Student: Obviously, in light of everything that's going on
at the moment, we all believe rape and sexual assault are heinous crimes.
We all want rapists behind bars, but I feel that, in this climate,
logic, evidence, and data are, kind of, being lost in translation.
And also, there's a very pervasive, "You're with us or against us"
mentality that's really doing a lot more harm than good.
So my question to you is: how can we best stand up for the importance of
due process and the presumption of innocence, while also doing what
we can to support survivors?
Shapiro: I think that there is actually a third question that I want to address
that you didn't even ask. So I'll address the first two, and then
there's a third one that I think is implicit in the first two.
When it comes to standing up for due process, the answer is
we actually have to stand up for it, even in cases where it make us
uncomfortable, or even where we believe that the person may be
responsible for something bad, because once you lose due process
for one, you lose due process for everybody, obviously.
When it comes to standing up for sexual assault survivors, I think
the idea that we ought to take everybody's first account with the
respect it deserves means not dismissing, not downplaying,
but it also means asking the proper questions in order to get
at the truth. That doesn't mean intimidating people. It doesn't
mean calling people liars without evidence that they're lying.
It doesn't mean mocking them, obviously, God forbid.
It doesn't mean doing any of those things.
Throughout the Christine Blasey Ford thing, I kept saying over, and over, and
over, "I'm not calling her a liar. I'm not mocking her. I don't know
if she's lying. I don't know if she's telling the truth. I don't know if
mis-remembering. I don't know any of that stuff.
All I know is that due process requires such and such to happen."
Now, the real answer, in the end, to a lot of what's happening...
And here's the really unpopular part with the Left.
The Left destroyed traditional mores with regard to relations between
the sexes. Destroyed them wholesale. So, the original idea was that men
were supposed to act with honor and chivalry in protecting women,
and women were supposed to look for, for example, relationships,
just as men were. Sexual activity was supposed to be confined...
This was, at least, the ideal. It was supposed to be confined to committed
relationships, particularly marriage. Not everybody lived up to that.
But a huge number of people did. In fact, once people got pregnant,
people basically got married. Studies from the 1930s, 1940, and 1950s
show a lot of seven month marriage babies, right? People who were
sleeping together, getting pregnant, and then the couple gets married.
When you don't teach men to protect women, you get men who will
victimize women. And when you don't teach women that they ought to
cherish men who are responsible and good, all you end up doing is
incentivizing bad male behavior. The feminist movement was
not wrong when they said men are acting like pigs.
They were wrong when they said women also ought to act like pigs,
and that this is the solution to our problem. Because now, what's
happened is they got rid of traditional mores about how sex ought to be
connected with love and ought to be connected with relationships.
They got rid of all of that. It's just a bodily function now,
except when it comes to actual sexual assault. We treat that differently than
any other bodily function, obviously, but that's the problem. They create
this standard where sex is basically a throwaway item, sort of like eating.
And then we treat sex very differently when it comes to what we all know it is,
which is a deeply important and intimate part of a person's life,
and then we attempt to backdoor standards of consent that, frankly,
don't make any sense in a real-life context. You get college campuses
in California saying that what you is a "yes means yes" standard,
where you have a legal checklist, I guess, where every time you do
anything in the bedroom, you're supposed to ask: "Am I allowed to
touch your hand? Am I allowed to touch your shoulder? Am I allowed
to touch your hair?" Which has never, ever resulted in actual fulfillment
of a sexual encounter. It's sort of like Zeno's Paradox. If you have
a "yes means yes" standard, the closer you get, the further away you are.
And the... [Audience laughter]
Shapiro: And again... Women really gave up on marriage a lot too soon.
Marriage was the best thing ever for women. It is an amazing thing for
men too, because it civilizes them, it cultures them, it teaches them
to be protectors of their family, and to take care of people,
and to think beyond themselves, and think beyond their generation.
Women gave up in marriage a way to teach men to do those things.
And also, women gave up the idea that a commitment was going to
come along with this intimacy. And let's be real about this.
Every scientific study ever done has shown that women actually do have
better sex in the context of committed relationships.
All the crap that you see in "Cosmo Magazine" about sleeping with
100 guys and being sexually happy is just garbage.
It is just sheer, unadulterated garbage.
[Audience applause]
Shapiro: I know, a long answer to a short question, but reinculcation of
traditional roles of male and female with the same feminist respect that
we ought to have for women at all steps of the process is the answer.
Student: Thank you. I hope people are listening.
[Audience applause]