Ignorant Or Stupid...Or Evil?

Amy Alkon reports:

Bloomberg reporters John Lauerman and Jennifer Surane interviewed multiple men from colleges like Harvard and Stanford who expressed concern over what was once known as a "hook-up culture" but is now labeled by feminists as "rape culture." The change in terminology ensures that all responsibility is placed on men, just because of their gender.

Take Malik Gill of Harvard University, who said he wouldn't even give a female classmate a beer.

"I don't want to look like a predator," Gill told Bloomberg. "It's a little bit of a blurred line."

This is the environment the lack of due process for men has led to:

William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, told the Bloomberg reporters about a patient who was kissing a girl during a party and began thinking about what would happen if things went further.

"'I want to go to law school or medical school after this,'" the student said, according to Pollack. "'I said to her, it's been nice seeing you.'"

Pollack also noted that the media attention to campus sexual assault has led to a "witch-hunt" mentality.

"Most males would never do anything to harm a young woman," Pollack told the Bloomberg reporters. But the current focus is "starting to scare the heck out of the wrong people.

...and Dr. Helen Smith analyzes:

We will keep hearing the question from women, “where have all the good men gone?” as they live in their cocoons, never understanding that the guys went on strike a while back and many have left for good....If college women do not understand the injustices they are witnessing against men in our colleges today and strive to help, then they are part of the problem. They reap what they sow.

The last sentence is the key: "They" -- generally speaking, women who've embraced the fatuous notions of "oppressive capitalist patriarchy" and a "rape culture," or who've used those fictions to create a state of affairs within which their imputed victim status can win them legal and social privileges -- either:

• Know nothing about incentive effects; or:
• Lack the mental capacity to understand their action; or:
• Know and understand them but actively sought the conditions they've brought about.

No need to choose only one explanation, Gentle Reader; there are plenty of women to populate all three categories more than adequately. Indeed, some women fall into more than one.

Incentive effects -- sometimes called second-order effects by economists -- require time to manifest. The engendering agency must persist for some interval, thereby conditioning the minds of those subject to it to believe that:

• It will continue for the foreseeable future; and:
• They cannot escape its coverage by flight or cleverness.

Tax laws have incentive effects: taxed behavior decreases, sometimes to zero, much to the chagrin of left-leaning types who'd love to establish tax rates of 100% for "the rich"...those who dare to harbor unapproved opinions and allegiances, anyway. Penal laws have incentive effects: when a law is passed that bans some good or service, that thing passes into the control of the underworld, where dwell persons willing to risk the ire of the gendarmerie if the profits are sufficient. Standards of jurisprudence have incentive effects: when it becomes acceptable for Smith to sue Jones for harm Smith did to himself by misusing Jones's product, the product will either become far more expensive -- tort insurance costs a bundle, y'know -- or completely unavailable.

And social attitudes have incentive effects. A pervasive attitude to the effect that all men are potential rapists, that even an unwanted glance should be legally actionable, and that what matters most is women's feelings rather than objective standards of justice, will cause barriers to spring up between the sexes that only the very bravest men will attempt to surmount.

When the Duke Lacrosse players were preconvicted by academia and the press, against all the evidence, of raping Crystal Gail Mangum, a genuine, flying-lead "war between the sexes" became unavoidable. To further their "narrative" about "patriarchal capitalist oppression of women and minorities," the Left, especially the academic Left, elevated the unsupported word of a black stripper -- who would later be convicted of child abuse, arson, and attempted murder -- to the status of gospel truth. They allowed the mountain of adverse evidence, to say nothing of the backgrounds and alibis of the accused young men, no respect at all. Indeed, the young men's ultimate exoneration didn't dent the syndrome at all; the ordeal they endured while Michael Nifong's politically motivated prosecution persisted was more expense and suffering than an innocent man should endure.

That the worst effects should manifest on American college campuses is entirely understandable. The Left has a powerful degree of control over academia, the one and only venue where its lunatic notions are tolerated and its social-engineering schemes can be tried out without risk to itself. In collusion with the Obama Administration, colleges have all but uniformly erected a "guilty by accusation" standard for accusations of sexual misconduct made by a young woman against a young man. The accused is afforded no due-process protections, and often is denied even the right to representation by counsel. In those cases where the accusations are refuted objectively afterward, and there are many such, little to nothing is done in remediation of the injustice inflicted upon the innocent young man.

Is it even plausible that a thinking person could fail to see how this would harden young men's attitudes against the weaker sex? The typical young man to emerge from such an environment will be extremely wary of women at the very least. The braver ones will adopt an even more pernicious attitude: "You want to see yourself as a victim, babe? Well, let me help you along with that!" Worst of all, attitudes acquired early in life tend to be far harder to dispel than those acquired later; the afflicted person hasn't yet had enough experience of change to be open to the suggestion thereof, even when it might be to his advantage.

There are women persons in the feminist movement who actively desire that barriers between the sexes rise high and grow very firm. Not all of them are lesbians. However, the great majority of women who self-identify as feminists are simply unable to grasp what their "movement" has wrought. It hasn't occurred to them that "having it all" requires a man...or that there is no way to conscript a Y-chromosome-bearer for purposes of matrimony, or coitus, or progeny. As of this writing, at least.

Dr. Helen's book Men On Strike is a valuable survey of the incentive effects of contemporary feminism's attempt to promote women as strong and independent creatures who deserve to "have it all" while securing for the weaker sex the privileges and immunities granted to helpless victims. America's colleges and universities are currently the front lines of the war that has erupted. It's a conflict that will have no victors.

Despite the social carnage, there remain persons who watch happily, in self-righteous satisfaction, as the corpses pile up and the infrastructure of American society is demolished. Were feminists of better overall character aware of those persons and their aims, matters might be rectified...in time. However, an attitude of hostility, once established, cannot swiftly or easily be dispelled. For the foreseeable future, the "marriage strike," the "paternity strike," and the no-man's-land character of America's college campuses will persist.