By David Futrelle
Sorry I was out of commission yesterday! This is part of the reason why: my latest piece on The Cut about education secretary Betsy DeVos’s new campus rape policy, which turns out to be not really much of a policy at all.
Here’s the basic argument, minus most of the fun details about the terrible Men’s Rights activists and other reactionaries whose bad ideas she’s basically absorbed.
DeVos had been widely expected to use her speech today at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia to announce a rollback of the Obama administration’s guidance on how colleges should deal with accusations of rape. This she did, declaring the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter — requiring that colleges take rape accusations more seriously — basically null and void. …
So what does DeVos propose as a replacement for this “failed system?” She’s got nothing.
That’s right. After torpedoing the “Dear Colleague” letter, she offers college administrators precisely zero guidance on how the Department of Education expects them to fulfill their Title IX responsibilities. …
Instead of guidance, DeVos offers only a promise that her department “will launch a transparent notice-and-comment process to incorporate the insights of all parties in developing a better way.”
So the “era of ‘rule by letter’” is over, but the “better way” is yet to come. What exactly are college administrators expected to do in the in-between days? More to the point: what are victims of sexual assault on college campuses supposed to do?
Betsy DeVos literally has no answer.
It’s going to be a mess.
Naturally, the MRAs are thrilled. More on that tomorrow.
Yeah, Challenge in particular had all the same story beats as Sharpe’s Tiger. I’ve always wanted to see the Jetti fight on screen, so that was fun to finally watch. It wasn’t the best Sharpe film by any stretch, but it was well-cast (with the exception of Padma Lakshmi, who is a terrible actress) and held its own for the most part.
You’re dishonest and you’re an idiot, because we have due process in between accusation and punishment in order to determine whether someone is guilty. It’s not to make it more difficult to punish rapists. It’s to make sure we are punishing rapists and not innocent people. No justice is served to a rape victim if some random person is punished and the actual rapist goes free. So your whining about lynch mobs is not only ahistorical and racially offensive, it’s a red herring.
But this is neither here nor there, because you’re dishonest and an idiot in another way, which is that you jumped straight to capital punishment when the system actually in play is the student code of conduct system in higher education. Nobody ever went to jail from a college tribunal, let alone was hung. That’s a gross mischaracterization of the issue on your part.
In short, you’re a dishonest idiot and you should feel bad.
I never said you, personally falsely accused David of doxxing. I said you defended the people who falsely accused David of doxxing.
Also, are you saying that it’s okay to falsely accuse if they things that can be deemed inflammatory? For example, since Paul Elam calls women cunts and bitches, he should take a look at his own behavior if a woman falsely accuses him of rape?
If MRAs are going to position themselves as fighting against false accusations because they’re the worst, most life destroying things ever, you need to be consistent in that position and defend even people you don’t like against them.
Ooh, looks like Shadrach noticed me! Permit me a rebuttal:
THBBBBBPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHT
Once again — you reeeeeeeally need to run this kind of thing past Meshach and Abednego. Could have saved yourself some carpal tunnel, with all this backtracking you’ve got to do now. “Oh, I didn’t REALLY mean feminists/Democrats/whoever were a lynch mob out to murder innocent people, I was just doing my best Maude Simpson ‘think of the children’ impression, honest! Buuuuuuuut I’m still going to act like a YUGE racist by deliberately ignoring Still Fiqah, and only Still Fiqah.”
Oh…you thought you could just sneak that one in under the radar? Cute, but: nah.
You stupid, stupid person, these universities are under NO obligation to abandon the policies they put in place due to Obama’s Title IX guidelines. Fucking shove it with your goddamned duplicious nonsense.
Have you any idea what colleges and unversities USED to do? Look the other way. When rapes were called into the town PD, people were told to contact campus police. It was swept under the rug as a “campus crime.” And most of the time, campus police did nothing. THIS IS WHY CAMPUS ASSAULTS WERE THRUST INTO THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Yanno, I can’t even with you. So tired of the people who pretend sexual assaults are a part of “the campus experience,” and every action taken address this is met by hostility from those denialists who think while campus rapes are non-existent, false rape accusations are somehow at some fucking all-time high.
I can’t, I can’t with this person. Mammotheers, carry on the refutation; this one is making me feel physically ill.
Also, commentariat: I’m sorry for asking a question you have, no doubt, fielded several dozen times…but how do you embed images in this forum? There’s a page from Gunnerkrigg Court that applies to our latest troll, here.
PeeVee: have you tried [nyoom]? Center yourself in the [nyoom]. Let the absurdities and the enormities of the outside world just [nyoom] away.
TW: rape and stalking.
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In spring of 1994 a student was gang raped by members of my college’s football team.
She went to the police.
They arrested the rapists, all 8 of them.
The football coach bailed them out.
In court they said the violent gang rape over a toilet was consensual sex. The judge said it must have been, because all 8 of them said so.
The victim dripped out. The rapists continued to live on campus and get cheered at every game.
