Rape And America’s Culture Of Victimhood–Political Training To Teach The Morally Obvious

A friend whose son was a member of the National Guard remarked that most of the two-week summer training course was not on how to shoot but how not to rape. Endless hours, the boy had told his father, were wasted on a subject which required very little explanation.   Allegations of rape would be explored according to rigorous standards of military, civil, and criminal law – far more stringent and less forgiving than anything found on college campuses; and more fair and just.  An allegation would be only that and nothing more.  A presumption of innocence would be sacrosanct.  

Rape according the laws of the state which governed the boy’s National Guard were among the most explicit and restrictive than any in the country; laws which defined physical rape and sexual aggression (attempted rape) within the context of physical force and intimidation.  Although these laws were attacked by progressive feminists because of what they saw as lawmakers’ white male privilege if not misogyny, their demands to lesson the rigors of the law were defeated.  As such, any soldier in the state National Guard knew without confusion exactly what constituted rape and attempted rape after one hour of indoctrination.



Moreover, most of the boy’s class of inductees were middle class, temperate, responsible, and reasonably educated young men and women.  They came to the Guard with an already well-established morality, sense of justice, and respectful treatment of women.  It would be unconscionable for any of them to consider rape or violence against women.  Their upbringing had been moral and spiritual in nature, and families encouraged volunteering for the Guard as a gesture of strength, rectitude, and patriotism.  Elaborate sensitivity training was unnecessary, uncalled for, and a diversion from the more important tasks of soldiering.

Of course not all the boy’s class were brought up with the same attention to moral and social development as he; and their social attitudes may have been less morally formed than his.  They might have considered questionable actions whereas the boy never would have.  Yet the procedures for investigation, trial, and conviction or exoneration were so strict and so well-known, that even the less morally centered of the new Guard recruits would toe the line.  Conviction of physical sexual aggression and/or rape would be punishable by the most severe punishments allowable.

The female reservists also knew of the strict laws and regulations governing sexual conduct.  There was no mistaking their clear legal responsibilities.  While all allegations of sexual assault would be taken seriously, the standards by which they would be evaluated would be uncompromisingly strict.  Any and all subjective accusations would be dismissed out of hand.  There would be no consideration of personal judgments of comfort (“He made me feel uncomfortable”), assumptions of universal male predatory sexual behavior, no admissibility of impropriety or ‘inappropriate behavior’.  Normal sexual dynamics - male advances, female rejections and vice-versa - would be the standard against which claims would be evaluated. 

Women, in the view of the conservative state jurists who drafted the rules and regulations, were quite able to take care of themselves; but should be afforded every avenue to defend themselves in court.  “The only aggression against a National Guard member that will be tolerated”, said one lawmaker, “will be an enemy bullet”; and that, he went on to say, should be a rare occurrence.



Rape should never be tolerated because it is a violent, criminal act.  Attempted rape or sexual intimidation are just as serious breaches of the code of moral and civil conduct of a mature society and must be punished.  Yet the issue of sexual violence has been obfuscated and distorted by political hysteria.  The feminist assumptions that all man are potential rapists, that male chromosomes guarantee sexual aggression, and that misogyny is as innate and inbred as eating and drinking have infected both public discourse and judicial process.  Under this flamboyant rhetoric, men are presumed guilty under the flimsiest of charges. 

Perhaps as importantly, women activists’ demand for safe spaces and a no-tolerance policy for ‘unwanted’ touching, glances, words, or intentions is absurdly ironic.  If women are supposedly as strong, willful, able, intelligent, and determined as men, then demanding universal protection from men is tantamount to admitting their weakness.  You can’t have it both ways.

Under the rubric of ‘normal sexuality’ women know that man by nature are assertive, that it is usually they who make the first sexual advances.  Women either respond favorably or reject these advances.  They have learned not to frequent venues where irresponsible male sexual behavior is likely; and have learned that a culture of respect acknowledges men’s very unique and particular sexual drive and responsiveness and dress appropriately.  Assertiveness and aggression are not the same things at all.



One needs only turn to the plays of Ibsen, Strindberg, O’Neill, Chekhov, and Shakespeare to see how strong, defiant women living in the most patriarchal, oppressive societies best their men all the time.  Intelligence, cunning, sexual allure and promise have always been in women’s armory and used frightfully well.  How is it that today’s American culture has so devalued women’s strength and potential? 

The issue is not violent, physical rape which has always existed; and if in history not a punishable crime, a heinous moral one.  The issue is more with the questionable allegation of ‘sexual aggression’, expanded beyond the definition of attempted rape and psychological and physical intimidation to ‘unwanted attention’.  It is this desire to protect women when they least need it which leads to a divisive sense of sexual hysteria.  Sexual relationships are not taught as normal, even spiritual; but acts to be wary of; acts of male sexual predation. 

