Lies of Women who Falsely Cry Rape Have the Same Destructive Impact on Genuine Sex Attack Victims
Lies of Women who Falsely Cry Rape Have the Same Destructive Impact on Genuine Sex Attack Victims
Annie Brown
June 12, 2013
STEPHEN McLaughlin was 23 when he killed himself after being falsely accused of rape.
He was a gentle, intelligent and dignified man who had been damaged irreparably by the lies of a vindictive young woman. Stephen would have been 40 this year, perhaps a father and husband enjoying the love and the life he deserved.
I think of Stephen every time I see a case like that of Linsey Attridge, 31, who falsely accused two strangers of raping her in an attempt to win back her boyfriend. She picked two men at random on Facebook and threw a grenade into their world.
Last week, Attridge was convicted and sentenced to 200 hours of community service.
Stephen’s accuser was a former girlfriend and she had sex willingly with him on his birthday.
She too admitted that she had cried rape to make her new boyfriend jealous.
Police had picked up Stephen in the middle of the night and subjected him to an intimate and degrading medical examination. The next morning when he returned home, he vomited, wept and repeated with incredulity the word “rapist”.
A few weeks before he died, Stephen told me that he was haunted by the prospect of that split-second of doubt, the potential for there to be any pause, any question, in any mind that he was capable of such a heinous crime.
On his sister Alexandra’s 30th birthday, he left her party, drove to a remote spot in the Galloway forest and killed himself.
The lies of women like Attridge have the same destructive impact on genuine rape victims. Victims fear that flicker of scepticism, that they may not be believed. As Attridge has shown, there are women low enough to cry rape. But she is the exception, not the rule.
It is beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of women to wreak such havoc on an innocent man’s life.
To Stephen, neither his accuser’s confession nor the court’s conviction, could restore the honour he valued with his life.
Let’s hope that the vindication of the court is enough for Attridge’s victims but it will take them years to recover – if they ever do.
As Stephen’s tragic suicide shows, to falsely accuse a man of rape is to play Russian roulette with his life.
For two months, Attridge’s victims were investigated, forensically examined and questioned. She plucked them from Facebook and for that time they were tarnished with the label of alleged rapists.
She punched herself in the face and ripped her own clothes to add credibility to her lie that the men had raped her in her Aberdeen home.
It was cruel, it was vindictive and manipulative and a betrayal of men and women. Attridge’s ex-boyfriend feels she deserves jail but it is difficult to see what purpose prison would serve.
The prospect of jail time is not going to deter any other woman like her, who is willing to swing a wrecking ball through men’s lives in a perverse attempt to keep her bloke.
She needs psychological help and to know that the consequences of actions like hers can be fatal.
I hope she will think of her victims and of those like Stephen who paid the ultimate price in the petty politics of another’s relationship.
Link: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/annie-brown-lies-women-who-1946762
Women Need to Get Angry with Rape Liars like Linsey Attridge
This is No Time for Sisterhood: Women Need to Get Angry with Rape Liars like Linsey Attridge, She’s Abusing Them as Well as the System
Peter Lloyd
June 9, 2013
Earlier this week, MailOnline reported on the case of Linsey Attridge – the latest woman to evade jail after making a false rape claim.
The 31 year-old from Aberdeen, Scotland, falsely accused two strangers of sexual assault in a twisted bid to trap her boyfriend into their ailing relationship.
The single mother-of-one claimed that two men broke into her home and committed the violent attack while her partner was away playing football.
2 horrible, dangerous lies = 200 hours of community service
She then punched herself in the face and ripped her clothes to make the story appear more credible, before spending three days trawling social networking site Facebook to find innocent users she could ‘identify’ as responsible.
Her victims were then detained by police, questioned and forced to undergo intrusive forensic and medical examinations.
Then, following two months of police investigations, Attridge confessed that the claim was a malicious lie – purposely designed to emotionally manipulate one man by legally manipulating two others
Not to mention the real victims of rape, both male and female.
Last Wednesday, she appeared in Aberdeen Sheriff Court where she publicly admitted wasting police time.
