Are all men rapists? - problems with the Violence Against Women Act of 1993

National Review, August 23, 1993 by Stephanie Gutmann

The point is, the view of rape as systemic is leap-frogging from the feminist fringe into more and more areas of our lives. Miss MacKinnon was the drafter of the final language of our new federal sexual-harassment law, the one that defines sexual harassment as pin-ups, jokes, stares - anything that creates "a hostile and offensive environment." (I remember a lawyer at a feminist law conference crowing that, now that the premise of actionable "hostile and offensive" work places was accepted, there was no reason not to press on with the concept of a "hostile and offensive world"!) The rape crisis" feminists' obsession is that life is pervaded with men's hatred for women, that women are systemically pushed down, that the most intimate relationships are never free of this one-sided power dynamic. "Rape as an expression of male dominance has been tolerated because of our society's sexist attitudes," explained Sally Goldfarb. "One of the advantages of the bill is that it codifies the true nature of rape."

The worst thing about VAWA is how anxious the Senate Judiciary Committee seems to be to see the world through the redefiners' eyes. Its 65-page report - "The Response to Rape: Detours on the Road to Equal Justice" - attempts to show that rape and domestic violence are treated far more leniently than other violent crimes. That's how proponents of the bill make the case that there is systemic bias - as in race trials in the South - justifying the intervention of the Federal Government. The less than 100 per cent conviction rate in rape cases is presented as evidence of "the failure of the legal system," not as evidence that there are, sometimes, false accusations. After much guilt-slinging ("We are all responsible for the beliefs and the attitudes that allow us to apply rape laws grudgingly, with suspicion rather than sympathy"; "violence against women reflects ... a failure of our nation's collective imagination"), the report relies on a barrage of statistics to show that crimes against women get perfunctory treatment.

But what about those numbers? Neil Gilbert, a professor of Social Welfare at Berkeley, has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal that "among the violent crimes of rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, the relation between reported crimes and convictions is equally deplorable .... the unfortunate news is that justice is appallingly thin all about - for all victims the norms are insufferable."

A lot of the other statistics are from shaky sources like Mary Koss. In a ubiquitously cited study, 43 per cent of the women she classified as rape victims hadn't classified themselves thus, and 40 per cent went on to sleep with their "rapists" again.

Or Dr. Andrea Parrot of Cornell University, who has written, "Any sexual intercourse without mutual desire is a form of rape. Anyone who is psychologically or physically pressured into sexual conduct is as much a victim of rape as the person who is attacked on the streets." Furthermore, "sometimes women don't recognize sexual assaults as rape. Education is necessary to sensitize both men and women to what constitutes rape." In this context, Senator Hatch's comment that the education and "sensitivity training" portions of the bill are crucial because "a lot of these people don't realize they're committing offensive actions or they're committing crimes" is particularly ominous.