<p>Found this too—Kopin sent a letter to the Dept of Education Office for Civil Rights:</p>
<p><a href=“DocumentCloud”>DocumentCloud;
<p><a href=“Opening New Front in Campus-Rape Debate, Brown Student Tells Education Dept. His Side”>http://chronicle.com/article/Opening-New-Front-in/147047/</a></p>
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<p>This is why I believe you should care and more importantly why the DOJ should care. You are uninterested in the scenarios where both parties are drunk however if there was intercourse then the according to the DOJ guidance the male committed a sexual assault. So schools now have two choices … 1) rigorously enforce the DOJ requirements and bring cases against a ton of their students (10+% each weekend?) … or … 2) make a conscious decision to selectively enforce the DOJ requirements and as a school decide what standards to use for enforcement (and risk getting hammered by the DOJ).</p>
<p>I think it’s great the DOJ is getting involved … but given the feds are finally getting involved I wish they would take the lead in defining a realistic and implementable definition of consent … instead of punting and using a simple definition that will cause issues in both directions. My guess is the current definition will result in a lot of males getting in trouble in situations that are hard to describe as rape (campuses that stick to the DOJ guidelines) … and also a lower level of cases pursued at some schools who decide on a very lenient standard of what to pursue. The worst of both worlds … not as many legitimate cases pursuesd as there should be … and more false positives then they should be.</p>
<p>yeah. You’re right, actually.</p>
<p>The overwhelming impression I get from the Brown case is that the accuser was in a mentally fragile state during their entire acquaintance–to put it kindly-- and that the accused would have been well advised to obey his original instinct and not have any further sexual relationship with her. She does appear to have behaved in a consistently erratic manner and constantly embellished her story, and it is unconscionable that the student activists and media outlets eagerly ran with all kinds of headline-grabbing lies, especially that the other student claimed that he also raped her. It may be that her behavior came about because of an earlier sexual assault, or was exacerbated by it. But it seems pretty clear that the accused was not responsible for her troubles, and definitely didn’t rape her by any reasonable definition of the word. </p>
<p>In any case, it is a good thing that he is pushing back and going public. He certainly has nothing to lose, and this kind of thing will, one hopes, result in a balancing of the procedures involved that will result in more actual justice for real victims and real predators.</p>
<p>Agree, I find it sad that her life, at least for awhile in cyberspace will be connected to all this publicity. I think in some ways she was taken advantage of - and not by the young man - but all the people around her who encouraged her in her embellishments and blogging and videotaping, when they should have been helping her with her trauma, quietly. He got a years suspension but the “troops” kept on compounding the situation and I think pushing her to the extreme. It’s also shameful that his name came out in the media from what should have been a confidential situation but he was between a rock and a hard place when a US Senator called him a rapist. I would have counseled the same if it were my son. He stayed quiet, but it got so absurd he had no choice but to tell Dartmouth he would not return and to turn to lawyers stop the slander. The entire situation is very, very sad and served neither person well. </p>
<p>Brown, not Dartmouth. Poor Dartmouth has enough to deal with! :)</p>
<p>Oh shoot, went to take a shower and now it’s too late to edit…</p>
<p>Reading the letter his lawyers sent to the DoE, I found it amazing how her story changed and grew and grew until Kopin was practically a murderer as well as a “brutal rapist.” I’ll admit I bought her story hook, line and sinker and thought he was a real dirtbag (now I just think he was foolish and exercised poor judgement). No one in the media seemed to bother to check on the details. The stuff Sclove’s father said at the press conference was over the line, and I agree it is better for Kopin to come out and tell his side at this point than stay silent. </p>
<p>Though, to be sure, there are those who will never believe anything he says. To some part of the world, he will always be known as that guy who nearly choked a girl to death while raping her, not to mention that he is a “serial” offender. That Senator owes him an apology, but I don’t think it will ever happen.</p>
<p>hmm … I’m going to make another plunge into this thread.</p>
<p>To me the rhetoric about the rape culture doesn’t ring particularly true and I believe is somewhat counter productive. The more time the most people spend on trying to fix true underlying problems the more progress will be made. Arguing about rhetoric among folks who agree there is a problem doesn’t really help. I’m going to try to get to this point in two steps.</p>
<p>First some personal experience. I got a masters at Stanford in the 81-82 school year. That year there was a rapist on campus. There was strong reaction on campus including public meetings and demonstrations. While most of these activities at these events were pragmatic discussions about what’s next (safety tips, reporting tips, development of a campus escort service, etc) there were also a few speakers talking about the misogyny on campus and how it creates an environment that encourage male students to rape … this including a lot of talk about males “do x behaviors”. The first meeting was 50/50 female/male with hundreds(?) of males … the second meeting the ration of men was way down. Among the men the comments were the rapist would be lucky if he was caught by the police because if he got caught by a guy on campus he probably end up dead … however at the meeting there was a lot of talk about how men where the problem. I get the anger and the hurt of the situation but bashing 50% of the folks trying to help doesn’t really help. In the end the rapist was caught because one victim bit his tongue almost off and they caught him when he went to see doctor … it was a non-student coming on campus to hunt victims. This experience was the final one when I decided to label myself as a humanist and not a feminist.</p>
