December 17, 2014

How do lawprofs know when they are caving to the feminist activists?

Harvard lawprof Jeannie Suk has an article in The New Yorker called "The Trouble with Teaching Rape." This struck me especially hard because the other day, when I was cleaning out my office, I encountered a folder of notes written 24 years ago, when I taught a law school seminar on rape. ("You're teaching a whole seminar on rape?" That's the first line of the notes.) I'd just read these notes last night — after not looking at them for more than 20 years — so it was interesting to see how different everything was back then and whether my attitude had changed.

I was teaching a seminar on rape because I was immersed in a writing project that had grown out of my experience teaching Evidence. All the evidence casebooks have a section on the "rape shield rule," which limits inquiry into the alleged victim's "other sexual behavior." (This project became "The Lying Woman, The Devious Prostitute, and Other Stories from the Evidence Casebook,” 88 Northwestern Law Review 914 (1994).") If you taught Evidence, you'd have to go out of your way to avoid rape, and the books — highlighting the threat to the criminal defendant's rights — presented the women as liars. 

Professor Suk teaches Criminal Law (not Evidence), so the subject is less about who's telling the truth and more about the act and the state of mind that constitute a crime.  She reports that the teaching "environment" has changed in "the past couple of years" and students "seem more anxious... about approaching the law of sexual violence."
When I teach rape law... I focus on cases that test the limits of the rules.... We ask questions like: How should consent or non-consent be communicated? Should it matter whether the accused realized that the complainant felt coerced? What information about the accused and the complainant is relevant to whether or not they should be believed? How does social inequality inform how we evaluate whether a particular incident was a crime? I often assign students roles in which they have to argue a side—defense or prosecution—with which they might disagree.

These pedagogical tactics are common to almost every law-school topic and classroom. But asking students to challenge each other in discussions of rape law has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject. 
Suk doesn't say whether she's had difficulty. She shifts from describing what sounds like her own stellar teaching to references to generic teachers who somehow just can't hack it anymore. Exactly what is happening in those classes? I'd like to hear something specific. Maybe those professors who are giving up never did a very good job with the topic, the students are speaking up about the professors' fumbling, and those professors jumping at the chance to skip the topic altogether.

When I went to law school, more than 30 years ago, the substantive criminal law class didn't focus on any particular crimes. We spent the whole semester on actus reus, mens rea, and a few defenses (like impossibility). There was a section of the book on particular crimes, and we might have dipped into murder and theft, but that was the kind of material you could learn quickly in your bar review course. It wasn't the meat of criminal law. I think if you go back and figure out the history, rape got into the criminal law course because law professors caved to the political argument that not to teach it was to say that it's not important.

That was never true, and if the activists demand that rape be taken out and the professors cave, they are, ironically, paradoxically, uncaving.

58 comments:

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

The area of 'rape', is always going to have this problem:

Beneath the city two hearts beat,
Soul engines running through a night so tender.
In a bedroom locked . . . in whispers of soft . . . refusal . . . and then . . . surrender.


Rape, or sensual as hell?

Brando said...

Caving or uncaving, if professors or the institutions themselves are letting pressure from the students close off areas of learning and free discussion, then they're failing at their job to educate and make the universities havens of open thinking. Perhaps it has always been this way to some extent, but things seem to be getting much worse lately. From "trigger warnings" to campus speech codes to banning controversial speakers to the latest special snowflakes deciding they're too traumatized by news events to take their exams, higher education is being allowed to turn into a complete joke and a sick waste of money.

What is a young, ambitious kid to do after graduating high school?

Virgil Hilts said...

Susan Estrich taught a popular class at HLS on sex discrimination (100+ students -- Susan was great!) and it included a segment on criminal prosecutions of rape. After Susan discussed a really difficult case where the victim had not done anything to resist the defendant, one of the more ignorant radicals in my class stood up and tore into Estrich saying something to the effect that unless someone had been a victim of rape they had absolutely no business questioning the actions/inactions of a rape victim. The next 30 seconds of awkward gasp-filled silence was the best moment of my law school career.

Virgil Hilts said...

The case was State v. Rusk. http://www.princeton.edu/~ereading/Mdv.Rusk.pdf

Jon Burack said...

"If the professors cave"

This is the saddest part of the issue here. All the young cannibals dancing around the pot could perhaps be excused for their ignorance and intolerance. What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?

MayBee said...

Maybe those professors who are giving up never did a very good job with the topic, the students are speaking up about their fumbling, and they are jumping at the chance to skip the topic altogether.


