Douthat: Stopping Campus Rape

[Simfan34]

The guy makes a lot of sense. A great heaping amount of sense:

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-stopping-campus-rape.html?referrer&_r=0

[Simfan34]

If we are to regard college students as young adults, then we have to be understand what the results of that would be and hold  both men and women accountable for poor judgement on their part. Rights go hand in hand with responsibilities. You cannot have one without the other; are we to treat college students as children who need to be kept on a bit of a leash, or responsible adults. Attempting to have it both ways is intellectually dishonest and fools no one.

The idea of the "parietal" system, while somewhat interesting, might have a downside as it reduces the opposite gender to a mystified "other", which would facilitate objectification of the sort that treats the genders as a "conqueror" or a "conquest", rather than, just, say, people.

But there is the need to accept that while rape is completely and utter despicably and morally abhorrent, trying to throw out any discussion of preventive measures is counterproductive. Robbery is wrong even if I leave my door unlocked. That doesn't mean I don't lock the doors.

We are not helping anyone by shutting down any discussion of how to prevent rapes from happening outside of "people should not rape others". I mean, we don't approach a crime spree by asking "how do we stop people from robbing others". It's actually a bit... bizzare.

[Simfan34]

How would the second be accomplished?

By keeping an eye on those organisations, generally speaking. It all has to do with bringing things out into the open. Keeping alcohol illegal encourages further disrespect for the laws and general standards of decency. It would almost certainly foster more responsible alcohol consumption patterns. And who do you think makes all these fake IDs? It can't be anyone good. I'm quite a sure a good amount of those are in the hands of the Triads (I mean, come on, Chinatown and everything).

[Simfan34]

None of these proposals addresses the core of the problem.

That being?

[Simfan34]

None of these proposals addresses the core of the problem.

That being?

That thing which half the forum claims does not exist.

The Bradley Effect?

A meaning to life beyond electoral cartography?

[Simfan34]

The way to prevent burglary is to get burglars to stop burglarizing. Got it. Let us know when you have proposals beyond broad societal transformation.

If that is too glib-- and I think it might-- if we are going to have this discussion, it's time we stop acting as if any and every sort of mention of preventive measures is morally reprehensible. Once people can grasp the idea that pointing out ways for potential victims to avoid sexual assault is not assigning some kind of responsibility on them to not be assaulted or is somehow holding them at fault if they were to be assaulted, we can have a serious conversation as to how stop sexual assault in a manner beyond throwing around lefty epithets and "calling out" others for their improper ideological outlook.

[Simfan34]

What exactly is "quasi-total impunity"?

I'm well aware rape is not burglary. But the approach is the same. One suggests getting the perpetrators to stop committing their crimes- a completely noble but unrealistic goal. The other suggest ways to prevent people from falling victim to the predations of would-be criminals. Why is the former reprehensible?

One of the major currents I have noticed in the "debate" here on campus and elsewhere is a call for adopting a rather narrow definition of consent-- narrow as in many casual sexual interactions prevalent in campus culture would not be considered consensual acts. Transitively, this would mean there are a lot of things going on, to put it bluntly, that could be considered rape that do not match up to the popular conception.

Now this is fine and noble, calling for fully informed consent and clearly defined boundaries, but the unmentionable thing here is that this is completely contrary to the "sex positive" culture we've come to expect from society, college culture in particularly. Indeed, I've witnessed one or two shrill "callings-out" of various writers on campus blogs or the paper for not being such. But as Douthat points out, an environment of young people drinking and partying, largely unsupervised, is going to lend itself naturally to some things that would not be considered consensual by any particularly rigorous definition of consent.

What am I trying to say- and I'm more than willing to hear otherwise- is that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a culture that treats sexual relations as little more than a form of recreation, one often "aided" by alcoholic consumption, and simultaneously expect participants (as they are reduced to) to always abide by concrete and inflexible rules in regards thereto.

The solution is either to accept that a society with as open a view of sexual relations as ours will inevitably produce "grey areas", or attempt to rollback sexual mores to something resembling a more constrained time. Only the former is remotely plausible, and in that case we should not go about attempting to blame "society" for an hyped "epidemic" but rather focus on preventing sexual assaults and bringing rapists to justice, an effort that loses focus when one attempts to throw in "rape culture".

[Simfan34]

What exactly is "quasi-total impunity"? What am I trying to say- and I'm more than willing to hear otherwise- is that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a culture that treats sexual relations as little more than a form of recreation, one often "aided" by alcoholic consumption, and simultaneously expect participants (as they are reduced to) to always abide by concrete and inflexible rules in regards thereto.

The solution is either to accept that a society with as open a view of sexual relations as ours will inevitably produce "grey areas", or attempt to rollback sexual mores to something resembling a more constrained time. Only the former is remotely plausible, and in that case we should not go about attempting to blame "society" for an hyped "epidemic" but rather focus on preventing sexual assaults and bringing rapists to justice, an effort that loses focus when one attempts to throw in "rape culture".

Douthat kind of gets at this in a piece he wrote today:

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/douthat/2014/07/08/sex-and-consequences/

[Simfan34]

I am all for raising the voting age to as high as we see fit. Driving age should be 18. Would also kill high school parties and thus underage drinking.

[Simfan34]

I didn't know angus was married to someone from China! Either way, I don't think the driving age gets to the crux of the problem.