But, in another gender-biased outcome for female offenders, Attridge was spared jail in favour of 200 hours unpaid community service. Something that’s neither a fitting punishment, nor a deterrent.
Gender pay gap? Let’s sort the gender sentencing gap too.
Even her ex-boyfriend, primary victim Nick Smith, said: ‘I think the sentence was ridiculous. I actually walked out of the court as soon as I heard it. I think the justice system has let us all down.’
And he’s right.
Because, although it’s clear that men are the only victims in this particular case, Attridge has also betrayed the sisterhood.
Not only has she embarrassed her gender with her lies, but she has also made the process of convicting real rapists even harder for other women. Women who have already endured unimaginable pain. Girls who, sadly, will be subjected to the same horrors in the future.
And she’s not the only one. In April last year, Kent’s Kirsty Sowden – a former John Lewis shop assistant – cried rape over a fully consensual encounter with a man she’d met online. He was arrested at his workplace in front of colleagues and detained in a cell, wasting 376 hours of police time and costing £14,000.
In May 2012, 20 year-old Hanna Byron was spared jail after falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of rape in revenge for breaking up with her.
In August, Sheffield’s Emma Saxon made a second false rape allegation against her boyfriend, Martin Blood. He was held in police custody for 14 hours and subjected to an intrusive medical examination – all because he’d stood her up.
Southampton’s Elizabeth Jones was finally jailed in February – but only after making her ELEVENTH false allegation.
Yet, despite this, not one person or rape charity has ever come forward and distanced themselves from such behaviour. Not one.
Which, by default, is yet another disservice to the real victims of rape – both the men and women who are attacked, and the men named and shamed, regardless of conviction.
Sadly, it’s not just women like Attridge who lie. I’m also talking about women in positions of power. Women like Harriet Harman.
‘Too many people assume that there is a party line when it comes to gender issues – that women must support each other, no matter what. But such misplaced loyalty is insane’
In 2010, an official enquiry report led by Baroness Stern – a prison reform campaigner – ordered Harman to stop misleading the public about rape statistics. For years she’d been pumping misinformation that only six per cent of rapists are brought to justice, when the reality is actually very different.
Actually, the rate is more like two in three – a figure which is much higher than comparable numbers for other violent crimes. Yet still we are told that only 4 per cent of rape attacks go to court.
But where was the outrage from women about this? Quite frankly, it was nowhere to be seen. Just like it was missing this week. Which amazes me.
Emma Saxon made a false claim of rape against Martin Blood, a man she had met online, after he failed to show up for a liaison (left). Elizabeth Jones, 22, has made 11 false rape claims since 2004 (right).
After all, when Lee Rigby was killed in Woolwich, representatives from Britain’s Muslim community publicly distanced themselves from the actions of Michael Adebolajo in a bid to align with what’s right. They did this by highlight what was wrong.
But I never see this with our country’s feminists, which begs a very sad question: are women galvanising over gender, rather than justice?
Too many people assume that there is a party line when it comes to gender issues – that women must support each other, no matter what. But such misplaced loyalty is insane.
In our best-ever age of equality, women should not stand by somebody simply because they share matching XX chromosomes – if they’re crying rape. They should be raging against them, like the crime of rape itself.
Instead, their apathy reeks.
Unfortunately, women also suffer when judges pass laughable sentences – like the one imposed on Attridge. Because if rape is such a terrible crime, and it clearly is, why isn’t defrauding rape with false allegations also bad? And why is it less bad if you’re a woman?
It’s patronising. It tells the world that women are not strong enough, not independent enough, not responsible enough to be equally culpable as their male counterparts in a court of law. And, whether they like it or not, they are.
Equality means equal. The same.
Ironically, Attridge’s sentence comes just days after a man was imprisoned for sending his son a birthday message via the same website which Attridge used to identify her victims.
The very multi-million pound platform which now censors anything which may be deemed offensive to women, but doesn’t extend the same courtesy to men and boys.
