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'Ah, the special feeling you get when logging into Facebook and find someone thinks you’re cool enough to invite to their event. Is it a house party? Is it a social? All the possibilities race through your mind. Then it hits you. You tap the red notification and find you’ve been summoned to this year’s “I Heart Consent Training Sessions”. Your crushing disappointment quickly melts away and is overcome by anger.
Let me explain, I love consent. Of course people should only interact with mutual agreement, but I still found this invitation loathsome. Like any self-respecting individual would, I found this to be a massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face. To be invited to such a waste of time was the biggest insult I’ve received in a good few years. It implies I have an insufficient understanding of what does and does not constitute consent and that’s incredibly hurtful. I can’t stress that enough.
'I’d like you all to take a moment to think about someone you’ve probably never met.
His name is George Lawlor, and he’s a student at Warwick University. And, dear readers, something terrible has happened to George. You see, George logged on to Facebook recently and noticed that he had an invitation to an event.
Perhaps Lawlor doesn’t get asked to all that many parties - such was his dismay at this particular invite. Instead of a request for his presence at the coolest club in town, he’d been invited to something entitled “I Heart Consent” - a workshop where people willingly turn up and learn about the idea of sexual consent. These sessions, popping up on campuses across the country, are happening in a bid to decrease the number of assaults.'
'A student at the University of Warwick has divided opinion online after speaking out against being invited to sex consent training lessons – a move, he says, was ‘the biggest insult I’ve received in a good few years’.
Writing in online student publication The Tab, politics and sociology student George Lawlor described how he was excited to receive an invite to what he thought was a social event, but says his crushing disappointment quickly melted away to be overcome by anger when he realised what he was being invited to.
Having acknowledged how people should only interact with mutual agreement, he said he still found the invitation to be loathsome, adding: “It implies I have an insufficient understanding of what does and does not constitute consent and that’s incredibly hurtful. I can’t stress that enough.”'
'One major and negative narrative about the justice system is that wealthy and well-connected people get to live by different rules than the rest of us. One can find examples both reinforcing and undermining this, but the prevailing narrative remains.
If one wanted to find a blatant example of wealthy, privileged people getting their own justice system they can bend to their will, look no further than the anti-campus sexual assault movement. Born of false statistics and exaggerated (orwholly made up) victimhood, the movement has created (and seeks to maintain) a separate court system for those who can afford college.
What we're left with is a movement that seeks "easy justice for me, but not for thee." It's a slap in the face to the millions of Americans who are at a higher risk for sexual assault and who cannot afford college, many of them poor, minority women.'
'Feminists attacked a cathedral in Argentina Monday as a line of men defending it were being grossly assaulted.
The disturbing scene is part of Argentina's National Women's Encounter, a festival of shameless feminism sponsored every year by the state's Department of Culture as a "social interest" event.
...
Men stood in prayer in front of the Cathedral of Mar del Plata while unruly feminists possessed with rage cursed and assaulted them, throwing bottles and feces and even starting a small fire.
That's when the police finally intervened and made an effort to tame the rioting crowd of hysterical women. The attempt to restore order was met with petty acts of defiance. Many of the girls, several of whom were topless, threw anything they could find at the police, who didn't use much force to gain control of the situation.
'A Gridley Street man has been charged with paying a woman to falsely report a sexual assault against another man.
David Hernandez, 29, of 96 Gridley St., is facing charges of conspiracy to commit second-degree falsely report an incident, conspiracy to commit second-degree providing a false statement, criminal liability of for acts of another for second-degree falsely reporting an incident and criminal liability for acts of another for second-degree providing a false statement.
He allegedly paid a woman $100 in June to tell police she was raped in RockwellPark, according to the warrant. Hernandez gave the woman a description of the phony suspect with the intent of it matching the man who was dating his ex-girlfriend, the warrant continued.
Police allege he was trying to break up the relationship so Hernandez would have a chance at getting back with his ex.'
'A new book claims that male office workers are now so afraid of being on the receiving end of a sexual harassment case, they are reluctant to mentor, assist, befriend and even hold open doors for female colleagues.
Crushingly, Sex & The Office suggests men now view such ordinary, decent behaviours as “too risky” – and, in what will be a bitter irony for equality campaigners – claims that, as a direct consequence, women are now failing to advance at work.
This terror of being accused of sexual harassment is now so common it has its own term, “backlash stress”. It sounds like something straight out of a Claims Direct ad – where the only victims are men.'
