The Monsters of Ohio State
I heard something interesting on the radio today.
The Ohio State University’s Student Code of Conduct (SCoC) is drawing a lot of heat from conservatives and libertarians for having a list of criteria that — I think most of us would agree — is utterly ridiculous. Among the provisions of the SCoC:
- If a male student kisses a female student without receiving verbal consent just prior to the kiss, the University considers it sexual assault. This is true regardless of the relationship between the students, and regardless of whether the female wants, enjoys, or returns the kiss.
- If a female student and male student have sexual relations of any kind, but it is determined that the two students engaged in said behavior for different reasons, the University considers this to be sexual assault perpetrated by the male student.
- If a male student shakes the hand of a female student, the female student has the right at a later time to have the male student charged with sexual assault.
When I heard this, I found myself saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that!” As in, “Oh my God, I really and truly do not believe that you aren’t just pulling that s**t out of your ass.” So when I got home, I did some Googling. It turns out that this is a pretty widespread meme amongst conservative and libertarian talk shows and news sites right now. This includes Reason, Rush Limbaugh, PJ Media, and other various places.
What’s interesting (and funny) about all of these sources is that they all link to one another. What no one seems to bother to have checked out at all is the actual OSU SCoC. And — SUPRPISE! — it turns out it doesn’t actually do any of those things. You can see for yourself; the link to the OSU SCoC on sexual misconduct is here.
So why, you might ask, does everyone seem to think that these claims are true?
Funny story.
It’s actually because of another page on the OSU website that gives general guidelines to students about the most effective ways to gauge whether or not the other person actually wants to have sex with you. Here are is the advise given by the University, with the parts that are freaking everyone out emboldened:
Effective Consent
- Effective consent can be given by words or actions so long as the words or actions create a mutual understanding between both parties regarding the conditions of the sexual activity–ask, “do both of us understand and agree regarding the who, what, where, when, why, and how this sexual activity will take place?
- When someone affirmatively demonstrates that (1) they do not want to have sex, (2) they want to stop any sort of the sexual acts, or (3) they do not want to go any further, the other party must stop completely. Continued pressure after that point can be coercive.
You will note that there is nothing here that suggests that the University defines sexual assault as the absence of verbal approval — indeed, it very specifically says consent can come from “words or action.”
You will also note that there is nothing here that suggests that if two people have different reasons for having sex with one another that the University considers it sexual assault. Remember, that this is a set of guidelines given to young people who are still figuring out what it means to be a mature adult when it comes to matters like boinking. And Reason’s Robby Soave’s click-baiting sneers notwithstanding, each partner understanding why the other is playing under-blanket bingo really is part of being a mature adult — and nineteen-year-olds who make the effort to honestly communicate and hear their partner’s and their own reasons why will save themselves a lot of pain and grief down the road.[1]
Look, I know that old-school objective journalism is so last generation and everything, but it seems to me that you’re doing an withering expose on a Code of Conduct Policy that clocks in at all of 311 words in order to show how you’re so much smarter than those eggheads that run academia are, the very least you should be willing to do is read the fishing thing first.
Sheesh.
[1] Trust me on this. I know of what I speak.
Follow Tod on Twitter, view his archive, or email him. Visit him at TodKelly.com
What’s interesting (and funny) about all of these sources is that they all link to one another. What no one seems to bother to have checked out at all is the actual OSU SCoC.
Sigh.
At some point, it’s time to start revoking press credentials or something. Somehow.Report
ddos?Report
Why is this even surprising? It is the end logic of academic liberals.Report
… said the guy who did’t read the post that was about the journalists who didn’t read the Code of Conduct.Report
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was true they way colleges are going. It is how academic liberals think.Report
It is how academic liberals think.
How do they think?Report
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was true they way colleges are going. It is how academic liberals think.
You were perfectly clear. You just read the first paragraph and didn’t get to the important part, and accepted it as true because it fit your preconceived notions.
And now you look bad, because it’s very, very obvious that you’re just as lazy as the people linking this BS.
Congrats.Report
Notme,
As an academic libertarian who works daily alongside academic liberals, I think I can speak with a certain amount of authority gained through first-hand knowledge unleavened with much sympathy for the type.
