Due process for campus sexual assault is not a left/right issue

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sexual assault is a serious issue that should be dealt with seriously. But the proposed solution for this problem on college campuses creates an entirely new problem. It eviscerates due process for accused students in the name of helping accusers.

The fight over campus sexual assault and due process has somehow devolved into a Republican vs. Democrat issue. The most vocal supporters of draconian sexual assault policies are Democrats like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. There are several prominent Republicans on a Senate bill to curb sexual assault, but none have made a name for themselves as a proponent.'

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DNA clears man in rapes; accuser arrested

Story here. Excerpt:

'DNA evidence has cleared a man in two rapes in Norcross, and a woman who accused the same man of rape in Brookhaven has been arrested and charged with providing false statements, police said Tuesday.

Anamirna Cabello-Loeza, 31, surrendered July 1 and was jailed after detectives determined statements she provided in connection with the case “were not truthful,” Brookhaven police Officer Carlos Nino said in an emailed statement.'

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Is It Rape to Hold Someone's Hand Without Explicit Consent?

Article here. Excerpt:

'I suggest they call it the Princess & the Pea Code. (Or Princess and the Penal Code?) The group seems to be on the verge of endorsing the idea that every step in any encounter that could conceivably lead to sex must be explicitly agreed to by both parties. Let’s first state that obviously, no one wants anyone raped, ever. Duh. But how far back in any encounter should we start regulating and punishing? And how fragile do we take our species for, when we state that any unwanted anything, even the grasp of a hand, is too much to bear and requires legal intervention? Shulevitz writes:

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Sexual Consent Contracts Are Now A Real Thing You Can Buy

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Sexual consent contracts,” once the stuff of parodies, are now a real product that activists are selling online for the purposes of promoting “sexual respect.”

The “Consent Conscious Kit” is being sold online by the Affirmative Consent Project at the website InstantConsent.com. For only $1.99, one can get a small bag (available in both faux-suede and canvass varieties!) filled with a condom, a pen, some breath mints, and this simple contract:

[Graphic]

The contract recommends that potential lovers take a picture of themselves holding the contract, or else use the pen to fill out the back, which reads “On this date, [blank], we agree to have consensual sex with one another.” There are then lines for two people to both print and sign their names (the contract is apparently no good for threesomes or orgies).'

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Megyn Kelly freaks out over NY affirmative consent law: What about men’s rights?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The implementation of an affirmative consent law in New York state had Fox News host Megyn Kelly concerned on Tuesday, as she fretted that men are presumed guilty too often in college sexual assault cases.

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Teenager’s Jailing Brings a Call to Fix Sex Offender Registries

Article here. Excerpt:

'That sexual encounter has landed Mr. Anderson in a Michigan jail, and he now faces a lifetime entanglement in the legal system. The girl, who by her own account told Mr. Anderson that she was 17 — a year over the age of consent in Michigan — was actually 14.
...
As an Indiana resident, Mr. Anderson will most likely be listed on a sex offender registry for life, a sanction that requires him to be in regular contact with the authorities, to allow searches of his home every 90 days and to live far from schools, parks and other public places. His probation will also require him to stay off the Internet, though he needs it to study computer science.

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Study: Bisexual men at greater risk for psychosocial problems, HIV

Article here. Excerpt:

'An American study involving nearly 7,000 men drew some jarring conclusions about bisexual males’ psychological and sexual health.

According to the study, men who have had sex with both men and women are “disproportionately impacted by psychosocial vulnerabilities,” are more likely to report depression, suicidality, incarceration and substance use.

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Why affirmative consent laws are bad for women

Article here. Excerpt:

"Researchers investigating why women do not generally ask men out on dates discovered that ‘a great majority of the women, 93%, preferred to be asked out -- only 6% preferred to do the asking. The majority of men preferred to do the asking, 83%, while 16% preferred to be asked out on a date’, confirming that when it comes to making the first move, both women and men prefer men in the driver’s seat. Some feminist commentators describe this almost universal preference as ‘sexual aggression’ on the part of men, ascribing specious motives to a social preference shared by men and women alike.

New affirmative consent laws have the potential to turn much of this preferred behavior into sexual assault, retroactively, and given that men are expected to initiate expressions of sexual interest, the laws will initially be used to reclassify expected behaviours from men as criminal, depending on how women feel about those actions at a later date. Using the example of holding hands, critics of the law point out that much of what is now considered normal human interactions will fall under criminal assault if the new laws are effected. In a dissenting memo, ‘readers have been asked to consider the following scenario: "Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of Criminal Sexual Contact' under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).’
...

