Rape like murder is a very serious crime. It involves lifetime consequences. For that reason, the law requires substantial evidence. If the barrier of evidence is lowered to the level that many of these college commissions have chosen, i.e. where a simple accusation or denouncement is grounds for expulsion, a rape accusation becomes the simplest of revenge tactics. Anonymity and the destruction of the education and life of one's target.
Assuming women are capable of no evil or are somehow better than men is the worst kind of sexism. Anyone who knows women well, through either work or friendship, knows that outside of inclination to physical violence (though there are exceptions here as well), women are not much different than men. Men, as you know, steal and defraud one another legally (Microsoft twisting suppliers arms not to supply pre-installed Linux or negotiate an acquisition in bad faith to steal technology), even start wars of aggression legally (G.W. Bush, Tony Blair come to mind). Women do exactly the same things (think of Carly Fiorina's reign at HP, Margaret Thatcher as Britain's prime minister and Hillary Clinton as US secretary of state; in earlier generations you have Queen Elizabeth I and Tsarina Ekaterina the Great). If you'd prefer a fictional representation, please take Lady Macbeth as an example. Imagine what a Lady Macbeth could do with the new college rules on sex. She could eliminate rivals without killing them (she would not need to do the bedding herself that would be too obvious, she could manipulate minions into it).
Making naive simpletons and pastoral milk maids of today's savvy young female undergraduates is absurd. The ubiquity of free pornography on today's internet means that almost every twelve year old knows more about sex than most nineteen year olds did twenty years ago (post-sexual revolution). Most women by twenty one are astonishingly sexually sophisticated.
Day after regrets are now becoming fair game for rape accusations. Men have sex pushed on us when we are inebriated. Women have sex pushed on them when they are inebriated. Indeed, many women feel that they need to have a few drinks to be able to relax and enjoy sex with a new partner. Sex is complex. Sexually active men and women both have intimate experiences which they regret and wish never happened. It's part of life. There is a difference between a bad sexual experience and a violent rape. These new campus rules seem to be deliberately designed to eliminate that distinction. I'm not sure that with all the good intentions in the world we can bar people from bad sexual experiences without eliminating sexuality altogether.
Of course, the social consensus has to be negotiated where the dividing line is between a bad experience and rape. If not, the etiquette of sexuality needs to change radically.
If for instance a couple of drinks renders a man or woman incapable of assent, I'd suggest it's time to close the bars on campus and to start selling alcohol field tests which include DNA sampling and a consent document. The consent document would have to be signed and witnessed and delivered to a university commission a day before the act of coitus. The alcohol field test with DNA sampling would have to be administered within an hour before the actual act.
This is very technically complicated. As a lower tech solution we could enforce a mixed audience of peers, 3 men and 3 women minimum, at least two of whom are chosen by each sexual party, to any spontaneous act of coitus on campus. That way the university commission would be assured of competent witnesses. Alcohol would still have to be banned otherwise the participants may not really mean the assent they offer and the witnesses testimony would no longer be reliable. Witnesses of course could intervene immediately in the case of perceived absence of consent - special training should be made available to those who wish it.
Solutions like those above would put an end to the gray zone of sexuality. In the absence of that kind of clarity, rape remains a very serious crime and the threshold for conviction as for all crimes should remain sufficiently high that a simple accusation does not become an automatic conviction. Teaching incoming freshmen and freshwomen some guidelines about safe behavior would save everyone considerable grief. Getting smashed on tequila then heading over to the football team's dorms (where they've probably been partying with their own clouded judgment) was always a bad idea. I'd argue the football team should learn that allowing in such visitors might not be a good idea. Yet indiscriminately destroying young men's lives on hearsay or making them blindly fear intimacy doesn't seem a real solution to the complexity of human sexuality.
We go to a lot of trouble to teach young people to drive safely. The roads are dangerous. We should probably spend an equal amount of effort in teaching them how to navigate their own sexuality and sexual situations safely.
