“Culture” Wars — Update
by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky
Only in the mind of the modern feminist can an orthodox Rabbi advocate for pre-marital sexual abstinence and be deemed a rape apologist. Such was the peculiar response in some precincts to my “A Novel Idea”.
Arguing over statistics and studies is a futile exercise, as the studies conflict, methodologies differ and even definitions are often imprecise. For those intellectually capable of an open mind, I urge you to read the esteemed social scientist Heather MacDonald’s cover story in the Weekly Standard (November 2, 2015) subtitled “The Phony Campus Rape Crisis,” which will function as a devastating rebuttal to the criticism that has been directed here, and written in a much stronger manner than was my essay although our objectives were different.
To mention but two “statistics”: one blogger presumed that 23% of my congregants have “likely personally experienced sexual assault.” But “sexual assault,” as some studies, including that of the Justice Department, define it, includes even an unwanted peck on the cheek, an execrable practice still seen in some liberal Orthodox precincts, but hardly synonymous with rape except to a certain subset of fanatical activists. Or, “95%” of college rapes go unreported to the police, but they are, apparently, reported to researchers. 95%? And perhaps it is 395%, or 45%? Perhaps some of these assaults are more akin to the circumstances I explored in my essay (as have others, see George F. Will’s column on a related subject).
To those who persist in citing the “1 in 5 women on campus raped” canard, I refer you to this new Prager University video released this week (as if to come to my rescue!) that debunks this datum. If nothing else, all of the above should allow for a calmer discussion of this matter.
What did I write in my essay, whose every word I stand by? Here’s a synopsis. The reality is that rape is an abominable crime that is an unimaginable nightmare and deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. To be falsely accused of rape is also an abominable crime that is an unimaginable nightmare for which the lying complainant deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Both are life-altering events and in both cases the victims deserve our fullest support and the victimizers our unmitigated opprobrium. Obviously, instances of rape exceed false claims of rape, and as I noted, “even one is too many.”
That is the black (the former scenario) and the white (the latter scenario) of the matter. But the professional feminists see only the black. There is no white, no other side, the woman is always right, the man is always wrong. In that echo chamber, I am certain, that makes sense. In a world where truth, justice, decency and fairness matter, that contention is risible.
But I addressed both those scenarios only in passing. My focus was on the “gray” area, the “he said/she said” scenario, where the events are fueled by what I termed the culture of promiscuity and entitlement on campus, where the couple had a relationship and often a long term physical relationship, and where “feelings” – especially post facto feelings – matter more than legality or fairness. These are cases where the woman sometimes does not feel like a “victim” for weeks or months after the encounter (usually coincident with a breakup or a conversation with a feminist adviser who convinces her that she was assaulted without consent). These are cases in which there are no witnesses, no evidence, and no corroboration. They exist. They are troubling no matter who is right and who is wrong. But the feminist activists see no “gray.” The man is always guilty. Always.
Indeed, the “hookup culture” on campus has created a sense of male entitlement concomitant with some females’ pursuit of unlimited pleasure. It is in that culture that, invariably, women – who, as I noted, have a greater emotional investment in physical intimacy than do men – will over time feel used, abused, scorned and empty. And it is in that culture that, I submit, the problematic area of “he said/she said” is more likely to arise. It is for that scenario that I suggested a return to traditional moral practices, such that are already mandatory for Jews but would even benefit non-Jews. The bloggers who mock that suggestion are playing into the hands of lecherous young men and, ironically, endangering more women both physically and psychologically.
It was in this gray area that I urged a return to the virtues with which religious Jews are quite familiar – no affectionate physical contact between men and women outside the context of marriage. That won’t stop the “black” cases of rape (forcible assault) nor the “white” cases (false accusations), for the most part. But it would stop much of the “gray,” in which consent is unclear or ambiguously given, because the assumption would be, since males are an aggressive breed, that the male assaulted the virtue of the female.
But for the professional feminists, there never is a “gray” area. Men are always predators, women are always saints, and rabbis, always, deserve special calumny if they don’t toe a particular line.
