The "rape culture" moral panic on US college campuses

[Ineth]

The current state of affairs

 

Imagine this scenario:

1. John, having gotten blind drunk, is escorted back to his dorm room by his friend Jane.
2. Once there, John blacks out.
3. Jane takes advantage of the situation, and performs oral sex on him.
4. After leaving, she realizes she's done something wrong, and sends text messages to two other friends expressing her guilt.
5. Later, when John hears what's happened, he breaks off his friendship with Jane.
6. ...
7. ...Two years pass; Jane gets in with a radical "all men are rapists" feminist crowd...
8. ...
9. Jane goes to the college's Title IX coordinator, and reports John as a rapist, referring to the above encounter.
10. After revising her initial incoherent story a few times, she settles on claiming that while she did initiate the sexual encounter, she silently "withdrew consent" at some point during it, and John failed to get "affirmative consent" from her in accordance with the "Yes means Yes" principle.
11. John finds himself in front of a kangaroo court where:
    • He's not allowed to have a legal advocate (while the accuser does have one).
    • He's not allowed to present evidence against the accuser.
    • He's not allowed to face or cross-examine the accuser.
    • The "court" is made up of people without legal training, who were only prepped using feminist activist material which claims  that "women almost never lie about rape".
12. Said kangaroo court rules to expel John from the college on the charge of rape, because he failed to prove that he complied with "affirmative consent".
    • The fact that he couldn't, because he was blacked out? Doesn't matter. They lecture him that "being intoxicated or impaired by drugs or alcohol is never an excuse."
    • The fact that she failed to get his consent? Doesn't matter. Women are victims.
    • (Male + sex + no proof of affirmative consent) = rapist, simple as that.

Sounds like it must be from some weird dystopian novel or something, right?

Well, unfortunately it's the reality of US college campuses in 2015:

  Amherst Student Was Expelled for Rape. But He Was Raped, Evidence Shows.

 

The guy is suing the college now.

 

As are many other male college students who were treated similarly unjustly by Title IX courts across the nation during the last two years. Before that, such things were unheard of.

 

But wait, the Kafkaesque machine is not content with merely destroying the lives of male students who were unfortunate enough to have ever had sex with a female co-ed who

• later goes on to become a feminist activist, or
• gets vindictive when he later breaks up with her, or
• is pressured by conservative parents who found out about the sexual encounter and are in denial about the fact that their pure little angel chose to have sex before marriage,
• etc.

No, it's also going after free speech now, as one female professor (who, ironically enough, is herself a feminist) had to learn the hard way:

1. She writes an essay in which she criticizes aspects of the Title IX-enabled victim culture.
2. In response, she's promptly charged with a "Title IX violation" herself.
3. She's told to appear before a Title IX court hearing, while the actual charges against her are kept secret (because apparently, being told the charges one is faced with, is another civil right that just doesn't have a place in this bright new college world anymore).
4. At the hearing itself, she learns that her essay was accused of having a "chilling effect" that could contribute to women feeling less "safe" on campus, but she is neither told the identity of her accuser nor how she may defend herself against the charges.
5. She's not allowed to have a  lawyer with her at the hearing; only a "support person" who may not speak. The next day, a new anonymous "Title IX violation" charge appears against the support person she brought.
6. (...see her op-ed My Title IX Inquisition for the full ordeal.)

Being a female professor, she had infinitely more institutional power and support in that college setting than a male student, so unlike them, she was luckily able to fend off her Title IX show trial - barely. At this point, even left-wing news outlets started taking notice of the absurdity that the whole Title IX and "safe space" situation has become.

 

Again, none of this was the case just a few years ago. So, what has changed? The answer is:

 

 

"Title IX" and the "Office for Civil Rights"

 

Title IX is a federal law that was passed 43 years ago, with the good intention of preventing gender discrimination in the education system (or at least the parts of it that are publicly funded).

 

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is part of the Department of Education, was tasked with overseeing the enforcement of that law. For that purpose, it was given the power to sanction colleges which had discriminating policies, up to the point of cutting them off completely from government funding (which would be absolutely devastating for most colleges).

 

So far, so good right?

