UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

Pretty soon asking a girl out will be considered rape.

 

This has been pretty well established, particularly with the 1-in-5 number that infuriates you so much -- someone who is considered too intoxicated to give consent (even after the fact) can be labeled a victim. Sure, we know it's hooey, but as long as that 1-in-5 number governs the issue, that's going to be the thought.

This is going to become a huge deal as the "Yes Means Yes" laws start cropping up in more states.

 

Talk about staking out some risky territory ...

 

What grabbed my attention was the reference to "two drunk people having sex." That conjures something else for me other than one person taking advantage of a drunk person.

Is that where we're at? No sex when alcohol has been consumed?

True story: I turned my friend down for years in college. She caught me one night when I was drunk. We went to her dorm and had sex. I regretted it afterward.

Shouldn't my sober non-consent - years of it - have stood and been respected?

 

The idea being that even if she gave consent at the time, she was too drunk to actually do so.

 

OK. So you're not talking about all drunk sex?

 

Yep. You were the victim of a sexual assault, at least by current definitions.

By current definitions I have been the victim of a sexual assault and also a rapist. So I have it both ways.

That's the part people have trouble getting their heads around. They hear the new standards, think, hell that happened to me/I did that and I'm not a victim/rapist. Then they go outside and tell those damn kids to get off their lawn.

Also, I'll be hosting a candlelight vigil this evening for and against me.

 

Don't forget to invite Instapundits you've both heard of and never knew existed to cover the vigil.

 

It's infinitely better than a party line of, "Your risk of being raped goes down a statistically insignificant percentage when you're on a college campus as opposed to when you're not."

Judging by the victory laps taken by people like Glenn Reynolds in the wake of the DOJ releasing their stats, the 1-in-5 number being false or a misrepresentation means that campus rape is a "hoax," the product of "media hype and political opportunism." Which is a despicable, bullshit position that has little bearing on reality.

 

But isn't that ultimately true? Aren't young women in college thought to be victims less frequently than young women not in college?

 

Google these terms ... "Brett Sokolow", sex, booze ... He's a leading consultant to colleges/universities on campus sexual assault. You can read his newsletter about campus panels that, in his expert opinion, blew it while adjudicating instances of drunk sex.

 

Yes, technically, it is true. It's still statistically insignificant and most likely within the margin of error.
It's also insignificant because of the differences in reporting between college students (80 percent unreported) and nonstudents (67 percent unreported) from that same report.

Just because something is slightly more likely to happen elsewhere doesn't mean it's not happening on college campuses at an unacceptably high rate. It's happening EVERYWHERE at an unacceptably high rate.

I'm starting to think statistical manipulation and parsing is a bigger distraction to the actual issue than Erdely's story was.