While the Justice Department estimates that one in five female college students experience some form of sexual assault, the other half of the equation is far more circumspect: Only 6 percent or so of male college students commit sexual assault, with each committing nearly six rapes on average, according to the psychologist David Lisak, who’s conducted extensive and widely cited research on sexual assault. That suggests that many sexual assaults on campus are committed by serial predators.
.. That would mean that colleges and universities with lots of dorms and few off-campus options might be less rape-prone, especially if RAs are required to attend official dorm parties. (That’s also why I’ve proposed that colleges experiment with policies stipulating that only sororities—and not fraternities—serve alcohol as a means of reducing the prevalence of sexual assault on campus. Then, sisters would decide who gets into a party and who doesn’t—and when a woman gets too drunk, she can, of course, go upstairs to her own room.)
.. A relatively dated, but reputable, survey suggested that athletes are overrepresented in reports of sexual assaults on campuses. Not all athletes are equally likely to be accused of sexual assault. Research suggests that the so-called “helmet sports”—football, hockey, and lacrosse—are dramatically overrepresented in incidents of assault, while tennis, swimming, soccer, and track are far less so. The “revenue” sports also exist in a protected bubble of alumni boosters and loyal local fans (including police and prosecutors) who run constant interference for them.
.. He’s found that between 16 percent and 20 percent of male students said they’d commit rape if they could be certain of getting away with it.
.. Sexual assault happens everywhere, yes, but it happens more often in some places than in others. As the aforementioned research on athletics and fraternities suggests, it likely happens the most on residential college campuses where there are lots of people of the same age going to alcohol-soaked parties in all-male residences with no official administrative oversight—in places there is a high-level of gender inequality in social life, a pervasive attitude male sexual entitlement—in places where men bond over sexual conquests and believe that true brotherhood means silence. Tinker with any of those variables, and there might be some shifts in rates. Take them all on, and assault rates will, I would hypothesize, plummet.
Why are there so few women philosophers?
To take an analogy – which I hasten to add is limited – consider professional snooker. Even though women are eligible to compete as professionals, none is ranked in the top hundred. The six-times world champion, Steve Davis, has no doubt about the reason. It is not that women are incapable of the highest levels of skill. It is rather that as a group they are disinclined to devote obsessive effort to “something that must be said is a complete waste of time – trying to put snooker balls into pockets with a pointed stick”. As Davis sees it, “practising eight hours a day to get to world championship level” ranks high among the “stupid things to do with your life”.
.. One thing that distinguishes academic philosophy from nearly all other disciplines is its adversarial style. To deliver a paper is to suffer an ordeal by criticism. When I started philosophy, no holds were barred. If you thought a speaker had erred, you were encouraged to persist with your questions until he (it was rarely she) knuckled under.
.. Philosophy and economics are both distinguished from similar disciplines by a marked tendency towards scholasticism. Much work in both subjects focuses on technical minutiae whose relevance to larger issues even the experts are hard pressed to explain. Of course, serious academic work need not always be transparent to the general public, but much in philosophy and economics isn’t even of interest to those in adjacent sub-disciplines.
Modesty Culture Part 11: “Others may, we cannot” is a Lie
What if the kid (being intelligent and all) sees someone they love – who may very well be a Christian too – breaking mommy and daddy’s rules?The child might decide that following that legalistic rule is NOT necessary to be a good person or even a good Christian.
And that – make no mistake – would be unthinkable.
That’s why modesty culture proponents have to control friends and family – and school situations. Because the whole house of cards is in danger of falling if a child realizes that good people and good Christians differ on clothing. The thought might occur to them that maybe God doesn’t really expect one to dress in a deliberately counter-cultural manner.
..
And this is why, if water is involved, I would rather be (with a very few exceptions) around non-religious friends. Because they haven’t sexualized everything. Because my daughters can just be, without being held up for judgment and either approved or not, depending on the particular personal clothing preferences of the person judging them... This is also why I am extremely uncomfortable with my daughters being around Modesty Culture proponents.
Because I have no confidence that they are teaching their sons to respect women. (See part 4 on “Defrauding” and Rape Culture.) Because I see that they are focused on sex and on appearances, and are not seeing my daughters as people rather than bodies. Because I know – from my wife’s experience – that my daughters will eventually be looked upon as moral threats to the virtue of their sons. Because my daughters will be blamed for their sons’ sexual failings.
The Three Faces of Trump
But many Americans may not realize how much Trump’s voice and gestures are also shaped by New York—the old, hard New York, before gay rights, smoothies, and Brooklyn, the New York that Trump and I grew up in. His temperament is the residue of a thousand wise-guy tabloid columns, the knowing talk of Seventh-Avenuemachers and Irish taxi drivers and mobbed-up guys in the outer boroughs.
.. Men like Trump always cut to the chase because, for them, there’s nothing but the chase; they cite the bottom line because it’s the only line that matters; they put down women because there’s no reason, most of the time, to take them seriously. If a woman somehow does attain power, they assume she will use it to destroy men.