her agency, whether it was assisted by beer or booze or enhanced by other stimulants or perhaps sedatives, and thus a victim of circumstances.  Never mind that, as appears to be the case in this Cornell story, the lady had her evening of what she thought was fun, then, a day or so later thinks, ewwww, I shouldn't have done that.  Now there's a whole therapeutic bureaucracy for her to lay out her victimization case.  A colleague correctly described that situation as the complainant simply lacking any character: she could have dialed back the pregaming, turned down the invitation, or excused herself when the drinks and the pharmacopeia started to circulate at Chi Phi.

A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO THE RABBIT CULTURE.

A self-styled feminist called Louise Perry recognized reality three years ago.  There's nothing in her work that skeptics of the new dispensation hadn't recognized thirty years ago.  "Some of us have known this for two score years.  Reality is socially conservative, and sometimes reality dawns after all life's illusions have disillusioned."

THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION. Recent fossil discoveries spark a debate among anthropologists.

The most controversial aspects of the papers involve the authors' -- particularly [Kent State's C. Owen] Lovejoy's -- interpretations of what the fossils say about behavior. Of particular importance, he said, is that the sizes of males and females were about the same, and that the specimens do not have large, sharp canine teeth. Both findings suggest that the fierce, often violent competition among males for females in heat that characterizes gorillas and chimpanzees was absent in Ardipithecus.

That implies, Lovejoy concluded, that the males were beginning to enter into monogamous relationships with females and devoted a greater proportion of their time to caring for their young than did earlier ancestors.

"This is a restatement of Owen Lovejoy's ideas going back almost three decades, which I found unpersuasive then and still do," [Harvard's David] Pilbeam said. [Yale's Andrew] Hill was more blunt, calling Lovejoy's speculation "patent nonsense."

Perhaps the academic pecking order reflects better supporting work and a long-time professor at Kent State has had lots of opportunities to get it wrong. Perhaps the peer-review culture requires faculty at mid-majors to make more daring claims in order to be published. Or perhaps anthropology departments at the Ivies have to protect their credibility in the Culture Wars. Monogamy, rather than the rabbit culture, being evolutionarily stable. Subvert the dominant paradigm, indeed.

TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY. Public Brewery commends a column by Amanda Leisgang that objects to a legislative proposal that would preclude University of Wisconsin health services from providing morning-after contraceptives to students. The quote he highlights:

Some critics of the morning-after pill call it chemical abortion. Others feel that it promotes promiscuous, irresponsible behavior. All of these concerns are understandable, and it is admirable that these opponents feel so strongly about their beliefs. The world needs more people that take a stand instead of sitting on the fence.

On this issue, though, they are dead wrong. People can wish and hope and pray that their children will make responsible sexual decisions. The only way that people can expect their children to be responsible is if they are properly equipped with information and choices. Instead of taking away a birth control option, these "pro-life'' lawmakers should be focusing on medically appropriate sexual education. Tell your children and students in school that abstinence, condoms and the traditional birth control pill prevent pregnancy. If people know the facts, they are more likely to make the right choices.

That's a point Reason's Ronald Bailey made some time ago, suggesting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is exceeding its authority with some objections to approving this pill for minors.

The FDA claimed Plan B had not been tested in enough adolescent females to prove that it's safe for them to use. However, proponents saw the FDA's assertions as a political move to appease the Bush administration's pro-life allies.

After all, agency staffers noted that this was the first time this issue had ever been raised. "The agency has not [previously] distinguished the safety and efficacy of Plan B and other forms of hormonal contraception among different ages of women of childbearing potential, and I am not aware of any compelling scientific reason for such a distinction in this case," wrote John Jenkins, director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs, in an internal memo leaked to The Washington Post.

Yes, medication is medication, and culture is culture, and division of labor enables efficiencies. The problem, however, is that the University of Wisconsin's health service crossed a cultural line in the way it informed students of the availability of this pill. Owen at Boots and Sabers raised the cultural point; a newspaper article provided additional discussion. At the time, I noted some other unintended consequences.

If the condom fails and the kids don't have the morning-after pill, they still have three months to deal with one "unwanted effect" in the feminist way. The chlamydia or the herpes will be another matter.

I neglected to mention the psychological effects; the Chicago Sun-Times had that part of the story. (Additional links here.) That's missing from Ms Leisgang's argument as well. Consider:

The morning-after pill is a vital tool in giving women control over their bodies. Since its inception, it has been an indispensable tool for women who may have an unintended pregnancy from accident or rape. To take this tool away from women, especially those women who are typically young and broke on college campuses is absurd. The use of any contraception, including the morning-after pill, is a decision that should be made solely by a woman and her doctor.

