How is a man on a college campus supposed to do his homework and study while knowing it can all be for nothing if at any time during the next 4 years, any woman says he raped her at some time in the past when it is not possible for him to prove where he was so long ago?
For a guy to rape a woman, she at least must trust him enough to go into a private bedroom with him. If a guy does rape her in the park, there will be plenty of evidence, assuming she reports it in time.
As for “but the law is gender neutral”: show me one case where a woman was expelled for raping a man. Just one case. I think we all know that regardless of how a law is written, the tribunals strongly favor the women. Any guy who dares report a woman would just fall victim to a counter accusation. Any guy who reports that he fears a woman plans to falsely accuse him or threatened to, will find that what might have been now actually is, and he is the defendant not the plaintiff.
I’m a guy. I have a cracked tooth because these rules made me so angry a year ago that I clenched my teeth together too hard. I have a high GPA, which slid as I thought about it more. I graduated, but I was not able to focus in graduate school. The only reason a ton more guys are dropping out is because most schools don’t teach guys the rules. If they do, they water them down to make them sound harmless. They won’t learn just how strict they are until they are in a tribunal. How is it ethical to make rules no one has heard of and then enforce them without full teaching just how strict they are?
I never said they judge me for not drinking (although the fact I do drink with them likely made them like me more). I said that they drink any time they socialize. Therefore, if I were to ever kiss one of them, it would only occur while they are drinking, unless I ask them to please not drink this time so that they can consent. That is the environment most university students are in. Your policy is making them all into rapists, but only the men are getting penalized.
I agree. Execution would be a larger deterrent, assuming victims were willing to levy that penalty against their attacker. I don’t think either penalty is fair to someone who has a 50% chance of being innocent.
@OnMyWay2013
You are much better than the lawyers who came up with the affirmative consent idea. Many public officials, lawyers, and theorists behind it very openly say they want all men to be in fear, since fear is a good way to deter rape. I think they are horrible people. Putting men in fear is no better than when women were in fear.
Do you believe that as long as there is one woman raped, that is too many? What about the psychological damage done to a man who is falsely convicted? Is that one too many too, or do men’s lives not matter? I believe there should be a tradeoff between the 2 goals, not 100% one way or the other.
True, my fine would not be a complete deterrent. I ever said it would deter 100% or even 90%. I think it would deter 75%, if men knew there was a 100% chance of getting it if a woman they had sex with accused them. I think a 75% reduction in rapes is good enough, if it can be had without terrifying the innocent.
If she reports it within 24 hours, the fine could be higher. If he can tell she is angry at him, he should not have sex with her.
You need help… I’ve never cracked a freaking tooth even though the likelihood of me, as a 20-year-old female, being raped or sexually assaulted is much higher than you being falsely accused by some random person.
I could, at any moment, be accused of plagiarism and expelled for not citing a single quotation or for not paraphrasing something enough or for having phrasing that looks like someone else’s. Any time I get behind the wheel of a car, I could kill someone or be killed by making a mistake. Any time I eat meat / fish / eggs or something that’s been prepared by someone else, I could catch a food-borne illness and die.
Those are actually fears that keep me up at night, and fears that I base my life around to some degree. But at the same time, I’m not going to drop out of college, or stop driving, or turn down everything that people offer me outside of my house. While I realize the consequences of these things are very serious and permanent, I recognize that there are precautions I can take to protect myself from them. These things happen rarely enough that I’m not going to let the fears completely take over my life.
You might get falsely accused of rape. But what if you don’t? Maybe at the specific school you keep referring to, it’s more likely to happen, but I have no reason to believe the law is like that everywhere.
Personally, I don’t think this law or any laws relating to things like abuse and assault are carried out in a gender-neutral way, even if the language is meant to be gender-neutral. Do you want the law to be gender-neutral concerning rape/assault? You did say, at one point: “I also think a small woman should not be charged with sexual assault at all. If she is, it should just be mild harassment. I think the huge push to make it gender neutral only is from the desire to use Title 9, which mandates gender neutrality.”
The environment most university students are in? Where people don’t socialize unless alcohol is involved, and where people always end up in sexual situations? I have trouble believing it, but I also don’t go to a “party school,” so there are a lot of social events without alcohol, and when there are parties with alcohol, most people just talk and dance. So I’ll take your word for it…
Yes, one woman is too many. Yes, one man is too many. Yes, men’s lives matter. But just like how in cancer diagnosis techniques, there are always false positives and false negatives, there is no 100% accurate way to judge rape cases. Like you said, there needs to be a tradeoff. The point of debate is whether affirmative consent laws are a mild shift or a jump from 100% one way to the other. There are some people who will say the latter but still not care, like Ezra Klein, but many also don’t think the shift is that large.
