One of the co-hosts of the Fox News show “Outnumbered” said on Wednesday that women in college need to take more “personal responsibility” to protect themselves from rape.
Harris Faulkner’s comments came as part of a discussion about remarks made recently by a former George Washington University president, who said women need to be “trained not to drink in excess” so they can defend themselves against rape.
Asked whether the former president’s comments were offensive, the show’s sole male guest — its “one lucky guy” — Lou Dobbs said he didn’t think they were.
“As a father of two sons, two daughters, I will tell you, the last thing you want is any child — a boy, a girl, it doesn’t matter — to be defenseless,” Dobbs said. “And if you don’t teach your kids and pray that they learn to never, ever take on additional vulnerability to everyday life in this society, why should there be anything controversial about it?”
The consensus seemed to be that while the victim shouldn’t be blamed, drinking in excess was problematic. Co-host Jedediah Bila asked whether this was simply creating an excuse for justifying rapists’ behavior.
Faulkner said “personal responsibility” was “very important in all of this. No one’s blaming the woman. It’s not like, you know, back in the day when they would blame us for what we had on.”
Faulkner continued:
“If you know that this exists on campus, and it does unfortunately all over the country. All over the world,” she said. “It is what it is what it is. To put yourself in a vulnerable position and to then be, you know, drinking on top of that and not looking out, you know, it’s the opposite of good sense.”
Co-host Liz Claman pointed out that men are also responsible for preventing rape, saying: “Guys shouldn’t be drinking so much that they lose control or their ability to focus. … Guys lose control too.”
Co-host Andrea Tantaros added that when she was in college she was given a rape whistle and it seemed that they put “all the guys in some kind of box, already guilty.”
Watch the video below, via Raw Story:
