Date-Rape Hysteria
May, 1992
Princeton, New Jersey--In classrooms and journals, in lectures and coffee shops, academics are talking about rape. Although it wears a fashionable leftist mask, this is a neopuritan preoccupation. While real women get battered, while real mothers need day care, certain feminists are busy turning rape into fiction. Every time one Henry James character seizes the hand of another character, someone calls it rape.At a certain point, the metaphor gets paranoid. An overused word, like an overpainted s...
