Heather Mac Donald's recent article for the City Journal is a case study in irrationality and delusional thinking. Let's put aside the fact that she conflates two completely unrelated issues – she clearly wanted to rant about recent events at Yale, and thought she'd make it seem more current by pretending it had something to do with SEAL Team 6. Her arguments on both counts show a failure to understand feminism in general and the particulars of the cases at hand.
Let's start with what is clearly Mac Donald's main beef: Yale's recent actions against the DKE fraternity for having new pledges chant, “No means yes, yes means anal!” According to Mac Donald, the chant was “an unfunny effort at transgression,” and Yale's response to it is evidence that they have caved to feminism, “the largest and most influential power bloc.” But in order for something to be transgressive, in must violate some boundary, go against what is generally considered acceptable. Unfortunately, the sentiments chanted by DKE's pledge group are more the norm. College women are at the highest risk for date rape, and a large number of college men don't understand that forced intercourse is rape. Women who experience date rape are often told it was their fault for dressing the wrong way, going to the wrong place, or drinking too much. College campuses are notorious for not investigating assault accusations, and rape victims all too often are dismissed by authorities. Rather than holding men responsible for not raping, our culture holds women responsible for not getting raped.
Mac Donald believes that Yale's sanctions against DKE would only be justified “if the pledge chant represented official thinking on campus.” But if Yale had just given DKE a slap on the wrist, as they and other universities have done in similar situations in the past, they would have been accepting sexist and threatening attitudes as normal and inevitable. Instead, school officials enforced actual consequences and sent a clear message that misogynistic attitudes are not welcome on campus. Yale is finally taking the stance that women should not have to accept that their bodies are public property, that assault or the threat of assault should be taken seriously. They are not caving to the unreasonable demands of a feminist regime, but admitting that women should be treated as human beings.
The article gets truly offensive when Mac Donald calls Yale feminist groups hypocritical for objecting to DKE's pro-rape chant when they have hosted sex-positive events on campus. According to this logic, hosting events that encourage people to take consensual pleasure in themselves and their partners means giving up all rights to oppose rape. Geez, ladies, if you stopped being such slutty sluts you wouldn't have to worry about getting raped!
Mac Donald goes on to say that sexism is a myth, and that if she didn't experience discrimination at Yale in the 1970s, there can't possibly be any inequality there today. Mac Donald is fortunate to feel she hasn't experienced sexism, but not all women are that lucky. It's true that we have made a lot of progress since her college days, but women are still more likely than men to experience harassment and assault. They are paid less and promoted less than men in most fields, and face expectations in career and family that men do not. Objecting to pro-rape chants does not mean that women are too emotionally fragile to meet the demands of a military special forces team, and it is ludicrous to suggest that it does.
Yes, that is where Mac Donald goes with this convoluted argument. She argues that women can't possibly be fit to serve in military special-operations units if they are so thin-skinned as to oppose hateful sexist speech on college campuses. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me, either. She is clearly dedicated to enforcing the status quo, but when you have to abandon common sense to do so, it may be time to reassess your stance.
[Original article: Sisterhood and the Seals by Heather Mac Donald]
Well put!
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