Trusting Trump with Secrets

Looking back on World War II as a young adult, I got the impression that parts of US culture put a bit too much emphasis on secrecy and spying and code-breaking for reasons having more to do with the Cold War than with the victory against the Fascists of the Second.

      * I had grown up on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and knew how important fear and suspicion of "spies and saboteurs" are for reinforcing loyalty and group solidarity. As Senator Arthur Vandenberg advised President Truman, the government had to "scare the hell out of the American people" to get support for the Cold War — and the scaring the hell out continued, including stoking fears of spies.

      * Stressing the elegance of code-breaking and triumphs of spying drew attention away from how much the Allies owed for victory to the brute-force barbarism of the Red Army smashing its way west into Hitler's Reich.

      * Stressing the elegance of code-breaking and triumphs of spying drew attention away from how much Allied victory was the result of US Federal government coordination and to some extent cooptation of US industrial production and other aspects of a directed, highly regulated capitalism.

      * Stressing Russian theft of American secrets helped denigrate the ability of the Soviets to use their German scientists almost as well as we used our German scientists for the rocket, missile, and other programs of the Cold War, and helped justify the execution of Ethel Rosenberg.

Well, etc. We did have intelligence and spy-craft triumphs during the Second World War, and "spies and saboteurs" are a threat — and terrorists as well; but my highly unoriginal feeling was and continues that the threat is often overblown and over-emphasized. 

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted e-mails and Donald Trump's attack thereon early in the debate of 9 October 2016. (I don't know if they went back to it, since I returned from the gym where I was watching the ... show to finally write this blog post.)

What got me was Mr. Trump's chiding former-Secretary Clinton for not know that a circled "C" on a document indicated classified/confidential material. Hence, Mr. Trump indicated, Ms. Clinton couldn't be trusted with secrets. And the following went through my mind, coming from the big story of the weekend of Mr. Trump's comments on a bus about imposing kisses and, well, grabbing what once was called "queynte."

    If one is going to confess to a possible crime, much less to brag about committing one, it is well to check if you are in the presence of someone wearing a "wire." Mr. Trump bragged about a couple acts  somewhere between crude and criminal on a bus at a television studio while people around him were clearly wearing microphones and he himself was miked.  

     

     There was no subtle "C" here; there were obvious microphones, and if he was sufficiently stupid to admit to groping or assault in the presence of visible microphones — while wearing a microphone! — he is in no position to talk about anyone else's handling of confidential material unless they're sending pdf's of it to ISIS and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 

    It's not so much that "Power corrupts," including, apparently "star power." The crucial thing is that Power regularly "makes arrogant," and "arrogant makes stupid"; and Mr. Trump clearly is too arrogantly stupid to be trusted with secrets, even his own. 

John Kasich and Kimberley A. Johnson: Rape and Victim Blaming — and Prudent Warnings

I dislike "human interest" openings, but I'm going to start with a personal experience before I get to a brief addendum to Kimberley A. Johnson's "Open Letter to John Kasich About Rape and Victim Blaming," from The Huffington Post.

Once staying in Boston in the 1970s, I was surprised and a little saddened that my hosts were appalled that I'd jogged in the morning at a nearby downtown park. In one of the birthplaces of American freedom — Boston, not the apartment I was staying in — I clearly had the right to jog where and when I wanted and thought my hosts mildly paranoid to let fear so dominate their lives (you should have seen the security on their front door!) that they'd avoid a beautiful neighborhood park. However, I was in my late 20's, in good shape (if small), and a White male; if I'd been otherwise and a child in their care, the advice to avoid the park in the early morning probably would've been an excellent idea.

With this experience in mind, I'll add this much to balance Johnson's rebuke of Kasich for his "recent advice to a female student concerned about sexual assault [...]: 'Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol.'”

John Kasich governed Ohio from the hard-Right and would make a bad President for a number of reasons, including what he said about rape. On the other hand, there is the issue of prudence and that what people have a right to do is not always prudent to do. Americans have a right not to be obsequious to police officers and even to mouth off to them. Whether acknowledged by the law or not, Americans have the right to refuse to get down on our knees before cops or prostrate ourselves before the law and "the Man." Parents, however — and especially Black parents — should still tell their teenage sons to be respectful and sometimes downright docile in dealing with cops. Even so, parents, and especially mothers, should tell their daughters to be careful at parties with a lot of liquor and not to get drunk when partying with guys.

