August 20, 2011 - 4:44 am
WSJ: “College Rape Accusations and the Presumption of Male Guilt:
Pressured by the Obama administration, universities abandon any pretense of due process in sexual assault cases”:
Most egregiously, OCR requires universities to render judgment using “a preponderance of the evidence” standard. This means that in a rape case, a campus disciplinary board of faculty, administrators and perhaps students serves as both judge and jury. Few if any of these judges are likely to have professional competence in fact-gathering, evidence analysis or judicial procedure. Yet to deliver a verdict of guilty, they need only believe that the accused is more likely than not to have committed the crime.
OK, I’ll take the bait…so men are fleeing colleges because they are less likely to get away with rape? And a campus disciplinary board is more likely to be sympathetic to the victim?
I can only speak from own experience serving on a campus conduct board more than two decades ago. We provided students with an ability to grieve decisions made about expulsion and/or behavior in a dorm that caused them to be asked to live off campus. We heard maybe a dozen “cases” a year and our decisions were treated more like recommendations to the school. So, yes, the guy who pulled a gun on his roommate because his alarm was too loud had to leave school and the fraternity brothers who arrived at a late night “mixer” wearing only condoms were not allowed to have parties for 99 years or relocate their house off campus.
Rape is an underreported crime and I would be surprised if the brave women and men who report it would want to go through university channels. Perhaps using a standard of “preponderence of evidence” will swing the pendulum too far the other way. That being said, does anyone believe a complaint against a football player on a top 25 ranked team would even get to this disciplinary board?
Ok, I’ll bite back (metaphorically – please don’t threaten me with assault charges…).
Your naïveté is charming, Leigh. As with young men and marriage today, the trend is to avoid situations where they are guaranteed to loose. When guys hear enough of their friends get their income and kids stripped from them in divorce court, they quit getting married. And now, as guys hear enough of their friends get railroaded by college kangaroo courts, they’ll figure out another way to get their degree.
We’re a little thick headed sometimes, but far from what your girlfriends think, we’re not stupid.
As for me, this is another reason why my son is joining the Army rather than starting school in the fall, and is finishing his education online as much as possible.
You mean that false rape is an underreported crime. Lots of evidence showing that at least 25% of the accusations are false. Fortunately, men still get to serve on juries, and when we see colleges and the kangaroo court members get sued, we know how we’ll vote.
Likewise, for rape / harassment claims, ladies, it’s “bruises or it didn’t happen.” Your word is nowhere near good enough.
Don’t forget that internal damage too. Rape kit or it didn’t happen in the eyes of the court.
See below for my account of when I served on a student conduct board. These boards are used not because they want students to self-govern, but because they want to limit their own liability if a student takes them to real court. The student boards are tightly controlled.
As for whether these involve rape allegations… you’re right, these usually are handled by the administrators. Who pressure victims to work with them rather than the police. This is how it worked when a friend of my sister was raped– by an administrator. You can be sure they worked to quash those charges. Approaching her as confidantes, they pressured her very strongly to handle everything internally (and though they never said it, she knew they could make her life miserable if she didn’t listen).
We’re not just talking about the innocent being railroaded, though I’m sure it will happen and this is obviously the point of the policy. After all, why pressure colleges to use a preponderance standard if not to convict students who couldn’t be found guilty in a real court?
The side effect, though, is to put law enforcement in the hands of an entity with a strong motivation to defend favored constituencies rather than pursuing justice. Is a school really going to give a victim a fair shake if the accused is a student peer advisor? Or an administrator? Or a TA? Or an athlete? If nothing else, will a school really expose itself to being sued in Real Court? No, of course not. They’ll have a vested interest in a cover-up.
So really I think this will harm victims as well as the accused. Innocent people will be found guilty and punished in kangaroo courts. Guilty parties will go free. There is no “pendulum”. There are only innocent and guilty people, and victims. The whole point of the court is to figure out which is which. So a crappy court is a crappy court.
THAT’S what you took away from that? That men are less likely to “get away with rape” ?!
Not that the system is ridicuously unfair and blinded by it’s own stupidity? Not that it takes away civil rights for some sort of feel-good wymynyst pablum?
YOU are the reason men don’t want marriage, college, this workforce, etc. YOU. Your attitudes.
Haters gon’ hate.
Leigh, you admit that your experience is more than twenty years ago. How long ago was the Duke Rape fiasco?
Rapes do happen, and so do false accusations of rape, and I know women who bring false accusations of rape to strike back at all men for how one man treated them in the distant past, and a couple who are just plain crazy.
