Althouse: "As a female liberal feminist lawyer who cares about civil rights I have to say. I understand the impulse but No. Just no."

August 3, 2017

"As a female liberal feminist lawyer who cares about civil rights I have to say. I understand the impulse but No. Just no."

"Universities are not institutions designed or trained in the investigation or adjudication of serious crimes. Anyone who truly cares about civil rights would reject the star chambers that are university disciplinary bodies with no right to the turn over of exculpatory evidence or the right to confront your accuser. Rape victims need to go to police. Universities need to cooperate with the police or face charges of their own. End of story."

Top-rated comment on the NYT op-ed "Don’t Weaken Title IX Campus Sex Assault Policies" by Jon Krakauer and Laura L. Dunn.

I haven't read all 185 comments over there, but going in the order they're ranked by readers, I'm seeing only firm opposition to the authors' position. People are standing strong for due process and the importance of treating rape as the serious crime it is by reporting it to the police and using the criminal law system with the attendant rights of the accused.

66 comments:

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Due Process. leftists hate the idea.; 8/3/17, 7:24 PM
The Vault Dweller said...: This is heartening to see. Rape is a very serious crime. It should be treated as such and dealt with by the professionals in the judicial system. If someone is guilty of rape they should go to prison, the only way one can do that is through the justice system. Campus disciplinary actions shouldn't be used to cover serious crimes. It should be for issues of plagiarism, cheating, illicit drug use, public intoxication, maybe even a campus prank that technically is vandalism but not that serious of property damage. No one wonders what a university's disciplinary position on murder, armed robbery, or arson is, because it is rightly expected to be handled by law enforcement.; 8/3/17, 7:25 PM
eric said...: It's much, much easier to convict in the court of public opinion.

If accusations go to actual court and you're lying for attention, you'll get the accused a not guilty verdict. Can't have that. Then the woman looks like a fool.

Better to never know or investigate the truth. This way, women win and men lose. All is right with the world.; 8/3/17, 7:25 PM
Sebastian said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/3/17, 7:25 PM
Sebastian said...: "the importance of treating rape as the serious crime it is by reporting it to the police and using the criminal law system with the attendant rights of the accused" Yeah, but this would entirely undermine the importance of using "rape" as a bludgeon to screw men, favor women, attack the patriarchy, report dozens of "rapes" every year, prove the existence of rape culture, add jobs for prog administrators, and fight the culture war by other means. Rape is too useful to turn into rape-rape.; 8/3/17, 7:26 PM
Gahrie said...: @Althouse:

Do you believe that 20% of women attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison will be raped?; 8/3/17, 7:29 PM
David said...: "People are standing strong for due process and the importance of treating rape as the serious crime it is by reporting it to the police and using the criminal law system with the attendant rights of the accused."

Oh let's hope so. But the colleges still have to deal with what to do with someone who has been formally accused of the crime. Do they stay or do they go? And for what reason and after what kind of process.; 8/3/17, 7:32 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Yeah, well, that's because most of the commenters are probably relatively sane.

Do we not understand that Women's Studies Depts are full of women who think that all heterosexual sex is rape & coercion? Notice that none of the employees from Dept of Ed who were responsible for the "Dear Colleague" letter ever appeared on the news shows or in print by name? Notice how Arne Duncan never really got out in front of this push?

My guess: this was a cabal of feminist nutjobs that got themselves a little sinecure at DoEd under the Obama administration. Probably it had something to do with Valerie Jarrett, like most other lefty nutjobs in the O. admin. If someone from the office had gone public, folks would have looked up her CV & found out that she had written lots of articles featuring words like "hetero-capitalist patriarchy", "intersectionality", "woman centered woman" & "strap on".; 8/3/17, 7:32 PM
rcocean said...: "Do you believe that 20% of women attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison will be raped?"

You could argue that 80% of all co-eds are "raped" while in college. It just depends on what you define as "rape".

Its sorta like: What does "Congress shall not establish a religion" mean? It could mean what its meant for hundreds of years. Or it could mean whatever you want it to mean.; 8/3/17, 7:35 PM
rcocean said...: Personally, I think we should look to Cool Hand luke for guidance

Any man accused of "eyeballing" a co-ed spends a night "in the box".