People have the right to be free from fear of rape and mugging and police brutality, and victims should not be blamed. That's one clear point. Also, however, older folk have the obligation to warn younger people of the dangers of rape and mugging and police brutality and tell young people to act prudently.
 

Vade Mecum: Your Student Guide to Legally Safe Sex While in College

     I have long been in favor of teaching young people, and strictly enforcing in sexual situations, the old rule, "Yes means yes; No means no; and Maybe emphatically means no more than maybe."

     I also remain convinced that we ordinarily should not insist "that people engaging in sex should ask permission for each stage of the encounter — each 'base' in the sports metaphor." After the initial Yes most couples can get along on body language and monosyllabics like No, Stop, or Oh, yeah!" (for two monosyllables).

     This issue has become immediate for me because two California politicians I like and respect (and to whose campaigns I've contributed money) are pressing for requiring California colleges to require "affirmative consent" at each stage of a sexual encounter; and the story on the latest round of their campaign for a State mandate was headlined in my local paper, "Better response urged for assault," with a subhead in a much less emphatic font, "Colleges need improvement against sexual battery …" (Ventura County Star 18 April 2015: 2A). Additionally, this movement for affirmative consent fits in with serious alarm over sexual offenses at colleges — and similar legislation will be coming soon to other legislative bodies.

     My concerns with the issue come from having spent a lifetime in America with a large portion of it on college campuses — thirty-five years teaching full time — and significant time helping to write student conduct regulations.

     Having grown up in America, I'm concerned with what matters and who matters. Sexual assault and sexual battery are serious issues, but so are nonsexual assault, battery, and what is still called at law "mayhem." We've seen over the last decade far too many expressions of distress over sexual exploitation and what was once called "white slavery" — by people who are not generally concerned with exploitation more generally. Similarly, I understand the need for politicians to go with politically "sexy" issues and how "politically sexy" frequently means issues relating to sex. And I understand how the American public and media have, as the saying goes, the attention spans of beagle pups and that politicians have to work with issues that grab attention and work while those issues have our attention. As Winston Churchill said, in a rule Rahm Emmanuel recycled, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." But if some politicians, pundits, and more normal folk don't ever complain about the exploitation of workers, I don't want to hear from them about the exploitation of sex workers; if they are totally silent on rates of mugging, assault, battery, and violence generally, they would do well to remain at least soft-spoken when it comes to those crimes combined with sex.

     Having grown up in America through the Civil Rights Movement, I'm concerned with which victims count and which don't count so much. "The rate of rape and sexual assault" of women 18-24 years-of-age "was 1.2 times higher for nonstudents (7.6 per 1,000) than for students (6.1 per 1,000)" according to a posting on the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. And to quote a Wikipedia article giving what should be a commonly-known set of statistics, "A United States Department of Justice report […] states that 'In 2011-12, an estimated 4.0% of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff in the past 12 months or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months'" — which may "under report the real numbers of sexual assaults in prison, especially among juveniles."

     Politicians, pundits, moralists, and other folk stressing sexual violence on US campuses, people willing to mandate detailed regulation of sexual conduct to prevent even ambiguous cases of sexual assault — I want to hear from them at least now and then on sexual assaults against victims with less clout: poor women not in college, prisoners, and, more generally, "People not well connected."

     My main concern with the proposed legislative mandates, though, comes from having helped write rules for The Student Handbook at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; 'cause a State mandate on affirmative consent requires rules and makes inevitable clarifying guidelines and information sessions and advice from Student Affairs staff on how to have "Legally Safe Sex."

     In most of the discussions I've encountered, "affirmative consent" is defined as "'affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity' every step of the way," and this formulation raises serious questions for collegiate writers of the rules to ensure that the law is obeyed, and for those getting out pamphlets and having (compulsory?) informational meetings for students on how to obey the rules.

     (1) My first question as a rule writer would be how to write the rule for married students.

         You can't exempt married students from rules on sexual assault without having the university denying the possibility of marital rape. On the other hand, to get the State, through public universities, involved in the sex lives of married people seems a horrible idea.

         The question of married students leads to dealing with graduate students, say doctoral candidates in their late 30's. To what degree can the State, through the university, tell mature citizens how they must behave sexually if they are to ensure that they are obeying the rules, whether or not they're concerned about being accused of wrongdoing by a partner. As a practical matter, such accusations are pretty much the only serious worry for students engaged in sex, but writers of university regulations and advice pamphlets have to tell people what to do to obey the rules, not what it's safe to do if you aren't likely to get accused.

         So: Should you tell doctoral candidates to be sure to ask explicitly, and with words, what it is they want to do sexually, in private, with one or more consenting partners?

         This was not a problem in the old days of in loco parentis, when schools were "in place of the parents" and all students of any age were legally "infants" in relation to school authorities. But what should be policy nowadays with thirty-year old graduate students or a thirty-year old junior? What should be the policy for a nineteen-year old sophomore male, registered to vote and registered for the Draft?

     In a time when arrested development is a major problem among young people in America, it is a bad idea to treat college students like children and set up self-fulfilling prophecies. Not so much in State statutes but in writing the rules to implement those statutes, how strictly and explicitly should colleges and universities advise adults on how to behave sexually — or risk punishment in university disciplinary systems that offer fewer due process protections than US courts?

     (2) My second question would be how to reconcile requiring the asking of explicit questions about sex with rules against sexual harassment. When does requesting "affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement" at every step become sexual harassment? When advising students on legally safe sex, what should you tell them about when to start asking explicit questions? In one form of ideal world, young men and women (or post-pusescent girls and boys) would feel free and comfortable to go up to someone they find attractive and say, "Hi. I find you sexually attractive. Would you like to talk a bit and see if we'd both like to go over to my place or yours for sex acts we'd both enjoy?" In one form of ideal world, such a conversation would be unremarkable; but for good and ill, such a world is not one we live in.

     "Hey, would you like to copulate and maybe engage in oral sex?" is not a line likely to get a guy sex — although it might work for gals. Relevant here, though, is it a line we wish to encourage or even require?

     (3) I haven't followed this debate into lurid detail, but what I've heard seems to assume pretty vanilla sex, and, indeed, vanilla is what sex usually is. But not always. With a bit of ingenuity a committee can probably write rules that cover group sex without getting gross or grotesque, but the rhetorical and ethical problems get more complex with, say, sadomasochism or just bondage. On the one hand, I'm not sure I'd like to write rules or put together a PowerPoint presentation or website entry that covered how to get consent in encounters involving handcuffs and a ball gag, especially if the major objective of the game is domination and silent submission. On the other hand, it is naïve to think that no students at no time are going to engage in low-rent, 20-shades-of-off-white S&M, one of the more popular perversions.

         Check out a porn site or two for the range of sex acts to cover; the people writing the university regulations will need to do so. And then consider if it's a good idea for university regulations to stipulate what sort of sex games are permitted or forbidden to initially consenting adults in private.

     A more practical concern is that the whole argument over the details of affirmative consent and ambiguous cases of sexual assault draws attention from simpler and more immediate issues.

     With the one instance when I had to deal with a rape issue as a member of a university and civic community, there was nothing subtle involved. My student was a serial rapist, and the solution to the problem he presented, from an institutional point of view, was his being arrested, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and sent to prison, which very effectively got him off campus and will keep him away for a very long time. My experience proves nothing in itself, but illustrates a wider concern: It may not be the case that "On college campuses, repeat predators account for 9 out of every 10 rapes," but the policing of sex on campus (and elsewhere) should begin with robust police and prosecutor efforts against rapists and preventing patterns of rape. 

     There are, though, social and cultural issues behind disturbing rape statistics, more subtle issues with which colleges and American society more generally must deal and deal seriously.

     Few of my students had the phrase or concept "macho asshole," nor had they sufficient experience with alternative ideals of masculinity even to make jokes about SNAGs ("Sensitive New Age Guys") or "the strong, silent type." A fair number of my students had grown up in social and political subcultures and in niches of popular culture where adolescent swagger was respected rather than scorned and where violence was associated with strength and not weakness of character. As time went on, increasing numbers of my students could use "bitch" and "bitches" and "bitch-slapped" in everyday speech where they would never use words like "nigger" (and didn't even know slurs like "kike" and "dago"). In most cases, this background cultural noise had little effect: the great majority of college students hit eighteen as good kids and continue their way as being responsible young (and not so young) adults.