Maybe. But my guess, based on the current White House pressure to actually change the law in California, is some people are shouting that anything less than affirmative consent is rape, and they won't listen to any other argument. Perhaps even accusing other people of "victim shaming".

That's what we are seeing play out across the country. Even in the UVA case, people asking questions about the reporting were shouted down. Anti-rape activists (are there pro-rape activists?) said they don't question the assumed victim.

So why try to imagine there is something else going on?

Brando said...

"This is the saddest part of the issue here. All the young cannibals dancing around the pot could perhaps be excused for their ignorance and intolerance. What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?"

That's exactly the problem. I can't blame a toddler for demanding to eat nothing but M&Ms all day, every day, and no other food. But for a parent to cater to that demand is inexcusable.

The minute a student says "we can't discuss that topic because it upsets me" the school should simply explain that they have every right to drop out and attend another college that may be more to their liking. The minute a campus group tries to ban a speaker because they don't like what they assume the speaker will say, the school should say they have every right to not attend, or attend and not listen, but the speech will go on if it serves the school's educational functions. If a student says they're too traumatized to take a test because of something that happened to someone else in the news, the school should let them know that news happens all the time, and if they choose to skip the test and get a zero, that's their right as well, but no special accommodations will be made.

Do we want to produce fragile snowflakes, or intelligent, learned graduates? That needs to be the overriding decision here.

Michael K said...

"What is a young, ambitious kid to do after graduating high school?"

There is something to be said for a term in the military. I fear even that is eroding as a truth zone. The Navy just relieved an outstanding black captain for reminding female sailors about the effects of pregnancy on readiness.

Capt. Wayne Brown was relieved as commander of the San Diego-based amphibious assault ship Boxer after an investigation concluded that he had "lost the respect, trust and confidence of his subordinates" because of his temper and his behavior toward female crew members, according to the investigative report. His behavior included touching and asking crew members whether they were using birth control with their husbands or boyfriends.

In Gulf War I, the first in which female crew were allowed on warships, 25% of deployed female crew became pregnant and had to be discharged.

And the career of an outstanding female general ended after she over ruled a court martial in a sexual harassment case .

The officer was still forced to resign but she felt the punishment if dishonorable discharge was too harsh because the two witnesses to the alleged sexual assault, one of them female, disagreed with the complaining women that she had been assaulted. Both witnesses in the car said it was consensual.

General Helms was a female astronaut and retired after Obama withdrew her nomination.

Truth is no longer a defense in this society.

Michael K said...

The "complaining woman..."

Damn autocorrect.

sojerofgod said...

(Now placing my Grumpy Old Man Hat on my head)

First last and only thought:
What the hell is wrong with these people? All we seem to hear now is how their sensitivities are crushed by having to discuss rape? So these shy shrinking violets of feminism can's stand to even talk about unhappy subjects, while in the real world peoples cheerfully shred each other over land, money, or beliefs. Why does anyone take these people seriously? Why are they in college? Obviously they do not have minds capable of strenuous thought. They need to be out on a factory floor somewhere, or operating a waffle press and an Eggo factory.*


* That's not to belittle honest working people, of whom I have been one most of my life. These Radfems would likely fail at those jobs too.
(Hat now placed back on shelf)

Ann Althouse said...

"Susan Estrich taught a popular class at HLS on sex discrimination (100+ students -- Susan was great!) and it included a segment on criminal prosecutions of rape. After Susan discussed a really difficult case where the victim had not done anything to resist the defendant, one of the more ignorant radicals in my class stood up and tore into Estrich saying something to the effect that unless someone had been a victim of rape they had absolutely no business questioning the actions/inactions of a rape victim. The next 30 seconds of awkward gasp-filled silence was the best moment of my law school career."

I find it hard to believe that any of her students would be unfamiliar with her book "Real Rape"... or was this before that came out?

Brando said...

"So these shy shrinking violets of feminism can's stand to even talk about unhappy subjects, while in the real world peoples cheerfully shred each other over land, money, or beliefs."

I refuse to even call them "feminists" anymore without quotes. This is a strain of know-nothing, hate-filled, ignorant SJW lunatics with illiberal beliefs that fit in better in a Leninist or Fascist society than a free country. It is certainly NOT promoting sexual equality or female advancement to cater to the shrinking violets who can't stand open discussions without hitting the fainting couch.

Brando said...

"I find it hard to believe that any of her students would be unfamiliar with her book "Real Rape"... or was this before that came out?"

You may be assuming too much in terms of what students like that would be aware.

traditionalguy said...

