Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

What about racists, everybody hates them too dont forget. Even racists!

i do wonder if the whole 'rape culture' meme indicates a kind of frustration that as a society we have stigmatized rape to the point where it's one of the most horrific crimes a person can commit, and yet it hasn't gone away.

i don't know about that, mordy. i think people quite reasonably are appalled by rape and by a history of victim-blaming that accompanies it some contexts. some police dep'ts do have a serious history of not treating some rape victims with respect, to put it mildly (though i often think people understate how much progress has been made in this area). but some people seem to have drawn from that a conclusion that these things are better handled by poorly-trained campus administrators rather than by the legal system. which seems a major tactical mistake to me.

xposts -- what aimless said!

to get back to the underlying reasons for the current campus-rape crisis rhetoric: what we're seeing on many (not all) college campuses right now is an overcorrection to a very real problem, an overcorrection that threatens important principles of justice and free speech, not to mention often not really helping the problem in the first place (since colleges are primarily interested in not being sued, their policies aren't necessarily ideally helpful to either victims or the accused).

there's also a somewhat icky class issue lurking behind all this. rape is more prevalent among young people /off/-campus (or so indicates the best research from NIH etc), but most of the media attention seems to be focused on the plight of campus women, who as a group tend to be whiter and more privileged than women of the same age not attending college. also, historically women of color and poor women are much more likely to be victims of indifference and hostility from police/the legal system in general, esp. when it comes to sexual assault/rape.

that's not to say there aren't lots of feminists and anti-rape activists who aren't as vocal about rape in society in general as on campus. but the amount of gov't/policy attention that's given to campus rape, which isn't any more prevalent than rape elsewhere, strikes me as indicative of class privilege.

i guess i sound like i'm concern trolling, but i don't think i am. i should say that my position in academia might give me a kind of distorted view of how visible these debates are in general.

as usual, multiple xposts, sorry.

Unfortunately, the tradition of universities being their own fiefdoms able to operate as a law unto themselves goes back to the middle ages and they will give up that privilege very reluctantly

i think you've got this backwards, actually.

it's the dept of education who pushed this stuff on campuses, by basically saying if they don't adjudicate cases of sexual misconduct/assault/rape themselves, they could be threatened with Title IX-based lawsuits. so the whole infrastructure of campus tribunals, etc. stems from federal policy.

of course the universities' main goal is always to protect themselves, so the tribunals--writ large--end up dispensing something quite other than justice, both to victims and the accused.

that's not to say there aren't lots of feminists and anti-rape activists who aren't as vocal about rape in society in general as on campus.

oops, i meant to write "who ARE as vocal about rape..."

sorry!

here's a relevant article: http://chronicle.com/article/Should-Colleges-Be-Judging/229263

lead graf:

Four years after the U.S. Education Department admonished colleges to take their role in responding to sexual assault more seriously, a consensus is emerging among some campus officials and legal experts that the government's guidance is not only unrealistic but exceeds its legal authority. The amount of money and effort colleges are devoting to try to meet the mandates for adjudicating sexual misconduct, they say, is unsustainable.

(btw the phrase "consensus is emerging among some..." is weird. if it's only "some," it's not really a consensus, is it? anyway.)

I don't know anyone who is pro-rape, no, which is why I find the notion that 'rape-culture' should mean pro-rape culture so ridiculous. But we had a perfect example of rape-culture earlier this year, at carnival, in Denmark. In Aalborg, they had five rape-allegetions during that weekend. But 'that's what happens when so many people get drunk' the police said. Like, I'm sure that police chief would still say he hates rapists. But y'know, who knows if it was actually rape-rape, or if the women made it up, y'know.

Like, there's a bunch of people who would say they are anti-rape who are still pro-Bill Cosby, as if that's two different thing.

Believing that alcohol use has a positive correlation with incidence of rape is reality (though if the police said it all blasé like the prevalence of alcohol means they don't need to treat the accusations seriously - obv that's an issue). Re pro-Bill Cosby, I'm not sure what that means. Ppl who don't believe he did it aren't pro-rape, they just in deep denial probably bc it's painful for them to believe someone so important to them could be literally the worst thing they can imagine. Ppl who believe he did it, but don't think it ruins the comedy for them are just savvy cultural readers. Ppl who believe he did it, and that it's a good thing - those ppl are obv pro-rape.

yeah people who believed OJ didn't do it aren't pro-murder

OTOH most people /are/ pro-murder in certain situations (osama bin laden, etc.)

side issue though! back to creepy liberalism!

depends on where you look. unless you set a very low threshold for what can reasonably constitute "a culture," it is not very useful to say that a "rape culture" exists on american university campuses.

