"Rolling Stone Never Gave the Villains of Its Gang Rape Story a Chance to Defend Themselves."

Writes Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic.

[T]he reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, allowed herself to be bound by a vow she made to Jackie not to contact the alleged rapists, especially the pseudonymous Drew, said to have lured her into the room where seven men raped her. Erdely may not even have tried to identify them....

“If I had to guess what happened at UVA—and at this point, we can only guess (which is why we should not be passing judgment),” Wendy Kaminer, a civil libertarian and feminist who has written extensively on both rape and free speech on campus, emailed me, “I’d guess that the story is neither entirely fabricated nor entirely true, and, in any case, compels a real investigation by investigators with no stake in their findings.”

The White House task force report on campus sexual assaults "reflects a presumption of guilt in sexual assault cases that practically obliterates the due process rights of the accused."

Writes Wendy Kaminer, noting that the report titled "Not Alone" would be more aptly named "Believe the Victim":

Students leveling accusations of assault are automatically described as “survivors” or “victims” (not alleged victims or complaining witnesses), implying that their accusations are true.

When you categorically presume the good faith, infallible memories and entirely objective perspectives of self-identified victims, you dispense with the need for cumbersome judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings and an adversary model of justice. Thus the task force effectively prohibits cross-examination of complaining witnesses: “The parties should not be allowed to cross-examine each other,” the report advises, denying the fundamental right to confront your accuser.

Much more at the link. There's also "The White House Flunks a Test on Sexual Assault/An administration task force ignores the rights of the accused," by Matt Kaiser and Justin Dillon in The Wall Street Journal, which is written in blander terms. ("Being a victim of a sexual assault is a horrible, life-altering thing. So, too, is being falsely found to have committed a sexual assault. Schools need processes that are fair to both accusers and the accused.") In less bland terms, there's KC Johnson's "The White House Joins the War on Men."

"The SaVE Act implicitly assumes the guilt of students accused of sexual violence or stalking and ensures that guilt is fairly easy to establish."

Writes Wendy Kaminer in The Atlantic:

It requires schools to employ the lowest possible standard of proof -- a preponderance of evidence -- in disciplinary hearings....

Violence prevention programs mandated by the SaVE Act are almost as worrying as the mandatory disciplinary proceedings. Schools must conduct prevention and awareness programs for all new students and employees. In addition to providing relatively objective information about reporting, protective measures, and disciplinary procedures, administrators must lay down the law on highly subjective matters, like "the elements of healthy relationships" and "bystander intervention"  -- the "safe and positive options" open to someone who perceives a risk of violence or stalking.

Prevention programs must also include a "definition of consent in reference to sexual activity," a requirement reminiscent of the notorious, unself-consciously absurd sexual consent guidelines issued by the late Antioch College in the 1990s. Its detailed prescription for consensual sex included these mandates: "The person(s) who initiate(s) the sexual activity is responsible for asking for consent. The person(s) who are asked are responsible for verbally responding. Each new level of sexual activity requires consent."

Policies like these are easily mocked, but there's nothing funny about the prospect of enforcing them with little regard for due process.

Wendy Kaminer "can't find feminism" in the charges of sexual harassment aimed at Yale...

"... 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....

What accounts for such feminine timidity, this instinctive unwillingness or inability to talk or taunt back, without seeking the protection of university or government bureaucrats?...

Decades ago, when Catherine [sic] MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and their followers began equating pornography with rape (literally) and calling it a civil-rights violation, groups of free-speech feminists fought back, in print, at conferences, and in state legislatures, with some success. We won some battles (and free speech advocates in general can take solace in the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the right to engage in offensive speech on public property and public affairs). But all things considered (notably the generations of students unlearning liberty) we seem to be losing the war, especially among progressives.

"Years ago, I watched an array of law students lingering in a hotel lobby, waiting to be interviewed by visiting firms."

Writes Wendy Kaminer:

The men were completely, conventionally covered by their suits; the women seemed half naked by comparison, in fitted jackets, often showing a little cleavage, and above the knee, or shorter, skirts. Maybe they hoped to benefit from these reveals, but I suspect they were subtly disadvantaged by them. The men were free to focus on their interviews; at least some women were likely to be distracted (however, unconsciously) by concern about their looks and the need to sit and display themselves appropriately. How much skin is just enough? Stilettos, kitten heels, or flats? Hollywood or D.C? These are questions men never have to ask. Will they ever cease to matter to women?

