The boys referred me to an article reviewing US academic Stephen Baskerville’s book, The New Politics of Sex, (Angelico Press, 2017) by F. Roger Devlin, “The Criminalization of masculinity.” This is a good over view of the standard evils that feminism has delivered, and how the sexual revolution has harmed men, and led to the degradation of sex. But what caught my eye was the move by feminists to make heterosexual relations sex into rape, something the radical feminists in the 1970s only dreamt of. Here is what is happening on US university campuses:
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/11/07/the-criminalization-of-masculinity/
“For decades, feminists have assiduously promoted the lie that one woman in four (sometimes five) is raped while attending university. “Reputable scholars who investigate [such] claims,” writes Baskerville, “readily conclude that it is not simply exaggerated but a hoax.” At most, a lot of women, unprotected by traditional behavioral expectations, are learning the hard way that fornication is not the path to happiness. When such cases were brought before ordinary courts of law, they quickly got thrown out. So universities began, under feminist pressure, to establish internal procedures to handle accusations of sexual misconduct. These do not have to abide by the principles that govern ordinary courts of law, notably the presumption of innocence. One attorney cited by Baskerville describes the result as a disciplinary procedure where students nearly always lack lawyers, no legally trained judge oversees the process, testimony is not under oath, hearsay is freely considered, relevant evidence or even proper notice of the charges may not be given to both parties, students may be forced to incriminate themselves, and whatever “jury” is empaneled may not be of one’s peers.
Such travesties of judicial procedure are now legally mandated at all colleges which receive federal funding, i.e., at nearly all of them. During the Obama presidency, Assistant Secretary of Education for civil rights Russlynn Ali even issued a directive to university officials demanding that campus tribunals adopt a lower standard of proof for cases of sexual misconduct than required by ordinary courts of law. This directive, by the way, included no period for public notice, comment, and possible amendment, as legally required for federal regulations: “it was simply an arbitrary order issued from the pen of a functionary.”
Since rape (as traditionally understood) is such a serious crime, convictions have always required proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Now campus kangaroo courts are convicting men on the basis of a preponderance of evidence standard, the lowest standard recognized by law. As Baskerville points out, the only possible explanation for this change is that the authorities want not to punish more actual rapists, but to secure more guilty verdicts against men. Why would an Assistant Secretary of Education for civil rights be pronouncing on how criminal cases are adjudged? Because American courts have ruled that rape and sexual assault are forms of discrimination. Such is the hold of liberal ideology over the legal minds of America that judges are apparently no longer able to imagine any other form of wrongdoing. So officially, rape is now wrong because it “discriminates against” women. Some think the present system does not go far enough. Colorado Congressman Jared Polis advocates expelling all male students accused of sexual assault: “If there’s ten people who have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all ten people.”
Indeed, feminist law professor Catherine MacKinnon does not think consent is a meaningful concept, and “has repeatedly suggested that virtually all heterosexual intercourse amounts to rape.” She is not a fringe figure; for many years, she was the single most cited feminist “scholar” in the world, and has repeatedly been called upon to advise the governments of individual states and Canadian provinces. Susan Brownmiller, author of the standard feminist text on rape, called rape “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” On this view, whether a particular man is innocent or guilty of a particular act is not especially important; even the defendant who is innocent in a particular case is part of the same male conspiracy against women. As Baskerville notes, such assigning of collective guilt to categories of people is a typical mark of totalitarian regimes. It justifies us in considering feminism part of the larger phenomenon that has been called “Cultural Marxism.”
The new thinking is being written into law. California law now requires that to avoid a rape conviction, male university students must “demonstrate they obtained verbal ‘affirmative consent’ before engaging in sexual activity.” Not just obtain it, but demonstrate, in court, that they obtained it. Asked how innocent people are supposed to prove they received verbal consent, the California assemblywoman who authored the law replied, “Your guess is as good as mine.” The impossibility of acquittal seems to be the whole point of the law. The madness has long since spread beyond university campuses. Washington state has formally shifted the burden of proof in all rape trials to the defendant. In North Carolina, naming the person accused along with the time and place is sufficient to secure a rape conviction. Baskerville found one case in Texas where police were ordered to hide exculpatory evidence. Rape accusers remain anonymous, but the accused do not, even after the accusation is demonstrated to be false. The past sexual history of the accuser is not admissible as evidence, but that of the accused is. Accusers are exempt from polygraph tests, but not the accused. Even a history of false accusations is not admissible. Might crime labs step in to defend the innocent men now abandoned by the legal system? Labs have been found guilty not just of mistakes but of deliberate falsification of evidence. The Washington Post, among others, has documented how feminist laboratory technicians doctor and fabricate evidence to frame men they know to be innocent.”
This is a clear example of how what begins as academic nonsense, on the tax payers’ funded adult childcare centres of the universities, metastasizes, like most dangerous cancers, to invade and destroy the rest of society. Like cancers, no preventative actions were taken to stop feminism before it took root, and nor was there a life-or-death fight to eradicate it in the 1970s. Instead, victory after victory occurred, out of guilt and weakness. Now, civilisation itself is in the balance.