Intellectual bankruptcy of progressivism: another example

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Dec 20

 RE: McMaster Failing Survivors of Sexual Assault.  Hamilton Spectator of today.

The story which appeared on page 1 is an intellectual fraud.  It ought to have been labelled an opinion piece, but wasn’t.  The most obvious example of its prejudiced nature is its use of the word ‘survivor’ as in ‘sexual assault survivor’ when the word ‘accuser’ is the accurate term.  Until a conviction in court is obtained or some other objective way of assessing truth is employed, an accuser cannot be objectively called a survivor.  That favored expression ‘rape culture’ is employed when rape is almost never the accusation; sexual assault, or sexual violence are.  Finally, the author proceeds without a proper understanding of what a moral agent is.

I don’t know why McMaster University as an institution is being singled out for blame for the existence of the alleged ‘rape culture’ on campus, but it was.  The enforcement of criminal law, which is what ‘rape’ and ‘sexual assault’ call for, is not the job of the University; it is a police matter.  If a member of the faculty has committed a crime, such as fraud or shoplifting, that crime is not the doing of the University as an institution, for the faculty member was not acting as an agent of the University in the course of committing that crime.

It is mysterious when the author writes: “…the university’s handling of their own sexual violence complaints failed to get them justice and left them feeling silenced, their concerns dismissed.”  What ‘justice’ was being sought?  Why didn’t the alleged victim go to the police?  How serious were these accusations, really?  The story is a joke.

The story is also an indictment of progressivism itself.  Since the rise of feminism and the sexual revolution in the 1960s – which saw the end of segregation by sex of university dormitories – it was beaten into men that they can’t touch.  This is the third generation of Canadian students inculcated with the “no touch” rule.  So, how could a “rape culture” even arise in the face of political correctness and progressivism?  Has sexual libertinage been combined with a Victorian sense of morality in today’s progressivism?

Let’s not forget that university campuses in Canada are well populated with people from other, non-European cultures, such as from Arab and African states.  They may not get the “no touch” rule.  Are these the source of the sexual assaults and sexual violence?  If so, that would be a condemnation of the progressive idea that all other cultures are superior to the western one.  The cultural and racial aspect of the “rape culture” went undiscussed in the article.  Is it simply that white girls don’t like being bothered by men from other races and cultures but won’t go so far as to expose themselves to accusations of racism?  Are girls from other cultures and races proportionately represented among the “survivors”?  It went unstated in the article.

It may well be that exploration of this aspect of the matter could prove embarrassing to the thesis of progressivism that the institution is at fault and that other cultures are superior.  An institution being at fault excuses the actual perpetrators of moral blame in the same way that the zoo is morally to blame if it lets its animals out and they create havoc.

What is surpassingly strange is the progressivist assertion of rape culture etc. in the face of fifty years of inculcation against it.  Sexual liberation of women and libertinage does not mean what it appears to imply.  The moral blame is assigned to the highest authority possible, as in the countless examples of conservative leaders being blamed for the sayings and doings of their followers.

All this conduces to show the intellectual bankruptcy of progressivism, but you already knew that.

-30-