
America’s New Sex Bureaucracy - hooboy
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/291105/americas-new-sex-bureaucracy
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>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
daughters make for a very tough jury in rape cases. A lot of the opposition to
these title ix courts has come from mothers worried about their sons being
falsely accused.

With racism, there is a pretty good chance that in some areas, a person of one
race has virtually no one of another race that they genuinely love. This
allows racial discrimination to last longer, and has the danger that when base
emotions get appealed to by demagogues, there is less resistance.

~~~
tzs
How would bias toward gay people fit in with that? A lot of people don't know
(or at least aren't aware that they know) anyone gay, but bias toward gay
people has dramatically fallen over the last couple of decades.

There was a recent episode of "Hidden Brain" on NPR that talked about this
[1].

This part is particularly interesting:

> In a thought experiment, Mahzarin and her colleagues have extended the trend
> lines of the data to see how long it would take for bias to be entirely
> eliminated. To be clear, this isn't a prediction about what is going to
> happen. It just shows you the speed at which different biases are changing.

What they found is that this would have anti-gay bias all but eliminated in 9
more years. By contrast, it's about 60 more years for anti-black biases to be
eliminated, 140 years for skin tone biases against darker skin to go away.
Biases against the elderly and the disabled and the overweight do not go away
within the next 150 years.

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.

(To reiterate, the timeframes aren't predictions of what will happen. They are
just comparisons of the rates that those biases are changing right now).

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-
ho...](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-how-gay-
rights-activists-changed-the-minds-of-their-opponents)

~~~
blotter_paper
>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 of animals has to decide who gets a split of food, and some
of them have a dramtically shorter life expectancy, I could imagine there
being a biological tendency to care about the young over the old. A similar
calculation might be made about the disabled, since a wounded companion is
less helpful than an able-bodied one. Weight, I have a number of ideas about.
There's a disease correlation, of course. We also might ostracize overweight
people because overweight people were more likely to be hoarding food in our
deep past, and sharing with those who don't share back is a bad strategy. Even
if the specifics of my armchair-anthropology are utter horseshit, I could see
factors similar to these out-weighing the familiarity bias without discounting
it.

~~~
everdev
The bias against overweight people is probably less about them hoarding and
more about them being unhealthy.

We probably have a bias against unhealthy people because they'd drain the time
and resources of a tribe. And they'd be less likely to help with physical
activities like hunting, gathering and war.

Obesity is a very new phenomenon but not wanting to include or associate with
people who seem sick or unhealthy is probably pretty old.

~~~
Hitton
Bias against overweight people isn't about them being unhealthy, plenty of
other unhealthy people have public sympathies, the problem is they are mostly
"voluntarily" unhealthy - they want accommodations for conditions caused by
their unhealthy habit. It's similar to drug addicts' plight in both the cause
and reaction.

------
jancsika
How in the world is the conversation not about the lack of ethics of the
teachers and faculty who agree to serve as the amateur judges/questioners in
these tribunals?

 _Hello, I spent a decade of my life learning just how difficult it is to
become an expert in my very narrow field. In fact I spend most of my time
helping undergrads refine their rank speculation into tractable problems to
potentially guide them to a deeper understanding of even a tiny slice of my
narrow specialty.

What's that? You'd like me to serve on a jury for the school? No not on a
jury, but instead to serve as a kind of combination panel judge and amateur
lawyer? For what may be criminal allegations against a student? And you say
there's no actual trained judicial expert to lead and constrain the process,
but instead a handbook that will teach me in about an hour how to question a
witness?