That "control" argument is quite old; it has been a staple of the abortion wars for years. Rape, incest, life of the mother. Tay-Sachs. Downs syndrome? Tests reveal it's going to be a girl? A DNA scan suggests a predisposition to homosexuality? Where does that control cross a line?

Do the woman, or her hook-up of the moment, have any obligations toward each other beyond being careful about what fluids are exchanged?

Likewise with the morning-after pill. By its neutrality toward the spring break rabbit culture, the University has suggested that some of those "right choices" Ms Leisgang alludes to are, well, more nuanced. But perhaps Wisconsin's health service has acquiesced in a line that the entering students have already been allowed to cross. Consider the young lady from Alabama who apparently has paid with her life for what she called "fun." Why Aruba as a senior trip destination? Senior trip -- a relatively recent invention in the scheme of things -- used to be fraught with meaning: Washington, D.C., for a taste of the great traditions; or Manhattan or Chicago for a look at the pinnacle of the working world the younglings are entering. An island with an 18 year old drinking age ... naw, that's not a reason for picking a senior trip destination.

Perhaps it is to those mixed signals the schools and universities are sending that the legislators are responding.

BETTER TO RULE IN HELL THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN.

We'll conclude the quest for fifty book reports in 2016 at Book Review N^o. 34, which is Michael Walsh's The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.  Yes, it's another in the theme of Higher Education Has Gone Nuts, but there's some provocative stuff dealing with Original Sin and Faustian Bargains and other religious themes.

Let's start by contemplating the circus.  Do you see the religious symbolism on this wagon?

RABBIT REDUX

There is a rabbit culture. Pope Francis recognizes its existence.  "Pope Francis is firmly upholding Church teaching banning contraception, but he said on [19 January 2015] that Catholics to be true to their faith didn’t have to breed 'like rabbits' and should instead practice 'responsible parenting.'"
And perhaps responsible parenting applies to what happens for after the kids are ready to hop out of the hutch, but the suggestion that the young be encouraged not to rut like rabbits is still contested, because privilege, or something.

Consider what happens when Slate's Emily Yoffe suggested (yes, I'm catching up on old posts again, on a theme that I've long emphasized, but being in accord with the Pope can't hurt) the does be more careful about drinking to excess.

Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue. The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people who, shall we say, don’t have your best interest at heart. That’s not blaming the victim; that’s trying to prevent more victims.

Angela Morabito, of College Conservative, wants the bucks to take some responsibility too.

If you’re going to tell the girls “don’t drink so much that you are in a position to get attacked,” you better also tell the boys “don’t drink so much that you ​do the attacking.” Anything less is to put the burden of prevention on victims, instead of on the perpetrators where it belongs.

This seems commonsensical enough, but Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, back before her gig included going on Hardball to help Tingles slime Donald Trump, published a roundup of all the ways the Correct Thinkers pushed back.  "The second point is the regime of feminist political correctness that chills discussion."  Her first point was the obvious, that collegians like to drink a lot.  But the push-back on her second point was too much.  "Oh please. This isn’t a gender studies class; it’s the real world. In which Yoffe’s piece ought to be required reading for every college student, male and female."  Reading?  Who reads anything any more?

Trust a Salon writer, in this case Soraya Chemaly, to issue a privilege check.  It's the entitlement, stupid.  And yes, high-status revenue sports are a part of the entitlement.

Dig into her essay, though, and maybe you see the Pope is onto something.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the study however was that these children felt no sense of responsibility for their actions. What does this have to do with entitlement? The likelihood of perpetrating sexual violence was not equal across all groups.  The teenagers with the highest propensity to sexually assault a peer were white kids from higher-income families.

Her conclusion?

Boys and girls are being sent off to college without parents ever discussing critical dilemmas, double standards, power imbalances, cultural entitlements, or even what it genuinely means to be empathetic.  It’s not just parents who themselves are struggling with alcohol, abuse and dysfunction that are a problem. It’s parents whose reluctance to speak openly about serious issues with children who also enable these problems to thrive. People arrive at school with complicated histories shrouded in silence, shame, anger and incoherence. Our reluctance to extend our concepts of justice to include the family spills over into other institutions every day and college is one of the places where this is most evident.

To repeat, as repeat I must: what happens when the village combines the redeeming features of a hippie commune and a trailer park?

As Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds, quips, "[the do-your-own-thing crowd] live in a fantasy world."

Perhaps the fantasy lives on in "Take Back the Night" events, too.  Fine, tell your stories, but clean up the common culture.

THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE: HOLD INDIVIDUALS ACCOUNTABLE.

Vox:  Don't allow extremists to set the terms of the conversation.

Allowing extremists to set the limits of conversation validates and entrenches the extremists' premises. That was true in the criticism of Charlie Hebdo's covers, and it's even truer in today's crimes.

These murders can't be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn't be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn't need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.

