Warning Young Women on Campuses

The real danger to young women on campuses isn't the 'rape culture', writes Camille Paglia, who argues that the majority of incidents "carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape but oafish hookup melodramas..."

The true danger is "the ancient crime of abduction and murder." She points to "the disappearance of UVa sophomore Hannah Graham two weeks ago" as "the latest in a long series of girls-gone-missing cases that often end tragically." (Paglia notes that Hannah's fate remains unknown, although a 32-year-old, 270 pound former football player has been charged with 'abduction with intent to defile'.)

Too many young middleclass women, raised far from the urban streets, seem to expect adult life to be an extension of their comfortable, overprotected homes. But the world remains a wilderness. The price of women’s modern freedoms is personal responsibility for vigilance and self-defense. [snip]

There is a ritualistic symbolism at work in sex crime that most women do not grasp and therefore cannot arm themselves against. It is well-established that the visual faculties play a bigger role in male sexuality, which accounts for the greater male interest in pornography. The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey.

Sex crime springs from fantasy, hallucination, delusion, and obsession. A random young woman becomes the scapegoat for a regressive rage against female sexual power: “You made me do this.” Academic clichés about the “commodification” of women under capitalism make little sense here: It is women’s superior biological status as magical life-creator that is profaned and annihilated by the barbarism of sex crime.

Misled by the naive optimism and “You go, girl!” boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.

Read The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil.