Feminist activists at Georgetown University are special snowflakes who felt they needed trigger warnings before another feminist who disagrees with them gave a lecture on campus.
The speaker, resident American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, delivered the lecture on Thursday night at the famed Jesuit university in Washington, D.C.’s best neighborhood.
The lecture entitled “What’s Right (and Badly Wrong) with Feminism?” was sponsored by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a conservative women’s group.
A group of radical Georgetown feminists demanded “trigger warnings” at the event because, they feared, Sommers could traumatize rape victims by talking.
“Tonight, Republicans are hosting an extremist anti-feminist speaker that dismisses and denies survivors of sexual assault and the real harm of rape culture,” a Georgetown student identified only as “Sarah” emailed.
“Current College Republicans leadership has not been willing to do simple things like add a trigger/ content warning, or clarify why they felt it was appropriate to bring this speaker into our community,” Sarah complained.
“If you’re available and up for it, I’d strongly encourage you to attend,” the feminist continued. “Students that are educated on the real facts of sexual assault and able to provide information on resources should be in the room.”
Sarah’s email was addressed to “SAPE,” which appears to be a Georgetown campus group called Sexual Assault Peer Educators.
Perhaps a dozen of the lecture attendees turned out to be protesters. They held up signs as Sommers spoke. Messages on the signs included “Feminists Against RAPE Apology!” and “Trigger Warning: anti-feminism.” At the bottom of the “trigger warning” sign was a scrawled message about “safe space.”
The demonstrators also posted signs outside the room where Sommers spoke notifying students of “safe spaces” in another campus building.
“All are welcome to come if they feel triggered or upset by today’s events,” the signs urged, according to Luce Lecture director Laurel Conrad.
Sommers, who looks to be about 5’5″ and weighs perhaps 130 pounds after getting caught in a rainstorm, spoke to a standing-room only crowd of over 100 students in total.
“I’m sorry to see that students want to silence another point of view,” Luce Lecture director Laurel Conrad said. “It seems that feminists can’t decide if women are warriors or if they are delicate butterflies who must have the remarks of established academics like Dr. Sommers prejudged.”
“The protesters are using trigger warnings as a way to stigmatize the presentation and anything that differs from their point of view,” Conrad further explained. “It’s insulting.”
The Luce Institute observed that Sommers said nothing that could be misconstrued as an apology for rape or rapists. However, the protest did likely cause more people to attend, thus amplifying Sommers’s message.
The lecture has been posted on YouTube.
Sommers is a former philosophy professor — at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. — and the author of several books including “The War Against Boys,” “One Nation Under Therapy” and “Who Stole Feminism?”
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