there is certainly a culture centered around pressuring students to drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol and have sex

you can't distinguish that from a "rape culture"?

http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/recrimination-and-ruined-hope/

relevant

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-home-sebastian-junger

Are you consigning that new inquiry piece? Not sure I buy it

*cosigning

i have no opinion

You can't stay neutral on a moving train, j

i'm in the quiet car

hi i was on vacay for a week but the mclean's article i posted here, i thought it was bad

*maclean's

i mean, the headline draws a nice short line between "the guy who yelled 'fuck her right in the pussy' at a reporter" and "you"

aha it was a trap! Now we know the real sexists

idk if this was the point of j posting that vanityfair article (which i thought was very informative and interesting) but it made me even more skeptical of college trigger anxiety than ever being as how it seems to be more a product of failure to reintegrate into community/structure and not just the reliving of past traumatic experiences (though there's that too). in general the whole article seems to exist on a parallel track of understanding + treatment than how PTSD has been discussing in the popular culture.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/doublex/2015/06/the_hunting_ground_a_closer_look_at_the_influential_documentary_reveals.html

The filmmakers present what happened between Kamilah Willingham and Brandon Winston as a terrifying warning to female college students and their parents, and a call to arms to government officials and college administrators. They offer the case as prima facie evidence that draconian regulations, laws, and punishments are required to end what they say is a scourge of sexual violence. But there is another story, which the filmmakers do not tell. It’s a story in which Willingham’s accusations are taken seriously and Winston’s actions are thoroughly investigated, first by Harvard University and later by the Middlesex County district attorney’s office. It’s a story in which neither the school nor the legal system finds that a rape occurred, and in which Willingham’s credibility is called seriously into question. It’s a story of an ambiguous sexual encounter among young adults that almost destroyed the life of the accused, a young black man with no previous record of criminal behavior. It’s a story that demonstrates how deeply the filmmakers’ politics colored their presentation of the facts—and how deeply flawed their influential film is as a result.

Crossposting from the Action Bronson thread:

http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2015/06/01/action-bronson-removed-from-canadian-music-festival-lineup-following-online-petition

I contacted Kirby Dick to talk to him about the Willingham case. He declined to speak with me, but asked for a list of written questions. I sent him my questions by email, and he replied, “After careful consideration I respectfully decline.”

shameless

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/06/02/why-do-high-profile-campus-rape-stories-keep-falling-apart/?hpid=z2

The anti-campus rape activists often claim that false accusations of sexual assault are practically nonexistent. (“Anti-campus rape activists” is a necessary but admittedly clumsy term. Every sane person is obviously opposed to campus rape. And even among activists who have made campus rape their issue, there is dissent and disagreement about strategy, priorities and reform.) But that so many of the accusations that they themselves have chosen as emblems of the cause have been proved false or debatable suggests that they’re either wrong about the frequency of false accusations or that the movement itself has had some extraordinarily bad luck.

"or debatable " doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

i agree!

i do think that sometimes people want to use the most seemingly outlandish/awful/sensational instances to highlight since they are headline-grabbing, and predictably some of the more outlandish cases are the ones that fall apart upon investigation (e.g. the rolling stone frat gang-rape one). i don't think we really need to read anything into it regarding the specific frequency of false allegations (except for the fact that false allegations exist, but very few people would deny that).

it does really bother me, though, that the filmmakers made their film in what appears to be bad faith. (that or they simply lied about doing "fact-checking" on the cases they highlight.)

even the title of the film seems sensationalistic, it calls to mind the opening scene of "halloween" or one of those "slumber party massacre" movies.

oh yeah, i don't think that all these cases turn out to be problematic bc all rape accusations are lies. i think that the focus on sensational stories to dramatize hasn't done activists any favors, especially when one of the primary memes of activists is that false accusations are practically non-existent - it makes it more dramatic when a particular sensational story turns out to be false (or at the very least 'debatable').

http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/the-supreme-court-just-made-online-harassment-a-little-bit-easier

People tend to dismiss 'non-sensational' rape out of hand.

It's a catch-22. If it's someone she knew, well, probably not rape. If violence wasn't involved, well, probably not rape. Had both been drinking a bit, well, probably not rape. No drinking, violence, someone unknown, huh, that sounds way too sensational, probably not rape.

Every single rape is 'debatable'. Outside of police shootings, it must be the hardest crime to prove.

police shootings aren't hard to prove

sorry missed your sarcasm. you're right, it's hard to get indictments in police shootings due to procedural norms/police being protected somewhat

This is bullshit:

Consequently, the researchers and activists who have tried have put this figure all over the map, from a fraction of a percent to as high as 40 percent.