These inconsistencies, just like the inconsistencies in criminal sentencing, do the entire female population a disservice when they favor them.
Why? Because they make it about men vs. women, rather than right vs. wrong. And that’s what so many people fail to recognize.
This is not the path to justice. In fact, when women fail to publicly criticize these liars, along with their unbelievably light sentences, they’re not being objective or even ignorant – they’re condoning them.
AAUP’s Committee on Women Expresses Deep Concern about Feds’ Speech Code ‘Blueprint’
AAUP’s Committee on Women Expresses Deep Concern about Feds’ Speech Code ‘Blueprint’
June 7, 2013
Adding to the long list of those concerned about the new mandate for speech codes issued on May 9 by the federal Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Education (ED) is the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Women. AAUP’s letter to the Departments praises their desire to create a “more equitable campus environment for women” but expresses deep concern with their redefinition of sexual harassment, which “eliminates the critical standard of ‘reasonable speech,’ and, in so doing, may pose a threat to academic freedom in the classroom.”
Appropriately, the letter focuses on the adverse effects this is likely to have on faculty members, giving examples of controversial issues that have arisen in the course of their gender studies classes. For example, “[a]fter seeing a film on African culture during a class on African literature, students discuss attitudes towards breast-feeding and breasts.” The AAUP correctly points out that “[u]nder the proposed redefinition of sexual harassment, each of these classroom topics, because they might offend student sensibilities, or create discomfort, could be construed as ‘verbal conduct of a sexual nature’ and thus be considered contributory to the creation of a ‘hostile environment’ in the classroom.”
FIRE has made the same points, but perhaps the Departments will pay more attention when they are voiced by professors. We can hope so, anyway—the AAUP wrote twice (including one letter from the Committee on Women) to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) after the April 4, 2011, “Dear Colleague” letter put at grave risk the rights of students and faculty members accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment (examples of which may now include the aforementioned breast-feeding discussion). Its letters were ignored, as were FIRE’s. Thankfully, the growing chorus of criticism about the blueprint has already forced OCR to respond to widespread concerns about its latest offense against academic freedom, free speech, and common sense, even if that response was faulty and insufficient.
We urge faculty nationwide to join FIRE and the AAUP in standing up for academic freedom. Write OCR directly and demand that it retract its mandate for speech codes immediately.
Beating up Your Boyfriend to Keep Him in Line
Beating up Your Boyfriend to Keep Him in Line:
Time for a Long-Overdue Conversation
Women Against VAWA Excess
June 5, 2013
Jodi Arias’ recent conviction for the murder of ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander has been the focus of heated public debate in recent weeks, partly because it highlights the long-hidden problem of female-on-male abuse. Research shows men and women engage in partner violence at more or less equal rates: http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm As lawmakers repeatedly said during the recent Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, “A victim is a victim is a victim.”
Beating up Your Boyfriend
Last week columnist Cathy Young spotlighted a rogue Facebook page called “Beating up Your Boyfriend to Keep Him in Line.”
The page was devoted to the idea that domestic violence against men is funny, even a necessary proposition. The page had attracted a large following – over 16,000 “Likes,” so the page’s message clearly resonated with a lot of women.
Domestic violence is serious business, and the page obviously violated Facebook’s hate speech policy. When alerted to the offensive page, WAVE’s members complained in droves. Within hours, the page had been taken down.
But the troubling question lingers, why did so many endorse the page’s sneering message?
Futures Without Violence
Futures Without Violence is a group that makes the claim, “Everyone has the right to live free of violence.” That’s a good thing to say, of course.
But take a look at its Facebook page – it has a lot to say about “violence against women,” but not a word about “violence against men”! https://www.facebook.com/#!/FuturesWithoutViolence?fref=ts .
Each year Futures Without Violence gets $6.5 million in anti-abuse funding from the federal government. But in its depiction of the problem, Futures Without Violence is being flat-out dishonest with the American public.
Saying ‘No’ to a Hateful Agenda
Most women care deeply about the husbands, boyfriends, sons, and other men in their lives. When they say “everyone” has a right to live free of violence, they aren’t engaging in word games that somehow manage to exclude half of all victims.