     But some became macho assholes, if, with college, better schooled and better spoken macho assholes. And part of the macho asshole role is disrespect for women and weaker men, and occasional or repeated violence toward them.

     The swagger admired too widely in US politicians does not help here, nor similar posturing by male leads in action movies — nor their real-world behavior off-screen. We need more cultural ideals of manhood involving self-control and low-key confidence, and an ideal of courage consisting not in "Taking out the trash" and "Wasting the bad guys" but in the sort of cop who doesn't fire until fired upon and risks taking a bullet rather than shooting an unarmed civilian.

     For nicely ironic balance, the production of "good kids" both male and female is also and perhaps equally an aspect of the sexual-assault problem gone after by "affirmative consent" rules.

     Unlike the ideal of the macho bad boy, ideal "good kids" don't drink booze in high school, and they don't try to get laid. The law-abiding, dutiful parents of "good kids" don't give their kids beer or wine or stronger drinks: as the sign says in the train station in the fancy suburb of Highland Park, IL — and elsewhere — "Parents Who Host, Lose The Most." The upshot of such ideals and public policies is that nowadays fewer parents than is healthy teach their children how to "drink like gentlemen"/"drink like a lady" or how to go about getting laid (etc.) like civilized grownups.

     So young college students booze like adolescents, and engage in sex in what one theologically sophisticated undergraduate described as the good (Catholic) kid fashion of "Get drunk, get stupid, get laid," get penitent, get absolved … and then repeat the process as often as possible.

     "Affirmative Consent" goes against the subconscious strategy of being a relatively "good kid" and still getting laid. The theology is straightforward, especially for a traditional Catholic. To get drunk and get animalistic is to engage in bestial sins abhorrent to puritanical cults and subcultures. But wordless, drunken, animalistic rutting is far less sinful than getting demonic by warping one's divine Reason and Will with "affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity," i.e., in traditional Christian terms, to engage in the mortal sin of Lust realized in — for the unmarried — fornication. Falling into sin is one thing; consciously choosing sin and articulating your choice is literally willful disobedience and an enactment of Satanic Pride.

     Few college students — hell, few American PhD's! — have the theological training to do that sort of conscious analysis, but America's "good kids" can still live out such logic with exquisite exactness over a drunken weekend.

     The campus sexual assault problem will be ameliorated when assault generally in the United States is reduced. It will be ameliorated when macho asshole serial rapists are regularly arrested and imprisoned, and when macho swagger is laughed at and despised: when it's no more socially acceptable to say "bitch" than for a White to say "nigger." We'll go a long way toward a solution when American parents teach their children how to use booze and not abuse it, and how to engage in a variety of sexual activities sensibly and responsibly — and consensually, consciously, responsbibly, and with minimal feelings of guilt and embarrassment.

     Such sex should be engaged in with some conversation, but not necessarily obsessively "talking dirty" over each new move citizens in college want to try.

    

--------------------------------------

SIDE NOTES:

              (1) Damnation: If a number of traditional theories are correct, pre-marital sex of any sort may send its practitioners to hell. In California, we have occasional signs informing people that "The State of California has determined" that some action or other is hazardous (e.g., as a risk of cancer or birth defects). It would be a sensible accomodation to religious believers to publish rotating notices along with affirmative consent rules, some statement of unarguable fact like, "WARNING: Traditional Christianity has taught that sex outside marriage — possibly any sex act without the potential for reproduction — is an offense against chastity and may condemn your soul to the lake of fire that burns forever." Or, "CAUTION: Acts of male homosexuality are forbidden under Leviticus 20.13, fornication by 1 Corinthians 6.18." As to whether or not such teachings are correct, neither the United States nor any of the States may take a position, but it would be courteous to traditional believers to state the facts of traditional belief when, arguably, one is encouraging young people to go against them.

              (2) Tuition and Fees: Off and on from the 1970s into the 2000s, I worked on rules as part of the Service requirement for my job as a full-time member of a university faculty. Nowadays at least the key portion of such work would be done by lawyers from the Office of University Counsel — and/or at the office of the state Attorney General — billing at the rate of lawyers.

"Yes," "No," "Just Say 'No'" and Sexual Responsibility (29 Aug. 2014)

"our courteous Antony,

Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak"

— His aide and friend Enobarbus on Mark Antony,

in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

            I think most of my readers will agree with the formula, "No" means No; "Yes" means Yes; "Maybe" means maybe. Now I'd like you to think about the implications of that formula for young Americans, and especially how we educate and train young Americans.

            First off, if "Yes" is to mean "yes," people have to ask yes/no questions, and other people must be free to answer "yes" or "no." As one of my feminist colleagues put it (I'm quoting from memory), "I tell my students that asking once isn't harassment; it's what he's supposed to do. If he repeats himself after you've said "No," that is harassment. The first one is a freebie."

            And, second off, it's a freebie for everyone, or at least everyone in a voluntary encounter between (or among) people of the age of consent. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is from the early 17^th century, and it's set shortly before the Christian era. Even back then, they had the concept that at least a good looking, imperial-class stud would be asked for sex by women, and he might, in theory, say "No." Antony won't, but (a) undesirable women probably couldn't get near him, and (b) by the mid-20^th century guys had developed the concept of male slut, which we can apply to this vision of Antony, as in the rhetorical question, "Is there anything you won't fuck?!"

            Antony won't say "No," but he could, so his "Yes" is significant.

            And Enobarbus seems convinced that women who want a man might very well ask, which is more significant.

            When I was in high school in Chicago around 1960 and guys would say, "Hey, she really wants me," we could respond, "If she really wanted you, she would ask you."

            Women and older girls, then, need to be able to say "Yes," or their "No" isn't totally convincing. Women and older girls need to be free to ask, and if they do not ask, then guys should assume that these gals might be willing to have sex with them but aren't exactly, let's say, champing (or chomping) at the bit.

            If "Yes" means yes and all, then the old idea of the coy young maid is a bad idea.

            The Machiavellian Duke of Buckingham tells the even more Machiavellian Duke of Gloucester — soon to become King Richard III — that when offered a crown Richard should "Play the maid's part: still answer nay, and take it" (Richard III 3.7.51; through-line 2252). Or as Shakespeare sexistly puts into the mouth of a young woman, "[…] maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that / Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay'" (Two Gentlemen of Verona 1.2.54-55; through-lines 207-08).

            So let us say an emphatic no to the gushy old romantic ideal of the shy maid who cannot say "Yes" but really wants "it." And equally no to the old romantic ideal of the pleading lover who keeps pressing his case; the repeatedly-rejected wooer always was a pathetic schmuck with no sense of dignity, but now we can, and should, see him also as an incipient stalker.

            "No" means no, damn it. Give her your number, and tell her that if she changes her mind to call. Ditto for "him" and all the various variations.

            I would not go so far as to push the case that people engaging in sex should ask permission for each stage of the encounter — each "base" in the sports metaphor — or I won't make that case unless they both get off talking dirty. After the initial "Yes," most couples can get along on body language and monosyllabics like "no," "stop," or "Oh, yeah!"

            (Sometimes, though, it's simply necessary to pause and "Use your words." I have no idea what sort of squeal or grunt I made, but a woman once courteously stopped what she was doing and asked, "Did that hurt?" And I had to think a moment and say, "I … I'm not sure. Do it again.")

            Initial saying of "Yes" or "No" and, if "Yes," some basic decisions — "Your place or mine?" "Do I need to buy condoms?" "You're sure your creepy roommate is out of town and took her iPhone with her?" — initial negotiation, even if quite brief needs some physical and aural space for communication. This is an additional reason why hook-up bars designed for noise and sensory overload are abominations on the face of the Earth. Indeed, some of the customers are in such places precisely because serious talk is impossible, but that's no reason they should be encouraged, or no reason beyond financial gain.

            So: One problem area in serious sex-ed for America's young people is more or less in the political Center and Left: squishy Romance and the subspecies of feminism that discourage  talking about sex, especially guys' directly asking older girls and women for sex. (My colleague had to tell her students that "The first one is a freebie" because other people had told them that any request for sex that turned out not to be desired was sexual harassment.) This problem area overlaps with the Right, and the "Just say 'No'" American puritanical tradition.