Any man accused of "grabbing ass" spends a night "in the box".

Any man accused of leaving the toilet seat up spends a night "in the box".

Any man accused of "rape" spends a weekend "in the box". And then has to carry around a mattress for five days.; 8/3/17, 7:42 PM
Kevin said...: Typical comment structure: As an (appeal to authority) let me tell you (what you should do).

Whether you agree or not, every time you allow them the first, you set yourself up to fall prey to the second. And you don't even know if the appeal to authority is true.; 8/3/17, 7:46 PM
Birkel said...: "Shaking it off here, boss."; 8/3/17, 7:57 PM
cronus titan said...: THe reason there is opposition to referring campus sexual assault to police is because the activists know that very few of these incidents meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. Instances of alleged sexual assault on campus rarely involve violence or force. Although it is often true that the young man was a cad, that is not a crime. As well, a criminal investigation would collect and test evidence, meaning times, text messages, social media, motives, etc. Keeping it a Title IX preponderance of the evidence standard, in a school tribunal, assures an outcome without testing stories or collecting evidence. If any exculpatory evidence is simply ignored or excluded, no inquiry of the accuser made beyond a prepared statement and precluding an accused student of accessing what the accusation is specifically or accessing evidence, i.e. deny due process, it is easy to assess guilt and goose the numbers.

Schools know they are destroying young men, sometimes for no reason, but they are okay with that because it means the federal money spigot keeps flowing. Until that changes, nothing else will.; 8/3/17, 7:58 PM
Rick said...: My guess: this was a cabal of feminist nutjobs that got themselves a little sinecure at DoEd under the Obama administration.

The principle goes back to Catherine MacKinnon in the 1970s. This has been kicking around radfem circles for decades. The change was having a President willing to appoint the nuts to positions of authority and then accept their twisting of Title IX beyond its meaning and in the process violate their own rules (by not publicizing their administrative changes and soliciting feedback).

The result is outrageous. KC Johnson has done a great job chronicling the issue. But even he understates the problem because he focuses on the specific weaknesses in the law. But the biggest flaw is the biased "investigation" process. It's outright absurd, the investigations are staffed by left wing nuts. In one case the investigator literally invented the supposed evidence justifying a conviction and rather than being fired for incompetence and sued she was promoted to Title IX Director. In multiple cases people have been found guilty despite the victim telling them the sex was consensual.

Of course the schools support these actions, but the Dear Collegue Letter protects those administrators by allowing them to claim they are just following the government's requirements. This is the craziest movement of my lifetime.; 8/3/17, 7:59 PM
Paddy O said...: The deeper and more dysfunctional issue is that universities have set themselves up as effectively autonomous city-states. It's dysfunctional in how bureaucracies always are, and dysfunctional in how it rigidly defines sharply separated classes (administration, faculty, students). It creates a very warped social experience for all, one that isn't mirrored in the rest of actual society. But the "college experience" has become a defined priority for our culture even still.; 8/3/17, 7:59 PM
Quayle said...: What else do aging baby boomers have left, except putting on their self righteous morality face and tut tutting some wrong, real or perceived? I'm always surprised they can't see how much they've surpassed their parents in busybody policing of their neighbors' sins.

Different sins but all the pompous Puritanism and more.

And nothing excites the white tower academic more, than being able to apply their sanctimony to solving a world problem in real time.; 8/3/17, 8:03 PM
Birkel said...: Paddy O:
I think you will find that the state legislatures (a majority controlled by Republicans) will exert power. The city-states are beholden to all sorts of rules that can be passed. Don't be surprised if the war between state capitals and land grant universities goes hot.

There are a lot of legislators looking to make a career. Going to war with the universities is a solid career move in many states.; 8/3/17, 8:08 PM
Anonymous said...: It's too late in the day to get into the details, but Harvard's administration has used "rape" and "unwanted touching" as a smoke screen to force all kinds of social changes on the undergraduates that will have a major negative affect on many. If they had submitted rape charges to local criminal prosecution instead they probably would have effectively stopped most future incidences of "rape", but what would they have used to bludgeon the undergraduates with?; 8/3/17, 8:08 PM
Fernandinande said...: rcocean said...

