A week ago Yevgeniya Lomakina of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Daily Collegian wrote a column criticizing sex outside of marriage and other artifacts of such “feminist movements as ‘female liberation’ – women having the freedom to have sex with anyone, anywhere.”
“If a young woman wears a promiscuous outfit to a party,” Lomakina continued, “then proceeds to drink and flirt excessively, she should not blame men for her downfall. She made a decision to dress a certain way, to consume alcohol and should be prepared to deal with the consequences. Far from being a victim of rape, she is a victim of her own choices.”
The column drew exactly the response you’d imagine, leading the Daily Collegian to post an apology the next day. Both Lomakina and night editor Hannah McGoldrick, who greenlit the piece, were fired from the paper.
But Lomakina, for her part, insists she was misunderstood. She wasn’t talking about actual rape in the passage in question, she insists, but circumstances in which “women put themselves in a vulnerable position by dressing provocatively and consuming alcohol,” then “consent to sexual activity,” but later “regret it and accuse their partner of rape.”
Glad she cleared that up.
studentactivism.net 
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March 7, 2011 at 12:13 pm
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March 7, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Brian
A reasonable position would be somewhere in between.
There is no manner of flirtation or provocative dress that would ever DESERVE rape, but given the volatility of the circumstances described, certainly someone is playing with fire not to take heed. My guess is that other people at the same party would be under similar influences and just as vulnerable to the effects of alcohol etc. Would the influence of alcohol be a valid defence for the perp?
I could walk into a Harlem side street and yell hostile remarks peppered with hate speech and scream the “N-word” at the top of my lungs, and thought I would never ever DESERVE to be beaten up for it, I’d be pretty foolhardy not to expect it would happen.
A person can get a ticket for jaywalking, not because they DESERVE to be hit by a car, but as a reminder to heed their own safety. To say someone shouldn’t have crossed that part of the street is not blaming them for a car accident, it’s holding them to account for their PART of it.
Every person should be mindful of protecting their own interest and should assume responsibility for their security. Labelling all challenges for people to be responsible for their own safety as “victim blaming” is a disservice to fairness.
March 7, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Brian
per your retweet:
“RT @vha2581: @studentactivism is it really necessary to fire them. It is an opinion and it should be allowed to be printed but also refuted.”
This is a good point. If Westboro Baptist can win the right to picket hate speech at funerals, can’t someone’s unpopular speech be upheld as well? The view described comes across to me as conservative, arrogant, and judgemental, but I can also see how it would be a valid point of view in its own context.
March 7, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Brian
“The members of our Editorial Board were not alerted [to] what was clearly potentially controversial content, which is standard procedure so that we can form a consensus.”
Basically the issue was their discomfort with the controversy and dissent.
Only “lost kitten in a tree” stories, please.
March 7, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Brian
What I do consider to be the error is the following quote:
“…Far from being a victim of rape, she is a victim of her own choices.”
It’s not far at all, and it’s wrong to try to isolate the harm of rape from bad decisions. The person in question may very well have been a victim of BOTH.
I recently made the mistake of misjudging a risk and jumped from a dangerous height, breaking one of my heel bones. I’m writing this in a cast and will be on crutches for two months, possibly with post-traumatic arthritis for life. Did I deserve broken bones? NO.
Was I stupid to jump? Admittedly, yes. Even though I’d done the same jump before it was still pretty high, and I knew it could be dangerous.
If someone criticized me for jumping, should they lose their job? It might be shameful and embarrassing to me to face it, but they would be right to call me on it, so NO.
March 7, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Anna
When it comes to issues with rape and sexual assault involved, you really can’t compare it to jumping from a height. You were fully aware of yourself (I think) and there was no one else pressuring you to do it (I hope), nor was there any judgment impairing drug/alcohol involved.
It’s great that she decided to take on the issue of premarital sex and the feminist movement with its downfalls. But tying that into the issue of rape and suggesting that those more modern things may have created a rise in rape brought about by volatile situations is absurd.
People have been drinking since the beginning of the universe, since they discovered grapes. People have been drinking in excess since forever. Volatile situations have existed since forever (look at Babylon and Niniveh). But even since those times, rape has never been acceptable (though I’m sure it must’ve been happening a lot, given how there were provisions against it in Mosaic Law in the first testament).
Rape has happened even among friends. A lot of times among friends, in my opinion. So… yes, I support the paper’s decision to remove her from their staff, because she failed to reason and probably research properly. Not to mention that, as it’s a UNIVERSITY paper, certainly there is a silent community of victims of rape that have probably wrongly suffered from this kind of opinion. They don’t need those opinions reinforced.
March 7, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Angus Johnston
Brian, the editor lost her job because she disregarded newspaper policy on controversial submissions and printed something that shouldn’t have been printed without vetting, not because the paper doesn’t like controversial writing.
As for the rest of your comments, I find the idea that going out to a party and dressing provocatively, getting tipsy, and flirting with other people is somehow analogous to shouting racial slurs in Harlem mind-bogglingly weird, both as an analysis of gender and as an analysis of race.
Women are more likely to be raped by a boyfriend than by the cable guy. Does that mean that a woman who has her boyfriend over for dinner is “foolhardy”? This kind of project — of apportioning out responsibility for rape according to the actions of the woman who was raped — is madness. It’s not productive or helpful in any way.
Yes, women are at risk of being raped in our society. Yes, they are MORE at risk when they engage in certain behaviors (though often not the stereotypically “risky” behaviors which will get them slut-shamed). But here’s the thing: Women know this. They don’t need you tut-tutting at them. They certainly don’t need you suggesting that going to a party in a nice dress, having a few beers, and flirting with your friends is analogous to inciting black people to acts of racial violence.
March 7, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Angus Johnston
And one last thing, expanding on what Anna said. As I’ve written before, the sexual revolution (and the rise of feminism) has coincided with a huge DECREASE in the incidence of rape in the United States. If we’re going to make any sort of correlation-equals-causation argument here, it has to be exactly the opposite of the one the columnist offered: Sexual liberation makes women less likely to be raped.
March 8, 2011 at 12:21 am
anne
Angus, when you wrote, “The column drew exactly the response you’d imagine,” what I imagined was a lot of insistent rape apologism like Brian’s. Society’s so deeply invested in rape culture. It’s a very effective way to preserve male privilege by keeping women out of the public sphere. Glad to be pleasantly surprised for a change.
March 8, 2011 at 12:24 am
anne
What’s “promiscuous outfit,” by the way? I wasn’t aware that articles of clothing are capable of sleeping around.
March 8, 2011 at 12:27 am
anne
“Risky behavior” according to actual rape statistics: Being female, being in your teens, hanging out with men you know, enlisting in the military.
March 8, 2011 at 4:50 am
Ed Darrell
Men have a responsibility, a duty, to control themselves, to avoid assaulting women in any way. Men have a duty NOT to rape.
That duty is not altered in any way by a woman’s looks, dress, or behavior.
It’s not the responsibility of women to make sure men have Johnson control.
A woman’s dressing provocatively cannot in any way be compared to a self-defense claim in assault, and shame on any man or woman who says otherwise.
March 8, 2011 at 4:53 am
Ed Darrell
Would pre-emptive castration of men who women suspect might rape them if the men got drunk, be acceptable? If we’re putting all the responsibility to stop rape on the women, let’s consider the obvious extensions. How far may a woman go to prevent her own rape? Why not pre-emptive castration?
March 10, 2011 at 11:46 am
G
I don’t know if you can imagine how goddamn wonderful it is to come across men who really truly get it. Thanks Angus, and Ed.