The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice

All I take out of that article is that Zerlina Maxwell and Rachel Sklar are halfwit ****s.

 

Better than nothing.

 

I like it when the threads cross.

 

Could've easily used the gay rights debate as another example (and honestly, one where the balkanization seems even more extreme). There's plenty of support for what he said.

That said, while he affirmed in extremely general terms that social justice issues are worthwhile, it might've been nice to point out specific examples of how to do things better. For instance, the Maxwell and Sklar may have dumb responses to the UVA rape case, but there are people on the "protect the victim" side who are making much more reasonable points. This one comes to mind: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/5/7341973/trauma-rape-allegation-uva

Mentioning some positive examples of quality, moderate voices would've made the whole piece read as less reactionary.

 

I don't think the piece is reactionary at all. The Maxwell and Sklar's were made to look foolish by the UVA thing, but they have been around much longer than that, their ridiculous take has become the mainstream view and has helped spawn such things as the false rape accusations thread on this message board, and they -- and anyone belting out similar vagina noise -- were foolish way before they were made to look foolish.

 

you had to have done that on purpose.

 

Be more specific.

 

that bolded sentence is an abomination. (I like the article.)

 

Didn't you spawn that thread?

 

Yes

 

It isn't the best I've ever written, but I don't know that I would call it an abomination.

 

And if you don't believe those with a reasonable viewpoint are floating by themselves in a quief-bubbling wavepool of vagina cacophony, take a look at the recent vigilante-style sexual misconduct protest at Skidmore, or the recent charges against poor Professor Kipnis at Northwestern, who had the temerity to hold an unpopular opinion. Or the upside-down politically correct sexual misconduct cases at Occidental, Swarthmore, Reed, Boston College, and Vassar. Or the fallacy of perfection-based campaign Know Your IX has engaged in against Bystander Intervention efforts. Or Wendy Murphy asserting she has never seen a false complaint, and that all drunk sex is rape. Or, the controversy around the recent Islam-related bias allegations at Conn College. Or that idiot blogger I quoted n the false rape thread who writes an article about how she was being raped 20 years ago while she was getting rammed from behind in a back alley standing up with onlookers watching and listening to her moan in delight while begging her penetrator to go "Tyler-Bray-deeep".* I see avenging social justice warriors everywhere I go, and I go everywhere. And everywhere I go, it's always vagina noise I hear. Even from those without vaginas, who have, weirdly, been brainwashed by an idealogical movement that I would hate if only I could figure out what in the hell it was.

*I probably made that last part up.

 

Sure, extremism is the default position on any social justice issue right now, and that's not good. I don't know about many of those cases, but I do have two friends in the department that Kipnis was criticizing at Northwestern, and the biggest thing I saw them complaining about was that her op-ed was "alarmingly inaccurate" about the facts of the case, in such a way that was extremely misleading, and when she was confronted about how she just straight-up got her facts wrong, her response was "agree to disagree."

Like I said, I don't know all the details of the case, but if she's just straight-up misrepresenting facts to make her view sound more plausible, I understand why people would be upset.

 

Like with the UVA case? Yeah, man, did you read the Columbia article on it? She was actively looking for a campus rape case. She was going to write a story about a campus rape, it just wasn't clear to her initially what campus would be the centerpiece.

But you should never question the "victims". Because....er.....rape culture and stuff. It's nonsense. The idea of it deserves public shaming. You (as in everybody) should be just as appalled by the fabrication of that and the various other not-infrequent fictionalized 'factual' rape stories/claims as you would be at the actual gang rape itself....had it happened.

Seriously, are any of these stories ever true? Are the people who think/stated false rape claims are some of kind of insignificantly small outlier occurrence ready to stand up and say they were wrong. And that the studies I cited that showed that basically half of all rape claims are false aren't "creepy" but in fact are much more accurate than the abracadabra 2% numbers that the feminazi brigade likes to repeat in every other sentence that includes the term "rape culture"?

Are y'all ready to adopt my five step precautionary approached proposed in the other thread? Cause [itch bay]es be lying, yo.


ETA: the Vandy guy clearly did some raping. I answered my own question on that one. But I can still rattle off more objectively, provably false claims than you can -- or anyone can match with provably guilty rapists. Crying rape culture.

 

You have to see the way you go on though that some could misconstrue what you are saying. I get what your point is. I'm not sure you have nailed down how to deliver it yet.

 

Do women lie sometimes? Of course. Do women get raped sometimes? Also, of course. Are both of these bad things? Absolutely.

But having trouble coming up with slam-dunk, provable-in-court rape cases does not mean that rape isn't a serious problem. It's extremely difficult to prove. If a person is not drugged, beaten severely, or raped in public, how do you prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt?

The reason feminists are up in arms about it is because lots of people do get raped* and really have no recourse. They can't prove it, because it's all he-said/she-said. And I've seen a number of cases where a girl reports it and is immediately treated like the suspect of a false-reporting investigation.

So what do you do with that? Yeah, there's false reporting going on. But there's raping going on too. Should you punish the actual victims for the actions of the false reporters? Surely not. And should you punish the falsely accused for the actions of the rapists? Also, surely not. And given no way to tell beyond reasonable doubt which is which, how do you address both problems? Believing the victim at all times isn't the best way, but neither is automatically distrusting the victim.

*The number of people I know personally who have been sexually assaulted despite never setting foot in a frat party makes it really hard for me to believe that cases of genuine rape are super rare.

 

WTF

 

I can say the same thing.

 

It's not a high number, but I have a pretty small circle of friends who are close enough to talk about stuff like that, and they're really not the drinking/partying type. Knowing the people I'm talking about, you'd swear the number is zero.

 

My WTF response was mostly with regard to "despite never setting foot in a frat party". I'm not gonna say that people don't get raped in fraternity houses, I'm sure it happens. I'm not going to pretend that fraternity guys are a bunch of altar boys whose main purpose as members is to serve the community, but the stereotypes about rape and fraternities have become absurd.