 

The problem though, is that it the OCR was quickly hijacked by feminist activists, and over the decades they continuously widened the scope of the "official" interpretation of Title IX, and abused the agency's sanctioning power to force those interpretations on all colleges:

• At first, they only used it to sanction discrimination against female athletes in college sports programs (i.e. what the law was meant to do).
   
• Then they went further and started to use it to force colleges to engage in "positive discrimination" against male athletes.
   
• ...and so on. (See this excellent - but unfortunately paywalled - article for a thorough historical outline: How Title IX Became a Political Weapon)

And now, under the 2nd term of the Obama administration, they went full McIntosh and started using it to force colleges to set up feminist kangaroo courts for adjudicating alleged sexual assault cases on-campus (and for silencing free speech).

 

Before then, some colleges had already their own infrastructure for dealing with internal sexual assault allegations (but they applied the liberal "innocent until proven guilty" principle), while other colleges directed their members to go straight to the police & legal system (which also operates under the "innocent until proven guilty" principle).

 

Under the OCR's new Title IX "interpretation", all colleges must now have an infrastructure for dealing with these cases internally, and said institutions are forbidden from assuming "innocent until proven guilty", and they must adopt procedures that completely defy the classical liberal conceptions of "justice" and "rule of law" and look like they're taken straight out of Franz Kafka's novel "The Trial".

 

Obviously, none of that is legitimized by the original Congressional mandate behind Title IX (a.k.a. "stopping gender-based discrimination"). It's a shameless abuse of executive power by anti-democratic and illiberal gender-ideologues.

 

 

Pushback

 

The Democratic Party seems in no hurry reign in the OCR's illiberal and un-democratic actions which happen in the name of its administration, because doing so would undermine the election campaign of Hillary Clinton who has thoughtlessly and opportunistically jumped on the "rape culture" hysteria bandwagon and will have trouble climbing off it again.

 

The conservatives, in turn, secretly love how all that "sinful" pre-marital sex on college campuses is being criminalized, and don't really feel compelled to do anything about it either.

 

So it falls to independent liberals and libertarians, and anyone who still has a sense of justice, to stand up for civil rights and constitutional values.

 

The professors of Harvard Law School adamantly fought against having to implement the OCR's new Title IX interpretation, because they believe that it goes against everything that they teach their students about fairness and justice and law.

They lost the main battle (the OCR, being part of the executive branch of government, simply has the bigger guns), but apparently they haven't given up:

 

  A Call to Arms Law School professor Janet Halley is pushing back against Harvard and the government's approach to Title IX.

 

Hopefully it will go all the way to the Supreme Court.

 

Various liberal professors and college staff have also started to speak out:

  I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me

 

 

A moral panic

 

While the feminist-hijacked OCR may be the instigator of the kangaroo courts, its executive actions did not happen in a vacuum - they fell on fertile ground among the larger movement of third-wave campus feminism, which fetishizes victimhood and aggressively denies any agency and self-responsibility of women in both everyday life and in the realm of sexuality.

 

Emboldened by propaganda such as the bogus "1 in 4" or "1 in 5"  statistics, its foot soldiers are quick to show up en masse and rabidly attack and shout down any voice of reason with histrionic accusations of "being a rape supporter", and they have no qualms about abusing any positions of institutional power they may hold (such as college committees), to silence and destroy dissenter.

 

When the ever polite and well-reasoned Christina Hoff Sommers gave a guest lecture at Oberlin college in which she calmly dismantled some of the dishonest and illiberal aspects of third-wave feminism and called for a more fact-based "equality feminism", the local third-wave college feminists - who had unsuccessfully tried to get her lecture banned - went so bat-**** crazy that campus security insisted on providing Sommers with bodyguards while she was there.

 

This has all the makings of a full-swing moral panic, and in many ways resembles the "Day-care sex-abuse and satanic rituals" hysteria of the 80s:

• the bogus statistics
• the unwillingness to fact-check
• the indifference towards false accusations
• the politicians opportunistically jumping on the hysteria band-wagon
• the abandonment of liberal principles like due process and free speech
• the silencing of any voice of reason using aggressive slander or abuses of institutional power.

Colleges are supposed to places of enlightenment and reason.

It's sad that they are so susceptible to this.

