Rape is whatever we say it is
If there is no objective reality in our brave new post-modernist world, then rape is whatever women say it is. At least, that’s the current PC line.
If a woman has sex with a man and regrets it, that’s rape. If a woman is ambivalent at the time but yields because it’s the path of least resistance, that’s rape. If a woman is thinking “no” but doesn’t say it, that’s rape. The “yes means yes” law that was recently passed in California is such an obviously dreadful idea that I feel a sense of exhaustion even contemplating writing about it.
This is what the sexual revolution plus feminism hath wrought: Puritans and Victorians were Bacchanalian revelers compared with sex on the modern campus, where it might soon be necessary to bring a pair of lawyers into the room every time a couple wants to engage in a little hanky-panky (even the word “hanky-panky” is way too frivolous for these grim killjoys).
That anyone can continue to have sex at all under these circumstances, so fraught with peril (particularly for the young male), is a testament to the strength of the sexual urge in the young. No wonder a lot of men have decided to forego real live women and deal with computers or sex dolls.
The PC feminist/leftist forces behind this seem to want it both ways. Woman are strong, independent, responsible. There’s nothing they can’t do. But they are weak, susceptible to the slightest pressure, and not responsible for their own decisions where sex is concerned.
Remember those strange Virginia Slim cigarette ads of the late 60s/early 70s that featured the slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby”?
The phrase perfectly encapsulates the contradiction inherent in modern feminism. It congratulates the woman on her supposed progress from the bad old days of dependence, and yet it infantilizes her by calling her “baby.” Of course, there are other ironies as well, including the fact that independence is defined as the right to smoke cigarettes, and the modern woman in the ad is featured because of her beauty.
_____________________________________________________
I wrote the above post before I had read this article by Emily Yoffe in Slate. It is both disturbing and essential reading, describing how very far colleges now go to deprive the accused of his rights in their kangaroo court proceedings, and how the current federal government has pushed hard for this.
The following excerpt describes what’s happening at Harvard, but it could be anywhere:
More than two dozen Harvard Law School professors recently wrote a statement protesting the university’s new rules for handling sexual assault claims. “Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process,” they wrote. The professors note that the new rules call for a Title IX compliance officer who will be in charge of “investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review.” Under the new system, there will be no hearing for the accused, and thus no opportunity to question witnesses and mount a defense. Harvard University, the professors wrote, is “jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials.” But to push back against Department of Education edicts means potentially putting a school’s federal funding in jeopardy, and no college, not even Harvard, the country’s richest, is willing to do that…
Much of what’s happening on campuses today regarding the handling of sexual assault is due to the rise of a small, once-obscure arm of the federal government. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dictates to colleges the procedures they must follow in regard to campus sexual complaints.* It also examines schools for violations of Title IX, the law that forbids discrimination in education on the basis of sex. In recent years, OCR has used Title IX, best known for tackling imbalances in athletics, as a tool to address sexual violence. When OCR issues findings against a school, if the school declines to admit wrongdoing, the office has the power, as yet unexercised, to essentially shut the school down.
I’ve been concerned about campus rape accusations for many years now as I’ve watched the situation worsen. After the accused men in the Duke rape case were exonerated in 2007, I wrote a post describing how the situation constitutes an “overcorrection” (the same word Yoffe uses in her current article), and a dangerous overcorrection at that:
I’m all for female freedom. But the checks and balances of the society in which I was raised, restrictive and limiting though they undoubtedly were, kept the behavior of most of us more reasonable. In other words, we learned the art of self-protection and even something known as good judgment, all in all not bad things to learn in this imperfect world.
Because the law isn’t able to prevent all bad things from happening. It can only try to punish the perpetrator after the fact, and that doesn’t mend a broken life or repair a deep trauma.
And sometimes, it doesn’t even punish the guilty. Sometimes the law affords an opportunity to ruin the reputations of the innocent.
In this case, justice triumphed and has exonerated the lacrosse players, although not early enough to have spared them and their families terrible suffering. And perhaps it will even discourage future false accusations if this woman’s name is made public.
There’s no easy solution to these problems. We can’t go back to the days of the three feet on the floor of the public rooms of the unisex dorms, much less the duenna. All of this would be on a continuum where, somewhere down the line, we might end up with the chador and purdah. In the end, the only thing to do is to try to teach young people good judgment, and try to balance the law so that both accuser and accused are protected from the twin evils of blaming the victim and false prosecution.