Rape was once a crime of violence and treated akin to murder as a capital crime for which no bail was given.

But the use of that severe penalty for constructive crimes started being too easy . It started as a convenient charge for the consensual sex between teens where one was a year or two older than the other and the girls parents wanted their daughter to change boyfriends. It was a capital felony turned into a convenient misdemeanor.

But why stop there? Once a war of men seeking to have sex women was a political motive, then use the capital felony everytime. Again it was not the old crime of violence. It was at best a misdemeanor relabled rape to construct a useful attack tool within criminal law.

Brando said...

"There is something to be said for a term in the military. I fear even that is eroding as a truth zone."

The military I imagine can be just as subject to political whims and of course as that organization isn't even supposed to be a "free thinking" zone, I imagine this could be far worse. Though military training would be valuable for gaining a lot of skills and discipline to use in the rest of society.

As our universities start to collapse under their own rot due to financial bloat, catering to political pressure, and general mismanagement, we may see a rebirth of new institutions dedicated to actual learning and free thought, which could provide the necessary training for ambitious students down the road. Nature abhors a vacuum!

Saint Croix said...

Part of it is that rape was always a violent crime. It didn't affect our sex lives. Rape was like murder, a serious crime of violence. And we had no problem distinguishing sex from rape.

Now feminism is trying to teach us that many forms of sex should be defined as rape. Of course that's upsetting! You're going to upset men and women.

There was a woman in Professor Sommers' wonderful book who was taking a feminist seminar about rape. And it was screwing up her sex life. She kept imagining that her boyfriend was raping her. And she felt the need to deprogram herself from the feminist brainwashing.

And the way she did that was by going retro, acting like a homemaker, baking brownies for the feminist rape seminar.

Rape is an upsetting subject anyway. But it can be particularly upsetting when feminists are perceived to be attacking our sex lives. For instance, when Catharine MacKinnon says that women cannot consent, because of patriarchy, she's defining all heterosexual women as rape victims, and all heterosexual men as rapists. (I might be misstating MacKinnon's argument because, as you might imagine, I do not like reading her).

I'm not sure how defining all heterosexual sex as statutory rape helps women. In effect you're defining adult women as children, unable to consent. But MacKinnon's extremism is just illustrating the problem of removing force and violence from our notions of rape.

Shanna said...

What the hell is wrong with these people?

I think that at least three times a day reading the internet, but people in real life don't seem so crazy so maybe it's just we are exposed to them more.

Virgil Hilts said...

Ann wrote "I find it hard to believe that any of her students would be unfamiliar with her book "Real Rape"... or was this before that came out?"

It was just before the book, but after her precursor Yale Law Review article which was quite famous (probably more than half the class had read it). Even if you had not, everyone knew about it. It would be like a student in one of your classes not knowing about your blog. Thus, the gasps and excitement while Susan formulated how best to respond.

chickelit said...

Susan Estrich taught a popular class at HLS on sex discrimination (100+ students -- Susan was great!) and it included a segment on criminal prosecutions of rape. After Susan discussed a really difficult case where the victim had not done anything to resist the defendant, one of the more ignorant radicals in my class stood up and tore into Estrich saying something to the effect that unless someone had been a victim of rape they had absolutely no business questioning the actions/inactions of a rape victim. The next 30 seconds of awkward gasp-filled silence was the best moment of my law school career.

Harvard Law, eh? That incident sounds like something out "The Paper Chase."

I'm glad that in retrospect we can understand the generic shallowness of such thinking. Suppose someone had stood up and insisted that nobody had any business speaking about any crime unless they had been specifically targeted themselves.

Shanna said...

And we had no problem distinguishing sex from rape.

Indeed. And that is how it still is, for the most part in real life. It's just all these crazy people trying to change definitions.

This "I didn't feel like getting out of bed or forcefully saying no, not just no but hell no, thus it was rape' stuff is nuts.

MisterBuddwing said...

Thus, the gasps and excitement while Susan formulated how best to respond.

And... ?

buster said...

I presume that most of the students at Harvard Law School aspire to be practicing lawyers. It's impossible to practice law without sometimes having to put up with genuinely offensive conduct directed at the lawyer himself, let alone his client and others involved in a case. It's also impossible to avoid learning some rather unpleasant facts about others, including the client.

What I like about good lawyers is that they are worldly. They know a lot about life and can deal with it competently. Maybe law schools should teach their students about how to be a lawyer in addition to the substance of the law.

Bryan C said...