And what I would say is that your stereotype is patently silly.Report
As a non academic libertarian, who lives in a socialist state, and has followed many cases of public school insanity in my home state and county, I can say that the stereotype is patently similiar to other examples that have taken place in the past few years in other areas, not only in details but in general tone.Report
California just passed an affirmative consent law for the UC and CSU systems that is raising some eyebrows including from some on the left who think it infantilizes women too much and question whether it is wise to have a separate standard for college students:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119459/californias-campus-consent-laws-every-sex-act-potential-crime
Whenever a new law passes, there is a lot of fear-mongering about negative side effects or unintended consequences. Sometimes but not always those unintended consequences hemming and hawing are overblown and sometimes the negative consequences dwarf any benefit that the law was intended to give. Where a law is on this spectrum probably depends on ideology.
I don’t think the new California law will be as bad as the TNR article states and plenty of young men and women will be having sex at college. I do think it raises some interesting observations though.Report
Given the massive rape problems colleges have, I can understand the urge to start trying to find something — anything– that might put a dent in the problem.
*shrug*. Unfortunately, to a large extent it’s cultural and those attitudes need to be handled earlier than college, during far more formative years.
It’s doubly hard because the seeds get planted WAY before any kids are even thinking about sex (or generally even aware of what it is) — it’s built into a lot of our culture and media, into our very definitions of ‘normal’ relationships.
I guess the simplest explanation is the way a lot of men — especially young men — talk about sex. As if sex is something the women own, something they have to be convinced to part with — rather than a mutual act. Getting the woman to “give it up” — like it’s a possession or an item to be one, rather than two people deciding to bone.
Why wouldn’t some men get resentful, if sex is some treasure the woman won’t share? Hoarding it all to herself? How mean, how selfish, right? That’s the way we pitch it, as a society. \
Men desire it, women guard it. Antagonism from the get-go.Report
I believe people in the sex-positive community call this the commodity model of sex. Historically, because sex before marriage was officially disapproved of since antiquity, there has been a certain logic about this. Men have been taught that sex is something that is there by right and women were raised with the idea that they should guard sex and not give it outside of marriage.
Changing how people think about sex will help but not as much as the sex-positive people think it would. As a French novelist whose name I can’t spell pointed out, but more elegantly, free love has the same problems as the free market. Some people are going to do very well, others decently, but many other people are going to have horrible love and sex lives even if they do everything ostensibly right. There is an element of chance and luck that simply can’t be wished away. Romantic and sexual frustration needs to be accounted for in some way besides just deal with it. People with bad love/sex lives aren’t going to accept thats the way of free love any more than the losers of the free market are going to be fine with their poverty.Report
I think you need to get laid more, Lee. Saul, too.Report
You don’t need free love, you just need the understand that sex is a mutual arrangement — you don’t even get off the ground unless both parties are interested.
That’s not ‘free love’. That’s accepting the other party is an independent entity with their own particular list of criteria.Report
i want to hear more about the obamacare of sex plan. do i get to keep my old sex plan if i like it? who’s going to handle the sexbamacare.gov site launch?Report
If people are below a certain sexrate do they qualify for sexsubsidies?Report
@stillwater
You have a way of winning friends and influencing people.
Or were you purposefully trying to be nasty?Report
The Arabs coined the word for an equalizing agent here: Al-Cohol. Obviously, don’t use so much of it that consent (or safely driving home!) becomes an impossibility. But it does loosen up inhibitions enough to facilitate interaction when used responsibly.Report
Lee Esq. Probably Michel Houellebecq.Report
@rufus-f, thats the one.
@stillwater, like its that it easy.Report
@burt-likko, I have found that alcohol doesn’t really work that way for me.Report
if sex is some treasure the woman won’t share? Hoarding it all to herself?
Suddenly this sounds like the copyright arguments.Report
Yes. It is obviously a problem that too many men talk about the world in a manner that accurately, if not always precisely, reflects the reality of the world instead of talking about it in a manner that reflects our preferred feminist ideology. Maybe if we get to boys young enough, we can root out all of that toxic masculinity.
I look forward to the day when we all, men and women alike, receive our mandated pixie cuts and androgynous drab coveralls. Ideologically enforced equality is the answer to all of our ills.Report
@stillwater ,
I have to ditto what @saul-degraw said here. That wasn’t a nice comment.Report
@leeesq
Burt Likko: [Alcohol] does loosen up inhibitions enough to facilitate interaction when used responsibly.
LeeEsq: I have found that alcohol doesn’t really work that way for me.
He means that alcohol should be used on your potential partner, not yourself.Report
Lee, Saul, GC,
Yeah, that comment not only sounded like it conveyed some nastiness but it probably did as well. Maybe some of my frustration with cops shooting unarmed black guys carried over to this thread. So sorry for that.
