George Will on Sexual Assault: It is a "coveted status"

I usually do not post stuff like this, and probably should not post this here. But if this can remain rational maybe the Bin has some promise. As we know, this issue has visited the MSU campus as well as many others.

So Will starts off by implying that assault is something that women actually want.

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.

Will then goes on to question the definition of assault. He also points to a discrepancy in the small number of reported assaults versus the claimed number of actual assaults. For me, this is the only place he makes a decent point. I understand his comments about "trigger warnings," but I wonder what his response would be if we substituted his language with a recently returned war veteran? I somehow feel he would all of the sudden become more sensitive to the idea of trigger warnings and would refrain from mocking the idea of trigger warnings in the classroom.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-college-become-the-victims-of-progressivism/2014/06/06/e90e73b4-eb50-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

I don't get why Will ties college rape to warning labels on books, which are being asked for by students, not the government: "Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a 'safe,' 'supportive,' 'unthreatening' environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant."

I find that stance interesting, coming from George Will. Will supported the PMRC's efforts to put warning labels on albums in the '80's. He argued then that naughty lyrics destroy our capacity to feel shame and embarrassment, asking, "Would you want to live in a world in which no one, not even the young, blushed?"

Apparently, he's decided that humanity's ability to blush no longer needs his defense, or he's finally realized that the soft censorship of warnings isn't the dandy idea it used to be. Or maybe he's a big fucking hypocrite, in addition to being the most pretentious columnist in America.

The guy is too smart for his own good. He used a lot of big words here to explain that he's a dumb ass.

Bump

Because I guess we want to talk about it
now....

Turtleneck wrote:Bump

Because I guess we want to talk about it
now....

solid bump.. (seriously).

MSU can have whoever they want to speak at commencement.. but I'm proud of the students that protest that their university brought a conservative misogynist (redundant?) to campus on what is supposed to be their day..

Robert J Sakimano wrote:solid bump.. (seriously).

MSU can have whoever they want to speak at commencement.. but I'm proud of the students that protest that their university brought a conservative misogynist (redundant?) to campus on what is supposed to be their day..

I don't see what the problem is, Bob. It was not disruptive and was a simple exercise of our freedoms of expression. It's a "nothing to see here" moment.