of that last century leaves us only withnsome happy rhyming and the illusion ofnsubstantive meaning. The fact is, in thisnvicinity, the few Indian names that cannbe translated are simply mundane descriptions.nSantee probably means “thenbig river,” and most of the rest are alsonreferences to water in some form. Thatnjust won’t do for a state capital like “thenglaringly objectionable” Columbia. Ifnwe’re to rename it we’ve got to havensomething both poetic and meaningful,nand I won’t risk another commemorativento some fleeting value judgment orntyrannical inept rascal.nSo, then, a Cherokee translation ofn”Place where, last year, 21 legislatorsnwere convicted of accepting bribes”nmight do. Or maybe “Place where archaeologistsnonce misplaced artifactsnand paperwork and stayed on vacation.”nThis is fun, but I’ve got to get serious.nHow about a Catawba translation ofn”Place where canoes are routinely paddlednfrom both ends against the middle”?nI’m afraid that’s it for me, unlessnthe rules can be bent to include GeneralnWilliam Tecumseh Sherman. Considernthis: General Sherman was namednin part after Tecumseh, a Shawnee chiefnof admirable talents—among them thenability to defeat United States soldiers.nIn addition, the Union general wasn’t soninept that he couldn’t find Columbianand burn it down. Plus, his men didn’tnconsider him tyrannical. Shermantown.nYes, I like that. It rolls off the tongue. Itnpurges us.nWilliam P. Baldwin writes fromnMcClellanville, South Carolina.nLetter From thenLower Rightnby John Shelton ReednTrivializing RapenLast spring I picked up our studentnnewspaper to read this sentence in anfront-page story: “Statistics show thatnone out of every four UNC females willnbe sexually assaulted while in college.”nWow. The University of North Carolinanhas roughly 15,000 undergraduatesn(leave the graduate students out of it), to dig.nsomething over half of them female. So I’ll tell you what I found in a minute.nthat would mean, oh, 450 or 500 as­ First, though, some observations.nsaults on previously unassaulted under­ Once upon a time, back in what myngraduates every academic year, or about teenager calls the “Dork Ages,” we knewn16 or 17 a week. Surely I’d have heard what rape was, and it was serious. As anabout this. I mean, if it’s that bad, any­ matter of fact, until the Supreme Courtnone who sends a daughter to Chapel Hill interfered with us, first-degree rape wasnis making a big mistake. Forget UNC: a capital offense in every Southern state.nput her in purdah. At least give her a That may have had something to donsidearm—she’ll have more use for Smith with the relative absence in my youthnand Wesson than for Strunk and White. of what has come to be called “datenI suspected that what we had here was rape.”na factoid. I figured there’d be a long, I believe it really was rare. Some timenlong trail a-winding from the Daily Tar ago the columnist Hal Crowther wrotenHeel to anything that could be consid­ that he not only never heard the termnered a reliable source, but I resolved to when he and I were in college, he nevernfollow it. For you, dear reader—for you. heard of the phenomenon. This wasn’tnIn the event, the trail could have been entirely because of our male friends’ re­nlonger. The student reporter told me spect for women (although there wasnthat she got the figure from a friend, more of that around than you’d suppose,nwho got it from a book assigned in a to read most feminist accounts of thenwomen’s studies class. Strictly speak­ period); it also had to do with self-reing,nshe said, it applied to American colspect. Real men didn’t force themselvesnleges in general, not UNC in particular, on women.nbut several sources had told her that Hal’s recollections squared with mynUNC was not unusual in this respect. own, although I wondered if he and InWell, OK, but I still didn’t believe it, so just knew unusually well-behaved guys,nI went to the library and got the book. or if the rapists of our acquaintance sim­nFeminist Fatale: Voices From the “Twenply weren’t talking. But then I read anntysomething” Generation Explore the Fu­ essay by Florence King on the subject.nture of the Women’s Movement, by Paula “Date or acquaintance rape is a phe­nKamen. It sent me to another book: I nomenon of the sexual revolution,” shenNever Called It Rape: The Ms. Report wrote, “and so foreign to my experiencenon Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving that I can’t think of anything to saynDate and Acquaintance Rape, by Robin about it. In my day, when a woman toldnWarshaw. That cited several articles re­ a man to stop, he stopped.” Thank you.nporting a survey of 6,100 undergradu­ Miss King, for that testimonial to ournates at 32 colleges, conducted in 1985 generation.nby Mary P. Koss, Ph. D., with supportnfrom the Center for Antisocial and ViolentnBehavior of the National Institutenof Mental Health. Back to the librarynone last time, for an article by Dr. Kossnand two coauthors, all from Kent StatenUniversity, called “The Scope of Rape,”npublished in the Journal of Consultingnand Clinical Psychology in 1987, wherenI finally found something resemblingndata.nSo what’s happened since 1965 or so?nWell, aside from scrapping the deathnpenalty, we’ve changed the definition ofnsexual assault. By law, in most states, itnnow includes not just sex acts accompaniednby physical force or threatsnof violence, but those made possiblenby the victim’s diminished capacity duento drugs or alcohol. I’m glad that’snillegal^-don’t get me wrong. But maybenwe ought to call it something else.nThe point of all this bibliographical Let me tell a story. A while back, at antrivia, by the way, is just to show how hearing in these parts about discrimina­nthese things work. A student reporter tion against homosexuals, the managerncites a fellow student who cites a pop of a gay bar (call him “Jim”) told a re­nfeminist tract that cites a journalistic remarkable tale. He said that he met anportnwhich finally cites some serious reother man in a convenience store; theynsearch. To get the obvious questions an­ picked each other up (or however thesenswered (how was the sample drawn, things work) and repaired to a nearbynwhat was the refusal rate, what were the motel where, ah, nature took its course.ndifferences between different kinds of Then, to Jim’s surprise, his new friendnschools, how were rape and attempted attacked him with a pair of scissors, call­nrape defined—just for starters) you have ing him names that reflected unfavor-nnnOCTOBER 1992/41n