Co-ed actually refers (or at least once did refer) to women who are attending mixed-gender institutions rather than women-only ones–which we still have.
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Each time I hear or read about the GOP’s increasingly strident rationalizations against gun regulation, immigration reform, climate change, and women’s rights, I am struck with how utterly ridiculous their arguments must sound to the rest of the civilized world.
George is not merely wrong. He is ridiculous.
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George needed a good slap in the face with the facts.
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Nevertheless we all need to hear it said and written, if only because to the ethically deaf, truth unspoken is truth denied.
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Bravo.
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Will is not only a pig, he’s the type that finds fault with everyone else but refuses to leave his gated community to see how others really live, his ugly pompous privileged face gives me the willies, when I see that ugly kisser on television for some strange reason I think about Piñata’s and a big wooden club. This guy…this guy…not my kinda guy!
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Yep, and for a good reason, only not hard enough.
a wing-nut with brains is an oxymoron!!
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But women in all-female institutions are a very small minority of the women attending colleges and universities. And why the need to make that distinction anyway? Such a distinction has never been made for men.
I don’t have a problem with calling an institution itself co-educational; I do have a problem with referring to their female students, but not their male ones, as “co-eds.”
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That’s a question I ask myself nearly every time I read a Will column. The despicable curmudgeon should have been sent to the showers years ago. And this consistent attack against victims of rape that appears to be a policy plank of the GOTP is both horrifying and puzzling by turn. Don’t these men have wives, daughters, sisters and mothers? How can they so crudely dismiss the savage violence of rape? Our country is in sad shape when a popinjay like Will remains a respected columnist while he spews nothing but hate and misinformation.
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She is on twitter - I’ve been following her for quite some time. Why not ask if she voted and for what persuasion? I’m guessing Dem - because I don’t follow any R’s (haven’t met one yet that wasn’t nasty on twitter - I’m sure some do exist…)
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Dr. Gunter’s letter is eloquent and powerful. I commend her courage in proffering it. It can’t have been easy to write, let alone publish, but her passion, no doubt, drove her to be heard.
She deserves public support from all who support her views on this devastating societal scourge.
I invite all, male and female, who share her and my concerns and dismay about Mr Will’s positions on this important issue to address him directly via his email address (assuming he hasn’t closed it down by now):
Georgewill@washpost.com
Here is what I sent him:
Mr. Will,
I am profoundly disturbed, and, on behalf of my fellow males offended, at your insensitivity to the extent that you have trivialized the problem of sexual assault in our society.
I began working on this issue in 1990, and can tell you, after listening to hundreds of victims recount their stories, and then working as well with men and women who perpetrated sexual assault on others, that you have contributed profoundly to the pain of all, victim and perpetrator alike, who read your words.
What all of them want most profoundly is to hear words which promote understanding and healing, not the kind of condescension and trivialization that you generate.
If you want to have your eyes opened and truly come to understand this issue I invite you to come down off your lofty intellectual pedestal and spend a few weeks volunteering at a rape crisis center where you can sit in on support group sessions and hear the truth about what sexual assault is truly like, and, if you’re lucky, hear what it is like for women to live in a kind of relentless sexually hostile environment which we males impose upon them.
You apparently have no concept of the depths of this problem or the damage it is causing to all members of our society, men, women, and children.
Time to wake up.
Dave
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What does prissy little George Will, know about the issue of sexual assault?
He wrote this column simply to appeal to his Faux News audience.
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To social conservatives, if a woman is sexually assaulted:
- Boys will be boys, and you cannot go against nature.
- She was probably dressed scantily and therefore had it coming.
- It was God’s will, so give thanks for the blessed event.
- Shit happens, so suck it up and deal with it.
- Her body’s defenses will prevent her from becoming pregnant.
- There’s no need for “Plan B”-type contraception, because that’s what rape kits are for.
- What’s “rape”?
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Will is an artifact. Perhaps he should would benefit from a few days incarceration in one of MSNBC’s prison shows, and write MoDo style what it feels like to be raped.
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One wonders if Will would feel the same if he found himself in an environment where he were preyed upon as women are at todays colleges–say high security prison? Would he then want demand protection? I think we all know the answer.
George Will is one of many ignorant pundits and politicians that is clinging to his ignorance because apparently he knows no other way to ‘survive’. There are just too many that would rather go down with the ship of fools they ‘know’ than grow and evolve into better human beings embracing the unkownn.
I think the truth is that it is terrifying for many of them to see the shape of their shattered reality and they have to cling to their tribe for reassurance. From that perspective I have compassion but it is all the more reason to get them away from positions of power so they can’t keep pulling the ‘verbal’ trigger.
At what point is letting this go on like all of us watching seriously drunk people get in a car to drive instead of fighting to take the keys out of their hands?
I’m so tired of these emotionally stunted men trying to redefine rape so as to exclude any number of situations in order to exonerate themselves from the misogynistic ideas they have about sex, whether those ideas remain in their fantasies or they have been acted out in reality at some point. Rape is having sex with someone who hasn’t given you the express permission to have sex with them. Period.
These men are either so desperate for sexual contact from a woman or so narcissistic that their own sexual gratification eclipses everything else. These people put themselves in the situation of the rape victim thinking, “I don’t see the problem. Some chick gets me drunk and has her way with me? Sounds like a party.” The problem is that this fantasy as it plays out in their minds isn’t rape. They are willing participants.
Pardon the vulgarity, but there’s only one way to get through to this “two tits, a hole, and a heatbeat” crowd:
Rape isn’t what you perceive it to be in your twisted fantasies. It’s Zed and Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction. It’s you going out to a bar and meeting a couple of guys, hitting it off, and having a good time. One of them suggests going to another bar, and on the way to the parking lot, he and his buddy bend you over the hood of his car and take turns violating you, and you can’t fend off both of them at once. Take heart, though. Now you can enjoy the privileges of being a rape victim.
When this scenario etches its way into your brain, you may start to have some empathy for the women who face this very real threat every day. Rape is common enough that women have to take precautions to avoid these situations all the time. And there are predators who are looking for the moment they drop their guard or make a mistake, and then they pounce. Imagine it was you who had to constantly defend against these jackals.
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It seems folks confuse his overbearing and arrogant style ( as in the case with many University types ) with intellect.
That’s the kind of rhetoric I expect from, say, Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz. Well done.
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Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence- from domestic abuse to political terror, by Judith Herman, M.D.
The groundbreaking book on trauma, wherein the territory is laid out accessibly, including societal aversion to and amnesia of the subject.
"To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered. . . . "
Above is an excerpt in this online intro: http://www.jimhopper.com/trauma_and_recovery/