What is most troubling, and quite typical of this genre, is the sheer inability of the feminist activists to tolerate another viewpoint. “On this, there can be no debate! There is only one opinion!” Feminist orthodoxy brooks no dissent (as opposed to Jewish Orthodoxy, whose every tenet, they feel, is negotiable). So their goal is to ensure that only one side of an issue is ever heard. They do this by denouncing any opposition as immoral, shrieking that any dissenter is evil, and trying to intimidate that dissenter into silence, penance and universal obloquy. This is what passes for discourse – forget civil discourse, just discourse – in that pathetic echo chamber of the young and coddled. How sad.
Typically, as they see it, for expressing views with which they disagree, I should be fired from the rabbinate, kicked out of any rabbinic organization to which I belong, tossed from any institution in which I am active, and, for Heaven’s sake, even thrown out of AAA (to which I just renewed my membership, and so will not go down without a fight).
What is even sadder is that, to these activists, men are irredeemable brutes, end of story. My objective, on the other hand, is to preserve the honor of both men and women. Their eager embrace of the “hookup culture” – as long as there is consent – exacerbates the problem, cheapens the nobility of women and undermines the sanctity of marriage. Their contempt for women, and not just women’s virtues, is breathtaking.
The Talmud (bottom of Sanhedrin 21a) teaches us that after Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar, King David’s Sanhedrin decreed that an unmarried man and woman should not be secluded together (the prohibition of yichud). That was good advice then as it is now. It doesn’t mean that they “blamed” Tamar; rather that prudence and common sense dictate not putting oneself in a situation of potential danger. No one ever “deserves” to be raped, as some hideously perverted my words. But do not walk into a field clearly labeled “Danger: Mines!” Even if the ones who planted the mines would be guilty of causing injury, surely the minefield pedestrian also bears some responsibility for his fate. The mature person takes responsibility for his own actions, a fundamental Jewish principle that I explored in my last book, “The Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility.”
Further irony: these critics are antagonized because they call me a “leader” who should not say these things that upset them; yet, when I try to take the lead on this particular issue – elevating the moral level on campus so that no one, but especially our young people, is ensnared in that morass – they protest. It sounds like they want “leaders” whom they control and who just follow the script that they write. But those are not “leaders” but followers with a fancy title.
Heeding our moral laws can only benefit men, women, marriages, families and society itself. That was and is my point. The fruitless debate over statistics aside, I would hope that even the professional feminists can subscribe to that.
R Pruzansky deserves a huge Yasher Koach for exposing the PC thinking , lack of due process to the accused and the acceptance of feminist rooted canards about relationships between the genders. Once again, we see that there is more freedom of speech between the walls of any Beis Medrash worthy of the name than on the average college campus today.
I agree strongly with your first sentence.
Rabbi, Kol HaKavod to you for speaking out on both the issue of personal choice and responsibility in “hookups” reported as rapes and on the political correctness of the JOFA and secular feminists.
I’m curious to know if a frum(ish?) campus atmosphere like that at Yeshiva University has a rate of campus rape, date rape, hookup rape etc. that is any less than that of the “average” US university campus. I would hope that the rate would be lower at YU, to the extent that YU students are supposed to: 1) keep laws of yichud; 2) keep shemirat negiah; and 3) date only for getting married and not for “entertainment” or “fun”.
If the incidence of campus rapes at YU, BYU, or other religious student bodies (pardon the body pun) is measurably lower, then it might help prove the role of personal responsibility in consequences of “hookup” culture to the JOFA crowd and their fellow feminist travelers.
Yasher koach Rabbi Pruzansky.Very well said.
Why exactly does Rabbi Pruzansky believe that this scenario of consensual relations after which the woman regrets her actions and feels hurt and used and then turns around and accuses the man of rape is so common as to deserve its own category and its own article to address it? What hard numbers are there to reflect this hidden statistic?
At least 75 men have filed lawsuits against their schools since 2013.
Your intent has always been clear, and the misreprentations of you offered by your critics are egregious.
While I do agree with the point that yichud gets people to stay far away from trouble and that it is a good idea for all, a couple of major criticisms of this article.