Men gossip just as much as women. We don’t need to experience being robbed in divorce court or fleeced by California Family “services”, or railroaded in a kangaroo court to learn to avoid certain situations.
BTW, how often do men prevail in bringing charges against someone who falsely accused them of rape? How much does it cost him, socially and monetarily?
Rape is an underreported crime
All the evidence suggests that rape is an overreported crime – that as many as 50% of reported rapes are made up out of whole cloth by the person reporting them.
Rape is a crime, punishable by a prison term. Rape is not a conduct issue to be decided by dweebs on a college committee. If you are raped you’re first responsibility is to report it to the police.
Then it requires that the rape be proven…
“OK, I’ll take the bait…so men are fleeing colleges because they are less likely to get away with rape? And a campus disciplinary board is more likely to be sympathetic to the victim?”
No, they are fleeing colleges because they know that at any time they can be falsely accused of rape, and after this new Obama standard these kangaroo courts will not give them either due process or justice.
But late in you article, where you give the example of the accused football player, you also make a good point. Basically these university tribunals will favor whoever has the proper political connections to the administration. If its the accused, then the victim will be screwed (and if they were a real rape victim, they would be screwed twice). But if the accused has no connections, then the campus PC culture where most men accused of rape are guilty, will result in the accused being convicted, regardless of whether they are guilty.
This should be a matter of lawsuits directed at the college or university and every individual sitting on these boards. Make them pay through the nose and the boards will dissapear.
LeighB, I very sincerely hope that you are soon accused of a serious crime, and that you are judged on the basis of “preponderance of evidence” rather than “beyond reasonable doubt.” And that your accuser is assumed to be telling the truth.
“OK, I’ll take the bait…so men are fleeing colleges because they are less likely to get away with rape?”
Gee, with that attitude and a preponderance of the evidence standard, what could possibly go wrong?
@Leigh B
legitimate rape is underreported… false rape is overreported. a ADA i know told me that at least half of all his rape cases are fake. HALF!! too many women out there use yelling “Rape” as a bargaining chip against guys in their life. two decades ago it may have been different, but in modern context, i think you missed the point of this.
LeighB, no what it means is that men are more likely to have their civil rights violated with no legal recourse. The idea that somehow having due process “allows” people to get away with crime is an mind set that would fit very well in a Fascist dictatorship, but should have no place in American society. Your belief in hear-say “evidence” and immediate assumption of who the “victim” is, are a disease to the body justice, not a cure for injustice. And I will leave you with three words “Duke lacrosse team”
A former co-worket of mine once said that of all the possible things he feared, being falsely accused of rape was top of the list, because the system can be so blindly accepting of said charges levied against men.
And he was a former police officer.
Yep. Don’t forget domestic violence. Prosecutors have said that women commit 40% of the domestic violence, but account for only 10% of the charges filed. A cop will generally arrest the man in a situation regardless of what happened. False charges are common in this area as well, and the arrest record stays with you forever. Doesn’t matter if you are acquitted. And a man often cannot get a fair shake in court on this anyway.
“brave women and men who report it”
Really. Men are getting raped left and right. And no drunken tramp never claimed “rape” after waking up feeling like a drunken tramp? No woman ever pressed false charges? And this thing called “date-rape”, isn’t that just “buyers remorse”?
Rape is rape, it goes to the courts. Anything else just gives liberal idiots the power to “level the playing field” by discriminating against men.
Last sentence says it all. Rape is rape, and is a crime, and is for the court system. This policy sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
LeighB – What evidence do you have that “Rape is an underreported crime”? If the reports are not there and no documented evidence exists to support what is presumably in those absent reports, then how does one establish that a situation exists? A “belief” that such things exist?
Wow, that sounds like…faith over hard evidential science. Imagine that.
To be fair, for rape to be underreported, one rape would have to go unreported. I have yet to meet a woman who says she was raped in the past who then pressed charges, even among feminists. I have no idea why. I’m guessing reliving it in court day after day is considered too high a price. To be honest, this makes the men in their lives carry the double burden of caring for a rape victim friend/ girlfriend/ wife in the years of their recovery for some jerk’s five minutes of feeling “strong”, and the sincere desire to violently murder the attacker if he ever crosses that man’s path.
Therefore, for rape to be accurately reported, there would have to be one false rape charge for every unreported actual rape. That strikes me as all kinds of horrific for everyone attacked in this way.
