So basically dstark and his friends created a workplace where taking advantage of women was career suicide, at least when colleagues were made aware of the behavior.
Fraternities and sports teams have the same option. They can make this behavior unacceptable. If there is enough negative social pressure, culture changes.
Funny, I was just thinking about this. Suppose we actually have a videotape, so there isn’t a dispute as to what actually happened. In fact, suppose this is the videotape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVvQt6HwQeQ
Those of you who have 4 minutes of your lives to waste may want to watch it - it’s a PG-13 scene from Ghost, a movie starring Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. I’m imagining all this affirmative consent stuff playing out in a rape trial in California, with famous feminist attorney GA doing the examination of Patrick Swayze:
To think you can write a rule-book or dogmatically adhere to a doctrine and ignore the idiosyncratic circumstances in these cases seems crazy to me.
Antioch College tried this way back in the 1990s–they implemented a version of Yes means Yes where you had to obtain permission at every step of the way. May I kiss you? May I touch your breast? etc. They even inspired an SNL sketch (you can see it here if you like):
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/campus-rape-debate-feels-like-groundhog-day.html
Here’s more on the history from this article about the college’s demise in 2007:
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-daum30jun30-column.html
"In 1993, it suddenly became national news that Antioch required anyone engaging in sexual activity on campus to ask for and grant permission throughout every step of the encounter. Conceived by a group called Womyn of Antioch, the policy stipulated that consent could not be granted through body movements, nonverbal responses or silence. Furthermore, it stated that “consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity” and that “each new level of sexual activity requires consent.” Translation: dorm room make-out sessions were being punctuated by steamy questions like, “May I kiss you now?”, “May I remove your (Che Guevara) T-shirt now?” and "May I " (you get the idea).
Admittedly, this was the early '90s, a time when many liberal arts campuses were so awash in the hysteria of political correctness that it seemed entirely possible a lamppost could commit date rape. But the attention to the Antioch policy, which got as far as a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, not only came to symbolize the infantilizing dogma of the new left, it turned an already obscure college into a laughingstock."
Now they seem ahead of the times! Do note, however, that their policy did say that consent could NOT be granted through body movements (nonverbal cues)—it had to be verbally asked and verbally answered—which may be why it was ridiculed as taking all the “spontaneity” out of a sexual encounter. Also according to Wikipedia “no rights were given to the accused, and it called for immediate expulsion of the accused with no formal process.[82] The policy, both as it then stood and as revised, uniquely viewed any sexual offense as not simply a violation of the victim’s rights, but as an offense against the entire campus community. It was revised to focus more on education and less on punishment and clarified in a series of community meetings during the 1991–92 academic year.”
This article has a quote explaining the intent of the policy:
"The Saturday Night Live put-on made it almost impossible to have a serious discussion in the media about the Antioch rules, and before long even the New York Times was talking about the difficulty of “legislating kisses.” Lost in the national controversy was the distinction that Karen Hall, the director of Antioch’s sexual offense prevention program, made when she observed, “We are not trying to reduce the romance, passion, or spontaneity of sex; we are trying to reduce the spontaneity of rape.”
Isn’t the media one of our problems?
Hunt, I don’t get what you’re saying… I won’t even bother to defend, at this point. But there have been many statements made on this thread that frustrate, that go to examples not relevant to colleges, that fly left field when confusion could be reduced by sticking to what we do know.
What we know is that colleges should not be holding fake felony trials because it’s harder to get convictions in real courts of law. I don’t get why this is even a hard concept, really.
Hunt, You are right.
I agree with your post #4659.
We just have to listen to the victims to know you are right. 
What I’m saying is that it does not advance the discussion to restate somebody else’s position in extreme terms that don’t accurately reflect what that person said. I feel that we’ve seen quite a bit of that in this discussion (although perhaps not as much as in similar discussions in the past, which is a good thing).
I don’t want to point to any particular person, but if somebody says that they don’t think colleges are well equipped to handle sexual assault cases, that doesn’t mean they are advocating the elimination of all disciplinary procedures by colleges. I think we are all tempted to do this–“Aren’t you really saying that…?” I’m just suggesting that folks stop and think about it–thus (again, for example) if somebody says they don’t think colleges are well-equipped to handle sexual assault cases, it’s fair to ask that person what scope he thinks college disciplinary proceedings can reasonably have.
Margaret Nussbaum “is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, a chair that includes appointments in the philosophy department and the law school.” Wikipedia
https://genderbudgeting.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2012/12/nussbaum_women_capabilityapproach2000.pdf
Is this a statement with which all here can agree? That there should be this right to bodily integrity?