Thus, the responsibility rests with the individuals. Not with their belief system. Not with their environment. That quickly puts us in contested territory.  George Packer in The New Yorker elaborates.

A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique. Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism. For some believers, the violence serves a will to absolute power in the name of God, which is a form of totalitarianism called Islamism—politics as religion, religion as politics. “Allahu Akbar!” the killers shouted in the street outside Charlie Hebdo. They, at any rate, know what they’re about.

These thoughts don’t offer a guide to mitigating the astonishing surge in Islamist killing around the world. Rage and condemnation don’t do the job, nor is it helpful to alienate the millions of Muslims who dislike what’s being done in the name of their religion. Many of them immediately condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in tones of anguish particular to those whose deepest beliefs have been tainted. The answer always has to be careful, thoughtful, and tailored to particular circumstances.

I believe the same principle applies to any other attempt to call out entire populations for the sins of a few.  Consider #notallmen, and compare and contrast.  Here's an Uncle Tim, reacting to a massacre perpetrated by a frustrated trustafarian late last spring.  I do a little word substitution.

The murderer was active on men’s rights, jihadi fora, where women infidels are highly objectified otherized, to say the very least. They are seen as nonhuman by many such groups, and at the very least lesser than men Moslems — sometimes nothing more than targets or things to acquire. What these men jihadi write puts them, to me, in the same category as White Power movements, or any other horribly bigoted group that “others” anyone else. While it may not be possible to blame the men’s rights jihadi groups for what happened, from the reports we’ve seen they certainly provided an atmosphere of support.

Hard choice: treat jihadi discussion boards as subversive per se, or pickup artist discussion boards as threatening per se, or work to identify the individuals most prone to act on the nastiest impulses encouraged thereon.  Back to the Uncle Tim.

Why is it not helpful to say “not all men Moslems are like that”? For lots of reasons. For one, women Everybody know this. They already know not every man Moslem is a rapist, or a murderer, or violent. They don’t need you to tell them.

Second, it’s defensive. When people are defensive, they aren’t listening to the other person; they’re busy thinking of ways to defend themselves. I watched this happen on Twitter, over and again.

OK, so what's the more productive strategy, whether the objective is to encourage boorish men to behave like gentlemen, or jihadis to respect the pacific traditions of their faith?

Earlier, I mentioned that the conversation is about the men Moslems who are the problem, not the ones who aren’t. Well, at this point, a conversation needs to be had about them, too. Even though we may not be the direct problem, we still participate in the cultural problem. If we’re quiet, we’re part of the problem. If we don’t listen, if we don’t help, if we let things slide for whatever reason, then we’re part of the problem, too.

We men Moslems need to do better.

Perhaps, although it's ultimately about what individuals do. Perhaps in the rabbit culture, it's the saner guys not egging on the predatory guys. What is the generalization?

Or let's do the same word substitution on a rant by a self-described guerrilla feminist.

You are acting like because you never raped or beat a woman engaged in a terrorist act that you are not participating in rape culture or misogyny jihad [I could have let the original words stand]. The fact that you are exempting yourself from a conversation about how men Moslems treat women nonbelievers and how patriarchy jihad operates means that you ARE part of the problem.

When you say ‘not all men Moslems!’ you are completely shirking responsibility for how you benefit from patriarchy jihad. You are evading accountability for your participation in a culture world-view that systematically privileges your gender belief system. When you silence women critics and derail feminist responsive conversations with your ‘but not all men Moslems!’ bullshit, you are exposing yourself as one of “those men Moslems” that you purportedly abhor so much that you feel the need to distance yourself from them in the first place. Hate to break it to you, turkey, but if you’re silencing women critics and derailing feminist pointed conversations to make them all about you and your feelings than you ARE one of THOSE MEN JIHADIS. You are revealing yourself as the true antifeminist faux-ally useful idiot you really are.

So, you never raped a woman committed an act of terrorism. What do you want? A cookie? A medal? A goddamn Nobel Peace Prize? You want feminists everywhere thinking people to stop doing the critical work they’re doing to pat you on the back for never raping anyone engaging in terrorist acts? Do have any idea how unbelievably fucked [c.q.] up that is? Also, as I’ve stated before, here’s a pro-tip: if you don’t want women other people to think of you as a potential rapist terrorist, then maybe you should start by working to end rape terrorism by educating men not to rape women engage in terrorism, rather than attacking women critics for implicating all men Moslems in rape culture jihad. Men Moslems are the people doing the majority of the raping in this country global terrorism. Acknowledging this reality is not anti-male Islamophobia, its simply stating a fact [No, I'm not going to do the same word substitution at the link. That's left as an exercise.].

