The Other Side of the College Sexual Assault Crisis
And excerpt from the cover story in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/12/18/other-side-sexual-assault-crisis-403285.html?rx=us
Colleges have recently ramped up their investigation of sexual assault accusations because a 19-page letter told them to do so. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter. It clarified that sexual violence is a subset of sexual harassment, which in an education setting falls under Title IX of the Education Amendments. The OCR threatened to investigate schools thought to be insufficiently zealous with sexual assault cases, and if it found a school had violated Title IX, the OCR might rescind federal funding.
“We were seeing quite a bit of noncompliance and quite a bit of concern around the country,” says Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, who believes the “Dear Colleague” letter did its job. “I think we’ve seen just a cataclysmic change around the country in terms of attention to the issue, responsiveness to it, and training, preparation for our students so that we can see safer campuses,” she says. The OCR is investigating 152 colleges for their handling of sexual violence claims, and, she adds, complaints about sexual violence at colleges have increased more than 400 percent.
Victims’ advocates say the OCR letter helped destigmatize sexual assault and encourages survivors to report. But a less-told consequence is the tendency by schools to trample due process rights for the accused, according to some higher education and legal experts. “There was for a long time a perception that colleges were not responsive at all to claims of sexual misconduct,” says Samantha Harris, director of policy research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. These days, however, “a growing number of people are starting to be concerned that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.”
“I think probably a lot of colleges translated the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter as ‘favor the victim,’” says Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators and president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, which consults with schools. “We very quietly started to say to our clients.… Don’t overcorrect on this because it will touch off a spate of litigation by accused individuals.”
The message, he adds, was “You went too far. Swing the pendulum back.” Sokolow says schools didn’t heed the warning and resented the suggestion. “[We] really took it on the chin. I mean, this was such an unpopular thing for us to say. And it does not feel good in any way, shape or form to have been absolutely right.”
Read the rest here:
What’s Misandry?
An excerpt from HERE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-dunion-edd-lpc/whats-misandry_b_8312952.html
by Paul Dunion, Ed.D., LPC
Therapist, author
I canvased over 300 people representing a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, regarding the word denoting hatred of girls and women. Approximately 94 percent of those polled correctly identified the word as misogyny. When asked to name the word defining hatred of boys and men, less than 2 percent were able to identify the word possessing that meaning. Those that did accurately recall the word misandry were not able to spell it correctly. Could it be that there is some level of cultural collusion to have contempt for boys and men remain veiled?
(Curious enough, the word misogyny shows up in my favorite thesaurus while the word misandry does not.) An analogy might be that we easily recall that one side of a coin is named heads as we somehow stop referring to the other side of the coin as tails. We would gradually lose a more complete description of a coin. How did we decide to lose a more complete description of the hatred coin? How did it become so much easier to speak of hatred toward females and virtually impossible to reference disdain held toward males? Can it be that we do not want to know how and where contempt lives for males? And if that’s true, what price are both genders paying for such denial?
We might begin addressing these curiosities by suggesting that due to the social impact of feminism in the ’70s, we gained some important awareness regarding how hatred of females was being manifested. We came to understand that contempt for girls and women was alive and well expressed by socio-economic oppression as well a drastic number of females being subjected to rape and domestic violence. Hence, the word misogyny took its rightful place in our vocabulary, as we were willing to be receptive to how hatred was hurting girls and women. Could it be that we have not yet come to that place where we are willing to see how hatred injuriously impacts boys and men, and if so, what is our resistance all about?
A simple explanation might be that we are not interested in knowing how hatred hurts males, especially white, straight males, since they are members of the privileged class. Who wants to know the suffering of the privileged? However, there may be two other explanations for the impoverishment of our language pertaining to contempt for boys and men.
The first is that we may have some resistance to define females as perpetrators. Yet, we are reminded time and time again that victims typically become perpetrators. We have plenty of evidence supporting the ongoing violation of females by males. Is it possible that the leap from females being victims to perpetrators fueled by misandry is just too much to hold? Is it beyond us to imagine Mom, Grandma and Aunt Helen harboring disdain for boys and men?
Read the rest here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-dunion-edd-lpc/whats-misandry_b_8312952.html
Donald Trump – The Miley Cyrus of Politics
If you haven’t figured it out by now, you must not know how people manipulate the press in our country.
It is pretty apparent to me that Donald Trump will say anything so that his name will appear in the news and he will stay at the top of the polls. This is the same tactic that people like Miley Cyrus used a few years ago when she was breaking free of the Hanna Montana image and trying to be cool and relevant. She said the most outrageous things and had some of the most outlandish performances so that she could be one of the trending topics on a regular basis. It’s all a game and I think that many people do not understand how it is played until long after the flavor of the day is an afterthought.
When you have dozens of channels to choose on cable from and thousands of artists to sift through on Itunes or Spotify, you just can’t be good and get a following. In today’s world, there must be something else that grabs your attention to separate you from the others. Some choose to be truly unique and have great songs and a really different look (like Sia) and get the attention in a positive manner. Others choose to resort to the things that attract negative attention simply because they are vulgar, overly sexual, repulsive and just flat out ridiculous. The music or talent level be dammed.
When you have what seems like 3,234 GOP candidates running for office, it seems like in order to pimp the media, you have to find a way to stand out. I don’t see why it is so hard to be unique with the pack of buffoons the GOP is allowing to stand up and represent their party, but hey, I guess making sense and having clear, reasonable policy positions isn’t good enough in 2016. With this many people running for the same office, it seems as if the easiest way to make yourself look different is to use the same techniques Miley used.
The next time you hear Donald Trump speak, he will talk about how he is leading in certain polls, how he is selling merchandise, the way he is trademarking this or that. He is a true salesman and is simply selling his brand. He has no intention of being president because he knows his rhetoric will not be able to stand up to any sort of scrutiny. He is bombastic because he knows that when he says outrageous things, he will have his brand being mentioned in every major media outlet in the world.
I think it’s interesting to watch the reactions of people after he opens up his mouth. Why do people say they are “scared” or they find him “scary”? I don’t get it. Scared of what? He has no way to effect public policy, he has no intention of being anywhere near local, state or national political office – and oh yeah, he will never, ever be president. He appeals to those who are generally not intelligent enough to see thorough his game. He is the ultimate pimp.
Enjoy the freak show for another couple of months. No need to be scared. He will go back to doing whatever he did prior to his presidential bid eventually. I guarantee it.
Bonding
When I walk down the street with my daughter from time to time, she does something that I find very interesting. Instead of holding my hand like she used to as a little girl, she grabs the inside of my forearm as if I am walking her down the aisle in a wedding ceremony.
Some people have told me that it is a sign that she feels secure around me and others have told me that it is a form of bonding. Either way, I think it is great.
My daughter is about to be a teenager in a few weeks and I am certain that these moments might not last. I will take every little thing I can get before the crazy levels of hormones begin to flow and fluctuate. We have such a strong bond that I am sure that many years from now, she will hold my arm in the exact same way when I walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
My daughter and I when she was about 2
At age 5
Us again at age 12
I certainly hope we can have this much fun in another 10 years.
In fact, I’m going to write a post in 2025 about us and yes, we will be sticking our tongues out! I made sure that no matter what happened during my divorce that nothing was going to separate us. There might have been a broken bond between her mother and I, but certainly not between us (or my son).
Whatever you have to do to maintain the relationship with your kids, DO IT! It’s worth every penny wasted on lawyers and the court system. I love my kids and am truly enjoying the time I spend with them.
Life is short. Spend time with your kids or someone else will.
