America’s New Sex Bureaucracy • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#101

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #97

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be sued in civil court for money. You're not held in prison or kicked out of school by government fiat in the meantime. And the damages (if any) are imposed after the court proceeding. The exceptions are related to things like civil asset forfeiture, which are of questionable constitutionality and are similar to the rules we're discussing insofar as they are both worthy of contempt.

A university tribunal is not government fiat, and a civil court has more power than simply issuing fines.

A university tribunal that operates as a result of federal requirements is government fiat, and a civil court is primarily concerned with awarding damages rather than imposing penalties. That they sometimes do other things is evidence more that the legal system is messy and flawed than that the exceptions should be the rule.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#102

Post by jhbadger » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

shawndrost wrote: post #52

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

I don't want to wade into the specifics of campus tribunals, but the broad mechanism here is very commonplace and uncontroversial, no? Eg if I work for an NSF grant recipient and I spit on my boss, and I get fired with no court ruling, would you find it confusing/objectionable?

Yes, that would be objectionable, and probably not even legal, unless your boss was a member of a protected class and it could be shown that what you were doing was a hate action against the class and not the individual.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#103

Post by jlawson » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #67

notfashion wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the scenarios "some of my best friends are of the opposite sex" or "some of my best friends are of another race" have much bearing on sexism or racism. Loving someone from a different category doesn't automatically dissolve all antagonism or prejudice—it might just override it in a specific case. Relationships are multidimensional. You would need to provide evidence that these bonds of love/affection som…

As one potential example, though I'd want to see more data on actual relationships, regions with more immigrants tend to have warmer feelings toward immigrants, even among the non-immigrant population.

Because the non-immigrants who don't want to live among foreigners tend to leave and/or not move in. Simple self-selection.

Real life example of someone like this would be John Cleese, who moves from London to Bath after London lost its English identity.

Compare: People who eat burgers like burgers more than people who don't. Is it because eating burgers makes you like burgers, or because only people who like burgers will choose to eat burgers?

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#104

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #60

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture... ...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his con…

What if employee A makes up lies about employee B, and the reason a bunch of other people feel uncomfortable or unproductive or unhappy around employee B is just based on perception from these lies?

Are you in the right as an employer to fire employee B without serious due diligence? To potentially ruin employee B’s life or reputation? Instead of letting it escalate to a real court case (if applicable)?

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#105

Post by doodliego » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

gedy wrote: post #63

mieseratte wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand “why,” in that they are required to. What I don’t understand is why this is a thing to begin with. Government end-runs around standard systems of due process is odd.

From the article: "This ideology is a successor to liberalism. It brandishes terms that superficially resemble normative liberalism—terms like diversity and inclusion—but in fact seeks to supplant it. This new regime, in which administrative power has been fashioned into a blunt instrument of deterrence, marks off a crucial distinction—between the liberal rule of law, and the punitive system of surveillance rooted in…

[flagged]

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#106

Post by will4274 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

brandmeyer wrote: post #65

hirundo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you at least consider yourself outside of the camp that considers it to be "rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated”, and feels no need for standard due process measures in campus sexual assault judgments? What would be the equivalent extremities of the opposite camp? I'm not hearing from many opponents that sexual assault should be tolerated. It's more common to hear that they should be immediately esca…

> I'm not hearing from many opponents that sexual assault should be tolerated. It wasn't that long ago that a literal parade of college students were chanting "No means yes! Yes means anal!" Fortunately, that behavior isn't common. But it also isn't fair to insinuate that the other side doesn't exist.

> It wasn't that long ago that a literal parade of college students were chanting "No means yes! Yes means anal!"

Nor too long ago that a parade of college students were chanting "Die Cis Scum." Bizarrely (to me), detailed reporting showed that neither groups actually believed the words they were chanting - most people shouting "No means yes! Yes means anal" didn't believe rape was ok and most people shouting "Die Cis Scum" didn't believe murder was ok. Such cultural phenomenon deserve more than the surface glance you've given them.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#107

Post by wahern » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #23

hammock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is in the article: Title IX requires them to. Specifically, the new federal guidance that was issued during the Obama administration.

I understand “why,” in that they are required to. What I don’t understand is why this is a thing to begin with. Government end-runs around standard systems of due process is odd.

The requirement comes from the original Civil Rights Act. Say you're a minority student and some other students start using epithets to taunt you (as was common). Are you going to make a federal case out of it? Is it administratively efficient to require a student to make a federal case out of it, especially if all that's required is a firm rebuke from the administration to cease the hostile behavior?

Remember, the defendant as far as the law is concerned is the university, not the accused student(s). These rules are about requiring the school to provide procedures to address its own conduct; namely, permitting a hostile school environment. Which brings up another point: can a school even be considered to have permitted a hostile environment if they haven't been given the chance to remediate things before initiation of a federal lawsuit? Thus, these rules for internal, administrative adjudication are also about setting standards for judging whether a school has willfully or negligently permitted a hostile environment.

The problem is that in their zeal to avoid being adjudged as having permitted a hostile environment they've in some cases crafted administrative procedures that unfairly treat the accused. But the accused can also make similar claims against the university--that the adjudication procedures sexually discriminated against them. So there's back pressure, it just requires time for things to settle into an equilibrium. (See my post elsethread about the cause for the recent radical shifts.)

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#108

Post by learc83 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #60

mieseratte wrote: post #4

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture... ...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his con…

Most Universities are non-profit, and almost all of them take Federal money. Classifying them as a business isn't accurate.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#109

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

alexithym wrote: post #47

rayiner wrote: post #38

Meh. This is the second sexual revolution. The first go around resulted in rules and around causal sex in college that favor men and encode male expectations. Women are making clear that those rules don’t work for them and are demanding a change. If you don’t push the line on consent you have nothing to worry about.

> If you don't push the line on consent you have nothing to worry about. The issue with this position is that it assumes a defined line of consent which is generally shared by both parties. However, one of the main theses of the article was that the very definition of consent itself can been so radically altered as to make this a strong assumption. For example, one definition of rape presented in the article ("Politi…

> Would you not also agree that a fair process is a desirable goal for any society?

Process is necessarily probabilistic. The more "fair" things are for the accused, the less often victims rights will be vindicated. (Hence the phrase "better to let 10 guilty men go free than have one innocent man go to jail.")

That process is essential where criminal penalties are in play. But it's not clear to me that the same weighting is warranted in every situation.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#110

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #100

klipt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to prevent these things from going too far is to make the standards gender neutral. If men start accusing women of rape by trickery too, I imagine feminists will very quickly back down. The main problem is when it's all in one direction: when people think that defining more things as rape makes them more feminist, more supportive of women, and more deserving of social brownie points, then they have incentive…

I don't have any direct (or indirect) experience. So what happens now if a man accuses a woman of "raping" him? I'm guessing that he'd be ignored. And I don't think the standards will become gender-neutral any faster than they'll become just. I do wonder, though, whether young men are becoming more cautious about who they have sex with. And if there's any way to protect oneself against future rape accusations. Perhap…

> I do wonder, though, whether young men are becoming more cautious about who they have sex with.

This seems to be part of the point of these efforts, and also socially desirable. Don't take advantage of marginal situations; don't toe the line. Don't do anything you can't defend later. Those are all good things to tell young men.