And caring women certainly would not support an organization that makes light of violence against any group, or cherry-picks the truth to push an ideological agenda.
As one of our members recently wrote, feminists only seem to care about “making men to be evil and women to be victims.”
W.A.V.E. invites all persons – women and men alike – to join together in respectful partnership to bring an end to domestic violence.
Time to Change Military Justice
Time to Change Military Justice
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
June 2, 2013
In his commencement address at the United States Military Academy late last month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel urged the newest graduates of the two-centuries-old academy to help stamp out the “scourge” of sexual assaults in the military. His call had special resonance. It had been revealed just days before that a sergeant responsible for advising cadets had been charged with secretly videotaping female cadets in the shower — just one of an alarming cascade of incidents in recent weeks evidencing the depth, frequency and sheer brazenness of the military’s sexual misconduct problem.
Last Friday, allegations surfaced that three members of the United States Naval Academy football team had sexually assaulted a female midshipman in April 2012. When she reported the attack, her lawyer said, she was disciplined for drinking but the academy did not bring charges against the three and allowed them to keep playing football.
A Pentagon report released in early May estimated that as many as 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in 2012, up from an already unacceptable 19,000 in 2011. Only a small fraction of victims — 3,374 in all — reported their attacks, despite new assistance programs, with many fearing harm to their careers and that their complaints would not be taken seriously anyway.
The issue will get an airing Tuesday at a hearing convened by Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, to consider possible changes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, using the annual defense authorization bill as a vehicle. The question, however, is whether Congress will undertake the broad reforms necessary to encourage more victims to come forward and to show that legislators take seriously the pledge of zero tolerance for such crimes that military leaders and successive administrations have been making for decades.
A bill offered by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and co-sponsored by four Republicans and 13 other Democrats aims to do just that. Under the current system, senior officers with no legal training but with lots of conflicts of interest get to decide whether court-martial charges can be brought against subordinates. They also pick the jury pool, and they can throw out a guilty finding even after a verdict is rendered. A recent series in The San Antonio Express-News detailed instances in which senior officers put pressure on victims to get them to drop charges.
Ms. Gillibrand’s bill would mandate immediate referral of formal complaints of sexual misconduct to investigators, and would take charging decisions out of the hands of commanders and give them to senior military lawyers independent of the chain of command. While not the entire answer, this is a necessary step for bolstering the system’s credibility. The bill would also strip commanders of the power to toss out verdicts involving serious crimes.
Mr. Hagel supports eliminating the power of senior officers to overturn court-martial verdicts in serious cases, and there is a good chance Congress will approve legislation to take that positive step. But the outlook for broader reform along Ms. Gillibrand’s lines is not encouraging. Mr. Levin’s witness list, for instance, includes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of the different service branches, who have already voiced objections to that approach. Only at the last minute did Mr. Levin add two witnesses from victims’ advocacy groups.
The top brass can be expected to argue that moving the disposition of cases outside the chain of command would somehow undermine order and discipline. Yet while commanders must have the authority and respect to lead troops into battle, it does not follow that they are the right people to decide whether someone should be prosecuted for rape or other crimes. These witnesses need to explain why the troubling status quo is worth preserving, and why it should not be replaced by an approach like Ms. Gillibrand’s, which has a real chance of helping to change the military’s entrenched culture of sexual misconduct.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/time-to-change-military-justice.html
Facebook Agrees to Block Sexual Assault ‘Humor’
Facebook Agrees to Block Sexual Assault ‘Humor’
Nidhi Subbaraman
May 29, 2013
Facebook is changing its policy on “humorous” posts and images that make light of rape and violence against women, following pressure from activists and advertisers.
In a statement published Tuesday, Facebook says it will process more complaints and will train its staff of reviewers using guidance from women’s groups and legal experts. And should egregious material continue to slip through, women’s advocacy groups will have direct contact with the social network.
