Links - 5th July 2018

Dan Arel on Twitter: "“due process” is the new asking a rape victim what she was wearing.… "
Replies: "So you think poor people and minorities (those who would be least likely to be believed) should all be locked up as soon as a straight white male like @danarnel accuses them of something they didn’t do? You guys are the problem."
"Dan Arel molested me when I was a child. How much money do you have Dan?"

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Alexander the Great - "There is one strategic explanation which is not often thought of which is that any empire has to have frontiers and though Alexander seems to have been more keen than most to expand them, you know to go on forever, nevertheless you have to be worrying all the time about what's next just beyond your frontier. The Roman Empire is a classic case of this - why did Julius Caesar invade Britain for example? So the strategic explanation of the Indian campaign is that he is wrapping up his eastern frontier. The Romantic explanation which is of course what the sources go for - Herakles had been there, Dionysius had been there, I'm going to go there"

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thomas Becket - "'He accuses him of posing as a martyr. He says you're summoning us to martyrdom, to be like you, a martyr. What's the cause for which you're bringing us to martyrdom?'
'Because *Latin* - it's not enough to be killed, you have to have a cause. You have to be upholding the Christian cause for which you are killed in order to be a martyr. You can't just decide to get killed and be a martyr'"

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Beethoven - "He is tremendously successful in China and in Japan ... This idea of putting a name to suffering and overcoming suffering in eating bitterness as they say in China's very attractive to the Chinese mind...
It's interesting contrasting that monumentality with 19th century practices where for instance the finale of the ninth symphony that is so celebrated now wasn't thought to be so successful so quite often wasn't performed when they performed the ninth symphony"

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Siege of Malta, 1565 - "The Hapsburgs had achieved an extraordinary feat of becoming a great world power by marrying people and gradually bit by bit they built up this huge empire in various bits of Europe"

Penn Law professor who said black students are ‘rarely’ in top half of class loses teaching duties - The Washington Post - "Amy Wax, a tenured professor, will continue to teach electives in her areas of expertise but will be removed from teaching first-year curriculum courses, Penn Law Dean Theodore Ruger said... “It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false”... When Wax’s video surfaced earlier this month, it sparked outrage among student groups and faculty members, many of whom called her statements racist. A petition circulated calling on Ruger to discipline her."
So much for tenure
Why doesn't the school release the statistics to clear the air?

Alums petition U. to address Amy Wax's claims that black students never graduate top of Penn Law - "Wax added that she teaches a course of "89 to 95 students" each year, "so I'm going on that because a lot of this data is a closely guarded secret." Created by Penn Law students and alumni, the petition demands that Ruger take action against Wax's "false and deeply offensive claims."... The petition also states that Wax's comments "compromise" the Law school's assurance that students' grades are kept private by the Registrar's office. The students also call for Ruger to answer whether the school collects race-based data and to reveal the data Wax is basing her statements on"
Since (by its own admission) the students and alumni don't know the data, how do they know the claims are false?

Amy Wax: calling people racist is not the 'right way' to conduct academic discourse - "Wax began by contending that law schools and universities need a wide range of views and should avoid “unreasoned speech,” such as epithets, name calling and the rejection of arguments without justification... She specifically repudiated a colleague's claim that her stated support of Anglo-Protestant cultural norms in an interview with the DP was "code for Nazism." She also said explicitly that she was not a Nazi"
If supporting Anglo-Protestant cultural norms is code for Nazism, that suggests that American liberals really do hate their country and/or white people

The Sexual Train Wreck Behind "Yes Means Yes" - "“It’s spreading pretty fast,” Alison Berke Morano, founder of the Affirmative Consent Project, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Ms. Morano’s group, launched in February, distributes sex contracts—yes, sex contracts—to college students. “The contract comes as part of a ‘Consent Conscious Kit,’” Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner reported earlier this week, “which also includes a pen (to sign the contract, duh), breath mints, and a condom.”... “Yes means yes” policies, at their heart, imply that it is normal, healthy, and a good idea to have sex with complete strangers. (Controversial point from yours truly: Unless you are a fictional member of a fictional band, it is generally not.) But they also imply that it is normal and healthy to have sex with people you don’t trust. Why else would you have to draw up a sex contract? Why else would you need Andrew Cuomo to write your sexual rules for you? Despite years of “feminist” marketing, that’s not empowered in any way. It’s just creepy, and also kind of insane. The ideology behind “yes means yes” is strange in another way: It implies, through its list of rules, prescriptions, and penalties, that sex is a clinical experience; that it is perfunctory, mechanical, and best overseen by bureaucrats."
To think that contracts for sex started off as a joke mocking affirmative consent