<p>I do get the hurt and anger. I am a parent of a daughter, my spouse is a women, one of parents is a women, my one sibling is a women, and over the last 30 years or so my best friends have mostly been women … women are at the core of my life and the safety and well being is of the utmost importance to me. 30 years later women’s issues are still among the most important to which I donate money, materials, and time … however I still feel as a male unwelcome to help work to solutions giving the rhetoric … and still feel more comfortable with label humanist.</p>
<p>This is how I think it relates to this thread. </p>
<p>There are numerous posts talking about the rape culture and about misogyny. If 20% of women have been sexually assaulted on campus and most men who assault women assault many women then a small minority of men are the problem … and, similar the Stanford situation, I’d guess the vast majority of men believe those guilty should be caught, have something nasty done to their genitalia, and severely punished. To me there is big disconnect between rhetoric about a broken culture that corrupts (all) men and the reality of a few sick men and the lion’s share of men not having an issue understanding the limits and respecting boundaries and also being appalled by the behavior. </p>
<p>Similarly, to me the rhetoric referencing the rape culture and misogyny for the way campuses/schools have mishandled rapes in the past is misplaced and counter productive. I believe the schools behavior has been appalling and frankly criminal … however, they have exhibited the exact same indifference to child molestation (Penn St), academic fraud (UNC), regular assault, robberies, etc. These are large bureaucracies that are trying to protect themselves … in some insane way they believe hiding this stuff will protect the reputation and financial interests of the bureaucracy … (and as history has shown a million times ultimately the cover-up is much worse for the bureaucracy than the initial issue). The cover-up mentality is the core problem of why schools have not addressed sexual assaults on campus … they need to develop open and transparent process with folk without conflicts-of-interests involved to handle misbehavior of all types on campus. Personally, this is why I believe the DOJ becoming involved is really powerful … they have hit all the schools over the head with a bat and woken them up about their bureaucratic stonewalling.</p>
<p>Bottom line … I believe the more time spent focused on the biggest true drivers the more progress will be made.</p>
<p>To address the problem, it needs to be understood as a system (rape culture): <a href=“Rebecca Solnit: A Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year – Guernica”>http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-a-rape-a-minute-a-thousand-corpses-a-year/</a></p>
<p>Great piece, @mamalion</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>First @mamalion thanks for that article. It’s very clear.</p>
<p>@3togo I appreciate that you are looking for a solution. The main thing I have to say is that until there was a strong push from victims of rape, and advocates of victims of rape, and the DOJ, nothing had changed vis a vis college rape in decades and decades. </p>
<p>While I understand you believe you are elucidating a new position, the idea that women should not discuss rape culture is silly. Too many women are raped every year to see this as anything other than a cultural problem. If twenty percent of men could look forward to being raped, I’m sure we would see this as a massive cultural breakdown. Most women do.</p>
<p>Read that article. It’s very interesting.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>With regard to this issue, I told my S, who will enter college this Fall, that so much of life is like a Rorschach test – there are innumerable interpretations of events and experiences and the popular interpretations at any one time are a function of the then current trends. He may wish to interact mostly with other students who understand this and can look beyond the perceptual ruts they find themselves in, but the reality is that many of those he encounters will be governed by the popular trends and he needs to be aware of them.</p>
<p>That is certainly true, austinareadad. But if I had a kid, particularly an S, heading off to college I would ask him or her to read the article mamalion posted and discuss it with me. In fact, I would do this with any HS kid.</p>
<p>Consolation, if this is turned into a war of men against women where men are “the bad guys” and the solution is for women to stay away from men, as the author of that article seemed to suggest, I am pretty confident that the future will be more horrible than almost anyone can imagine. I know it is popular to state that women don’t need men, but I am quite sure that men do need women and they will break any rules they need to in order to make that happen. Also, only a complete lunatic thinks that men can be eliminated. The solution is to improve communication, restore trust, and repair the damaged relations between the sexes, and I just don’t see enough people interested in doing that.</p>
<p>Did you read it all the way through to the conclusion? She says the very opposite of what you are suggesting.</p>
<p>“Increasingly men are becoming good allies—and there always have been some. Kindness and gentleness never had a gender, and neither did empathy. Domestic violence statistics are down significantly from earlier decades (even though they’re still shockingly high), and a lot of men are at work crafting new ideas and ideals about masculinity and power.
Gay men have been good allies of mine for almost four decades. (Apparently same-sex marriage horrifies conservatives because it’s marriage between equals with no inevitable roles.) Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. But we are free together or slaves together.”</p>
<p>This sounds like “let’s all be on the same team” to me.</p>
<p>*Here I want to say one thing: though virtually all the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesn’t mean all men are violent. Most are not. In addition, men obviously also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, and every violent death, every assault is terrible. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women, both intimate violence and stranger violence. *</p>
<p>We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they’re splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, it’s a human rights issue, it’s everyone’s problem, it’s not isolated, and it’s never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. It’s your job to change it, and mine, and ours.</p>
<p>Yes, really, austinareadad, that was not my take-away from the article in the LEAST. I am the mother of a son and a humanist, and I certainly do not see men as enemies OR want to live without them.</p>