Last night was the annual Miss USA pageant. Rape was a big question on the minds of pageant organizers.
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Miss Pennsylvania, who was conceived when her mother was brutally raped, made headlines in the weeks preceding the pageant, and Miss Nevada, who ended up winning the Miss USA crown, was asked a question about why college campuses so frequently sweep sexual assault under the rug, as well as how to curb the sexual assault epidemic on college campuses.
Miss Nevada, whose name is Nia Sanchez, is a fourth degree black belt in taekwondo. This was her response:
“I believe that some colleges may potentially be afraid of having a bad reputation and that would be a reason it could be swept under the rug, because they don’t want that to come out into the public. But I think more awareness is very important so women can learn how to protect themselves.
“Myself, as a fourth-degree black belt, I learned from a young age that you need to be confident and be able to defend yourself. And I think that’s something that we should start to really implement for a lot of women.”
Teaching women to defend themselves should be an uncontroversial answer. But in today’s world of feminist craziness, this was an offensive statement.
Conservative website Twitchy exposed the almost immediate meltdown of the so-called feminists, who were appalled that a woman would dare express the idea that women can and should be able to defend themselves.
Let's hope Nevada uses her media tour to reiterate that teaching girls self defense is NOT the best way to protect against assault #MissUSA
— Mandy Velez (@mandy_velez) June 9, 2014
https://twitter.com/a_mariagarica/status/475833515758866432
https://twitter.com/GibbonsColleen/statuses/475829474811187200
I get that the college sexual assault problem can't be solved in 30 secs but still icky to pretend like self defense is the answer. #MissUSA
— Elisa Benson (@elisabenson) June 9, 2014
It’s worth pointing out that Elisa Benson — the one who made the comment about self-defense being “icky” — is the community manager at what is arguably the largest women’s magazine in existence, Cosmopolitan. I guess Cosmo’s “Fun, Fearless Women” feature will be taking the “fearless” part out, since women should just cower in fear and hope they don’t get raped.
Now, the bloggers are starting to catch on too, if that that cesspool of idiocy Jezebel is any indication. They echoed the notion that women shouldn’t have to learn to defend themselves from rape.
And you know what? They’re right. No one should have to. But it’s certainly a good idea for everyone to be able to defend themselves from attacks, including rape. Also, no one should have to install alarm systems on their homes, no one should have to lock their car doors while they’re driving, and no one should ever have to worry about being assaulted or murdered. But that’s not the world we live in.
There have always been monsters out there that will steal, rape, and kill. The idea that you can lecture the small subset of men who would do such a thing out of it with #YesAllWomen hash tags and the like is idiotic.
Most men do not need to be taught not to rape someone anyway — and it is incredibly offensive to imply that all men need this re-education. Believe it or not, most men already find the act of rape to be abhorrent and evil.
But perhaps the most mind-boggling thing about this entire debate is that so-called feminists are literally throwing the idea of empowerment out the window . They insist that women should be content to remain helpless victims who must rely on men to exert self-control and not rape them. That’s the “feminist” point of view, seriously.
We should instead tell men not to rape, very sternly. When that doesn’t work, women should apparently just cower in fear while yelling “NO!” really loud and hope that their rapist will listen or that some nice policeman will hear them.
Thank goodness Miss USA prefers to give advice that would empower women rather than empowering would-be rapists.