What do you all think of the fact that Jackie of the UVA rape hoax is till afforded anonymity in many places? I think her name should be publicized and she should be prosecuted. Just as I think rapists should have their names published and their crimes prosecuted, so should false accusers. Every single time.
@zoosermom A judge has summoned “jackie” this week. Already in the works.
You have mentioned ideology more than once. Stop projecting.
As parents and as a society we teach our sons acceptable male behavior. We are already teaching our males so we probably think there is some value in teaching.
Many behaviors are taught. The behaviors don’t just happen.
If we teach our males and they learn about themselves or others, that already is a huge value.
I don’t know what you are afraid of. People spend their lives trying to understand themselves and others. As a society, we teach which behaviors are acceptable and which aren’t.
As a society we teach socialization. We start pretty early with our kids.
That article–if you actually read to the end-- describes a process of allowing guys to think about what “masculinity” means without being in danger of being mocked for not being tough enough or whatever. I think it sounds great.
My denomination uses this curriculum, which similarly encourages people to think about gender and sexuality and human relations in a holistic manner:
I like to think that a young man who has experienced it would be inoculated against the harmful version of masculinity that leads to the “scoring” mentality and thus to assaults and rapes.
Thanks for reading the article to the end. 
I tell him to keep his pants on until he finds the right woman if he doesn’t want to be a dad too early. I tell him not to be alone with women he doesn’t know well. Why take that risk?
So far, so good.
I don’t know if this article was posted previously, but I think it is appropriate to the thread:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/fashion/sexual-consent-assault-college-campuses.html?_r=0
"But in real life — and, ever more frequently, on college campuses — what constitutes consent is wildly more complicated. Sometimes one person initiates; other times it’s both; still other times it’s hard to tell. Sometimes one party wants to engage in part of the sex act but not all of it; other times a person may consent to doing one thing at one moment, only to withdraw that consent as the thing actually begins to happen.
In some cases one party reads a signal — a physical cue, a look, a text message, something else — to mean one thing, while the other intended it to mean something entirely different…
And there is a whole new vocabulary to memorize, with terms like “enthusiastic consent,” “implied consent,” “spectrum of consent,” “reluctant permission,” “coercion” and “unintentional rape.” Even “yes means yes,” the slogan of the anti-rape movement is sort of confusing.
“It should be ‘Only yes means yes,’” said Dr. Brod, the sociologist. (And if you still can’t tell, then ask.)
The questions from students are seemingly endless: Can consent only be given verbally, or can it be indicated by body language (and if so, how can I be sure it “counts”)? What’s the difference between “affirmative,” “enthusiastic” and “effective consent,” and why do all of these terms vary by campus (and sometimes even within them)? How does a person gauge or indicate interest, or demonstrate consent, without having to awkwardly ask, “Is this O.K.?” a thousand times over again (or is this simply the new norm)?
Even in the best situations, it can take some getting used to.
Seated with a group of students in the women’s center after Mr. Kalin’s talk, Caroline Howell, a sophomore at Trinity, described a hookup scenario with a guy who — every step of the way — asked for her permission.
“As much as I was like, ‘This is awesome,’ I was like: ‘This is weird. This is awkward,’” she said. “And then I was like, ‘Wait, we went through that whole thing and I didn’t ask a single question — shouldn’t I be asking too?’”
My son is about to start a program similar to what consolation posted. I’m interested to see what he gains from it.
I totally understand that this thread is about what one tells one’s sons about consent. Given that this is the CC Parents Forum, I totally understand that people posting here do not need to advise their sons against raping women. Probably the sons of CC posters are likely to avoid the overwhelming majority of slightly gray areas, too.
However, I think it is very important to tell sons about the environment that has led to the policies that are prevalent on many campuses. That is, there are rather shocking and deplorable numbers of forcible rapes and incapacitated rapes occurring on most campuses. Campus policies start from that, and then the administrators carry their admonitions and restrictions as far as prevailing conditions and their own beliefs permit.
I think this is the answer to the question posed by Ohiodad51 in # 692. If you don’t tell your sons where the campus policies came from, then you haven’t answered the big question, “Why?” with regard to the campus policies.
As mentioned many times, I don’t think that the preponderance of the evidence standard of proof is the right one on campus, though it is being strongly encouraged by the Department of Education. But that gets into discussion about the right campus policies–and you cannot understand why there is any campus policy without the recognition that rapes are occurring on campuses (and not just misunderstandings, nor just unwanted touching).
On a peripheral issue related to what one might tell one’s sons: Please consider the Yale DKE episode of a few years ago, starting with the pledges going to the area where freshmen (women and men live) and chanting, “No means yes, . . .” [and it got worse]. All of these young men were highly recommended enough to get into Yale. They weren’t “serious” about the idea they were chanting, of course. But they also weren’t thinking about the negative effect of their chanting on women in the Yale residences. I don’t think their chant was funny. Some did.
“What do you all think of the fact that Jackie of the UVA rape hoax is till afforded anonymity in many places?”