"What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?"

They've invested heavily in shame-as-empowerment, and have decided that they really don't deserve to live. And, so it follows, neither do the rest of us.

damikesc said...

What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?

...because most of them got their position because the former leadership caving?

And why aren't feminists more upset that feminists make women seem like pathetic little children who cannot handle any open discussion?

Virgil Hilts said...

Susan's response was very nice. She gently explained that as most of the people in the class probably knew, she had been a victim, and she then went on to explain what had happened to her (which everyone else in the class already knew). People forget how much Susan's article and book helped undo rape victim stigmatization.

DanTheMan said...

>>saying something to the effect that unless someone had been a victim of rape they had absolutely no business questioning the actions/inactions of a rape victim

Quite right. And, unless you've been murdered, you have no business questioning the actions of murder victims.

Larry J said...

Michael K said...
"What is a young, ambitious kid to do after graduating high school?"

There is something to be said for a term in the military. I fear even that is eroding as a truth zone.


I spent 13 years on active duty (Army and Air Force). One of my brothers is retired Navy. My oldest son served a hitch in the Army and the younger one is career Navy. Overall, the military has been good for my family. However, given what's happening in the military today, there's no way I'd advise any of my grandchildren to serve in the military. Nor, for that matter, will I encourage my grandsons to attend college. They have too much to lose given the rampant insanity happening today.

Saint Croix said...

Neither pro-lifers nor feminists would appreciate the comparison, but I think we have a lot in common. We're both willing to upset people's sex lives. Pro-lifers are asking, is there love? Will you love the baby you might be making? Feminists ask, is there consent? Does she want to have sex with you?

So both groups can be highly annoying, particularly to men who need to focus. Get that crap out of my mind, I want to explore the vulva.

(Man I hate that word. Rhymes with Mulva).

What pro-lifers and feminists both need to worry about are false accusations. You want to be careful accusing people of a violent crime like homicide, or rape. You want to be right.

Michael K said...

"I'm not sure how defining all heterosexual sex as statutory rape helps women."

It increases the availability of women by 50% for lesbians. That's how. Maybe 98%.

My daughter, while a student at UCLA ten years ago, decided to look into a sport for exercise. She had taught martial arts and was, and is, in great condition. She contacted a women's rugby group and went to a practice. She quickly realized that they were all lesbians and left. She had trouble with stalkers and annoying calls the rest of the school year. They would not leave her alone.

Had it been men, it would have been sexual harassment.

chickelit said...

That was never true, and if the activists demand that rape be taken out and the professors cave, they are, ironically, paradoxically, uncaving.

How convexing!

sean said...

My law school experience was the same as Prof. Althouse's: very little time spent on specific crimes (maybe a two weeks on varieties of homicide). But our crim law exam featured specific fact patterns. I don't remember if any of them involved rape, but I have seen exams with such hypotheticals.

Assuming a course like the one Prof. Althouse and I took, and further assuming that most professors don't like unpleasantness or hostility--they would have gone into private practice if they did--I think it would be unwise for a professor to use rape hypotheticals on the exam. They can be changed to something else, e.g., instead of having sex with a woman whom he thought had consented, the defendant can take property that he thought was his.

Laslo Spatula said...

Any comments on 'Professor Suk's name would be riffing, obviously. Will not do it.

I am Laslo.

Beldar said...

As a teaching tool for young lawyers, historical or hypothetical rape cases are also extremely useful in trial advocacy courses. Testimony about sex, from almost any source and in almost any context, is among the most sensitive for an advocate, with the greatest potential for sudden reversals and spectacular miscues. And the legal definition of the crime and resulting elements that go into the court's charge to the jury — and which therefore should form the template in accordance with which both sides' advocates must structure their entire presentations — allow for a wide range of pedagogical manipulation.

holdfast said...

""How do lawprofs know when they are caving to the feminist activists?"

When it's a day ending in "Y".

chillblaine said...

Rape or sexual assault doesn't always leave physical forensic evidence. We must rely on the testimony of the victim. The creation of moral panics and demands for trigger warnings does victims no good. We must demand, always, the truth.

Biff said...

Brando said..."This is the saddest part of the issue here. All the young cannibals dancing around the pot could perhaps be excused for their ignorance and intolerance. What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?"

I know that invoking Ayn Rand is almost like invoking Godwin's Law, but there really were a couple of phenomena that I've seen repeatedly in my career that Ayn Rand really got right. "The sanction of the victims" is one of them.

mccullough said...