“The guidelines used by these systems have failed to capture all the content that violates our standards,” read the statement signed by Marne Levine, Facebook’s vice president of Global Public Policy. “We need to do better — and we will.”
Last week, the Women, Action & the Media group published an open letter explaining that Facebook wasn’t doing enough to remove posts that condoned violence against women. With a quick search, anyone on the social network could see Photoshopped images of women along with slogans that encouraged or made light of rape and violent acts. For example, next to a woman whose face has been made to look like she was beaten, the text read, “1/3 of women are physically abused. 2/3 of men aren’t doing their job.”
Women, Action & the Media — joined by a coalition that included V-Day and the Everyday Sexism Project — called out not just the social network, but also advertisers whose ads have appeared beside offensive content.
The letter asked Facebook for a more nuanced moderation of posts, and more consistent execution of its existing policy. In addition to the letter, Women, Action & the Media has encouraged users to spot their own images, and post them on Twitter under the hashtag #fbrape.
Women, Action & the Media sung Facebook’s praises following Tuesday’s announcement, saying Facebook “has admirably done more than most other companies” to address their concerns about hate speech directed at women.
Unlike Reddit or Tumblr, social media sites which are reluctant to police comments and content, Facebook does ban hate speech, and has a system in place for users to report content that violates its Terms of Service agreement. But in its Community Standards, Facebook “distinguishes between serious and humorous speech.” In the past, under this loophole, Facebook has been slow to tackle hateful content against not just women, but posts and pages that target ethnic minorities or religious groups or gays, as well.
It appears that when regular users report content that encourages or makes light of rape or violence, Facebook often leaves it up, WAM’s executive director, Jaclyn Friedman told NBC News last week. “It’s only when the media gets involved that the pages come down,” she said.
A Facebook spokesperson previously told NBC News in an email, “We occasionally see people post distasteful or disturbing content, or make crude attempts at humor. While it may be vulgar and offensive, distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies.” Also, “We do require that any such page be clearly marked — so users are aware that the content may be in poor taste.”
Gender scholars suggest that trivializing violence and rape can aggravate a culture where abuse is a serious issue. There’s also evidence that making light of violence and rape on media could have effects in the real world.
Readers of such content “are more likely to become numb to the pain and suffering of others,” Ohio State University’s Brad Bushman, author of a study of the effects of violent video games and media on real life empathy, told NBC News. “When positive things like humor or sex are linked with violence, the effects are particularly pernicious.”
But it’s not just the activist groups that pushed Facebook to reevaluate its policies. Since Facebook didn’t block the content, Women, Action & the Media appealed to the advertisers who didn’t want their ads associated with it.
One advertiser targeted in the campaign, Dove, told NBC News last week that the company was “working with Facebook to block our ads from appearing on these pages,” adding that, “in the future, we will be refining our targeting to reduce the chance of any ads appearing on similar pages.”
Another, airline Finnair, told NBC News, “We have been in contact with Facebook … and urged them to take concrete action to ensure Finnair ads do not appear on hate speech sites,” adding, “If Facebook is for some reason unable to solve this problem, we will need to reconsider our media strategy towards Facebook.”
Other advertisers, including Zipcar and Audible, posted public responses to the campaign, and WAM says that 15 companies including Nissan UK asked to remove ads from Facebook.
“I’m so thrilled honestly that they’ve recognized that they have work to do,” Friedman told NBC News Tuesday. “I feel like we’re moving to a better place.”
Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/facebook-agrees-block-sexual-assault-humor-6C10094982
Jodi Arias ‘Survivor’ Shirt Sickening, Says DV victim
Jodi Arias ‘Survivor’ Shirt Sickening, Says Domestic Violence Victim
May 22, 2013
PHOENIX – Jodi Arias’ claims that she killed Travis Alexander in self-defense have set actual domestic violence victims back ten years, according to one abuse survivor.
“Travis was the victim of domestic violence,” said Leah Pettyjohn, a domestic violence survivor. “He ended up the ultimate victim when his ex-girlfriend murdered him.”