When I first responded to the Elliot Rodger story, I gave the final word to Cathy Young.  With word substitution, it still works.  "But the worst possible answer is a toxic version of feminism counterterrorism that encourages women the civilized world to see themselves as victims while imposing collective guilt on men Moslems."  The collective guilt approach simply turns sympathetic people, whether they are gentlemen or practice Islam or both, from being helpful.

BEARING THEIR SCORN AS A BADGE OF HONOR?

One argument advocates for minority rights, particularly among the sexual underground, make is that for example, homosexuality cannot be volitional, as nobody would voluntarily expose himself to the opprobrium that accompanies that choice.  That same argument appears in the recent case of a woman in Spokane presenting herself as black, despite ample evidence of Czech and German ancestry.  Here's Ben Shapiro, summarizing the argument.

By the left's standards, Rachel Dolezal is black. She can choose her race, just as Bruce Jenner can choose his sex. And she didn't choose. She always felt that way. After all, no one would choose to be black, just as no one would choose to be gay -- blacks are so put upon in American society that no one would fake being black for, say, the benefits of employment or mainstream leftist celebration.

That position is not uncontested.  I borrowed my title from a Dan Quayle campaign line, in which he stood his ground in the Culture Wars in part by defining precisely who he stood in opposition to.  And bearing opprobrium might be a strategy, perhaps as a way of encouraging progress, perhaps as a way of expressing your opposition.  Remember how political long hair on men used to be? Perhaps there's still that element of encouraging the opprobrium in getting a tattoo.  What, then, about a white girl choosing to pass as black?

On one hand, “black” is a statement of identity. It describes a certain culture and a certain history, tied to the lives and experiences of enslaved Africans and their descendants. It’s a fluid culture, with room for a huge variety of people, from whites, to blacks, to people of Latin American and Caribbean descent.

Fluid indeed, as the descendants of the slave-traders have also emigrated.  And contested: witness the continued tussle over what being authentic is about, and whether authentic is something other than urban contemporary.  But columnist Jamelle Bouie spells out her premises carefully.

I am a descendent of slaves with strong African features. This makes me culturally black—I identify with the American national group—and racially black; I’m more likely to face overt discrimination than my white friends. And in all likelihood, this would also be true if my mother (or father) were white. I would still have African features, I would still have a connection to black American history, and I would still occupy the bottom rung of the racial hierarchy. But if I were born with lighter skin and more European features, I might be able to escape the stigma of blackness. I would still have the cultural connection, but I wouldn’t occupy the same place in the hierarchy.

Under those circumstances, she might have an easier time passing, something that used to be more fraught than it currently is. But passing as a member of a culture is a different thing than passing as a member of a race. For all the talk about race being a construct, it's still a construct with consequences.

The political designation of race is a function of power—or, put differently, you are whatever the dominant group says you are. A Nigerian immigrant might not identify with black Americans, but she’s still “black,” regardless of what she says, and if she gets pulled over by the police, that identity will matter most. And on the other end, a black American with dark skin and African features could identify as white with her friends, but in society, she’s black, regardless of how she feels.

Dangerous territory alert ... if this hypothetical immigrant speaks the Queen's English and shows up for work dependably and hangs out with expats from elsewhere in the Commonwealth, would black Americans reject her for "acting white." But I digress.

Ms Bouie has no problems with Ms Dolezal qua ally.

In her favor are key parts of her life. Dolezal has identified as black for almost 10 years. She’s been heavily involved in the local black community, and a leader on issues important to black people. She has no apparent black ancestry—a real difference from blacks who pass—but she’s adopted a kind of black culture almost wholesale.

But it's possible to be an ally without inventing a background.

Then again, her story involves lies and misrepresentations. She passed off a darker-skinned stranger as her father, and an adopted sibling as her son. There’s a chance she faked a hate crime against her, and she falsely claimed she was born in a tepee with a family that hunted for its food. She says she’s black, but we don’t know if she’s alwaysblack. Is she black when she’s purchasing a home? Talking to the police? Or is she black only when vying for a role where lived experience would help her odds?

Privilege-checking at work.

To belong to the black community is to inherit a rich and important culture; to be racially black is to face discrimination and violence. And that has often gone for whites who identify with blacks, or for blacks who appear to be white.

Thus, more privilege-checking.

We don’t know the entirety of Dolezal’s story, and we will likely learn more. If it’s troubling, it’s at least partly because it feels like Dolezal is adopting the culture without carrying the burdens. And with the fake father and the fake children, it seems like she’s deceiving people for the sake of an à la carte blackness, in which you take the best parts, and leave the pain aside.

We can go beyond Salon's musings. Inside Higher Ed called for deeper thinking. (The comment section is less than edifying.) Daily Nous carries the deeper thinking. Start here.