On the upside, I didn’t really mean for the comment to imply a judgment about a person’s sex life as much as a judgment about judging other folk’s sex lives when it’s pretty clear that judgment isn’t informed by any of the behaviors, intentions, logic or analysis upon which that judgment is based. Hence my saying (obliquely) that if a person got laid more they’d realize that the comfortable, academic, a priori, (whatever) view being expressed is nonsense. Same goes for j r’s comment, btw. He expressed his view as an incontrovertible and obvious *fact* but my experience – as well as overall view – is that he’s obviously wrong.Report
There is some truth to the idea that women are the “gatekeepers” has some truth to it, because we’ve set up gender roles that way: men as the pursuers, women as the pursued. That system benefits men for the most part, so men complaining about it as a gendered issue is somewhat comical.
On the other hand, “I’m not succeeding, so it’s women’s fault” is a pretty common and entirely inaccurate view. It’s basically just a way of avoiding self-criticism.Report
This is a pretty good example of the manner in which progressive feminists want to have it both ways. You want to be able to dismiss, as myth, the idea that there are meaningful differences between how men and women tend to view sex, but you want to be able to deploy the myth of the loser who can’t get laid to dismiss someone who disagrees with you.
I get why you do this. It is convenient to be able to jump in and out of traditional conceptions depending on which is the most convenient. I get it, but I don’t buy it. And no one else should buy it either. If I’ve said something incorrect, then make the case based on the accuracy of what I said and not on whether or not it meets up with your ideological priors.
Here is what I am going to do. I am going to make a statement that I believe to be true. I believe it to be accurate. And I believe it to be precise enough as to be meaningful. If you disagree with this statement, tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Here is the statement:
I don’t think that there is a significant level of a priori difference between the male and female sex drives. There are lots of men with low sex drives and lots of women with high sex drives. On average, women tend to want sex about as much as men. The meaningful difference is that women are generally much more selective about with whom they want to have sex. The fact that men tend to be much less selective sets up a situation in which women are the de facto gatekeepers in the sexual marketplace. Even in situations where the man and the women like each other in equal amounts, its more likely that the man is pushing for sex sooner and the woman waiting to see what the man’s true intentions are.Report
Yes. It is obviously a problem that too many men talk about the world in a manner that accurately, if not always precisely, reflects the reality of the world instead of talking about it in a manner that reflects our preferred feminist ideology. Maybe if we get to boys young enough, we can root out all of that toxic masculinity.
WTF? Did you take a blow to the head?Report
@j-r I think you might be talking past feminists here.
Dropping the whole political tribe moniker, I don’t know of any women who would disagree with what you’re saying. (In fact, the only people I can think of that I know that would disagree would be men, because for whatever reason even though it’s 2014 a lot of men still seem to cling to the idea that women don’t like sex that much.) Where they will disagree with you (or maybe not you, but many people who make this particular argument), rather, is the notion that therefore women have all the power — both in male-female relationships, and in the general social hierarchy.
In other words, the historical problem with the observation you made isn’t that it isn’t true, it’s that it is then used as a “logical” reason not to take women seriously with any legitimate grievance they might have, up to and including physical abuse and glass ceilings.
I say this not because I think you’re making that argument (I know you better than that), but because I’m not sure when I read these threads the degree to which you are aware that this is the particular stream in which you’re paddling agains the tide.Report
I’m sorry. Does @mike-schilling have this site’s only sarcasm license?
Of course it is. And if individual women want to have it both ways (keeping some of the benefits of traditional gender roles, while breaking free from the unfair constraints), I wish them the best of luck and will even support them on occasion. However, when you take that from the individual level and turn it into a systematic ideology, I am going to push back against that ideology.
That sounds like a pretty good reason to start from a position based firmly in reality, not in ideology. It’s like anti-drug efforts that tell kids that all drugs are equally as bad and that if you take a puff of a joint, you might as well me mainlining smack. That approach works a little bit in scaring kids away from drugs, but sooner or later they are going to learn that not all drugs are the same and they are going disregard all the sensible advice mixed in with the scare tactics.
All I have said repeatedly on this issue is that if you want to get to a point where sexual relationships between men and women (or between men and men and women and women) are characterized by better communication and clearly affirmative signals of consent (which I would like as well), then you have to start from a place of accurately understanding the sexual marketplace. Otherwise, you make the same mistake as those anti-drug messages.
And I definitely realize that I am swimming against the tide. What fun would it be to do it any other way?Report
jr,
respectfully, I don’t think you’ve considered what actually goes on at bars very much. There are an awful lot of women who aren’t very selective about “one night stands”. Most of them tend to look somewhat undesirable (what’s the term? “whales”?), or be otherwise not on the “long term dating” market (might have a husband).