Pettyjohn escaped a dangerous relationship and now advocates for other victims. She does not believe that Arias, now a convicted murderer, was an abused woman.
“To stand there in court with a ‘Survivor’ shirt, it’s sickening,” Pettyjohn told ABC15.
Arias told the jurors that, if spared the death penalty, she would sell her “Survivor” shirts to help DV victims.
Pettyjohn said one word describes her emotions when she saw Arias hold the shirt up for the jury: anger.
“I thought, how dare you claim to have any intention of helping someone else when you did something so horrific to someone.”
Pettyjohn said anyone who is in an abusive relationship needs to call police and get help immediately.
Read more: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/Jodi-Arias-Survivor-shirt-sickening-says-domestic-violence-victim#ixzz2UbYCwPwS
The Military’s Culture of Sexual Violence
The Military’s Culture of Sexual Violence
Margaret Carlson
May 21, 2013
I have a suggestion about how to help instantly reduce sexual assaults in the military. Round up those in charge of handling sexual-assault cases.
What fertile ground. In the space of two weeks this month, two of the top officers in charge of preventing sexual assaults were accused in sexual assaults. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Krusinski, the officer in charge of the Air Force program, was arrested in a Washington suburb after he grabbed a woman in a parking lot. An officer in the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention unit at Fort Hood in Texas, meanwhile, is under investigation for abusive sexual conduct.
About Margaret Carlson»
Margaret Carlson is a Bloomberg View columnist appearing on Wednesdays. A former White House correspondent for … MORE
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QWill Republicans Let Obama Have His Scandal?
Q.Sexual violence in the military is so pervasive, even some of those who have been charged with rooting it out are themselves violent. The military just can’t seem to curb the epidemic on its own. It’s more important to pretend nothing has happened when a complaint is lodged; many are never relayed to military criminal authorities, while others are swept under the rug. It’s the victim’s fault — for upsetting camaraderie and esprit de corps. Get her (or him: the Pentagon estimates that 54 percent of victims are men) to be quiet or charge the complainer with conduct unbecoming an officer or insubordination.
Dangerous Paths
It’s no wonder some women in uniform try not to drink too much — not alcohol, but anything — at night. As one told Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the most dangerous place on base is often the secluded path to the latrines, where many assaults take place.
Last year, the Pentagon received 3,374 reports of sexual assault, according to its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. (The actual number of assaults is probably closer to 26,000, the office says.) Of those 3,374, almost 1,000 were deemed baseless or outside the military’s jurisdiction, and several hundred were dropped by commanders as unfounded or for other reasons.
It’s true, as the military is fond of saying, that the great majority of military officers are law-abiding. But when a fellow service member is accused, the law-abiding tend to side with the accused. Reporting a rape is never easy, but it’s much harder when the perpetrator is of higher rank than the victim (50 percent of the time) and when the perpetrator is in the victim’s chain of command (23 percent of the time). Join the military, where you may be more prone to sexual attack and you don’t even get the protections, however flawed, you would get at your local police precinct, because the brass close ranks.
There have been attempts to fix pieces of the problem, such as the indignity of a recruit having to salute the man who attacked her while her complaint is being investigated. In 2011 the Pentagon instituted an expedited transfer policy — but there’s no deadline on providing a move, and it doesn’t track how long a move takes. Victims’ groups say more than 60 percent of victims face continued contact and retaliation from their attackers.
Meanwhile, members of Congress have dozens of reports that superiors are more interested in finding reasons to intimidate the victim than in helping her get out of the line of fire. In one case, a nurse couldn’t get out of her unit after being raped by a fellow officer. She even had to train with him. Her command found excuses not to honor her transfer request until Representative Niki Tsongas intervened.
Even the big boss, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, couldn’t fix one problem: the ability of commanding officers to overturn jury verdicts with no explanation whatsoever. After a general overturned a sexual-assault conviction of an airman at Aviano Air Base in Italy, Hagel pledged that no such thing would ever happen again. He found out he didn’t have such authority.
