In his Monday Wall Street Journal column, James Taranto stated that in sexual assault cases where both the victim and rapist are drunk — both parties are equally to blame for the attack.
Taranto even went as far as to compare rape to a car crash involving two drunk drivers saying, “one doesn’t determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver’s sex.”
Surely this ugly kind of victim-blaming is beneath the dignity of The Wall Street Journal. Approximately one in four young women will be sexually assaulted during their college career – an alarming statistic that should spur all of us to seek effective policies to provide services to rape survivors and hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes. But Taranto seems determined to maintain or even deepen the rape culture that pervades campuses and indeed much of U.S. society. What does that say about The Wall Street Journal?
Taranto’s recent screed is not his first misogynist claim. On January 6, he said that the growing number of illegitimate children was a product of the “rise of female careerism” and women’s choices given their access to abortions and birth control when he said, “the vast majority of children who are growing up without fathers are doing so in large part because of their mother’s choices.”
James Taranto doesn’t need a national platform for demeaning women and condoning rape. He has demonstrated how out of touch he is; now he needs to be out of a job.