Being a staff writer for The Badger Herald has its perks. You get to say you’re part of the largest independent student newspaper in the country, professors compliment you on your articles, you get some good reader feedback and your Grandma is just so proud of you. Most of the time, it’s a great, noncontroversial organization to be a part of.
But last week, the Herald came under fire from campus after publishing a letter to the editor titled “’Rape Culture’ Does Not Exist.” The article was tweeted hundreds of times, a plethora of letters to the editor were submitted and published in response and editors had to write explanations defending the decision to publish the article.
I have no problem with people who rebuke David Hookstead for his opinions about rape culture. But I do have a problem with people questioning the legitimacy of publishing the article, the paper and the editors that published it.
Do I agree with Hookstead? No. Do I find his article largely insensitive? Yes. Do I think he should be personally attacked for stating his opinion on a controversial issue publicly? No, I don’t. Do I think the paper was absolutely in the right publishing the article? Yes, I do. And anyone who would consider themselves a feminist or cares about rape culture should too.
The main problem with third-wave feminism is the mode of message instead of the message itself. I’m willing to bet that if you explained what rape culture was to a group of college guys in an objective way, they would agree that it is a societal problem that needs to be addressed. If you showed that same group of young men a typical feminist article on Jezebel, they’d probably roll their eyes.
This is because third-wave feminism is a uniquely hard social movement to engage with. Very little discourse is ever achieved on rape culture, women’s rights in the contemporary workspace and similar issues simply because divergent opinions are usually dismissed as sexist or misogynistic.
You can’t blame most feminists for this “with-us-or-against-us” mentality. Most of them have probably been victims of systemic sexism to different degrees throughout their lives. The ubiquity of institutionalized misogyny they perceive in media, legislative policies and other areas of society has to be incredibly frustrating. But this mentality is more counter-productive than anything else because it obstructs the most powerful tool in any social movement — the empathy of the general population.
Take gay rights for example, which has probably been the most successful movement in terms of being accepted and gaining the sympathy of my generation. LGBTQ rights were a much-discussed and debated topic throughout our developmental period. This discourse took place because it was socially acceptable to not be in favor of all LGBTQ rights. When this discussion occurred, most people my age were forced to listen to the plight of members of the LGBTQ community and ultimately sided with them.
This national discussion on feminism never existed to this extent, mainly because if you try to engage in this sort of discourse you are crucified by most feminists as being sexist. So the movement is largely limited to a relatively hard-core base. This doesn’t help anyone.
By publishing Hookstead’s article, The Badger Herald started a discussion on rape culture that has been written about in New York Magazine, the Huffington Post, college newspapers across the country and many other news outlets. I would encourage anyone to take part in this discussion and listen to an opinion different than your own. Naming-and-shaming those who disagree with you isn’t a solution, it’s an intimidation tactic and it’s a lot easier than meaningful debate. And who knows? Maybe you could change someone’s point of view or — God forbid — learn something and adjust your own.