The things you listed fall under "failure to communicate".; 8/3/17, 8:14 PM
Anonymous said...: "One in the box. One in the bush.'; 8/3/17, 8:23 PM
readering said...: One problem is dealing with conduct that falls short of rape involving intoxicated couples who are not strangers. Not sure municipal police departments and prosecutors are better at handling these situations than university administrations. Saw an interesting play recently on this subject. Two-hander designed to be ambiguous: Actually by Anna Ziegler.; 8/3/17, 8:38 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: If some male college student voted for Hillary Clinton and gets subjected to one of these kangaroo courts, I don't feel sorry for him.; 8/3/17, 8:40 PM
Chuck said...: The April, 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter was issued over the name of then-Assistnt Secretary of Education for Civil Rights within the Department of Education. She effectively ran the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department. But everyone should rest assured that the policy that she rolled out was coordinated with the highest levels of the Obama Administration, and Democrats in Congress specifically including Senators Claire McAskill, Richard Blumenthal and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Anyone who doesn't yet know about the excellent work of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), I urge you to check them out. They went after Russlyn Ali before she stepped down in 2012.

https://www.thefire.org/controversial-head-of-dept-of-eds-office-for-civil-rights-steps-down/; 8/3/17, 8:46 PM
Birkel said...: readering: "One problem ... conduct that falls short of rape ... intoxicated ... not strangers. ... university administrations."

I'll mark you down for "want non-criminal sex to be policed by university administrators."

What else does your little fascist heart desire?; 8/3/17, 9:03 PM
Chest Rockwell said...: "Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is a federal law that states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

What does this have to do with sexual assault?; 8/3/17, 9:05 PM
cubanbob said...: Rape used to be a capital crime and now it has become a campus discipline issue? That's suppose to be feminist progress?; 8/3/17, 9:23 PM
Big Mike said...: Over at USC football player Matt Boermeester for abusing his girlfriend. Except she says she wasn't abused, and that when she tried to tell that to the school, they treated her terribly, basically accusing her of battered wife syndrome and lying to them.

You can find her full statement here, but the key quote is:

"I want to be very clear that I have never been abused, assaulted or otherwise mistreated by Matt. He is an incredible person, and I am and have been 100% behind him. Nothing happened that warranted an investigation, much less the unfair, biased and drawn out process that we have been forced to endure quietly."

And

"I feel I was misled, harassed, threatened and discriminated against by the Title IX office to such an extent that I had to retain my own attorney during the process to protect myself and to try to get them to listen to me. The Title IX office’s response was dismissive and demeaning, 'We are sorry you feel that way.'”; 8/3/17, 9:27 PM
Birkel said...: Big Mike,

That case would be an excellent point of departure for the Department of Education to reduce financial aid to the school since the administration has encouraged a hostile educational environment under Title IX. The penalty for abusing civil rights should be substantial.

To make it fair, UNC-CH should lose federal funding because it has defrauded the government with fake classes for athletes.

Pour encourager les autres.; 8/3/17, 9:42 PM
Michael K said...: Jon Krakauer? The "Into Thin Air" Jon Krakauer ?

Jesus !

He kind of went nuts on the Matthew Shepard case but this ?; 8/3/17, 9:48 PM
buwaya said...: The whole idea of in loco parentis is idiotic. Where a university, of all things, is somehow responsible for the personal welfare of its students, as if it were a boarding school for children. This is one of the dumber American ideas.

A university should offer classrooms and pay professors to lecture, offer examinations and diplomas for those who pass. And thats all. Everything else should be the students own look-out.

Among other things this would make the whole business vastly cheaper. As it is in, say, Europe, Australia and Canada.; 8/3/17, 9:55 PM
walter said...: cubanbob said...
Rape used to be a capital crime and now it has become a campus discipline issue? That's suppose to be feminist progress?
--
Yep. Almost makes ya wonder if they're pursuing women's safety or a means to punish innocent young men for "toxic masculinity".; 8/3/17, 9:59 PM
Chest Rockwell said...: "Over at USC"...

