Facebook board member and Trump donor Peter Thiel has apologised for a book he co-wrote in 1995 that argued the definition of rape had been expanded to include “seductions that are later regretted”.
Thiel’s co-author, David Sacks, a Stanford and Paypal alumnus along with Thiel, also apologised after the Guardian reported on the book’s contents on Friday.
Thiel gave a statement to Forbes magazine, which said: “More than two decades ago, I co-wrote a book with several insensitive, crudely argued statements. As I’ve said before, I wish I’d never written those things. I’m sorry for it. Rape in all forms is a crime. I regret writing passages that have been taken to suggest otherwise.” Thiel had not responded to a request for comment to the Guardian.
Thiel made his fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, which increased markedly after an early investment in Facebook. He now sits on the board of the company, and has attracted notoriety after donating $1.25m (£1m) to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
In the 1995 book, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, Thiel and Sacks wrote of Stanford’s sexual assault policies: “It is ludicrous to believe that anyone who had been forcefully violated would not know it and bear physical marks.
“But since a multicultural rape charge may indicate nothing more than belated regret, a woman might ‘realise’ that she had been ‘raped’ the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman’s consent be obviated any more than the man’s? Why is all blame placed on the man?”
Sacks, who is now the chief executive of Human Resources startup Zenefits, told Recode: “This is college journalism written over 20 years ago. It does not represent who I am or what I believe today. I’m embarrassed by some of my former views and regret writing them.”
The book has proven endlessly controversial since its publication, with Thiel already apologising for some of its contents once before: in 2011, he expressed regret for writing about an incident in which a future PayPal executive, Keith Rabois, stood outside the house of a Stanford staff member shouting “Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of Aids!”. Rabois had hoped to provoke discussion of free speech, and the subsequent anger was compared by Thiel and Sacks to the Salem Witch Trials, Orwell’s 1984, and the Spanish Inquisition.