If ‘passing as privileged’ involves a member of an oppressed group passing as a member of a privileged group for the sake of some personal advantage, then a fit for this sort of alleged case might be ‘passing as disadvantaged’, where a member of a privileged group passes as a member of an oppressed group for the sake of some personal advantage. There are many such examples. A politician with a wealthy background might present himself as “a man of the people” in order to sway voters in a low-income district. Cultural appropriation in the music industry or within artistic communities is another example, such as when a person passes in order to sell “authentic” indigenous pieces or narratives. Someone might pass as a member of a marginalized group in order to obtain a scholarship or other diversity opportunity, or in order to feel somehow special in virtue of having suffered, overcome adversity, or challenged the status quo. Some simply fetishize otherness.

Fetishize otherness? I guess that's how the Highly Intellectual describe scorn-as-badge-of-honor. There's a lot of serious thinking in the post, take your time, read, understand.  But there's quite the scrap for position developing (revealing itself, perhaps) among the Perpetually Aggrieved.  Can a man declare himself a woman?  How is that different from a woman with Czech grandparents declaring herself black?  (Oh, and the culture-warriors of the right are having fun with cats coming out as dogs.)

We agree to accept transgender people’s expression of belief in their authenticity. It’s fine for [Meredith] Talusan or others to say that they are convinced that the identities they embrace are their real ones in some way that is not limited by their biology at birth. However, the logic of the pluralism and open-endedness of identity they assert would require that they also accept the self-reports of claims to authenticity regarding identities that may diverge in other ways from convention. Certainly, not doing so necessitates some justification more persuasive—and less Archie Bunkerish—than simply asserting "Mine is genuine, theirs is not." The voluntary/involuntary criterion isn’t even sophistry; it’s just bullshit.

I don't want to go into the rabbit hole of mainstream society issuing a retrospective apology to all the people clapped in the Cuckoo's Nest over the years for claiming to be Napoleon, and yet I sometimes get the sense that the aggrieved intellectuals are certifiable.

[Zeba] Blay expresses this position most clearly. She objects that Dolezal "occupied positions of power specifically designated for members of a marginalized group."

There's that fetishized otherness again. But if the Perpetually Aggrieved get over their authenticity hang-ups (which, I submit, contribute more to the continued lack of progress of supposedly oppressed people than they help) that might be a desirable outcome.

It may be that one of Rachel Dolezal’s most important contributions to the struggle for social justice may turn out to be having catalyzed, not intentionally to be sure, a discussion that may help us move beyond the identitarian dead end.

I'll give the last word to Daniel Payne, who appears to be of the view that the aggrieved intellectuals are certifiable.

As my colleague Robert Tracinski recently pointed out, the growing normalization of insanity has resulted in the concurrent stigmatization of normalcy itself.

But the sectarianism among the Perpetually Aggrieved and their authenticity fetishes will be worth a little insanity.

SEEING OFF TOXIC EUNUCHISM?

Megan McArdle suggests it's time to listen to the "bad feminists."

I have now had dozens of conversations about #MeToo with women my age or older, all of which are some variant on “What the hey?” It’s not that we’re opposed to #MeToo; we are overjoyed to see slime like Harvey Weinstein flushed out of the woodwork, and the studio system. But we see sharp distinctions between Weinstein and guys who press aggressively -- embarrassingly, adulterously -- for sex. To women in their 20s, it seems that distinction is invisible, and the social punishments demanded for the latter are scarcely less than those meted out for forcible rape.

There’s something else we notice, something that seems deeply connected to these demands for justice: These women express a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness, even though they are not being threatened, either physically or economically. How has the most empowered generation of women in all of human history come to feel less control over their bodies than their grandmothers did?

Let me propose a possible answer to this, suggested by a very smart social scientist of my acquaintance: They feel this way because we no longer have any moral language for talking about sex except consent. So when men do things that they feel are wrong -- such as aggressively pursuing casual sex without caring about the feelings of their female target -- we’re left flailing for some way to describe this as non-consensual, even when she agreed to the sex.

Under the old code, of course, we had ample condemnatory terms for men who slept with women carelessly, without much regard for their feelings: cads and rakes, bounders and boors. Those words have now decayed into archaism. Yet it seems to me that these are just the words that young women are reaching for, when instead they label things like mutually drunken encounters and horrible one-night stands as an abuse of power, a violation of consent--which is to say, as a crime, or something close to it. To which a lot of other people incredulously respond: now being a bad lover is a crime?

Yes, that's a bit of jiu-jitsu by Ms McArdle, using bad to refer to those feminists who aren't all over the latest effusion from the fever swamps of intersectionality, rather than to the Thought Leaders who have over the years made a virtue of being Bad (or Mad, Bad, Imbruited.)  Furthermore, that's something regular readers of Cold Spring Shops have understood, for years.