That fall a man began stalking another student. She told the police. They told her that even though he’d pretended to be a student and sat in class in order to follow her, he’d broken no laws.
He tried to abduct her and broke her wrist in the struggle. She got away. She called the police. They told her never to go anywhere alone. Her sorority sisters began taking turns walking her to class. When they weren’t available, she had to call campus security to escort her. Once she drove herself. She parked under a street lamp only feetmfrom the door of her dorm. He was waiting. He raped her in the parking lot. She called the police. The rapist produced a movie ticket for a movie that played during the rape. They let him go. She dropped out.
A student was jogging in the basketball court. (because that was the safe place to run) A naked man in a clown mask jumped out at her and chased her. She called the police. Her sorority sisters thought it was so funny that they filled her bedroom with clown dolls. She dropped out.
At one point a man was cutting women with a box cutter when they walked home from class. We were told to be careful. Every women’s bathroom stall had instructions on how not to be raped on the door. It was a constant reminder that it was our job to not let men rape us and that we weren’t safe anywhere near that campus.
I had a stalker in ’95. My boyfriend started driving me to my night classess. I found out the stalker had actually lived in my hometown. He found out where I lived on campus and where my parents house was. He’s stalked and tried to assault various girls years before ’95. I was not his first, 3rd or 5th target. One was a cheerleader who cleaned his clock when he grabbed her. He’s done it at other schools too. His parents just kept moving him somewhere else.
My dad gave me a knife. I carried a body alarm. I told the school. They told him I was complaining about him. A professor told me he knew I was making trouble for him and to watch out. I decided not to go back in the fall.
He used to hang out at a local coffee shop and asking women to drive him home. A student I knew scared him off.
He started stalking a professor.
They finally kicked him out of school.
Do you see the pattern? Because that’s the end goal of this policy. They don’t want women seeking higher education.
That school? It advertised itself as the safest school in the south. Still does. And do you know how it does that? No convictions = no rapes, no stalkers, no assaults. They were never invested in keeping us safe. They were invested in keeping their reputation as “safe”.
This administration wants women back in the kitchen. No abortion. No contraception. Single mothers cannot file their taxes as breadwinner. Women can be paid less than men.
This is all by design. Don’t doubt for a second that they know what they’re doing. The right learned its lesson fighting abortion rights.They can’t just force women into unwanted marriages, unwanted motherhood and unwanted domestic servitude. So, like abortion rights, they’ll come at it from the sides. They’ll chip away and chip away until they get the outcome they want. They’re doing the same with ethnic cleansing and eugenics. We’re being gaslit the whole way. Don’t fall for it.
Schadrach,
Fuck off, you disgustingly dishonest piece of trash.
Fuck all the way off and keep fucking off until you find yourself on another plane of existence and then fuck off some more.
You aren’t worth any other response.
Dimmy, I am reaching for my inner [nyoom] right now, but I’d much rather Schadrach zoom off into the night, never to be seen on these hallowed pages again.
I don’t know, Lea. I think he’s worthy of my old S!N standby “Eat literally all the shit and die in a penis fire.”
Comfort kitties
http://s3.favim.com/orig/47/cat-cats-cute-kitty-lovely-Favim.com-437499.jpg
Anti troll kittehs
@Dimmy: I SAW that! I thought it was just me…alors, qu’est-ce qu’on fait? Racists are gonna racist.
Makes sense!
Women need to fight and to bring this up.
In the meantime, women need to learn self-defense so that males can be totally owned by the stronger, superior female.
In prehistoric times, women were strong! Women fought the mighty sabretooth cat to protect her young.
Women need to regain their birthright. Women are just as strong as men….and him having more brawn means nothing when SHE HAS SPEED, FIRE AND SHAKTI!
Heed the lesson of the She-bear, folks….The male bear is TECHNICALLY bigger and stronger….but the female bear is still capable of owning him in a fight. Threaten her cubs and it’s GAME OVER, BOY!
This is a trait in ALL mammals! Women are primates! Primates are mammals! An angry ape is a SCARY ape!
If the authorities refuse to protect us, it is UP TO US to kick ass ourselves!
Males may technically have more physical strength but THAT MEANS NOTHING! It’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.
YES! We need to change the culture, fight the system and teach males to be real men and not misogynists….but women and girls still need to learn how to knock a rape-boy’s face into the pavement!
Women seem incapable of fighting men because we’ve been mentally primed with the lie for centuries that males a so much more powerful and we’re so weak and it messes up our psyches that we turn to jello when threatened by a guy who’s scrawny and the exact same size as us! How pitiful is that?! A strong, physically-fit woman who’s 5’8 being super-overpowered by a scrawny 5’8 guy!
LADY! HE’S JUST ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, NOT A RAMPAGING RHINO! HE’S NOT THAT INFINITELY STRONGER!
We need to get over the centuries of misogynist social programing and regain our inner-Xena!
We also need to hit the polls and vote those misogynist jerks out of office!