Dangerous Predators
Violence and cover-up are part of the military’s culture. If the numbers are right, there are 26,000 estimated assaults but only a minuscule fraction are prosecuted. That means there are a lot of dangerous predators at large.
Gillibrand introduced legislation last week that would essentially remove commanders from the legal process. If passed, complaints would have to go to a parallel system of military prosecutors outside the command structure. No more commanders overturning guilty verdicts.
The bill has 15 co-sponsors, but it may not be enough. True, victims are no longer so afraid to come forward, and top military officers acknowledge that sexual assault is an epidemic. But change won’t come easily. At a news conference last week, Senator Susan Collins spoke about her support of Gillibrand’s bill. As she noted, her remarks were almost identical to those she’d given almost a decade earlier. Sadly, they were still topical.
This bill, though laudable, doesn’t do anything to reduce the violence itself — just the terrible injustice that happens afterward. Women still shouldn’t walk to the latrines alone.
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/the-military-s-culture-of-sexual-violence.html
Have Negative Abuse Stereotypes Given Rise to Man-Hating Feminism?
Man-Hating Feminism More Than Just a Myth
Octavia Sheepshanks
May 20, 2013
Do you believe that all human beings are equal? Then you’re a feminist!
Well, such was my naïve belief, until now. While disagreements between supporters of any movement or system of beliefs are unavoidable, I thought that at least human equality was one area in which feminists would unite. I saw the notion of a feminist as being anti-men as merely one of many unjustified stereotypes, such as being ugly, or unwomanly.
Recently, however, I realised that man-hating feminism was all too real. My first experience of this was on Twitter. An article in the Independent had revealed that many men experience lasting psychological trauma at the birth of their children. I was horrified by the experiences described. Unfortunately, certain feminists of twitter were not. One lamented: “They can’t even let us have childbirth without fucking whining about what a hard time they have”; another declared that the traumatised men were “just squeamish”, a reaction ominously similar to men in decades past who have labelled women as “hysterical”. When I tried to explain that the article made the obviously correct assumption that childbirth is more traumatising for women, and simply reported undeniable trauma also experienced by certain men, I was accused of “trolling”, and of not knowing “much about feminism”. Finally, when I responded by saying that my words were due to a belief that “feminism at its heart should be about women being equal to men”, I was met with the response, “it’s a women’s movement. Men do not get a say in it and they take opportunities to hijack and derail.”
When some of the most commendable feminists I know are men, this is a pretty confusing statement to be making. If we isolate roughly half of the population from the movement, what can we hope to achieve?
Suppressing my concerns, I reassured myself that Twitter is a breeding ground for narrow-minded people, and that at least the feminist movement at my university had got it nailed. Oh, how wrong I was. Speaking to Harry Peto, a male, self-defining feminist, about the Twitter debacle, I learnt that before coming to Cambridge he had joined the Cambridge Men’s Feminist Discussion Group on Facebook. The reaction to these online discussions by certain Cambridge female feminists was so extreme that they were deleted. Those responsible for censoring the discussions believed that men should not only be denied the right to call themselves a feminist or to discuss feminism, but actually to vocalise their agreement with women on certain issues. And so the group was forced to shut down as a platform for discussion before term had even begun.
One of the women accountable for this went on to publish an article titled ‘Suffering under the Burden of Patriarchal Responsibility? Read this!’, directed at male “feminists” who really needed to “know their place” (Sound familiar?). Comments made by Harry and other men, which had been kept privately on record, were quoted in isolation, out of the wider context of a discussion, and branded as “extreme mansplaining, normative sexist language, general bullshit”. Examples of their comments, which in no way reflect that description, include: “Why exactly does an opinion (and clearly not on a leadership level) become worthless because of the gender of the speaker? Why isn’t THAT gender discrimination?” and “Either we offer support and are sexist, or stay silent- and are sexist. Hmmm. This is a difficult one.”
This was followed by a long list on what these men should be doing, rather than discussing feminism- such as cooking for women, so they have more time to discuss it themselves. One stated: “Seven. Don’t talk over women or interrupt them or explain to them why they’re wrong, particularly in discussions about oppression, politics, or academic subjects.” Personally, I would find it deeply annoying, indeed sexist, if a man refused to engage in debate with me solely because I am female.
