America’s New Sex Bureaucracy • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#351

Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #10

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…

Given the popularity of social justice causes, I have a hard time believing this is a material factor. People seem rather up in arms about racism or even just adverse impact on this day and age.

Social justice causes are popular to talk about, not to actually do something about.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#352

Post by kedean » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

jlawson wrote: post #103

scarmig wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Counterpoint to you last example just for fun...people who live in places with a lot of highly rated burger restaurants eat more burgers because they are surrounded by good burgers, not because of an inherent love for ground beef patties.

I think the general sentiment was more about the neutral people who hold a view but could be accepting of something different, rather than the people who are staunchly against something.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#353

Post by dclusin » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

icu wrote: post #348

dclusin wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Richard Nixon level paranoia. I think that your second point is probably occurring quite a lot, especially in tech, where empathy & people skills aren't always high up on the list of priorities. But to walk around with suspicion to the point of carrying around a microphone is just lunacy. It's also an overreaction to such an unlikely outcome of being accused of misconduct with a female employee. It affects su…

It's not lunacy as society has forgone due process to the point that Harvard Law adjudicators, who are women no less, are sounding the alarm. If you can't imagine it happening to you, say it happens to your father, or your brother, or your son. The asymmetrical damage of a false sexual assault allegation is so far skewed to the accuser it's telling that you haven't suggested a more ethical and practical way of protec…

It's definitely a scary situation for sure. Especially considering that having due process is something that's been drilled into our heads since a very young age. From a practical perspective I just don't see any personal benefit from implementing these sorts prophylactic actions, given how rare these occurrences actually are. Being shot in America is certainly a very dangerous reality that we live with, and depending where you live it may be more likely than not. Given this, I don't go around wearing bullet proof plate armor in public to minimize my risk of being injured by a shooter. I think that the best defense against these sorts of outcomes is to engage in public discourse, and correct bad & unfair policy outcomes as they become apparent. Participating in the dialog and talking about it with friends and family I think is enough action for me. Hopefully I'm not unlucky.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#354

Post by jeffdavis » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #349

jeffdavis wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't be reckless" is simply not good enough when there's no due process, no standards for evidence, and no standards for guilt. You can be very careful, and still end up on the wrong side of a baseless claim. Could be anything from a lie, to a dream, to mistaken identity, to a drug dog sneezing. Without due process, anything goes, and being careful isn't enough, because suspicion becomes guilt and by the time you s…

You brought up Brett Kavanaugh. That's a silly example. Anybody in politics knows it's a hostile environment. It's like walking into a gunfight and expecting to not get hit. You might not get hit. But just being there makes you a target. In the OP's situation, basic sexual hygiene would have prevented the whole thing. It will for everyone that doesn't put themselves first and foremost in a shooting gallery. You can u…

Isn't politics the place we need to use the most restraint? Otherwise, it's just too easy to remove an inconvenient politician from play.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#355

Post by wahern » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #288

wahern wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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? I'm confused,…

Because a university isn't investigating to determine whether a crime, per se, has occurred, but to determine whether allegations of discriminatory (racial, sexual, etc) harassment are credible. If such harassment is occurring, or something equivalent which creates a discriminatory hostile environment for the student, a university has an obligation under these laws to end it.

A rape is a crime, but a rape followed by the ongoing presence of the rapist also equates (under legal precedent) to a hostile environment for the student victim, which is how Title IX comes into play.

The question was why are universities conducting these investigations. Rape plus ongoing presence of the rapist is considered a form of sexual discrimination by the university, in so far as the university willfully permits the rapist's ongoing presence. Thus the university is put into the position of judging the credibility of any allegations.

In this way it's also identical to the racial epithet scenario. Shouting racial epithets isn't a crime or even illegal, but a university that doesn't stop such ongoing behavior among its students is considered to be illegally racially discriminatory against the target of the epithets.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#356

Post by blotter_paper » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

pharke wrote: post #327

blotter_paper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most families include the elderly and the overweight, so the idea that familiarity breeds acceptance would predict that those biases should be going away quicker than biases against gays. What I'm about to say is not meant to provide a justification for discriminatory behavior, it's just an armchair-anthropologist's attempt at explaining this discrepancy. We might have a very deep bias against old people; if a group…

The counter to that is that the elderly and the overweight haven't always been the subjects of negative bias. There are plenty of inversions of that bias throughout history and across cultures. It's honestly just fashionable to be young and skinny at this point in history and this part of the world, hence the bias against the opposites.

That's a pretty good counter, actually. I was aware of those facts, but hadn't considered them in this context as far as I recall.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#357

Post by learc83 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #153

learc83 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Most Universities are non-profit, You're still a business if you're a non-profit. > Almost all of them take Federal money You're still a business if you accept government contracts. > Classifying them as a business isn't accurate. I mean, they act like businesses, and in most cases they very explicitly legally are businesses. They accept money in exchange for services. If not a business, what would you classify the…

>and in most cases they very explicitly legally are businesses.

By that definition every nearly single non-governmental organization is explicitly legally a business, so stating that an organization is a "business" is meaningless.

A church, a soup kitchen, and fraternal lodge are also explicitly legally businesses as well, but it's not useful to classify them alongside for profit businesses.

Many very well off schools don't even charge students who make below a certain income, and the vast majority of their operating expenses come from donations--saying they charge money in exchange for a service isn't a very useful description of what they do.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#358

Post by tptacek » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #129

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…

Your argument is premised on this unreasonably general statement being an actual norm, which it clearly is not.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#359

Post by belorn » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #245

intarga wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 - I'm doubtful of your claim there was nothing to vote on except where/whether the army fights. 2 - That's irrelevant anyway unless you're suggesting that it was still the case up to 1919. 3 - Even if it was, why does women not fighting imply they can't have opinions and thoughts on when and where the army fights? For sure it still affects them.

And yet 1919 is the closing year of WWI, which as I recall was the first major war where women's labour could be deployed directly as a proactive and systematic part of the war effort on foreign soil. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no military historian. There is a massive link between being involved in the military and having political power, even without suffrage. There are 2,500 years of history and women got the vo…

The original bill was to be voted just as the war ended and it included a critical detail: female military draft. The world war 1 machine was running out of men to send to the war and the volunteer system for women did not turn out enough people to fill the ever increasing demand in the war factories. Something had to give.

Creating a female military draft raise some major concerns in 1918, one being that women had not voted to enter the war in the first place. It was seen as a bit unfair to then demand them to help fix the situation. Thus the right to vote.

Then the war suddenly ended and the bill got postponed. The female draft part was dropped but the idea of women vote continued with force and a year later it passed.

Most historians agree that the world war 1 was the catalyst for the women suffrage movement, through there are some disagreement. Some points to the fact that the movement existed before the war, but how significant their political influence was at that point is far from clear.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#360

Post by wnoise » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

slimed wrote: post #303

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not equally true of anyone who makes the opposite determination? We have no information besides a third party report of an accusation and a retraction. My understanding of the world is that false accusations are rarer than many people think and false retractions are more common. There's negative ramifications that are hard to overstate to that as well.

Have you considered that it is not your job to make a determination? If someone shares a story like this you politely believe them and move on, comfortable in the knowledge that it may or may not be true. "Your understanding" is purely anecdotal.

> you politely believe them and move on, comfortable in the knowledge that it may or may not be true.

You have a very different understanding of the word "believe" than I do.