I think toward the end of Crim Law we read a case on the original common law crimes like murder, rape, arson, robbery, theft, and battery, as well as a few cases on conspiracy and accomplice liability. I don't remember anything specific about any of those cases.





rhhardin said...

Buckley argued in the late 70s when the question came up whether you could rape your wife, that you couldn't. Rape was a crime against feminine modesty, and that was not a question with your wife. The correct charge, he argued, would be assault and battery.

He lost the argument, so rape became legally penetration without something, and that something began to vary, and then penetration itself became inessential.

Rape became mysterious, one could stupidly say more feminine, and retained its original meaning only to provide a handle for outrage with is supposed to accompany all its evolved namesakes, which the outrage is supposed to accompany with the name.

Being more feminine, it cannot be nailed down or reasoned about. It's just feminine.

You'd have thought feminism would be in favor of abolishing rape in favor of assault and battery, since they abolished feminine modesty, but they need the contradition.

Good luck teaching the new law to women.

FleetUSA said...

I never practiced criminal law but I always considered rape and murder cases to be the most difficult to prosecute or defend without clear evidence. There is so much at risk in both cases to the defendant and the shades of grey can be enormous.

Ann Althouse said...

"Part of it is that rape was always a violent crime. It didn't affect our sex lives. Rape was like murder, a serious crime of violence. And we had no problem distinguishing sex from rape. Now feminism is trying to teach us that many forms of sex should be defined as rape. Of course that's upsetting! You're going to upset men and women."

Remember that Susan Brownmiller's famous book about rape, the most famous book about rape, "Against Our Will," is entirely framed on the idea that rape is not sex, but violence.

I see in my old notes that I used the term, prevalent at the time, "feminisms." There isn't just one thing that is "feminism," and there are different approaches to how to deal with sex. My view has been consistent for at least 20 year, I can see. I think that you don't want the crime too narrowly defined OR too broadly defined. The crime needs to be that which we think people deserve criminal punishment for. But there is much more bad sex than just that, and it is best to use other ways to deal with the part of sex that is bad but not criminal.

Bob Boyd said...

Althouse said..."The crime needs to be that which we think people deserve criminal punishment for. But there is much more bad sex than just that, and it is best to use other ways to deal with the part of sex that is bad but not criminal."

What kinds of things are you thinking of? And what other ways to deal with them? Could you give an example?

Skeptical Voter said...

RE Virgil Hill's comment---there are those crystalline moments in one's time at law school. Yours was a particularly delicious example.

Anonymous said...

I had to read the rantings of Prof. Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin in criminal law class at law school. 20 years time have not allowed the offensive odor of these two transparent misandrists go away. May Prof. Mackinnon rot in hell for the Meritor Savings Bank case notwithstanding her superb skills in convincing the Supreme Court to make the modern American workplace a de facto hostile environment for men. See, e.g,., Dr. Helen Smith, "Men on Strike."

To answer your question, Prof. Althouse, assigning reading from either of the foregoing two miscreants without a disclaimer that their factual assertions and arguments are unrepresentative of actual misogyny (as practiced, e.g., by radical Islamic fundamentalists) is prima facie evidence of caving to feminist activists.

Jupiter said...

Jon Burack said...
"If the professors cave"

"This is the saddest part of the issue here. All the young cannibals dancing around the pot could perhaps be excused for their ignorance and intolerance. What explains the resignation and even acquiescence of those in the pot itself?"

It is not the professors who are in the pot. The professors are being handsomely paid by the cannibals.

mikee said...

I attended a very small, Southern-Baptist affiliated liberal arts college back in the late 1970s.

A Drama prof once explained that he readily signed his contract, which limited his classroom discussions to subjects covered by his realm of study, because everything under the sun and beyond the moon was covered in theater arts.

The Chem and Bio and Physics profs likewise had no problem discussing the universe's origin, evolution, abortion, or any other currently taboo subjects. They all eloquently described in classes how their primary subject enlightened discussion of the controversial issues.

And somehow students survived having their precious beliefs challenged. In fact, they often came away understanding the value of belief systems in a world filled with controversy.

Leftists have a problem with public argument about their beliefs because they cannot support their positions except as a faith, which when practiced results in horror, universally.

etbass said...

Chicklit said:

"I'm glad that in retrospect we can understand the generic shallowness of such thinking. Suppose someone had stood up and insisted that nobody had any business speaking about any crime unless they had been specifically targeted themselves."

Yeah! Unless you are a victim of murder, you can't have an opinion on it!

Saint Croix said...

