Post: #1

Quote:As feminist student activists fight to expand their circle of vulnerability in collegiate life, Title IX has gone from a law designed to protect college students from sexual misconduct and discrimination to a means by which professors are put on trial for their tweets.

Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis found herself entangled in one such trial after two female graduate students filed Title IX charges against her because of an essay and a tweet she authored. Kipnis was then plunged into a secretive and labyrinthine bureaucratic process that she believes threatens her academic freedom.

The trouble for Kipnis started a few months ago when she published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the growing sexual paranoia on college campuses. Though Kipnis primarily focused on conduct between professors and students, her essay did feature a cutting indictment of the current activism around consent and sex on campus: “women have spent the past century and a half demanding to be treated as consenting adults,” Kipnis writes, “now a cohort on campuses [is] demanding to relinquish those rights, which I believe is a disastrous move for feminism.”

Student activists at Northwestern protested Kipnis’ essay by carrying around mattresses in the style of Emma Sulkowicz, which Kipnis regarded as “symbolically incoherent,” given that Sulkowicz’s mattress had come to symbolize student-on-student sexual assault and that Kipnis’ essay was primarily about sex between students and teachers. Further, Kipnis hadn’t assaulted anyone. Nevertheless, the students, with mattresses in tow, went to Northwestern’s president with a petition demanding swift and official condemnation of Kipnis essay.

Of the protest, Kipnis writes, “the new [consent] codes infantilized students while vastly increasing the power of university administrators over all our lives, and here were students demanding to be protected by university higher-ups from the affront of someone’s ideas, which seemed to prove my point.”

Though the President said he would consider the petition, Kipnis assumed that academic freedom would prevail.

But Kipnis was wrong.
After the petition was circulated and mattresses dragged to the University President’s office, two students filed Title IX complaints against Kipnis. Kipnis was informed of the complaints through email but was not told what she had done or to whom she had allegedly done it. Here’s Kipnis :

Quote:I wrote back to the Title IX coordinator asking for clarification: When would I learn the specifics of these complaints, which, I pointed out, appeared to violate my academic freedom? And what about my rights — was I entitled to a lawyer? I received a polite response with a link to another website. No, I could not have an attorney present during the investigation, unless I’d been charged with sexual violence. I was, however, allowed to have a “support person” from the university community there, though that person couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t be informed about the substance of the complaints until I met with the investigators.

Kipnis refused to meet with investigators until she learned what the charges were about. The investigators were attorneys from outside law firm hired by Northwestern. The attorneys agreed to tell Kipnis about the nature of the complaints over Skype and agreed not to ask her any questions.

Here’s Kipnis again:

Quote:Both complainants were graduate students. One turned out to have nothing whatsoever to do with the essay. She was bringing charges on behalf of the university community as well as on behalf of two students I’d mentioned — not by name — because the essay had a “chilling effect” on students’ ability to report sexual misconduct. I’d also made deliberate mistakes, she charged (a few small errors that hadn’t been caught in fact-checking were later corrected by the editors), and had violated the nonretaliation provision of the faculty handbook.

The second complainant was someone Kipnis mentioned, not by name, in connection with lawsuit brought by a Northwestern professor who had two sexual harassment investigations brought against him. The professor is suing Northwestern for defamation and one of the students for defamation. Kipnis mentioned these lawsuits in her essay.

The complaint charged Kipnis mention of the lawsuit was retaliatory and created a hostile environment, though Kipnis points out that she said nothing disparaging. Additionally, the complaint charged that Kipnis omitted information that student believes should have included about her. “This seemed paradoxical — should I have written more?” Kipnis writes, “And is what I didn’t write really the business of Title IX? She also charged that something I’d tweeted to someone else regarding the essay had actually referred to her. (It hadn’t.)“

The Title IX creep that’s happening to Kipnis doesn’t just stop with her. Kipnis was allowed to bring a ‘support person’ , who was not allowed to speak, to her meeting with the Title IX investigators. A Title IX complaint was then filed against the support person. Certainly, such blithe use of a provision to expand the sphere of victimhood seems counter productive to the goal of protecting those who were directly victimized by sexual misconduct or discrimination.

For the rest of the insane and increasingly paradoxical twists to Kipnis’ ordeal (which is still ongoing), including the Title IX investigators asking Kipnis if she would like to file her own retaliation claim against the students, read her dispatch here. It is a stunning example of feminism devouring itself.

link

What commentary do I need to add? How beautiful is it to see these harpies becoming self-aware of the parody they are becoming?

Post: #2

Poetic justice. This is kinda like when Mao's Red Guards had gone out of control and started attacking older communist party members for not being revolutionary enough.

Post: #3

(05-29-2015 11:43 PM)StrikeBack Wrote:  Poetic justice. This is kinda like when Mao's Red Guards had gone out of control and started attacking older communist party members for not being revolutionary enough.