Affirmative Consent in California: The Problem With 'Yes Means Yes' - "The law’s defenders, such as feminist writer Amanda Hess, dismiss as hyperbole claims that it would turn people into unwitting rapists every time they have sex without obtaining an explicit “yes” (or, better yet, a notarized signature) from their partner. Hess points out that consent can include nonverbal cues such as body language. Indeed, the warning that “relying solely on nonverbal communication can lead to misunderstanding,” included in the initial draft of the bill, was dropped from later versions. Yet even after those revisions, one of the bill’s co-authors, Democratic Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that the affirmative consent standard means a person “must say ‘yes.’ ”... as a legal standard, nonverbal affirmative consent leaves campus tribunals in the position of trying to answer murky and confusing questions — for instance, whether a passionate response to a kiss was just a kiss, or an expression of “voluntary agreement” to have sexual intercourse. Faced with such ambiguities, administrators are likely to err on the side of caution and treat only explicit verbal agreement as sufficient proof of consent. In fact, many affirmative-consent-based student codes of sexual conduct today either discourage reliance on nonverbal communication as leaving too much room for mistakes (among them California’s Occidental College and North Carolina’s Duke University) or explicitly require asking for and obtaining verbal consent (the University of Houston). At Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College, nonverbal communication is allowed but a verbal request for consent absolutely requires a verbal response: If you ask, “Do you want this?”, you may not infer consent from the mere fact that your partner pulls you down on the bed and moves to take off your clothes... The consent evangelists often admit that discussing consent is widely seen as awkward and likely to kill the mood — though they seem to assume that the problem can be resolved if you just keep repeating that such verbal exchanges can be “hot,” “cool,” and “creative.” It’s not that talk during a sexual encounter is inherently a turn-off — far from it. But there’s a big difference between sexy banter or endearments, and mandatory checks to confirm you aren’t assaulting your partner (especially when you’re told that such checks must be conducted “in an ongoing manner”). Most people prefer spontaneous give-and-take and even some mystery, however old-fashioned that may sound; sex therapists will also tell you that good sex requires “letting go” of self-consciousness. When ThinkProgress.com columnist Tara Culp-Ressler writes approvingly that under affirmative consent “both partners are required to pay more attention to whether they’re feeling enthusiastic about the sexual experience they’re having,” it sounds more like a prescription for overthinking... When the San Gabriel Valley Tribune asked Lowenthal how an innocent person could prove consent under such a standard, her reply was, “Your guess is as good as mine.”... In essence, advocates of affirmative consent are admitting that they’re not sure what constitutes a violation; they are asking people to trust that the system won’t be abused. This is not how the rule of law works."

College students remain deeply divided over what consent actually means - The Washington Post - "What if someone undresses? Or gets a condom? Or nods in agreement? In each of those scenarios, a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll found, at least 40 percent of current and recent college students said the action established consent for more sexual activity. And at least 40 percent said it did not.
So much for consent being as simple as a cup of tea. Of course feminist social engineering will be the imposed solution

Against ‘Enthusiastic Consent’ - "a lot of unenthusiastic sex is perfectly ethical. A couple that is trying hard to conceive a baby might not be feeling terribly erotic: “honey, my cervical mucus looks like an egg white!” is few people’s idea of dirty talk. Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with planning your sex around trying to conceive. Similarly, a sex worker may not feel terribly enthusiastic about sex with her clients, but that doesn’t mean that her or her clients are doing something wrong. Second, enthusiastic consent is androcentric. Sexologists sometimes distinguish between responsive desire and spontaneous desire... there is a gender difference in how likely people are to experience responsive desire: a minority of men experience responsive desire, while the majority of women do, and a significant minority of women only experience responsive desire and never spontaneous... Third, I feel like ‘enthusiastic consent’ is sort of disrespectful of people’s agency. If it is someone’s own personal body and their own personal decision, I’m not sure why sex-positive feminism gets to have an opinion about whether their motivations for consenting to sex are pure enough"

I drew this graph about sexual desire… and I think it might change your life. - "Among 225 40-year old Danish women, 32.4% reported never experiencing “spontaneous libido” (Garde and Lunde, “Female Sexual Behavior”)
33% of 1,749 women in the United States reported lack of interest in or desire for sex (Michael et al., Sex in America). In the same study, 16% of men reported the same lack of interest in sex.
38% of 893 American women reported “thinking about sex with interest or desire” once a week or less in the last month (Bancroft et al, “Sexual Risk-Taking”); 14% thought about sex with interest or desire daily (Bancroft, Loftus, and Long, “Distress About Sex”)
In a multiethntinic sample of 3,248 women aged 40-55, 42% reported feeling a desire for sex less than two or fewer times in the last month (Cain et al, “Sexual functioning”); 30% reported desiring sex between once per week to every day
30.7% of 3,687 Portugeuse women reported that they typically or always accessed desire only once they were aroused (Carvalheira, Brotto, and Leal, “Women’s Motivation for Sex”); in this study about 12% of women “often” fantasized about sex and 12% “very often or always” initiated sex with their partners.
Among Norwegian and Portuguese men aged 18-75, 74% presented with “spontaneous” desire, 2.5% with responsive, and 24% with what the authors call “decreased” desire (Stulhofer, Carvalheira, and Træen, “Insights from a Two-Country Study”)."

