ASHE SCHOW: ‘Yes means yes’ opposition: It’s about due process, not misogyny.

It’s easy enough for women writers to attack men who write against “yes means yes” laws as crude misogynists. But it’s a simple and lazy response that ignores all the women who oppose them as well based on concerns about due process rights.

Many big-name journalists have been writing about the “yes means yes” laws recently — Ezra Klein, Jonah Goldberg, Jonathan Chait — you may notice a pattern there. Salon’s Katie McDonough insinuated that Chait — who has written in opposition to the law — dismisses women’s opinions on the law in order to respond to a man – Klein.

I, too, received criticism when I interviewed four due process advocates with intimate knowledge of what a lack of such rights can cause. I was chastised for only interviewing men (naturally, I get no credit for being a woman).

But in fact, due process is important, and due-process advocacy is by no means exclusive to men.

Elizabeth Bartholet, one of 28 current and former Harvard Law professors who recently wrote in opposition to the university’s new sexual assault policy, told the Washington Examiner that while she had no “silver bullet” to creating a perfect policy, she did believe such a policy should take into account the rights of the accuser and the accused. . . .

“The government’s push is to suppress sexual activity to the max,” Bartholet wrote. “Many women, including many women’s rights advocates and many feminists, think this is a very wrong approach to the complex issues involved.”

Kimberly Lau, an attorney who is currently representing several young men suing their university for denying them due process, expanded on the idea that the new policy from the Obama administration, as well as California’s law, are degrading to women.

“For the last hundred years or so, I believe that a large part of the feminist movement was built on women striving for the equality of treatment between the genders,” Lau told the Examiner. “That said, with equality comes accountability and because of that, I find it offensive that there are presumptions being made about who should be in control of the sexual encounter even where both male and female students have been drinking.”

Credentialed-but-not-educated nitwits like Young Ezra won’t appreciate due process until they’re charged with something.