 

Conclusions / Advice

• If you're (a parent of) a guy considering to go to college in the US, be very wary.
  Since the kangaroo courts tend to be filled with volunteers from college staff, and feminist ideologues love to volunteer for such positions, avoid colleges that have a "Gender Studies" department (where such ideologues thrive). The system will still be stacked against you, but at least it will be administered by people who don't get off on destroying you.
   
• If you're a guy who is already in college, only date off-campus.
  It won't protect you completely, as the story at the top of this post shows, but it very much reduces the likelihood of being targeted with a Kafkaesque Title IX charge that will leave you stranded without a degree and in debt.
   
• If you're a voter, be wary of voting for politicians that identify with third-wave feminism.
  The "pink police states" which college feminists have erected on campuses with the help of the feminists in the OCR, is a microcosm for what a feminist-run nation might look like. And quelle surprise: Liberal values like due process, "innocent until proven guilty", and free speech are not a part of it. Don't let the kind of feminists who control the  OCR, also gain control over other more important and more wide-reaching government agencies.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Ineth

[213374U]

"Colleges are supposed to be places of enlightenment and reason"? Funny, I thought that's just where people went for a piece of paper that supposedly improves their chances of getting a decent job, in exchange for ~15 years of indentured servitude.

 

themoreyouknow.jpg

 

 

I read this article just now, I didn't know where to post it. I figure this is as good a place as any (I don't think I'm hijacking your thread too much): Jerry Seinfeld and I are among a dying breed

[JadedWolf]

"Colleges are supposed to be places of enlightenment and reason"? Funny, I thought that's just where people went for a piece of paper that supposedly improves their chances of getting a decent job, in exchange for ~15 years of indentured servitude.

 

themoreyouknow.jpg

 

 

I read this article just now, I didn't know where to post it. I figure this is as good a place as any (I don't think I'm hijacking your thread too much): Jerry Seinfeld and I are among a dying breed

 

Hmm, yeah. Or like me, they just don't find Jerry Seinfeld all that funny.

[Blarghagh]

I don't find Seinfeld very funny, but more comedians have commented on this. Colleges used to be where they went to test out new material, see if people would get it, because it was fertile ground for free speech. Now, not so much. Chris Rock also swore off doing college shows for the same reason - the only thing you can get out of it is people bitching. I enjoyed his story about a white guy calling his portrayal of black people racist.

[HoonDing]

Life was better before broadband internet.

[Fighter]

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

I hope the expelled guy will take a conservative white heterosexual male lawyer and the case will be judged by a conservative white heterosexual male judge. And after he will cash in big time from college and from the whore, he will hire (off the record) some bikers to show her how an actual rape feels like.

 

Umm... no...

 

But I do hope if this story is true that the people who ruin lives in this way have theirs ruined instead and get drained of mass amounts of cash.

[GhoulishVisage]

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

I hope the expelled guy will take a conservative white heterosexual male lawyer and the case will be judged by a conservative white heterosexual male judge. And after he will cash in big time from college and from the whore, he will hire (off the record) some bikers to show her how an actual rape feels like.

 

 

Bruh.

[JadedWolf]

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

I hope the expelled guy will take a conservative white heterosexual male lawyer and the case will be judged by a conservative white heterosexual male judge. And after he will cash in big time from college and from the whore, he will hire (off the record) some bikers to show her how an actual rape feels like.

 

[HoonDing]

straight white males wont keep smilin forever

 

throw down fedoras and put on the pickelhaube

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

I hope the expelled guy will take a conservative white heterosexual male lawyer and the case will be judged by a conservative white heterosexual male judge. And after he will cash in big time from college and from the whore, he will hire (off the record) some bikers to show her how an actual rape feels like.

[Bryy]

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

.... what.

 

am i reading.

[Nonek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Az2BvTcshg

[BruceVC]

 

I think we (white male heterosexuals) were nice for to long now and we gave to much freedom to minorities (racial, sexual etc.). They forgot who gave them those pretty little toys: freedom, rights etc., and now they think those are granted. No sweeties, we gave them to you and we will take it back. 

.... what.

 

am i reading.

 

The funny thing is he really believes this, he is like luzarius on these forums. He has no compunction or  concept of feeling embarrassed  by making posts that demonstrate he is a bigot  

[Walsingham]

Wow.

