On Tuesday, radio personality and columnist Dennis Prager blamed "the feminist left" for what he says is the "gargantuan lie" that women are commonly sexually assaulted while in college.
Prager, speaking at a rally organized by the Sarasota Republican Party in support of Gov. Rick Scott, said there is no "rape culture" on college campuses, and instead "a rape of the culture." Women's rights activists and students at many campuses have pointed to an ongoing problem of campus rape and assault, and earlier this year, the Obama administration convened the White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault that published a comprehensive report on the problem. Last month, the administration launched the "It's On Us" campaign to decrease sexual assault rates. According to findings from the Department of Justice, 1 in 5 college women is sexually assaulted.
Calling the 1 in 5 statistic "nonsense," Prager said, "Do you know what sexual assault means? Did you ever look at what counts? An unwanted kiss is considered sexual assault. I'm stunned it's only 1 in 5. Four out of five women have not gotten an unwanted kiss? My wife gets unwanted kisses every so often."
That last comment reportedly elicited some audience chuckles.
Sarasota Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the topic of sexual assault "should never have been part of a political discussion at the rally." The comments, though, were not unusual for Prager: Just a week before the rally, Prager's own website stated "White House College Sexual Assault Statistics Grossly Exaggerated."
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Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com. She is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly CNN columnist and a contributing writer for the New York Times, she is also a lawyer.
