Katie Roiphe

About the author: Katie Roiphe was a doctoral candidate in English literature at Princeton University when this article was adapted from her book The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus.

"Rape-crisis" feminists are betraying many of the principles of feminism. In fact, many campus rape activists, by eliminating the distinction between rape and a bad sexual experience, are unwittingly perpetuating stereotypes of women as weak, innocent, and easily preyed upon by stronger, lascivious men. The perpetuation of myths of this kind, namely that women are the weaker, innocent sex, only succeeds in keeping women in the nineteenthcentury prisons from which feminism should be liberating them.

One in four college women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. One in four. I remember standing outside the dining hall in college, looking at a...