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America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

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Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#121

Post by Paperweight »

jancsika wrote: post #85

How in the world is the conversation not about the lack of ethics of the teachers and faculty who agree to serve as the amateur judges/questioners in these tribunals? Hello, I spent a decade of my life learning just how difficult it is to become an expert in my very narrow field. In fact I spend most of my time helping undergrads refine their rank speculation into tractable problems to potentially guide them to a dee…

So the system effectively selects for tribunal judges who are partial and/or unethical (re. the italicized)!

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#122

Post by dmckeon »

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.

Institutions often want their own tribunals so that they can more strongly influence both the outcome of investigations and decisions, and the public messaging about them. The underlying goals are not justice and equity, but protection of and advancement for the institution itself. Consider universities, churches, and HR departments.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#123

Post by esyir »

tkel wrote: post #54
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…

Exactly. For example Thomas Jefferson fathered 6 children with a slave of his. The millions of men who believed their wives had no right to vote, that it wasn't their place. The parents who shame their kids for their sexuality or gender identity. Prejudice and love can co-exist.

There were also women that were nonchalant, or even the large female anti-suffrage movements as well. Suffrage was seen by some (yes, women) as a threat to the family structure, amongst other reasons for oppision. Framing this as "prejudice" alone ignores the culture/opinions of the people of this era.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#124

Post by cadlin »

jhbadger wrote: post #102
shawndrost wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think it's literally illegal to fire someone for spitting on their boss?

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#125

Post by claudeganon »

tkel wrote: post #54
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…

Exactly. For example Thomas Jefferson fathered 6 children with a slave of his. The millions of men who believed their wives had no right to vote, that it wasn't their place. The parents who shame their kids for their sexuality or gender identity. Prejudice and love can co-exist.

Thomas Jefferson raped a woman because he was a wealthy slave-owner in a white supremacist, patriarchal society and could do so with impunity.

If you want to understand how to overcome prejudice, it begins with acknowledging historical reality for what it was and not trying to bend your understanding of events to correspond to foundational myths and deifications.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#126

Post by claudeganon »

notfashion wrote: post #28
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

>But after a lifetime in service of the feminist cause, she took on the case of a friend whose son she came to believe had been wrongly convicted of rape and won his acquittal on appeal. This is one of the big ways in which sexism is a much more tractable problem than racism and less potentially explosive. Women and men both have members of the opposite sex that they genuinely love. I have heard that fathers with dau…

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…

> Loving someone from a different category doesn't automatically dissolve all antagonism or prejudice—it might just override it in a specific case.

Well-put. One need only think of how many men love their individual wives/sisters/mothers while otherwise being deeply misogynistic.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#127

Post by dragonsngoblins »

mikedilger wrote: post #25

This is a very difficult issue. Most sexual assaults happen in private, so there is rarely any evidence a victim can use to convict the perpetrator. Most accusations are real, but some are questionable as to whether a crime was committed, and some accusations are false. Given there is almost never any evidence, victims are at a severe disadvantage in the innocent until proven guilty paradigm. I can understand why som…

> Most accusations are real

See, I want to believe that, but I'm not sure there is a way to know whether or not that is actually true. In much the same way that there is rarely evidence of guilt when an accusation is true there isn't likely to be evidence when an accusation is false. I keep seeing people say some variant of "X% of rape accusations are false" but none of the sources I have ever seen have had a particularly accurate way of gathering data... because one doesn't exist. The proportion of unproven accusations that happen to be false is unknowable in practical terms, and I get frustrated by people variously flat out stating it is high/low.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#128

Post by cadlin »

gregimba wrote: post #50
ccday wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the professors quoted in the article suggests otherwise: > The system promulgated a definition of sexual misconduct so expansive that it “plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today,” as Gersen wrote in an article in the California Law Review.

The standard at my college was any alcoholic consumption meant you could no longer consent. If I had a beer and had sex with my girlfriend it was considered sexual misconduct under the definition of consent the school provided.

Are you certain of this? It's a common misunderstanding about campus consent policies and it might be true somewhere, but it is far from standard. It might be a part of lower quality consent literature, but that's different from the actual standards determined by school policy.

E.g., The University of California's policy around alcohol and consent is:

>The Respondent knew or a reasonable person should have known that the Complainant was unable to consent because the Complainant was incapacitated,in that the Complainant was... unable to understand the fact, nature, or extent of the sexual activity due to the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#129

Post by manfredo »

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.

Yeah, no.

> As Catharine Mackinnon, the progenitor of the school of feminism from which this movement proceeds, once put it, “Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”

Plenty of people feel violated after being dumped by a significant other, or feeling unsatisfied by entirely consensual sex (see the Aziz Ansari story). Even getting explicit, affirmative consent is no guarantee that the other party will feel violated.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#130

Post by caseysoftware »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #114
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its an investigative process with procedure and hearings, its no more a fiat than a court is.

Except - as noted in article - none of the people involved are trained investigators, the starting position it to believe accusers (instead of being impartial), the accused are not allowed legal representation, and they're often under a tribunal-imposed gag order. There is nothing "just" in that situation.

The protections afforded to both the accused and the accuser are to provide safeguards for everyone involved.

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