RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/431104/print

According to a student at California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, trying to give a classmate a ride to their car so you can get their parking spot is rape culture.

In an op-ed for the Poly Post, the school’s official newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Adrian Danganan admits that commuting to the campus “has never been more difficult” because “parking is becoming increasingly sparse.”

She explains that “students are struggling to find suitable methods ” to find a spot to park to attend class, and that some have resorted to offering departing classmates rides in order to take their spots when they leave.

But this method, according to Danganan, is far from “suitable.”

Now, she starts off by explaining that it’s generally a bad idea to get into a stranger’s car — which is a totally fair argument. She quickly goes from reasonable to ridiculous, however, when she writes that “pressuring a pedestrian to enter a vehicle only encourages idiosyncrasies that attribute [sic] to rape culture.”

(Yikes! I guess these students would be better off missing class entirely. They might fail out of school, but at least they wouldn’t be contributing to a culture of sexual assault!)

Now, Danagan does concede that “this seems radical and outlandish,” but explains that she’s actually totally right because “trying to ease someone or even guilt him or her in to [sic] doing so is almost like sweet-talking to get what is desired.”

So . . . according to Danagan, every single time one person tries to persuade another in order to get something — anything — that “is desired,” then that’s rape culture.

This is, simply put, insane.

Under that logic, Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of rape culture. Salespeople contribute to rape culture, and are literally getting paid to perpetuate sexual violence. The next time a waitress at a restaurant tries to get me to order dessert, I won’t just politely decline — I will un-politely decline, because now, thanks to Danagan, I realize that what she’s doing is basically just like if she were trying to rape me.

Look. It would be one thing if the driver were flirting with the person they were trying to give a ride to, because that would suggest that the motive was sexual. But Danagan admits that the motive of these students is a parking spot. Maybe I just don’t know how to party, but finding a parking spot in order to get to class sounds like the furthest thing from a sexual activity, and — if words still have any meaning — Danagan’s characterization of this trend is the furthest thing from truth.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.