Liberals Behaving Badly

Who should have the right to define rape: survivors who have experienced sexual violence or those who are accused of perpetrating it?


One of the true talents of the radical right, which is to say the Republic-con party, is to find issues which draw out the most damaging and absurd statements from liberals and that makes progressives/liberals look bad--not just on a single front but on all fronts.

Betsy Devos has found one such area in the issue of "campus rape." 
The opinion piece in the NYT today about "Who gets to define rape" is a case in point.


Over the past 20 or 30 years ardent, self righteous people on mostly liberal campuses across the land have twisted the idea of rape into a shape so misshapen as to be almost unrecognizable. 

A  NYT article by Nicol Bedera and Miriam Gleckman-Krut, who are "campus sexual violence researchers" pursuing PhD's in sociology at the University of Michigan, begins with the sentence noted above, which is a rhetorical question, containing in it the answer they believe is obvious. The article was a response to  Ms. Devos's attempt to change the Obama policies on campus rape. As one letter writer noted, a girl who has had sex with her roommate's boyfriend and wakes up the next morning, hung over and regretful, has not been raped.


Nor has the girl who got drunk and walked back to an equally inebriated boy's room and had sex and wakes up the next morning and feels badly about that.


Rape is a violent crime which involves forcible sex against the expressed will of the woman. This should precipitate a criminal investigation with the presumption of innocence protecting the accused, including his identity until the appropriate time.


The argument of Ms. Bedera and Ms. Gleckman Krut is that the protections of the defendant are too high a hurdle and men should be punished for their depredations and the star chambers established by colleges allow this punishment on the least evidence and with the least protection for the accused, which is only right, if what we are most worried about is the feelings and the experience of the complainant.

the flag the Right captured

Harvard, and most egregiously Brown, have set up committees which well deserve the description of "star chambers" to meet in secret and determine the fate of accused without any of the rules which protect the accused in ordinary criminal proceedings.


There is no justification for this other than the emotional nature of the crime and there is quite a lot of "politics" by which I mean the individual act, which is always defined by particulars of person, place, time, personality are stuffed into a more general anger over women being forced into unpleasant and even horrific acts against their will and then "the system" making them a victim the second time.


The British series "Broadchurch" has depicted the difficulties of pursuing a case of a rape in great detail and as is true of most human experience, there are areas of doubt but evidence can be collected by well trained people which sometimes corroborates and sometimes refutes accusations.

One wonders about Ms. Bedera and Ms. Gleckman Krut.  They are professional advocates, I presume, as "campus sexual violence researchers" which means their bread is buttered by the creation of a need for their services. It is always difficult to get a man or woman to listen to reason if his/her salary depends on not listening to reason. Without knowing anything more about them, I suspect from these shreds of description, they are exactly the sort of liberals who give liberalism a bad name.

Unfortunately, the Right is right on this issue more than it is wrong and the left isn't even close to right.



There are other wedge issues out there:  Transgender rights, which the left too often has conflated with "homosexual" rights.  The right to free speech when that speech is offensive. 


As rabid Democrats, we ought to be very wary of getting drawn into traps.
They can make us look bad.