Wash U Honors Anti-Feminist at Graduation

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise at 2:31 PM on May 12, 2008.

KathyG excoriates Washington University for offering an honorary doctorate to anti-feminist crusader Phylis Schlafly:

[V]ery rarely—in fact, almost never—do you see a great university honor someone who, throughout her public life has shown nothing but contempt for the values of the academia, values such as intellectual honesty and integrity, rational discourse, and the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge. Who has been, not a champion of human rights and human progress, but rather, at every turn, sought to thwart the aspirations of millions of female and nonwhite Americans and deny them equal justice under the law. Who has attempted to leave the world a far worse place than it was when she came into it, and in many ways has succeeded at this.

Schlafly is a very talented political operative, but she's not a deep thinker. Feministing excerpts an recent interview with Schlafly in which she argues that marital rape is a contradiction in terms because a woman issues blanket consent to sex by getting married:

Could you clarify some of the statements that you made in Maine last year about martial rape?

I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That's what marriage is all about, I don't know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn't mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn't rape, it's a he said-she said where it's just too easy to lie about it.

Was the way in which your statement was portrayed correct?

Yes. Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them.

So you see this as more of a tool used by people to get out of marriages than as legitimate-

Yes, I certainly do. [Student Life]

Schlafly believes that a husband is entitled to extract sex from his wife against her will, as long as he doesn't physically hurt her in the process.

Schlafly also implies that we can't have laws to protect wives from their husbands' sexual demands because someone could make a false allegation. If you take Schlafly's logic to its ultimate and logical conclusion, all rape laws should be struck down because of mere possibility of false allegations. She's advocating the sex crime analog of tort reform: An alleged victims don't deserve the right to arbitration in the courts because someone might bring frivolous allegations.

I'm very disappointed that WashU would single out such a morally reprehensible alumnus for praise and recognition.

Tagged as: feminism, women, rape, marital rape