Television becomes our feminist preacher

Naturally my conerns about these aspects of The Pitt's storytelling proved to be totally at odds with the acclaim the episodes received from all the reviewers. In a Collider review, writer Kelcie Mattson describes the rape storyline as "profoundly, searingly humane - detailing a medical procedure, assisting an overlooked patient, and confronting pervasive cultural harm with the sensitivity, integrity, and urgency it requires."

Ilana's ambiguity about the assault is uniformly framed by commentators as a realistic portrayal of survivor psychology, including self-blame and fear of social repercussion. Her care for her friend is viewed as a barrier to justice rather than admirable humanity.

And this is exactly the consensus you'd expect from today's feminist culture. Our media is determined to enforce a monolithic narrative of victimhood, dismissing alternative responses like empathy for the accused as misguided, internalized oppression. This strips agency from the victim by implying her instincts are wrong, while privileging a framework that views all such incidents through a lens of systemic harm- at the expense of individual context, like alcohol-fuelled mistakes and misunderstandings between friends.

There's something very odd about framing sexual assault as "Ultimate Trauma". It is surely ideological overreach to assume that all sexual assault warrants immediate, exhaustive resources-despite ER overload. It imposes a rigid, value-laden hierarchy of suffering rooted in feminist ideologies, rather than objective medical or situational priorities.

But that is what happens in this mad, sad world of modern feminism which positions sexual violence as an unparalleled symbol of patriarchal harm or systemic oppression, a compulsory narrative which overrides individual agency and real-world context.

How telling that a New York Times article on The Pitt described the show as "an empathy exam". "It's a civics lesson," it added.

Well, if it is a civics lesson what are the rights and responsibilities, the lessons about the rule of law, that this hugely popular television series is intent on teaching us through this particular plotline? That's simple. The message is "Nail the bloke! Put aside any misguided loyalty to perpetrators, any concerns about ruining their lives. All accused men are villains and deserve to receive the full brunt of the law."

Surely it is relevant that we're usually talking about kids here – most date rapes involve very young men and women, with 15-19 the most common age group amongst accused males. And surveys show most women in this situation are, like Ilana, very unsure that these young guys deserve to be sent to prison for regret sex that so easily results from these alcohol-fuelled adventures.

That's the bottom line here. The feminist's prescribed punitive approach simply isn't working. Many young women don't want these former friends to end up behind bars and hence don't report to police. And if they do, many juries don't end up convicting the males caught up in these murky he-said she-said cases.

Back in 2009 Aya Gruber, a lifelong feminist, a Harvard Law graduate, a former public defender, and a survivor of sexual violence, wrote a pathbreaking Washington Law Review article which argued that feminist reforms targeting date rape are "controversial, sporadically-implemented, and empirically unsuccessful." She pointed out the entire feminist legal framework was built around the most extreme, unambiguous cases, and then applied wholesale to every situation including messy, ambiguous, alcohol-involved scenarios. The woman who is uncertain, who knows the man, who doesn't want his life destroyed - she was simply written out of the picture when the laws were designed. Ultimately Gruber urged feminists to re-imagine gender justice outside of the guise of criminal law.

Another prominent feminist had similar ideas. Eight years ago, I was delighted to see Germaine Greer, one of the leading lights of Second Wave feminism, talking sense about these date rape cases. Promoting a small book she'd written on rape, Greer called for the lower sentences for sexual assault and said society should not see it as a "spectacularly violent crime" but instead view it more as "lazy, careless and insensitive."

And she mentioned an idea about how to tackle the issue in a more sensible way. Namely, restorative justice (RJ). I first came across restorative justice many decades ago, when I wrote a story on how this approach was being used to resolve disputes amongst personnel working in a coal mine. Restorative justice is all about bringing together the various parties – those directly involved plus some supporters - to collectively explore what happened, sort out responsibility for different aspects and decide on ways to make amends. This process, also known as "conferencing', is used very successfully to deal with school disputes, youth crime and the like.