This isn’t working. And perhaps a little expansion of our moral language will illuminate not just our current dilemma, but the structural reasons behind it. I’m thinking of a fairly recent paper by political scientist Michael Munger, which introduced the concept of euvoluntary exchange. Put simply, though we talk a great deal about voluntary exchange, the fact is that we often think voluntary exchanges are morally wrong. After all, the quid pro quo offered by [Harvey] Weinstein was in some sense voluntary, and yet also, totally unacceptable. Likewise price gouging after natural disasters, blackmail and similar breaches.

We have an intuition, says Professor Munger, that in order for an exchange to be really valid, both parties need to have a minimally acceptable alternative to making the deal. And in the case of sex, I think that often women no longer feel they have those alternatives. So expanding Professor Munger’s analysis to consensual sex -- we might call it euconsensual sex -- may give us some insight into what’s gone wrong.

My generation of women was not exactly unfamiliar with casual sex, or aggressive come-ons. But we didn’t feel so traumatized by them or so outraged. If we went to a man’s apartment, we might be annoyed that he wouldn’t stop asking, but we weren’t offended, nor did we feel it was impossible for us to refuse, or leave.

But then, I came of age in the liminal moment after AIDS complicated the sexual revolution, and before the internet turbocharged it. In part because casual sex was so risky, there was still a robust dating culture, which gave women alternatives to the nightly chase. Most of us chose those alternatives, which in turn limited the ability of heterosexual men to choose the nightly chase over dating.

Yes, and the rabbit culture had not yet implanted itself fully in men's minds. There were observers who saw it coming.

One has to wonder how different things would have been if feminism had demanded economic freedom for women and denounced the sexual revolution in the interest of preserving womens' traditional roles as the guardians of chastity. This would have gained for women the equal pay and opportunity they deserved while at the same time ensuring that women who wanted to raise families would find willing husbands-to-be.

Such a situation would also have spread the gains from feminism. Today the only victors in the sexual revolution are those men and women who are good-looking and clever enough to enjoy multiple partners with a minimum of emotional and financial commitment. The dowdy and the not-so-clever (or not-so-unscrupulous) are used by the well-endowed and find loneliness and frustration where, in a previous generation, they would probably have been able to start families.

We add some new language to the vocabulary, "bad feminists," "euconsensual sex," and yet, aren't we exactly where the older heads suggested we would be?

If there are enough women willing to accommodate men who approach romance like a deranged mink, then other women will feel they have to go along. It is no more realistic to tell an individual woman to opt out of this dynamic than it would be to encourage her to bring down capitalism by quitting her job. Since our society does not consider sitting home alone in your apartment night after night to be a minimally acceptable alternative to casual sex, women may feel that the sex they agree to is consensual, but not euconsensual. And they end up feeling violated when it becomes clear that he is (yes, again) interested in only the one thing.

But if this is indeed the difference between my generation and theirs, then what do we do with our new moral language? How do we get to a place where today’s young women have adequate alternatives to dispiriting sex modeled on ubiquitous porn?

Rediscover the evolutionary stability of the traditional virtues?

If you cast an eye back over history you’ll see that what most societies have actually come up with is the social equivalent of a cartel: if you want the sex, you’re going to first have to invest in some sort of relationship, because it’s not (readily) available any other way. Those regimes, of course, were often quite punishing to women, but then, that’s how cartels often work; when a cartel member cheats by selling below the fixed price, it is the member, not their customer, who suffers retaliation from the rest of the cartel.

Which suggests an uncomfortable possibility. No, not a neo-Victorian morals police to force morally loose women out of town. But a decision by women to force better behavior from the men who offend them, and even to browbeat other women into going along.

Rediscover the tragic vision?

We did not expect men to perfect themselves. We believed that our own power, as individual women, was both necessary and adequate to create the world we wanted. We also understood that using those powers might sometimes be unpleasant. But how much better to be the one who chooses -- by telling a cad to go (expletive) himself -- than to wait, as patiently as some Victorian maiden, for the men to solve our problems for us.

Rediscover gentlemen?  Peggy Noonan suggested as much, in a Wall Street Journal column temporarily in paywall limbo (her stuff eventually makes its way to her site, albeit with a lag) that Rick Moran expanded upon.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I learned what a gentleman was by observing my father. He was strong without being a bully. He respected people -- especially women -- without being obsequious. He was solicitous of other people's feelings. He was empathetic toward those less fortunate. He was kind, loving, and attentive to his wife. He was somewhat reserved, but that was probably due to his upbringing in an immigrant Irish family.

I don't think he ever gave me instructions on how to treat a female except to say gentlemen don't hit women. When I began to date, I knew what the word "no" meant and always proceeded under the assumption that the woman would tell me if I was doing something that made her uncomfortable. As a good Catholic boy, I didn't try and stretch the boundaries anyway, even though I realize today that many women are incapable -- for one reason or another -- of saying "no" to a man.

