Flirting is part of life, rape culture claims are an abomination, by Janet Albrechtsen.
Released this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Changing the Course report into sexual assault and sexual harassment at Australian universities is a textbook case of the intersection between the foggy world of sexual politics and the crystal-clear aim of activists to propagate hysteria despite the facts. The data from the report simply does not support the existence of a rape culture on campus.
Their “sexual harassment” is our “life”:
The report defines sexual harassment as staring or leering, suggestive comments or jokes, or intrusive questions about someone’s private life or physical appearance. That settles it then. We have surely all been perpetrators of sexual harassment.
In the deliciously confusing, often exhilarating yet frustrating flirtations between the sexes, scrutinising a sexual advance is no easy thing. Some stares, jokes, suggestive comments and questions as to whether you’re single will be welcome sexual banter. In which case, enjoy the evening. Some will be misfired sexual advances, an inchoate flirtation that simply wasn’t reciprocated. In which case, no harm done and adieu.
How else does a relationship, let alone a casual hook-up, start if not with a lingering look, a suggestive joke, a question about your private life? …
As sex therapist and author Esther Perel pointed out in a TED talk a few years ago: “Most of us get turned on at night by the very same things we might demonstrate against during the day. The erotic mind is not very politically correct.”
“Rape culture” claims are PC propaganda designed to boost the status, political power, or pay packets of its perpetrators:
In short, sexual politics are far more complicated than the simplistic findings of the commission’s report and its nine-point plan to stamp out wicked sexual practices on campus. For every claim of sexual harassment and sexual assault, there may be another side to the story. If that other side is not sought out or even mentioned as a caveat to the “data”, it exposes the report as propaganda rather than a search for truth. …
This report is more evidence that the gathering of knowledge has been bumped aside in favour of the accumulation of power. Here is postmodernism unplugged and its belief that truth is a tool of oppression. …
And the years of bullying by rape-culture activists has been rewarded. Universities Australia donated $1 million to fund the report, human rights bureaucrats have produced the perfect make-work report for themselves and university administrators, too frightened to be advocates for the virtues of truth and reason, have capitulated to the postmodern bullies.
Where is the real crime here?
Rape is a heinous crime and ought to be punished by the full force of the law. …
The demasculinisation of men, making them feel guilty for being different to women, is equally heinous. Labelling them as perpetrators of sexual harassment if they look at a woman, tell a dirty joke or ask a personal question may lead us into a sexually disinfected world we no longer recognise or wish to live in.
Henry Kissinger wisely predicted that “no one can win the battle of the sexes. After all, there’s too much fraternising with the enemy.”