 

Firstly any post (the OP) that long and that rambling, which doesn't show the courtesy to start with an executive summary, is clearly bollocks. I'm not going to waste any time reading it in detail.

 

Secondly, that is some sparkling zesty racism, right there, 'sharp_one'. I have to ask: does it make you feel all snugly?

[Sarex]

The funny thing is he really believes this, he is like luzarius on these forums. He has no compunction or  concept of feeling embarrassed  by making posts that demonstrate he is a bigot  

 

The pot calling the kettle black...

[BruceVC]

 

The funny thing is he really believes this, he is like luzarius on these forums. He has no compunction or  concept of feeling embarrassed  by making posts that demonstrate he is a bigot  

 

The pot calling the kettle black...

 

Oh so I'm a bigot? You will need to provide links my Serbian friend or I will be forced to dismiss your post as just more " Anti-BruceVC propaganda " 

[Meshugger]

 

The current state of affairs

 

Imagine this scenario:

1. John, having gotten blind drunk, is escorted back to his dorm room by his friend Jane.
2. Once there, John blacks out.
3. Jane takes advantage of the situation, and performs oral sex on him.
4. After leaving, she realizes she's done something wrong, and sends text messages to two other friends expressing her guilt.
5. Later, when John hears what's happened, he breaks off his friendship with Jane.
6. ...
7. ...Two years pass; Jane gets in with a radical "all men are rapists" feminist crowd...
8. ...
9. Jane goes to the college's Title IX coordinator, and reports John as a rapist, referring to the above encounter.
10. After revising her initial incoherent story a few times, she settles on claiming that while she did initiate the sexual encounter, she silently "withdrew consent" at some point during it, and John failed to get "affirmative consent" from her in accordance with the "Yes means Yes" principle.
11. John finds himself in front of a kangaroo court where:
    • He's not allowed to have a legal advocate (while the accuser does have one).
    • He's not allowed to present evidence against the accuser.
    • He's not allowed to face or cross-examine the accuser.
    • The "court" is made up of people without legal training, who were only prepped using feminist activist material which claims  that "women almost never lie about rape".
12. Said kangaroo court rules to expel John from the college on the charge of rape, because he failed to prove that he complied with "affirmative consent".
    • The fact that he couldn't, because he was blacked out? Doesn't matter. They lecture him that "being intoxicated or impaired by drugs or alcohol is never an excuse."
    • The fact that she failed to get his consent? Doesn't matter. Women are victims.
    • (Male + sex + no proof of affirmative consent) = rapist, simple as that.

Sounds like it must be from some weird dystopian novel or something, right?

Well, unfortunately it's the reality of US college campuses in 2015:

  Amherst Student Was Expelled for Rape. But He Was Raped, Evidence Shows.

 

The guy is suing the college now.

 

As are many other male college students who were treated similarly unjustly by Title IX courts across the nation during the last two years. Before that, such things were unheard of.

 

But wait, the Kafkaesque machine is not content with merely destroying the lives of male students who were unfortunate enough to have ever had sex with a female co-ed who

• later goes on to become a feminist activist, or
• gets vindictive when he later breaks up with her, or
• is pressured by conservative parents who found out about the sexual encounter and are in denial about the fact that their pure little angel chose to have sex before marriage,
• etc.

No, it's also going after free speech now, as one female professor (who, ironically enough, is herself a feminist) had to learn the hard way:

1. She writes an essay in which she criticizes aspects of the Title IX-enabled victim culture.
2. In response, she's promptly charged with a "Title IX violation" herself.
3. She's told to appear before a Title IX court hearing, while the actual charges against her are kept secret (because apparently, being told the charges one is faced with, is another civil right that just doesn't have a place in this bright new college world anymore).
4. At the hearing itself, she learns that her essay was accused of having a "chilling effect" that could contribute to women feeling less "safe" on campus, but she is neither told the identity of her accuser nor how she may defend herself against the charges.
5. She's not allowed to have a  lawyer with her at the hearing; only a "support person" who may not speak. The next day, a new anonymous "Title IX violation" charge appears against the support person she brought.
6. (...see her op-ed My Title IX Inquisition for the full ordeal.)

Being a female professor, she had infinitely more institutional power and support in that college setting than a male student, so unlike them, she was luckily able to fend off her Title IX show trial - barely. At this point, even left-wing news outlets started taking notice of the absurdity that the whole Title IX and "safe space" situation has become.

