Camille Paglia On Date Rape

On Date Rape is an essay written by American social critic Camille Paglia, which addresses what she believes to be the reality of rape at universities. Ignoring the controversy behind this essay, there are other significant problems with the writing. Pagila wrote a total of five short paragraphs in order to create this essay, yet not any of them are free of errors in reasoning. Otherwise known as logical fallacies, these errors in reasoning undermine the majority of the supporting factors and logic that are supposed to help Paglia express her opinion on the subject of rape. Despite the fact that there is a plentiful amount of logical fallacies throughout the text, there are three prominent examples that significantly impact the essay and are relatively easy to identify: hasty generalization, slippery slope, and appeal to fear. …show more content…
As a matter of fact, the first line of the entire essay, “Dating is a very recent phenomenon in world history,” happens to be an example of hasty generalization (Paglia). This particular type of logical fallacy is one in which a statement is generalized from a sample that is too small or unrepresentative of the target population that the author is trying to address (Cooper). Looking back upon the quote, the reason that it can be classified as a hasty generalization is that the author gives no evidence to back the claim. For all readers know, the statement could be some arbitrary opinion that Paglia came up with. Therefore, the quote and the foundation of what is trying to be said in the first paragraph is undercut as they no longer apply to the majority of the general