James Carroll wisely observes a “spirit of crisis” surrounding discourse about sexual assault in higher education (“Sexual assault and a culture unmoored,” Op-Ed, July 21). We have indeed reached a critical moment in our cultural tolerance for violence against women on college campuses, and heightened concerns among powerful people may lead to important changes.
However, it is crucial not to confuse crisis with newness, as Carroll does when he argues that young people have been morally bankrupted by the separation of religion from public education. These “moral orphans,” he argues, operate in a world in which the depersonalization of sex has led to a rape crisis and a rise in “sexual nihilism.” This view incorrectly assumes that there was a golden age without such problems and implicitly accepts the myth that rape is an act of desire.
I propose that we view this crisis as one of sudden awareness, stemming from the realization of our collective culpability in turning a blind eye to age-old patterns of sexual violence perpetrated against women. We do not have a new crisis to manage. We need only confront what we have previously chosen to ignore.
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