The dean of their medical school is also a meth addict...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/us/usc-scandal-carmen-puliafito.amp.html; 8/3/17, 10:15 PM
Gordon Scott said...: Campus rape center employees have nice, comfortable, well-paying jobs with no heavy lifting. They are difficult to fire, because they can yell that you support rape if you try. Easier to just let them be.

But they want to keep those nice, sweet jobs. So they must invent rapes for them to deal with. Actual, traditionally defined rape is pretty rare on campus. So it must be defined downward such that having consensual sex--and that consent is shown in evidence--becomes rape a year later when the rape center staffer convinces a girl that she really didn't consent.; 8/3/17, 10:17 PM
Zach said...: Anyone who truly cares about civil rights would reject the star chambers that are university disciplinary bodies with no right to the turn over of exculpatory evidence or the right to confront your accuser.

Worth remembering: the Court of Star Chamber was set up in 1487. 1487! It's taken centuries for people to work out what it means to have a fair trial, and we're still not done.

It's just ludicrous to think that you can set up a parallel system that will try people for things that look very similar to crimes and hand out punishments that look very similar to sentences and think you're going to get it right the first time.; 8/3/17, 10:18 PM
Big Mike said...: @Birkel, as far as I'm concerned the right thing to do with respect to UNC is:

1) Vacate the three national basketball championships they won under Roy Williams, giving the championship banners to Illinois, Michigan State, and Gonzaga.

2) Force them to relinquish the two additional Final Four banners they won under Williams, giving their banners to the teams that were runners up in the regionals.

3) Remove Roy Williams from the Collegiate Basketbsll Hall of Fame.

4) Ban the Tarheels football and basketball teams from postseason play for two years.

5) Remove scholarships from every single sport, including women's sports.

Not much more you can do to the football team regarding past bowl games; they lost nearly all of them sonit's pretty pointless to vacate past bowl game victories. But while we're at it, the UNC men's and women's soccer teams and lacrosse teams have won national championships during the time period in question, so if there's the slightest hint that these four teams were also involved with athletes not going to class or taking exams, then vacate those championships as well and bar them from postseason play too.

Enough screwing around.; 8/3/17, 10:43 PM
Skipper said...: When the hell did universities become semi-autonomous city-states?; 8/3/17, 10:47 PM
Birkel said...: Your answer smacks of fairness, Big Mike.
I am done with fairness and demand retribution.

I want the students at these schools denied federal student aid because of REASONS!

Banners and games be damned.
Slay the dragon.; 8/3/17, 11:21 PM
Achilles said...: The university system needs to be defunded and returned to it's original purpose because every year it operates it is a massive net negative both to the students in the system and our society.; 8/3/17, 11:40 PM
PB said...: From a historical perspective it's important to remember the order in which these things occurred. A claim was made that 20% of women on College were raped. Real statistics did not support this claim. The expansion of the term sexual assault to mirror leering still did not generate the necessary statistics. It to The Fray went the Obama Department of Education. And created a policy to impose upon the University with the threat of loss of Public Funding if they didn't comply. It was all an attempt to support a false claim. You have to suspect the motivation of an organization that would do such a thing as to whether they support any sense of justice Fairplay in the rule of law.; 8/4/17, 6:58 AM
Paco Wové said...: "One problem is dealing with conduct that falls short of rape"

This problem goes away when you realize that there is nothing to be "dealt with".; 8/4/17, 7:01 AM
My name goes here. said...: Readering: "One problem is dealing with conduct that falls short of rape involving intoxicated couples who are not strangers. Not sure municipal police departments and prosecutors are better at handling these situations than university administrations. "

What is the problem here?

If adults get drunk and have sex what is there to adjudicate?

That is a serious question.; 8/4/17, 7:42 AM
rehajm said...: As an unfrozen caveman lawyer, your world frightens and confuses me...; 8/4/17, 7:54 AM
Oso Negro said...: Blogger My name goes here. said...
If adults get drunk and have sex what is there to adjudicate?