That said, the confirmation bias of radical feminist to see a rapist behind every mustache except her own is a good enough reason to never interact with them. As for real women, be strong men. You may not have been there then to stop it, but you can be there now to give them a safe space to heal.
Thank you.
When I was in college I served on a student Judicial Board. The procedure was this: the administrator making the accusation and the student being accused came in with any witnesses they might have. Both sides made their case, and then the judicial board deliberates in private.
Except that an administration representative would be present to watch the deliberations, and inevitably would mention new accusations and evidence that the accused student never hears about. She’d always make it sound like we were insiders getting the inside scoop. I have to be honest here… I didn’t realize how unfair this system was for a long time.
The judicial board’s standard for guilt/innocence was that the entire board (five of us) had to be unanimous. Until one day when the board was split about a decision– because the ONLY evidence presented was after the accused had left and even we realized that this wasn’t fair. The chairman changed the rule (by fiat) and made it majority rule.
I would think the Duke Lacrosse episode would be instructive, Leigh. There are, I believe, 88 faculty members who never recanted their false accusations.
Continue to believe your fantasy. Maybe we can allow people to waive their rights in advance in the civil world. You’d be the first to sign up, right? You’ve never done anything wrong. Why not? What do you have to lose?
I, too, served on a campus judicial body. However, while the school was very liberal it was in another time and another place. We were worried more about cheating on exams than rape allegations.
Nowadays, its different. With the “victim” always being right, the only evidence they need to convict is that the alleged perpetrator had a penis.
The legal rules for matters between men and women are heavily skewed to screw men (sexual assault, child custody). Women use this to extract what they want because simply making the accusation is enought to put the guy into legal hell. Guys are largely onto this even if Leigh is blissfully unaware. The only thing unusual about false rape allegation in this linked story is the b*tch confessed her intentions while her boyfriend recorded it.
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2011/08/sexual_assault_false_claim.php
I am a grad of one of our nation’s military academies. In recent years there have been much noise and fury from politicians and newscritters about how the “good old boy” network condones sexual assaults at the academies because they are threatened by having women in their club. Because of this hysteria, many good leaders careers were sacrificed and the methods we use to train our military leaders were thrown out the door for political correctness.
I was able to look at the raw data from investigations over a 5 year period at my school. In that (and the numbers were far fewer than our anti-male media would suggest), the large majority of cases were two college students who got drunk, had sex, and then morning remorse led some females to shout “rape.” This, led some clever cadets to come up with the t-shirt slogan “No means No… no matter when you say it.”
Until the system decides to hold both men and women accountable for their adult decisions, this will continue to be a festering wound which serves only political ends. Yes – we do need to hammer any male who assaults a woman. But we also need to punish those women who assault, legally, men.
In all reality that would be a felonious assault, which means that the use of lethal force in self-defense should be fine and dandy. Of course I’m stretching the Texas penal code to it’s very limits but….
Women have pretty much chased men out of the educational establishment from top to bottom. Male teachers in the public schools are becoming extinct, it is too risky, little Jennie gets a bad grade then accuses the teach of rape, by the time the teacher digs out he is in hock for legal fees and a blot on his reputation. In the Wall Street Journal article the author ask why the professor and and admin people aren’t speaking up. It is because the male educators have been attacked when they have by the feminist/pc group that controls the universities. I was looking at one of the alternative teacher certification programs here in Texas. One of the benefits offered by a program I was looking at was free legal insurance for the first year…..do I really want to work in an environment were that is needed? Also in a guide book for one schools districts substitute teachers,” If a fight breaks out amongst students in your class don’t interfere, call administration and security.” Think about that for a bit.
An unintended consequence is the growth of alternative choices for men, and women for that matter. Consider the “Western State Governor’s University”. Accredited courses, online, and at less cost than the brick and mortar schools. Home schooling is getting bigger, and etc. Unless there is a change in laws and attitudes, given the price inflation of a brick and concrete university, they are going to end up empty and awaiting tear downs.
At Duke, one woman had plenty of credibility for the majority of the faculty and a large contingent of the student body when she accused a bunch of students of rape. The “preponderance of evidence” largely came, in the minds of the faculty and many on the student body, from the fact that she was black and her supposed victimizers were white. This dynamic was sufficient to convince a prosecutor to file charges of aggravated rape against these white students.
To these types of post-modern fanatics, these star-chamber radicals, these new grand inquisitors, the fact that the accuser was a congenital liar, a “stripper”, a drug user, and a serial skank, all simply reinforced or proved her authenticity as an oppressed black woman… The accuser’s revolting character only magnified her victimhood in the mods of the insane politically “correct” maniacs who nearly railroaded four innocent men of good character.
