Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Frederik is fundamentally right that the piece is awful. Every case of acquaintance rape that is not investigated properly is going to be debatable, just as every police shooting, which seems to be Balko's main beat, is going to be "debatable". Quite frequently they are "debatable" because they are not properly investigated and the ones that make the media have people lining up to debunk.

Writing an article about why a couple of high profile cases might have been the wrong ones to lead with is one thing, writing it with tossed out speculation on what the number of 'actual' rapes is, what his gut feeling on the number of false allegations is and mischaracterisation of the core arguments of activists is clearly in bad faith.

The objective isn't to fundamentally change the law, it's to ensure that the law saying sex without consent is rape is applied without prejudice to the victim.

so i don't think anyone here is disagreeing with that (that = "ensure that the law saying sex without consent is rape is applied without prejudice to the victim.")

The piece is a bucket of shit, and I see no reason in standing around and discussing politely how we deal with this bucket of shit. I'm more WHY THE FUCK ARE WE DEALING WITH THIS SHIT???

And the piece is about strategies in activism and media, not legal issues.

And with that, I'll sign off. Got an early screening tomorrow. Have fun dealing with this shit.

So how many rape-victims add up to on innocent in jail?

It's still a bullshit question, though.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 7:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this stance is interesting given the high level of proof you demand when it comes to podcast-friendly murderers of girls trying to pin their crimes on African Americans.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-kipnis-clown-show-and-the-drama-of-university-life

definitely what this thread needed, thanks xp

so i don't think anyone here is disagreeing with that (that = "ensure that the law saying sex without consent is rape is applied without prejudice to the victim.")

This is easy to say and much harder to ensure in practice, though.

Not just in the U.S. and not just on colleges but acquaintance rape is never investigated without prejudice to the victim and, of the varying motivations of activists, the main one is trying to force a cultural shift that gets people to understand that and ameliorate it.

'acquaintance rape is never investigated without prejudice to the victim '

idk i more tend to trust people who don't represent absolute omniscience on questions that the entire collective knowledge of humankind wouldn't be able to answer mb it's just me

If you know of a legal structure in which the initial investigation, secondary investigation, decision on whether to press charges, jury / judicial decision and sentencing are all untainted by factors other than whether consent could reasonably be established, by all means do share.

Some systems are better than others, some are improving faster than others but all are flawed.

Weird definition of prejudice there, and one that would apply equally to all defendants.

It depends on what those factors are and how they are applied. Legally, a prior relationship with the attacker, a degree of intoxication, the use of illegal drugs, a 'bad reputation', having gone home with the alleged attacker, having consented to X but not to Y, etc, do not invalidate a claim of rape but they do always affect the way the victim is viewed and treated. There are elements that obviously make pressing charges or securing convictions harder, and that's legitimate, but victims still need to feel that the systems are taking their claims with the appropriate seriousness. That might be having specially trained officers conducting interviews, it might be pushing cases through even where a conviction looks challenging, it might be educating people in positions of authority and the wider public about what consent means, idk. As long as people are willing to believe there's a difference between "rape" and "rape rape", there'll be a problem.

As long as rape is not defined as a strict liability offense and some concept of mens rea for the defendant is considered relevant, some of the factors you mention can very well invalidate a claim that "x is a rapist". The criminal justice system does not say "what occurred between x and y is unacceptable and should be prevented and sanctioned"; it says "x is/is not a criminal and will punished thus." The societal effects outside the court are maybe best addressed there.

Arguments for making rape a strict liability offense in a climate where criminal punishments are administered harder to the poor and POCs is counter-revolutionary. The way to change the culture is not to destroy all the bad guys and never has been.

I don't think many people would argue that it should be a strict liability offence but there are degrees of nuance around the reasonability of the belief that valid consent was given that do require clarification and education.

Absolutely -- but the rhetoric of the righteous on this thread and elsewhere tends to miss that nuance completely, and that isn't good at all.

They don't so much miss it as rail against it in a manner that suggests the onus is on people that don't appear to be as angry about it as they are to know the answers.

I said that it wasn't solely a legal issue, and was ridiculed for that as well. Am I now also guilty of thinking it is too much a legal issue?

As soon as your ("one's" -- I don't want to pick on you) extralegal solutions formalize into quasi-legal systems, you bring all the problems of legalistic proof and fairness with you. No dodging legal problems if you have a person punished at the end of a group process.

Strict liability for most crimes would be fine if the criminal law system were anonymous and fair and did see punishment as a goal in itself. I would be a happier man if I owned a magical unicorn.

did not see

Here's today's discussion subject: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

lol @ at the url

vox-reader-afraid

I'm expecting a bunch of Class of 1984 type quasi-horror movies about students chasing professors down with Title IX complaints clutched in their hands

At the very least, there's debate to be had in these areas. Ideally, pro-choice students would be comfortable enough in the strength of their arguments to subject them to discussion, and a conversation about a band's supposed cultural appropriation could take place alongside a performance. But these cancellations and disinvitations are framed in terms of feelings, not issues. The abortion debate was canceled because it would have imperiled the "welfare and safety of our students." The Afrofunk band's presence would not have been "safe and healthy." No one can rebut feelings, and so the only thing left to do is shut down the things that cause distress — no argument, no discussion, just hit the mute button and pretend eliminating discomfort is the same as effecting actual change.