Sorry, it's my minimal sense of civic and academic integrity calling. I really
have to take this..._

~~~
duxup
At Baylor a former investigator described believing that because it was a
religious school they expected there wouldn't be much for them to do.

I have to wonder how much life experience someone has who thinks that...

At a large public institution near me they had some lawyers review their
processes.

The resulting suggestions were pretty shocking. Things like, educating the
accused as to what the process even was. Notifying the accused that there was
an appeal (they apparently didn't do that all the time). Allowing all parties
legal representation. And more detailed recording of testimony, mostly due to
cases that involved concerns from accused students that their testimony that
was recorded was inaccurate and had only been recorded by hand written notes
taken by another student. In some cases their efforts to correct what they
said seemed to be interpreted as lying... because it conflicted with the
original notes (but not any factual conflict).

It is mind boggling that any of the suggestions were needed.

In the meantime the folks running the department investigating the reports are
also tasked with writing the rules, investigating, judging....and on their own
time advocating for various policies surrounding sexual assault.

------
oijqoiwejoiqwj
Unfortunately, I do not believe these ridiculous university tribunals will
come to an end anytime soon. In fact, I think the problem will get much, much
worse before it gets better. They are a symptom of a much larger problem.

Without distracting with any specific cases, it's very clear that the modern
world is shifting away from the presumption of innocence. This, combined with
an internet that remembers forever and a total disregard for free speech, will
have predictably disastrous results. The set of punishable behavior is growing
wider every day, whilst the standards of evidence are becoming shallower and
shallower.

It's infuriating that every major US news site is being flooded with stories
about increasing loneliness, plummetting sexual activity, increasing suicides,
etc., but seem more than happy to contribute to the new character
assassination of the day. Has it clicked for anyone yet that maybe today's
youth are becoming shut-in's because they have a brain, and they know one
mistake can ruin their entire life?

The commonly repeated reasons for this status-quo are pitiful.

Journalists aren't part of the judicial system, so it's alright if they pick a
side without physical evidence --- as if that somehow makes their claims more
likely to be true. Does not caring about science make a person's scientific
claims more valid? Why even care about the news if the news doesn't care about
the facts?

The 1st amendment applies only to the government, not private institutions ---
so what? Is having a closed mind now a desirable personality trait? I'd hope
that private individuals are working to preserve free speech as well, even if
they aren't forced to do so. Besides that, many of the private institutions
that this argument is applied to are in fact receiving special government
funding / support (universities are a prime example, large payment processors
are another). Can the government freely disregard your constitutional rights
as long as it uses a private-sector middle-man?

/rant

~~~
logicprog
This is amazing, thank you for posting this! I've been thinking along these
exact lines for a very long time (especially since I just started at a
university), but didn't want to speak up here because I was sure I'd get a
chorus of accusations of sexism. But since you put this here, I thought I'd
just give you a little encouragement.

------
mikedilger
This is a very difficult issue. Most sexual assaults happen in private, so
there is rarely any evidence a victim can use to convict the perpetrator. Most
accusations are real, but some are questionable as to whether a crime was
committed, and some accusations are false. Given there is almost never any
evidence, victims are at a severe disadvantage in the innocent until proven
guilty paradigm. I can understand why some people want to flip the tables and
"believe all women" but it's also clear that such a flipped situation has it's
own severe problems, and that IMHO there is no good solution. Knowing this I
have more empathy for everybody's view on this topic, rather than being in one
camp and demonizing the other.

~~~
dragonsngoblins
> Most accusations are real

See, I want to believe that, but I'm not sure there is a way to know whether
or not that is actually true. In much the same way that there is rarely
evidence of guilt when an accusation is true there isn't likely to be evidence
when an accusation is false. I keep seeing people say some variant of "X% of
rape accusations are false" but none of the sources I have ever seen have had
a particularly accurate way of gathering data... because one doesn't exist.
The proportion of unproven accusations that happen to be false is unknowable
in practical terms, and I get frustrated by people variously flat out stating
it is high/low.

~~~
lidHanteyk
You may borrow priors that are personal but calibrated based on reading
statistics: accusations are real at a 3/4 rate, about 1/3 of people have been
sexually assaulted ever, and in 9/10 of sexual assaults it is not the
assaulter's first time.

I personally would not say that 3/4 is "most", but I don't think any kind of
blanket statement can occur below 7/8, and usually I prefer to think in nines
or other logarithmic scales very close to certainty or uncertainty.

We need to have evidence before we can make certain reasoned decisions.
Without evidence, we need to listen, consider, and keep ourselves open to
possibilities.

~~~
abvdasker
Do you have sources for those numbers?

