It’s interesting, Cardinal Fang, that you are trying to pin JHS down, but you refused to directly answer my question (#156) about whether you approve or disapprove of the Occidental expulsion.
You also ignored Pizzagirl’s retort in #256.
I think only the last two have any place in a university disciplinary system, or any disciplinary system for that matter.
And of course the reciprocating oral sex case does not deserve expulsion, but it also doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously as a matter for official discipline.
No doesn’t mean no? If I tell you to stop, you don’t have to stop? Casey told Ryo to stop, and Ryo not only did not stop, Ryo restrained Casey and continued for “several minutes”, not ten seconds but several minutes, and you’re telling me that’s not a rape? Someone is allowed to force me to have intercourse after I have told them to stop, and you don’t think that’s rape???
That makes me sick. It literally makes me sick that someone denies that I have bodily autonomy. Does this odd rule apply to everyone, or just to people forcing other people to have intercourse after they’ve been told no?
I agree to have a tattoo. In the middle of the procedure, I say Stop. The tattoo artist, loving their artistic conception, ignores me, restrains me and continues tattooing for “several more minutes.” Fine?
I’m having a medical procedure which I have agreed to. In the middle, at a point where the doctor could safely stop, I say stop. The doctor, on a tight schedule and impatient with me, ignores me, restrains me and continues for several more minutes. Fine?
I think if you’re in s situation where you consented to sex and then decide five minutes into it that you don’t want to have sex any more, you probably shouldn’t have consented in the first place five minutes ago. Maybe this problem would be ameliorated if people only had sex within some kind of relationship, not hook-ups, and where “regret” is - I was really tired last night and should have said no from the get-go, not I changed my mind midway through and decided I didn’t want to sleep with the guy after all. Regret isn’t rape.
So Casey made a mistake. Or maybe, Casey didn’t think it would hurt, but it does hurt. Now Casey can be raped, because Casey made a mistake? That’s the punishment for making a mistake, if you’re a woman? Of course it’s not the punishment if you’re a man having unwanted intercourse with a woman, because she can’t force a man. But he can force her, so he’s allowed to force her.
I don’t see the slightest difference between the person getting the tattoo and wanting it to stop, and the person having intercourse and wanting it to stop. But then, I believe in my bodily autonomy.
JHS, you’re a guy, right, so you could never have receptive vaginal intercourse. But you could have receptive anal intercourse. So, let’s say, you’ve agreed to it, but now you decide you don’t like it. Maybe it hurts, or maybe you thought you’d like it but it turns out you don’t. Too bad for you, I guess. The other person gets to hold you down and continue. You have no bodily autonomy. Or maybe you thought you’d like some outre sexual practice, but now you don’t. Oops, sorry. You agreed to be tied up, and now you don’t get to be untied.
Jeez, even BDSM people have safe words.
“I’m glad you said that, JHS, because we need to be wary of judging a policy by the worst cases.”
As the lawyers always say, hard cases make bad law.
But at the end of the day, this problem does not EVER get fixed by legal or quasi-legal procedures. Due to the typical circumstances surrounding acquaintence campus rape, adjudication is going to do (at best) a lousy job. Most assaults can’t ever be proven. That’s just how it is – two people, in private, little to no evidence, one or both parties somewhat impaired, etc. etc. etc. Increasing convictions by watering down proof requirements is just trading one problem for another.
Sure you have to try to adjudicate this stuff as best you can. But it is still going to be close to a pointless exercise no matter what you do.
Prevention, prevention, prevention…
As a matter of interpersonal morality, courtesy, whatever, in the circumstances described Ryo should have stopped. I agree completely about that. It was wrong not to stop. It was not respectful not to stop, although I infer (maybe too imaginatively) from the case that Ryo honestly thought things would be fine and Casey would be happy, that Ryo was doing what Casey really wanted. And in a fair number of cases like those described, that might even be true. No means no is the only acceptable rule, but that doesn’t mean that in the course of human affairs no doesn’t sometimes mean yes. Casey is not blameless, either. If you don’t manage your ambivalence better, someone is going to get hurt.
