Ezra Klein on Yes means Yes

[laughing dog]

And your point is....? Remember, you are the one who started this with post #30.

I'd imagine the point is that the seriousness of being shot by a tank doesn't make arbitrary amputation ok, in the same way that the seriousness of rape doesn't make imprisoning the innocent ok.

I wasn't arguing that amputation was ok or that imprisoning the innocent was okay.

 

[Rhea]

It's my contention that this group of boys assuming consent is largely a group of phantoms, and that the "she didn't say no defence" is the resort of predators and abusive partners, who commit rape deliberately.

And get away with it regularly with a slap on the wrist or less.
I was at the trial for my attacker. His defense was "What's the big deal? She knew me." His sentence was 20 hours of community service.
Apparently the "what's the big deal?" defense when assaulting a 13yo girl in her own home who has never talked you you ever is the kind of "normal behavior" that our justice system needs to continue to let go.

I do not think they are phantoms. Neither the ones who don't think it's their problem to get consent nor the ones who deliberately ignore consent. In both case, a victim is raped and society thinks it's okay.

 

[doubtingt]

then it is not accurate, in my opinion, to call that the same thing as deciding to punish innocent people.

It isn't a matter of opinion but certain fact that this policy will punish innocent people. It does so in 2 ways. First, it invents a whole new crime in which having sex with any person that is "intoxicated" to any unspecified level is a criminal act. The fact that this crime is labeled rape isn't really the issue. This issue is that it makes a crime out an act extremely common act that is not a crime now and 99% of the time it occurs is not associated with any existing crime, or any harm to anyone, any no one perceives themselves as having been wronged at all. What you and all advocates of such policies constantly ignore is the fact that whether an act is a crime and whether a victim reports a crime are completely separate questions. Are there unreported rapes? If yes, then this shows that whether an act is rape has nothing to do with whether it is reported as rape. Are there rape victims who do not realize they were victims of rape? Most supporters of this policy would say "Yes", and much rape advocacy is about convincing women who don't feel like they were raped that they were raped. Again, this shows that the criminal act of rape is independent of the subjective feeling that you were raped. Hypocritically, advocates of these policies frequently argue that feeling one was raped or reporting a rape are often uncommon among women that are raped. Yet in defense of these policies they make arguments that logically presume that an act only becomes a rape when the women feel like and/or reports that it was a rape. This absurd argument is required by them because otherwise every act of intoxicated sex would be rape, and yet 99.9% of such acts have no objective or subjective features of rape outside of the mere fact that one party was intoxicated. Thus, any policy like the one in question that makes intoxication a sufficient criteria for a sex act to be rape, must mean that all acts of intoxicated sex are rape. The only argument they can or do put forth is that "it doesn't matter if no rape accusation is made", but this is nonsense because it contradicts their more general position that whether an act is felt as or reported as rape by a victim is not required for it to be rape. In sum, the policy/ definition of rape in question makes a criminal /wrongful act out of a common and widespread act engaged in my most people and without any objective or subjective evidence of harm or wrongdoing to anyone. It makes a common and harmless act a crime in pursuit of punishing the small % of the times that the act coincides with something that is a crime, thus it makes people innocent of causing any harm to anyone, guilty of wrongdoing.

The second way it increases punishment to innocents is that it equates an accusation with evidence for that accusation, thus all inaccurate accusations will lead to a guilty judgment and life damaging punishment. Again, it lays out no criteria that separate intoxicated sex from rape. The identical act is punished as rape based entirely upon whether one party says it was rape. Since intoxication makes it technically rape, that could be the sole basis for it being said to be so. If I admit to having sex with my girlfriend after we both had a few beers at a party, I am admitting to an act of rape. Whether , I get punished for that act depends upon nothing but whether my girlfriend report something that she knows is technically a crime. If the rule says you were raped, then even if you would not have otherwise felt so, you were. Thus whether you say you were is a matter of whether you accept the definition that this rule uses and that you and other supporters argue for. If you don't say that you were raped after having intoxicated sex, then either you reject the policy and the definition or you know you were raped technically but don't want to get your partner in trouble. You can be there are and will be more advocacy groups pressuring the latter women to report it. In addition, most rape and abuse advocates want their to be prosecution of the crime, even without the support of the victim. When the crime was real and actually harmful and the victim is just afraid, this makes sense. However, in this case when a crime is defined in a way that there is often no harm and no real victim, then it is absurd. Yet, you can be sure that the same supporters of this policy will begin to support enforcement of it even without the support of the "victim". Anyone will be able to report that someone raped someone else, and the only evidence required for punishment will be whether they had sex while one party was "intoxicated" to an unspecified degree.

