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EnderSpeaksAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:09pm
I have nearly nothing constructive to add other than that was a great article and the kind of thoughtful eloquent writing that I wish happened here more often (unlike, say, a creepy post about a 16 year old boy).
Here’s my questions: What would an ideal system look like? While appreciating that we’ve been, and continue to be, horrible to woman; how do we make safe spaces for everyone?
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  Anna MerlanEnderSpeaks
  12/04/15 2:20pm
  I don’t know. I think about it a lot. The cops don’t do a great job, universities have, in many cases, essentially gamed the system to make sure they don’t add to their crime reporting stats, and we don’t have a lot of alternative models.
  
  One thing I’m a fan of is the restorative justice model, which emphasizes trying to actually repair harm through collaboration and discussion with everyone involved. BUT that’s clearly not for everyone, and it’s in complete and direct conflict with much of what we do in the United States, where everything is set up to minimize exposure to both criminal charges and civil lawsuits. It also, frankly, requires someone taking responsibility. And so how do you employ it in situations where no one can agree who’s at fault, or even if any harm was done?
  
  I tend to think, sometimes, that there is no solution. But that doesn’t feel great either.
  
  Sorry, that was a lot for a Friday.
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  HaHaYouFoolAnna Merlan
  12/04/15 2:43pm
  My Feminist Jurisprudence prof in law school, a legit genius who has devoted her life to issues like these, has looked at tribal models of restorative justice, and how those can (or can’t) be implemented in areas of domestic violence and sexual assault. You’ve precisely pinpointed the most difficult issues, Anna.
  
  However, I think that there could be a place for it in situations like this, where a violation definitely occurred, but using the criminal or civil justice system feels like too blunt a tool to achieve healing. It all hinges on the implementation, though, and it would have to be so delicately and perfectly done. Honestly, I don’t trust these educational systems to do it right.
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BlessedAreTheHedas. Our fight is not over.Anna Merlan
12/04/15 2:10pm
Emily Yoffe's obvious bias is why I stopped reading Slate. She has such a low opinion of women, well, women who aren't just like her. Thanks for highlighting the actual cases she attacked in such detail.
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  Cherith CutestoryBlessedAreTheHedas. Our fight is not over.
  12/04/15 2:14pm
  She’s gone! Mallory Ortberg from The Toast is Prudie now.
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  LOREM IPSUMCherith Cutestory
  12/04/15 2:18pm
  I like Mallory Ortberg a lot more so far.
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infundibulumAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:31pm
Where Yoffe evidently sees a sodden night gone awry, it’s just as easy to see a story of two women who tried their best to follow the correct steps after they believed they had been assaulted.

Yep. This is one of the big problems I’ve always had with Yoffe. She absolutely crucifies women for doing completely reasonable reporting measures after assault. I can never quit understand what Yoffe and her fans want women to do, other than never drink or leave their homes.

Great article, Anna.
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  ad infinituminfundibulum
  12/04/15 2:51pm
  I think it’s less that she wants women to never drink or leave their homes as that she wants to make sure men can rape with impunity. She has made clear again and again that she strongly dislikes women, particularly women who are victims of sexual assault, and she considers it a travesty that it’s even possible (although quite rare) for men to face consequences for raping women when rape is, by definition, always 100% the (female) victim’s fault.
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  infundibulumad infinitum
  12/04/15 3:01pm
  That’s also an option. I know people who think she’s this high-minded, above-it-all observer of campus rape cases. It’s just fucking baffling.
  
  I dunno. I’ve been in higher ed a while, and the amount of situations I’ve seen where a woman or a person of color is told to sit down and shut up in response to a claim of wrong doing dwarfs the number of cases where I’ve seen justice happen. Or cases in which I’ve seen victim-biased miscarriages of justice (that number being 0). I’m getting real fuckin’ sick of the Emily Yoffes and Jon Chaits penning these pieces about how I need to hate and fear the uppity women and minorities I work with. She’ll be at home in the Atlantic, which is the mouthpiece of the ‘white liberals who like minorities, but would really rather keep their privilege, thank you’ movement.
  