 

Again, none of this was the case just a few years ago. So, what has changed? The answer is:

 

 

"Title IX" and the "Office for Civil Rights"

 

Title IX is a federal law that was passed 43 years ago, with the good intention of preventing gender discrimination in the education system (or at least the parts of it that are publicly funded).

 

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is part of the Department of Education, was tasked with overseeing the enforcement of that law. For that purpose, it was given the power to sanction colleges which had discriminating policies, up to the point of cutting them off completely from government funding (which would be absolutely devastating for most colleges).

 

So far, so good right?

 

The problem though, is that it the OCR was quickly hijacked by feminist activists, and over the decades they continuously widened the scope of the "official" interpretation of Title IX, and abused the agency's sanctioning power to force those interpretations on all colleges:

• At first, they only used it to sanction discrimination against female athletes in college sports programs (i.e. what the law was meant to do).

   

• Then they went further and started to use it to force colleges to engage in "positive discrimination" against male athletes.

   

• ...and so on. (See this excellent - but unfortunately paywalled - article for a thorough historical outline: How Title IX Became a Political Weapon)

And now, under the 2nd term of the Obama administration, they went full McIntosh and started using it to force colleges to set up feminist kangaroo courts for adjudicating alleged sexual assault cases on-campus (and for silencing free speech).

 

Before then, some colleges had already their own infrastructure for dealing with internal sexual assault allegations (but they applied the liberal "innocent until proven guilty" principle), while other colleges directed their members to go straight to the police & legal system (which also operates under the "innocent until proven guilty" principle).

 

Under the OCR's new Title IX "interpretation", all colleges must now have an infrastructure for dealing with these cases internally, and said institutions are forbidden from assuming "innocent until proven guilty", and they must adopt procedures that completely defy the classical liberal conceptions of "justice" and "rule of law" and look like they're taken straight out of Franz Kafka's novel "The Trial".

 

Obviously, none of that is legitimized by the original Congressional mandate behind Title IX (a.k.a. "stopping gender-based discrimination"). It's a shameless abuse of executive power by anti-democratic and illiberal gender-ideologues.

 

 

Pushback

 

The Democratic Party seems in no hurry reign in the OCR's illiberal and un-democratic actions which happen in the name of its administration, because doing so would undermine the election campaign of Hillary Clinton who has thoughtlessly and opportunistically jumped on the "rape culture" hysteria bandwagon and will have trouble climbing off it again.

 

The conservatives, in turn, secretly love how all that "sinful" pre-marital sex on college campuses is being criminalized, and don't really feel compelled to do anything about it either.

 

So it falls to independent liberals and libertarians, and anyone who still has a sense of justice, to stand up for civil rights and constitutional values.

 

The professors of Harvard Law School adamantly fought against having to implement the OCR's new Title IX interpretation, because they believe that it goes against everything that they teach their students about fairness and justice and law.

They lost the main battle (the OCR, being part of the executive branch of government, simply has the bigger guns), but apparently they haven't given up:

 

  A Call to Arms Law School professor Janet Halley is pushing back against Harvard and the government's approach to Title IX.

 

Hopefully it will go all the way to the Supreme Court.

 

Various liberal professors and college staff have also started to speak out:

  I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me

 

 

A moral panic

 

While the feminist-hijacked OCR may be the instigator of the kangaroo courts, its executive actions did not happen in a vacuum - they fell on fertile ground among the larger movement of third-wave campus feminism, which fetishizes victimhood and aggressively denies any agency and self-responsibility of women in both everyday life and in the realm of sexuality.

 

Emboldened by propaganda such as the bogus "1 in 4" or "1 in 5"  statistics, its foot soldiers are quick to show up en masse and rabidly attack and shout down any voice of reason with histrionic accusations of "being a rape supporter", and they have no qualms about abusing any positions of institutional power they may hold (such as college committees), to silence and destroy dissenter.

 

When the ever polite and well-reasoned Christina Hoff Sommers gave a guest lecture at Oberlin college in which she calmly dismantled some of the dishonest and illiberal aspects of third-wave feminism and called for a more fact-based "equality feminism", the local third-wave college feminists - who had unsuccessfully tried to get her lecture banned - went so bat-**** crazy that campus security insisted on providing Sommers with bodyguards while she was there.