Those 88 vile faculty members of Duke still have not recanted their slanders of four students. And to Duke’s eternal shame, I don’t think any of them have been fired with extreme prejudice either.
I just don’t date girls who go to the same school. I will do everything in my power to make them attracted to me, but I won’t give them the time of day in anything other than a public setting. It’s kinda fun because I know I’m creating some bitter feminists. Remember guys, we’re ambitious and going places, we’re the catch.
Except that your strategy implies that you have to actually do something to be accused. “Creating bitter feminists” hardly insulates you from being falsely accused and falsely convicted. That you had no opportunity since you are never alone with them comes down to “he said/she said”; they merely have to make the accusation.
Men are fleeing college, because, despite decades of feminists and progressives working overtime to destroy them; to get a woman they want, they still have to be able to make a living.
Since many young men don’t have the financial means or intellectual interest to become engineers or professionals, and since only about 10% of jobs are governments paper-shufflers, the smarter ones recognize quickly that they better learn how to build stuff, repair stuff, run stuff, sell stuff or manage other people. It’s either that or the dole. And the dole doesn’t attract desirable women.
Boys and men have been chased out of education for years: we favor girls who seem naturally better at “school conforming behavior”. Girls tend to read at an earlier age as their language skills mature faster than boys. Boys prefer to read books with boy heroes, while girls will read books regardless of the gender of the hero. Years ago the feminist (the preponderance of elementary teachers and school librarians are women) decided girls needed more female role models. The educators and publishing community pushed for more stories with female heroes, which boys would rather not read. In short: even though boys read later than girls, and tend to have more problems reading than girls, educators promoted literature which they know boys won’t want to read. This pushing men out of education through coddling women’s false accusations of rape are just the small tip of the ice berg.
I’ve heard on service academy had a female cadet charge a male cadet with rape. Then they found emails she had sent to him describing the rape fantasies she had had about him. Those charges were dropped.
This comment is a little vague. So why do you think there’s all this push to get girls to read and be in school? Is it all because of the evil feminists, whom I don’t sympathize with by the way? Let’s step back and look at the broader history of education to see the real issue: girls were often shut out of education, not only not encouraged to read but also considered too stupid to be educated. Boys were the only ones allowed to go to school in most eras of history. Even today in parts of the world, there are groups who believe no girl over the age of seven is capable of learning anything (Deobandis), where girls are punished from going to school and no one bothers to teach them to read because they don’t “need” it.
So cry me a river that some boys think it’s icky to have to read (gasp!) a book with a female protagonist. Such books don’t have to be especially girly, many aren’t, so there’s really no reason why the boys can’t get over it and learn to find the experience enjoyable. Boys as well as girls should be grateful they live in a country where they can get an education and learn to read at all and that they have so many choices in what to read. Not everything is all because of the war between the sexes, and you do a disservice to both education and kids to think otherwise.
It is a little hard to be sympathetic to all concerned. Young men and young absolutely should not be living in the same dorm building let alone the same room. In fact, having males and females in the same class room only detracts from the learning process. A mingling of genders brings a lot of distractions and other problems. I am in favor of separate learning facilities for males and females.
There are lots of opportunities for both genders to hang out together. Just not at school. “But you mean no cheerleaders at football games?” That’s right. You should be there to watch the game not the bimbos.
Alluha Akbar my brother! And, make all the shameless hussies conceal their uncovered meat with a suitable bourque or other suitably concealing garments!
Sarc!
Sex-segregated schools does not mean that you have to do away with cheerleaders. If you look up in your history books you see that if you go far enough back, the cheerleading squads at most schools were all men. They weren’t there to titillate, and their cheerleading no doubt had a different tone … perhaps more like war cries.
That’s still how it works at Texas A&M (originally all-male and all-military), where the yell leaders, as they’re known, are not only male but are also members of the Corps of Cadets.
Gig ‘em!
Are we talking ‘rape rape’ as Whoopie would say?
How about this: If you get raped, call the cops. Not the campus cops, the real cops. Cheating on an exam or playing your stereo too loud in the dorm are college-level offenses. Rape is a crime, period. Should be treated as less than that just because it occurs on university property.
I agree wholeheartedly. If universities were interested in justice instead of simply PC posturing, the acccused would have the choice to opt out of the faculty/student disciplinary board in favor of a real court. The military does this with Article 15 (administrative) discipline; if the accused refuses the Art 15 the armed service has two options: bring a courts-martial with its higher standards of evidence and higher punishments, or drop the charge. For generations that has kept the administrative side with its looser standards from trampling the rights of the accused.
