Kate Manne

“We are all feminists now,” [Pinker] declares, prematurely...“Though feminist agitation deserves credit for the measures that led to American rape decline,” "feminists having muscled their way into power and rebalanced the instruments of government to serve their interest...”

"The [feminist] victories came quickly, did not require boycotts or martyrs, and [the activists] did not face police dogs or angry mobs,” according to Pinker. When it came to sexual assault reforms, in particular, “the country was clearly ready for them."

Feminist progress was also made thanks to the men in power growing wise to the nuances of female sexuality: such as women’s hitherto puzzling tendency “to find the prospect of abrupt, unsolicited sex with a stranger to be repugnant rather than appealing.” (406)

Although “rape is not exactly a normal part of male sexuality,” it is not too far off either, according to Pinker.

Pinker: "If I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to a gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate."

Pinker: "Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence, and today rape centers unanimously insist that “rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust—it’s about aggression, power, and humiliation, using sex as a weapon.""