1 – (and this is the most crucial.) Rape and false accusation of rape ARE NOT EQUAL. Rape harms a woman physically and destroys her emotionally. Her outer and inner life are severely compromised in best case scenario, and more typically destroyed…from the inside out. Healing from something like that and walking away intact is virtually impossible and nothing short of heroic. False rape accusation may destroy a man’s external life, but leaves his inner world intact. He knows who he is and what he did and did not do, and can walk away and start life anew elsewhere and be totally OK. Not so for a woman who has been raped. And drawing any sort of equivalence between the 2 is delusional and shows a complete lack of understanding of what rape is.
2 – “female virtue” – what about male virtue?!?! and in the same vein – “King David’s Sanhedrin decreed that an unmarried man and woman should not be secluded together (the prohibition of yichud). That was good advice then as it is now. It doesn’t mean that they “blamed” Tamar; rather that prudence and common sense dictate not putting oneself in a situation of potential danger” ….Where does blame for Tamar come into play? Hilchot Yichud apply to men just as much as they apply to women. If a man doesn’t leave a yichud situation, he is just as much accountable. No one even mentioned blaming Tamar – a cursory read of the situation would more likely look like a woman should be externally protected (and not independently responsible for her own protection) from this law.
(and this is the most crucial.) Rape and false accusation of rape ARE NOT EQUAL. ….. And drawing any sort of equivalence between the 2 is delusional and shows a complete lack of understanding of what rape is.
R. Pruzansky referred to both rape and false accusations of rape as abominable crimes. He used the same language for both, but did not state that they are equivalent in their abominable-ness.
But R. Pruzansky states explicitly that he is not writing to address those cases ie. he is writing about the campus hookup culture.
So it seems that the criticism of R. Pruzansky boils down to the following: in the context of a comment on the culture/atmosphere on campuses, R. Pruzansky refers to rape and false accusations as “abominable” – but suggests that they are equally abominable. And for this he deserves to be Alinsky-ized and fired…
“female virtue” – what about male virtue?!?! … Hilchot Yichud apply to men just as much as they apply to women. If a man doesn’t leave a yichud situation, he is just as much accountable. …
R. Pruzansky does not say anything to the contrary. Indeed I am certain that R. Pruzansky agrees with you …
I do not understand how Oriyah can so easily dismiss a false accusation of rape, unless of course she has been falsely accused of a serious moral crime herself.
She seems to see nothing wrong in enabling women to blithely destroy the lives of former boyfriends. A false accusation of rape can easily end a man’s college career — or true career. Unlike a rape victim, no one will look at him the same way again. People seem much more interested in accusations like these than whether or not they are actually true. And unlike a rapist, the “lying complainant” is almost never punished or prosecuted, even if her victim somehow proves conclusively that she was lying.
In the world of a modern academia there is no such thing as a false accusation against a man. As seen in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case, a female drug-addicted stripper is more credible than a male All-American collegiate who has done nothing wrong greater than a speeding ticket, with a rock-solid alibi proving he was a mile away using an ATM when the “rape” allegedly occurred. Just last month, Yale expelled the captain of its men’s basketball team, because a girl in a relationship with him a year ago claimed that the fourth of four encounters between them was non-consensual — despite the fact that she left his room after that encounter, met up with him later that evening and returned with him. No one in the Yale administration appears to believe that it is unusual for a victim of sexual assault to return to spend the night in bed together with her assailant, much less imagine that this might place her accusations within the realm of “reasonable doubt.”
Undergraduate men accused by former girlfriends routinely find themselves suspended or expelled from college after “hearings” without due process or the presumption of innocence. Fortunately, lawyers in the real world seem unimpressed with the PC environment on campus, and the Yale case is only one where the university in question finds itself on the receiving end of a large lawsuit for their misconduct.
You need to look up the definition of “routinely”.
If 75 men have gone so far as to file lawsuits against their colleges since 2013, I’d like to know what definition of “routinely” this isn’t.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bab5cb59d0464264948890b99c4cffcc/colleges-face-legal-backlash-men-accused-sex-crimes
“The accused can be removed from a class, dorm or campus even before a disciplinary hearing is held so that the accuser does not have to cross paths with her alleged attacker. Disciplinary proceedings can take months, meaning the accused can miss a year of school before the case is decided.”
