This thought experiment makes a bad microcosm/macrocosm connection. In her example, a one rapist strikes one part of campus over one period of time. Sure, for a brief period of time, female students would be advised to avoid that spot.

But if we extend this example, it would mean that a campus has one small area where many rapists are raping many women over an extended period of time. That would suggest some horrible problem at the university. Women would be smart to avoid that area, but they'd also be smart to avoid the entire university, which would then have demonstrated an inability to maintain the safety of its students.

And if a university had one area to which women couldn't go because of safety reasons, we'd say that university was being run quite poorly and not in the interests of its female students.

We'd then demand that the university do a little more than ask women politely not to go to that area. "Dear female students, please note that Rape Alley is hereby given over to the rapists, and we ask that you avoid that area." Of course, the rapists will then spread out, knowing that the only thing stopping their rapes is the choice by female students to avoid parts of the campus.

If the rapes were to continue and spread, over a large area of campus and large area of time, women would no longer be able to make these free choices, for the entire campus would become the site of a potential rape.

The only free choice open would be for female students to avoid that university.

Here's another thought experiment: if black men were repeatedly beaten to death in one part of town, would we say, "Stupid black men, they knew they shouldn't have gone to that part of town"?

Or if rich men were repeatedly robbed in one part of town, would we say, "Stupid rich men, they should know better than to carry any property around with them"?

Or if drunk drivers were continually getting into accidents on Friday or Saturday nights, would we tell their victims, "Well, you should have known better than to drive when the drunk drivers are out"?

Luther, as a kid, did your parents ever warn you that there were places that it was dangerous for you to go, or warn you about staying out late at night? Have you ever read a travel guide where it tells you not to walk alone in a certain part of the city?

Do you think the people offering this kind of advice are participating in a "blame-the-victim" culture and are unwittingly participating in handing the streets over to criminals?

Luther - the police put up road blocks to catch drunk drivers when they expect them to be out, like on New Year's Eve. I still take responsibility for myself, by getting home from work at a reasonable time on that day and not going back out. And the appearance of gang graffiti in our neighborhood in Memphis helped us in our decision to move out, even though the police are doing what they can to control crime. None of this is either-or.

See my analogy from the post that is now off the main page: if you leave your laptop in plain sight in your unlocked car, and it is stolen, the person who takes it is a thief and there's no excuse for his actions. At the same time, if you don't want your laptop stolen, you lock it up. It's just prudent behavior. You don't demand that the police scour the city to lock up every conceivable laptop thief so that you can continue to leave your car unlocked with impunity. I mean, you could, but you'll lose an awful lot of laptops before you give up and just lock the dang car.

My daughter knows better than to engage in underage drinking (it's illegal for a reason) and she certainly knows better than to drink to the point that she loses control over her body and what happens to it. Because I taught her better, and in addition she has good sense. I don't think she feels in any way oppressed by this. Once again, it's simple prudence.

You say: "We'd then demand that the university do a little more than ask women politely not to go to that area.". FTA: "Would the State University administrators tell girls to stay away from the area until the rapist is caught?" Did you miss the "until the rapist is caught" part? In McDonald's scenario, the university isn't sitting on its hands tolerating rape.

Laura, the "until the rapist is caught" is partly what makes the microcosm not represent the macrocosm. A temporary measure is not a permanent measure. What we can ask folks to endure over a week or month is not what we can ask them to endure always and in general.

We need to distinguish precautions from responsibilities. If a campus admits boys who cannot control themselves not to commit a crime, then there's a deeper problem than can be fixed by women taking on new precautions. As long as getting drunk is legal, it's not a woman's responsibility not to get drunk. But as long as rape is illegal, it's a man's responsibility not to rape drunk girls.