Sarcasm aside... this seems to mirror a lot of the same concerns and principles that come up in discussions of the Death Penalty versus Life Without Parole. What strikes me as somewhat surprising is that many people who I would otherwise assume to be against the death penalty because of the risk of punishing innocent people, are NOT against this policy, even though it also runs the risk of punishing innocent people.

Yes, the hypocrisy among supporters of these policies is stunning. IT isn't just the death penalty but almost all "law and order" issues that they usually side with having high standards of evidence for punishment to avoid wrongful conviction, plus clear evidence of harm to others for it to even be a crime in the first place. I am with them on those issues most of the time, which leads to opposing drug laws, speech laws, and any efforts to restrict forms of consensual sex. But on this issue they dismiss as completely unimportant the logical certainty that these policies will make many consensual acts crimes (even when not reported), and many innocent people punished who technically violated the law (because most people have violated such a law), but caused no harm to others. Rhea's and others arguments in support of such policies could come directly from the mouths of the neo-fascist "law and order" conservatives that use "the children" and "victims rights" rhetoric to create a criminal class and make it as easy as possible for authorities to convict people for real crimes and for things that should be crimes.

I expect hypocrisy from the general "law and order" conservative types because their positions are so obviously not rooted in any concern for victims of real harm but in wanting to punish personal morality with a strong dash of racism and wanting to protect the illegitimate wealth of the ruling class from any whiff of uprising. Thus, one would not expect any consistency in applying principles of justice, when authoritarianism and inequality are the true goals for which the law is being used.
But I actually think that rape advocates do generally have regard for principles of justice, fairness, and punishment used only to correct/prevent real wrong to others. That makes their hypocrisy more intense, because they so strongly advocate these principles in general that they then are so blatantly violating on this particular issue. Intense aims toward a specific outcome (in this case, punishment for all real rape perps) is what fuels abandonment of procedural principles that define justice and fairness. But it is one thing to bias oneself into unwittingly violating one's own principles. It is another to engage in the kind of belligerent and willful denial of reason and fact that highlight this violation, as we can see on this issue.

 

[KeepTalking]

The Due process clause has no applicability other than as a legal doctrine.

You've said this strawman before, and I have already replied that we are not speaking of due process's scope of legal applicability.

It's not a strawman, it's a fact, pure and simple. If we are no speaking of "due process's scope of legal applicability", then we aren't really talking about due process.

We we are speaking of Klein's violation of the moral principles behind due process. As you don't seem to get this, perhaps we ought to look at what you do know.

I don't really care about Klein's violation of the moral principles behind due process. I don't even care about the supposed moral principles behind due process. What I care about is that people use words and phrases in the correct context, so that they are no able to shoehorn the fucking Magna Carta into a discussion about college disciplinary actions.

So, have fun. Feel free to talk about what I know, as if you know anything about what I know. Also, feel free to go fuck yourself.

 

[maxparrish]

I think assuming consent and not checking for it creates a risk that you could be wrong and find yourself afterward with charges pressed against you...Good question. Because people are arguing (in many previous threads as well as now, this is not the first) that getting consent is onerous. This leads me to believe that currently they are assuming consent. Also that many college rapes are not properly prosecuted. Also that many of them consider themselves not-rapists while their victims obviously do.

...I am not out to "punish" anyone. I am more concerned with sufficient clarification to act as a deterrent to public acceptance of something that is not acceptable leading to lack of prosecution.

Note:
Those who are using assumed consent and are assuming correctly will not face charges because their partner was consenting - the assumption was correct.
Those who are using assumed consent and are NOT assuming correctly will find their partner pressing charges.

...No one is going to press charges unless they feel they were raped. (derec's tales of 2, 4 and 8 year old cases clearly demonstrate how rare the false accusation is.)

Your making many unwarranted assumptions. Among my criticisms:

1) The current law does not address traditional rape as violence or deter wrong-doers as intentional rapists. "Ambiguity" or confusion between parties is quite irrelevant when a rapist breaks into an apartment or attacks a woman on a jogging trail - a new set of 'rules' in the bedroom is not going to change behavior or punish that kind of wrong-doers. NOR will it change the behavior of an intentional rapist whose initial contact is friendly or consensual, they rarely care what the woman says or want.

2) So apparently the law is intended to address the "unintentional" rapist. The current law is intended to "clarify" a kind of sex in which a California coed is somehow unable to express a single word of "no" or "stop" BUT either expects her partner to mind-read OR have him/her obtain explicit permission for every step of sexual play. Otherwise these males (and a few females) are probably unintentional "rapists" (intentional rapists don't worry about protests and permissions).