Considering that a lot of people don’t go into sexual encounters planning to rape or even knowing what they’re doing is rape, I don’t think that the existence of a fine alone will do much. And if the risk of being punished were the only thing that would make me care about obtaining consent (vs. basic respect), I’d think: Being fined is not a serious punishment. So getting her drunk to get laid isn’t a big deal. So it’s not a big deal if I ignore her for another minute until I finish. So as long as he isn’t pushing me off, it’s fine.
DISCLAIMER: I am aware that several different people have responded to my post, but I’m on my phone and can’t get all the appropriate usernames. My entire post is NOT directed at any one person.
It’s been shown that 8%-10% of ALL (not just college) rape accusations are false. That means that 90%-92% are true. That’s an A, not a C. The likelihood of being falsely accused by someone you have never interacted with, let alone have had sex with, is lower than the likelihood of me being raped by a complete stranger, and that’s saying something (80%+ of rape cases are someone the victim knows and trusts).
I wasn’t putting words in anyone’s mouth. I was making a point to be clear that a victim of assualt is always a victim because I was about to launch into how neither gender should drink to excess as a matter of personal safety (alcohol poisoning).
@traveller2013 Your proposition of a fine is no better than whatever rules at your school have you so anxious. A fine that large would be devastating to most college students, and their reputation would still be tarnished.
I’m honestly not sure how schools should handle this. On the one hand, maybe they shouldn’t be involved at all. On the other hand, if my dorm room was broken into or I was mugged on campus I would report it to the school AND the police. In some places where the school has its own police jurisdiction, reporting to campus security and reporting to the cops are the same thing. Further, higher education is not currently a right and neither is employment; if I was accused of a crime, I could be fired from my job, especially because I work front end in a pharmacy. Living in society has as many benefits as risks.
As for having been assaulted, that’s not the case and I don’t appreciate the assumption. Setting a standard for consent isn’t about stopping rapists, it’s about combatting the “he/she didn’t say no or fight” defense. I was once in a situation that could have turned terrible. A coworker wanted to take a kinda-date that ended up at his house further. I was not interested in doing so and the way he brought it up scared me to death. I told him no very clearly, verbally. My body language also communicated no. Thankfully, he backed off immediately and took me home. I wasn’t a victim of anything more than a huge misunderstanding.
“The police do not have jurisdiction over the school.”
I will agree 100% that a private school can violate anyone’s rights they want to. They can throw anyone out they want to.
But a state or other public institution, I believe, whether or not it has been proven yet in court, that civil rights can’t be violated.
My son is in school in NY, and I believe they have a “yes means yes” state policy.
Note by the way, they also have a zero tolerance for drug addicts but nothing mentioned about drug dealers - I know that where I teach, which is a state school, they will not throw out drug addicts.
That is a lie spread by radicals. In 2%-10% of cases, police find that accusers say they were lying about the rape, and that it did not occur. That does not mean it did not occur, but just that the accuser chose to say that, maybe just to end the questioning.
4% of accusations lead to a conviction. Of those, 30% are exonerated after 12 years in prison because DNA proved innocence. That does not mean the woman was lying. It just means they caught the wrong guy.
The rest, 85%, are in unknown middle zone, where police can’t prove either way. Those are let go after the guy’s life has been ruined by the accusation, true or false. Feminists often count this portion in with the “true rapes”. I think we can all agree that is very dishonest.
There simply is no way to know how many are false and how many are true. Given how damaging a rape accusation can be to someone, I say 1. we keep the accused anonymous just like the accusers, 2. We never penalize the accused, so they will come forward, 3. We need a short statute of limitations, which is reasonable if we make it painless for them, 4. The 4% would still get convicted, even though we know 30% are innocent, 5. The 85% would stay anonymous, but all would be fined, 6. Only the 8% should not be fined, and those women should not be fined either. Sound fair?
First people say the fine would not deter rapists, and now you say it would be devastating. I’m a poor college student. I would be very upset by the fine, but it would not devastate me. I’d continue on to the next semester. Under current school rules, students are expelled instead of given a fine. Don’t you agree that is even worse? Conviction is hard to avoid, even for the innocent.
My fine idea does not give the person a record. It is all quiet. We just keep track of whether they get accused again, to link a pattern, but no one in the public can see the secret record.
That is what I want to change. There are many things we can’t protect ourselves from, but I think we can deter 75% of rapists and not overly hurt the innocent. I also say if someone kills someone, claims it is self defense, and we can’t prove either way, give them 1 year.
That only works if the guy does not know the rules. If he knows the rules, and he is a rapist, he would just lie that he asked and you said yes. If he is a good guy and does not know the rules, then they just serve to guarantee his conviction.