Over seven years have passed since I wrote those words, and the scales have tipped even further in the direction of favoring the accuser and depriving the accused of due process (at least, in the extra-judicial proceedings on college campuses), and false accusations certainly do not seem to have been discouraged. And why on earth would they be, if the mantra “accusers almost never lie” is repeatedly chanted?
Here’s another quote from the Yoffe article, discussing one professor’s reaction to the fact that some accused men are beginning to fight back with lawsuits:
Caroline Heldman, an associate professor of politics at Occidental College and co-founder of End Rape on Campus, said of the men who are turning to the courts, “These lawsuits are an incredible display of entitlement, the same entitlement that drove them to rape.”
Professor Heldman is an incredible display of the tyrannical totalitarian impulse, alive and well and living on the American campus today.
Read the whole Yoffe article; it’s much too long to summarize. It will chill your blood. One can only conclude that the Salem witch trials are back, but the penalty this time is not death; it’s merely the destruction of a young man’s future.
[Hat tip: Commenter Mrs Whatsit.]
Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits. If there is no consequence, then there is no limit to the totalitarian impulse of the Heldman’s of the world. Total control and power is their motivation. Thomas Jefferson spoke of it.
“The PC feminist/leftist forces behind this seem to want it both ways. Woman are strong, independent, responsible. There’s nothing they can’t do. But they are weak, susceptible to the slightest pressure, and not responsible for their own decisions where sex is concerned.”
The feminist left’s infantilization of women, that they are “weak, susceptible to the slightest pressure, and not responsible for their own decisions where sex is concerned” puts the lie to their assertions that women are strong, independent and responsible.
PS: I’d love to see a study showing the racial percentages of those accused and of those, how many go to ‘trial’ on campus. I suspect it’s disproportionately white male. And if so, it is all part of the left’s strategy of attacking our culture’s societal infrastructure.
One way to understand feminism to realize that women think the most important thing in the world is to keep them happy.
Recommended again on the subject:
http://www.cotwa.info/
Index of lawsuits:
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/list-of-lawsuits-against-colleges-and-universities-alleging-due-process-violations-in-adjudicating-sexual-assault/
Key post:
http://www.cotwa.info/2014/12/003-in-5.html
The foundational ‘fact’ used to justify the “overcorrection” is a statistic claiming 1 in 5 college women are raped. Apparently, the ‘fact’ is extremely inaccurate.
Here is a brand new study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics placing the frequency of rape and sexual assault on women aged 18 to 24 in college at 6.1 per 1000 — and for nonstudents of the same age, 7.6 per 1000. A pretty far cry from one in five.
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176
The abstract says that 80 percent of attacks on college students go unreported, compared to 67 percent of those on nonstudents. I haven’t read anything but the abstract yet, so I don’t know how the authors know (or think they know) these percentages.
Two surprising things: the author is apparently a woman (first name Lynn) and the BJS is an office of the federal Department of Justice. I wonder why on earth they allowed this to be published? Talk about harshing the narrative.
Planned Intimacy (PI) will absolve men and women of legal and moral responsibility under the watchful eye of a government licensed adviser. PI can cohabitate with Planned Parenthood in case a burden should be conceived.
Another option is to address the consequences of progressive morality and restore an enlightened perspective of human life, men and women, and relationships. It may help if we stop political, legal, and cultural normalization (i.e. promotion) of dysfunctional, unproductive, and fetish behaviors.
Sexual harassment law is the same way: It doesn’t matter what you intended or what most people would perceive your actions to be, it only matters what the complainant feels about it. That’s why there’s a “reasonable man” standard for objectively evaluating the accused’s actions in the prosecution of many laws, but no “reasonable woman”.
The one actor in this campus melodrama that is escaping scrutiny and criticism are the universities themselves. They are absolutely complicit in the evolution of this “rape culture.”
When I was a grad student in the first half of the seventies we lived in sex-segregated dorms. Grad students! The more draconian rules of visitation were still around but, in the grad dorms they were, for the most part, unenforced and ignored.
Then the universities went to alternate sex floors; one floor of males, one floor of females (I hesitate to call undergraduates men and women).
Then, the universities went to co-ed floors in which the sexes were intermixed. By the time my son graduated in 2006, the dorms had a sex checkerboard pattern; the dorm door across from each male room was a female room not by chance, but by central planning. Then, when my daughter was at university, there were quads with four rooms and common living space which were sex-intermingled.
To the extent that any problems exist on university campuses, the universities, themselves are complicit and have enabled and facilitated the problem. When boys and girls get together, boys and girls will do what boys and girls do when boys and girls get together. Administrators either forget that or they just don’t give a damn.