I get where you’re coming from, but it’s fine with me that she stays anonymous. To me, she’s a classic example of an accuser where “liar” isn’t the right model. I don’t doubt that something really awful happened to her at some frat at UVA, just not in the time and place she claimed.
This is not to trivialize the injury she did to real people. If they want to sue her, they can. But I’m not sure shaming her publicly does real accusers/victims any good.
As to the why, in our specific case, my son has two older sisters and has heard every warning and horror story that I’ve had for them over the last decade! Now it’s his turn. As I said upthread, my newest thing is getting drunk and freezing to death, but being assaulted in a hazing situation, as well as having someone falsely accuse him of something are right there on my list, too. Not to mention chewing carefully in case there is no one trained in Heimlich or CPR certified in the campus dining hall.
Just a thought experiment. Can any of you who are defending the campus tribunals articulate a defense of the system without reference to rape or physical assault?
Hanna, I always respect and appreciate your posts, so I would genuinely appreciate knowing why you think something happened to Jackie that night if you might be willing to share.
It’s been my suspicion that she wanted attention and didn’t think through any of this. Dumb, but not as intentionally malicious as Emma Sulkowicz.
Ohiodad51, re the thought experiment you suggested in #711: I do not think that the campus “tribunals” would have come into existence if it were not for the cases of forcible rape and incapacitated rape where the victim is unconscious. I view the other cases as accretions. Some other cases are still problematic, without sinking to the level of rape. I think Hanna is right when she says that people on campus are trying to solve a problem that they don’t know how to solve–I don’t think anyone knows how to solve it, actually.
My university does have a campus judicial system that deals with some cases of student misconduct, without involving the police–people shooting off fire extinguishers in the residence halls, for example.
@QuantMech, that is my point. It appears that supporters of the current system appear to be primarily interested in punishing behavior that is already criminal, and has been for hundreds of years. It seems to me one can be against rape and still see many
Problems with the current tribunal system. I would like to see someone defend it on its own terms. Otherwise it sounds a whole lot like “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette”.
@Ohiodad51 I think the main defense of the tribunal system is that historically the police departments handling of rape and sexual assault was so rough, so bad, so insensitive that it served to further crush the soul of those who’d already been deeply hurt. I believe the intent was good - to improve justice and care for the victim. But it got tied up in a political movement and so it falls into “if a little is good, more is still better” principle. And here we are with something as absurd as the Occidental expulsion case.
“I would genuinely appreciate knowing why you think something happened to Jackie”
Occam’s Razor, really. I think trauma is the simplest explanation for her actions. She did tell her friends in real time that something bad happened to her. The Phi Psi house is really visible, with a perfect “southern frat” look, and could easily take a place somebody’s memory.
She could be some kind of psychopath, but in that case, it’s strange to me that she went back and forth with Rolling Stone, refusing to cooperate close to the time of publication, etc. If this was a planned-out attention grab, she did it very badly. They considered pulling the story because of her waffling. She also gave all kinds of falsifiable details that easily took the story apart. That makes sense if her story grew out of a mess of traumatic memories and associations. It makes less sense in a deliberate plot.
Of course, we will never know for sure, and it doesn’t excuse the false accusation. But that’s my theory.
I think Occam’s Razor leads me to the conclusion she lied about everything. Almost nothing in her story checks out. She completely fabricated her date using the name and pictures of a high school acquaintance.
I don’t exactly understand your question in #711, Ohiodad51. It seems to me that cases of rape and physical assault are the actual reason for the existence of college judicial systems, with regard to the consent issue.
There are other reasons for the existence of college judicial systems; for example, if a student discharges a fire extinguisher in a residence hall (this happens), and is not acting maliciously, but is not really thinking of the consequences. An intermediate case involves students dropping water balloons from dorm windows. This typically goes to a university judiciary, rather than to the police. Students who have not previously lived in buildings with many stories often do not really understand the acceleration due to gravity, and as a result, they do not anticipate the physical consequences of their actions.
With regard to cases of non-consent, there are several instances of which I am aware where the victim reported a forcible rape to the police promptly, and handled everything correctly, but the prosecutor declined to bring charges, presumably because the standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” could not be met. I don’t think that preponderance of the evidence is a high enough standard for a university judiciary. I don’t know exactly what constitutes “clear and convincing evidence,” but I could imagine a situation where that standard is met, while proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not exist. Doing nothing seems to be to be wrong in such a case–but that is most likely outcome if the case is left to the police and prosecutors.
From what I have read, a very small number of men account for a relatively large number of forcible rapes on campus. Yet there may not be sufficient evidence to meet the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If there were clear and convincing evidence of a pattern, I would have no problem saying that the attacker should not continue to be enrolled at my university.
Some other reported instances of decisions by college judiciary systems strike me as over-reach.
On a related subject, what should I be telling my son and daughters to do if they are a victim of a sexual assault? I am hoping that some of the attorneys can share what they tell their kids. If your son or daughter called home and had been assaulted, what would you tell them to do, and what would you do?
We all hope it never happens to our kid, but it is always good to have a plan in advance. In real time, I suspect I would not be thinking too clearly, and I suspect that the typical initial dad thought of show up at the frat with a shotgun is probably ill advised. lol