You'd think that in two or three thousand years, we might have gotten a few things right. "I don't think there's any doubt that if there were more gentlemen in the world and more empathy, much social friction between the sexes and the races would disappear." So much more thrilling, though, to deconstruct everything, question everything, break many things and call it Progress.

Pajamas Media's D. C. McAllister continues the argument, only in her formulation, the "bad feminists" are Ladies.  "The sexual revolution brought us a second, third, and fourth wave of feminism that quickly devolved from the lofty goals of those who fought for equal rights to the gutter where women act just like men." Yes, regular readers know that, and yet it's more important that the idea catch on (after everything else has failed?) rather than that the early adopters claim credit.

How do we know that everything else has failed?  We see that mad, bad, and imbruited is futile.

We splash our bodies across the internet for the world to see. We act like either men or whores, but hardly ever as ladies. We reject feminine gentleness for bitchiness. We scoff at female discretion and chastity and applaud our nastiness. We objectify ourselves, as well as men; dominate in sex just like men; and have mechanical detached, dehumanized sex while complaining that we can’t find a strong, loving gentleman who treats us with dignity and respect.

Yes, and conducting yourselves in such a way that the pickup artists benefit from the misery by coaching men to offer anything but dignity and respect.

It's not turning the clock back, it's seeking a state of good repair in human interaction.

ARE THERE TRAILER PARKS IN BRITAIN?

Schoolteacher Francis Gilbert takes a cut at a larger social phenomenon, attempting in Yob Nation to offer a prima facie case that the bad habits of the hustler and the slacker have become the norm in British culture. I don't know enough of the country's history to evaluate all of the claims in the work, which appears to find yobbery everywhere. (Did you know that John Bull is the Father of All Yobs?) This Book Review N^o. 26 suggests that Thirteenth Generation crudity has made its way to Britain. Mr Gilbert attempts to make the case that the well-to-do have aped some of the self-destructive behaviors that used to be confined to the poorer quarters, although his evidence is of the anecdotal and unsystematic type. Thus, for example, the aggressive, sometimes drug-charged style of the securities trader and the initiation rituals of the officer corps become of a piece with the brawling of Geordies with Scousers in the terraces. (Ah, soccer, the sport of choice of eight year old U.S. girls, and of Third World males.) Recently retired Prime Minister Tony Blair rates a yob tag, with Mr Gilbert suggesting his relationship with "consigliere" Alastair Campbell sharing an inner outlook in common. Binge drinking and the rabbit culture become, in Mr Gilbert's estimation, the norm for social life among collegians and young professionals. Bristol's gentrified riverfront, with numerous nightspots, takes on a "bleak, sour mood" at bar time. (I did spend a Saturday evening in a hotel near that riverfront, and although it sounded like quite the party, it didn't sound that unpleasant, although I was still a bit out of phase with the clock and opted to turn in early.) The impression the bar staff has of the collegians brings to mind the Rate Your Students fodder who will not do a lick of work but will push every button to wheedle a higher grade. "You find yourself engaged in an argument with one of them for 15 minutes to half an hour, if you won't let one of them in." So just say no and summon the bouncer faster. (I did notice a lot of "staff wanted" posters in windows of waterfront establishments. Perhaps there is a mismatch between pay and working conditions.) Ayia Napa, in Cyprus (where the Greeks and Turks continued World War I by proxy) appears to be a British version of Panama City or South Padre, complete with "Girls Gone Wild" material. Mr Gilbert does not draw the plausible connection between welfare entitlements and the yob life, although one of his sources laments that more of Britain's skilled trades are being done by immigrants, legal and illegal, from the former Soviet bloc. But, to repeat myself, the steering of young men who exhibit yobbish tendencies to trade school ought not be the default policy prescription.

Mr Gilbert's policy prescriptions, although incompletely supported by the stories he puts together, strike me as sensible. First, he suggests that the destructive lifestyles of the rich and famous (are you listening, Michael Vick, Lindsay Lohan, Newt Gingrich, Barry Bonds, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton?) ought not receive the affirmation they often do. Here, the book might have been strengthened by appeals to more rigorous social science, should such work exist, on the casual causal relationship between the antics of famous people and the mores of the hippie commune and the trailer park. Second, he suggests that the schools more aggressively inculcate the habits of the middle class (to put it in the North American locution I regularly use.) Again, although he draws on reports of classroom management difficulties colleagues have encountered, and some of his other books suggest a discontent with the teacher's lot, Mr Gilbert puts together an incomplete case. Finally, he suggests a tougher criminal justice system, with greater reliance on anti-social behavior orders (usually involving a more rigorous house arrest than Paris Hilton almost got away with.) There has to be a great deal of social science addressing the effectiveness of that regimen.

