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College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

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Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#61

Post by oconnore »

CthulhuOvermind wrote: post #14

"The legal verdict on whether sex is non consensual still often rests on the perspective of the alleged perpetrator rather than the experience of the victim." I'm not sure I entirely understand this quote to its fullest. It is being argued that it is the experience of the victim that matters if sex is consensual. Isn't this quote logically wrong? Consensual by definitions means both parties agreed. But is the author…

I think the discrepancy comes from advocacy thought vs. legal thought [1]. When advocating for rape victims, who are severely disadvantaged in these situations, you might make a statement like "we need to listen to the woman's perspective". As has been pointed out, that statement is a heuristic on several levels: the woman is often, but not always, the victim; and from a legal standpoint, there are of course other things to consider. It's still a useful and generally true statement.

When you're listening to "megaphone speech", you have to understand the context to understand the message. That can be difficult, because in most cases if you already understood the context, you wouldn't need to listen to the message. Try.

The flip side is also true, when activists win, and are given real institutional power, they must stop relying on context and start being precise ("gavel speech") with their intentions.

1: http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/02/trading-the-megaphone-fo...

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#62

Post by Sevrene »

FreeInternet wrote: post #50
Sevrene wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read all of your article, I didn't have to read it to see that your comment looks like propaganda; new user, highly politicised comments, abrasive attitude to questions, comments with very similar content, etc. I don't really know if your comment is propaganda — I don't really care, actually. It's probably not. But we must be suspicious of suspicious acting narrators trying to lead conversations on sites lik…

no, we must do our research and not form quick judgements. No excuse to not read all the article. If you don't have time to learn, please save time by not speaking.

Having a healthy amount of suspicion suspends judgements in the first place.

I skimmed the article as I had already heard most of it. No need to be so righteous. You could save yourself time (and everyone else for that matter) if you just worded your original comment a bit better; that's all I wanted to say in the first place. It's ironic that your post looks like propaganda when that's what you are so concerned about in the first place.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#63

Post by ryan-allen »

mikekchar wrote: post #53
jmspring wrote: post #49

I'll risk down votes...but...this is one of those posts that doesn't fair well here in the sense of balanced conversation...and the comments I have already read...I hope it disappears soon...

I'll vote you up mainly because I also wonder a bit about why this article is here. I haven't been around HN for that long, but even a year ago I seem to remember that the articles voted up were mainly technical in nature or related to startups. I have noticed that as discussion boards get more popular they seem to move to being platforms for expressing opinion on political subjects. It may be my imagination, but the…

The comment is topical on HN because of previous incidents of sexual assault allegations at/after tech conferences that were not dealt with by the criminal justice system, but rather by internet mobs and character assassination.

I'm of the opinion that this kind of stuff should be reported to the police and be dealt with there, rather than via blog posts and twitter, but the argument "police don't care" seems to trump my position.

I live in Australia where the police would give a flying shit, especially if you have corroborating witnesses (the case I am thinking of here on HN did).

This all ties in with the "All White Men"/"Women In Tech"/"Male Privilege" microcosm that is not unique to startup web tech, yet has somehow crept in, in the last few years.

I like to keep my peas and corn separate on my plate, but others like to mix them together. Oh well.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#64

Post by bitwize »

mirimir wrote: post #52
danieltillett wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that rare when using the current standard of consent. If you include any man who has sex while drunk (and is hence incapable of giving consent) then rape of men by women is very common.

What if both parties are incapable of giving consent?

Then each party is criminally liable for the rape of the other, under law. But, in practice, for heterosexual liaisons the male partner will be charged and prosecuted while the female goes free.

Disclaimer: ianal

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#65

Post by danieltillett »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #44
danieltillett wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that rare when using the current standard of consent. If you include any man who has sex while drunk (and is hence incapable of giving consent) then rape of men by women is very common.

Can you define drunk as you intend it in this sentence? People seem to be very loose with this phrase recently and it's impossible to tell if they're doing so intentionally for political reasons, or if they're just not very good at communicating what they mean. Drunk can mean someone has had 1 beer (e.g. drunk driving in many locations). It can also mean aggressively or flamboyantly out-of-character after several dri…

Thaumasiotes has already explained the situation on campus in regards what is considered drunk and consent, but even in the wider world you can only give consent when not intoxicated. The level of intoxication is not clear cut, but at least in Australia it needs to be “substantial” [1]. What exactly is substantial is up to the jury.

