Are All Men Rapists?

ONE DAY this January, Joe Biden had a revelation to share with his fellow members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Our idea of crime,” he intoned, “has left no room for violence against women.” The “surging epidemic” of rape and domestic violence he saw engulfing the nation was “doubly dangerous” because it is “as invisible to policymakers as it is terrifying to its victims.” The solution? An omnibus bill he had been shepherding for several years, now titled “The Violence Against Women Act of 1993.” Not until the proposed legislation is passed, he told them, “can we as a nation inscribe this violence with a name so that it will never be mistaken or dismissed as anything other than brutally wrong.”

Unless you had spent the last ten years in one of Catharine MacKinnon’s law seminars, you should have been jolted from your post-lunch nap when the statement “our idea of crime has left no room for violence against women” went by. Even in the rhetoricbesotted Senate a few cries of “Huh?” or “Say what?” should have rung out. But the concepts of “silent data,” the “invisible” epidemic, and the collusive, practically conspiratorial legal system seem to have gone down without a hiccup. Apparently, the senators have been absorbing their lessons well.

SG

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Stephanie Gutmann

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ONE DAY this January, Joe Biden had a revelation to share with his fellow members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Our idea of crime,” he intoned, “has left no room for violence against women.” The “surging epidemic” of rape and domestic violence he saw engulfing the nation was “doubly dangerous” because it is “as invisible to policymakers as it is terrifying to its victims.” The solution? An omnibus bill he had been shepherding for several years, now titled “The Violence Against Women Act of 1993.” Not until the proposed legislation is passed, he told them, “can we as a nation inscribe this violence with a name so that it will never be mistaken or dismissed as anything other than brutally wrong.”

Unless you had spent the last ten years in one of Catharine MacKinnon’s law seminars, you should have been jolted from your post-lunch nap when the statement “our idea of crime has left no room for violence against women” went by. Even in the rhetoricbesotted Senate a few cries of “Huh?” or “Say what?” should have rung out. But the concepts of “silent data,” the “invisible” epidemic, and the collusive, practically conspiratorial legal system seem to have gone down without a hiccup. Apparently, the senators have been absorbing their lessons well.