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Pink is the new catAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:21pm
Much like The Rolling Stone piece, I continue to be frustrated by how a widespread problem can only be talked about on a case-by-case basis by the obtuse. People get so into picking apart the individual instances that they can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s exactly what’s happening with the undue use of police force in Chicago, New York, Ferguson, Baltimore, etc. Those of us sensitive to the issue see the bigger picture- it’s not the individual episodes, it’s that there are so many of them that it’s evidence of a problem. Those that wish to pretend the system work will just endlessly uphold the institutional actions by pretending the individual episodes aren’t related, aren’t connected, and aren’t produced by similar circumstances.
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  portland1Pink is the new cat
  12/04/15 2:36pm
  And one glaring truth that stands out in this case and in every case: Letting universities “police” criminal conduct means that the universities can minimize sexual violence in the name of preserving their institutional reputations.
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  titania126Pink is the new cat
  12/04/15 2:37pm
  Exactly what I wanted to say. And along with the pervasive issues with the judicial process is the overarching need to change our standard of consent—to teach men and boys that no matter how sophisticated, drunk, and horny they might be, if they can’t muster a “yes” from an intoxicated, incapacitated, or sleeping woman, they MUST treat her response as a no. Leave it up to that woman to grab them and pull them back into bed if they’re wrong; better to err on the side of caution.
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hercules q. einsteinAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:10pm
Emily Yoffe as in “Dear Prudence”? That woman should not be allowed to write. Her advice is based only how many puns she can stick into her lame answer. Sometimes her advice is actually dangerous.
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  demonveenhercules q. einstein
  12/04/15 2:19pm
  I’d be very interested to hear how exactly you would go about ensuring that she “should not be allowed to write,” Adolf.
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  Cherith Cutestoryhercules q. einstein
  12/04/15 2:19pm
  I didn’t see The Hunting Ground so I can have no opinion on this.
  
  But she’s generally so fucking judgmental in her column. Like advice columnists from thirty years ago wouldn’t be as judgmental as she often is.
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PoodletimeAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:19pm
This whole area is such a mine field. I’m going out on a limb here by saying that I believe women should protect each other more in parties and social situations, especially if some of them have been drinking. Predators gonna predate, and statistics show us that a small number of men, especially college-age men, are predators. These guys would be easier to escape from/prosecute/beat up if women spent more time at parties or other social gatherings watching each other’s backs. Of course, rapists have to take responsibility for their own behavior, but isn’t it better to stop them before they actually attack your friends?
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  oldbiddybadger2Poodletime
  12/04/15 2:32pm
  I feel like a lot of women are doing this already, but bystander guys need to step up more instead of adhering to ‘guy code.’ I hear way too may stories where women are the ones who end up stopping attenpted rapes of other women, and not nearly as many stories of guys stepping in to help.
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  Pink is the new catPoodletime
  12/04/15 2:36pm
  Well, but guys AND girls should also be watching out for the vulernable AND watching out that their friend may be the one who is crossing the line into predatory behavior. It’s the “see something, say something” of the real world. That’s on all of us. It’s kind of unfair to think that it’s only women who can’t let loose and get rip-roaring drunk with friends. PLUS, that doesn’t even cover assault that happens in a relationship- friend or romantic. What if the person you think is going to look out for you- and who your friends think is looking out for you- is the person who violates you?
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civlibsAnna Merlan
12/04/15 3:36pm
Just FYI the Harvard Crimson named Winston first—not Yoffe: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1...
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  Anna Merlancivlibs
  12/04/15 5:27pm
  Yes, the word “case” got substituted for “film” at some point in the editing process; I’ve fixed that and added a correction.
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HermioneStrangerAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:23pm
As New York points out, though, the film does use one heavily-cited statistic that’s looking shakier all the time: the assertion that most campus rapes are committed by just a handful of serial rapists. The study that produced that assertion has lately been heavily criticized, and a subsequent study this summer found very different results.

