Signs at a demonstration in Los Angeles, Calif. Reuters photo: Lucy Nicholson They feel pressured, they feel disrespected, and they are fighting back. The feminist website Babe published an account of a date gone bad. The pushback has been swift and sharp. I share some of the concerns of the critics, but I also think young women are sending a message that is being missed. To permit an anonymous accuser to assassinate the character of a famous man is a sucker punch. He may have behaved badly, but even assuming that her entire account is true, nothing she describes seems remotely awful enough to justify the public humiliation to which she has subjected him. There is no way to know who is behind this. It could be someone with a grudge against Ansari. It could be someone who routinely makes accusations against people. But the cultural chord it struck is revealing. To be clear, the critics, including Flanagan, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, and even Catherine Deneuve, make two essential points. One, it is crucial to make distinctions between behavior that is boorish or uncouth and conduct that is abusive or criminal. What we are seeing in the broader culture now is something that has been evident on college campuses for some time — women are unhappy about the state of sex and romance. They feel pressured, they feel disrespected, and they are fighting back. Sadly, our culture has so exalted sexual license that the only form of sexual conduct women are permitted to protest is coercion. What does it say about dating in our time that those are unrealistic expectations? Grace was bitter and hurt. Yet in our unbuttoned age, her only weapon, as she sees it, is to claim that a crime was committed. Everyone else seems to be loving it. He really did do something terrible to you. In this, I think Grace speaks for many, many women and also some men. Feminists hate to seem to pine for love and romance, yet their responses to Grace hint at the disappointment the sexual revolution has delivered. This is the same... Making the click-through worthwhile: What we know about the Mail Bomber at this hour, the New York Times offers readers a presidential-assassination fantasy, and selected highlights from the NRPlus elections briefing that you probably missed. What We Know about the Mail Bomber Suspicious packages featuring... In the aftermath of the attempted bombings of George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Brennan, I'm going to be pessimistic on an already-dark day. We've seen this movie before. We know what's going to happen next, and none of it is good. Everything about our polarization is about to get... Today I learned something truly new. For progressives, the looming midterm elections apparently should not hinge on a booming economy, a near-record-low unemployment rate, a strong stock market, and unprecedented energy production. Instead, progressives hope that race and gender questions overshadow pocketbook issues. The media are fixated on...