I must add an anecdotal note of my own. Often, the markers of a "yob" appear to be sneakers, which the British call "trainers," hooded sweatshirts, and ballcaps, often with the bill askew. That description would fit more than a few good and decent U.S. collegians, and some of Mr Gilbert's problem might rest in decoding the cross-cultural messages. On my visits to Britain, the attempts of the young to ape North American dress and speech amuse. All too often, the youngsters know some of the words, but they don't get the music. But frequent use of the less imaginative four-letter words is a sign of social deficiency, there as well as here.

THE WHEEL TURNS. Years ago, a feminist collective at my high school (yes, we had such things, as well as state-champion caliber basketball and baseball) issued a manifesto that included a characterization of "free love" as less than desirable for the female in the couple, who, the manifesto alleged, "paid for the 'free.'"

It appears as though participants in the rabbit culture are learning a similar lesson.

Hooking up happens, so what happens after hooking up? It isn't always as carefree as it seems.

"What happens is usually one of two partners becomes attached," [Washington Post reporter Laura] Stepp said. "It becomes for that person more than a hookup. But, they won't call it something else."

Stepp added that the attached person is normally the female in a heterosexual hookup.

"The culture really benefits men. It gives men what they want without women getting what they want," said senior Anthony Moniello, who took Stepp's class. "A lot of times, a girl will hook up with a guy, but then she'll want to see him again. For men, it will be a more physical thing."

Via Newmark's Door.

ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT ENCOURAGES STUDENT AFFAIRS.

I'm inverting the title of a real university office as a way of returning to the subject of sex imbalances on campus. "How many women entering higher education realize they are going to de facto Women's Colleges?" The topic has provided material for lots of commenters over the last few years. There's a useful summary at 11D:

One downside to having college campuses that skew female is it kills dating. If you take out the social misfits and the guys with girl friends, there are slim pickings indeed. And the slim pickings end up setting the rules. Even this guy with the zit on his neck.

Because there is a huge competition for the few datable men on campus, male dating rules win. The article describes a woman grabbing a strange guy in a bar and dragging him onto the dance floor to get his attention. Women sleep with guys right away, in order to get noticed. No guy needs to settle on one girl, when he has sororities of girls desperately throwing themselves at him with the hope of getting noticed.

That analysis is superficial, as the poster notes in her conclusion.

My first job after college was working as an editor of computer books. I went to the COMDEX conference to showcase our books. The other editors and I were the only women among the sea of computer nerds. I liked that ratio. Too bad they were all geeks.

Put another way, contemporary mating practices and admissions policies might not be evolutionarily stable. That doesn't stop commenters from drawing all sorts of Deeper Implications.

SOONER OR LATER YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY.

In a week, Donald Trump has broken the morale of his most vociferous detractors of the left.  Common Dreams contributor John Ripton calls for help from his fellow-travellers.  "Without resistance this regime will ensure that Americans are more vulnerable to climate change and to political chaos, moral decay, and social disintegration."  Yes, Donald Trump was running around California setting fires.  Yes, Donald Trump was running around Chicago looting the Magnificent Mile.  Yes, Donald Trump was running around the campuses chasing Jewish students into the library attic and facilitating the rabbit culture.

THE CONFEDERACY OF THE FRUSTRATED.

That's a line from an Evan Osnos essay in The New Yorker on the Donald Trump phenomenon.  There's some truth to it, and a number of perspectives on What It Means.

Sometimes it's simple.  Here's a flag sales tent at a Midwestern threshing bee.

The more censorious the Perpetually Aggrieved become, and the more in-your-face the rainbow coalition is in the entertainment industry, the more Gadsden flags and POW-MIA flags and Confederate battle flags will sell.  Subverting the dominant paradigm and being transgressive isn't for the critical studies people only.

ENGLISH MAJORS ALSO STUDY CREATIVE WRITING.

Last week, we noted the writing clinic University Diaries provided in connection with a Rolling Stone story about a gang-bang at the University of Virginia.

There's accumulating skepticism about that story.  University Diaries acknowledges the skepticism, quoting from one of the commentaries that notes, "If this turns out to be a hoax, it is going to turn the clock back on their thinking 30 years."  Perhaps, but if the creative writing draws attention to the damage the collegiate rabbit culture (facilitated by a toxic mix of beer-'n-circus, do-your-own-thing, and non-judgementalism when it comes to sexual license) has done to the lives of young men and young women alike, or if it proves to be opportunism by a conscience-cowgirl looking for a mix of upscale males in a jockish environment looking for candidates to pull a train so as to support her preconceived narrative about privilege and sexism, then we might make progress in changing the default cultural settings in higher education.

That is a desirable outcome.