Posted on 03/22/2015 7:08:24 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
KATHERINE BYRON, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims, free from anything that might prompt memories of trauma.
So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”
Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.
The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We are raising a generation of pansies.
L
Good point.
Yikes ! Pelion on Ossa.
“I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
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You’d have to have a heart made of stone not to laugh out loud at this smarmy idiot!
Instead of proving that women are strong and capable without a man (which seems to have been the foundational premise of feminism), they are proving that they are as dependent on a strong protector as any woman in the 1950s—they’ve just transferred that role to society at large, instead of their boyfriend or husband.
If you ever want to see what started out to be a pro-feminist movie that turned into a justification for the Islamist treatment of women, indeed one that's so compelling the Iranian mullahs should have dubbed it in Farsi and shown it all over Iran, go watch the 1991 movie, "Thelma and Louise," starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. There two absolute nitwits set on a fishing trip that becomes an ever-escalating series of disasters due to their own stupidity that cause them to have no alternative but to commit spectacular suicide. Your comments show these "feminists" are making just as bad fools of themselves as Thelma and Louise did.
Bless her little heart, the poor dear. We should all pitch in to provide her a fainting couch and smelling salts.
Students this age went to war to save the world from the Nazis and Japanese imperialists. There were no safe places for them to hide.
I fear for the future of the nation when these delicate flowers are in charge.
Our present legal system assumes and proceeds as if every claim of rape is true.
The identity of the “victim” is kept secret, while that of the “rapist” is immediately publicized. Usually he’s subjected to a humiliating perp-walk for the cameras.
This is long before a determination has been made that he’s guilty or even that a crime occurred at all.
Accurate statistics are difficult to come by. But it appears that 10% to 15% of rape claims result in conviction. Another 8% to 10% are definitively proven false, usually because the accused has an unbreakable alibi. (Though rape activists often use a false statistic of 2%.) The standard of evidence needed to determine a rape charge is untrue is roughly similar to that needed for conviction.
This means that in 75% to 82% (roughly) of cases, we are unable to determine definitively whether the accused committed the crime. In a considerable percentage (don’t know the number) of those, it simply cannot be proven one way or the other whether a crime occurred at all.
The great majority of these “rape culture” rapes on colleges, for instance, are date rape cases. All parties are agreed sexual activity took place, the only question in contention being whether it was consensual.
How can any human group ever reach a conclusion “beyond a reasonable doubt” when the only evidence is the conflicting testimony of two people?
I’m glad you asked! Juries reach their decision and convict, or not, based primarily on which party tells the better story. Sadly, the ability to tell a believable story has no inherent relationship to the truth of what actually happened. Some people are excellent liars, most of us have known people like that. Others can’t tell the truth effectively when they are under stress.
Is the ability to tell a coherent story well under stress, or not, really sufficient reason to convict a person of a serious crime? Is there any other crime of which people are routinely convicted simply on the unsupported and contradicted testimony of one other person?
More like expensive educational DAYCARE...gets the kids outta the house
A young man today would be safer if he would not allow himself to be alone with one of today’s women. There is no way he can protect himself from ANY claim that one of the liberated females will bring against him and no way can he win if it were to happen. The male today is little more than a punching bag for the feminists to practice on.
Old enough to remember when I lived in a free country.
“Sounds more like kindergarten than college. “
There ya go. Perfectly said. That is what has become of colleges today: kindergarten, where they are told what to think, do, and say, to hide the scary aspects of life they were there to prepare to handle in the first place.
I heard ISIS provides all of these things to its captured enemies.
The “evil” south had the right idea: chaperones and tightly controlled balls and parties for suitors. Men were expected to act in a genteel and chivalrous manner or face the consequences (often painful and delivered by family members) and women were expected to act in a gracious and decorous manner as well. There was little opportunity for these he said she said situations to occur. I know, I’m a racist chauvinistic pig.
I take great consolation in knowing that these women are unlikely to breed. Now if we can just keep them out of teaching and other professions where they might infect other people’s daughters with their dumb-ass ideas, we might get this whole mess cleared up in a generation or two.
if she didn’t mention allowing concealed carry on campus, she isn’t totally interested in stopping the alleged increase in sexual attacks on women. is she concerned about sexual assaults on men too or just women?
Is it just me or does anyone else here find this whole concept more than a little creepy? Parents from the real world think they're sending their supposed "young adults" to an environment where they will be challenged both mentally and physically to better prepare them for the often harsh truths they will encounter in life. Instead, they are turned into useless wastes of oxygen. I will never send one of mine to one of theses drone factories.
What a complete FOOL! This poor little idiot doesn't even have the first clue that that is exactly what she is supposed to be there for.
Very few things traumatized me more than It's a Small, Small World in Anaheim.
On a related note:
This stuff is little different than the automatic deluge of counselors, therapists, group sessions, handouts, and hand wringing that follows any bit of "workplace violence", fire, flood, televised suicide by cop, or lost puppy in today's America.
Poor Dear ... if she had only been born in an earlier time she could have those whose viewpoints go against her dearly and closely held beliefs burned at the stake, or at least pilloried in the public square ... in another country she could send them off for re-education or to a gulag or concentration camp ... I guess when you don't yet have the totalitarian power to do such things, you retreat to a room full of puppies and pretend everyone else with a different worldview doesn't exist ...
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