Simply put, MacDonald is asking women to give up legal rights to protect themselves. The bigger question is: how have we created a culture in which women need to give up rights to protect themselves? That's where the attention needs to be focused. For all the modesty in the world isn't going to stop rape; if a man is willing to rape a drunk girl, how long will it take before, left to its own devices, it's "She was asking for it by talking to me" or "She was asking for it by looking at me" or "She shouldn't have come to the party is she didn't want sex"?

It occurs to me, though, that there is another piece of the puzzle. I wonder if anybody is talking to the boys.

Like, if you are contemplating having sex with a girl you MUST be sure that she consents, and that she is not incapable of consenting, before you proceed. It is illegal to have sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent. Yes, perhaps she shouldn't have gotten that drunk, but it its still illegal for you to do it. We take accusations of rape very seriously here. If you are accused, even if you are ultimately exonerated, you will go through some unpleasantness. At the very least you will have the expense of defending yourself, and your education will be interrupted. So protect yourself. If you don't know the girl, or if you are not absolutely certain that she is consenting, prudence dictates that you leave her alone.

Do you suppose anybody is telling the guys that?

Laura, I'm sure freshman men and women are given the rules on date rape and alcohol when they arrive on campus.

But in any case, it should be clear to boys that if a girl can barely talk or walk, it's taking advantage of her to have sex with her. I don't believe that guys who do so are wee innocents. They know full well that they only way they are getting sex is by getting the girl drunk. Such guys talk about it, they plan it, and it's rape, premeditated, calculated rape.

I mean, ask a guy if it's OK to steal stuff from a drunk guy's apartment. Just because the drunk guy let them in, threw a party, and cannot stop the robbery doesn't make it any less a robbery.

This isn't to say that there's not gray areas and he-said-she-said rape cases. But it shouldn't be too much to ask that boys make sure girls actually want to have sex with them before having sex with them. Boys who do otherwise are criminals, plain and simple.

"They know full well that they only way they are getting sex is by getting the girl drunk."

And yet you object to suggesting to girls that they not allow that to happen to them.

"Getting the girl drunk" indicates that she is a passive player in the scenario. I give girls a lot more credit than that. I think generally people who are mature enough to go away to school are capable of looking out for themselves and can be expected not to buy into the mindset that they need to be able to act as stupid as they want and that it's random strangers' responsibility to make sure nothing bad happens to them. As I said before, I think some people who go away to school don't have that maturity yet and they need someone to spell it out to them.

Also, your statement that a boy (if we're going to say "girl" then "boy" must be appropriate, yes?) knows he will only get sex if he gets the girl drunk, then you are assuming that a girl's default position on sex is "no". I think it should be but I don't think it always is. Do you think that girls never consent to casual sex? Do you think that girls don't get tipsy and then consent? Do you think it never happens that girls get drunk in order to have sex and then disclaim responsibility so they can think of themselves as good girls and still have fun? I think human nature is more complex than you are making out.

Bottom line, individuals of either sex need to look out for themselves.

Adults know that just because something is legal, that doesn't make it OK or even advisable. In the case of girls under 21, drinking alcohol is not even legal.

Laura, the problem is the double standard with rape and other crimes. If a drunk man gets mugged and murdered, no one is going to say, "Well, he was drunk, maybe he wanted to give his money away." Few will even say, "He was drunk, so that makes the robbery partly his fault."

Second, there's a difference between a boy knowing he will try to get a girl blind drunk and rape her, and a girl going to a party to get drunk. The former is premeditation of a crime; the former is a perfectly legal way to spend an evening.

Third, being immature or irresponsible does not make one open to a free-for-all of crime. That's why it's the law: it protects us all, rich or poor, smart or dumb, mature or immature.

Fourth, there is no such thing as a "girl's default position on sex." There are only ever individual circumstances of actual sex or rape. If a girl is too drunk to make a free decision, her prior beliefs don't really matter. (And sure, there's a blurry legal line here, but that's life.)

Fifth, I'm not denying that human nature is complex. But just because some people fake victimhood is no reason to loosen legal strictures.