3) Anyone 'charged' with unintended "rape" or sexual assault may or may not be guilty because it is NOT the actual act of the accused, it is the unspoken consensual state of mind of the woman AT the time of sex (or sex play) that defines the accused 'guilt'. Under the law, presumptively most women don't want sex or even sex play in any circumstance. So unless the accused can prove that the woman's state of mind was clearly permissive, he is assumed guilty. And the only way to prove state of mind is by production of a FORMAL verbal agreement, or undeniable and continuing explicit acts of sexual aggression (for each step) by the female.

So all of this regulation of the bedroom by the state, one that requires a lack of due process is because of an alleged wave of "unintended" rapes and rapists at California colleges - in short, because California women are too infantile to say no?

 

[Emily Lake]

This seems rather like saying that amputation is no big deal to the amputee when compared to being shot by a tank.

And your point is....? Remember, you are the one who started this with post #30.

In post #30 I said it was NOT exactly the same as being imprisoned, in response to someone else's attempt to absurdify it into meaninglessness through exaggeration. At worst, I said that it has the potential to ruin someone's life.

I don't, however, think that it merits being dismissed as "no big deal" on your part.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'd imagine the point is that the seriousness of being shot by a tank doesn't make arbitrary amputation ok, in the same way that the seriousness of rape doesn't make imprisoning the innocent ok.

I wasn't arguing that amputation was ok or that imprisoning the innocent was okay.

You did seem to be saying that since it wasn't imprisonment, then it's just fine, no big deal because, hey, it could be worse!

 

[bigfield]

The part at the end where he says "women are not infantile" resonates with me. To me it seems this type of law is implicitly saying that women are not able to make decisions for themselves. For example, the law (as I understand it) says a woman is not capable of giving consent with any alcohol in her system. If I were a woman I'd find that extremely insulting and condescending.

The law stipulates that an intoxicated person cannot consent, but it doesn't stipulate that anything over 0.00 BAC qualifies as intoxicated.

However it also isn't clear what the threshold actually is, either in terms of BAC or in terms of qualitative indicators.

 

[bigfield]

It's my contention that this group of boys assuming consent is largely a group of phantoms, and that the "she didn't say no defence" is the resort of predators and abusive partners, who commit rape deliberately.

And get away with it regularly with a slap on the wrist or less.
I was at the trial for my attacker. His defense was "What's the big deal? She knew me." His sentence was 20 hours of community service.
Apparently the "what's the big deal?" defense when assaulting a 13yo girl in her own home who has never talked you you ever is the kind of "normal behavior" that our justice system needs to continue to let go.

I can't comment on why the justice system failed you.

Do you have more objective evidence that the justice system considers assaults on 13 year old girls to be normal behaviour?

I do not think they are phantoms. Neither the ones who don't think it's their problem to get consent nor the ones who deliberately ignore consent. In both case, a victim is raped and society thinks it's okay.

The justice system is not reflective of the community zeitgeist. Community consensus here in Australia is that prison terms for sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, are too lenient. I imagine there is a similar feeling over in the USA. Where is the evidence that this is false, and that society actually thinks that raping someone is OK?

 

[Rhea]

Do you have more objective evidence that the justice system considers assaults on 13 year old girls to be normal behaviour?

Yeah, it's all been presented before. There are a host of cases of rapes upon people by people they know. "Date rape," "Acquaintance rape" It's all pretty well documented and it's the reason why this is an issue, is a new rule/law, and is being discussed on campuses. It's a situation that happens with such alarming frequency that campuses and state legislators are actually spurred to do something.

Maybe people here were thinking this whole thing was totally made up without any data to suggest its need.

I do not think they are phantoms. Neither the ones who don't think it's their problem to get consent nor the ones who deliberately ignore consent. In both case, a victim is raped and society thinks it's okay.

The justice system is not reflective of the community zeitgeist. Community consensus here in Australia is that prison terms for sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, are too lenient. I imagine there is a similar feeling over in the USA. Where is the evidence that this is false, and that society actually thinks that raping someone is OK?

I've already answered that. The frequency with which rapists get off without consequences or light consequences, the way rape victims are treated by both the community and the legal system. Not the rape sentences, just getting to and through court.

Shit, it's as if none of you remember watching the Steubenville case and how long it took just to get those assholes into court. Everyone thought it was okay. We've had so many threads on this every time a case comes up. And now y'all are all, "what, has this ever happened? Isn't this a phantom?"

I'm not willing to post any more. I'll need to just walk away and let you convince yourself it's a phantom problem that never really happens.

