The most recent “big thing” in the overlap between internet and real world strife over sexual politics has been the spamming of an online rape reporting device at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Reportedly some 400 internet users (or a smaller group of repeat offenders) filed false reports to the controversial system, rendering it at least temporarily useless for its intended purpose.
One possible source that triggered the reports is the Men’s Rights subreddit.
The result has been outrage from college administration as well as widespread condemnation from gender ideologues and some mainstream sources.
To be clear, AVFM was not engaged in this particular event, nor do we officially endorse what happened. We do not denounce it, either.
After discussion with senior management, however, it became apparent that we needed to publish an editorial opinion on what happened.
That discussion led us not to make a declaration of whether we think what happened was appropriate, even as we reject it as one we are going to officially endorse. Instead it led us to a question that should be posed to Occidental College as well as to society at large.
What the hell did you expect?
The modern academic climate in the United States can be likened to a table that rests on four legs. Those legs are rape hysteria, demonization of men, fraudulent academic feminism and the continual erosion of due process for men and other Constitutional principles. The problem with the Occidental “reporting” system is that it sits square atop that table. In that position, it not only should be a target, it necessarily will be because a long-due backlash against the processes that put it there is emerging from many corners of society. That backlash is 100% justified. Indeed, that backlash can perhaps be seen as proof that we may have reason to hope for society yet.
There is some conditional — and temporary — sympathy for college administration in regard to this event. Their creation of a device where students (read: women) can make anonymous rape complaints (against men), a dicey proposition to say the least, was taken up somewhat under duress.
In April of this year, a group of 37 students, faculty and alumni filed federal complaints accusing the school of violating the Title IX gender equity law and the Clery Act. The Clery Act is a campus security law requiring the school to accurately track and disclose campus crimes.
Undoubtedly this left the school scrambling for another way to increase their ability to report sexual assaults. An “anyone can report anyone else for anything they want anonymously,” system was probably regarded as a way that would satisfy litigious feminists. It would also help that those feminists could possibly be able to control the number of reported sex crimes by manipulating the system themselves.
So, we understand that the effort was put forward by the school after it was threatened with legal action.
But of course, an academic environment tolerating corrupt scholarship, ideological domination of multiple departments, harassment of dissenters and the open spread of hateful propaganda under the auspices of education is precisely what produced the federal complaints to begin with. The complaints are chickens coming home to roost in the most generous interpretation.
So we ask again, what the hell were you thinking? We even ask that rhetorically of Occidental administrative officials, knowing that corrupt feminist ideology reaches to the very top of school governance. Yes, we are saying it is entirely plausible to speculate that the school’s administration could have colluded in the federal complaints.
Perhaps the most telling of the schools mentality regarding sex crimes was offered by the school’s interim Title IX coordinator Lauren Carella:
“This abuse of our reporting system is unacceptable to all of us. This form is an important option for the Oxy community to use to address the serious issue of sexual assault.”
And therein is the problem. Schools are not foreign embassies. They are not sovereign, extralegal fiefdoms, beyond the scope and reach of criminal statutes in California or any other state. They are schools. The entirety of their properties, students, faculty and administration fall under local criminal jurisdiction.
Rape and sexual assault are crimes, regardless of whether they occur on campus or off. As such, those victimized are entitled to police investigation of their allegations, as well as criminal prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators when the evidence so justifies.
The accused, too, are afforded specific rights; due process of law and the presumption of innocence among them.
What we actually have now, sitting squarely on our metaphorical table next to that horrific reporting system, is a network of Star Chambers driven by hysterics and ideology. That system has shamelessly swept aside all pretense of a liberal educational environment and, even while accepting direct and indirect government funding, shamelessly sweeps aside the values enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Roy Bean would be beaming with pride.
The deplorable nature of this system has been roundly criticized by feminists and non-feminists alike. Yet it goes unabated because this is what our institutions of higher education have produced and invested in perpetuating.
That there are people who are seeking to wreck it by any means necessary would only be a surprise if it had not happened. We are certain that it will happen again.
The solution to this is simple, even if unpalatable to gender ideologues. Rape and sexual assault are criminal activities. When they occur, report them to the police and let the criminal justice system do its job. There is no plausible way to believe, as the individuals on the internet just proved, that such a reporting system can produce reliable data on which to calculate the incidence of sexual assaults. It is just too vulnerable to undermining and misuse, by feminists and their detractors alike.
Also, producing star chambers and the anonymous reporting systems to keep them busy, just to satisfy litigious activists, is not only a poor answer, it is a stupendously corrupt one that will deter rape reports from going to actual police. It will result in irreparable harm to even more young men who are already vulnerable to the current system, as well as continuing the further erosion to the credibility of real rape victims which feminism has already caused.
Regardless of your feelings, pro or con, to what the spammers did to the Occidental College reporting system, it is going to continue, and to worsen, until the things driving those reactions are addressed.
Criticizing the tactics of the spammers may seem almost obligatory. And it is. Much in the same way as criticizing the civil rights riots in the late 1960s. That too, was very easy and remarkably simple to condemn.
It is only when we have to discuss why those riots happened that things get a lot more complicated.
