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Reality Check: Adolescent Males
When the Kavanaugh story broke I made the comment that, whether or not the account is believable, it isn’t a sufficiently big deal to warrant preventing his confirmation. Since then I’ve read and heard several comments, including in conservative media, to the effect that these are “serious allegations” that, if true, would certainly disqualify Kavanaugh.
I disagree. I think we are witnessing a preening, unrealistic outrage rooted in a fantasy of how humans are supposed to behave. Life isn’t a fairy tale, never less so than when it involves intoxicated, scantily clad teens cavorting without adult supervision.
Since the sexual revolution, the process of seduction has grown ever more perfunctory and abbreviated. Young men are, at their best, clumsy, sex-obsessed creatures. Add alcohol and they become even less gracious, if that’s possible: the lines between flirtatious, boorish, and aggressively physical become increasingly blurred.
I’m not saying that what is alleged to have occurred is a good or appropriate thing. I have a daughter of my own, after all. I’m merely saying that it is to be expected: there is nothing good and appropriate about a bunch of kids being left alone to drink and carry on, and the consequences of allowing that kind of situation are going to tend to be bad regardless of the character of the kids involved. Kids lack judgment. They’re also wired differently from adults, with brains that are far more sensitive to pleasure and dismissive of risk: of course they’re going to make poor choices and misbehave, if given the opportunity.
That’s why we try not to give them the opportunity. That’s why we have always cautioned young women to be careful where they find themselves, and why we should continue to caution them. That’s why fathers are suspicious of their daughters’ boyfriends, and boyfriends are wary of their girlfriends’ fathers. That’s why sensible parents try to prevent their children from having unsupervised drinking parties.
Anyone who thinks that the behavior Mrs. Ford describes – of an intoxicated teenage male at an unsupervised party featuring intoxicated teenage females – is indicative of something unusual, unexpected, or alarming has an unrealistic view of young men, and probably of a lot of other things as well.
Published in Culture
Defend it? I don’t know. But certainly people do it. And that’s not really surprising, that people who feel guilt or hurt in the cool light of day might decide that they’d rather think of themselves as victims than as people who made a foolish choice.
You need to read the story of Mattress Girl … Emma Sulkowicz.
Right. My point (and perhaps I’m splitting hairs here) is that I think most progressives would agree that as long as a woman consents at the time, of course she can’t retroactively change her mind.
However, if she later claims she didn’t consent at the time, we should believe her. Therefore in practice yes, she can later withdraw her consent, unless the man had the foresight to obtain a signed and witnessed consent form in advance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/20/feminists-want-us-to-define-these-ugly-sexual-encounters-as-rape-dont-let-them/?utm_term=.1e6b44b259bf
http://www.everyjoe.com/2016/01/14/lifestyle/sexual-consent-yes-means-yes-until-she-regrets-it/#1
The second article has some specific cases.
Could you be more specific? She alleges he:
If her account is true that describes acts she clearly did not consent to at the time. Where is the retroactive element?
Heh. You are probably right — and in any case I won’t hazard to guess what goes on in the progressive mind when it comes to sex.
If the goal is to rob sex of its attendant mystery and passion, and to render it — for normal people — physiologically impossible from a sustained male commitment standpoint (was that sufficiently oblique?), then I think the signed/witnessed thing is probably the way to go. Make him read the fine print and initial a few boxes as well, and we can dispense with more conventional birth control entirely.
If you think about it though, isn’t that essentially what a marriage license is?
Her current account of that event cannot be true, based upon her documented very friendly interactions with the accused for months(!) following the alleged August 27, 2012 encounter. She did not file the assault claim until April, 2013.
To be clear, I’m asking for quotes from progressives defending the right of a woman to retroactively revoke her consent.
The she is lying.
I’m trying to separate two concepts:
My claim is that anyone defending her would dispute #2 and insist her account of events is true, regardless of the evidence to the contrary.
As a contented and committed bachelor, I’ll refrain from commenting.
Also, I’m not sure that’s true as a general rule. We know for example that women (and men for that matter) will sometimes stay in a relationship with an abusive partner for months, even years.
Suppose a couple, we’ll call them Ann and Barney, get in a fight and Barney physically assaults her. The next day they make up, and she decides to continue the relationship. A year later they break up, and then in a fit of anger she reports the assault to the police. Would you dismiss her claim of assault as patently false b/c she continued to have “very friendly interactions” with him for months afterwards?
And then get slapped with a sexual assault charge if she didn’t appreciate the advance.
This is what I always did, and never spent a day in jail. But then, I’m lovable.
In a sinister sort of way.
Presumably it all depends on the appropriateness to the stage of the relationship. If you walk up to a co-worker in the office and kiss her, you may well get charged with sexual harassment if she didn’t appreciate the advance. If you ask her out on a date, and she accepts, and you take her out to dinner, walk her home, and then try to kiss her, I don’t think a jury in the land would convict you of a crime, even if she has decided by that point she’s just not that into you. A kiss attempt is appropriate in that context. If instead you shove her against the wall and start groping her, well, you’re squarely back into sexual assault territory if she doesn’t appreciate it.
It really doesn’t seem all that ambiguous or complicated.
I think the complications arise most conspicuously in the college environment, where we have a bizarre combination of libertine hook-up culture and feminist victim hypersensitivity. In the real world, I think we mostly have it figured out.
There are many things I have thought weren’t ambiguous or complicated. And according to a lot of reporting and talk nowadays, I’m apparently wrong.