See? The “no means no” standard worked just fine there, because he did not want to rape you. Had he wanted to rape you, the “yes means yes” standard would not have saved you, nor would it have stopped him from lying about it later.
Did he bring it up verbally, or by reaching for you? Are you saying that if he had asked to have sex, that would not have scared you?
I suspect many women would be frightened even by a guy asking.
I think guys should verbally ask if he has been been drinking, since drunk guys can’t read body language as well. Best not to make a first move while drinking, but not many people will obey that.
There are people who fear lightning strikes, and people who think they can win the lottery. I don’t have either irrational believe. I do fear getting my perfect record damaged. I’ve been told by my friends I worry too much, since I don’t do drugs and don’t drink and drive. But each of them has a misdemeanor for those. Each of them. So who was right to worry? Me.
In your situation, that was a first time bringing up of the topic, best done verbally. You did not say how he went about it. I think once people have been dating a while and done activities, it is less reasonable for the school to require them to have to ask every time, unless you tell them they must.
You may feel safer if he asked in front of others, but if your answer would have been yes, then it would not be private. People who try to keep sex private often ask out of earshot of others. Then you get fearful and think it is an attack.
Some sources say that if a guy invites a woman out to look at the stars with him, it is likely a rape attempt.
Any rapist who thinks he/she can get away with saying whatever should say that the person gave full consent. Even if you don’t know the rules, why would you do anything other than paint a picture of perfectly consensual sex? Because you don’t think that what you did is rape. Good guy or not, if you had sex without affirmative consent, you still committed a crime. So setting a standard for consent (more importantly, teaching it to people instead of hiding it in the rulebook) will stop, at the very least, those “good guy” rapists. Also, if the system is guilty until proven innocent, and the victim’s account is taken as fact while the accused has to prove his account is true… If someone can be convicted for raping someone they never had sex with but encountered once on a beach a long time ago… How is a rapist lying going to help?
Laws do stop people from committing crimes, especially when the potential punishment is severe. If someone specifically wanted to rape (as in, he/she wanted the sex to be against your will) or didn’t care whether or not they raped you, a “no means no” standard wouldn’t work either. We see this in the fact that people who say “No” or “Stop” multiple times still can get raped. But if he/she wanted to have consensual sex, and you couldn’t say no because you were too drunk or afraid, a “no means no” standard would say, “There’s no “no,” so you have consent and can go ahead.” But an affirmative consent standard would say, “You didn’t get a “yes,” so this is still rape.”
And frightened by a guy asking if she wants to have sex? I would think that if there were fear, it would be that rejecting sex will lead to rape or violence (or in some cases, fear that a person will leave them or that she’ll otherwise be shamed for it). But rapists don’t ask, so I’d think that while the proposition would out someone in the awkward situation of possibly saying “no,” it would put someone more at ease, not less…
I think it’s perfectly rational to not want to do illegal things because it will go on your record, lol. But if someone planned on, say, avoiding women for the your life because you’re scared of a random hookup, or friend, or girlfriend, or even wife accusing you of rape in such a way that it ends up being a 50/50 case and having it put on your record, that’s another thing. If that’s why someone never went to parties and didn’t drink, that’s different. That’s when a legitimate fear becomes a phobia.
@OnMyWay2013 : thank you, the yes means yes as a legal standard was the point I was trying to make. I don’t know why this is such a difficult thing to grasp.
@traveller2013 : you’re talking like the mere proposition of sex will cause a woman to falsely accuse a man of rape. For the record, my former* coworker made a vague proposition, and when I told him no, he said something along the lines of “you’re alone with me in my house, it’s the middle of the night, no one knows where you are, what did you think was going to happen?” When my response was “what the bleep is that supposed to mean?”, that was when he took me home. Rape can be a crime of opportunity just like any other crime. Sheesh, I wasn’t scared because he wanted to have sex, I was scared because he made something that sure sounded like a threat at 2am.
(*former coworker, because he was fired two months before this incident for hanging up on a customer)
He asked, you said no, and he was rude but took you home.
So this in an affirmative consent example where what went wrong was him saying something else that scared you. Notice how that is not illegal under affirmative consent. I don’t see how that example is a knock against “no means no”.
Which means you did not teach them the rules, or else they would have known it was rape. Teach them the rules, and they then know what to lie. This does not catch rapists.
