The issue with this position is that it assumes a defined line of consent which is generally shared by both parties. However, one of the main theses of the article was that the very definition of consent itself can been so radically altered as to make this a strong assumption. For example, one definition of rape presented in the article ("Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated") doesn't care at all about whether the woman consented, verbally or otherwise.
Anyways, that doesn't matter. The reform described by the article is for the purposes of a more fair investigative process. Not one tilted towards the accuser, not one tilted towards the victim, but a fair process. Would you not also agree that a fair process is a desirable goal for any society?
Process is necessarily probabilistic. The more "fair" things are for the accused, the less often victims rights will be vindicated. (Hence the phrase "better to let 10 guilty men go free than have one innocent man go to jail.")
That process is essential where criminal penalties are in play. But it's not clear to me that the same weighting is warranted in every situation.
I am not negating the fact that rape is a serious offense and likely occurs with great frequency but we must always balance the rights of the accused and the accuser with legal process. Innocent until proven guilty is the bedrock of our justice system and without it we may as well revert to having a counsel of biased tribal elders decide guilt and punishment.
> As Catharine Mackinnon, the progenitor of the school of feminism from which this movement proceeds, once put it, “Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”
Plenty of people feel violated after being dumped by a significant other, or feeling unsatisfied by entirely consensual sex (see the Aziz Ansari story). Even getting explicit, affirmative consent is no guarantee that the other party will feel violated.
But his argument stands if it is being pushed as a norm, with attempts to either formally enshrine this as a norm or policies that make it easier to enforce as a norm.
... and that just appears to be straightforwardly true in the university system. The quibbles are as to how effective and widespread such a push is.
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 Or rather, consent can be withdrawn retroactively.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.
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.
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...
This seems to be part of the point of these efforts, and also socially desirable. Don't take advantage of marginal situations; don't toe the line. Don't do anything you can't defend later. Those are all good things to tell young men.
Or just plain seduction. Getting women excited enough that they'd want to have sex. I recall an intimate conversation with a female friend, who shared that she'd never let a guy touch her breasts, unless she wanted to have sex. Because once she did, and he did, she would.
Even that could be borderline, if there's a premeditated intent to seduce. Yet seduction is often a consensual process. But maybe not consensually with the goal of sex. And there's where it gets crazy.
Anyway, I was thinking more about being cautious regarding sexual politics. As in researching the potential partner's social media history. Or just introducing the issue in a casual way, and seeing what they say.
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...
For men the category you want to look at is "made to penetrate". For CDC data the "rape" category only counts victims being penetrated, so if a woman forces a man to have sex with her that is instead counted under "made to penetrate".
It could also be pursued as a consciousness-raising campaign.
And what you say about avoiding what you "can't defend later" seems disingenuous. Because from TFA, I gather that there's typically no mechanism for making a defense.
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".
> As Catharine Mackinnon, the progenitor of the school of feminism from which this movement proceeds, once put it, "Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated."
Maybe she's not a "modern feminist". But that's the sense I get from TFA about current policies.
This is less far-fetched than it may seem at first. Many people on HN would agree with the proposition that an arbitration clause in an employment contract with a big company is only theoretically consensual. The concept of "wage slavery" is widely accepted on HN as well. The basis of these ideas is that people may "consent" to something but that is not the same thing as welcoming the thing. In the sexual context, few people would disagree that, for example, someone cannot "consent" to sex with a prison guard or an arresting police officer. What about economic or social coercion? What does consent mean in cultures where women have no way to support themselves or any social standing outside a relationship with a man?
I get what you say about "coercive circumstances that existed at the time of the act." However, the following paragraph isn't at all reassuring. I mean, there may well be circumstances that pressure someone into having sex. But if their sexual partner isn't personally responsible for those circumstances, why should they suffer?
As to “responsibility” it’s not an easy concept either. People who don’t create the coercive circumstances often knowingly take advantage of them. I’d point out that when McKinnon wrote the quote, it was still legally impossible in some states to rape your wife. (Marriage was essentially considered irrevocable consent.) Even today, social dynamics are geared toward what male expectations—sex on demand with no strings attached. Any given man many not create this framework, but they live within it and take advantage of it. (Although that’s slowly changing. They did an investigation at my kid’s school into widespread sex between male teachers and high school students in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time it was “bad” but tolerated. Today we would call it rape. The liberalism of the sexual revolution, which as Dworkin points out accrued largely to the benefit of men, is being recalibrated and that’s a good thing.)
But if the women profiled in TFA are credible, things have gone too far on college campuses.
This is injecting your own message into what was written. MacKinnion wrote that, "Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated". Feelings of violation can manifest after sex, and it is an assumption on your part that this does not fall into scope of what MacKinnon considers sex. MacKinnon wrote that she considers it rape "whenever" women feel violated, so at face value this encompasses feelings of violation that manifest after the fact.
MacKinnon writes right after that quote:
> I think it's fairly common, and is increasingly known to be common, for men to seek sexual access to women in ways that we find coercive and unwanted. On those occasions the amount and kind of force are only matters of degree. The problem is that rapes do not tend to be reported or prosecuted or sanctioned based on the force that was used; not based on how coercive it was and not based on how violated the woman feels; instead they are based on how intimate she is with the person who did it. This is why most women think we won't be believed in reporting the most common rapes, that is, rapes by people we know.
Hell of a gamble to take with your life and freedom
Funny how that works...
What sounds like a crazy exaggerated joke(ok it is), there were actually cases where this happened and prevented people from being sentenced as rapists. The Gina-Lisa Lohfink case in Germany for example. The sex tape is arguably what saved these men from jail. An especially disconcerning part however is that the allegations were made after the video surfaced. So even with video proof it was a matter for a court with experts being called in to interpret the video.