Yes, it works only because the system used to choose the judges and arbiters (jurors) is a fair one and people trust it.
The jurors are as close to disinterested parties as possible and are not politically vested in the outcome. Not so with a tribunal made up of school employees and students; they are vested in the outcome and thus the result is automatically biased in some way.
More specifically though, If people do not trust a system, lowering the standards for that system is just the opposite of one should do to garner trust.
And one of the etc.'s, which I do think is the next biggest shoe to drop, is the suspect tribunal makeup itself. The makeup of the tribunals, and the people making these guilty and non-guilty decisions are going to be challenged directly.
In civil or criminal court, the defense is part of choosing the juries and potential jurors with known or perceived prejudices are challenged, and the result is a jury that both the plaintiff and defense agree to.
However, tribunals have people on them who also have biases and other things in their history, which would disqualify them from the being on the tribunal, and a real jury no less, if found out and properly challenged. But, there no process (as far as I can surmise) to arrive at an agreed to tribunal makeup, as it seems like a take what you are given scenario.
Tribunals will soon have a tough time finding people when the serious lawyers start investigating tribunal members personally and find things about them that either show direct bias or a past situation, which should disqualify them from serving on such a proceeding. And things will hit the fan when these details are published for the world to see. This will make the job way less inviting than it already is.
“You stated, “A reasonable woman in her right mind, even if drunk, does not take off all of her clothes and get into bed with a man…if she is not interested.” I’m just allowing for cases when she doesn’t feel she has any other option- intimidated or forced are obvious.”
Intimidated and forced are two different things. And there is a difference between being intimidated because there is a threat of force (he’ll grab me and force me if I don’t take off my clothes and get into bed), and being intimidated with something that doesn’t mean physical harm (he won’t like me anymore if I don’t take off my clothes and get into bed).
We obviously still have some cultural problems–I mean, how many times have you ever heard of a man being pressured into sex by a woman? I’m sure it happens, but not that often.
This post is going to be a very serious digression in response to Hunt’s recent posts. Please feel free to read right over it.
…
Hunt: More than once, in different threads, you have pointed out I am reading words that aren’t there. Sometimes I think you are absolutely correct. Sometimes I think it is a bit more complicated. I am reading each post and analyzing it as a piece of text. My analysis may, of course, be incorrect. That may be the case more often than not. I hope that isn’t so.
http://www.panix.com/~squigle/dcp/analysis.html
I do think I haven’t always been as kind as I should have here, and for that I do apologize. I hope this post isn’t unkind to you.
Well, I think what I’m objecting to is a form of the reduction ad absurdum argument, in which one attempts to refute an opposing argument by suggesting that it leads to an absurd result. For example, above I argued that in cases with a lot of proof problems and potential biases among fact-finders, the preponderance standard is no better than a coin flip. Somebody could retort that I am saying that all civil litigations should now be decided by flipping coins. Of course, that’s not what I’m saying. Somebody could fairly ask me whether I had the same concerns about use of the same standard in civil cases, and I would have a response.
And alh, are you saying that you have the ability to analyze what a post on a message board is “really” saying, as opposed to what it is expressly saying? This is also a problem I have in many controversial discussions–the apparent belief that persons who disagree with oneself actually have much more extreme views than they are expressing.
No, I’m claiming no such ability. But I don’t believe any of us are reading these posts in a vacuum. We are reading them sometimes knowing something of the poster’s posting history, in the context of an ongoing discussion, in a cultural context. And we are sure coming at this from different cultural contexts. I am not sure it is even possible to just read the words in the post without, at least unconsciously, bringing some outside prejudices to bear.
I don’t think it is surprising that several readers may read something different in the same post.
adding: The reason I’m still on this thread is because I am learning a lot and thinking about ideas that never entered my head before.
Men are almost never physically afraid of a woman, and for obvious reasons it’s much harder for them to be raped. Big difference. Until modern times, the consequences to women of unwanted sex were much higher - pregnancy, disease, loss of social status. It’s still the case too. All this is hard wired into our biology and culture. I don’t worry about my sons being assaulted by a woman at all. Bluntly, mostly no one really cares unless the man is very young or vulnerable in some way.