 

This has all the makings of a full-swing moral panic, and in many ways resembles the "Day-care sex-abuse and satanic rituals" hysteria of the 80s:

• the bogus statistics
• the unwillingness to fact-check
• the indifference towards false accusations
• the politicians opportunistically jumping on the hysteria band-wagon
• the abandonment of liberal principles like due process and free speech
• the silencing of any voice of reason using aggressive slander or abuses of institutional power.

Colleges are supposed to places of enlightenment and reason.

It's sad that they are so susceptible to this.

 

Conclusions / Advice

• If you're (a parent of) a guy considering to go to college in the US, be very wary.

  Since the kangaroo courts tend to be filled with volunteers from college staff, and feminist ideologues love to volunteer for such positions, avoid colleges that have a "Gender Studies" department (where such ideologues thrive). The system will still be stacked against you, but at least it will be administered by people who don't get off on destroying you.

   

• If you're a guy who is already in college, only date off-campus.

  It won't protect you completely, as the story at the top of this post shows, but it very much reduces the likelihood of being targeted with a Kafkaesque Title IX charge that will leave you stranded without a degree and in debt.

   

• If you're a voter, be wary of voting for politicians that identify with third-wave feminism.

  The "pink police states" which college feminists have erected on campuses with the help of the feminists in the OCR, is a microcosm for what a feminist-run nation might look like. And quelle surprise: Liberal values like due process, "innocent until proven guilty", and free speech are not a part of it. Don't let the kind of feminists who control the  OCR, also gain control over other more important and more wide-reaching government agencies.

 

 

Good post. I have nothing further to add really.

 

Sharp_one: "We are taking it back". Elaborate.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

Ah. Typical leftish style of argumentation. When you lack any arguments whatsoever just throw an made up word that is meant to insult opponent, like: bigot, racist, homophobe, misogin etc. Like those have any actual meaning.

 

 

Well you got one thing right, I'll give you that: "misogin" indeed doesn't have any actual meaning.

 

I wouldn't consider that a weakness of "leftish style argumentation", though.

[Darkpriest]

Hmm I remember some time ago I was making fun of the new idea of active consent being required, throughout the whole "courting" process

 

ahh.. here it is, our perfect discussion in November last year, with all the risks and apparently this abuse is present in the case provided by the OP

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69351-journalism-and-sexism-in-the-games-industry/page-25

 

so in short, every male is guilty unless proven otherwise... Even though I despise anyone who is even remotely approaching abusive behaviors vs women, the law's basic principle should not be twisted around and reverse the basic principle of being not-guilty until proven.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Darkpriest

[Gorgon]

I suppose the thinking is that with the old rules of engagement people were getting away with rape. And of course now people are getting away with false rape allegations. Not really an improvement.

 

Well, if you are a woman and don't care about objective standards in the legal system it probably does protect you from rape better than before, seeing as how you have the systemic advantage now and men you engage with are constantly going to be some degre of paranoid about your 'unstated level of consent'. 

[BruceVC]

I suppose the thinking is that with the old rules of engagement people were getting away with rape. And of course now people are getting away with false rape allegations. Not really an improvement.

 

Well, if you are a woman and don't care about objective standards in the legal system it probably does protect you from rape better than before, seeing as how you have the systemic advantage now and men you engage with are constantly going to be some degre of paranoid about your 'unstated level of consent'. 

Considering the level of abuse towards women in most societies I have no issue with them having a systemic advantage 

Its funny but despite all the women I have interacted with in my life I have never been accused of rape and neither have any of my male friends, yet I know women who have been raped 

 

So a systemic advantage seems like a good idea, I'm not sure why people are so worried?

[Darkpriest]

 

I suppose the thinking is that with the old rules of engagement people were getting away with rape. And of course now people are getting away with false rape allegations. Not really an improvement.

 

Well, if you are a woman and don't care about objective standards in the legal system it probably does protect you from rape better than before, seeing as how you have the systemic advantage now and men you engage with are constantly going to be some degre of paranoid about your 'unstated level of consent'. 