            Old-style, capital-"P" Puritans can be seen as generally orthodox Christians, who believed human beings are essentially souls and that the crucial issue is whether those souls are saved or damned. So far as we have any control over our salvation — and we may have none — traditional doctrine taught resistance to the soul's enemies: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

            Souls, in traditional Christian theory, are lead into evil by the bodily sins of Lust, Sloth, and Gluttony, and by the Worldly/Demonic sins of Wrath, Envy, Greed, and Pride. Puritans emphasized the threat of the Flesh, and today many pious Americans put little energy into condemning wrath, envy, or greed. And, with one crucial exception, today's puritans have nearly forgotten that Pride is a sin.

            Young Americans are taught morality mostly in terms of their sexuality and secondarily as an imperative to obey the laws or social conventions governing what drugs they may put into their bodies — variations on that battle against Lust, Sloth, and Gluttony. "Pride is the root of all evils" only when it takes the form of intentional disobedience to adult authority. "Just Say No" means "No" to peers, not to parents, ministers, or the law.

            One student at my university used puritan doctrine to explain the tendency of our students to "Get drunk, get stupid, get laid," without planning and without protection, and certainly without negotiation. One can get drunk, get stupid, get laid, and then get repentant and get absolved and get welcomed back into Holy Church. One can get wasted and sin and remain "a good kid."

            The fleshly sins are deadly, but easily forgiven. Unforgivable, she argued, would be the rebellion of an unmarried 19-year-old's planning to get laid, buying condoms, having sex, enjoying sex, and responding to older-adult accusations with "Yeah, I got laid—So? 'Sex is dangerous'? Skydiving is dangerous! Anything worth doing is worth a little risk to do! You take sensible precautions, which I did."

            If the question is obedience and the soul's salvation, not bodily health, equally unforgiven would be a 19-year-old who says, "No, we didn't smoke pot; we drank dope tea, talked, and took a bus home as a group. Tolerate it." Far better, in terms of obedience, for teens to sneak tequila and beer Friday nights, get drunk, get wild, and meekly repent on Saturdays.

            All the more so if the 19-year-old in question was a young woman. Again, when guys in high school would say, "Hey, she really wants me," we could respond, "If she really wanted you, she would ask you." More exactly, she would ask back then only if she had a lot of guts, and even after graduation, as a legal adult, it would take guts to tell her parents, if asked, "Actually, I planned the date, and the sex."

            Things have gotten better with educating gals on sex. I'm not so sure there's been progress with guys about sex or with either group on the closely-related matter of alcohol and other drugs. When I was growing up, fathers and "older guys" would instruct boys in sexual protocol (e.g., "bathe; take your socks off; spend the night; cook her breakfast"); and both sexes often got informal training in how to "drink like ladies and gentlemen." Bingeing and puking on your date was bad form, to say nothing of a bad introduction to asking for sex.

            Nowadays, chastity training discourages all nonmarried people from asking for sex. "Abstinence Only" precludes discussions of sexual hygiene and sexual manners — and helps makes mutual bingeing, not negotiation, a primary way for unmarried teens to get sex, however sloppily and dangerously.

            "Just Say No" undermines the believability of "No means no" and contributes to alcohol abuse, sexual assault, and morning-after charges of sexual assault. Under "Zero Tolerance," teaching your kids how to drink and throw a responsible party can get adults arrested.

            Under "Abstinence-Only" regulations, straight-talking, honest drug education — "This is what the drug will do for you, this is what it may do to you" — is forbidden.

            "Just Say No," "Zero Tolerance," and "Abstinence Only" cut off debate and forbid discussing relative risks and risk reduction.

            Puritan policies make excellent sense in terms of saving souls and training obedience, but in secular, democratic terms, they have high costs.

            Unless ruthlessly enforced, such policies contribute to teen-pregnancy, venereal diseases, and abuse — as opposed to learning responsible use — of alcohol and other drugs, and of other people. When ruthlessly enforced, Abstinence Only/Just Say No train for submission to power, not ethical choice.


            You want to reduce sexual assault on campus and elsewhere? After you've arrested, tried, convicted, and put in prison a whole lot more of the serial rapists responsible for much of the problem, start working on the cultural issues. Tops among those cultural issues are the people who haven't thought through "Yes means 'Yes' … (etc.)" and have implemented policies they see as solutions but are very centrally part of the problem. 

Words Mean (1 Sept. 2014)

POLONIUS [Aside.] […] Still harping on my daughter: […] I'll speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET
Words, words, words.