 

[bigfield]

Yeah, it's all been presented before. There are a host of cases of rapes upon people by people they know. "Date rape," "Acquaintance rape" It's all pretty well documented and it's the reason why this is an issue, is a new rule/law, and is being discussed on campuses. It's a situation that happens with such alarming frequency that campuses and state legislators are actually spurred to do something.

That does not answer the question.

Date rape is convicted at lower rates than stranger rape, and is perceived as a lesser offence than stranger rape, but that is far from considering it normal or acceptable behaviour.

I do not think they are phantoms. Neither the ones who don't think it's their problem to get consent nor the ones who deliberately ignore consent. In both case, a victim is raped and society thinks it's okay.

The justice system is not reflective of the community zeitgeist. Community consensus here in Australia is that prison terms for sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, are too lenient. I imagine there is a similar feeling over in the USA. Where is the evidence that this is false, and that society actually thinks that raping someone is OK?

I've already answered that. The frequency with which rapists get off without consequences or light consequences, the way rape victims are treated by both the community and the legal system. Not the rape sentences, just getting to and through court.

Shit, it's as if none of you remember watching the Steubenville case and how long it took just to get those assholes into court. Everyone thought it was okay. We've had so many threads on this every time a case comes up. And now y'all are all, "what, has this ever happened? Isn't this a phantom?"

I am well aware of the Steubenville case. I posted about it many times. The Steubenville case is one of several notable cases where the perps were athletes that the small-town community sought to protect despite their crimes, and where the victims were hounded cruelly. The circumstances of those cases suggest a problem with the way athletes are treated as community heroes. It doesn't make sense to extrapolate those cases to apply to society at large, or the justice system at large.

IIRC those cases either involved a heavily intoxicated victim or the victim was strong-armed. The acts are and were unambiguously rape. Rewriting the laws on consent won't do a thing to compel the justice system to act. What is needed is procedural reform and higher accountability to compel police, prosecutors or judges to do their jobs.

 

[Rhea]

The acts are and were unambiguously rape.

Unambiguous to her community? Apparently not.

 

[maxparrish]

Sarcasm aside... this seems to mirror a lot of the same concerns and principles that come up in discussions of the Death Penalty versus Life Without Parole. What strikes me as somewhat surprising is that many people who I would otherwise assume to be against the death penalty because of the risk of punishing innocent people, are NOT against this policy, even though it also runs the risk of punishing innocent people.

Yes, the hypocrisy among supporters of these policies is stunning. IT isn't just the death penalty but almost all "law and order" issues that they usually side with having high standards of evidence for punishment to avoid wrongful conviction, plus clear evidence of harm to others for it to even be a crime in the first place. I am with them on those issues most of the time, which leads to opposing drug laws, speech laws, and any efforts to restrict forms of consensual sex. But on this issue they dismiss as completely unimportant

What seems to escape both you and Ms. Lake is that the Left is no longer liberal, in some ways is far more like the harder core radicals of prior generations. Such folk in the 60s and 70s were 'anti-liberal', and deeply critical of romantic anti-statist ideas like grassroots democracy. Liberalism, in their view, the belief in individual "rights" was quaint and useless - only obstructing the real goal of centralized power for the masses.

Today the left is no longer anti-statist, or suspicious of institutional power. Indeed much of it is now the establishment culturally, economically, and politically, and the idea of centralized power, and its ability to abuse power, is appealing rather than repugnant. But having lost the FDR "common man" as a natural constituency (and now being members of an elite) it has abandoned the liberal notion of blindness to an individual's group membership as a goal to equal treatment among 'the common folk' and replaced it with a required awareness of person's group identity as defining.

Hence, folks like Rhea, are not hypocritical because her 'identity politics' tells her that her group interest trumps arcane liberal notions of individual rights and procedural fairness. In fact, such liberalism is a roadblock to central power for 'the group'. Just as prior generations of radicalized class war 'required' the disposal liberal ideas of 'equal individual rights' so does the current new groups of gender, race, and others

Liberalism is largely dead, left identity politics rules.

 

[bigfield]

The acts are and were unambiguously rape.

Unambiguous to her community? Apparently not.

The acts are unambiguously rape according to law.

 

[Togo]

Unambiguous to her community? Apparently not.

The acts are unambiguously rape according to law.

And this is the point. The law gives us everything we need in terms of identifying rape, and it looks from the examples provided (such as the Stubenville case) like that part is working just fine. The problem comes with local communities that don't take such laws seriously, and local authorities that don't pursue or punish people for violations. That's nothing whatsoever to do with moving the boundary on what constitutes a rape, it's to do with actually enforcing the existing laws, and the punishments given to those who break them.