Which means: a woman can have ruin her ex-boyfriend’s academic career simply because she doesn’t want to see him anymore. And since he can never prove a negative, she will suffer no consequences for lying.
While any false positives are obviously not a good thing, and 75 since 2013 is not nothing, that is a very small drop in the very large bucket of rape and sexual assaults against females. It’s the false negatives that are far more systemic and pervasive.
The DOJ document notes that among females age 18-24 between 1995-2013, over 31,000 students and an additional 65,000 non-students were so victimized per year. The vast majority of these cases, sadly but understandably, were not reported to the police.
There’s no way this is true, or men wouldn’t keep going to college.
“Rape and false accusation of rape ARE NOT EQUAL. Rape harms a woman physically and destroys her emotionally. Her outer and inner life are severely compromised in best case scenario, and more typically destroyed…from the inside out. Healing from something like that and walking away intact is virtually impossible and nothing short of heroic. False rape accusation may destroy a man’s external life, but leaves his inner world intact. He knows who he is and what he did and did not do, and can walk away and start life anew elsewhere and be totally OK. Not so for a woman who has been raped. And drawing any sort of equivalence between the 2 is delusional and shows a complete lack of understanding of what rape is.”
I feel that this comment is coming from a “complete lack of understanding” of what a fake rape accusation could do to a man. Is this based on any evidence? I would have thought that every single thing that Oriyah said about rape should apply. In some ways, it might even be worse, as no decent person thinks that the rape victim did anything wrong, whereas the victim of the false accusation is a pariah in society.
Anyhow, how can anyone dismiss something that “may destroy a man’s external life”? Isn’t that totally devastating all by itself, isn’t like killing someone?
In Heather MacDonald’s article she reports on the high incidence of non-reported assaults and notes that a high percentage of women chose not press forward because “it was not serious enough to report”. However, she does not explain what the category encompasses.
For many – if not most of those women – it simply means they have little trust their stories will be believed or any positive outcome will ensue. Perhaps they are prescient and recognize the position R. Pruzansky takes is actually more common than the one that says it’s always the man’s fault and so there is little value in reporting. They also know how limited is the possibility of successful prosecution.
In the public at large, similar to at Harvard, Justice Department data state that only 32 out of 100 rapes are ever reported with only 2 out 100 convicted. Apparently college women are no different than other women in their attitude toward making allegations, despite the feminist agenda on campus, for comparable reasons having little to do with the hookup culture.
Good job Rabbi Pruzansky.
Unfortunately once you start talking about this topic, you’ve already lost the battle. It doesn’t matter how logical or accurate or even compassionate your words may be – once you’re a man talking about rape, as a woman, I’m already feeling aggravated. Sorry to say it but that’s the truth :).
Today anyone who denies the absolute right to all forms of sexual fulfillment, even only for himself, is a sexist, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic monster. The epithets are multiplied like makkos in the Haggadah. Rabbi Pruzansky can stand up to such abuse, but an 18-year-old college student doesn’t have a prayer.
R. Pruzansky should stop trying to reform secular mores and exercise some genuine rabbinic leadership. He should tell his Modern Orthodox congregants something they don’t want to hear. Tell them that sending a child to Harvard, Yale or Princeton is avodas Moloch, a sacrifice to the god of professional success.
The controversy is particularly pointless because it is in the end political. Were R. Pruzansky a Democrat, he could have defended outright child molesters such as Jeffrey Epstein and Roman Polanski. His opponents will almost certainly vote for the wife of a serial predator, a woman who actually did blame the victims.
Charles Gregor wrote in part:
“He should tell his Modern Orthodox congregants something they don’t want to hear. Tell them that sending a child to Harvard, Yale or Princeton is avodas Moloch, a sacrifice to the god of professional success”
How many horror stories and polls of the drop off in observance will we need before MO realizes that sending kids, even after a year or two in Israel, is fraught with spiritual dangers for the average MO high school graduate.