Brown University was the site of a Janus Forum debate earlier this week on “How Should Colleges Handle Sexual Assault?” The debaters were Wendy McElroy, ifeminists.com editor and “rape culture” skeptic, facing off against Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti, an evangelist against “rape culture.”  The notion that such an issue could be subject to debate was more than Brown could stand. In response to student protests,

[Brown president Christina] Paxson declared in a campus-wide email that her counterprogramming, titled “The Research on Rape Culture,” will provide students with “research and facts” about “the role that community norms and values play in sexual assault.”

For those whose ears couldn’t bear the sound of ideas with which they might disagree, there was alternative, where only the dulcet tones of confirmation would be heard.  But what of those brave souls who might consider weathering the storm?

Indeed, The Brown Daily Herald reported that “multiple students have said they feel the event … goes against the University’s mission to create a safe and supportive environment for survivors.” Event organizers clearly anticipated this reaction, telling the Herald that they would be “hosting Sexual Assault Peer Education in Salomon 203 at the same time as the debate if at any point during the lecture students need to leave and receive support.”

There was a time when the mission of a University was to educate students, to prepare them to go out into the real world and achieve.  In the real world, the environment isn’t always “safe and supportive.”  People, similarly entitled to such an environment, disagree with each other. People, similarly entitled to express their views, believe differently.  This clash of views doesn’t make for a “safe and supportive” environment.  If students can’t make it through a debate without need to leave and receive support, then the University has failed in its mission to prepare them.

As Robby Soave notes at Reason, “it’s a miracle the debate even took place at all,” following the campus reaction to the debate.  And yet, it did, recapped as follows:

McElroy’s main argument, according to The Herald:

McElroy said rape culture exists in places like parts of Afghanistan where “women are married against their will” and “murdered for men’s honor” but not in North America, where “rape is a crime that’s severely punished.”

What’s more, those who politicize rape and assert the existence of rape culture imply that all men are guilty or that the accused do not deserve due process, McElroy said.

It is unacceptable that men can now be disciplined for rape through college hearings based on a preponderance of evidence rather than the traditional criminal justice standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. “Let’s not build justice for women on injustice for men,” McElroy said, closing her talk.

And Valenti’s:

Valenti never tackled the question of whether a preponderance of evidence or guilt beyond a reasonable doubt should be the standard for conviction of men in college hearings, but she did talk about other aspects of sexual assault as it relates to college campuses, such as the fact that alcohol plays a role in most sexual assault incidents.

“Alcohol is not the problem,” Valenti said, chuckling at the notion. “What we need to discuss is the way rapists use alcohol as a weapon to attack and then discredit their victims.” Rapists benefit from others’ insistence that a victim’s inebriation is to blame for his or her assault, she added.

Both speakers addressed how students might move forward in eliminating rape and sexual assault on campus.

“Stopping someone from telling a rape joke or saying they got ‘raped’ by a test” would be a start, Valenti said, but she also urged students to hold university administrators responsible for addressing rape on campus.

The points speak for themselves, and it’s not particularly worthwhile to rehash them here.  Granted, the line about Valenti “chuckling at the notion” grates in its passive-aggressive dismissiveness, but then, Valenti’s perspective that the problem is perpetrators, not “victims,” such that no behaviors on the part of women is fairly subject to scrutiny.  Victim-blaming.

But what of her “start,” “stopping someone from telling a rape joke or saying they got ‘raped’ by a test”?  Granted, it’s a longstanding meme that feminists have no sense of humor, and that the control and manipulation of language is necessary to alter human nature and gender interaction, but does a joke or turn of a phrase accomplish the task?

After initially posting his Reason piece, Robby Soave received a twit from Valenti chastising him.

Valenti tells me on Twitter that my headline is a distortion of her position and that she never asserted rape jokes cause rape.

In a fit of microaggression, Valenti commanded Soave to correct himself.  He did, for the sake of accuracy if not obedience.

So “social license to operate is foundational to rape culture,” and “stopping someone when they are telling a rape joke,” weakens that social license.

To my eyes, that’s a confusing way of saying that abolishing rape jokes is what we should be doing to stop rape. But I have amended the headline to more perfectly encapsulate exactly what Valenti said, based on her prepared remarks rather than the news article.

Having wondered what was meant by “rape culture” in the past, this offers some insight.  With this bit of greater understanding, I go back to the social license as reflected in our culture, such as 1974’s The Groove Tube, from which the opening video came, or the motherlode of social license for college licentiousness, Animal House from 1978.

There was no Bwell Safe Space outside the theaters that showed these movies that gave social license to behaviors and language that Valenti would prohibit and silence.  Would we be better off today in a humorless world?  Would Brown University show these films to its students today? Would they find them funny or need peer counseling to support them through the trauma?

As proven at the debate, Valenti can chuckle.  But can she laugh?