Conservative Commentator Says Rape Victims Are Equally Guilty If They’re Drunk
Conservative commentator James Taranto is known for his outlandish left-field viewpoints, but his latest comments are making headlines a little more than usual.
via Think Progress
In a Wall Street Journal column published on Monday, conservative commentator James Taranto argued that a “balanced” approach to the college sexual assault crisis involves placing equal blame on rapists and their victims, if both of them were drinking alcohol. The fact that intoxicated rape victims aren’t held responsible for their assault is “self-evidently unjust,” according to Taranto.
“If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn’t determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver’s sex.
But when two drunken college students ‘collide,’ the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault,” Taranto writes. He goes on to conclude that efforts to address sexual violence on college campuses are creating a culture in which “women, but not men, are absolved of responsibility by virtue of having consumed alcohol.”
Taranto has a long history of approaching sexual assault from this perspective. The Wall Street Journal columnist has previously argued that combating sexual assault in the military amounts to an “an effort to criminalize male sexuality” and a “war on men.” In his most recent column, he reprises his concerns that men are often falsely accused of misconduct by women who have not actually been raped.
This sounds like completely bogus logic to us, but what’s your take on Taranto’s comments, Bossip fam?