As a matter of building and maintaining social systems, if you have a couple with a long-term, ongoing relationship, and there was consent to sex, and they were in the middle of having sex, I don’t think administrators should be pondering he-said/she-said testimony about exactly how long it was that Ryo continued after Casey asked Ryo to stop, or exactly what Casey said, or exactly what Casey meant, or exactly what the over-crafty case writer meant by “restrained.” (“Restrained” really put the rabbit in the hat. Of course it tempted me to put this in the category of a severely punishable offense, until I thought about how long and with what detail of focus I would have to observe them in bed in order to make a fact finding on this issue. That may be my real rule: If I have to watch them have sex in order to determine the facts, I’m not going to do it.)
The social fabric is endangered when one person feels entitled to force sex on another person without consent. I don’t think the social fabric is endangered when 18-year-olds in the middle of an ongoing romantic relationship waver back and forth across the line of consent and someone gets caught offsides. If it were a game, there would be a quick whistle, and a face off outside the blue line, or a free kick. It’s not a game; there’s no referee; they should work it out. I wouldn’t blame Casey for breaking up with Ryo (but I suspect that would not be the usual outcome). I don’t think Ryo is creating a hostile environment in which Casey and (more importantly, if the penalty is expulsion) others like Casey are not able to thrive. So, butt out, college administrators.
I have never felt obligated to complete an act that wasn’t pleasurable to me, and it might be five minutes in before I figured that out. My partners have never acted as though that wasn’t my right, though they might not be too pleased about it. Sometimes we did something else. They had the option to leave at any time. So did I. I can’t imagine how I would feel if someone had restrained me and kept going after I said to stop. Really really angry for starters.
How we judge all this is increasingly unclear to me, but I don’t want anyone telling anyone else it isn’t their right to stop in the middle of things. I know that’s wrong.
@alh Of course you would be mad in that situation, and justifiably so. And of course your partner would be miffed if you called a halt in medias res, but that’s too bad, you have a right to say stop. All of that is 100% true.
What I am saying is that it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that you should have a judicial or quasi judicial remedy, with serious external penalties at stake, if in the context of an ongoing relationship your partner is rude to you in that way. I don’t think you need the state or the university to protect you from that, and I don’t think other women need the state or the university to protect them from your partner. I also think the cost of trying to involve the state or the university is enormous – in actual time and trouble, in risk of error, in collateral damage, in intrusions into people’s intimate lives.
She said no, but she really wanted it. Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. I’m not surprised to hear it again, but I am surprised to hear it echoed from you, JHS.
I don’t care whether the rapist convinces himself that he knows better than the woman who has told him to stop. Lots of rapists think that. We need to stop giving them cover for their delusions.
This is not just a little misunderstanding. If he continues when she tells him to stop, he is raping her.
“Rude” seems to be a mild description of someone holding another person down and penetrating them against their will for minutes.
And let’s put the goalposts back where they were, please. Ryo and Casey did not have an ongoing sexual relationship. This was their first time having sex. They were dating, but Casey had been reluctant to agree to sex. Casey finally agreed.
I have never been as interested in the legalities of all this as the rest of you. The college tribunals I’m aware of, in real life, have been disasters, though usually for the accusers.
I am very interested in what sort of cultural norms we support and encourage and, in my opinion, we need to be very clear to our kids, male and female, that they have to stop if their partners say stop. I have difficulty with this idea that we judge behavior right or wrong on whether it is legal or illegal or can be proved legal or illegal.
When people understand it is wrong, maybe they won’t do it. There still seems to be some confusion that it’s wrong,
on this board, where we have been talking about this for several years now.
When we were in college and a male didn’t stop, whether with a female or another male, it wasn’t rape, because that wasn’t how we defined rape. I am pretty sure it is rape these days. However we name it, it is wrong. People have the right to change their minds.