That is a serious question.

8/4/17, 7:42 AM

In past times, it depended on whether the man was an unlucky splooge stooge. In that event, he might find himself in bondage to the woman for 18 years to life. These days, if the woman has bad feelz following fornication, the man must be denounced and driven from the institution.; 8/4/17, 7:56 AM
Francisco D said...: @Rick,

If I recall correctly, Cathryn McKinnon asserted that any sexual intercourse between a man and a woman constituted rape.; 8/4/17, 8:30 AM
Matt Sablan said...: The strongest sexual assault policy on campus would be to immediately turn over reports of crimes to the police, as they would do with any other crime. You don't see universities trying to investigate murder.; 8/4/17, 8:35 AM
Matt Sablan said...: Also: If any organization accuses me of a crime, and refuses to have the proper authorities deal with it, I would in no way cooperate with them.; 8/4/17, 8:41 AM
Whirred Whacks said...: The one thing Stanford did right during the Brock Turner sexual assault case was to immediately turn the entire matter over to civil authorities. Santa Clara County Sheriff were on the scene within minutes and took him to County jail where he was held and arraigned. Then had a trial. Stanford was out of the picture.; 8/4/17, 8:47 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: The excuses given by administrators for why they should conduct investigations into a serious felony are:

1) In addition to a crime, it is also a violation of the student code of conduct
2) The victim will be intimidated and upset by the presence of the perpetrator on campus
3) The victim might not feel comfortable going to the police

My response would be:

1) Any serious crime is going to be a violation of the student code of conduct. As someone mentioned above, you don't investigate murder do you?
2) There is actually some merit to this, but that is why you should go to the police. So that an actual investigation can take place.
3) If the victim doesn't go to the police, then you have to assume no crime has taken place.

The real reason college administrators interject themselves into what should be a criminal matter for the civil authorities is that they can't abide that whole "presumption of innocence" thing. That guy is guilty of something, otherwise this young woman wouldn't be here complaining about him. Rules only get in the way of punishing the wicked. And punishing the wicked is what life is all about.; 8/4/17, 8:54 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: When the readership of the Times sides with Trump policy over the NYT's take, that is newsworthy. The backlash (Google "Nungesser") is already building into a wave of costly lawsuits these schools are losing and going to lose for denying due process. And all this from a "Dear Colleague" letter or two from the Obama Education Department. What a stupid destructive thing they did just to juice up their "war on women" rallying cry for 2012. How many lives do they have to ruin with their virtue signaling?; 8/4/17, 8:58 AM
Anonymous said...: Universities responded to the Department of Education OCR "Dear Colleague" "guidances" by adopting new policies and procedures for dealing with sexual assault, which they redefined to mean a hot look, a double-entendre and close dancing at the mixer.

They also went to great lengths to destroy any vestige of due process and to create a system that ambushed and railroaded students. And that tended to reward accusers. The blowback has begun.

What I don't understand is, whether the universities adopted any new policies on false accusation. I would like to think that a student who knowingly falsely accuses another of an offense, should be subject to the same penalty as the accused might face if the offense had in fact occurred. Justice often employs symmetry, and here I think it might be a useful deterrent to casual, vindictive or attention-getting claims that will completely destroy somebody's life.

IMHO.; 8/4/17, 9:02 AM
Rick said...: Francisco D said...
If I recall correctly, Cathryn McKinnon asserted that any sexual intercourse between a man and a woman constituted rape.

I don't recall that from McKinnon's work although she alleged participation in pornography was categorically rape. In reaching that conclusion she seemed to be claiming no one would voluntarily accept those conditions so it could not possibly be consensual.

Andrea Dworkin claimed all hetero sex is rape (although her protectors pretend otherwise) so maybe you're mixing the two. Revealingly Dworkin exempted her own relationships on the basis she was woke.; 8/4/17, 9:13 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: Campus administrators think of themselves as Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall, but they are actually a lot more like Deloris Umbridge.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=dolores+umbridge&&view=detail&mid=490FC5C54CA538C99CE3490FC5C54CA538C99CE3&FORM=VRDGAR; 8/4/17, 9:24 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: "What is the problem here?