Rape like murder is a very serious crime. It involves lifetime consequences. For that reason, the law requires substantial evidence. If the barrier of evidence is lowered to the level that many of these college commissions have chosen, i.e. where a simple accusation or denouncement is grounds for expulsion, a rape accusation becomes the simplest of revenge tactics. Anonymity and the destruction of the education and life of one's target.
Assuming women are capable of no evil or are somehow better than men is the worst kind of sexism. Anyone who knows women well, through either work or friendship, knows that outside of inclination to physical violence (though there are exceptions here as well), women are not much different than men. Men, as you know, steal and defraud one another legally (Microsoft twisting suppliers arms not to supply pre-installed Linux or negotiate an acquisition in bad faith to steal technology), even start wars of aggression legally (G.W. Bush, Tony Blair come to mind). Women do exactly the same things (think of Carly Fiorina's reign at HP, Margaret Thatcher as Britain's prime minister and Hillary Clinton as US secretary of state; in earlier generations you have Queen Elizabeth I and Tsarina Ekaterina the Great). If you'd prefer a fictional representation, please take Lady Macbeth as an example. Imagine what a Lady Macbeth could do with the new college rules on sex. She could eliminate rivals without killing them (she would not need to do the bedding herself that would be too obvious, she could manipulate minions into it).
Making naive simpletons and pastoral milk maids of today's savvy young female undergraduates is absurd. The ubiquity of free pornography on today's internet means that almost every twelve year old knows more about sex than most nineteen year olds did twenty years ago (post-sexual revolution). Most women by twenty one are astonishingly sexually sophisticated.
Day after regrets are now becoming fair game for rape accusations. Men have sex pushed on us when we are inebriated. Women have sex pushed on them when they are inebriated. Indeed, many women feel that they need to have a few drinks to be able to relax and enjoy sex with a new partner. Sex is complex. Sexually active men and women both have intimate experiences which they regret and wish never happened. It's part of life. There is a difference between a bad sexual experience and a violent rape. These new campus rules seem to be deliberately designed to eliminate that distinction. I'm not sure that with all the good intentions in the world we can bar people from bad sexual experiences without eliminating sexuality altogether.
Of course, the social consensus has to be negotiated where the dividing line is between a bad experience and rape. If not, the etiquette of sexuality needs to change radically.
If for instance a couple of drinks renders a man or woman incapable of assent, I'd suggest it's time to close the bars on campus and to start selling alcohol field tests which include DNA sampling and a consent document. The consent document would have to be signed and witnessed and delivered to a university commission a day before the act of coitus. The alcohol field test with DNA sampling would have to be administered within an hour before the actual act.
This is very technically complicated. As a lower tech solution we could enforce a mixed audience of peers, 3 men and 3 women minimum, at least two of whom are chosen by each sexual party, to any spontaneous act of coitus on campus. That way the university commission would be assured of competent witnesses. Alcohol would still have to be banned otherwise the participants may not really mean the assent they offer and the witnesses testimony would no longer be reliable. Witnesses of course could intervene immediately in the case of perceived absence of consent - special training should be made available to those who wish it.
Solutions like those above would put an end to the gray zone of sexuality. In the absence of that kind of clarity, rape remains a very serious crime and the threshold for conviction as for all crimes should remain sufficiently high that a simple accusation does not become an automatic conviction. Teaching incoming freshmen and freshwomen some guidelines about safe behavior would save everyone considerable grief. Getting smashed on tequila then heading over to the football team's dorms (where they've probably been partying with their own clouded judgment) was always a bad idea. I'd argue the football team should learn that allowing in such visitors might not be a good idea. Yet indiscriminately destroying young men's lives on hearsay or making them blindly fear intimacy doesn't seem a real solution to the complexity of human sexuality.
We go to a lot of trouble to teach young people to drive safely. The roads are dangerous. We should probably spend an equal amount of effort in teaching them how to navigate their own sexuality and sexual situations safely.