Catholic Catechisms and pastoral teaching, as strict as they have been on sexual matters, stressed the sacramental holiness of sexual union in marriage.  Whether or not most Catholic boys  and girls followed the Church’s teachings on abstinence and sexual purity, the principle of the sanctity of the act was stressed.  God was in the picture.  Sexual morality was a necessary feature if not product of this teaching.  Even if no one remained celibate, the principle of sanctity and respect remained.

Once again, the issue is not how many Catholics emerged from this early teaching to become moral adults – probably fewer than the Church had hoped – but that there was always a sense of morality within sexuality. Paul in his Epistles was particularly clear about the principle of responsible sexuality, how it was intimately related to both earthly and divine family.  While there is no doubt that such conservative prescriptions were no different from any other religious teacher of other faiths – religion at its simplest is an organized, socially conservative institution – they were universal and ineradicable.



Why is rape so prevalent in socially dysfunctional neighborhoods? Not because rapists are not aware of the legal consequences of their actions; but because they lack the moral underpinnings common among the city’s majority population.  Attempts to explain away dysfunctional behavior by claims of persistent racism, poverty, public neglect, and lack of financing are now dismissed out of hand.  Decades of investment based on these assumptions have failed to result in any significant improvement in these marginal communities; and political moderates are joining conservatives in concluding that the problem is one of moral failure not public support.

All of which is to say that the National Guard reservists should be spending far more time on learning how to shoot than to learn how to negotiate sexual waters.  The legal consequences of fairly prosecuted rape are serious as those are of physical sexual aggression; and the rest of responsible male and female behavior should have been long ago taught at home.  Morality, especially when it has such direct, serious implications, cannot be taught in a classroom.  Respect for women and women’s respect for themselves are matters of parental and religious guidance, taught over years by example. 

Honesty, courage, compassion, and all the other universal principles of a successful society also cannot be taught incidentally.  It must be a matter of norms, universal values, and societal principles. Morality learned this way becomes innate, accepted, never doubted.

The Antebellum South–Elegant, Graceful, And Sophisticated

The Deep South is many things to many people – Gone with the Wind, virulent racism, the sophisticated tradition of the cavaliers and gentlemen, the Mississippi River, Delta blues, cotton, and quadroons, and much more.  It cannot be ignored nor forgotten.  As much as many would like to think that it never existed or at best should be consigned to the dust bin of discredited history, it will not go away.  Rhett, Scarlett, pocket doors, mint juleps, cotton plantations, and Reconstruction cannot be wished into oblivion, airbrushed, and forgotten.  The great antebellum mansions of the Old South not only existed but still exist, visited every year at Southern pilgrimages, tributes to a simpler, more sophisticated,  graceful, and elegant way of life.  Residents of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi may have moved on from the civil war and Northern occupation, but they have not forgotten Southern traditions.



Manners, hoop skirts, formal dances, broad lawns and civility are not a thing of the past, but a living history, a present, and a permanent piece of both Southern and American history, a vital and essential piece of our past.

Yet there are many in the North who would like to airbrush the entire South – to remove it from recollection and significance.  According to them slavery is the only criterion for social judgement; and no matter how much the  Southern, English, cavalier ethos may have contributed to American culture, its livelihood of human bondage must never be forgiven, a mark of Cain which can never be removed.  No amount of penance can forgive the horrors of slavery. 

Unless one understands Southern history, one can never understand American history. Not only was the Civil War a major event of the new Republic, it was the event against which all other are judged and according to which political philosophies depend.  A recent political observer noticed that interest in the Civil War is waning – fewer visitors to Gettysburg and Antietam, and fewer borrowings and purchases of books on the great, decisive battles of the conflict.  More disturbing was the fact that few young American understand the antecedents of the war – why it happened and more importantly should it have happened – and even fewer have any knowledge of Reconstruction, perhaps the more telling and more significant outcomes of the War.  Because of radical Republican Reconstruction – punitive, repressive, harsh, and unforgiving – the South resented the North even more than as its wartime enemy, and soon returned to a society little different from the slavery of the antebellum period.  Reconstruction is a lesson in retribution and forgiveness denied.

Yet Northerners remain universally critical of the South.  Visiting Mississippi 150 years after the War, 200 after the first slaves were brought from depleted tobacco fields of East to work the black, fertile soil of the Delta, and 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act is still tantamount to treason and at best a reprehensible, immoral act.  Spending dollars in Mississippi would be giving succor to the enemy, validating the South’s heinous and unforgivable past, and turning one’s back on liberalism and its moral conscience.

