Dear Students:
I hope this email finds you well and recovering from our most recent examination. If you are a guy please disregard this message. Today, I am writing to the ladies in the class about a serious issue: Campus rape and how to avoid it.
In a recent column, I angered some people by writing about the false rape epidemic that is being created by the Department of Education using federal funding as leverage to get state universities to inflate campus rape statistics. I stand by everything I said in the column. But there is still a threat of rape on every college campus. So women need to learn to protect themselves from the threat by making good decisions.
Unfortunately, your other professors are doing a very bad job of preparing you to face the threat of campus violence in general and sexual assault in particular. Their incompetence on this issue rises to the level of academic malpractice. It is most evident when they employ wildly overused and misleading terms like “rape culture” and “rape myths.”
Sociologists are probably the worst when it comes to explaining rape. They usually talk about how the culture “creates rapists” and “causes rape” through the mechanism of the so-called rape culture. That is because sociologists almost invariably operate from a flawed worldview that assumes people are good until they are corrupted by society.
Of course, sociologists are always at a loss to explain how a bunch of good people can somehow add up to a “bad” society. Most of them majored in sociology because they could not pass a rudimentary course in mathematics. They generally prefer to rely on their intuitions rather than statistical evidence contradicting their utopian visions.
Those of us who are not enslaved by those utopian visions realize that people are not good. They are inherently evil. No one has to teach them how to be calculating and selfish. In fact, there is really no need to explain crime because it is a natural inborn tendency. In fact, we would be better off trying to explain conformity. In other words, we should ask ourselves this question: Given man’s propensity towards evil, how does he ever manage to do anything good?
Given man’s fallen nature, it is incumbent upon us to find ways to hold his dangerous impulses in check. One way we can do that is by teaching a man to internalize moral principles, which will cause him to feel guilt or remorse whenever he does something wrong. Of course, this includes doing bad things to women.
Take a moment to imagine this old example: You are walking across campus at night and you see a group of men approaching you. It is dark outside and you suddenly get nervous because they are talking and laughing loudly. Although it is dark, you can see that they are each carrying something. When they get close, you can see they are carrying their Bibles. When you realize the men are coming home from a Bible study you are naturally relieved. You intuitively understand that there is a relationship between exposure to moral teaching and propensity towards crime.
However, it is equally intuitive that strict reliance on moral teaching as a means of preventing crime is unrealistic. The moral teachers, like the students, are inherently flawed human beings. They aren’t perfect so there must be a backup plan when teachers inevitably fail to inculcate young men with a full appreciation of the need to be respectful towards women.
This is where deterrence comes into play. If men make it to adolescence without having an internal guilt mechanism that keeps them from violating women then there must be an external mechanism to hold them in check. That external mechanism is fear.
I always tell fathers that they need to tell a young man two things when he comes to the door to pick up his daughter for a date: 1. I own a Glock. 2. I also own a shovel. But a father also needs to tell his daughter that she is going to learn to shoot a handgun before she is allowed to get her driver’s license.
Of course, women need to do more than just learn to shoot a handgun if they want to reduce their chances of being sexually assaulted. They also need to make it known that they are willing and able to defend themselves.
Take a moment to imagine another hypothetical situation. There is a rapist walking across campus looking for a potential victim. He passes two women in the dead of night. One of them is wearing a tee shirt that says “Glock.” The other woman is wearing a tee shirt that says “Pink.”
In other words, imagine one woman who has made a conscious decision to communicate that she owns a handgun made by Glock. Then imagine another who has made a conscious decision to communicate that she owns sexy panties made by Victoria’s Secret. Which one does the rapist choose as his victim?
For too long professors have talked about the “rape myth” that a woman plays no role in enhancing or diminishing her chances of being raped. Remember that professors who seek to preserve educational funding by inflating campus rape statistics are the ones who peddle such nonsense. To the extent that higher rape statistics help them secure more federal funding, they have no real incentive to reduce your chances of being a victim.
In the end, you all need to recognize that the world is a dangerous place and that you must take an active part in your self-preservation. That involves getting a gun, learning how to use it, communicating that you have it, and wearing enough clothes to conceal it.
Thank you. And good luck on your next examination.
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