I'd like to address a couple of arguments, some of which have been raised in this thread, some of which may have not.
1. It may have been true that income was not equally distributed in the past, but it is not the case now.
Someone in this thread suggested that gender income inequity was an issue among older people in more loveist workplaces (?), but not an issue in modern work places. This is simply not true. The gap has shrunk over the years, but it is still a wide gap, no matter what demographic you look at. If your concern is young people in new jobs, the US Census Bureau has you covered with it's Annual Social and Economic Supplement. In 2008, among 25-34 year old males, median income was $33,575. Median income among women was $27,018. Clearly it is still a relevant issue. For entertainment purposes only, 25018 dollars divided by 33575 dollars is roughly 80 cents to the dollar.
2. Rape isn't as common as people say it is.
I am skeptical of the 1 in 4 women in college are raped as well. If the 1 in 4 number were correct, then roughly 2500 people would be victims of rape at my college. However; comparing it to the FBI statistics for the total rape incidence rate is a completely invalid comparison. In order to make the claim that this number is exaggerated (which it is), you need to look at the incidence rate of rape in the student population. However, I can tell you that the incidence rate of reported rape is relatively low, a cursory browse of universities in Alabama showed something like 6 rapes being reported for the entire state in 2009, if 1 in 4 was accurate then it would be in the thousands. The number isn't that important though, whether is 10 rapes or 6 rapes or even 1 rape, it's too many and justifies spending resources on rape prevention. I don't think people realize how horrible of a thing rape really is.
Finally, the argument that you should dismiss the movement against gender inequality because of a misrepresented statistic that's been quoted by some people involved in the moment is a strawman.
Specifically related to the City Journal article, I challenge them to demonstrate that this rape prevention "industry" actually exists as some kind of conspiracy to defraud the public of hard earned money. That Harvard University created a department to handle loveual harassment reports in 2006 despite already having resources on campus for people is hardly a smoking gun. I also doubt that there is some kind of excess of anti-rape literature. As an anecdote, I would like to share that most of the literature distributed on the two college campuses I've studied out were almost all focused on not accepting drinks you didn't pour yourself, not drinking so much that you pass out, etc, exactly the type of literature that the author advocates! The issue of rapes being investigated by universities and wasting valuable tuition does not appear to be the case either. Universities do not have the resources or the capabilities to investigate crimes. This is because they are universities, not detectives. The first college I attended did not have any on-campus housing and was attended almost solely by commuters so the issue of rape wasn't really dealt with on campus, campus security spent most of their time writing traffic tickets. Any report of a rape would definitely be reported straight to the police. The college I currently attend does have on-campus housing. They also have a dedicated police force, which also happens to be the same police force that also protects the rest of the town. Any crime on campus would be reported to them, and they would take care of it from there. The idea that campuses spend valuable resources on investigating these crimes is just silly - not only do universities have a moral and legal obligation to share this with the police, there is a financial incentive as well - it's cheaper for them to let the police to take care of it.
There's quite a few other things in general that I find odd about that City Journal article (a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research) and I really question the accuracy and motives of the article, but I realize I've probably said enough about that.
3. It's okay to look at people, it's biological.
Yes it is, and if you're just looking at people, that's totally fine. The problem isn't looking, the problem is loveual harassment. If you're staring, leering, making cat-calls, groping, etc, and making someone feel uncomfortable, then you are doing something wrong and you should stop. Leering and groping isn't natural, it's you being a jackass. We're talking about unwanted attention. Obviously if there's a woman that wants to engage in behavior that would normally be considered harassment, it's not harassment because it's desired behavior. In my experience I've never walked through a park and had a woman beg for me to stare at their breasts or had a woman ask me to grope them in a subway. Maybe I'm just not that attractive, but I think it's more likely that they don't want that attention from anyone at the moment.
This argument is often misrepresented as being against looking at women in general, like woman want you to walk around with a blindfold on or something. That's not the case. The argument is that woman should just be able to do things in public without receiving unwanted and undesired attention.
4. Women want to be treated better than men.
This is a misrepresentation of the moment. Just because someone is against the mistreatment of women does not mean that they support the mistreatment of men. It's a gender equality movement, focusing mostly on womens' issues because there are just not very many instances of women being extended privileges men are denied. You would probably find them sympathetic to things such as gender bias in custody cases.