POLONIUS
What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET
Between who? (Hamlet 2.2.191-94)

            Many Americans get exercised over what they see and hear as violations of Good English. Fair enough: It's a God-given and Constitutionally-protected right to complain. Indeed, I suspect that the variety of sentences in the most ancient language that followed the variety: "Cave bear behind you!" was the rest of the likely meaning, "You idiot! I told you not to go into that cave. But would you listen …? Noooo!" Much of the time, however, those of us who complain about language usage complain about the wrong things.

            For example, there are people who'll be mildly or more upset that Hamlet says "Between who" and not "Between whom," and there was at least one editor who corrected Shakespeare's English in Richard III so that the villainous Richard says in one edition "To whom" and not what Shakespeare much more likely wrote, "To who".

            I'm going to keep harping on quite different issues, harping here on the occasion of two significant mistakes appearing in significant debates.

            One is in Senate Bill 967: Student Safety: Sexual Assault, passed by the California General Assembly and on the desk of Governor Brown for action before the end of September 2014. I'm sure I'll return to this Bill in later posts, but for now I just want to note that it includes a reference and a half to investigations of sexual assault where "alcohol or drugs were involved" (§ 1.2.C.8 [I think; numbering in legislation can get arcane]).

            Now, as a practical matter, two crucial issues with campus rape are first, identifying, arresting, charging, convicting, and putting in prison for lengthy sentences serial rapists; and second, and relevantly here, changing undergraduate folkways of alcohol use and abuse: specifically the logical (after its fashion) but dangerous "Get smashed, get stupid, get laid."

            I will stress again the phrase as a practical matter, as in as a practical matter, Black parents do well to instruct their sons how to act deferentially when confronted with cops, especially White cops; as in as a practical matter, Liberal or Radical Feminist parents do well to say to their kids of any sex, gender, color, sexual preference or whatever, "Like hell you're walking through that neighborhood in that outfit at this hour of the night!"

            Yeah, we are all free in much Libertarian and Leftish theory to wear whatever we want, and walk where we want; to get drunk out of our minds and pass out in the middle of a drunken orgy; to mainline Rohypnol while waiting for a date to return from the bathroom. Free maybe: free as many Libertarian and Black and Lefty parents will insist — when not advising their kids on what is prudent.

            So as a practical matter, it is important to limit reckless drug use by women and twinks and underage folk at campus parties, and the most important drug to limit is ethyl alcohol imbibed for the purpose of getting hammered.

            Talking about "alcohol and drugs" in such contexts is a really, really bad idea since the phrase implies that alcohol is not a drug and somehow not a potentially dangerous drug. When trying to limit sexual assaults, the phrase people should use is "drugs, especially alcohol."

            The second phrase I'll continue harping on appeared yet again in my local newspaper, and is repeated much of the time Americans argue about abortion and the large, contentious set of issues around abortion: "when life begins" — as in, "The crucial question in these issues is when life begins."

            Yet again, no, that is not the question, and it cannot be the question starting from a simple point of belief and fact in the Abrahamic religions and among anyone familiar with biology after, say, 1668, or at least after, 1859. Between the time of Francesco Redi and Louis Pasteur there was firm disproof and discrediting of the ancient theory of "spontaneous generation."

            As Genesis saith mystically and Redi, Pasteur, et al. demonstrated scientifically, life doesn't begin, it began, and has been passed on, each living thing reproducing "after its kind," except when you get mutations and such — but that's another argument.

            Once life got started it got handed down that was and remains pretty much that: no significant new life would get spontaneously generated because (1) getting life started seems pretty difficult to pull off, and (2) anything new and close to alive would very quickly get eaten by an organism more sophisticated, which would likely be the closest organism around.

            Abortion and the issues related to it do not have to do with what's living or dead or non-living but what is human or close enough to human that we should see he/she/it/whatever as a "person under the law," with a right to life.

            A fertilized egg, embryo, fetus, or baby — sperm and egg as well— are all living things. That's easy. When you get a person is difficult. So we don't want the figurative waters muddied by bringing in "When does life begin?" and we don't want the damnable arrogance of seeing things as alive only if they're human.

            They knew better than that in Biblical times, which is why there are strict rules about killing and eating animals but much less fuss about killing plants, and we know, or should know, that plants are alive (it has to do with what creatures have "the life-breath"). Indeed, "we" know nowadays — i.e., anyone with the education to already know or who has the time, skill, and resources to look it up — we know or can look up that way more of life on Earth is microbial than human and that most of the cells in and on our body are microbial, not human.