Great suggestion. That could be done by any state legislature with more brain cells than members. For any charge that would be a criminal charge outside the college, any accused would have the right to opt for judgement through the state court system rather than the schools. The colleges would have no right to prevent students from exercising that option, and would be compelled to accept the judgement of the state court. If the accused were found innocent, that would be the end of the matter and the student would have standing to sue any administrator or faculty who tried to impose their own “justice”. Any judgement against the administrator or faculty would be paid by the person, not the school.
Common sense? Reporting a felony attack to the authorities? That’s just kooky-talk!
How about we go even further with this common-sense fantasy; raise our sons and daughters to …wait for it… tell the truth. Train them to conduct themselves as though there are consequences to their actions -and with bitter reality, remind them to note and avoid people and situations that will have consequence, for merely associating. But that’s silly; it implies responsibility and accountability.
Milwaukee (18), please tell me the story doesn’t end there: surely the woman was charged with filing a false report, wasn’t she?
Filing a false report would be a blatant honor code violation on her part – which at the service academies has always been automatic dismissal.
So… did that happen?
I have been searching the Internet to verify this story, unfortunately the person who told it to me said it was a while ago, and I’m still searching. I did find another case where a female cadet, who was considered shy when sober but very aggressive toward men when drunk. She came home drunk one night, instant messaged another cadet to come and have sex, and later claimed rape. The accused was nearly removed from his academy, but the whoever was hearing the case noted that she invited him down to her room, didn’t resist, didn’t call out to her roommate for assistance, and delayed reporting the incident until some time had passed. Unfortunately, the legitimate claims of rape are diluted by too many of these stories. My intuition tells me real, honest to goodness rape might happen. There may also be cases of men using their positions of power to take advantage of women. However, there are women willing to use sex as a way of self-promotion. Is that rape? I’ll keep looking for the specific example I was informed of.
Young men aren’t just fleeing college — or more precisely, abstaining from attending one. They’re putting ever less effort into attracting young, marriage-minded women. The horror stories are piling up to a truly frightening depth.
“Men in single state should tarry,
While women, I suggest they marry.”
filing a false report? are you serious? what a $100 fine? guys stand to lose their very life, and you want to make sure she gets a fine?
and let’s not forget women get a pass on just about everything ‘under the law’.
equality was lost loooooong ago. wife in divorce isn’t getting what she wants, cries rape, or he messed with the children, or he hit me. any one of these will immediately give her the upper hand, as if she didn’t already have it. he will NEVER live down these lies. if convicted they follow him around and put him on a list to be hated wherever he goes, for the rest of his life.
over 250 men have been exonerated by innocence projects on d.n.a. evidence accidentally saved, from decades before. and these same people are putting men to death on similar testimony. no wonder our civilization is falling apart. we deserve idiots like our current non-person prez. selling us out.
and IF caught lying, she gets a ‘filing a false police report’? gzzzzzz. can you boy’s and goils spell s t u p i d?
Okay, so let me see if I understand this argument correctly…
Leigh says Rape is an underreported crime.
Why is this?
Because women do not want to live through the trauma and the humiliation a second time recounting what has happened. Therefore a woman who is a REAL victim of rape is more likely NOT to report it.
Next, we have examples of False Rape Charges and how they literally RUIN the lives of men who, in actuality, did nothing wrong. Cited above was the Classic Duke LaCross case.
And what is the down side for a False Accusation?
A $100.00 Fine!
So the consequences to the accuser of a False Rape Charge are, in essence, less than the consequences to the accuser of a REAL Rape Charge.
But, Liberals are fine with condemning the persons charged with rape, be it real or false, because Rape Really Happens and Somebody’s gotta’ pay?
Is that what I’m seeing?
jd
Sounds accurate. Bad boys have their misbehavior excused, and good guys finish last.
Sounds like a great basis for a civilization, eh?
Pardon me while I barf.
Reason #5,325 why I’m glad I never had kids in the first place.
A cynic might suggest that Leigh is saying the safest way for a man to get laid is to commit rape.
A cynic might. And yet I was suggesting no such thing. I am sure there are many terrific interactions among young people of college age that don’t involve excessive amounts of alcohol, “rough play” and/or allegations of rape. I thought Dr. Helen’s headline was over the top.