T,
I don’t understand why colleges can’t offer a choice of unisex or mixed dorms. In some ways I’m very pro choice.
T,
There does seem to be a broad cultural and structural push for promsicuous behavior increasing sex in ambiguous situations. Combine changing sex norms with the current institutional response looks like deliberating creating a problem in order to impose a desired solution.
Expat,
Why does it have to be a choice? It should be a requirement.
Eric,
One wonders. To the university, “rape culture” could be a feature rather than a bug.
Actually, it was worse than I remembered. My son reminded me that not only was the room across the hall from his an opposite sex room, but the checkerboard pattern meant that the rooms adjacent to his were also female rooms.
male – female – male – female – male
female – male – female – male – female
As Eric notes, it almost looks like a conspiracy to foster the libertine behavior they now call “rape culture.”
I dasn’t say much here. I’m such a dinosaur.
I will mention my experience with Administrative Offices in the Navy. The rates that worked in admin were Yeomen. It required good typists and filers with the ability to publish the Plan of the Day and other squadron publications as necessary. In the military paperwork is a BIG deal. Anyway, I saw Admin Offices with all Sailors that got a lot of good work done. I also saw Admin Offices with all Waves that got a lot of good work done. The Admin Offices with a mix of Sailors and Waves never were as good. There were way too many hormones sloshing around the place. Has that changed in the 39 years since I left active duty? I don’t think so.
I liked it better back in the day when the woman called the tune in sexual relationships. No meant: Hell no! Maybe meant: When I see a ring and the date is set. Yes meant: You were either married or darn close to it. Any man that didn’t know and respect that arrangement was a jerk and loser who had little chance of finding a wonderful woman to settle down with. Yeah, I know – I’m a dinosaur.
Remember that poor cop in Ontario, who got into so much trouble when he advised young women to ” not tease the animals “, and dress appropriately when going on a date?
The meaning of laws is how they are used. Laws of tyranny: Apartheid, Title IX. Repeal Title IX.
Pingback:Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove
JJ: “I liked it better back in the day when the woman called the tune in sexual relationships.”
Women are still calling the tune. However, too often, the tune they’re calling with one part of their brain is not the tune they want with another part of their brain. The dissonance is a consequence.
The Universities were intentionally ordered by the Leftist hierarchy to condition those girls and boys with sexual pleasure, the easier to condition them with indoctrination and slave collars.
People who are not conversant or researchers into sex slave trafficking and sexual pleasure slave conditioning, probably don’t know the details or the secrets.
But the Left does.
EITHER a woman aged 18+ is an independent, self-sufficient adult, and has every right to make her own decisions as she sees fit, but then she must also be willing to suffer the consequences, even when her own vision of what was fit was a product of poor judgment,
OR she requires a certain degree of protection (first and foremost from her own imprudence), but then she must also be willing to accept the flip side of such an arrangement: being under somebody’s protection means also being under their authority, to an analogous extent.
Many young ladies seem to cry out for some variant of the second type of arrangement, while the current mores are pushing the first one at all costs. I bet that many young men, too, would be more comfortable with sex-segregated dorms and more firm boundaries when socializing in mixed company. There is nothing wrong with offering an option of “going back” a bit to those interested. I for one would gladly sign up for an all-female dorm with a reasonable curfew rather than for a mixed dorm where any sort of indiscretions are allowed and where I risk ending up emotionally scarred for life as a result of a few hours of poor judgment. Why, if I would WILLINGLY adhere to additional rules and checks, in exchange for what I regard as a healthier atmosphere to live and study?
I’m still trying to figure out where the universities obtained the legal authority to investigate, prosecute and punish rape cases. Did the state legislatures grant the university administration police and judicial powers in cases of felonies?
Remember what happened at Duke? The lacrosse team members sued the university for millions and won in court.
“This is what the sexual revolution plus feminism hath wrought: ”
That sums it up. It was predictable that the “hook up” culture would result in recriminations. But, feminism is all about being “free”. The result is what we have come to on the college campuses. This is going to make the “townies” much more attractive guys on campus.
We already here beaucoup complaints that men won’t commit and are dropping out. But, really, that is a result of what we have wrought. Few rational men want to subject themselves to these dunking chambers.
Japan still has sex and gender separations.
But it’s not about restrictions, since Japan has public bath houses like the Romans did.
A society, in order to cater to some things, must restrict other things.
The Left, in order to cultivate Obedience to Evil, must restrict freedom and independence. It is a lie, really, that you will be free under evil. It is definitely a mirage, a deception, an illusion even.