If adults get drunk and have sex what is there to adjudicate?

That is a serious question."

The problem is that women have traded sex for intimacy and a relationship with a guy for a long time. But now they aren't getting their traditional benefit of the deal. A large number of these cases, maybe even most of them, involve drunken or consensual sex where the guy is a cad later. She has sex with him, and doesn't end up in the relationship with him she wanted. She, or her friends, for her benefit, then complain to the administration, and the rest is something between history and a travesty.

Now into my theory - the sexual ratios have changed dramatically since I was in college better than four decades ago. Then, the ratio at my school was 3/2 male/female. Now, with the feminization of college, the ratios are almost the reverse on many campuses. Which is why, I think, the old rules, the old expectations of the transaction, don't work. Too many women chasing too few guys, and esp the most desirous guys. The result, as could be rationally expected, is a race for the bottom, resulting in the hookup culture, where everyone gets drunk, and then when they get desperate at the end of the evening, hookup with the best choice available for the night. Maybe via texting. Maybe in person. And maybe compounding this, the girls' mother's probably told them about trading sex for love, but the odds were in the mothers' favor when they were in college. They aren't for their daughters. So, when the hoped for bargain doesn't work out for them, their sexual partners for the evening end up potentially getting thrown out of college for not providing the love that the women expected, but rationally shouldn't have. And it has to be adjudicated by the colleges and universities, because they would be laughed out of court by juries in the real world - "You got drunk, got into bed with the guy, took off your clothes, he had sex with you and you are complaining? What did you think he was going to do?"; 8/4/17, 9:28 AM
bagoh20 said...: What's the difference between what these universities are doing and a Muslim men's university resorting to sharia law in similar cases? They could even behead some gays and create their own "star chambers".; 8/4/17, 9:30 AM
bagoh20 said...: "If adults get drunk and have sex what is there to adjudicate? "

It's clearly an exchange, a transaction. There should at least be a tax collected, maybe a license required. First you get the appropriate permits which will require inspection of the location and the equipment to be used, as well as some process diagrams, and 90 days for processing. Then, when you have all the required boxes checked, go to it you little horny devils and have that passion filled night to remember.; 8/4/17, 9:36 AM
Ralph L said...: Owen, some people are fighting back at my alma mater:
Sue Sue!

"“When a woman tells you she’s been assaulted, believe her,” Davidson College President Carol Quillen wrote in an Observer guest column"

I sent an angry email to the alumni office about its obnoxious president.; 8/4/17, 9:42 AM
bagoh20 said...: I've had a few one night stands, especially in college, and thing is that I remember every one clearly. I wish I could say the same for the sex in my long-term relationships, but counter-intuitively, the sex in these one-night fireworks shows was never as good as the average night with a long term partner. You might think that's why they ended up long term, but I'm sure I never chose or rejected a partner based on her sexual performance. I think I could, if she was bad enough, but I'm a guy - most sex is good.; 8/4/17, 9:47 AM
Ralph L said...: I want to know if these young females actually believe they can throw their girl parts around like guys do and not pay an emotional price.; 8/4/17, 9:57 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: I want to know if these young females actually believe they can throw their girl parts around like guys do and not pay an emotional price.

I don't know if they actually believe it, but I can see that they are constantly told that.; 8/4/17, 10:06 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: So, why does this happen? Why can't these young women just enjoy their one night stands, as a guy would, instead of thinking that there should be more to it emotionally? My partner and I get into this somewhat regularly. She calls me a "man whore" for having had, maybe, an above average number of sexual partners when younger. I try to explain the evolutionary side to this to no avail. Fidelity over the almost two decades we have been together doesn't matter. To her, I am still a "man whore". I just thought of myself as doing what guys do naturally, at the time.