Sweden plans change in law to require explicit consent before sexual contact - "The proposal is part of a series of initiatives being put forward. Others would make it illegal for Swedes to hire prostitutes abroad, and increase sentences for offenders"

Malmö police retract 'unfortunate' advice warning women not to go out alone after dark - "Local police had made a much-criticised public statement advising women not to go out alone after darkness following the brutal rape of a 17-year old girl in central Malmö at the weekend... Much of the critique directed towards Nilsson's statement centred on it pushing responsibility on the public to stay safe, with critics pointing out the police are expected to keep the public safe."
Don't tell me to take care of my belongings. Tell criminals not to steal them

'Exceptional' problems in Sweden's vulnerable suburbs: report - "A new report suggests that two fifths of residents in Sweden's vulnerable areas feel unsafe when they are outdoors at night... One in three residents of the 61 areas say they feel there are significant problems with open drug dealing, as well as shootings. Many say certain individuals or groups prevent them from moving freely... Women in particular are suffering, with the majority living in the areas (55.3 percent) saying that they feel unsafe"

Michelle Obama's G20 faux pas brings out Queen's touchy-feely side - "At least four people are known to have broken this rule, the first being Alice Frazier, who hugged the Queen in Washington in 1991 during her 13-day US visit."

Donald Trump's Sweden’s Immigration Gaffe: The Truth Behind It - "In the week since Trump’s infamous Sweden-gate, I have reflected on the irony of the Swedish media’s criticizing him for silencing certain media outlets — after all, conservative voices in Sweden have been consistently silenced for as long as I can remember. And rather than face the evident problems caused by systemic political mismanagement in Sweden, the establishment is using President Trump as a bogey man; he is a welcome diversion from the failure of its own ideological paradigm... Since the beginning of the immigration crisis, Sweden has cut 950 million U.S. dollars from its foreign aid to allocate to immigration services, and much more will have to be cut from other welfare programs to deal with a projected massive influx of refugees. No available studies show the current immigration as anything but a net loss for the country. The idea that immigration is noble has become a truth in Sweden and in much of Europe, and any critique against it is interpreted as racism. In this climate, we close our eyes to real solutions, such as devoting resources (military or financial or both) to aid individuals where they are. Western nations are now, at great expense, creating a problem within their own borders — to fulfill some sort of idea of themselves as being “good” countries — rather than doing actual good elsewhere. Europe is not dealing with the reason for the immigration crisis but is only delaying its solution indefinitely... journalists and politicians often insist that immigration is good for the country, creating jobs and paying for itself in the long run. When the reality of people’s daily life fails to comport with the picture painted by reporters and lawmakers, it creates a disconnect between the people and the powerful, and it stokes anger among voters."
On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out to them lists of figures proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred per cent, three hundred per cent, or five hundred per cent as the case might be

'Adam Ruins Everything' Exposes Crazy Hospital Prices in New Video - "Hospitals use a Chargemaster to assign arbitrary, ridiculously inflated prices to various common medical objects. That’s why a $20 neck brace costs $154, or an IV bag that should cost pennies can run for $137.
Blame these charges on insurance companies, who demand massive discounts from hospitals for sending thousands of patients their way. Hospitals still need to make a profit, so they inflate their prices and give insurance companies a discount off those figures...
The healthcare industry spends more money on lobbying than the oil and defense industries combined. Yay!
We have to go to the hospital, so there’s really no way around this. “Politicians have spent decades arguing over how to pay the bill instead of asking why the bill is so high,” Conover says. “Until they do, we’re stuck with this system.”"

Jemma Beale lied about being raped – but was sentenced by a flawed system | Zoe Williams - "Arguably, a stiff sentence for a false allegation in itself compromises women’s access to justice: any reported rape, if it fails to secure a conviction, has the potential to be turned into a counter-accusation of perjury... All crimes are a waste of time, in the sense that, had they not occurred, the police could have done something else. Yet no crimes are a waste of time, in the sense that they are what justice is for."
??? feminist logic