"Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America."

The first sentence of a NYT editorial titled "In Houston, Hate Trumped Fairness."

The language is so extreme — "vilifying," "hate." It seems to me that the focus on access to women's bathrooms wasn't aimed at the transgendered at all, but on males who might take advantage of a new opportunity to engage in voyeurism and sexual assault.

Elsewhere in the NYT, I see empathy for women who are sensitive and perhaps over-sensitive to matters involving their bodily privacy and safety and encouragement to men to become more sensitive.

Is this sensitivity supposed to shut off when a more treasured/trendy interest appears on the other side of the balance?

"I’m sure he’s a nice man and I know he has a family and I think he deserves closure and to be allowed to put this behind him.”

Said Samantha Geimer after a Polish judge declined to extradite Roman Polanski.

Geimer was 13 in 1977 was she was the victim of Polanski's admitted sexual predation.

“He said he did it; he pled guilty; he went to jail. I don’t know what people want from him,” she said....

Polanski apologized to Geimer in a 2011 documentary — and Geimer says she thinks he is sincere. She even sees herself as one of his supporters.

“We somehow ended up on the same side,” she explained. “Things have to go pretty wrong for them to end up this way.”

"I'm here trying to clear her name and let them know I consented to that, I just didn't finish the job as you could say."

"Everyone wants to do something spontaneous. I'm not being disrespectful to you. Have you ever done anything spontaneous?"

A man defends his woman, who was arrested for after having sex with squatting on top of him when he was unconscious...  on a parking lot... in broad daylight.

ADDED: The way the article (in The Daily News) is written, I pictured them on the surface of the parking lot, but — after I said they both should have been arrested — Meade says, "They were in a car!" Public lewdness is a crime, but when do the police actually arrest people for it? How exposed to other people were they? Have you ever done anything spontaneous? If so where? Perhaps in a car. Probably not on the surface of a parking lot.

Now, I've clicked through the link within the link, and I can clearly see that they were on the surface of the parking lot. They were also fully clothed. And the woman was charged not with anything in the realm of sexual assault, but only public drunkenness.

UPDATE: I've been pointed to the Daily Mail article and, as a result, crossed out "They were also fully clothed."

"Yet not one of the more than 700 sex offenders who have been civilly committed in Minnesota over the past two decades has actually gone home."

"And only a few men have been provisionally discharged to live outside of state facilities under strict supervision."

“You knew you were going to die here,” said Craig Bolte, a sex offender who has been held here nine years and who says he would rather be sent to prison, where “there is still hope.”

But now Minnesota’s civil commitment program — which detains more people per capita than any other state — is facing an overhaul. Earlier this year, a federal judge found it unconstitutional, calling it “a punitive system that segregates and indefinitely detains a class of potentially dangerous individuals without the safeguards of the criminal justice system.”

"My little girl stood up to this entitled young man. She stood up to the entitled culture at St. Paul’s School."

"She stood up to the rape culture that exists in our society and allows ‘boys to be boys.’"

Said the father of sexual assault victim. The victim herself said: "What he did to me made me feel like I didn’t belong on this planet and that I would be better off dead.... Without just and right punishment, I really don’t know how I’ll put one foot in front of the other. I don’t want to feel imprisoned for the rest of my life. I want to be safe again. And I want justice."

The judge sentenced Owen Labrie to 1 year in prison, 5 years of probation, and a lifetime of registering as a sex offender.

The trial jury’s acquittal of Mr. Labrie on the main rape charges, three counts of felony aggravated sexual assault, led his lawyer, J. W. Carney Jr., to refer during Thursday’s hearing to what his client and the girl had engaged in as “a consensual encounter between two teenagers.”

Labrie was also convicted of the felony of using a computer to lure a minor, and for that, he received a 7-year suspended sentence.

The hearing closed a dramatic trial that illuminated the clubby sexual culture among some students at St. Paul’s School... the existence of secret keys, passed among boys, to private spaces on campus, as well as a list of girls Mr. Labrie had compiled, with the victim’s name in capital letters.

Both sides agreed that Mr. Labrie, then 18, had invited the girl, then 15, to join him for a “senior salute,” a practice in which younger students met seniors for a romantic encounter before graduation....

The linked article, in the NYT, used the word "girl" to refer to the victim 10 times. The word "boy" only appears twice in the article, in that quote from the father about our "rape culture" that "allows 'boys to be boys.'"

The word "man" also only appears in the article in a quote from the father, who calls him "this entitled young man."