Regarding the Duke team, call me cynical but I seldom worry about privileged young white men with excellent counsel. And no, I did not jump to any conclusions about their guilt, there was a lot of conflicting information from the beginning. Good thing the truth came out and the DA was removed from his position. And yes, it seems reasonable to expect the Duke faculty to have apologized.
Absolutely incredible. You don’t “worry” about someone’s life getting destroyed by lies if they are white males with money?
Liberals are truly sick.
Yep, I read it correctly.
You don’t care aobut injustice as long as the ‘Right’ people suffer injustice.
Remind me why I want nothing to do with your utopia again?
Ugly, simply Ugly!
jd
Not all those falsely accused of rape are rich. What about them?
Is it okay to falsely charge a man with rape because some other men, not the one charged, got away with it? Punish the innocent? or are all men guilty because of the acts of a few?
That is exactly what you are saying.
Your ideas about justice are disgusting and racist.
Death is WAY too good for you, subhuman scum
This situation brings back fond memories of my UW-Madison days when the advice being circulated was that “Every man is a potential rapist.” An argumentation and debate class gave me the opportunity to argue “Every orange is a potential weapon”. The female prof was not pleased.
(But she complimented me on my attire as I approached the podium..sweet.)
Wait! What is the statute of limitations for sexual harassment?!!
But they will not, because today’s societal rules allow one to do what they did in the setting they did it without consequences, which is the point we are all trying to make.
And I see your typical leftist class envy jab in your response, and respond with the consequences of the false accusation upon the accuser, to which, there were none. Who was the privileged in the Duke case again?
Is it that there is a smaller percentage of boys in college, or is it that there is overall fewer boys period?
I haven’t seen a single report saying there are fewer boys but it sure seemed to me there were more girls than boys in my daughters high school.
I have read that the ratio of boys to girls at birth is a constant. is it really?
I just don’t see young guys really fleeing colleges because of the abstract possibility of being unfairly arrested for something they didn’t do. Its actually a good point of my fellow gender that we dont obscess of danger that much.
LeighB said “Rape is an underreported crime”
Um, no, it is not. And you can provide no actual facts or data supporting that silly assertion.
LeighB said “Regarding the Duke team, call me cynical but I seldom worry about privileged young white men with excellent counsel.”
Well, isn’t that grand of you! Of course you couldn’t possibly define how “privileged” the young men in question where (note you have to mention they are white) nor does it occur to you that it costs a heck of a lot of money to obtain “excellent counsel” especially when the charges are false.
But remember leigh, it is all about the narrative not facts.
Perhaps here is room for being egalitarian: If you are White and Male, you are privileged, regardless of the amount of money in you or your father’s bank account. You pig! (In the interest of disclosure, I am a White Male, and there is precious little in my bank account.)
Not a problem for those of us who remained celibate in college.
How does a university come to serve as a defender of the accused’s sixth amendment rights, particularly in this fashion. can the university coerce the student to surrender his rights for the privilege of attending? I believe this would make a good test case.
Leigh. Your attitude that we are simply entitled to a guilty verdict, just because rape happens and it is hard to prosecute, is childish and ignores the rights of men who are falsely accused.
What you want to do is make a rape conviction little more meaningful than a rape accusation. When a man is convicted of rape, we should all feel confident of the verdict so that we feel comfortable labeling him a rapist and treating him as such. It will not help women if we get the point where we point to a man and say he is a rapist only to have fair minded people shrug their shoulders and think, maybe, maybe not.
A brilliant and extremely keen comment; by the acceptance of false accusations as well as discarding legal due process, it castrates the law and legal conviction in “a court of your peers”. It damages the weight of law.
Leigh, what if I were under-privileged white male and had good counsel? Or, what is your definition of “privileged”? The ability to hire counsel to defend one’s self in a court of law? What if I were a privileged black male from an upper middle-class family? Or of mixed-race parents? I could be President one day, but would I be “privileged”? Should white males only get average counsel? Incompetent counsel? What would be acceptable to your emotionally-driven feminist ideology? Should, as a citizen of the United States, I or my sons not be allowed to secure the best legal weaponry we can find? Yes, if we are a woman or of any ethnic origin other than Caucasian, but not if we are a white male who actually sees having some measure of fiscal ability a good and positive aspiration?
You are a jealous, racist and class-discriminating harpy; and women -hard-working, genuine, fair-minded- are the worse for having you in their number, mis-respresenting them so heinously.
We will have peace as soon as LegighB and every one of her type are dead. No punishment could possibly equal her crimes but if there was ever any justification for death by slicing…..