No, they don’t stop people from committing crimes when the likelihood of a penalty is low. My fine would apply even if he gives a perfect story of consensual sex. If the woman says she did not welcome it, that is it. He gets fined. No questioning whose definition is right. Most men I asked said a $500 fine is pretty high. I think it would deter rapists very well. Did you know that before tasers, people disobeyed police because they figured they would not actually shoot them? Once tasers came out, people complied, because the threat was realistic. The same is true of OCR. $250,000 fines get more compliance than threats of removing federal funding. This is very effective at deterring crime. Expelling the innocent is unfair. The rare (as you admitted) $500 fine would not harm the innocent much, but would deter the rapists.
It would if we allowed other words or actions to indicate no, and did not count participation as consent when it occurred following threatening behavior that would make a reasonable person feel fear.
No. Rape is sex against your will or without your knowledge. Asking is just a way to verify it. If the sex is welcome, then the fact you did not ask does not make it rape. Failing to ask is taking a risk, but it is the difference between drunk driving and actually killing someone where killing someone is rape. All driving carries risks, much of which is legal. If someone is smiling strongly enough, most people would agree the probability of welcomness of at least a kiss high enough.
@OnMyWay2013 @PrivateConundrum
You want the ugly guys to ask, since you don’t want them to touch you ever at all. But if a good looking guy asked all the time, it would not be ideal. Yet under Affirmative Consent, if he ever failed to ask even once, even though she was smiling at him so strongly, he is a rapist. That is crazy. This law just serves to make every guy guilty of rape. 99% of women won’t charge him, but the 1% who might will have total power over his life. He must obey their every whim or else be charged for what happened 2 years ago. That is not good public policy.
I don’t want anyone to touch me “ever at all” unless they ask or we are in an actual relationship. Being good-looking doesn’t excuse someone from basic courtesy.
Under affirmative consent, even being married is not justification to ever kiss without asking.
I debated OnMyWay2013 about whether someone could say, “You don’t need to ask anymore to kiss me. Just do it if you feel like it, until I say otherwise”. OnMayWay2013 said “that is giving overreaching latitude [and should not be honored in a court]”. If he kisses his girlfriend the next day after she had told him that, she could hold it against him 6 months later and say that was sexual assault.
Do you think it is right for schools to have that rule?
Even the “no means no” crowd would agree that it is sexual assault for a guy to just walk up to a woman, even a classmate or friend, and grab her rear end.
I’m glad you at least recognize there are some “actual relationships” where always asking is not necessary. I’d just like you to clarify that for the other people in this thread, since the affirmative consent taught on most college campuses says consent must be asked for immediately prior.
Why the hell would she? You’re acting like women are scheming harpies just waiting to ruin your entire life for daring to look at us the wrong way. We made someone so angry that he cracked his tooth! Muahaha! Chalk one up for womankind!
I am in a committed, serious relationship and have been for over two and a half years. Of course we don’t ask “Can I kiss you?” anymore. But we’d better well back off if the other person says “I don’t feel like that right now.” And you’d better well ask if you want to move on to something new.
I have been friends with my boyfriend for seven or eight years. If you have, instead, known the partner for seven or eight hours or seven or eight weeks, you don’t know them well enough to assume consent for anything. Long-term relationships may develop a shorthand. But in none of your examples have you talked about relationships lasting years and years. I don’t know why you’re acting as if this view goes against my prior posts.
Even under my fine proposal, you could fine a guy who did not break my less restrictive law but did break your more restrictive personal rules. Just embellish the story slightly, do so soon after the even, say 72 hours, and he would have a hard time proving otherwise. I agree touching strangers should be illegal, and that is where there would most likely be witnesses.
Most guys can tell by looking at a woman whether she wants him to touch her. It gigantic small and batting eyelashes are an indication he can try to hold her hand. If she is not giving those signals, he will learn quickly from a small fine.
Better yet, so neither side needs to lie, the law should be, “If he ever does not ask her for permission, she can have him fined, an infraction even though many couples break it. If she came forward promptly, we take her on her word that at best he misread her. If he ignores a no, even a non-verbal no such as upset body language, that is sexual assault, a much worse offense. Again, absent some proof either way, it is still just the fine.” If there are witnesses nearby, we go off their story.
If assaulters are taught that they will just about 100% for sure be at least fined if accused by a woman they chose to be in the presence of alone, I think that will be very effective, for the same reason tasers are more effective than guns for police getting compliance. To protect men, only those women they invited to be with them alone would have this power. Not just any woman could walk over to him and have the automatic power. If a guy can see a woman is giving him the look of death, he can protect himself by trying to stay away from her and stay around other people.
And all men are well aware that the current school rules are only intended to convict men, not women. We know 99% of convicts are men. Saying it is gender neutral is not winning any votes from us. So can we please drop that act and focus instead on the standard of proof and penalty that makes enough women safe without harming too many men? When guys know they can be expelled just on someone’s word, that puts us under a lot of stress.