As a society, our understanding of what constitutes consensual sex is nothing short of appalling. Sure, many of us were taught that “no means no” but our parents, teachers and mentors didn’t go far enough to tell us that consenting to sex also means the right to say yes. Having sex with someone you know is incapacitated and unable to make a rational, consensual decision is, in fact, rape. This is particularly an issue on college campuses, where sexual assault is a huge problem. One in five or more women are sexually assaulted while in college. And studies say heavy drinking plays a significant predictor in campus sexual assault. Our colleges and universities are in desperate need of reform insofar as how they address rape and develop policies that keep students safe.
Enter Betsy DeVos. As the secretary of the Department of Education, this falls under her purview. And she has handed this task over to Candice Jackson, who now runs the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. You may remember that Candice has absolutely no qualifications to run this department whatsoever, aside from herself having received an education at some point in her life. Well, Candice is now attempting review policies that investigate sexual assault on campuses, starting with preserving the rights of those who themselves are accused of assault.
In an interview previewing her plans, Ms. Jackson, who heads the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and organized Thursday’s sessions, made clear that she believes investigations under the 1972 law known as Title IX have gone deeply awry. A sexual assault survivor herself, she said she sees “a red flag that something’s not quite right” — and that the rights of accused students have too often been ignored. [...]
Investigative processes have not been “fairly balanced between the accusing victim and the accused student,” Ms. Jackson argued, and students have been branded rapists “when the facts just don’t back that up.” In most investigations, she said, there’s “not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman.”
There’s a few things wrong with this horrible logic. Certainly anyone accused of a crime has rights. But our culture of jumping to knee-jerk reactions where we automatically discredit women who say that they have been assaulted is really out of control. What is this obsessive need that we have to paint women as liars who constantly wield rape as a weapon for some warped vendetta they have against some man? And why do we feel the need to consistently make excuses for and defend men who rape?
Sexual assault investigations on campuses overwhelmingly do not favor women who come forward with their stories. Investigations are lengthy (for example the Education Department’s average case length is 703 days), accusers are already given the benefit of innocence, victims are subjected to invasive questioning and all sorts of blame and shame—very often still having to attend classes with and live in proximity to their attackers. And since many people still do not understand that drunken consent isn’t actually consent, assumptions are made that consent was implied rather than actually given. It isn’t a pretty picture.
Moreover, if Betsy DeVos and Candice Jackson were serious about addressing this problem of campus rape in a substantive way, what she wouldn’t have done is started looking at policy reform by meeting with advocates for campus rapists. Yes, that’s right. The Department of Education reached out to groups that “have histories of intimidating rape survivors and dismissing domestic abuse against women.”
The National Coalition for Men, which was founded in the 1970s, has a long history of what is now known as “men’s rights activism.” One of the groups’ chapters published the photos and names of women, while calling them “false accusers.” [...]
Harry Crouch, president of National Coalition for Men, has also vocally blamed survivors for the abuse they faced. In a 2014 interview with Pacific Standard, Crouch defended Ray Rice, a former football player, who was indicted in 2014 on third-degree aggravated assault for an incident involving his then fiancee. “I’m not saying he’s a good guy,” Crouch said. “But if she hadn’t aggravated him, she wouldn’t have been hit. They would say that’s blaming the victim. But I don’t buy it.”
SAVE: Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is included in a list of misogynist websites put together by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2013, SAVE published an article alleging that many civil rights, like the “right to privacy in family affairs,” have been “undermined by domestic violence laws.”
How we address sexual assault on college campuses matters. All students deserve to be safe on campus but all students are not the same. We live in a world where social location and position can’t be ignored. There is a history of misogyny and abuse against women. Women are vulnerable on college campuses for many reasons. This is real. Sexual assault happens on college campuses with alarming frequency. No one in their right mind wants to see an innocent person suffer for something they have not done. But positioning men and women as equals in this discussion, when one is more vulnerable than the other, ignores history and facts. It is also nothing short of disgusting to meet with these men, in particular. There are better men out there than these abusers—men who actually don’t rape and want to see women safe on college campuses. This has been said many times but it’s worth repeating: this is the kind of repugnant behavior and policy reform ideas that happen when a sexual assaulter gets elected to the presidency.