The assertion that most campus rapes are committed by a handful of serial rapists has been criticized, but NOT because the former study was poorly done. On the contrary, it’s one of the most highly respected studies on sexual predators. It was, however, not really a study on “campus rapists”, in the sense we usually are talking about (males ages 18-22), but a study on male rapists in the general population (done at a non-traditional commuter school, the average participant was 26 y/o, and a third were 30+ y/o.)

The new study is definitely better suited to understand campus rapists. Importantly, though, the results don’t necessarily contradict the old study, just the way the White House campaign and media has used the old study. By the end of college, around age 22, about 3% (2.7%) of men reported committing multiple rapes, and qualified as “serial rapists”. That’s not that different from the old study, where 4% of men reported committing multiple rapes, and qualified as “serial rapists”. Given that participants in old study had more time to commit multiple rapes, the 1.3% difference isn’t really painting a different picture. It just points out that traditional colleges also have a bunch of men who will rape once or twice, and then stop, and we need to figure out if there’s a way we could intervene so that they wouldn’t rape even the once.
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  Collin ChristopherHermioneStranger
  12/04/15 4:20pm
  I love when I come across your comments. They’re usually the most well-thought out, data-backed comments on the site, and they’re just awesome. :)
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HaHaYouFoolAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:24pm
A note about the whole I-didn’t-think-my-rape-was-serious-enough-to-report-thing. I don’t think it’s that women think what happened to them actually isn’t that big of a deal (though there’s some of that going on, because minimizing is one way of coping), it’s that women know that the assholes in charge don’t think it’s that big of a deal. We know intuitively that we’re just going to end up revictimizing ourselves, and making everything worse, by having to fight to get someone to take it seriously.
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  quagmireHaHaYouFool
  12/04/15 2:31pm
  I minimize less important things that bother me all the time. I can imagine I would do the same thing if I figured whoever could supposedly help me would find reasons that I may have been asking for it.
  
  It’s telling that they’re more likely to report if it’s more of the “perfect victim” scenario. There’s a reason for that.
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  MorninBoehnerHaHaYouFool
  12/04/15 2:38pm
  As someone who was sexually assaulted in college twice, this is absolutely my take on it as well. I knew it was wrong and I also knew exactly what would be used against me.
  
  (A warning for blatant mentions of assault) He was a well liked, conventionally very attractive extroverted athlete. I was an average looking introverted nobody with a history of anxiety and disordered eating . He was also my boyfriend. I didn’t kick, scream or go for blood.
  
  There’s no way that wasn’t a willing encounter, amirite? Guys like him have girls throwing themselves at his feet. Why would he bother? /sarcasm
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paultoesAnna Merlan
12/04/15 2:30pm
Yoffe’s commitment to this bullshit is so bizarre and infuriating. She rarely wrote anything other than the advice column at Slate, but when she did it was always a piece about sexual assault that did its best to discredit or blame victims and lament the young men whose lives might be inconvenienced by an accusation... I wish I knew what motivates her to spend so much time and effort trying to dismantle other people’s stories and efforts. She claims she wants to uncover the truth. But it seems as if she is trying her damnedest to deny what the truth is.
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  miss_cheviouspaultoes
  12/04/15 5:21pm
  I feel like it’s part of her response to her own assaults*, actually (although this is totally armchair psychology on my part). Like, if she can convince the rest of us that acquaintance rape isn’t really that bad and neither are the guys that do it, then the things that happened to her and the men (and the older boy) who violated her trust are no big deal.
  
  The crazy thing is, her position — that alcohol and victims are at fault and boys will be boys — is what perpetrates the culture that permitted (even encouraged) what happened to her and her silence about it afterwards.
  
  *she wasn’t raped. She was molested by a teenage cousin when she was nine, groped by a friend’s father as a teenager, and groped by another man as an 18- or 19-year-old.
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Where Yoffe evidently sees a sodden night gone awry, it’s just as easy to see a story of two women who tried their best to follow the correct steps after they believed they had been assaulted.