~~~
lidHanteyk
Thanks to Aumann's Agreement, I cannot convince you that the priors are well-
calibrated priors without infinite regress. Do you have sources for other
numbers that you would prefer be used instead?

~~~
abvdasker
I'm gonna take that as a no.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Sure. Take a step back and look at this with some perspective:

* Neither of us really know what's going on

* Both of us have done private research

* We came up with some numbers

* I shared my numbers, you didn't share yours

Your complaint is that I'm not delegating the numbers to some authority. My
complaint is that, regardless of which authority you choose, you're still
choosing an authority.

I'm not saying that I'm right; in fact, part of the point of choosing priors
is to be wrong. However, when we publicize the process of selecting priors, we
of course embarrass each other: If the priors were already well-known and
well-agreed-upon, then by Aumann's Agreement, we would have nothing to
discuss.

------
AzuraJergen
As society reaches a point where the cost of simply being accused of rape
leads more and more cases of loss of a degree, job, social relations,
imprisonment and that uncertainty over whether it happened or not forces
decisions that are not fair or just to either party. We will simply see more
and more individuals isolate themselves from the other sex to limit the risk
that they will be blamed or look down upon for something.

Folks like the current Vice-President of the US, saying that he will only meet
with a woman in the presence of others may become more prevalent and "correct"
to limit the risk of liability. In the long run, this may lead us to fall back
into segregation of sex similar to Islamic doctrine, where segregation is
needed to ensure the protection of families and society.

Most may not be thinking about it, but change can happen slowly, but sometimes
it happens abruptly like the changes we have been seen lately. I encourage
everyone to use their minds to help build an environment that better suits the
current times, before we go back in time and all we have to blame is
ourselves.

------
DisruptiveDave
In my junior year of college (very early 2000s), a senior friend was accused
of rape by a classmate. Within two days he had to hide out at my girlfriend's
house because a large group of large athletes was on the hunt for him to beat
him up. Within weeks he was expelled from school. I don't recall the police
ever being contacted.

Turns out the girl was ashamed she voluntarily slept with him. She admitted it
to friends a couple months later. That was too late, of course. She received
zero punishment. He was "lucky" that the police weren't notified on Day 1.

~~~
kenneth
We should make the punishment for falsely accusing someone of rape equivalent
to the punishment for rape. That's take care of the problem.

~~~
janetacarr
This assumes the court system is infallible though when we know it is not.
Plus, I can see something like this deterring actual victims from coming
forward.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
_something like this deterring actual victims from coming forward_

This is also a possibility, but it's pretty much universally accepted that
it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person.

~~~
LurkersWillLurk
I don't agree. I would argue that the rise of the victims' rights movement
suggests that culturally, the United States is beginning to see the few false
reports/convictions as an acceptable casualty to the vast majority of truthful
reports.

I mean, we have Marsy's Law being added to state constitutions left and right.
One of its provisions is that the victim[1] can refuse a deposition before
trial. This obviously conflicts with the accused's right to access all the
evidence, does it not?

Another provision limits the amount of time a convicted person can seek post-
conviction relief. The goal here is to remove stress from the victim, but
again, we have seen many convicted people be exonerated due to DNA evidence,
or other evidence that arises after the fact. Again, this is a statement of
values - that the deprivation of liberty is less important than the desire of
the victim to not feel anxious about the perpetrator's possible release.

[1] I would argue that calling a complainant a victim undermines the
presumption of innocence. If you're a victim, it follows that the accused is a
perpetrator.

~~~
kenneth
Innocent until proved guilty is a fundamental principle of American values. I
don't at all see why we should throw that out the window and say that "a few
people falsly convicted is an acceptable casualty" just so we can catch more
perpetrators.

~~~
LurkersWillLurk
I mean, I agree. I'm not in favor of "acceptable casualties", I'm just saying
that the mainstream opinion is changing.

------
drewrv
The way this article conflates sex with sexual assault really creeps me out.
The first sentence states:

 _Four feminist law professors at Harvard Law School have been telling some
alarming truths about the tribunals that have been adjudicating collegiate sex
for the past five years._

No tribunals "adjudicate collegiate sex". They adjudicate sexual assault.

~~~
ccday
One of the professors quoted in the article suggests otherwise:

> The system promulgated a definition of sexual misconduct so expansive that
> it “plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today,” as Gersen
> wrote in an article in the California Law Review.

~~~
gregimba
The standard at my college was any alcoholic consumption meant you could no
longer consent. If I had a beer and had sex with my girlfriend it was
considered sexual misconduct under the definition of consent the school
provided.

~~~
balfirevic
What if you both had beers? You'd both be considered to have committed an
offence?

~~~
esyir
Of course not. He would have been the offender.

------
DoreenMichele
I don't know how we get there. I'm incredibly frustrated at how much doors
remain shut in my face and I can't get traction, real respect and the money
that goes with it.

But after a lifetime of sorting my baggage in the aftermath of sexual abuse
and rape, I'm clear that one thing that must happen is women need public lives
on par with what men have and women need career options and earned income on
par with men.

