"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken
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Sexual Harassment and the Loneliness of the Civil Libertarian Feminist
"Reviewing the charges of sexual harassment underlying the Title IX complaint by a group of Yale students and alumnae, I can't find feminism -- at least not if feminism includes independence, liberty, and power for women. Instead I find femininity -- the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers...
The only incident of alleged harassment cited in the draft complaint that does not involve pure speech is an act of vandalism. In 2004 and 2005, fraternity brothers stole T-shirts... "To steal these T-shirts is akin to stealing the voices of the victims," the draft complaint melodramatically asserts -- as if the victims were prevented from repeating and reclaiming their stories. If the T-shirt theft was intended to censor women, its success depended on their willingness to respond by censoring themselves...
In the feminist view reflected in the Yale draft complaint, the misogynist rants of some undergraduate men (perhaps a relatively small percentage of them) is not speech. It's a series of "dangerous," "sex-discriminatory threats" that "intimidate" and "terrorize" women, constituting a hostile environment (or "rape culture") that causes sexual violence.
That simplistic, practically hysterical anti-libertarian approach to offensive speech appears to be shared by the Obama administration...
Generally, the OCR letter displays much more concern for the sensitivities of accusers over the rights of the accused... The Obama administration, like the administrations of so many colleges and universities, implicitly approaches sexual harassment and sexual violence cases with a presumption of guilt.
Campus investigations and hearings involving harassment or rape charges are notoriously devoid of concern for the rights of students accused; "kangaroo courts" are common...
Sad to say, but feminism helped lead the assault on civil liberty and now seems practically subsumed by it"
This is where an obsession with Privilege gets you.
What many people seem to miss is that the problem is deeper than the attempt to censure the frat boy antics that the article kicks off with.
Comments:
"I've seen groups of coed females yelling "Show us your C***ks" and the government didnt get involved."
""No means yes, yes means anal" can also be read as "I'm a complete idiot who should be avoided at all costs.""
"I do not regularly call women sluts. (Nice of you to avoid personal insults/insinuations/character attacks, by the way.) If it makes you feel any better, I know plenty of gay men who call each other (and are called by their female friends) sluts all the time. It seems that reasonable people can disagree about how offensive it is. Which, of course, is exactly why putting it before a politically-charged federal agency is about the worst way possible to deal with it."
"Why wouldnt a bunch of white guys stand outside a black frat house yelling racial names? Because they'd get their butts kicked thats why."
"There is a reason that this type of silliness occurs at the more elite private colleges like Yale. The curious, contradictory idea that people certified as members of a "disadvantaged" group must be empowered by treating them like helpless victims is a figment that seems to primarily inhabit the minds of those who have been raised in well-educated affluence where they have both had the luxury of spending inordinate amounts of time learning and practicing abstract theoretical notions and have been sheltered from the coarseness of the world outside of the bubble"
(Ironically, one of the feminists replied to this with "Sorry, I don't take advice from guys with penises as small as yours. ")
"Several years ago I was let go from a job by a female who had frequently expressed for months her desire for an all-female staff. More recently I was told by a Human Resources department "We prefer female applicants" for a job I was more than qualified for."
"I see how this works. Woman says she's discriminated against: "Oh my god you poor dear! Those evil male patriarchs!" Man says he's discriminated against: "He's probably lying." Thank you for proving my point that feminism is a totalitarian ideology. If I had a prize to give, you would win it."
"We have equated "words" with the "sticks" and "stones" of the familiar rhyme. Insensitivity is now considered a crime by many people.
The reason "progressives" have such an issue with such things is that progressives believe that they can remake humanity into their own image. They had great success in the past because the injustices were so huge, but now that they have been mostly successful, they are finding changing behavior through reason increasingly difficult, hence the increasing use of the power of the law to create their utopia.
As Nietzsche pointed out that the problem with equality is that the more equal people become the more they resent any differences that exist. This is what is playing out."