Charlie Kirk is Why We Need Feminism

The case for a feminist education — open the schools

Well, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t expect to be writing another article on Charlie Kirk so soon. Just recently I wrote an article going over how Charlie’s thinking on race relations is fundamentally surface-level. He equated anti-racism with the KKK for the reason that both groups talk about race, and no, I’m not joking, he actually said this.

This time, though, I saw something from Charlie Kirk just recently that is actually quite horrifying, to be honest. As many people will no doubt know, Charlie has garnered quite a bit of notoriety online in the last couple of years by going around to college campuses across the US and giving talks as well as debating students and really anyone who shows up.

He talks and debates about pretty much anything he wants or the person he’s talking to asks him about. In the instance I’m going to talk about today though, he delved into some really questionable territory regarding the topic of sex, rape, and consent that really needs to be addressed in my opinion, if for no other reason than showing why this thinking is so dangerous.

As mentioned, Charlie was debating one person during one of these talks and the topic of sexual assault/rape came up and the girl he was talking to brought up the in the US experience rape or sexual assault. It’s worth noting here that she did mention that this is on the lower end and that many stats have it higher than this.

Charlie attempted to go after this by saying that the stat was false, but he didn’t actually explain why. The only debunk of it he offered was to claim that if stats regarding rape were that severe in college campuses then women wouldn’t go to college. Of course, this makes no sense because there are other reasons why women go to college, such as wanting an education.

Furthermore, women get assaulted by their partners and husbands all the time, so if Charlie really wanted to go to the logical conclusion of this argument, he would say that if women wanted to avoid sexual assault, they would not pursue relationships with men of any kind. Ultimately, this is just victim blaming; the logical conclusion of what he’s saying is no different from the old misogynistic trope of questioning what a woman was wearing and the implication that that is why a woman was assaulted.

After this point, he claimed that women lie about being raped and sexually assaulted “all the time” and that this was the only explanation for the 1 in 5 stat. He also quite bizarrely said that this would mean that US campuses would have a level of rape similar to the Congo but he doesn’t cite any evidence that the stats there are this high. He is simply regurgitating the same argument (almost verbatim) that Milo Yiannopoulos used to make years ago.

Now, I can’t speak for the American experience as I’ve never been there, but I do know that in Britain at least, this type of thinking is complete nonsense.

For one thing, it doesn’t account for the fact largely because people like Charlie will just accuse women of lying. I mean, he’s even said that women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault are liars and said E. Jean Carroll was lying about being raped by Donald Trump because she’s “.”

There are no incentives to lie about being sexually assaulted or raped. As soon as a woman comes forth about their experiences, people like Charlie doubt them and accuse them of lying…

A common argument that people will make whenever a famous person is accused of something like this is to say they’re just doing it for money. This is what people said about the children and it’s what’s been said about the women , even in light of his recent court case. Of course, this is nonsense because if that were the case, then every man with even a little bit of money would have hundreds of sexual assault allegations against him, but clearly that’s not the case.

The fact of the matter is, there are no incentives to lie about being sexually assaulted or raped. As soon as a woman comes forth about their experiences, and accuse them of lying, or you’ll even have people try to justify it by asking what the woman was wearing when she was assaulted.

In England for example, result in a conviction and many result in no further legal proceedings whatsoever. People will constantly fearmonger about false rape accusations but the truth is,to get away with rape than a random person is to be falsely accused of rape.

Victims of rape are so to accuse women of lying about rape when there is literally no incentive for them to do so and when reported rapes so rarely result in any further legal proceedings, nevermind a conviction, is the height of ignorance and misogyny.

It was at this point that Charlie started to get into some extremely questionable territory regarding the topic of consent and rape. The girl he was talking to asked him why so many women don’t report rape or sexual assault and he said it’s because alcohol is involved and “it was consensual and then it wasn’t consensual.” The girl responded by saying (correctly) that consent can be removed at any time, only for Charlie to say that they were getting into a murky grey area regarding consent.

He actually gave an example of two teenagers hooking up after a number of drinks, and “all of a sudden,” the girl removes consent and said this is an example of a grey area. Now, this is what I was talking about at the start of the article when I said his views on this are quite frankly horrifying.

For starters, I really have to question his thinking in this regard. Alcohol lowers people’s inhibitions, meaning that someone who is drunk can’t consent to sex by definition. Not only this, but even if they could consent initially and they later withdrew consent, to continue having sex with that person would be sexual assault. The literal whole point of consent is that you can withdraw it at any time, and if someone continues, they are violating you.

This is something that was brought up to Charlie in the debate, and he actually responded by saying it was an unfair characterisation. I think that Charlie and the type of arguments he makes here really are exactly why we need feminism, perhaps more than ever.

To accuse women of lying about rape when there is literally no incentive for them to do so and when reported rapes so rarely result in any further legal proceedings, nevermind a conviction, is the height of ignorance and misogyny

He for one thing makes the false claim that women lie about being raped and sexually assaulted all the time. As I’ve explained, women have no incentive to lie about this, and if anything, they have an incentive to simply not even mention it because people like Charlie will just accuse or doing it for money, as is often the case.

Even when women do come forth and present strong evidence of being sexually assaulted, they will either be ignored or still accused of lying. I already mentioned how in England virtually all reported rapes don’t result in any further legal proceedings, nevermind convictions. The only reason why people think women lie about being sexually assaulted or raped is because they don’t understand the nature of these things and the experiences of people who have suffered in this way.

Not only this, but his ideas about consent are actually really quite concerning and don’t stand up to even the most basic level of scrutiny, to put it mildly. His stance on these issues is rooted fundamentally in misogyny and a hatred of women.

For more stories about consent, the manosphere, and women’s lives worldwide, follow Fourth Wave. Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other targeted groups? Submit to the Wave!