I don’t understand why this is even a debate. To me, this Casey / Ryo example (never realized how many gender neutral names there were !) is pretty clear cut. Given what happened, if Ryo says it was rape, then it was rape. If I were hearing this case, then her views as to the seriousness of the incident would guide me when deciding what punishment to impose.
The principle that if a woman says no, even in flagrante delicto, then the man should stop pretty quickly has to govern. Period. This doesn’t seem hard to me at all. Even as a lust-filled college boy I understood this, and I know I certainly stopped when my partner was experiencing pain. Besides, just as a decent human being I had no wish to hurt someone else. You have to be a pretty sick individual to be able to take pleasure in what you’re doing while you’re pinning a girl down who is in pain and hollering at you to stop.
Look, in the real world I might hope that two people in a relationship where they are regularly having consensual sex could find a way to sort this out without involving a third party, sending someone to jail, or getting someone expelled. If there wasn’t any restraining going on and if Ryo only protested once then I could definitely see that. Maybe they would break up; maybe they would talk things out and Casey would be genuinely regretful for what he did.
But given what happened, if Ryo thinks there’s no excuse for he did and wants to press charges, then that is her right and, if you ask me, she has a winning case.
“I don’t understand why this is even a debate. To me, this Casey / Ryo example (never realized how many gender neutral names there were !) is pretty clear cut. Given what happened, if Ryo says it was rape, then it was rape. If I were hearing this case, then her views as to the seriousness of the incident would guide me when deciding what punishment to impose.”
Of course it is clear cut IF (big if) those facts are clearly established. But in practice, the Casey/Ryo facts are NEVER EVER established so clearly unless there is video tape. So in the real world, Al, you wouldn’t be imposing any punishment. Because it is rarely clear cut on the facts. That’s the whole point!!!
The Casey/Ryo facts will be actually be TOTALLY different than the Casey/Ryo hypothetical. The FACTS will be that the two kids tell different conflicting stories. Someone might be lying. Or someone might honestly experience and remember things differently. Or not remember at all. Or have been tired and drunk and ambiguous in their conduct.
So in light of the typical weak established facts, your choice as an adjudicator is (i) do nothing or (ii) punish someone without reasonable proof. Both options are lousy. The case is a TOTAL LOSER. Not because anyone disagrees about the relevant standard of consent. But because it is going to be completely lacking in proof.
Prevention prevention prevention. Adjudication is a necessary, but mostly pointless, effort.
The Yale document is making the assumption that the facts are as described. Partly, I’m sure, it’s meant to establish norms. As alh says, people need to understand that not stopping when your partner says stop is seriously wrong, and if a student is proved to have done that, they will be expelled.
The Yale document doesn’t talk about proof. It talks about what happens after the facts have been established to their satisfaction. Maybe the tribunal can’t prove the accusation. Then they can’t impose the sanction. But maybe Ryo, not having paid attention to what Yale says is forbidden, admits to have continued for minutes when Casey said to stop. Or maybe Casey makes the accusation, and then Ryo’s five best friends say that Ryo was complaining to them that Casey was a whiner and a crybaby for getting mad when Ryo didn’t stop after being told to stop. Or maybe there are texts where Ryo apologizes for continuing for minutes after being told to stop. Proof exists, sometimes.
I agree with a lot of what you’ve written. I particularly agree with the point you make about Prevention being something we should put a lot more emphasis on. But that wasn’t what was being debated. It seems to me that a lot of posters were arguing - assuming that the fact are true and stipulated to by all - that this case either shouldn’t be adjudicated or no punishment should be imposed. I disagree completely. As a parent with daughters, I most definitely think that firmly establishing the principle of the matter is very important.
I will also tell you that, based on my experience, you might be shocked at how often many students make “admissions against interest”. I was constantly surprised at how honest the students seemed to be. Very different from the workplace.
@“Cardinal Fang” It depends whether you are talking about law or actual people. In law, no means no is the only remotely acceptable rule, because there’s no way for an external factfinder to judge reliably when no may mean maybe. In life, in the actual lives of actual, flawed people, and especially in the actual lives of the actual, flawed, confused, proto-adults who fill college dormitories, people sometimes say what they don’t exactly mean. Not always, but nowhere near never. I am not going to build a legal system around that, but you are a baldfaced liar if you deny it happens.
