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from the I'm-not-touching-this-with-a-ten-foot-pole dept.
The Guardian has a fascinating piece entitled Sexual paranoia on campus – and the professor at the eye of the storm. There is a lot going on in this article/interview and it touches on a lot of different issues in both society and higher-ed in general. Some choice quotes:
But you do end up making strange bedfellows. The people supporting free speech now are the conservatives. It's incomprehensible to me, but it's the so-called liberals on campus, the students who think of themselves as activists, who are becoming increasingly authoritarian. So I'm trying to step carefully. It's not like you want to make certain allies, particularly the men's rights people.
Kipnis's original essay was provoked by an email she received about a year before, informing her that relationships – dating, romantic or sexual – between undergraduates and faculty members at Northwestern were now banned. The same email informed her that relationships between graduates and staff, though not forbidden, were also problematic, and had to be reported to department chairs. "It annoyed me," she says. The language was neutral, but it seemed clear that it was mostly women this code was meant to protect. She thought of all those she knew who are married to former students, or who are the children of such couples, and wondered where this left them. It seemed to her this was part of a process that was transforming the "professoriate" into a sexually suspicious class: "would-be harassers all, sexual predators in waiting".
On a personal note, when I interact with students (which is every day), it's always either with an open office door, or in a public area. So as not to be discriminatory, I do the same for all students, men, women, or others. This sort of culture on campuses does make everyone suspicious of everyone else and it makes it hard to trust others. Students can't trust the instructors because they might "do something", staff can't trust the students because even a false accusation can be career ending, so there's this overall chilling effect that occurs when what should be a collegiate environment turns into an us vs them thing. This is definitely worse in some places than others, but there is an undercurrent of it everywhere. I applaud Laura Kipnis for bringing these issues to the light -- if we're going down this route, it should at least be a conscious community decision rather than bureaucratic policy handed down from University Counsel and risk assessment teams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday April 14 2017, @02:02AM (7 children)
We are turning in a full circle. In the 1960s and 1970s it was hippies, free love and everyone getting high and getting their freak on. Yoohoo!, everybody gets laid! Women were fully emancipated and considered competent to consent to sex or kick ya in the nuts if you didn't take no for an answer. Then come the 1980s and sexual harassment was bubbling up but the good times were most certainly still rolling, now cocaine fueled! By the 1990s Bill Clinton have us the One Grope Rule, oral sex wasn't really sex, just a little more friendly than a kiss really, and sexual harassment disappeared for a bit.
Come the naughties the good times started coming to an end. Sexual harrassment was a thing again, women could change their mind days, months later and end your life. Women are delicate things beset by danger and no agency to help them avoid the risks. Now we are just about to the point where men will need to wear body cams at all times to be able to prove what happened and that won't even matter since if she changes her mind it is still rape. That isn't speculation about the future, that is already settled 'case law' to the extent these are settled in courts vs kangaroo courts where the accused is allowed to lawyer, no ability to question their accuser and often not even an opportunity to face the judge.
End result that is coming is sex outside marriage is going to be so dangerous it will become low status as an indicator of a generally risky personality. Women in the workforce will start to be reconsidered to eliminate the legal minefield as employers increasingly get drug into these cases, since they have much deeper pockets. Creative ways around the law will be a growth industry. Strict dress codes will become fashionable, especially in the workplace. This ends wrapping around to the 1950s again... or all the way to the 1930s. And it is all going to be a natural consequence of PROGRESSIVE demands, the conservatives will, as usual, be hapless bystanders.
Now combine this with World War Trans having the unstoppable consequence of ending womens sports, just to drop a random related trend line into this.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 14 2017, @02:33AM (2 children)
Hmmm. Interesting.
Do you think that maybe the progressives will make a stop along the way, and declare that women of child bearing age have the RIGHT to decide not to work, to stay at home, and to raise their families, to care for invalids, tend a garden, or whatever the hell else they want to do?
While I am aware that women have ALWAYS been part of the workforce, there was a time when women could CHOOSE to be part of that workforce. Unfortunately, there have also always been women who didn't have a choice. Primarily young mother's whose mates abandoned them, or maybe even died.
Women's fashions do come and go, and all this women's lib may just be part of a fashion cycle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @02:56AM
I wonder if we'll get any real progressives so we can implement UBI or some kind of real union-friendly policy.
This would enable women to choose to stay at home, where I think a lot of women would rather be.
50% of the "workforce" should be able to live without providing income.
