I had a conversation on Twitter with the Princeton Mom. She's the Princeton alum with two sons who also attended Princeton who said girls need to find a husband in college, before the pool of potential mates thins out too much.
As she states:
"If you associate too closely with a man who is significantly below your intellectual level, you will eventually get stupid juice all over you."
Now she's taken up a new cause -- the over reporting of rape, and the responsibility of women to stay sober to protect themselves from being assaulted.
Click here to see the entire interview. It's only two minutes long, and you really should watch it to understand what's going on here.
The Princeton Mom blames the "antagonistic feminist grievance machine" for inflating the issue of date rape on college campuses, and also states that "consent isn't sexy," and that encouraging boys to be certain that the girls with whom they are intimate are ok with continuing -- first base, second base, third base, etc. -- is a "buzzkill." (This is all in the video.)
So, ok. She has her opinions, I have mine. To be honest, I've never really considered myself a hard-core feminist, so that's not where I'm coming from in my disagreement with her. I'm all for equal rights, equal pay, and equal opportunity, but personally I took my husband's name and have depended on him to support me financially ever since we had our first child. And I have no problem with women finding a husband in college, if that's what they want to do. IF they want to.
Our disagreement began when the Princeton Mom responded to Dr. Rutherford's and my tweets of Dr. Rutherford's post by defending her position with the words STAY SOBER = STAY SAFE. I got a little irritated. And then Jonathan Farley, her co-author of this article disputing the number of rapes in this country contacted me by private message on Facebook to share it with me, and I got really irritated.
If you read the article, as I have done many times, you will see that The Princeton Mom and Jonathan Farley, who is an educated man who has taught at CalTech, among other places, are out to prove that:
NOT AS MANY RAPES occur each year as we have been told!!! We are being duped!
I'm not very good at math, and statistics in particular make my eyes roll back in my head -- but there's something about that article that just doesn't sound right to me.
Here is a report from the CDC.
- Nearly 1 in 5 (18.3%) women and 1 in 71 men(1.4%) reported experiencing rape at some time intheir lives.
experienced attempted* or completed (my bold) sexual
assault since entering college.
*Isn't it still a violent assault, even if the rape is thwarted?
- The National Research Council found that that rape is underreported in this country.
That's not to say that the CDC may have some numbers a little bit wrong, and that's not to say that Jonathan Farley's interpretation of statistics he looked at may not be a little bit right. As I said, I'm not very good with numbers.
What I want to understand -- what I really don't understand -- is why The Princeton Mom is putting ANY of the responsibility on the victims. If a college girl gets drunk, does that mean if someone rapes her it's her fault? That she was (God help us) "asking for it?" Because that's what I'm getting from my twitter conversation with her.
DON'T BE A VICTIM, she says. Oh, OK. Just decide you're not going to be raped and it won't happen!
@sharongreenthal The point is...rape isn't as prevalent as the Feminist Grievance Industry would have you believe. Best defense...sobriety!
— Susan Patton (@ThePrincetonMom) October 13, 2014
So, let's assume we can get all the college kids in the United States to stop drinking.
Let's pretend that might happen.
We are talking about COLLEGE GIRLS and BOYS here. Not full-grown, responsible, mature adults. They are experimenting, pushing the limits, testing their sexuality, exploring the world. Many of them will get drunk at some point or another. Hopefully not too often and hopefully not by binge drinking, which is so dangerous. No matter what, though, all sense of right and wrong should never go out the window.
Rape is violence, not intimacy. It doesn't matter how sloppy, stupid drunk a girl is. If she's raped, IT"S NOT HER FAULT.
According to USA Today:
At least half of college students' sexual assaults are associated with alcohol use. In one study, 74 percent of perpetrators and 55 percent of rape victims had been drinking.
So the boys are drunk more often than the girls. What do you know about that.
The boys should never, no matter what, think it's ok to take advantage of or assault a girl who is intoxicated by having sex with her. Being drunk is no excuse for violent assault.
The girls should never be held responsible for being assaulted, no matter how many tequila shots they've done. NEVER.
I am done tweeting the Princeton Mom. She is someone looking for attention, and she's created a persona that is argumentative and regressive. This is, after all, the woman who suggests that girls get cosmetic work done if they need it before they go to college in order to increase their chances of finding a husband. It's not surprising that she thinks college girls should be responsible for keeping from being raped by staying sober and understanding that once they say yes, it's nearly impossible to say no. Otherwise, it's a "buzzkill."
From what I understand, as far as the Princeton Mom is concerned, if a girl is drinking and she's raped, it's her fault. And that makes no sense to me.
Previously published on Empty House Full Mind
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