This is why I was querying the term 'ambiguous', because it's not very exact. The law is exceptionally clear on what constitutes rape, but is poor at prosecuting and punishing it. To respond to that by leaving the prosecution alone and changing the boundary conditions seems perverse.

 

[laughing dog]

I wasn't arguing that amputation was ok or that imprisoning the innocent was okay.

You did seem to be saying that since it wasn't imprisonment, then it's just fine, no big deal because, hey, it could be worse!

I did not think the differences between "X is worse than Y ", "X is worse than Y so Y is okay", and "X is worse than Y but neither is okay" had to be pointed out. Apparently, I was wrong.

 

[Emily Lake]

You did seem to be saying that since it wasn't imprisonment, then it's just fine, no big deal because, hey, it could be worse!

I did not think the differences between "X is worse than Y ", "X is worse than Y so Y is okay", and "X is worse than Y but neither is okay" had to be pointed out. Apparently, I was wrong.

I do believe that you are backpedaling. All of your posts in this string seem to clearly indicate that expulsion is not really a big deal, and not something to be concerned about. They all seem aimed at downplaying the import and effect of expulsion. I read this as being clearly a case of "X isn't as bad as Y, so X is no big deal in comparison". How did you intend your posts to be read?

Yes, because getting barred from a college campus is exactly the same as being imprisoned, and/or being hunted down by the King's men.

No, it's not "exactly the same". But it certainly does have far-reaching and profound consequences. Being expelled from a college can make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be accepted to another college. There's a very high possibility that the effect of expulsion is to bar that person from being able to get a degree - it condemns them to work in fields that do not require degrees, and it could feasibly ruin lives in a way that is as drastic as imprisonment would be.

The explosion of on-line and for-profit colleges along with data privacy concerns dramatically reduce those probabilities. And, of course, all of that pales in comparison to possible violence and rape from imprisonment.

I suppose if your life's goal is to be a medical transcriptionist then you're probably okay. but if you want to be a lawyer, it might be a bit more of a challenge.

Some places do not explain the expulsion or even mention it. So, expulsion may not be as big deal as you think. Especially given the recruitment goals for most colleges. There is an accredited school somewhere that will accept someone. So, the expulsion may not put as big a dent in one's life prospects as you imagine.

I think perhaps it deserves a bit more consideration before being swept under the rug though. Not having been expelled, I can't speak from certainty, but I suspect it is a thing of some consequence. In addition to that, very many people won't be in a position to relocate for school. Many people go to state schools specifically because of in-state tuition, and scholarships. Expulsion very likely carries financial consequences that aren't so negligible.

Not compared to imprisonment with its consequences or death.

 

[laughing dog]

I did not think the differences between "X is worse than Y ", "X is worse than Y so Y is okay", and "X is worse than Y but neither is okay" had to be pointed out. Apparently, I was wrong.

I do believe that you are backpedaling. All of your posts in this string seem to clearly indicate that expulsion is not really a big deal, and not something to be concerned about. They all seem aimed at downplaying the import and effect of expulsion. I read this as being clearly a case of "X isn't as bad as Y, so X is no big deal in comparison". How did you intend your posts to be read?

I intended my posts to be read as written. Apparently, you were or are unable to distinguish between relative comparisons (X is worse than Y) and absolute comparisons (X is okay). Your belief is predicated on poor reasoning.

 

[Emily Lake]

I do believe that you are backpedaling. All of your posts in this string seem to clearly indicate that expulsion is not really a big deal, and not something to be concerned about. They all seem aimed at downplaying the import and effect of expulsion. I read this as being clearly a case of "X isn't as bad as Y, so X is no big deal in comparison". How did you intend your posts to be read?

I intended my posts to be read as written. Apparently, you were or are unable to distinguish between relative comparisons (X is worse than Y) and absolute comparisons (X is okay). Your belief is predicated on poor reasoning.

I suggest that you read more carefully.

You very clearly implied that expulsion is not a big deal in comparison to imprisonment.

 

[KeepTalking]

I intended my posts to be read as written. Apparently, you were or are unable to distinguish between relative comparisons (X is worse than Y) and absolute comparisons (X is okay). Your belief is predicated on poor reasoning.

I suggest that you read more carefully.

You very clearly implied that expulsion is not a big deal in comparison to imprisonment.

Well, expulsion is clearly not a big deal in comparison to imprisonment. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. That does not mean that expulsion is just fine and dandy, and it appears that ld was not making that absolute statement.

In defense of my original absurd statement, it was made in response to a post that attempted to compare a law that can only lead to expulsion from a college or university to a complete abrogation of the mores and principles behind the Magna Carta. A position that is quite absurd on the face of it.