I think some of you are missing a major point Macdonald makes, which is that, as the title makes clear, there is no rape epidemic on college campuses. Of course rape is a horrible crime and a man who commits it should be punished to the full extent of the law. But those pushing the line that one-fifth to one-quarter of college coeds are raped have been proven wrong repeatedly. As Macdonald notes:

"Koss’s (who first came up with the 25% rate in the 80s) study had serious flaws. Her survey instrument was highly ambiguous, as University of California at Berkeley social-welfare professor Neil Gilbert has pointed out. But the most powerful refutation of Koss’s research came from her own subjects: 73 percent of the women whom she characterized as rape victims said that they hadn’t been raped. Further—though it is inconceivable that a raped woman would voluntarily have sex again with the fiend who attacked her—42 percent of Koss’s supposed victims had intercourse again with their alleged assailants."

If 1 in 4 female college students around the country were, indeed, being raped each year, campuses would become virtual police states, enrollments would be dropping, and university presidents and flacks would be spending all their time defending their institutions against charges of the worst sort of misogyny. Civil and criminal charges would put may schools out of business.

That is not happening, although a lot of careless behavior is, both among young men and young women. I don't wish to minimize suffering of those who are sexually assaulted. We should do all we can to catch and punish rapists. It is interesting, though, that many of those who believe in the hysterical claims of the campus rape and sexual harassment industries are also anti-capital punishment and anti-cop.

"Experts" who spout such myths, along with those who claim "institutional racism" and "unconscious bias" are political and economic actors who have a lot to gain by producing "acadmemic" work that is little more than blood libel. How can one prove he is not biased against women or a racist unless he repents and gives in to the demands of the accusers?

TG: Salon already debunked MacDonald's abuse of Koss's research and other data sets. See

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/02/25/rape/index.html

Don't know how to reply to your comment about campuses as police states except to say that the police presence on campuses such as Penn's and Yale's, and the police's ability to overlook illegal student behavior while pursuing every minor infraction by local residents, suggest that campuses are more like colonial territories than police states. (Check out a Friday night at the Sigma Tau fraternity at Yale, and ask yourself: Why isn't every person here arrested for drunken and disorderly behavior?)

I'm only half kidding about that last paragraph.

"the [latter] is a perfectly legal way to spend an evening."

A, not if she's under 21.

B, legal doesn't mean smart or moral or right.

It's legal to leave your house and car unlocked all the time. Try it and let me know how it works out for you, as you are posting on the internet from the library because your home computer is gone.

If a man gets so drunk he doesn't know what's going on, passes out and wakes up with his pockets empty, you think he's going to get any sympathy? He most likely would know better than even to admit that he let such a thing happen. "You dummy" is the least his friends will say to him.

Once again, if this: "a boy knowing he will try to get a girl blind drunk and rape her" is a frequent occurrence, why on earth do you object to girls being warned against letting that happen? Why? "He is trying to get you drunk so he can rape you." Would you really not tell a girl that if you saw it happening?

But Luther is presuming a universal position on sex for men, "yes". I can't see any place where he considers it possible for a man to have unwanted sex. What I wonder is, is modern feminism OK with reverting to the Victorian idea that sex is always something done by a man to a woman?

Another interesting question is what difference the man being drunk makes. Is he expected to make correct judgements of the woman's level of inebriation regardless of his own? If so, is he not de facto required to be careful about getting drunk in potentially sexual situations? That leaves the question, why only men face this requirement, but not women. This loops back to the previous in asking "two people get drunk and then have sex they didn't want - who is at fault?".

Laura, morals are one thing, laws are another.

But even a criminal (an under 21 girl who drinks) can be the victim of a crime (rape).

I have no problem if campus administrators tell students, "Hey, kids, best plan is not to get stinking drunk." I simply don't want campuses to assume that it's the girl's responsibility to stop rapists, to assume that a raped girl has done something equally wrong to get raped.