Yet how can anyone deny history, since Southern history is American history?  The war was fought for many socio-economic reasons but also for cultural ones.  It was indeed more like a war between countries than a war between the states, countries with different economic systems, a different society, and a very different culture; and in a review of two books by the historian George Frederickson, James McPherson of the New York Review of Books (12.4.08) discussed the issue of regional identity of the South and the North – Cavalier vs. Yankee. 

The Southern gentry believed that they were descended from English aristocracy and earlier to the Normans, and continued that ‘cavalier’, chivalric and heroic tradition in the United States.  They believed that Northerners, coming from peasant stock were inferior, as were their social and economic models.



While the link between English cavaliers and Southern grandees might have been exaggerated, the importance of the belief in and the propagation of this myth cannot be underestimated.  Not only the South but the North was guilty of myth-making, and as time went on not only had the South consolidated the conviction that its way of life was the higher expression of human society and its values, but the North bought into it, rejected it, and fought a war over it.

These ideas percolated into the popular press. The Richmond Dispatch, with the largest circulation of any newspaper in the Confederacy, published frequent editorials during the Civil War analyzing:

The incongruous and discordant elements out of which the framers of the Constitution sought to create a homogeneous people. The great wonder is not that the two sections have fallen asunder at last, but that they held together so long. The dissimilarity between moral constitutions, habits of thought, breeding and manners of the Cavalier and Roundhead must run in the blood for generations, and defy all the glue and cement of political unions. By the time of the Civil War, this mythology was complete.  It was not only a war about slavery, free labor, and economic competition, but about culture.  As I mentioned above, it makes no difference whether or not the claims to a Norman blood lineage held any water.  The point was the South fought to defend this Cavalier honor (McPherson)

The legend of the benevolent South, committed to land, family, and chivalry, intrigued two classic, Northern-born, novelists: Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James.

The former describes his father, descended from a Maryland planter family, as a man who "came from another America" (Gerster and Cords 330). In some of his short stories Fitzgerald betrays an uncritical fascination with the myths of plantation life and the Southern belle. In The Bostonians (1886) James idealizes the South although later on he was forced to admit that at the time of writing the novel he knew very little about the realities of life in Dixie. I argue that this myth of the South appears to be a lasting standard in American literature.

One recent Southern novel, Walker Percy's 1987 The Thanatos Syndrome, provides an example for my notions about representations of the South and its relationship with the North:

"The place where the strange events related in this book occur, Feliciana, is not imaginary. It was so named by the Spanish. It was and is part of Louisiana, a strip of pleasant pineland running from the Mississippi to the Perdido, a curious region of a curious state. Never quite Creole or French or Anglo-Saxon or Catholic or Baptist like other parishes of Louisiana, it has served over the years as a refuge for all manner of malcontents. ("Southern American Regional Sensibility versus the North," Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski CLC, 5.11)

Less well-known authors were also writing about and perpetuating the Southern Cavalier myth:

Based largely on a study of ante-bellum American literature, “Yankee and Cavalier” and subtitled "The Old South and American National Character"by William Taylor is a critical survey of regional beliefs and concepts in both North and South before the Civil War, and their effect on the thought of the period. These concepts, born of a ""myth-making frame of mind"", were reflected in the literature of the time, which also helped form them: the Yankee is pictured as industrious, ascetic, mercenary and hypocritical, the Southerner as gay, generous, cultured, and also as weak and vacillating, the Gentleman who was a doomed Aristocrat. The ""plantation novels"" of the 1830's by William Wirt, James Kirk Paulding and others, helped build the myth of the Southern Gentleman (Kirkus Reviews 1961)

Northern intellectuals hate the South and would like to finish the job that Sherman started – burn all vestiges of plantation life.  The very existence of manors and estates is anathema and a constant reminder of the evil history of the South; yet few of these Northerners can look at the architectural beauty, impeccably tasteful interiors, long, live oak-lined allées, formal gardens, and sweeping lawns without envy.  Image and romance trump political philosophy any day of the year.



For however much the cavalier tradition may have contributed to the Civil War, there is something to be said for gentility – graceful good manners, good taste, sophistication, and romance.  There is a good reason why the Old South never dies in Americans’ imagination and why Gone with the Wind remains a popular favorite. 

Pilgrimage is an event held in many towns in the Deep South to celebrate the antebellum period of cavalier manners, graceful elegance, and spacious homes.  It is time for the owners of these homes to show them to the public, and romantics from Maine to Michigan come down for the experience the recreated life of a plantation.  The houses are indeed grand, and most of them have been restored with patience and meticulous care by owners who want to preserve Southern or American history,
descendants of the plantation owners who lived there and wanted to relive a part of their past, or simply those who loved old houses, antiques, and historical appointments.

