got survivor privilege

#SurvivorPrivilege shows George Will just how fun it is to be a rape survivor

got survivor privilegeConservative columnist George F. Will doesn’t think this “supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. ‘sexual assault'” is such a big deal.

He’s hardly alone, of course. Like Glenn Beck and Christina Hoff Sommers, Will thinks the statistics on sexual assault rates lie. Like James Taranto and Emily Yofee, he thinks survivors are partially to blame if they were intoxicated. Like Cathy Young, he’s very concerned about the rights of male students who are supposedly being falsely accused willy-nilly.

Running through all these rape denialist takes, of course, is the implication that there must be many, many women who lie about being raped. Where Will really breaks from the pack is by openly speculating about why they’re lying. He argues that more campus rape survivors are now coming forward because colleges have made “victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges.”

On Twitter, Wagatwe Wanjuki started the #SurvivorPrivilege hashtag, where rape survivors are documenting the many “perks” of this supposedly coveted status…


Maya DusenberyMaya is also a fan of the #firegeorgewill hashtag.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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