And old guy, I do think a girl could rape a boy, could get him stinking drunk and sexually molest him. (Full rape might be difficult -- blind drunk men usually have, uh, some difficulties.) And I don't believe that all men want to have sex all the time. Like I wrote before, the prior beliefs of a boy or girl mean nothing. All that matters is what they do in particular circumstances.

Sure, there is a gray area, as there is in *all* legal situations. If two people get drunk and have sex, can one claim rape? If one of them refused to have sex and was forced, the courts still hold the other drunk party responsible for rape. Perhaps that's a double standard: drunkenness negates consent but it doesn't excuse an act of violence.

"I have no problem if campus administrators tell students, 'Hey, kids, best plan is not to get stinking drunk.' I simply don't want campuses to assume that it's the girl's responsibility to stop rapists, to assume that a raped girl has done something equally wrong to get raped."

OK, then, we agree. And I think these statements are pretty well consistent with MacDonald's article as quoted by Erin.

Erin - you say that you don't see MacDonald so much as a moralist as a pragmatist. I have thought for a long time that morals arise from pragmatism. People learned not to do X so that Y wouldn't happen. Then we go for generations without Y happening, and we forget why we decided X was not a good idea. Look at how single motherhood has been destigmatized, and then at the social ills that come from single-parent homes and at the rise in STDs. Inner-cities are struggling with these things. You used to read about how people in the ghetto couldn't afford middle-class morality but I think the reality is that they couldn't afford not to have it.

Luther: the Salon piece you reference – an angry screed, really – hardly debunks Macdonald’s article. In fact, the studies to which the author refers (links) seem to back up Macdonald’s contention. For example, a 2001 Dept of Justice study found that 3% of college women experienced a completed or attempted rape – that is, oh, 22% or so less than what Koss has claimed. A 1997 Univ of So. Carolina study found that 7% were victims of rape – again a much lower percentage than what is claimed by the believers in the rape epidemic. It appears to me that a certain kind of hysteria, in combination with an ideological mindset, is at work in the research of people like Koss, and it is reasonable to point that out so that we can more honestly address the very real problem of violence against women (the 3% and 7% figures are awful in and of themselves).

As I’m sure you know, researchers such as Carol Gilligan created a non-existent “girl crisis” in the early 90s. The press, many educators, academics and parents bought into the theory, and it took years for it to be debunked (or for the press to publish the doubters). The fact was that girls were doing quite well, compared to boys, in areas such as mental health and college enrollment, including grad school. That trend continues. Again, it's not that I'm against addressing issues of crime against women or youth development, but that I’m skeptical of the claims made by academics with an axe to grind.

Re: My campus police-state comment. I believe that if the 1 in 4 campus rape percentage were true, campuses policies regarding student behavior would become much more restrictive, and law enforcement would be stepped up. No more coed dorms, no alcohol, no parties, zero tolerance, The Man coming down hard on everybody. Most students and faculty members would demand more draconian measures to stop what would correctly be characterized as a holocaust of innocence. Common sense tells me, however, that coeds at schools such as Yale, Penn and the Univ of Chicago are at a much greater risk of being attacked off campus in New Haven, Philadelphia and the Windy City.

Or--and this possibility is too horrible to contemplate--these self-professed women's advocates really do believe that a drunken hookup is rape, and yet are withholding from women the simplest, surest way to prevent being raped, simply in order to preserve the principle of male fault.
Possibly. Option #3: No one will ever, ever encourage modesty or chastity. If you tell women that it would be in their best interests to avoid drunken hook-ups in favour of solid, stable, caring relationships, you may as well be returning to the 19th century, as far as modern feminists are concerned. Go that route, and you are afraid of female sexuality, trying to repress women, or saying that sexual satisfaction is only for men.

Not like that possibility isn't horrible, either - to allow women to be raped so that third-wave feminists can maintain a sense of sexual sameness.