            We humans can and should privilege human life — I just chopped up carrots and lettuce and feel no guilt — but we should know that we are either special only because God said and say so, or we're not particularly special at all.

            It is indeed "common usage" to say "alcohol and drugs" and ask, "When does life begin?" "Alcohol and drugs," though, implies the lie that alcohol is somehow not a drug or that the only drugs that really count as drugs are drugs the State declares illegal. Questions about when life begins are either diversions or the arrogance of assuming that only human life counts as life.

            It is such issues that the "Word Police" need to get after. If we lose the "m" on "whom," it will be no big deal.

Cold-Blooded Statistics (25 Dec. 2014)

            Tying together some stories in the news at the end of 2014, from police shootings in the sense of police shooting "civilians" to police being shot, to "the campus rape crisis": We need to bring back the word and concept "disinterested," and we need more disinterested research in areas of social conflict. This is a truism, but it's difficult to achieve; recall that for years, maybe decades, there was little research on the medical uses of marijuana because the Congress of the United States — folks who weren't convinced that nicotine and ethyl alcohol (cigarettes and booze) are drugs — said that there were no benefits to marijuana, and, therefore there was no cause to spend public money looking for medical benefits.
            We need news reports where the first couple paragraphs aren't with some touching, human-interest "for instance" anecdote but a statistic: Number of times something horrific happens per 100,000 ______ (fill in variety of human) per year, or some more relevant unit of time.
            For instance ….
            How many civilians are justifiably or otherwise killed, maimed, wounded, or otherwise harmed each year by police? Assaulted or just hassled? It's hard to get statistics even for just the US, let alone for comparison across a number of countries and cultures.
            How many police officers are killed each year in the line of duty? A friend of mine in the justice system says he's pretty sure that most on-job deaths are from accidents, but he's not sure of much beyond that. Some years, police work makes the top ten for most dangerous jobs in the US, some years not. What are the dangers of police work, and how do the risks vary from role to role, from area to area in the US? In countries similar to the US
            I taught on a Midwestern college campus for 35 years, and it was a pretty safe place: one B&E at my house during the time, and I met the burglar and wasn't overly threatened. We had a couple murders near campus, and one major problem ca. 2000 with one of my students who was a serial rapist — convicted on six counts and imprisoned. And one of my students ca. 1990 had a run-in with police because of the rifles and automatic weapons in the trunk of his car (he was a gun collector and weird but licensed and not an immediate danger).
            By one definition of the word "rape" that has been applied on campuses, I've been raped by two women, but, possibly because of an insufficiently raised consciousness, I still don't believe I was in a legal or moral sense raped. Manipulated maybe; raped?, no. So I want to see some numbers on the rate per 100,000 per year of rapes and other sexual assaults on US campuses, and see how those figures vary given different legal, ethical, and colloquial definitions of the crimes or ethical lapses. And I think every reporter and pundit covering campus sexual assaults should check carefully how those rates compare with similar crimes among young women not in college. Among that overly large US prison population?
            On the torture issue — also big news in December of 2014 — we need popularizations of historical research. "Torture is not who we are," said President Obama; an article in The Atlantic suggests, nah, that's us. The historical record indicates that we Americans are currently doing better than many peoples over the centuries, but that's a distressingly low bar. What's the record of torture in US periods of fear — hanging witches and terrorizing Blacks … for instance — and what is our record during periods of imperial expansion, as in the Philippines? How often were "enhanced interrogation techniques" used in the US historically? What are the best guesses at the rate today?
            (In 1692, Giles Corey was "pressed with heavy stones" to force him to enter a plea in the Salem Witch Trials. He didn't plead but died after a couple of days, so he couldn't be found guilty, so his property wasn't confiscated and could go to his heirs. Corey may be unique in US history, but milder torture such as waterboarding and "the third degree" are not.)
            Personal stories are extraordinarily useful to put human faces on statistics; but for policy we need the numbers. Especially on controversial issues, US universities and the gov't of the United States need to get out reliable and disinterested stats, and a wide swath of people need to read and understand those numbers.

            "I feel your pain" is a decent enough thought, but it's always more or less a figure of speech and/or a lie if you're talking about pain on a large scale. Compassion is the core, the metaphorical