But he was 18, and he did operate within a culture of entitlement that included preying on young women — girls. It appears that there were many other boys... young men... around him who did much the same thing and left their prey too hurt or embarrassed to come forward.

But how many poor boys have analogous stories of getting involved in gang behavior? Do we ask why the one boy who gets caught should go to prison and have his life ruined? I think we do not. We want the risk of the criminal behavior to be there, hanging over everyone, caught and uncaught, especially when so few are caught.

In her statement, the girl spoke of the isolating, suicidal thoughts and panic attacks that followed the assault. The trial itself, she said, traumatized her further.

“It’s terrible to say, but I know why people don’t come forward,” said the girl, who described feeling “physically and verbally violated” by Mr. Carney’s cross-examination.

"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."

Said the U.K. college student, who posed for a picture holding a "This is not what a rapist looks like sign."



I don't find the sign very convincing. Why would a rapist look a particular way? Rapists smile for photographs. Rapists wear shirts and sweaters. Rapists can be young white men. Rapists deny that they are rapists. Anyway, I'm willing to assume the anti-rape training session was long, tedious, and pitched at a low intellectual level. But "massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face"? The "biggest insult ... in a good few years"? "Incredibly hurtful"? To be fair, perhaps the training session was too successful in teaching him how to be super-sensitive. I hear the old REM track playing, everybody hurts.

I'm reading this over at Think Progress, where the headline is "Male Student Says He Doesn’t Need To Be Taught Not To Rape. Here’s Why He’s Wrong." First, I'd like to say that I find there to be something microaggressive about headlines like "Here’s Why He’s Wrong." So controlling. I feel stifled. Why not "Here's why I believe he's mistaken"? Acknowledge the existence of other people and their perspectives. It's taking me a while to settle down and read this column, which was written by a woman named Casey Quinlan.

[George] Lawlor asserts that he doesn’t “look like a rapist.” But what, exactly, does that mean? Lawlor never describes what a rapist should look like. 

That was my reaction too.

And, unlike the stereotype that sexual predators are strangers who jump out of the bushes, most rapists are actually people who the survivor trusted or at least knew....

Good point. 

Plus, despite the fact that Lawlor assumes most students know what consent is — even in what he calls “nuanced situations where consent isn’t immediately obvious” — the evidence suggests that college students aren’t entirely aware.

True.  But Quinlan doesn't take account of how long the training session was or how patronizing. I don't know either, but Lawlor's original blog post is available. It's called "Why I don’t need consent lessons," which suggests that he'd object even to a short presentation on a sophisticated intellectual level. Lawlor, "summoned to this year’s 'I Heart Consent Training Sessions,'" was "overcome by anger." The idea of any training at all — not just tedious, patronizing training — made him so mad he was overcome. To be overcome is to be defeated, as if by an enemy in battle. That's the nature of his anger. That's a mental state at odds with the simpering image in the photograph.

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.

Oh! For the first time, I realize that his intense reaction was to not to a long, patronizing training session, but to the invitation. He objects, strongly, to any training at all, including anything about the subtleties of consent:

I also know about those more nuanced situations where consent isn’t immediately obvious as any decent, empathetic human being does. Yes means yes, no means no. It’s really that simple. 

So it's nuanced... and yet it's really simple? Isn't it possible that the training session would open up some complexities that you hadn't thought about? Do you really know how drunk or nearly drunk your partner is allowed to be before you're doing something wrong?

... The only people who’ll turn up will be people who (surprise, surprise) already know when it’s okay to shag someone. No new information will be taught or learned....

Self-appointed teachers of consent: get off your fucking high horse. I don’t need your help to understand basic human interaction. 

If you don't go to the session, you don't know that you won't learn something and you don't know how "basic" the information will be. And why so angry? Why use the word "shag" and "fucking" in this context?

Next time you consider inviting me or anyone else to another bullshit event like this, have a little respect for the intelligence and decency of your peers. You might find that’s a more effective solution than accusing them of being vile rapists-in-waiting who can only be taught otherwise by a smug, righteous, self-congratulatory intervention.

Again, why is this man so angry? The invitation was to the "I Heart Consent Training Sessions." Where is the accusation that he's a "vile rapists-in-waiting" or that those leading the sessions are "smug, righteous, [and] self-congratulatory"? How does he know the event is "bullshit"?

Now, maybe this exaggerated language is his idea of satire. And maybe he's trying to give back the kind of rhetoric he feels he's heard from the anti-rape activists and the point is to crank up other students and get them into the mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore mode.

I'm done reacting to this character. What do you think?

"Why sex that’s consensual can still be bad. And why we’re not talking about it."

