p.s. I do not appreciate being baited

But Ken Blanchard must be bored, and virtually anything is better than grading student essays, which is what I've been doing with the rest of my weekend.

Ken's posting today about Heather MacDonald's recent LA Times op-ed, which he not so surprisingly accepts without question. I'd heard about MacDonald's op-ed a few days back, and have also followed the response from the feminist blogging community. I think the best, most detailed response came from Jill at Feministe, and it's worth quoting at length, mostly because this discussion is beyond tiring to me and Jill says it better than I could:

So as long as women aren’t defining their experiences as rape — a conclusion she draws based on the fact that many women decided not to report the incidents — it isn’t rape. Unless the woman says it is rape, and then it definitely wasn’t rape, it was her fault for how she dressed and acted.

While Ken and Heather MacDonald see this as evidence that rape just never occurs on campus, I can think of a bunch of reasons why rape survivors might want to convince themselves that what they'd just experienced wasn't rape. Ken is pretty smart, and can probably think of some reasons, too. Jill goes on to refute MacDonald's argument that the 'one in four' statistic is false, and questions MacDonald's criticism of both the "campus rape industry" and the "campus sex bureaucracy" (whatever those might be):

At first, it seems strange that MacDonald would simultaneously attack what she thinks is a hyped campus rape crisis and sex education on campuses. But it’s quite deliberate, and very telling. Anti-rape activism and sex-positive sexual health education are two sides to the same coin: They both challenge the dominant narrative that women’s bodies aren’t our own; they insist that sex is about consent and enjoyment, not violence and harm; and they attack a power structure that sees women as victims and men as predators. Anti-rape activists and sex-positive educators insist that men are not animals. Instead, men are rational human beings fully capable of listening to their partners and understanding that sex isn’t about pushing someone to do something they don’t want to...

It’s conservatives like MacDonald who pine for a time when women kept their legs shut until men forced them open — and were then humiliated and scorned if they dared stand up for themselves.

The psychology of female rape apologists isn’t that hard to figure out. If you can tell yourself that rape survivors asked for it — that they dressed a certain way, flirted too much, drank too much, just changed their minds, or flat-out made it up — you feel safe. You don’t do those things, and so you aren’t at risk.

I’m sympathetic to the need for psychological self-protection. But not when it’s to the detriment of other women. MacDonald works for the conservative Manhattan Institute, and her view isn’t simply a personal one: It’s the standard right-wing misogynist line. And it’s part of a much broader assault on women’s rights and basic bodily autonomy.

You might also want to take a look at "Wrong on Rape", Nora Niedzielski-Eichner's response in the LA Times.

Glad I could help, Ken.