https://theflaneursturtle.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/epictetus.jpg

no one?????!

i don't know why exactly but that URL made me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU

is it really that it's about feelings and therefore even having the event is a threat to students, or is it more just about a broader cultural trend towards totality - not dissimilar to republicans taking a hard opposition stance to every initiative of POTUS? it's like that negotiating trap where the more you indicate that you're unwilling to compromise, the more concessions you can hopefully extract from your interlocutor, but at a certain point no one trusts that you can make any concessions no matter what and the negotiations are over.

like it's not enough to debate someone who is pro-life and demonstrate through argument that they are wrong. even that gives the impression that a pro-life stance has any place in society and therefore the stronger move is to entirely excise it from all discourse. the big problem w/ that is that you can't just exile everyone from the body politic - they're still around, still voting and organizing, etc, you just can't hear them bc your fingers are in your ears.

i think the issue of job precarity and casual labor is key to that article, and cannot be overemphasized. when you don't know if you have a job a few months from now, it really effects the way you work as an instructor. that can mean avoiding controversial subjects, or it can just mean giving out too high grades for fear that lower grades will lead to lower evaluations, etc. that said, there are other things that can trump all this. i know adjuncts who keep getting work despite either not pandering to students or, sometimes, just being crappy teachers because of their chumminess with the people making the hiring decisions -- i.e. cronyism.

anyway, i think that like a lot of high-profile think pieces on this subject, that Vox article is hyperbolic and doesn't seem to have a good handle on how contradictory trends can coexist. (this is also true w/r/t to the rape-on-campus situation, where you can have institutions that simultaneously deal with victims poorly /and/ don't provide a measure of justice to the accused.)

speaking as someone who teaches at the university level, i've never felt quite as afraid as that article would make one think. i've taught controversial stuff before, including stuff that might conceivably "trigger" some students (films depicting sexual violence, for example). but i've never worried about it because i've always taken care to contextualize the material carefully, to justify it in terms of the broader pedagogical goals of the course... and i always explain what they're about to watch (and i allow people who might be upset to opt out, as long as they watch something else of relevance and write about it; nobody has ever taken this option btw). part of it is just that the truly hyper-sensitive students are probably a tiny little percent of students overall.

just my thoughts. tl;dr: VOX writer is sort of right, but exaggerates and lacks nuance.

btw i;m glad that the VOX author brought up adolph reed. that guy is amazing; i've learned so much from him. his arguments are always bracing, because he forces you to shift your frame of reference. a lot of that comes from his marxism, i think. people like david horowitz get a lot of mileage claiming that academia is a hotbed of marxists/communists. but i think the reigning liberal/"social justice" orthodoxy in the humanities has actually mostly forgotten marx.

As an adjunct, I too haven't recoiled from presenting graphic material. The burden's on me, as I see it, to explain why the material is important to the course. The only questions I fear are political ones, like last semester when after showing bits of "Collateral Murder" a student insisted on asking what I thought about the Iraq War and I had to firmly remind her that my opinions were of no account and had no relation to the material I'd asked them to watch.

^more or less the line i take. this is less because im afraid of repercussions than because i feel that any "political" debates that happens in my class are gonna devolve pretty quickly into the media talking points on both sides, which just strikes me as a waste of time pedagogically. better to put them on ground where those ideological positions are less immediately relevant and they are forced to think from scratch.

Most of the time those questions are asked by rabble rousers.

as when Hamsphire College disinvited an Afrobeat band because their lineup had too many white people in it.

i was wondering if i should be outraged over this but then i realized
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1433225/images/n-AFROBEAT-BAND-TOO-WHITE-large570.jpg

i'm sure they then went and booked a band from nigeria, right?

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

have fun with this one

That's the one I posted

gonna fire Title IX grievance alleging HOOS was mocking the ILE posting process

who is the ideal audience for that vox essay

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

lol

wth is "VOX" anyhow? i never know what all these websites are, they seem nearly interchangeable.

just imagine "Ezra Klein reconstituted as a web page."

apparently this is that vox's writer's tumblr:

http://whitehotharlots.tumblr.com/

it is sfw

ffs these whiny professors. u kno what i think the histrionic students and their deathly afraid professors deserve each other.

yeah

that guy seems like a troll

the VOX thing is a good example of a piece that while part of it rings true, it adds nothing to the conversation. it has no new observations, no new knowledge. it isn't well-supported, it's just a screed.

there's a ready-made audience for that kind of screed though, just as there is a ready-made audience for the kind of identity-politics orthodoxy that the writer laments. they def. deserve each other.

interesting post in crooked timber:
http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/03/the-counter-enlightenment-as-gotcha/

I said that it wasn't solely a legal issue, and was ridiculed for that as well. Am I now also guilty of thinking it is too much a legal issue?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, 3 June 2015 12:08 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fredb i got no issue with you or anything but you need to start discerning between "ridiculed" and "disagreed" imo

xpost

mordy, you have this habit of posting "interesting" blog posts that are not interesting in the slightest.

really? i think the tension for conservatives that want to affirm enlightenment values while simultaneously distrusting their foundation is a really sharp one!

i dunno, you just have a tendency of posting all these thinkpieces that just seem like they are written in an echo chamber.