I know: newsflash. But the fact that consent is not enough to make sex good is received as news by anybody is what's interesting. It's also valuable to understand how some people got stuck on the consent/nonconsent distinction when there are so many other issues to examine.

The article, at New York Magazine, is by Rebecca Traister.

It may feel as though contemporary feminists are always talking about the power imbalances related to sex, thanks to the recently robust and radical campus campaigns against rape and sexual assault. But contemporary feminism’s shortcomings may lie in not its over­radicalization but rather its under­radicalization. Because, outside of sexual assault, there is little critique of sex. Young feminists have adopted an exuberant, raunchy, confident, righteously unapologetic, slut-walking ideology that sees sex — as long as it’s consensual — as an expression of feminist liberation. The result is a neatly halved sexual universe, in which there is either assault or there is sex positivity. Which means a vast expanse of bad sex — joyless, exploitative encounters that reflect a persistently sexist culture and can be hard to acknowledge without sounding prudish — has gone largely uninterrogated, leaving some young women wondering why they feel so fucked by fucking.

"We can't stop rape if we prize men's reputations over women's safety."

A headline at The Guardian demands that we put abstractions in hierarchical order. That's a style of thinking that feminists used to consider phallocratic.

Why can't 2 things be considered important and capable of balancing and coordination, considered in context? I remember when feminists criticized men for their unwillingness/inability to engage in that kind of complex thinking.

(Note: The underlying article does not support the headline.)

"As far as I can tell, the new 'affirmative consent' paradigm allows for a very realistic possibility of two adults raping each other at the same time..."

"... which makes a mockery of the whole concept of rape. And can't people have consensual sex even if they aren't fluent in the same language? And didn't people have consensual sex before the advent of language itself? And don't nonhuman animals have consensual sex without using language? Tying consent to 'explicit permission' seems like the kind of simplistic mistake that might be made by a first-year law student, who should realize upon further reflection that the law needs to be more accommodating of the diversity of real-world situations."

Writes John.

"The yes-means-yes standard turns almost all of us into rapists. We have let the radicals hijack this issue..."

"...with disastrous results for innocent young people." = the highest-rated comment at the NYT article "Sex Ed Lesson: ‘Yes Means Yes,’ but It’s Tricky."

The next 3 highest, in order

If we're assuming women are to weak willed or stupid to even say "no" to something they don't want to do, why don't we go full 15th century and require permission from her male relatives and a marriage?

Articles like this make feel good about being 70. Keep 'em coming.

"'Kevin de León, the California State Senate speaker pro tempore and lead sponsor of the high school legislation, said the new law was as much about changing the culture as it was about changing the law.' Changing the culture? This is a law that the California legislature passed and the Governor signed. It is not purely symbolic. Students who find themselves on the wrong side of this law may be expelled from their schools. And California has left it to the students to decipher what the law means because the grown-ups like [Shafia Zaloom, a health educator at the Urban School of San Francisco,] are unable explain it. Apparently you have to break the law to find out what it means. Talk about unconstitutional vagueness!"

ADDED: The article names a particular teenage boy asking a question — “What does that mean — you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?” — and I wonder if he affirmatively consented to having his name associated with that quote in The New York Times. The teacher, who probably consented to having the press in her classroom as she forced this intimate topic on the compulsorily educated students, said: “Pretty much.... It’s not a timing thing, but whoever initiates things to another level has to ask.”

Do you want to risk looking like a dummy in that press-observed classroom by asking what, to me, seem like the obvious questions: Sex has levels? What counts as a level? When does a level begin? Is there always someone who goes to the next level first or is it possible to change levels simultaneously? Can there be 2 new levels coming up at the same time, with one person "initiating things to" new level A while the other person is "initiating things to" new level B?

Actually, now, this has me thinking of a way students could force adults to become more responsible in their sex education behavior. Listen to what the teacher said and ask questions about the meaning of the words. A phrase like "whoever initiates things to another level has to ask" contains material for a hundred questions. Do these teachers really understand what they are saying, as it applies to real human beings, or are they struggling to follow government orders?

By the way, Zaloom is not just another teacher following government orders. As we learn in paragraph 22 of this 30-paragraph article, she "has written a curriculum for affirmative consent programs that is being used throughout the country." I was surprised to see that, because much earlier in the article, she looks like just another teacher trying to follow orders. Paragraph 9 says Zaloom "has taught high school students about sex for two decades, said she was grateful for the new standard, even as she acknowledged the students’ unease."  

Grateful? Is she a receiver of the imposition of the standard or did she... initiate?