One of the original claims made on the group, by Gareth Erskine, perfectly illuminates the problem with this type of behaviour: “Types of feminist militancy such as not being able to agree with women I believe only damage the feminist cause rather than progress it. Men will be reluctant to call themselves feminists or associate with feminism if such alienation continues.”
It is vital that the women guilty of such alienation swallow their pride and reflect that men should be permitted to have opinions, just like them. Feminism has a severe image problem, and if this is to change, it must present itself as an all-encompassing movement.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/octavia-sheepshanks/feminism-man-hating-myth_b_3292843.html
Obama Administration Scraps Free Speech
Obama Administration Scraps Free Speech
Mona Charen
May 14, 2013
Two years ago, this column, along with others, raised an alarm about the Obama administration’s decision radically to diminish the due process rights of those accused of sexual harassment on American campuses. There’s a new outrage today, but first, a recap:
In a 2011 letter to colleges, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) mandated that in cases of suspected sexual harassment or sexual assault, universities were to reduce the standard of proof to a more likely than not standard. The new standard requires that fact finders believe only that there is a 50.01 chance that the charges are true.
I warned at the time that students falsely accused could see their lives upended and possibly destroyed. Clearly, if a student has committed a crime or serious offense, the university has a duty to investigate. But serious charges, which can blight careers, require serious guarantees of the rights of the accused. In a court of law, a defendant has the right to confront witnesses against him, the right to see any exculpatory evidence the state discovers, the right to be represented by counsel and the presumption of innocence. In felony cases, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.
No such safeguards are available to accused college students. As self-described feminist Judith Grossman discovered to her horror when her son was falsely accused of “non-consensual sex” by a former girlfriend, “the Department of Education’s OCR has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice.” Grossman recounted that her son was denied counsel, subjected to a two-hour long inquisition, refused the opportunity to present evidence (in the form of emails from the former girlfriend and other documents) and denied the opportunity to question witnesses against him. Thanks to Grossman’s legal expertise and assistance, her son was eventually cleared. Other students are not so fortunate.
Following the Education Department’s directive, the University of Hawaii announced that students may be evicted from dormitories after no more than an accusation. At Yale, an unsubstantiated charge of sexual assault against a star football player was enough to deny him a Rhodes scholarship. At Xavier University, a student who was found not guilty of sexual assault by a judge was nonetheless told by the university that he would be prohibited from participating in classes or extracurricular activities with his “victim.” Caleb Warner was banned from the campuses of the University of North Dakota for three years. When police investigated the case, they issued an arrest warrant for his accuser, charging her with making a false rape charge. Only after repeated interventions on Warner’s behalf by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) did the university finally admit that the charges were without foundation.
Having virtually obliterated procedural protections for those accused of serious offenses and crimes, the Obama administration has now added a new insult — a restriction on free speech itself. For two decades, universities have struggled with the question of “speech codes,” tempted by the left to enshrine political correctness at the expense of the First Amendment. Most campuses have resisted, but through the Obama administration, the censors have triumphed all at once and everywhere.
A letter from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice addressed to the University of Montana but explicitly intended as a “blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country,” the government has altered the legal meaning of the term “sexual harassment.” The new rule directly contravenes Supreme Court decisions and previous rulings from OCR that harassment “must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.” The Supreme Court has ruled that to meet the test of sexual harassment, behavior must be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.” Note the word “objectively,” meaning that a reasonable person similarly situated would be offended.
The reasonable person standard is now gone. The new definition of sexual harassment decreed by the Obama administration is “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct.” The purported victim now has the power to decide whether a young man or woman (but it’s nearly always a man) is branded a sexual harasser. It’s entirely subjective.
Obama promised fundamental transformation. This is part of it. Freedom of speech is sacrificed, and a new army of sexual harassment “specialists” will descend on America’s campuses to enforce the new dispensation.
