“Sexual liberation is having a nervous breakdown on college campuses. Conservatives should be cheering on its collapse; instead they sometimes sound as if they want to administer the victim smelling salts.” So begins Heather MacDonald’s now famous article “Neo-Victorianism on Campus”. According to MacDonald the campus rape-culture hysteria is an effort to restore old norms that the sexual revolution did away with. Legalistic consent rules, which MacDonald describes as resembling a mortgage application, expose any male who has sex to a potential rape allegation.

MacDonald goes on to describe the case of a young man expelled from occidental college for having sex with an “intoxicated” college student. After a night of heavy drinking, Occidental Jane Doe arranged to meet Occidental John Doe for sex, Heather MacDonald describes,

“….Jane Doe (a pseudonym), began her weekend drinking binge on Friday, September 6, 2013. She attended a dance party in the dorm room of John Doe, another freshman whom she had just met, and woke up the next morning with a hangover. She soon began “pregaming” again—that is, drinking before an event at which one expects to drink further. Jane drank before a daytime soccer game and continued during the evening, repeatedly swigging from a bottle of orange juice and vodka which she had prepared. Around midnight, she went to a second party in John Doe’s dorm room, still drinking vodka. John, too, had been drinking all day. Jane removed her shirt while dancing with John and engaged in heavy petting on his bed, sitting on top of him and grinding her hips. Jane’s friends tried to shepherd her home, but before she left John’s room, she gave him her cell phone number so that they could coordinate their planned sexual tryst.

When she arrived at her own dorm room, John texted her: “The second that you away from them, come back.” Jane responded: “Okay.” John wrote back: “Just get back here.” Jane responded: “Okay do you have a condom.” John replied: “Yes.” Jane texted back: “Good, give me two minutes.” John texted: “Knock when you’re here.”

Before leaving her dorm room, Jane texted a friend from back home: “I’m going to have sex now.” Jane walked down to John’s room at approximately 1 a.m., knocked on his door, went in, took off her earrings, got undressed, performed oral sex, and had sexual intercourse with him. When an acquaintance knocked on John’s door to check up on her, Jane three times called out: “Yeah, I’m fine.” Shortly before 2 a.m., Jane dressed herself and returned to her room. On her way there, she texted her friends vapid messages, complete with smiley faces, none of which mentioned assault. She then walked to a different dorm where she sat on the lap of another male student whom she had met the night before, talking and joking. The next day she texted John asking if she had left her earrings and belt in his room and asked to come by to pick them up.”

Later Jane Doe came to regret the encounter; Occidental decided she was too intoxicated to provide consent, and expelled John Doe from college.

While MacDonald dismisses the idea that John Doe raped Jane Doe, she sees a silver lining in his expulsion. According to MacDonald, fear of bogus rape charges will reduce premarital sex by scaring the crap out of college men. MacDonald asks, “What’s not to like? Leave laments about the inhibition of campus sex to Reason magazine.”

On this issue, I have to side with the amoral hedonists of Reason. We could also reduce premarital sex by banning women from appearing in public without a male chaperone, and stoning them to death if they engage in sex outside of marriage. Most people would correctly describe such rules as misogynistic. Why on earth would we support a system which makes men solely responsible for maintaining “sexual decorum?”

The object of campus sex rules is not to restore “sexual decorum,” but to ensure minimal restraint on women and maximum restraint on men. Compare the reactions of the Duke faculty to the Duke Lacrosse team, and to Duke Student and porn actress Belle Knox. According to mainstream faculty opinion, even if the players weren’t guilty of rape, they behaved badly, acting like farm animals. Meanwhile Belle Knox is above criticism, according to same faculty.

Traditional sexual norms were not a one-way street; while they treated men and women differently, the traditional rules required significant sacrifices from both, commanding chivalry of men and modesty of women. As evidenced by ubiquitous “Slut-Walks,” contemporary feminism demands chivalry, while maintaining that modesty is patriarchal BS. Don’t try and find a silver lining in this rain cloud; it isn’t there.