At each of the houses open for Pilgrimage, local Southern girls dress up in antebellum finery and take visitors through the formal gardens, men’s and women’s sitting rooms, formal dining rooms, conservatories, balconies, and children’s rooms.


Many of these antebellum residences have been furnished and appointed not only with furniture and accessories from the period but original to the house itself. 


The Antebellum South was a unique period of American history whose Cavalier culture may have contributed to the Civil War; but which cannot be denied nor branded as exclusively evil.  Nothing ever is.  The period of the Robber Barons was in the view of many progressive historians, one of the worst and most destructive of recent history.  The aggressive, laissez-faire greed of the Rockefellers, Mellons, and Carnegies destroyed the lives of many working class Americans, reinforced the idea of the rightful concentration of wealth, and set the stage for predatory capitalism.  Yet these billionaires created and led an elegant, graceful, mannered life little different from that of Southern gentlemen.  Their Newport ‘cottages’, homes on Jekyll Island, and estates throughout New York and New England were as impressive as the great antebellum plantation homes of the South.



The Old South – the antebellum South – cannot be expunged from American history, ignored, consigned to historical oblivion.  It existed.  It was American; and the South, for all its old Southern traditions which still prevail still is.

The Politicization Of Food–Dismissing The Joys Of Eating

A few years ago a new restaurant, Shenandoah Farm,  opened in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.  Set high on a promontory overlooking the valley, the Potomac River in the distance, and the mountains behind; and offering food from its own gardens and nearby farms, the restaurant was a perfect match for patrons from Washington looking for good food in an ideal setting.  Moreover, the restaurant had recruited a young chef from California who had grown up on Alice Water’s unique combination of locally-sourced, organic foods creatively combined, prepared, and presented.



The restaurant prided itself on its local sourcing, and made it a point to explain each ingredient’s provenance, careful to note that only in the case of rare exceptions – fresh fish from the Chesapeake from a trusted, bio-friendly source – all food served was sourced from within a 50 mile radius, half that of the popular Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market in Washington.  One could be sure of the most careful attention to quality – only organic food, never GMO, humanely raised, and respectfully prepared.  The restaurant felt that in keeping with his eco-friendly approach to food, it should hire its staff within the same paradigm, and carried out a vigorous affirmative action search for waiters, kitchen help, and agricultural workers.  In other words, the restaurant hoped to be universally correct - eco-friendly, economically dependent on the local economy, and mindful of the needs of the less fortunate.

After the water was poured, waiters explained the menu; but in addition to describing how each dish was prepared, they gave each ingredient’s biography – exactly how it was grown (levels of acidity, minerality, water, and humidity), the specific farms from which it came (owner’s history and credentials), and the care taken in transport and storage.  “We honor diversity”, the waiters concluded, “and have on our staff African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans who have both productive and supervisory positions.”

“Jamie likes to prepare his dishes with a light touch”, said one server about the chef, “ all organic, of course, with a touch of the foraged and unusual – and the braised baby goat, stewed in Turkish figs and a Mediterranean infusion of rosemary, his specialty, is a good example”.

“Terroir is important”, the server continued, “and Jamie lets our free-range goats graze only on the Northeast slopes of the property.  He can sow sorrel and jimson there in the Spring, and the meat takes on a fragrant, autumnal flavor in October.”


The lettuce was from the kitchen gardens behind the main house – “built in 1880 by the Tylers, one of the few Virginia families who never owned slaves”.  The vinegar had been distilled and confected from the Norton grape, Virginia’s own native varietal. The eggs and chicken livers were from the free range chickens on the southern slopes of the farm.  “Our chickens have over 10 acres to roam”, said Marshall, “more land than any other poultry farm in the area.  We have carefully balanced the need for wide ranging with muscle consistency. In an area any larger than ten acres, the chickens become stressed, the meat less tender, and the organ meat grainy and somewhat acidic.



The restaurant was hugely popular and reservations had to be made weeks in advance; but after some time the waitlist shortened, tables could be easily had, and both the quality of the food and the service were soon a far cry from what they had been.  The restaurant realized that they, in their progressive approach to the entire food process, had underestimated cost.   Labor-intensive, small-scale, intensive farming was costly and the cost was passed on to the restaurant.  Recruiting minority workers in this rural corner of Virginia was not easy, and although the restaurant offered decent wages and excellent benefits they had difficulty attracting and keeping staff.  Insisting on a diverse, always changing menu designed to source and show-off a wide variety of local ingredients placed additional pressure on the chef who began to rely more on architecture and presentation than taste.

