On Date Rape and Fallacious Arguments
Camille Paglia is not a stranger to writing divisive editorials. As a self-proclaimed ‘social critic’, she said in response to criticism of her first book “Sexual Personae” published in 1990, “it was intended to please no one, and to offend everyone” (20Q). Thus, it should be no surprise that she has views on date rape that are unpopular for the current social mindset. In her editorial “On Date Rape”, Paglia declares “my kind of feminism stresses personal responsibility”, and concludes that if women are raped, it is because they do not acknowledge the inherent risk of interacting with men and are not protecting themselves accordingly (144, 145). In the editorial, Paglia is unapologetically unsympathetic …show more content…
She starts the first of these by declaring that the “young feminists today are deluded” , privileged, and sheltered white females – and this is their only reason for expecting safety in interactions with men, stating, “they come from a protected, white, middle class world, and they expect everything to be safe”, as wells as “many of these other women… are sexually repressed white girls coming out of pampered homes” (Paglia, On Date Rape 144). Next, Paglia continues her hasty generalizations by stating “notice how it is rarely Black or Hispanic women who are making a fuss about this in the media or on campus – they come from cultures that are fully sexual, and they are fully realistic about the dangers of life” (On Date Rape 144). She is assuming quite a bit about the motivations and reasons behind the apparent lack of Black and Hispanic women reporting rape, given that she is providing no evidence or data to suggest that what she is saying is factual. First, she assumes that these cases are not in the media due to the cultures being “fully sexual and fully realistic”, but does not consider that perhaps the media is underrepresenting minorities who are victims of crime (Paglia, On Date Rape 144). The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report in 2012 which compared the rates of unreported crimes from 2006-2010; the study estimated that 65% of rape or sexual assault crimes went unreported, but the percentages of unreported crimes in each race were about the same – 54% of white crime victims did not report to the police, while the percentage was only 46% for Black crime victims, and 51% for Hispanic crime victims (Langton, et. al. 5, 7). So, based on these numbers, we can safely say that violent crimes are going unreported in about equal amounts for each race that Paglia presents, so it is not simply that “it’s rarely Black or Hispanic women… making a fuss about this in the media” (On Date
Camille Paglia is not a stranger to writing divisive editorials. As a self-proclaimed ‘social critic’, she said in response to criticism of her first book “Sexual Personae” published in 1990, “it was intended to please no one, and to offend everyone” (20Q). Thus, it should be no surprise that she has views on date rape that are unpopular for the current social mindset. In her editorial “On Date Rape”, Paglia declares “my kind of feminism stresses personal responsibility”, and concludes that if women are raped, it is because they do not acknowledge the inherent risk of interacting with men and are not protecting themselves accordingly (144, 145). In the editorial, Paglia is unapologetically unsympathetic …show more content…
She starts the first of these by declaring that the “young feminists today are deluded” , privileged, and sheltered white females – and this is their only reason for expecting safety in interactions with men, stating, “they come from a protected, white, middle class world, and they expect everything to be safe”, as wells as “many of these other women… are sexually repressed white girls coming out of pampered homes” (Paglia, On Date Rape 144). Next, Paglia continues her hasty generalizations by stating “notice how it is rarely Black or Hispanic women who are making a fuss about this in the media or on campus – they come from cultures that are fully sexual, and they are fully realistic about the dangers of life” (On Date Rape 144). She is assuming quite a bit about the motivations and reasons behind the apparent lack of Black and Hispanic women reporting rape, given that she is providing no evidence or data to suggest that what she is saying is factual. First, she assumes that these cases are not in the media due to the cultures being “fully sexual and fully realistic”, but does not consider that perhaps the media is underrepresenting minorities who are victims of crime (Paglia, On Date Rape 144). The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report in 2012 which compared the rates of unreported crimes from 2006-2010; the study estimated that 65% of rape or sexual assault crimes went unreported, but the percentages of unreported crimes in each race were about the same – 54% of white crime victims did not report to the police, while the percentage was only 46% for Black crime victims, and 51% for Hispanic crime victims (Langton, et. al. 5, 7). So, based on these numbers, we can safely say that violent crimes are going unreported in about equal amounts for each race that Paglia presents, so it is not simply that “it’s rarely Black or Hispanic women… making a fuss about this in the media” (On Date