HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: Rape discussions don’t do enough to blame patriarchy.

A male professor at the University of Texas at Austin has found the missing ingredient when discussing sexual assault—the patriarchy.

In an essay that appeared for about a day on Waging Nonviolence, a social justice news site, before it was removed, Robert Jensen blamed—in great detail—his concern about the lack of discussion and blaming of men and the patriarchy when discussing sexual assault.

“Taking rape seriously requires a feminist analysis of patriarchy, and that analysis takes us beyond rape to questions about how patriarchy’s domination/subordination dynamic structures our intimate lives, an inquiry that can be uncomfortable not only for those who endorse the dynamic but also for those who have accepted an accommodation with it,” Jensen said in his essay, which has since been republished on his own website.

Jensen opined that when talking about rape, it is paramount to discuss the socialization of men and their understanding of sex, power, and violence.

“Rape is a crime committed by individuals, of course, but it is committed within patriarchy, and if we were serious about reducing the number of rapes, we would be talking about the roots of that violence in patriarchy,” Jensen said.

According to Jensen, defining—or “narrowing,” as he called it— rape and rapists “deflects attention from other questions about patriarchy’s eroticizing of domination and the resulting rape culture.”

He also blamed the “mainstream voices” for discrediting feminists’ analysis of rape as “too radical.”

Actually, the feminists themselves have done most of that.