Okay. My bullshit alarm went off. What year was this? In what city did this supposedly happen? I see law students dressed for interviews all the time, and as far as I can tell from my excellent perspective, this problem Kaminer would like us to fret about does not exist. Women law students know how to dress exactly appropriately for interviews.

I'm reacting to the ending of a piece titled "Kagan, Palin, and Lipstick Feminism," which is mainly riff on that Robin Givhan column about the way Elena Kagan dresses. Kaminer begins:

What do Elena Kagan and Sarah Palin have in common?  They each offer complementary cautionary tales about the continuing appeal of an ersatz, "Sex in the City" feminism that rewards beauty and punishes plainness with all the subtlety and compassion of a Playboy centerfold.  Kagan's appearance and fashion sense are mocked or savaged, especially but not exclusively by pundits on the right, following a familiar script.  Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano endured similar hazings.  Sarah Palin, to say the least, did not. 

You know, the standards of male and female beauty are different. That isn't wrong. We talk about how everybody looks. And we poke fun at anybody who exercises power. It's not wrong. It's right. It's perfectly fine to talk about the glamorous or dowdy way some female politico dresses. We talk about men's clothes too, even though it's usually a more boring subject because professional men stay within a narrower range of options.

Men are armored by their unrevealing suits; women are expected to expose themselves, with various degrees of discretion. 

Oh, bullshit. Women aren't expected to expose themselves. We don't even have to wear skirts anymore. Hillary gets away with pantsuits and complete coverage. If she chooses to expose herself, we're going to notice, and we will talk about it. But it is true that men are "armored by their unrevealing suits." Here, I talk with Robin Givhan about exactly that (in 2007):

"How have students become these self-righteous ‘young authoritarians’? "

Wendy Kaminer talks about free speech on campus (via A&L Daily):

Far from being a site of free thinking and free exchange of ideas, the university seems to have become a laboratory for new forms of censorship and conformism. ‘Kids come to college, and for the first couple of weeks of freshman year they’re in a sensitivity course, where they’re told what they’re allowed to say and what they’re not allowed to say’, says Kaminer. ‘They are subjected to thought-control programmes the minute they arrive. That is not a very good start.’...

How have students become these self-righteous ‘young authoritarians’? For Kaminer, ‘it is partly because they have been brought up in today’s victimised, intolerant culture’. She argues that restrictions on free speech are made not only by the right seeking to quell dissent among their left-leaning or liberal critics, but also by liberals themselves, who have bought into ideas of ‘hate speech’ and ‘harmful speech’....

Kaminer traces it back to the American feminist anti-porn movement of the 1980s, to authors such as Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. They, and others, were among the first, says Kaminer, to articulate the idea that ‘you have a civil right not to be offended or “arguably harmed”, even metaphorically, by somebody else’s speech’. Indeed, Kaminer points out that some of these feminist theorists made little distinction between words and actions: they argued that porn is violence, that to watch porn is to commit a violent act and that watching porn often directly encourages men to commit violent acts. According to Kaminer, this idea has spread widely, so that many more forms of hate speech – from racist speech to anti-Semitic speech, misogynist speech to xenophobic speech – are now seen as being potentially harmful, as encouraging listeners to hate and act violently towards others.

It's been my impression that the MacKinnon/Dworkin way of thinking fell out of favor when the need to support Bill Clinton conflicted with the interest in heightening awareness of things that fell under the rubric "sexual harassment." But there is still a core group of students that shops ideas like this to university administrators, and there are university administrators who feel they need to cater to them.

‘Words have power, of course they do. If they didn’t, why be a writer? Why be an activist? But words don’t cast spells over people. When feminists argue that giving a man porn is like saying “kill” to an attack dog, it implies that men are just dogs on short leashes...

Or cats...

...that they have a Pavlovian response that they cannot control. It ignores the fact that speech is a two-way exchange. The speaker is not Svengali: the audience hears what he says, interprets it, and they make their minds up. The way you combat bad speech is with good speech. You don’t combat it with censorship. That just doesn’t work, and it demeans debate.’

This should be such dogma -- or catma -- by now that it should seem too tedious to mention, but, sadly enough, it's not.