It's incidents like the above which legitimizes the whole year zero comparison too. This is what happens when you allow a truly paranoid toxic ideology to go after people's opinions through the bureaucracy. Free speech and open dialogue is completely abolished. It's exactly the atmosphere of paranoia, persecution, and purging that happened in the Khmer Rouge too.

When it runs out of targets it starts turning in on itself. The snake eats its own tail.

Post: #4

This ideological fracturing was always bound to happen-the cracks have been showing for a long, long time.

Just wished there was a way to accelerate it.

Post: #5

That was a great read.

Quote:The complaint charged Kipnis mention of the lawsuit was retaliatory and created a hostile environment, though Kipnis points out that she said nothing disparaging. Additionally, the complaint charged that Kipnis omitted information that student believes should have included about her. “This seemed paradoxical — should I have written more?” Kipnis writes, “And is what I didn’t write really the business of Title IX? She also charged that something I’d tweeted to someone else regarding the essay had actually referred to her. (It hadn’t.)"

Can you imagine the legal precedent!

Post: #6

What did she think was going to happen when her colleagues were out promoting moronic things like 'safe spaces' or avoiding 'triggering' students in classrooms.

The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in until the entire system destroys itself.

Post: #7

More mattresses? These fools must believe every false rape accusation. How do these triggered students function in the business world?

Post: #8

"After we get Wales, we'll be heading to Texas...lots of rebels in Texas."

"Texas? After Wales is where it ends."

"Doing right ain't got no end."

Post: #9

Feminism is just a power grab. Once they have some power they want more. They'll end up killing each other over it. Let's just sit back and watch the fireworks gentlemen.

Post: #10

(05-30-2015 03:51 AM)TheMan Wrote:  Just wished there was a way to accelerate it.

Maybe someone with more knowledge of the appropriate laws can create something like EZ-FILE title 9 complaint - with a dropdown menu pre-filled with different highly ambiguous accusations of "injustice". We can encourage everyone to file Title 9 complains against everyone else, until the system grinds to a halt.

Post: #11

(05-30-2015 08:05 AM)kbell Wrote:  More mattresses? These fools must believe every false rape accusation. How do these triggered students function in the business world?

They don't, they work in the public sector.

Post: #12

Damn maybe I should get into the mattress industry and take advantage of this trend.

Post: #13

(05-30-2015 10:27 AM)Gmac Wrote:  Damn maybe I should get into the mattress industry and take advantage of this trend.

Judging by these statistics, you might be right. Ha!
   

Post: #14

This article is on jezebel? What is happening.

Post: #15

(05-30-2015 08:05 AM)kbell Wrote:  More mattresses? These fools must believe every false rape accusation. How do these triggered students function in the business world?

This asian-american 2 has caused such a ruckus in silicon valley it's amazing. She also conned her way into some kind of CEO position of Reddit too. This is the type of idiocy we're dealing with.

Post: #16

Post: #17

(05-29-2015 11:43 PM)StrikeBack Wrote:  Poetic justice. This is kinda like when Mao's Red Guards had gone out of control and started attacking older communist party members for not being revolutionary enough.

I thought the same thing. When people in power start getting attacked by the little monsters they created it also means, theoretically at least, that the end of this nonsense could very well be in sight.

Post: #18

Coincidentally I just had another thought that occurred to me:

Another reason that university officials love the current brand of rape hysteria is that it gets students literally begging that the administrators be given more power. Remember the scene in the crappy Star Wars prequels where some delegate comes up begging that Palpatine be given emergency powers as a result of a situation that he stirred up?

Exact same game here.

Post: #19

The Ouroborous of Idiocy begins to devour itself. The coming implosion should be highly amusing!

Post: #20

Damn, thanks for the good laugh, a good way to start the day.

Post: #21

(05-30-2015 01:30 PM)UroboricForms Wrote:  The Ouroborous of Idiocy begins to devour itself. The coming implosion should be highly amusing!

Dammit! Beat me to it.

Post: #22

The original article is amazing

http://m.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Pa...es/190351/

Quote: But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can’t help asking, because there’s a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it’s pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn. - See more at: http://m.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Pa...eS9Hz.dpuf

Post: #23

It seems at least some feminists are self aware of the absurdity theyve reached

Post: #24

(05-30-2015 08:05 AM)kbell Wrote:  How do these triggered students function in the business world?

Womens Studies. They dont function in any business.

Post: #25

(05-30-2015 02:51 PM)Lochte Wrote:  The original article is amazing

http://m.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Pa...es/190351/

Ha, I read it, right from the start you see her entire motivation. She only cares now because she is a professor who dated a former student and the rule changes finally affect her. How many years did she bang the feminist drum when she didn't think it would affect her life?

From the Article:

Quote:Of course, the residues of the wild old days are everywhere. On my campus, several such "mixed" couples leap to mind, including female professors wed to former students. Not to mention the legions who’ve dated a graduate student or two in their day—plenty of female professors in that category, too—in fact, I’m one of them. Don’t ask for details. It’s one of those things it now behooves one to be reticent about, lest you be branded a predator.