A few weeks ago conservative columnist George Will wrote a column in which he said that on some college campuses being a rape victim was a “coveted status.” The column was in response to statistics that indicate that one in five women in college are the victims of sexual assaults, and more importantly President Obama’s initiative to address the problem of sexual assault on campus. Will’s implication wasn’t that women were getting raped simply to gain all of the benefits of being a rape victim, but rather that many were falsely claiming to have been raped. Or as Will said, when you make “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.” (I’m not quite sure what all those privileges are, beyond a free pelvic exam.)
This is somewhat similar to former Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s controversial comments about “legitimate rape.” Most of the controversy over Akin’s comments involved his ignorant and ill-informed statement that women couldn’t get pregnant if it was “legitimate rape.” But the underlying idea was that there are lots of women who falsely claim they were raped.
These comments are fairly common among conservatives. They seem to think that large numbers of women are evil seductresses, willing to bed a man and then claim rape, either out of embarrassment, or as Will said, to gain some “privilege.”
This makes me wonder: what kind of women do they know? What kind of women have they dealt with?
I’ve never met an evil seductress, and I spent most of my twenties looking for her. I’ll frankly admit that I was (OK, am) a complete dork, which maybe keep the succubi away. But do so many women throw themselves at Mr. Will (and Akin and Hannity and Limbaugh) that he has to be very very careful? Was he such a stud in college that he lived in constant fear that one of his many conquests might turn on him?
When I look at George Will I see a doughy white guy, but maybe women see something different. Maybe they can’t help themselves. Maybe George has thousands of groupies, and certainly some are looking for more than a night of pure bliss. So maybe George knows from personal experience that some women are evil enchantresses.
So I guess my question isn’t, why are so many conservative men misogynistic creeps, but rather, what kind of women do they know?