In its last throes and in financial difficulty, the restaurant lost its chef but not its principles; and its few diners were happy enough to be served, for lack of a better term, ‘politically correct’ food.  Taste was secondary.  It was all about the right way to maintain eco-quality, social justice, and local economies up and down the food chain.

The story of Shenandoah Farm is illustrative of the current American food zeitgeist – the quality of the food, the service, and the ambiance are secondary; the welfare of the animals slaughtered, the organic purity of the fruits and vegetables grown, the diversity of the kitchen and waitstaff are far more important than the final, plated product.

A Walk in The Woods is a new Washington restaurant in Adams Morgan, and while in the interest of time a complete tale of provenance, bio-integrity, and diversity is not possible (a written addendum is provided on the back of every menu), the restaurant has become known as a millennial go-to.  Dining there is a way to visibly demonstrate one’s progressive credentials, one more statement in an attempt to construct a completely respectful lifestyle.

The food is ordinary.  The chef has added exotic ingredients – a touch of wild sorrel, Chesapeake bay sea grass, and Dordogne morels – but has included them willy-nilly.  There is no reason why the edible flowers, Western sassafras, and sour Turkish fig reduction go with anything.  Beneath the decoration, the food is ordinary, over-salted, and tasteless. All the right moves have been made – organic, non-GMO, responsibly produced, local or fair trade – but little attention has been paid to the meal itself.

Dining in France, on the other hand, is a completely different experience, one which celebrates the artistry, the talent, and the high quality of both food and preparation.  The waiters at Le Petit Lutece or Le Train Bleu brought out the dish of fruits de mer – oysters, clams, mussels, periwinkles, and crab – without a word about provenance or husbandry.

The choucroute Alsatienne – German-style wurst, bacon, and ham atop a vinegary portion of marinated cabbage and accompanied by steamed potatoes and spicy Maille mustard – needed no explanation.  The lightly sautéed filet of Dover sole, the liver sautéed in porto, or a dozen fines de claire required no introduction, no soliloquy, no detailed explanation.  You didn’t ask because you didn’t have to ask. French brasserie cuisine was standard and uniformly good.



At the best Michelin-starred restaurants, knowledgeable waiters appreciated a knowledgeable question about the often complex preparation involved in French cuisine.  Sauces were prepared, reduced, enhanced, reduce again, highlighted, simmered, and then only served with meat, fish, or fowl. “Does the chef use sage or sorrel in his rabbit reduction?” would be an appropriate inquiry.  “What’s in it?” would not.

Within the last few months a new food group appeared on Facebook, one originated by its administrators as a place for like-minded (educated, savvy, upper middle class professionals) to share their experiences of food, wine, and dining. In the early going the site was all about the great restaurants of Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and most interestingly, the hinterland where the new American cuisine had finally arrived. There were pictures of oysters, succulent racks of lamb, bottles of top-flight California wine, French bistros, Asian markets, and Thai, Indian, and Spanish dishes.  It was all about the food, how to prepare it, and where to eat it.

The site featured stories of discovery, childhood memories, and international travel.  Its combination of personal recollections, the wide, eclectic but experienced taste of writers, and the evident delight of eating made the site far more interesting and engaging than commercial sites.

It didn’t take long, however, for the site to be politicized.  Posts were now more about minority chefs, women  who had overcome sexism and misogyny  to rise in the kitchen, inner-city gardens, the effect of Administration trade wars and tariffs on local growers, modern gourmet soup kitchens, the war on school lunches, food as a means to social solidarity, inclusivity, and the minimum wage.  The delights of eating had been derailed by  obligations.  The site had morphed into one of many thousands of political sites on the Internet promoting progressive causes.  Its uniqueness was gone; and many members left the group.

Politicization – or more aptly described, infection by political concerns – is part of the current American zeitgeist.  Things cannot be taken as they are and for what they are, but looked at only through a political lens.  Fractional sexuality becomes lionized and paramount; sex is only about power; dining is no more than the end result of a flawed socio-economic market chain.  Enjoyment means guilt, ignorance, and dismissiveness of underlying causes and their consequences.  America has become even more Puritanical, censorious, and intolerant than one would have ever thought.
So perhaps it is wrong to criticize the new, woke foodies.  They are only one part of a national trend.

Progressivism has become a secular religion, believe-or-be-damned, with-us-or-against-us; and its agenda (doctrine, liturgy, commandments) is showing up everywhere.  No segment of American society has been resistant to its evangelism – for now.  Like all American temporal trends, it will eventually, sooner rather than later, wither and die.