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University of Minnesota to adopt 'affirmative consent' rule for sex partners

Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Minnesota is joining a national movement requiring students to obtain “affirmative consent” from their sex partners or risk being ­disciplined for sexual assault.

The policy change, sometimes known as the “yes means yes” rule, has been sweeping college campuses across the country since California passed the first such law last year.

The U’s new rule, which is poised to take effect this month after a 30-day comment period, says that sex is OK only if both parties express consent through “clear and unambiguous words or actions.” Absent that, it would fit the U’s ­definition of sexual assault.

So far, the plan has prompted little dissent at the U. But nationally, critics have derided such policies as absurd and dangerous, particularly when it comes to protecting the rights of the accused.

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Scholar Takes On ‘The Authoritarian Juggernaut’ Of Campus Feminism

Article here. Excerpt:

'Countering feminist misinformation with facts has landed Christina Hoff Sommers, an avowed feminist and avid number cruncher at the American Enterprise Institute, into a cauldron on American college campuses and into a new alliance with gamers.

Over the last two years when a swarm of gender studies feminists attacked gaming as sexist, racist and offensive based on their social justice narratives, the incensed gamers pushed back against the authoritarian leftists and found an ally in Sommers, a scholar and author who calls on feminism to be grounded in reality and truth. Looking at the games and the research, she decreed the gamers falsely accused. They called her “Based Mom.”'

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Gender Inequality Mutilates the Bodies and Spirits of Boys

A well written article by Laurie A. Couture, here. Excerpt:

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UK: 'Victim' who made false rape claim spared jail

Story here. Excerpt:

'A WOMAN who sparked a police investigation when she falsely claimed she had been raped on a train was given a community payback order yesterday.

Karen Farmer, 35, told officers that a man had sexually assaulted her when she was travelling from Glasgow to Blantyre.

But the court heard that she had consented to having sex with the man with whom she had been on a date in the hours leading up to the journey. She made the rape claim after he ran off and left her when the train reached its destination.'

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Canadian Libertarians in Revolt After Party Leadership Suspends Anti-Feminist Candidate Lauren Southern

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Libertarian Party of Canada is in turmoil following the bizarre suspension of Lauren Southern, one of the party’s most visible and popular candidates, at the behest of a small group of aggrieved feminist activists.

Members and candidates are now in open revolt amid concerns that the party has been co-opted by a small group of left-wing culture warriors whose socially authoritarian agendas are alien to the majority of libertarians and toxic to the general public.

Southern, a libertarian activist and commentator for The Rebel Media, rose to global prominence last month when a video emerged of her challenging feminist campaigners at a “Slutwalk” demonstration in Vancouver.'

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Here’s One Rape Culture The Media Wishes Were Fake

Article here. Trump's mistake was his over-generalization, maybe coming from the sound-bite timeframes in which political messages get delivered these days. Had he been more precise in his accusations, he'd probably have less business-related fallout right now. Excerpt:

'Whenever The Donald is invited to defend his views for the umpteenth time, the questioning usually veers to the rape angle, as it did when Trump was interviewed by CNN’s Don Lemon Wednesday night. During the interview, the presidential hopeful brought up a Fusion article that reported that 80 percent of women coming into the U.S. illegally are sexually assaulted.

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The Future of Sex is Terrifying

Article here. Excerpt:

'The American Law Institute (ALI)—a respected body of professors, judges, and lawyers that draft model laws oft adopted in whole by state and federal government—has spent the past three years deliberating over sexual assault statutes (an area it hadn't revisited since 1962). A draft of the group's recommendations, released in May, endorsed "the position that an affirmative expression of consent, either by words or conduct, is always an appropriate prerequisite to sexual intercourse, and that the failure to obtain such consent should be punishable under" criminal law.
...
To this aim, ALI proposes establishing the new crime of sexual intercourse without consent, a misdemeanor, which takes place when a person "knowingly or recklessly has, or enables another person to have, sexual intercourse with a person who at the time of the act of sexual intercourse has not given consent to that act." (This is, of course, absent any sort of force, coercion, or indication the victim protested/resisted, which would remain felonies.) It would also expand the definition of criminal sexual contact to include any unconsented to contact with any body part if the perpetrator intended the touch amorously or lustfully.
...

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