ably on their shared sexual orientation.nWhen Jim escaped and went to the policento report this assault, the policemannhe told reminded him that sodomy isnillegal in North Carolina and suggestednthat he might want to think twice aboutnpursuing the matter. Believe it or not,nthe point of Jim’s story was that bothnthe policeman’s attitude and the epithetsnhis assailant used were evidence ofnubiquitous “homophobia,” requiringnnew civil rights laws to protect its victims.nSpare me. Come on, is it really hardheartednto deny this guy 100 percentnUSDA Choice victim status? Is it unreasonablento observe that someone whongets naked with strangers in rentednrooms is taking his or her chances? I’mnawfully glad it’s not my political partynthat has to pretend to take this kind ofnthing seriously.nAnyway, consider the question, “Hasnanyone ever tried to take advantage ofnyou when you were drunk?” If everynwoman who answers “yes” is now to bencounted a victim of sexual assault, inevitablynwe’re going to devalue the term.nSure, whatever grubby sexual transactionntakes place between a couple ofncommode-hugging drunks is wrong, andnif it’s not “consensual” it ought to bencriminal, and you can call it rape if younwant to. But I’m sorry, it’s not somethingnI’m going to lose a lot of sleepnover. Victimhood, like the dollar, isn’tnwhat it used to be.nNow, please, I’m not suggesting thatndrunk or drugged women “deserve it.”nBeing drugged is prima facie evidencenof illegal activity and so is being drunknfor anyone under 21, but even criminalsnhave rights, and just being stupid isn’tna crime at all. We old-fashioned guysnbelieve there’s no excuse for what, yes,nwe still call taking advantage of a woman,nand we don’t object to punishing anman who does it. We also believe, however,nthat there’s a qualitative differencenbetween that and raping her at knifepoint,nand if the law doesn’t recognizenthat difference it really is an ass.nBut Suzanne Fields, writing in Heterodoxy,na feisty new chronicle of campusnfolly, observes that when a New YorknPost editorial called for a legal distinctionnbetween stranger rape and sex precedednby “consensual activities” likendrinking, visiting a man’s hotel room, ornwalking on a deserted beach at 3:00 A. M.,nit caught hell. I can believe that. As Inwrite, our local D. A. is being harassedn42/CHRONiCLESnby the thought patrol for a memo to ournpolice pointing out that North Carolinanlaw requires some evidence of resistancenfor a rape charge to stick. As thenlaw stands, just saying “I don’t think wenshould be doing this” isn’t enough. Innfact our D. A. wants to see the lawnchanged to add the crime of third-degreenrape, but that doesn’t satisfy thosenwho want to blur distinctions and conflatenall involuntary sexual activity (andnpossibly, as Suzanne Fields suggests, tonportray rape as the paradigm for all heterosexualnrelations, but that’s anothernstory).nIt’s clear where we’re headed. Increasinglynthe rape theorists are invokingnthe nebulous and slippery conceptnof “psychological coercion.” Accordingnto Heterodoxy, a pamphlet at Swarthmorenalready defines “acquaintancenrape” as “ranging from crimes legally definednas rape to verbal harassment andninappropriate innuendo,” and Stanford’snJudicial Affairs Office interprets coercion,noutlawed by the student code, toninclude “belittlement” or “verbal pressure.”nJust as sexual harassment (a realnand serious problem that, incidentally,ndid exist in my youth) has been trivializednby being stretched to include allnsorts of unpleasant behavior and badnmanners—and, in some versions, to bendefined in the mind of the “victim” (ifnyou feel harassed, you are harassed)—nso we seem to be on the way to definingnas a rapist some clown whose idea ofnforeplay is a couple of hours of begging.nFortunately, I’m not the first to observenthat this really does demean women,nwho aren’t all that helpless.nBut what about that statistic (I hearnyou say)? Well, to make a long storynshort, I never did find the “one in fournwhile in college” number—surely you’dnhave to ask graduates to get that, or donsome tricky extrapolation from undergraduates’nreports—^but what I did findnmakes it plausible, given the study’s definitions.nFifteen percent of the undergraduatenwomen surveyed reported sexualnencounters since age 14 that met itsndefinition of rape, and another 12 percentnreported encounters that met itsndefinition of attempted rape; 17 percentnhad had one or the other sort of encounternin the past year. There really isna lot of nastiness out there, and somethingnhas indeed gone very wrong sincenmy college days. But not all the nastinessnis what most of us think of asn”rape.” Not even most of its victimsnnnthink of it that way. According tonSuzanne Fields (who must have seennsome data I missed), 73 percent of thenwomen the study said had been rapedndidn’t think they had been—plainly candidatesnfor reeducation—and 42 percentnhad intercourse with the “assailant” on anlater occasion.nBy the way, although the study’s definitionnof sexual assault sticks to encountersnthat most states would treatnthat way, it did ask about sex acts resultingnfrom “continual arguments andnpressure,” a wooing strategy rephrasednat one place in the text as “coercion,”nat another as “menacing verbal pressure.”nYou get the drift.nIt’s a shame that the study muddiesnthe water this way, because the situationnit documents is bad enough. By thenFBI’s more stringent definition, whichndoesn’t include the alcohol and drugnscenarios, 8 percent of these youngnwomen had been sexually assaulted innthe past year. If the same ratio holds,nII-I2 percent will be assaulted at somenpoint while in college—not “one out ofnfour,” but more than enough to benalarmed about. (And there’s no reasonnto question the sample. It’s true thatnstudents at religious colleges were lessnthan half as likely to have been assaulted,nand religious colleges were underrepresentednin the sample, but not enoughnto make a major difference in the estimates.)nIt’s interesting that the study also includedna similar sample of college men.nFive percent of them acknowledged behaviorsnin the previous year that the FBInwould consider rape or attempted rape:n1.8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.nThe difference between that 5 percentnand the 8 percent of women whonreported having been assaulted is nondoubt partly due to underreportingn(even most rapists are smart enough notnto trust a researcher’s promise ofnanonymity), but it may also reflect thenfact that many of our campuses have becomenstalking grounds for predatorsnfrom “the community.” Campus securitynis a genuine problem, and one thatnmight be easier to address than acquaintancenrape—but it doesn’t carrynquite the same satisfying ideologicalnfreight.nAnyway, to return to my diatribenabout blurring distinctions, the realnproblem, I think, is that treating all thisnstuff as equivalent makes it less likelynthat we’ll come down hard on the gen-n