Women don’t need to pressure a man into sex or are more subtle. In school, a few drunk women did try to do something when I didn’t want to. I was usually able to dissuade them, though one time I had to be quite firm about it with a friend. Our friendship ended the next day because she was either ashamed of what she did or the fact that I rejected her. Another time it involved 15 minutes of continuous and very insulting verbal abuse hurled my way. Frankly, she probably had a screw loose. It never occurred to me submit or to file a complaint. I’m sure no one would have taken it seriously anyway and I was twice her size. That’s not to say women can’t mistreat a man sexually - quite a few of my divorced male friends’ biggest concern is a woman lying about birth control for the obvious reason.
alh - even when you’ve disagreed with my opinions I’ve never felt you were disrespectful, just passionate about an important injustice. Hope you feel the same about my posts. I know I’d change some of them if I could. Made me a little sad that you changed your hugging. Full speed ahead arguing for what you believe in I say, as long as we all stay within the guard rails.
"Men are almost never physically afraid of a woman, and for obvious reasons it’s much harder for them to be raped. Big difference. "
This is interesting, because I wonder if our internal reactions would change if we were talking about an unprepossessing, 5’4," 120 slightly built man versus a 5’10," 160 pound, finely tuned and muscular female. Or what about a man who had a physical disability. I suspect in my head I do always assume a given man could overpower a given female, without knowing any more detail. That’s an interesting assumption.
The difference is like an entire universe.
A basic investigation is just that basic; an adjudication is essentially a trial that requires a million other pieces, and not within our purview at all.
Monetarily, an investigation would be around $5K and the adjudication $250K easy, given the lost productivity based on number of employees involved.
Again, I said we do not adjudicate sexual assault.
An investigation and adjudication are not even remotely close to the same, and your conflating the two lead to an erroneous conclusion that we would not investigate sexual assault. We would investigate, as needed, just not directed by us - see below. But that would not be an in-house investigation.
Actually, in the case of an alleged crime, that is a resounding “No.”
As the police will tell you, or us in this case, do not do anything to foul, impede, taint, or bias anyone or anything involved in the criminal case. The only thing that we should do is not destroy any pertinent data or potential evidence.
Thus running some parallel, shadow internal investigation is a no-no, as we may inadvertently do something that becomes obstruction of justice, or worse, such as give someone information he or she would not otherwise know or have. In fact, the procedure would be that all parities stop talking to each other about the issue, answer all police questions, and hand over the appropriate materials, pursuant to receiving proper warrants etc., and follow directions.
It is our policy to cooperate with all police, read as criminal, matters, but that is not our investigation to lead, direct, or carry out.
The sexual assault example above that I am talking about is a felony and is quite different than the harrassing guy or girl who is going around touching others on their shoulder or waists in a provocative way or the guy who forced a kiss at the water fountain. Not even close to the same.
I can easily tell you what we do in such a case of sexual assault allegation re rape. We would give both parties a leave of absence with pay for up to 3 months to get things sorted out. However, one thing that would be clear is that we would favor no one side and would only take further decisions based on the police investigation findings.
Is this written policy?
Do employees know the above?
OK, but the vacuum has to be filled in with something.
And what if that something is an erroneous interpretation of a poster’s view from another thread. Then you are destined to go down the road of being wrong all the time about said poster, if you use that as your base line. Just because you repeat something does not mean you understood it the first time, recall correctly, or are using it in the proper context at all.
Additionally, not all previous positions are translatable to other threads because the issues and contexts may be vastly different. To think that a poster cannot think one thing on one thread and see such a difference in another issue and thus then take the opposite view, as compared to the other thread, is really not giving thinking people much credit. By muddying the waters with previous issues, positions, and viewpoints that may not even be relevant to the current discussion, I do think it is a disservice and altering to what the person wrote exactly.
Intellectually, I do not even understand how that even works as useful since I assume the person is telling me exactly what they want to say and construct right now, not what they think they should say based on some previous discussion.
PG: We probably all have our own reactions. For me - a physical or mental disability, the man being < 16 years old, would change things. In your example, even if I thought the woman might be a bit stronger, I’d have a hard time believing she’d actually be able to overpower him enough to control him without a weapon. It would have to be a much more extreme example for me to think otherwise. Even then I’d want to ask the types of questions that most people would take offensive to if the genders were reversed.
If it was a female teacher / male student or female boss / male subordinate then I could maybe see him submitting to non-physical threats. As a sign of how the broader culture feels - wasn’t there a (bad) movie a few years ago in which a female boss played by Jennifer Anniston sexually harassed her male employee, and even gassed him and then had sex with his unconscious body? Movie audiences considered it something to laugh about. I can’t imagine them feeling the same way if the sexes were reversed.
Anyway, I don’t believe this is anything but a very rare problem. To me, it’s more just a way to test if we really think policies/ the law should be gender neutral or not.