Code-speak and Acadmic Leftism

When you talk to someone, you typically want to communicate your message clearly. However, sometimes communicating your message clearly will get you in trouble with someone else. So you're trying to communicate with one person, while disguising your meaning.

For example, adults often develop code phrases to obliquely talk about sex around children and sensitive adults. Phrases like "have sex" or "fuck" become phrases like "go home with" or "sleep with".

Older children and adults may grasp what "going home with" someone actually entails, but young children don't. And sensitive adults can partially ignore the actual meaning of "going home with" someone, since it only implies sex, rather then explicitly stating it.

We notice this in academia. When an academic feminist uses the word "rape" she is probably not using the dictionary Merriam Webster definition:

to force (someone) to have sex with you by using violence or the threat of violence

For example, in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy we see the entry Feminist Perspectives on Rape:

One limitation of a purely performative account of consent is that it does not take into account the context in which the relevant behavior or utterance occurs. For instance, if a woman says “yes” or even feigns sexual enthusiasm in order to keep a knife-wielding attacker from becoming angry and hurting or killing her, it would be absurd to regard her behavior or utterance as consent (or at least as meaningful consent). The question is what other contextual constraints and pressures may also undermine the validity of a woman's (apparent) consent. To put the point another way, having granted that “no” always means no, we must recognize that, in some cases, “yes” also means no. There are many kinds of explicit and implicit threats that render a woman's consent to sex less than meaningful: the man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. Which (if any) such nonviolent coercive pressures should be regarded as rape, either morally or legally, is a matter of some controversy (Schulhofer 1998; Burgess-Jackson 1996, 91-106).

The question is especially important from a feminist point of view, since it is to be expected that in a patriarchal society men frequently hold positions of social, legal, and/or institutional power over women and are thus positioned to withhold important benefits from women who refuse them sexual access, in addition to threatening harms and penalties. Viewing at least certain kinds of nonviolent coercive pressures as incompatible with meaningful consent may yield the conclusion that some quid pro quo sexual harassment is also rape (Falk 1998). Furthermore, some radical feminists' description of prostitution as “commercial sexual violence” (Jeffreys 1997) reflects an expansive understanding of the economic and other coercive pressures that often compel women's consent to sexual acts in prostitution (even where physical violence does not play a role)

The term "rape" is used by feminists as code.

Suppose an academic feminist is speaks to another academic feminist. If she uses the word "rape", they both know that it includes most instances of sexual intercourse, and possibly instances of non-sexual-intercourse. The feminist use of the word "rape" is essentially a condemnation of men having sex in a way that doesn't acknowledge women as superior is insufficiently feminist.

However, if a commoner overhears them, the commoner thinks that they're talking about a man grabbing an innocent woman in the park, and forcing himself on her. So the commoner hears a feminist say something to the effect of

"I got a raise for having sex with my boss was raped by my boss, so we need to enact policy X to prevent workplace rape"

And the commoner supports policy X. Of course, policy X is some way of harassing males at work and indoctrinating people with feminist propaganda.

Feminists talk about harassing men for doing normal things like having sex, drinking alcohol, peeing while standing up, et cetera. However, since they use code words like "rape", commoners cannot tell that they are harassing men for normal behavior.

Other code words include "sexist", "chauvinistic", "misogynistic", "discrimination", and "sexual harassment".