You'll have to let the gays in on this deal, but statistically it would be a wash.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cubancigar11 on Friday April 14 2017, @04:10AM
It won't be exactly that and it won't be a total circle. Women already have the right to decide not to work if they are married in more feminist countries such as nordic countries. The current demand is to have gender parity in positions of power i.e. 50% of board members ought to women and CEOs and management, basically all high paying jobs, should have 50% of women by law. The low paying jobs are divided into two categories: mostly female workers (e.g. nursing), and mostly male workers (e.g. construction). The former will prevail because entry of men is a land mine of sexual-harassment complaints, while latter are prone to be automatized and made obsolete.
This is not because of the college level leftist activism aka teenage angst or feminism used for political advantage, but rather those are a result of something else. We living through a bigger economical social change which started by industrialization and triggered the decline of agrarian culture and values. The trend I see is elimination of large number of men - the gender ratio is already skewed against men in Nordic countries, then other developed countries, and it is worst in the least industrialized countries such as middle east and Africa. In fact the only place it is normal (950:1000) is in purely agrarian societies that still exist in small pockets of Africa.
My theory is that women have always wanted to fuck the king, and king has always wanted to maintain his harem. Peasants were just required throughout history so they were tolerated. Now with complete automation and advent of AI, peasants are not really required. Women will keep finding one reason or the other to complain about their pathetic lives with poor peasants, and the rich conservatives will keep giving them concessions for one reason or the other.
Laura Kipnis? I didn't knew her but the moment she said she doesn't want to be seen associated with MRAs, I realized she is basically a conservative feminist aka 2nd or 1st gen of feminist but knows The Guardian won't allow her to right something without that disclaimer. The leftist control of media is so complete that I hardly encounter any person who is against MRA but can tell me what exactly MRA say except repeating some bs they read on a blog written by a feminist.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Friday April 14 2017, @03:06AM (2 children)
Possibly gender segregated workplaces...
I certainly resent, say, the three women who were conspiring to bring false workplace harassment claims against a co-worker and threatened to do the same to me if I didn't fabricate evidence to support their current claims - and the HR director who threatened me with termination if any complaint was made against me when I attempted to report the blackmail.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Friday April 14 2017, @03:27AM
Project the trend line out. The expense of all that drama, lawfare, loss of skilled menfolk from the workforce. Sooner or later a few of those unemployable men band together and found their own company and women won't want to, really couldn't be allowed to work around officially labeled serial harassers, convicted sex criminals, etc. As the system becomes ever more strained it will find it hard to refuse the conversion of unemployed wards of the State to productive taxpayers if the only hitch is turning a blind eye on their lack of gender diversity. How long before men who have never even been accused of doing anything decide they would rather work there on the "Isle of Misfit Toys." Especially since the lack of drama means the misfits are competing at an advantage that will be a lot bigger than it is today, assuming we keep sliding to Hell which is a safe bet. Competitive advantage means better pay. How long until political pressure build to permit a gender segregated workplace without needing to find a magic number of undesirables? Pretty soon the gender segregated workplace is mainstreamed again. The wheel will have turned.
And while the women are the most toxic drag on the workplace at present, it isn't because the rest of the diversity circus isn't trying. As they 'succeed' a similar solution would be an idea that would occur to more than a few. Circles everywhere. Action, reaction. Common sense and compromise just doesn't seem to be an option; we bounce from extreme to extreme.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @08:25AM
and threatened to do the same to me if I didn't fabricate evidence to support their current claims
Oh, you poor, poor oppressed male! You are just lucky they did not cut off your testicles just to set an example for the other MRA cucks in your institution, and leave your now useless dick just out of spite! Oh, you were so, so lucky! Just let me tell you! You have not yet been up against real militant feminists!
(Score: 3, Touché) by linkdude64 on Saturday April 15 2017, @09:12AM
Don't forget that many feminists in Europe have converted to Islam and now choose to wear the hijab which "liberates" their bodies from that terrible spectre, the "Male Gaze."
Because Islam is actually a feminist religion, if you didn't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha [wikipedia.org]
"The majority of traditional hadith sources state that Aisha was married to Muhammad at the age of six or seven, but she stayed in her parents' home until the age of nine, or ten according to Ibn Hisham,[11]"
She was so empowered that she even created the first inter-Islamic war - the predecessor to ISIS!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Camel [wikipedia.org]
Christianity is just so oppressive by comparison - Jesus didn't rape or prey on ANY pre-pubescent women whatsoever, and on top of that, didn't even personally rally his female supporters to any violence.
Full disclosure: I am a devout blasphemer of all religion.