Considering the level of abuse towards women in most societies I have no issue with them having a systemic advantage 

Its funny but despite all the women I have interacted with in my life I have never been accused of rape and neither have any of my male friends, yet I know women who have been raped 

 

So a systemic advantage seems like a good idea, I'm not sure why people are so worried?

 

 

It's not a good idea. You do not change legal basic rules to cater to a specific demographics. It's already a huge problem for men to get equal footing in courts where it comes to things related to parents' rights, now you complicate another section of legal system to be skewed heavily in favor of the women, and it creates dangerous precedence in legal system where the defender is guilty until it is proven otherwise. That's not how the law should work.

 

In order for you to comprehend the issue better It's like stacking law against blacks in South Africa in not so distant past, where they were generally guilty on hints and simple accusations unless they could produce a hard proof of innocence.

 

This only creates field for extreme abuses, as portrayed in the presented case.

 

 

-----------------------

IMO saying "No" is enough when you don't feel like it, and if someone does not get that rule, it won't change with the "need to hear yes" rule, but this opens big and ugly door for abuses.

 

Not to mention that it moves the flirting into a bit akward situations. I can quote myself with the previous example:

 

Remember that you have to make sure that the girl will now avidly and visibly nod in public and/or say yes "you can kiss me and put a hand on my butt" in a bar for college students or campus dorm/house party. Best if you can record it too!

Edited June 14, 2015 by Darkpriest

[Ineth]

"Colleges are supposed to be places of enlightenment and reason"? Funny, I thought that's just where people went for a piece of paper that supposedly improves their chances of getting a decent job, in exchange for ~15 years of indentured servitude.

 

Don't let Alu hear you talk like that, he'll brand you "anti-intellectual"...

 

Kidding aside, I do think that colleges were meant to be - and have the potential to be - places that foster rational discourse and a tolerant exchange of ideas, and that the fact that many college communities are throwing away that ideal in the name an infantilizing authoritarian conception of "safety", is a loss for society.

 

How are people who feel "unsafe" and need a "safe space" because someone dared to calmly confront them with the fact that their favourite advocacy data/statistics are unsound, supposed to become the leaders of tomorrow?

 

How can people who believe in banning (or violently preventing) those outside of their ideological in-group from speaking (while never actually having listened to their arguments), uphold a liberal democracy?

 

I read this article just now, I didn't know where to post it. I figure this is as good a place as any (I don't think I'm hijacking your thread too much): Jerry Seinfeld and I are among a dying breed

 

I do think this is related, yes. As TN says, other comedians/performers/speakers have come out with similar assessments.

 

As for derailing this thread, don't worry, Sharp_one is already doing that masterfully (that guy has got to be a troll, right?)

[Fighter]

Considering the level of abuse towards women in most societies I have no issue with them having a systemic advantage 

Its funny but despite all the women I have interacted with in my life I have never been accused of rape and neither have any of my male friends, yet I know women who have been raped 

 

So a systemic advantage seems like a good idea, I'm not sure why people are so worried?

 

So you have no issue with sacrificing the innocent? You don't believe in "It is far better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man is wrongfully convicted"?

 

Here is the thing if you've been raped nothing will change that. And while it is important to do your best to punish the guilty nothing can undo the crime. On the other hand you're giving criminals (false accusers) power to condemn innocent people.

 

There is no equivalence here. It is NOT a re-balancing of a two dimensional scale. There is a different element entirely.

[BruceVC]

 

Considering the level of abuse towards women in most societies I have no issue with them having a systemic advantage 

Its funny but despite all the women I have interacted with in my life I have never been accused of rape and neither have any of my male friends, yet I know women who have been raped 

 

So a systemic advantage seems like a good idea, I'm not sure why people are so worried?

 

So you have no issue with sacrificing the innocent? You don't believe in "It is far better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man is wrongfully convicted"?

 

Here is the thing if you've been raped nothing will change that. And while it is important to do your best to punish the guilty nothing can undo the crime. On the other hand you're giving criminals (false accusers) power to condemn innocent people.

 

There is no equivalence here. It is NOT a re-balancing of a two dimensional scale. There is a different element entirely.

 

mmm..good points raised. I don't believe innocent people should go to jail but I don't think this systemic advantage translates to that. This is about the initial accusation  been seen as real, you still need to go to court to prove the charges