A whole lot of this BS is rooted in the idea that a woman's sexuality is a
prize to be won by an "eligible" male -- ie a man who earns enough to take
care of her. There is a subtext of ownership there.

Which is part of what drives women to claim rape after a drunken hook up: It
protects their perceived purity in a world where women are still not entitled
to take ownership of their own sexuality and must hoard its use and preserve
its value to merit future ownership by some worthy man.

Ie some man who makes enough money.

It's a terrible societal poison that seeps insidiously into far too many
bedrooms.

~~~
dgzl
>A whole lot of this BS is rooted in the idea that a woman's sexuality is a
prize to be won by an "eligible" male -- ie a man who earns enough to take
care of her. There is a subtext of ownership there.

Both sides perpetuate this, but I see this coming from women much more than
men.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Perhaps that's because most women need a man's income to not be dirt poor.

I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman
to ever have spent time on the leader board.

It has resulted in nearly zero professional connections. When I complain about
that, I get blown off and told that's not something I should expect from HN,
nevermind that it works that way for plenty of men.

I was homeless for nearly six years. I continue to struggle to make ends meet.
I'm currently broke.

This is an ongoing issue for me. And it is shocking and appalling to me that I
still get told after all this time that my gender isn't the issue and I'm
imagining things. I guess just to add insult to injury while I literally
starve. Again.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
I'm very sorry that you go through hard times but when you take a look at the
homelessness statistics you would understand men are having it in comparison
statistically speaking much harder.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It's really not that simple.

[https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/g...](https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/gender-
and-homelessness.html)

~~~
flippinburgers
According to the article women, I guess, have it harder because:

1) Family tends to want to take care of women. Women get custody more often!
2) Women often are able to find a man willing to take care of them. 3) Peeing
in bushes is hard.

With other rich quotes like "women seem this and men seem that". At most it
simply proves that women have it easier.

------
jenkstom
Honestly I'm just glad to see this being discussed openly and honestly. It's a
difficult subject and it's been suppressed on both sides alternatively
depending on the time in history (herstory, whatever).

I'm happy that my daughter is doing so well in college and doesn't have to
worry about date rape. But I'm terrified of my sons going to college because I
know that consensual sex can destroy their lives. And honestly, they're much
less likely to even get there or finish in the first place.

------
icu
It is a sad thing to say, but the simple solution to this alarming trend of
rescinding consent after having consensual sex is to record the audio of your
interactions with the opposite sex. A voice-activated recorder that can store
months worth of conversations can be purchased on Amazon quite cheaply.

I've even heard of work situations where male managers refuse one-on-one
meetings with female employees due to fear of being falsely accused of sexual
impropriety. Again, in these work-related situations, recording the
interaction may save your career.

I realise the questionable ethics of recording someone when they don't know
they are being recorded. I also understand that there may be legal
ramifications for doing this depending on where you live.

However, if you are falsely accused of sexual assault, with an audio recording
proving consent, you can avoid the complete destruction of your life. You
still may have to face the legal repercussions of recording the conversation,
but this will be much smaller than the consequences of not being able to prove
consent.

~~~
dclusin
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 such a small segment of the
population that your suggestion to walk around wired seems vastly excessive.
There's probably something more reasonable that can be done.

~~~
maximente
> But to walk around with suspicion to the point of carrying around a
> microphone is just lunacy

you are straw manning heavily here. OP suggested recording high stakes
interactions with the potential to turn sour at a later date, not what you've
said here about walking around wired.

what are your arguments against saving evidence for high stakes interactions
that could turn into socially and career ruining consequences later? you know
this is done in non-sexual contexts e.g. police interviews already, right?

~~~
dclusin
Conversations in the workplace happen organically. Sometimes the CEO will
approach you at the water cooler and say, hey, got a sec? What are you gonna
do? Say "brb let me grab my recording device?" Or start filming the encounter
like people film the police?

~~~
icu
I'm not talking about all out surveillance of all human interactions. I'm
talking about being in a closed office with a female employee one on one, or
when 'going out on the pull'. Basically your workplace, bars/clubs, or other
high risk situations or venues especially where alcohol is served.

I'm also talking about keeping the device in your pocket as you would your
wallet or keys... or more like a swiss army knife.

You may never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad it's there.