We need to have Feminists of all sexes run for office!
We need to accept Feminist male allies (and figure out a way to see if he’s ‘genuine’ or not)!
We need to stay the hell away from Frat Boys and Dumb Jocks! Deprive them! Don’t attend their dumbass parties! Go Lysistrata on them. Band together in all-girl cliques! Don our “Pussy-hats” and PROTEST AND DISRUPT UNTIL OUR NEEDS ARE MET!
We need SHAME bimbos like Betsy DeVos! SHAME HER! DEGRADE HER! DECLARE CHICKS LIKE HER NOT REAL WOMEN!
Finally: FEMINISTS NEED TO TAKE A PAGE FROM THE LGBTQ PLAYBOOK! I can’t stress this enough! They’re succeeding yet Feminists are faltering! It shouldn’t be that way! Since Homo/Transphobia and Misogyny are linked, Feminism should be thriving as much as as LGBTQ Rights….yet it isn’t! We need to copy what the LGBTQ is doing!….
https://mic.com/articles/52423/5-winning-strategies-feminists-can-learn-from-the-gay-rights-movement#.7e9PWWZZG
….an old article but still a good one!
Time to stop “playing nice” and being “lady-like”….TIME TO PUT THE FEAR OF THE FEMALE IN THE MISOGYNISTS TINY BRAINS!….
….Even the heavily Patriarchal culture of India recognizes the POWER & FIRE INHERENT IN THE FEMININE! They most POWERFUL deities are FEMALE! The male deities’ are mere powerless corpses without the POWER of the FEMALE!
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I hope the tone of the above wasn’t too ridiculous but I’m ANGRY and ON FIRE! Ladies; WE are so much stronger than we think! We need to use our full power, embrace the true awesomeness of the Feminine, demand males (even masculine ones) embrace androgyny, reject the hulking macho guys, teach our sons to be feminists. Treat misogynist women like shit!
Macho Guys and Stepford Bimbos need to be made OUTCASTS! SHAMED! REVILED! RENDERED UNCOOL!
If guys are to “get with us”, they need to reject machismo!
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P.S. Dear misogynist rape-boys; Y’know….we ladies, too, are perfectly capable of drugging you to near-unconsciousness and raping you.
Just be thankful that we’re noble enough to NOT stoop that low!
I’ve no problem with the tone, but I don’t want to say that Betsy De Vos isn’t a “real” woman; that’s what transphobic people say about trans people, and I don’t think we should echo that, however inadvertently. She’s a real woman. She’s also a terrible leader promoting terrible policies.
Anyway, there’s truth to what you’re saying, for example about social programming and how women are taught to be deferential.
Sorry if I sound picky (all work and no play makes me grouchy and prone to overuse semicolons; that’s a fact). 😉
@ epitome
Nah, that’s like saying ‘too much garlic’; it’s innately illogical. 🙂
And in Canada one of the major anti-feminist groups is REAL Women. Capitalisation is theirs.
I think it’s time for you to calm down and think about what you’re typing before you hit the submit-comment button.
This, for example, is so incredibly uncool that it makes me wonder about your motives.
In addition to what PoM said, don’t tell me how to be a woman. Don’t assume that I don’t know how to be strong or that I don’t recognize my own strength. Don’t yell at me in ALL CAPS about shit I’ve been dealing with for decades that’s not new or even particularly interesting after wading through the cess pool that is the manosphere day after day.
And whatever the fuck you do, don’t call me a motherfucking lady.
This is also not cool. This is an insult that is frequently used against trans women and using it in this context implies that women who don’t meet some arbitrary standard are somehow inferior. Speaking up against reprehensible ideas is necessary, but we need to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
Sorry for some of the stuff I said. Sorry for using the word “lady” (I had no idea it was sexist). Sorry for that last bit about women raping men in revenge. Sorry for saying that misogynist women are not true women (though it didn’t mean that literally). Sorry for the overall over-the-top tone and words.
My motives are the same as most here. I’m a woman who’s a feminist who hates misogyny.
I’m a regular poster at FSTDT so anyone here who knows me from there knows I am “fer reals”.
I also have some mental and anger issues. Sorry.
*Sigh* I didn’t say the word ‘ladies’ is sexist. I said not to call me one. Don’t put words in my mouth.
I misunderstood. Sorry.
I don’t really know you so I can’t know if this is true except by your behavior.
You come across as feeling so passionately about some things that you don’t think very hard about what you’re actually saying. You apologize very freely but I’m not sure that you always understand why what you said was questionable. I’m not here to tutor you, and I’m not going to quiz you on it like a grade school teacher, but I will say that sometimes your screeds are harmful to your stated goals and frankly make my side look bad, and I’m not convinced that you grasp that.
I think both you and feminism would be better served if you would take a brief breather before you post to re-read what you’ve typed and think about what it says. Gender essentialism is one of the hardest habits to kick, and sometimes kicking it requires a lot of self-reflection and work. Please put in that work, for the sake of yourself and feminism both.