Pardon to those here in advance who get tired of my rant on evolutionary pressures and the like here. If we look at our closest ape relatives, the chimps (and then ignore their bonobo cousins who went in a different evolutionary direction), females had the babies, and in matriarchal groups raised them. Sex was for procreation, and the females tend to prefer alpha males for such, as they provide superior genetics. Maybe not exactly right for chimps, but certainly true for much of the animal kingdom, that we are theoretically a part of. Think of this as the baseline. But humans are unique here in one critical respect - our brains, and in particular brain size. They making birthing notably more difficult, and pushed female hips so wide as to impact walking, have moved into more immature brains, esp as compared to out ultimate growth and complexity. And, in order to develop those vaunted brains of ours, our young spend much longer, comparatively, dependent upon esp their mothers for survival. (Side theory - this is the root cause of the "seven year itch"). After 7+ million years evolution from our chimp relatives, overlaid over sex with alpha males for procreation, our females have evolved into pair bonding in order to maximize the amount of resourses available to them, and esp their long dependent young children. There are physiological aspects to this, such as female climaxing. But as important are the psychological aspects. Sex without commitment by the putative father of their kids meant through most of our recent history that the resulting children have a much higher likelihood of not surviving to adulthood, and therefore the ability to procreate themselves. Which, is, of course, the basis of evolution. Which is to say that human females have evolved, thanks to our much longer childhood dependency, to psychologically tie sex to male commitment. Never mind that sex no longer means pregnancy, and support for the resulting children. That is an eye blink in our evolutionary history, really within most of our own lifetimes. Human females are still wired (and will continue to be for quite some time) to expect commitment from sex. They emotionally need a husband before having sex, because the females in their ancestry that did so, are the ones who survived and had offspring.

Males, on the other hand, are wired to impregnate as many females as they can. But this has been modified by the female need for pair bonding. Things worked pretty well when the trade of female sex for male commitment was fairly universal. But it doesn't work now, esp for a lot of college women. They can't really hold out for commitment before sex, because plenty of other women are willing to provide it, if they don't. The race to the bottom. Guys are getting what they crave, esp at that age (sex), but the gals are not. To get a chance at the best guys, they have to put out, but when that doesn't work out, they dont get the commitment they crave, many of them are psychologically unsatified. Some, like Matress Girl Emma, at Columbia, go cra-cra crazy.; 8/4/17, 10:25 AM
Ralph L said...: Bruce, fewer sex partners leads to more paragraph breaks, you man whore.; 8/4/17, 10:33 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: "I've had a few one night stands, especially in college, and thing is that I remember every one clearly. I wish I could say the same for the sex in my long-term relationships, but counter-intuitively, the sex in these one-night fireworks shows was never as good as the average night with a long term partner. You might think that's why they ended up long term, but I'm sure I never chose or rejected a partner based on her sexual performance. I think I could, if she was bad enough, but I'm a guy - most sex is good."

Funny thing there is that guys are, essentially, driven to step out of those committed relationships. Esp those where the commitment isn't formal, which is maybe why marriage is still so important. In college, I had an amazingly fulfilling relationship with a woman. Some of the best in my life. Yet, I found myself breaking up with her sometimes on Fridays, in order to be the "man whore" my partner accuses me of having been. We would then get back together on Sunday. Even when I got "lucky", it was never that good. Yet, I would do it again the next month. I knew that it was stupid - but I didn't quit.; 8/4/17, 10:34 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I never thought of myself as a "man whore", but rather just doing what came naturally. Minority opinion, of course, around our household.; 8/4/17, 10:40 AM
Larvell said...: You know, a preponderance of the evidence standard wouldn't be such a bad thing, if it wasn't coupled with an almost-unbreakable "women don't lie" presumption, the failure to allow the accused a meaningful opportunity to gather evidence or cross-examine the "survivor," the federal government pressure for schools to find male students guilty, the fact that the investigator/prosecutor is almost always a true believer, the fact that there is almost nothing a "survivor" can do in the days, weeks, months, or years following an "assault" that is seen as inconsistent with her being a victim, and everything else that goes along with the kangaroo court system.; 8/4/17, 10:41 AM
walter said...: Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
My partner and I get into this somewhat regularly. She calls me a "man whore"
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"partner"?; 8/4/17, 11:29 AM
readering said...: Gee, just noticed someone called me a fascist. Maybe if I watch this I'll know why:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071650/; 8/4/17, 4:35 PM