------
concordDance
While this is an interesting counterattack in the ongoing Culture Wars, I
don't think hackernews is an appropriate place for it.

------
hirundo
> It is a story with which the rise of Donald Trump is fatally intertwined,
> but it is in fact a story that takes precedence—both temporal and
> logical—over the anarchic and pathological rise of the demagogue occupying
> the White House.

All of the elements of this story were in full flower during the Obama
administration. Trump's role has been to politically capitalize on the
resulting resentments. This is a "this is how you got Trump" story, if just
another straw on the camel.

~~~
MFLoon
The line you're quoting literally notes that this all happened before Trumps
rise, and is logically prior to it. It claims they were "intertwined", which
is implying the relation you're asserting (Trump capitalizing on the fallout
from Title IX and other such social trends under Obama). Nothing about this is
a "This is how you got Trump" story.

------
tomc1985
All I want is a world where more people are choosing to have more sex with
more people, and as much as I support feminism and liberalism, it makes me sad
to see sex become so... formalized and regimented. It's as if people are
forgetting that sex feels great and that pleasure is good. I resent the fact
that this great country (the US) has one of the lowest rates of sexual
encounters per year per person.

------
rolltiide
If you are getting mixed signals on these topics it is because there is no
consensus.

~~~
noobermin
A lot of the downvotes here are sort of cowardly. I mean, perhaps there is
some general consensus to contradict rolltiide if we refer to the status quo
in terms of what universities have chosen to adjudicate, but it is in fact
more complicated with people with differing ideas. That isn't an attack on
your perspective, it's literally just stating an observation that makes no
moral judgement.

------
mieseratte
For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run
their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused
is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

~~~
Lazare
If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees
uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and
is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting
productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture...

...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR
procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his contract,
etc., but I have no obligation to keep him employed if I think he's a net
negative to my company. Arguably I have an obligation to _not_ keep him
employed. And I certainly have no requirement to wait until he has been
convicted of a crime; it's not even clear any of the above _is_ a crime.

Similarly, if I run a resort, and one of the guests is so unpleasant they're
driving away other guests, or if I run a restaurant, and one of the guests is
making other guests uncomfortable, or I run an apartment building, and one of
the tenants is behaving poorly.

A university is a business. People come and pay money in exchange for a
service, and if someone is interfering with the ability of other people to
receive that service, or making people reluctant to come and pay money, it's
perfectly fine for them to be asked to leave. If what they're doing happens to
be a crime, then by all means, _also_ report them to the police, but it's kind
of odd to suggest that you shouldn't expel students except if they've been
convicted of a crime.

That being said, I think universities are doing a terrible job here, and I
think that given the _extreme_ importance of a university education in modern
life, the disruption that being expelled entails, and the stigma that will
follow someone if they are expelled, we need to be very careful about the
process here. My local dollar store will ban you from the store if they think
you shoplifted, and I assume they get it wrong sometimes, but it's fine,
because being unjustly banned from a dollar store does not ruin your life.
Being unjustly expelled from university could! Things are broken and need
fixing. But a world where you can only be expelled on conviction of a crime
makes no sense either. The discussion need to be about the correct amount of
protection needed.

~~~
klipt
In the workplace dating coworkers is generally frowned upon.

At a university, dating other students is so commonplace that a large portion
of people meet their spouses that way.

Title IX may want to treat dating at universities with the same disdain as in
the workplace, but it's not going to be an easy cultural shift.

~~~
Lazare
> In the workplace dating coworkers is generally frowned upon.

And at a restaurant, being in a relationship with a fellow patron is quite
common. Similarly, no legal or cultural ban against dating your room mate when
you rent a house (much to the relief of married couples everywhere).

Students are (mostly) not employees of the university, but they are customers
of educational services and (quite often) tenants. A university has a _number_
of relationships to students, and a number of responsibilities, both to the
(alleged) predators and to the larger student body.

I mentioned a startup situation in the hopes it would seem relevant to many
here (surely we've all had at least one co-worker that was disruptive?), but
trying to view this purely through the lens of employment law will get you
nowhere.

~~~
weberc2
Universities are paid largely by federal student loans and tax dollars. This
is not a standard business/patron agreement. Expelling a student $50K in debt
can ruin their life. The university owes them a fair trial. And there is no
excuse for the overt discrimination or other shenanigans we’re seeing.

