The explosive rape accusations leveled against seven Cornell students have revived the gender wars of the #MeToo era, offering a reminder of the dramatic transformation undergone by the feminist movement—and the left more broadly—in recent decades. In the 1960s, feminists demanded legal equality and the end of patriarchal paternalism, arguing that women should be free to make their own choices with regard to sex, family, education, and career. Today, feminists demand that women be protected against men, and that, in many contexts, they be treated as not responsible for their own decisions. In effect, this is a demand for the resurrection of paternalism under feminist auspices.
The assumption guiding the left-wing reaction to the Cornell case seems to be that because the accused are men, they are guilty, for men are by definition guilty. Is it any wonder that millions of men in recent years have turned away from a left that seems to hate them?