Hanna admitted some pages ago that in her marriage no sometimes meant ask me again in a few minutes. That’s been true in my marriage, too, in both directions. And It’s a good thing there are no administrative remedies for unwanted birthday presents, because in my marriage I do not follow the “no means no” rule when it comes to birthday presents.
In the administrative hearing I chair, I am never going to accept “Her lips said no no, but there was yes yes in her eyes” as a defense to a rape charge. When you put a relationship in the administrative hearing room, and you apply the only acceptable legal rule, you have to accept that on occasion you are going to convict someone who if all the truth could ever be known did not deserve it. The incidence of that is fairly low, though, because if there really was yes yes in her eyes, the case should never produce a complaint, much less make it to an administrative hearing. (Unless, maybe, her mother read her diary some months later and raised holy hell.)
But I want to be really judicious with the cases I let into my administrative hearing, too. So I am not going to referee sex once the clothes are off and the get is on, at least if it doesn’t involve physical violence with lasting physical harm.n The partner who doesn’t stop fast enough when the other partner has a change of heart in the middle of things may be a lousy, rude partner, but not necessarily the kind of menace to society who needs to be expelled. And the cost of engaging in the factfinding to determine the facts – including allowing 18-year-olds to compromise themselves with no understanding of the consequences – exceed the potential benefits of culling those particular offenders.
Again, I agree completely with all of you that Ryo was wrong. But I don’t think it follows that if this is the nature of a claim it’s appropriate for administrative intervention. It’s the college’s job to protect students from predation, not to enforce mid-sex etiquette, even if the principle of bodily integrity is important. As it is.
"The principle that if a woman says no, even in flagrante delicto, then the man should stop pretty quickly has to govern. Period. This doesn’t seem hard to me at all. "
Well of course, a no means no. However, a lot of these cases seem to be “I never actually said no - I froze and lay there and said/did nothing”? Or “I felt I couldn’t say no / no more because I was afraid I would hurt his feelings”? How do you adjudicate when the woman indeed didn’t explicitly say no, stop, attempt to push him off?
Deleted - didn’t read the post right.
It surprises me that people are even “pro” having a third party adjudicate relationships. Not the case of a person accusing someone else of a crime…if that were true accusers should go to the police and colleges should support that student emotionally to their full extent. But to think someone can simply go to a 3rd party and that third party has the ability to pass judgement on a situation with little to no evidence and sometimes evidence that the third party seems to ignore is beyond my utter comprehension. I gotta be with JHS on this one frankly and I think we have a responsibility to educate our male offspring what to do if they are in any situation where the other party is aggrieved and decides to call in a third party adjudicator for whatever reason. We’re not talking about mediation, we’re not talking about education, we’re not talking about therapy…we are talking about a third party administrating sex lives of young adults with the ability to pass judgements and punishments with lasting consequences like suspensions and expulsions seemingly in any way they desire.
Don’t even get me started on the Yale scenarios…oh my goodness. Once you remove clothing and start a sexual relationship with someone it’s on you. And if the law gets broken there is a path to redemption. I don’t recall one single scenario in those examples where the solution was therapy or mediation for both. And who gets to judge if Ryo’s “couple minutes” was actually a “couple seconds” maybe it felt like minutes to the person who wishes mightily they weren’t in that situation. How does that make the college campus a hostile environment for everyone else? There might be hostility between those two if they don’t work it out but since when in life is it a university’s job to remove everything distasteful or unpleasant for a single student while thousands of other students navigate their way through their four years unimpeded by Ryo and Casey’s personal issues? Worse yet how diminishing this all is for students that are the victims of sexual assault or rape. They get lumped in with the Caseys of the world who didn’t think Ryos stopped fast enough to suit the Caseys. And Ryo gets expelled. Wow just wow.