------
lordlic
I think it's pretty clear that Title IX courts could do a much better job of
protecting the due process rights of the accused. I think it's possible to
take a nuanced position that advocates for better due process rights _while
still fundamentally respecting the advances we 've made in protecting the
interests of women and other underrepresented groups_.

...but without that last part, the position I just outlined sounds very much
like that of conservatives opposed to the whole program of social reform. The
author of this article gives the game away in his concluding paragraphs where
he throws the term "social justice" into scare quotes. He has a bigger agenda
than just protecting the due process rights of college students. And (even
assuming the facts are exactly as he portrays them) I'm not surprised that the
professors described in the article got such a frosty reception to their
position - it's a difficult one to describe without coming off as another
stealth reactionary.

~~~
_vertigo
In your comment you seem to value who someone “is” (i.e. what their label is)
more than you value what they have to say.

Your reasoning for why the non-italicized portion is not good enough is
“conservatives say that”. The reason you offer for why the professors get a
frosty reaction is “they could be mistaken for stealth reactionaries”. Perhaps
it’s less important to consider what label you can assign to someone and more
important to just consider what they’re saying.

~~~
lordlic
_Didn 't I just say_ that I agreed with the core argument of the article? I
just wanted to make sure we all understood that this isn't a case of a "woke"
(for lack of a better term) person concerned about moderating the worst
excesses of the movement, it's a case of someone who wants to dismantle the
whole thing.

And it's absolutely relevant what a person "is." If NRA TV uploaded a special
report on gun control, it _matters_ that you know it was produced by NRA TV. I
can't believe I'm even having to argue this point.

Finally, I didn't defend students/academia reacting incorrectly to the
professors, I just said I understood. A lot of people are (rightfully, I
think) sick of neoliberalism's "free marketplace of ideas" approach to
permitting right-wing toxicity, and can get carried away when they think
that's what a speaker is relying on. That doesn't make them automatically
right.

~~~
_vertigo
I don’t necessarily disagree that it _matters_, but why does it matter, and
how much? Why can’t you believe that you’re having to defend the point? What
bearing does who someone is have on the actual _substance_ of an argument?

Personally I think that who someone is is absolutely useful information
because it can contextualize the intent of an argument and provide a hint as
to the biases of the person making the argument, which is a useful tool for
thinking critically about the argument. However, when weighing the merit of
the argument, it doesn’t matter who is making the argument.

That’s why I took issue - you said that the reason the italicized portion was
needed was because without it you sound a lot like a conservative. That’s
weighing the merit of the argument based on what kind of person makes it
rather than the substance of the argument itself.

------
eli_gottlieb
Flagged as irrelevant to Hacker News' core purpose, and somewhat inflammatory
to boot for those not marinating in campus culture wars all the time.

~~~
alexithym
This is much less irrelevant to HN's core purpose than the plethora of other
random articles that can be found at any given time.

Personally, I fail to see how the article was inflammatory. The author clearly
took pains to avoid demonizing either side of the discussion that was being
highlighted, something which is markedly rarer in the current day and age.

~~~
seppin
> HN's core purpose

You can only read about new backend frameworks so often, this is interesting..

------
strenholme
Three generations ago, we had a framework in place which minimized these gray
areas where, while a reasonable person would infer there was consent to have
sex, the partner actually was not consenting to sex.

The framework was this: If the relationship was not a lifetime monogamous
commitment, then the sex was not OK.

I have observed, in the majority of these cases (Caleb Warner, etc.), the
issue was that two people had sex with each other without first having an
established relationship with each other. It’s a simple observation that one
can generally avoid a false rape accusation by making sure to only have sex in
a monogamous committed relationship.

~~~
krapp
You do realize that sexual assault and rape can occur even within the
framework of marriage, right?

This framework only "minimizes grey areas" in the sense that a patriarchal
society assumes sex to be the the duty of the wife to the husband, and that,
therefore a womans' right to deny consent is nullified under the contract of
marriage. But this isn't actually the case. A relationship is not a guarantee
of perpetual sexual consent.

~~~
strenholme
That’s a real strawman there. There is a difference between “a majority” and
“all”; I did not at any point say that there is “never marital rape”, nor did
I say that there is “never rape in an established relationship”. I certainly
did _not_ say that “martial rape is OK”.

However, in all of the campus sexual assault accusations I have seen, not a
single one was one where the two people were married to each other.

In the real world, not everything is black and white. There are gray areas.
It’s _much less likely_ a sexual assault accusation will happen in a marriage.
This does not mean it will never happen; don’t pretend that I said something I
never said.