Remember that Susan Brownmiller's famous book about rape, the most famous book about rape, "Against Our Will," is entirely framed on the idea that rape is not sex, but violence.

Right! I knew it was a feminist insight. I think it's a particularly brilliant feminist insight. And important, as we distinguish sex from rape. We want to punish rapists. And we don't want to screw up our sex lives.

I know that feminists have been doing away with the "force" element of rape, trying to turn the entire crime into an issue of consent. And there's a history there, of women unable to prove rape because they didn't resist hard enough. And so feminists have been striving to remove "force" from the idea of rape altogether.

But when you do that, it's no longer a crime of violence. It's a crime of non-consensual sex. And many of these cases, where people are saying "rape," there's no violence at all. Not even a hint of violence.

From the point of view of men, you're turning rape into a mind game. We have to read the mind of women and get full consent. But we can't read your minds.

Yes means yes. Unless you're drunk, and then we find out that yes doesn't mean yes at all. That yes was actually a no. "I said yes, but now it's a no." And of course that's an insane thing to do to an innocent man.

There is also this history of feminists not caring about men or innocent men. The feminist's sole reason for existence is to fight for women. This idea that we might be punishing innocent men, or stressing out innocent men, many feminists are like, good!

But it's not good. Innocence is important and should be recognized.

Saint Croix said...

My view has been consistent for at least 20 year, I can see. I think that you don't want the crime too narrowly defined OR too broadly defined. The crime needs to be that which we think people deserve criminal punishment for. But there is much more bad sex than just that, and it is best to use other ways to deal with the part of sex that is bad but not criminal.

I would love to read your old law review article! Could you send me a pdf?

oystermanproductions@gmail.com

Jupiter said...

Here is Susan Estrich's impassioned defense of Crystal Gail Mangum, the woman who falsely accused the Duke Lacrosse Team od raping her;

http://tinyurl.com/pj78s2d

This dizzy sow teaches law?

Saint Croix said...

Here is Susan Estrich's impassioned defense of Crystal Gail Mangum

That was early in the case. Later on she would write, the woman is a liar

Saint Croix said...

Camille Paglia, for instance, charges that MacKinnon and her late collaborator Andrea Dworkin are responsible for "totalitarian excesses" in sexual harassment regulations and that their "nightmarish sexual delusions" have invaded American workplaces and schools and warped their views on pornography. Naomi Wolf branded her a "victim feminist". "Victim feminism," claims Wolf, "urges women to identify with powerlessness, even at the expense of taking responsibility for the power they do possess." In The Morning After, Katie Roiphe wrote that MacKinnon had an "image of woman as child" and attacked her for allegedly portraying all women as potential victims and all men as potential predators. Others have called her a fascist proponent of sexual correctness. Some have put words in her mouth - notably the claim that she thinks all heterosexual intercourse is rape: she does not. Some think she is right and that until sex inequality is tackled legally as MacKinnon proposes, women will continue to be raped, murdered and served up as masturbation fantasies for men. I couldn't wait to meet her.

Beta Man Interviews Catharine MacKinnon. Try not to swoon, boy. Yikes.

Saint Croix said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Saint Croix said...

I might be using the word "beta" wrong.

It's just weird how he sees himself as Jimmy Stewart and sees her as Kim Novak. She's accusing you of rape, dummy. How could you possibly feel romantic about that?

Douglas B. Levene said...

When I took criminal law with Jerry Israel at Michigan in 1978, he covered the law of rape. I specifically remember him asking a female student a question about whether it would be hard to stick a pencil into a spinning coke bottle. Jerry was a great professor, but the young criminal law profs today are horrified at this story, shocked that a professor might actually attempt to push a student to the edge of discomfort.

jimbino said...

The professors do not "cave" to the feminist activists. They "cave in." It is the spelunker types who "cave." Likewise, an angry person is not "pissed," but "pissed off" unless drunk.

English isn't used much on blogs anymore.

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

Biff said...
I know that invoking Ayn Rand is almost like invoking Godwin's Law, . . .


Not at all! It just means that something really insightful, and true, is about to be written.

Invoke away.

RecChief said...

say how about some instruction about what happens when you slander someone with a fake rape story in a book?

Or how about the finer points of law related to a magazine story where the central figure made up a boyfriend and used a website to fake text messages from said fake boyfriend?

I guess the law isn't very interesting compared to violet candy, huh?

I thought this was a law blog.

Real American said...

it's probably more that the activists want the law profs to teach that an accusation of rape is an unrebuttable presumption of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because women never lie about rape.