The “Affirmative Consent” Trap

Article here. Excerpt:

'An epidemic of sexual assault is supposedly raging on college campuses. Surveys and studies repeat the same frightening statistics: either one-in-four or one-in-five college women have been the victims of a sexual assault. Yet at a June hearing of the California State Assembly Higher Education and Joint Legislative Audit committees, chairman Das Williams couldn’t understand why the number of students disciplined for sexual misconduct was so low. A University of California at Berkeley administrator, for example, reported just 10 suspensions or expulsions out of 43 cases involving non-consensual sex over the last six years. How could that possibly be?
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Williams is promising a slate of bills early next year that would mandate training for all university employees to respond to, and intervene to prevent, sexual assault, and, more significantly, to beef up punishments for alleged assailants. “Rape is a very difficult thing to prosecute,” he told the Sacramento Bee. Because most college disciplinary boards already use the lower “preponderance of evidence” standard—as opposed to the more rigorous “reasonable doubt” standard that criminal courts apply—“there is a real role that schools can play that law enforcement can’t.”
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Neither the legislature nor the state auditor seems to challenge the claim, unchanged and virtually unquestioned for nearly 30 years, that either one-in-four or one-in-five college students is a victim of sexual assault. As Heather Mac Donald has pointed out, if that figure is correct, “campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions.” But it’s almost certainly not accurate. “No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years,” Mac Donald observes. Consider the one-in-four or one-in-five figure in light of the number of sexual assaults reported in the nation’s most crime-ridden cities. Mac Donald notes, for example, that the rape rate in New Orleans was .0234 percent in 2012.'

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It just struck me-- is it possible this campus rape hysteria is a kind of mass psychological maladjustment to the fact that there are relatively significantly fewer men as undergraduates than women? Consider that even during the '60s and '70s when women were much less common matriculants at coed colleges and feminist ideology/feminists were already there, this kind of thing wasn't a concern; getting drunk and having sex with someone you just met was just how things went. In fact, neither of you needed to be drunk, and ppl did that anyway! During the '80s, feminism got more edgy/hostile than it was even in the '70s but 'Take Back The Night' events were focused on prioritizing enforcement of forcible rape laws. M:F ratios were at close to parity. College women were not much worried abt a shortage of men to meet/date on campuses.

Now, the ratio is around 3.5:6.5, with the graduation ratio at 3:7. Suddenly, there's all this rape hysteria, with an expanded, non-legal definition of 'rape'. Suddenly, college admins, profs, staff, and lawmakers, all of whom very likely participated in what is now a proscribed way of socializing that ends with what is clearly mutually consensual sex, want college kids to refrain from doing what they happily did not too long ago. Only thing I can think of that's driving this nutsery is a desire to rid campuses of male students (the feminist motivation) and to protect all these innocent coeds, who probably feel the pressure of high competition for male attention, from *gasp* deciding to have sex "too soon" after meeting a guy. Newsflash, good Samaritans and moralizing, chivalrous people: that horse already left the barn.

I'd also like to point out to the ppl of CA that they have a rep in their Assembly who's deliberately trying to skirt the presumption of innocence *and* turn institutions not empowered to act as judicial bodies to, in essence, do just that. They can't imprison a man "convicted" in this way, but can throw a serious wrench into the works for his future, all with "preponderance" as a standard. Foregone conclusion: Guilty.

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I agree with you Matt...

Can I extend it?

There are now just under 4 men for every 6 women. Discounting gays and lesbians (many more gay men that lesbians: and no judgement here), that leaves about 1 man for every two women on campus.

The tables have turned.

Now it is just time before the men see through the overly Harlequin-esque view of relationships that have constrained their sexual activities. (For as much as the Don Giovanni is a form of toxic masculinity, the Romance novel-obsessed female is an example of toxic femininity.)

Now it is just time before men get asked out on dates, they do not pay, they get the gifts (heck, it is happening already).

Soon enough, men will require compliance signatures by the women before they agree to a date. They will film all activities. (Men will not care about this.)