'Rebecca Wald's father had to perform circumcisions during his medical training. It was awful. Her husband, also a physician, wasn't a fan of the procedure either. He understood the medical complications. So when the Walds' son was born in 2005, the family decided not to circumcise the newborn. But they are Jewish.
“My husband and I are Jewish, but we couldn't see putting our newborn through the trauma and exposing him to the complications,” Wald explains. “Every circumcision has complications, by the way, because of the lifelong damage it does to the organ.”
'Judges across the country are saying “no” to the “yes means yes” standard of affirmative consent for date rape.
The legality of the standard – adopted on California and New York campuses by state legislatures and in effect on numerous other colleges throughout the country – is in question following a series of recent rulings that cite a lack of due process.
"These decisions are harbingers,” said John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School and a public interest lawyer. “It does take time for new ideas to percolate through the system.”
Under the standard, the accused, typically a male, has to prove he obtained consent, even if neither party remembers what happened. The standard forces the accused to prove his innocence, rather than be proven guilty.'
'A new UN report claims that “73 percent of women have been exposed to online violence.” To combat this alleged epidemic of sexist mayhem on the web, it calls for draconian measures—including more government supervision and censorship of the internet. Before anyone acts on these UN recommendations, let’s check out a few facts.'
'The American Law Institute works to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law. In 2012, a Prospectuswas issued proposing to update the ALI Model Penal Code (MPC) on Sexual Assault, last revised in 1962. The Prospectus highlighted several anachronisms of the 1962 version such as the gendered character of the offense and the broad marital exemption.
Two years later, Tentative Draft No. 1 was released. A review of the draft Model Penal Code reveals that it enormously expands criminal liability at a time when the American Bar Association, lawmakers, and the American public have come to the realization that our country faces a serious problem with over-criminalization. ...'
We at SAVE know that male domestic violence victims do exist, and it's important that our national leaders take time to acknowledge them so that they receive critical resources and attention.
'The Army needs more female recruiters over the next several years as it gears up for the end of the ban on women serving in tens of thousands of combat-related jobs, according to a top recruiting official.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, in an Oct. 4 memo to the top Army personnel officer, has requested an annual boost in the percentage of women recruiters by 1% per year until 2018 "to improve the recruitment of females for Army service."
Women, Snow said, are 23% better at recruiting women than men. "Increasing the number of females on recruiting duty will improve the effectiveness of recruiting women," he wrote.
'In South Australia women are no longer able to care for their young children in prison, whereas other Australian state models show that it is in the best interest and wellbeing of the child and the mother/child relationship to allow young children to be cared for by their mothers.
The project focuses on the theme of Social and Global Transformation and in particular the question of individualisation, citizenship and human rights. It also examines the parenting needs of diverse groups of women including Indigenous women and teenage mothers. International organisations such as the Human Rights and EO Commissions have called attention to this social issue.
...
The student should have one of the following disciplinary backgrounds, social policy, gender studies, social and cultural geography, sociology, law, social work or psychology and have a strong interest in social policy. The successful candidate will be required to work closely with industry partner, the South Australian Council of Social Services (SACOSS) and will be embedded in the organisation up to 2 days per week.'
'There was the time when, 19 and naive, I was guilt-tripped into entirely unwanted physical intimacies with a much older married man. And the time, three or four years later, when I went to visit an on-and-off long-distance boyfriend and quickly realized that it was over for me — but he assumed we were still on, and I didn’t have the nerve to say no. And the time I told a man, “Look, I’m not going to sleep with you,” and it was taken as, “Try again in a couple of hours.” He did, and it worked.
When they happened, my views of these encounters ranged from “it was a mistake” to “it’s complicated.” They still do — even though, these days, we are encouraged to reinterpret such experiences as sexual violations. To many feminists, stories like these are evidence of a pervasive, misogynistic rape culture. “Kids see movies where there’s an aggressor who gets pushed away, but keeps trying until the girl relents,” advocate, author and filmmaker Kelly Kend writes. “. . . This is a rape dynamic that has been played off countless times as just how it works.” Canadian feminist author Anne Thériault laments “the still-pervasive and very flawed idea that if she doesn’t say no, it’s not rape” — clearly referring not just to attacks involving violence or incapacitation (for which few would demand a verbal “no” as proof of rape), but encounters in which a woman yields to unwanted overtures, like I did.
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"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality." - Ayn Rand