~~~
krapp
It's not a strawman. Marriage has no effect whatsoever on consent.

>It’s much less likely a sexual assault accusation will happen in a marriage.

Do you have data to back this up?

~~~
strenholme
Two out of three sexual assault allegations involve incidents when the person
was not in an established intimate relationship with the person:
[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/sexual-assault-
victims/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/sexual-assault-victims/)

Again, when did I ever say that “marital rape is OK”? I did not, and it’s a
strawman to claim that I did.

~~~
krapp
I didn't think you were claiming marital rape was OK, I thought you were
claiming it didn't exist, which is an unfortunately common belief. I
misinterpreted your intent and I apologize.

~~~
strenholme
Thank you for the apology. This is a complex topic which a Ycombinator thread
can not do justice to, so I present this link:
[https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/victims-and-
perpetrators](https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/victims-and-perpetrators)

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
mirimir
I get what you're saying. But the "second sexual revolution" actually happened
in the 80s-90s. I remember it distinctly. You always paused, and clearly
asked, at each stage.

But this is different. Now there is no such thing as "consent". Or rather,
consent can be withdrawn _retroactively_.

I've never been accused of rape, as far as I know. But many years ago, one
girlfriend told me that she had thought I was wealthy. With the implication
that we wouldn't be having sex, if she had known that I wasn't. Today, that
might well become an accusation of rape. In that I had tricked her.

~~~
klipt
One way to prevent these things from going too far is to make the standards
gender neutral. If men start accusing women of rape by trickery too, I imagine
feminists will very quickly back down.

The main problem is when it's all in one direction: when people think that
defining more things as rape makes them more feminist, more supportive of
women, and more deserving of social brownie points, then they have incentive
to keep going well beyond the borders of common sense.

~~~
mirimir
I don't have any direct (or indirect) experience. So what happens now if a man
accuses a woman of "raping" him? I'm guessing that he'd be ignored. And I
don't think the standards will become gender-neutral any faster than they'll
become just.

I do wonder, though, whether young men are becoming more cautious about who
they have sex with. And if there's any way to protect oneself against future
rape accusations. Perhaps some sort of witnessed contractual agreement? Maybe
something like Islamic "temporary marriage"? With penalties for changing ones
mind later.

Edit: Another thread cites an article about a guy who, paranoid after a
"drunken hookup", filed a Title IX complaint.[0] So maybe that's the workable
strategy. Have sex, and then be first to file. And research the process ahead
of time, so there's no delay.

0) [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-
ix-i...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-is-too-
easy-to-abuse/561650/)

~~~
gm678
" So what happens now if a man accuses a woman of "raping" him? I'm guessing
that he'd be ignored. "

I do think there is currently a double standard, and I think that misogyny and
the view of women as "passive" participants in sex contributes to that. The
CDC estimates that 1 in 71 men will be raped in their lifetime, and an
analysis by Scientific American found that 79 percent of male victims of rape
reported it to police, but unfortunately I cannot find information on how many
of those reports led to a trial and potentially a conviction.

I think that while some men are likely ignored, and we definitely have a
problem with the way we imagine sexual assault as a society, the relatively
high reporting rate suggests that many cases are also taken seriously.

I'm also not really sure what "strategy" you're referring to; a strategy to
protect yourself from Title IX complaints? I really think that what rayiner
said is all you need to do: "Don't take advantage of marginal situations;
don't toe the line. Don't do anything you can't defend later."

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-
victimizat...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-
victimization-by-women-is-more-common-than-previously-known/)

~~~
0xcraft
My experience relating being raped to friends was generally not a positive
one. I found women tended to be more open to believing my story. Men were
pretty skeptical. Of course, sharing my experience didn't happen for many
years. In the mid 1980s the idea that men even could be raped by a woman was a
bit farfetched both socially and legally.

~~~
mirimir
As a guy, I can't quite imagine being raped by a woman. Unless she was
wielding a suitable device, anyway.

But I have, after wild parties, found myself in bed with women who, in
retrospect, I didn't find all that appealing. And yes, I know, that's a
cliché.

Even so, I'd never make a big deal about it. We all do stupid things when
we're intoxicated. "Así fue ... son las cosas de la vida".

~~~
mirimir
Sorry. I am dense. Maybe you were raped by a man.