If there wasn’t an appreciable chance that a guy could get laid, he wouldn’t go to “looker” bars.Report
Does@mike-schillinghave this site’s only sarcasm license?
No, but so far he’s the only one who’s been able to afford the fee.Report
I’m sorry. Does@mike-schilling have this site’s only sarcasm license?
You do have to pass the written test.Report
Oo, a SARcasm license. That’s REAL useful.Report
This is going to get a tad autobiographical but I date a lot, its just that I seem to have a big problem in getting past the first date. I have no idea how this is. Most of my dates aren’t what I’d consider bad ones. Many times the woman does seem to be having a good time. They just conclude that we wouldn’t make a good couple sometime between the end of the date and when I try to get the second date. Most people who know me, men and women, do like me and consider me to be an intelligent, good-natured, humurous fellow. Its just that I can’t seem to generate the chemistry that many people consider very important for a second date. I have no idea how women see me but it doesn’t seem to be as prospective romantic partner or one-night stand but at the same time its not as a creep or “nice guy.”Report
Lee,
“I have no idea how women see me”
… you might try asking.Report
WTF? Did you take a blow to the head?
Come to think of it, had trauma really would explain most of the tenets of left-wing feminism.Report
Damn it, Swype, why do you always have to go for the ironic typos?Report
Kim, I believe that is considered “nice guy” (TM) behavior and even if it wasn’t, asking a person who romantically rejected you is not something that polite people are supposed to do. Rejection is supposed to be accepted with grace.Report
I think that affirmative consent as a ethical principle is a very good one. As a legal principle, it sucks it. I quote an argument made by a friend of mine (who is a lawyer):
Report
I would really urge everyone to listen to/watch the latest Joe Rogan podcast (language NSFW) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjMX4_4faX4
At the 20 minute mark they begin discussing campus rape and I found myself nodding my head almost the entire time. A big part of the discussion is that how laws like the ones that Saul linked to are actually anti-feminist and enshrine them as likely victims.Report
Tod, I think you are not choosing the best link for OSU’s student conduct policy. Here is the PDF version: http://studentaffairs.osu.edu/csc/
If you go by the link you provide, I could actually get Limbaugh’s point because the part you characterize as “advice” and has the verbiage they object to comes on a page immediately after the page you link to. It wouldn’t be clear to me as a student whether to consider this advice a binding part of the code or not. It’s when you pull up the PDF that you see no sign of this “effective consent” stuff.
Also, just FYI, OSU is in the process of changing its code of conduct.Report
Next thing you know, they’ll be saying the school is calling for
deathsex panels.ReportAs long as the panels are washed regularly, I guess.Report
Sex panels actually are a way many colleges have dealt with sexual assault to date. Panels with students, faculty, and a variety of other non-experts and people without other experience in adjudicating sexual assault cases. That’s one of the problems recent reform efforts have focused most closely on.
http://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/latest-headlines/how-many-colleges-mishandle-sexual-assault-cases_and-what-to-do-about-itReport
OSU is asking its students, when interacting with POTASes, to be civil. You know that’s the first step towards fascism.Report
I’m not familiar with that acronym.Report
people of the appealing sex?Report
“appropriate”. Though Google doesn’t find it either, so I must be misremembering.Report
People of the apposite sex, no?Report
Or “adjacent” (in the ideal case, anyway.)Report
DAT POTASReport
We could go on discussing apposite and adjacent, but that would be a tangent.Report
@j-r
Re: Wanting it both ways.
I think it is the human condition to want it both ways. It is much easier to see how others want it both ways instead of how you want it both ways though and this is true of all people, myself included.Report
You can’t always get what you want; but if you try sometimes (and you’re real lucky), you just might find, you can get it three ways.Report
You will be hearing from Mick Jagger’s lawyers in 5, 4, 3, 2…..Report
I think Mick actually achieved the mythical 9-way. It’s why he looks so old.Report
I thought that Mick Jagger was just undead since the 1960s.Report
Only for tax purposes.Report
But Jagger has a picture in his attic where he looks 22. (That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to the details.)Report
The Picture of D’oh!rian GrayReport
Mike, Mick probably looked undead at twenty-two.
One of my favorite rock anecdotes involves Pete Townsend wondering why women liked the Rolling Stones better than the Who.Report
Many people want to have their cake and eat it to but when it comes to romance, there seems to be a plurality of women that want all the best of traditional manhood with none of the bad parts they hate while not having to give anything that women were expected to bring to the table before feminism.
http://groupthink.jezebel.com/traditional-masculinity-and-sexual-preferences-1614373452Report