In a twisted and perverse kind of way, the feminists have done more to turn women into infants than any patriarchy ever did; only now, these women are desperate, too.

(Don't buy into the ability to dispense with men while women have babies fusing egg cells. Men can now fuse sperm into an artificial egg. The only difference is that two females can only produce a female, but two males can produce either gender. Welcome to the terrible world that liberal feminism has wrought.)

I don't worry so much about the rates of men on campus, by the way. Most degrees are useless and aimed at pushing paper. In the schools where it matters, men dominate. (Yes, Harvey Mudd is engaged in sexism by admitting less qualified women -- but at the serious graduate schools in engineering, it is male dominant). Where men drop out, they do manual labor (which is good, in this world: sanitation, oil rigs, miners, construction, firemen -- all eminently respectable), join the military, get pensions and all health benefits and are set for life. While feminist inspired women push papers and lean in, working for Facebook, growing sterile and despondent without purpose.

Feminism is a monster that is now devouring its own. One can only sit back in amusement and watch.

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In fact (and this is in partial response to XTRNL, who, in another thread, advocated lower standards to admit men into writing programs to balance Harvey Mudd's lower standards for women).

Yes, there are RELATIVELY (and that is an operative word, there) fewer men on campus, today. But in absolute terms, the "numbers" on the same.

Do we really want more men in reading programs? Seriously, the kids today cannot write. And it is not a matter of grammar (I have no issue with poor writing skills - and make many errors myself). The issue is the lack of ideas and the style of expression; e.g.: "Since time immemorial, there has always been poverty..." or some such trivial opening line that is used in every college essay. It is not that student cannot write in grammatically correct ways: it is that they cannot write an idea.

Is it no wonder? K12 testing has destroyed expression (while ensuring the success of girls who obey the rules). The liberal control of the university has squashed the flourishing of ideas. Now I am not saying I am liberal or conservative. But the point is there is a pressure to be liberal and conform on campus. And that is when ingenuity is squashed: conformance (inspired by either the right or left, but mostly left). Do we really need more men falling victim to this?

Rather, it is time to recognize what has happened to academia --it has become a wasteland of thought (and, yes, I partially blame feminism for this: Women's Studies, Afrikana Studies, Chicnao/a Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Fat Studies, Asian Studies). There is a niche for everyone so long as you tow the party line.

In one sense, it is no wonder that men are not going to college. There is no future there. There are better opportunities in the military (and that pension and health care program) and manual labor. Where do men continue to excel? engineering, manual labor, surgery (once nurses can prescribe medicine, even the general practice M.D. is useless, as is law, advertising, publishing... all the areas where women are heading.)

I am beginning to wonder if we are always in a state of nature. And men thrive in a state of nature. Men will find a way, while feminists drive women into pushing paper for Facebook.

Yes, I took the engineering route. But I have profound respect and admiration for dock workers, oil rig workers, sanitation workers, ditch diggers. When I am on the train at 5 AM (early rise to the gym), it is full of men heading off to manual labor. And I am proud to be in their midst.

I think the key is that all men must respect each other. Too often, men in academia had disdain for the blue collar worker. In one sense, men must step up to the brotherhood.

I am slowly beginning to think that feminism is doing much more damage to women. Yes, there was a time when it was needed: economic. political and social independence (even though, some men would argue that men, too, got shortchanged here). But today it seems to be making women miserable, while men are finding a way.

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Just to be clear, I am completely against affirmative action. The post of mine you are referring to was just to make a point. I don't actually support the idea of lowering standards for males in female-dominated programs. I was just pointing out that if they're going to do that for female students in STEM, they have to start doing it for everyone else who struggles in every subject, or else it is de facto discrimination.

By the way, I agree with you. Like you, I have an affinity for STEM. But I choose to be an instructor, instead of an engineer. I was never good at working with my hands, so I have nothing but respect for the men who make society possible by doing just that. You'd think with all men contribute to society, they'd be less shy about expressing their pride towards their gender, rather than feel like they're committing some grave crime for being proud of who they are.

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