The US case law is much more murky as this article explains [2].

1. https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/25.%20Sexual%20Offences...

2. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/08/opinions/cevallos-sex-cons...

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#66

Post by Dr_tldr »

deciplex wrote: post #11

It wasn't long ago that I would have agreed with this article in full. I may have even posted here on HN to that effect before. I am still sympathetic to the point it makes. However: Universities boot people out for other reasons which are not actionable in a criminal (or even civil) court all the time . Getting shitty grades, being a disruptive asshole in a class on a regular basis, and so on, can end your universit…

What if gay and transgendered people "creep you the fuck out", or orthodox jews, or people in wheelchairs?

Once you start making the case for expulsion and the application of a sliding scale of guilt due entirely to other people's beliefs about an unpopular individual or group as fine in principle, you've basically undone the entire enlightenment in law, governance, and ethics.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#67

Post by zorpner »

mikekchar wrote: post #53
jmspring wrote: post #49

I'll risk down votes...but...this is one of those posts that doesn't fair well here in the sense of balanced conversation...and the comments I have already read...I hope it disappears soon...

I'll vote you up mainly because I also wonder a bit about why this article is here. I haven't been around HN for that long, but even a year ago I seem to remember that the articles voted up were mainly technical in nature or related to startups. I have noticed that as discussion boards get more popular they seem to move to being platforms for expressing opinion on political subjects. It may be my imagination, but the…

Social/political issues are not orthogonal to technical issues -- in fact, the belief that they are orthogonal is fundamentally conservative (protective of the status quo).

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#68

Post by taneq »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
CthulhuOvermind wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of sex, it is an action that is legal(or not) depending on consent. In the example I gave earlier, the female has obtained consent from her partner. The male changes his mind half-way through but does not stop or act in any different way. In cases such as these, my understanding(and gut feeling really) is that since knowledge of consent is what makes an action legal, the person had no knowledge consent wa…

In that case, consent was mutually given and if the other party then changes their mind and asks the other to stop, then consent ceases, right? If the other party is not signalled that consent was withdrawn, then it is, in my mind, a bit tricky. It means that consent was no longer there, but the other party didn't have any way of knowing. I think it's fair to say that no assault occurred, but it's still damaging to t…

How is this in any way tricky? Consent is something the giving of which involves clear communication, not just something that exists in the mind of one of the parties. Likewise, consent can't just 'cease', it has to be withdrawn, which involves communicating the withdrawal to all parties concerned.

It's like signing up for a phone contract, then deciding you don't want it any more and stopping using the phone. If you don't tell the provider then they're completely within their rights to keep billing you.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#69

Post by raphael_kimmig »

mikekchar wrote: post #53
jmspring wrote: post #49

I'll risk down votes...but...this is one of those posts that doesn't fair well here in the sense of balanced conversation...and the comments I have already read...I hope it disappears soon...

I'll vote you up mainly because I also wonder a bit about why this article is here. I haven't been around HN for that long, but even a year ago I seem to remember that the articles voted up were mainly technical in nature or related to startups. I have noticed that as discussion boards get more popular they seem to move to being platforms for expressing opinion on political subjects. It may be my imagination, but the…

I think that this is probably just your perception. I've been here on and off for at least a few years now and I don't think that the content has really changed.

When you read the guidelines[0] it is clear that basically anything can be discussed here, given the right angle.

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon [emphasis mine]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#70

Post by SeanDav »

CthulhuOvermind wrote: post #14

"The legal verdict on whether sex is non consensual still often rests on the perspective of the alleged perpetrator rather than the experience of the victim." I'm not sure I entirely understand this quote to its fullest. It is being argued that it is the experience of the victim that matters if sex is consensual. Isn't this quote logically wrong? Consensual by definitions means both parties agreed. But is the author…

In the UK, there have been several examples of a woman getting drunk, having apparently consensual sex and then deciding the next day that she was raped. The male now has to prove that sex was consensual. The woman gets lifetime anonymity and the male has to undergo a public trial, almost always with commensurate loss of reputation and employment, even if later proven to be innocent.

There is a very recent example where a female barrister (senior lawyer) was involved in a public sex act with a male. She accepted a police caution for public lewdness the next day. She then discovered that the press were about to publish the story and very cynically, to stop her name from becoming public, she reported that in fact she had been raped. She was immediately given lifelong anonymity and the male was exposed to public trial.

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