Vox had an article on that a few days back: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/1/8687479/lie-rape-statistics The paper that gives 41% is pretty much eviscerated in that article - the small police prescint the study examined put all accusers through a polygraph, something that should not be done with trauma victims, which probably led to data 'flawed' to a fucked up extent. Why would the writer throw out all the 'flawed' data on the prevalence of campus rape, but then say we should look at 'flawed' data on fake rape allegations? Oh, I know, because the article is a worthless piece of crap.

idk if eviscerated is the right word:

One influential study from the 1990s found that in a Midwestern police department, 41 percent of rape claims were found to be false. But the department asked anyone claiming to have been raped to take a polygraph test to prove it — which is strongly discouraged when dealing with potential trauma victims. (The department's policy was to categorize a rape as false only if the accuser recanted, but the threat of the polygraph test could have induced victims to back out.)

oy: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/783-op-ed-why-is-violence-against-women-excusable-if-its-art/

i've read that kanin study and it seemed to have a bunch of holes in it but it's been a while

like the guy was using it to make a [possibly bad] point about how there's a lot of variance but it doesn't go at all to his point that there are a striking number of public big media cases that have turned out to be false, or disputible. if anything, for that argument, he'd prefer a much lower number since that would make it all the more strange that there are these duke lacrosse, rolling stone "jackie," Willingham, cases. if 41 percent were correct (which is obv isn't) you'd have a good explanation - it's practically 50/50 whether the case you're discussing is true. but he's arguing that false rape accusations /are/ very rare, and they show up more often in these sensationalist stories bc of other factors.

No, he is not arguing they are 'very rare'. He says that it's 'much more common than almost never', which seems to be somewhat more than 2-8% which seems to be the consensus. That is the second worst piece of bullshit. The worst is obviously him saying that witnesses are more trustworthy if they are 'reluctant'. Which is some catch 22 bullshit, ie, the only trustworthy victim is someone who shuts up about it. It's a disgusting article, is what it is.

Also, including the Rolling Stone story as a proof of bad activism? Isn't it more media sensationalism? I remember even the earliest commentary I read on that case had people lamenting that it was bad journalism, even if the story turned out to be true. Which it didn't.

there was a lot of pushback on early critics of the piece, cf http://jezebel.com/is-the-uva-rape-story-a-gigantic-hoax-asks-idiot-1665233387/

i think this reason is the most likely:

A third possibility was suggested by the Columbia School of Journalism’s report on the Rolling Stone story.

Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation.

In other words, there’s a strong desire to find the “emblematic” case, one that checks off all the right boxes — a sympathetic victim, a privileged attacker, an indifferent administration, and so on. Real life doesn’t usually produce such clean-cut cases. So there may be an urge to bend stories to make them more sympathetic, more universal and more likely to generate outrage. Probably more to the point, this desire to seek out the perfect poster case may also make activists and their sympathizers in the press more credulous and less willing to ask questions when a story that appears to fit the bill does come along, as Jackie’s story did. For activists and sympathetic journalists alike, there’s a strong incentive to want to see a promising story (i.e. “promising” in terms of its potential to generate change) in the most favorable light, and with that, a proclivity to overlook the red flags.

It's a catch-22. If it's someone she knew, well, probably not rape. If violence wasn't involved, well, probably not rape. Had both been drinking a bit, well, probably not rape. No drinking, violence, someone unknown, huh, that sounds way too sensational, probably not rape.

Every single rape is 'debatable'. Outside of police shootings, it must be the hardest crime to prove.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 4:03 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's true. the question is: what is your solution to this? it can't be to always believe the alleged victim, because whatever the occurrence of false claims (be it 0.000000001% or 10%) there has to be some standard of evidence and protection of the accused. unless you are willing to throw that out.

the problem raised in the film is that even after both harvard and the police department conducted thorough investigations and a trial (all of which is misrepresented in the film), the alleged victim is unsatisfied. but what new policies does she--or do the filmmakers--want to be put in place that would remedy the situation to their satisfaction?

How many of the cases of campus speech and academic freedom turn out to be different than originally reported? That dude who was thrown out of class for 'questioning rape statistics' then got arrested. The professor who had tenure revoked for 'blogging critically' about a colleague turned out to have received warnings before, and to have started campaigns against colleagues involving death threats. The recent Kipnis story also had pretty significant wrinkles. But does anyone write about this? Does anyone write that we shouldn't believe professors complaining about 'political correctness'? Because, complaining about it so much makes it much harder to get rid of real political correctness.

Fuck no. It's always rape we talk about to much. Or racism. Or harassment. Wonder why the fuck that is?

Bc no one ever goes to jail for infringing freedom of speech