Laura Kipnes -- Unwanted advances
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Kipnis has at least two goals in this book: (1) She wants to
describe some of the especially outrageous activities that are a
consequence of Title IX; and (2) she wants to propose and suggest
some fixes and solutions.

The fixes are more on a personal level rather than changing the way
institutions and universities have responded to the demands for
protecting students from sexual abuse.  Although I suspect that she
would agree that that protection is in fact needed, her
recommendations go more along the lines of educating and training
young women to protect themselves and to engage in behaviors that
would make it less likely that they be abused.  Recommendations of
this kind are tricky ones to make, because Kipnis knows that she
will be accused of "blaming the victim". Kipnis tries to "square
this circle" by both supporting reasonable action to stop abusers
and recommending wiser and safer behavior by young women.  This
likely will not work to ward off criticism by those who want
absolutely *all* blame placed on the abusers.  But, Kipnis feels
it's worth trying, because to *not* do so is both dangerous to and
infantilizes young women.  In the sense that it teaches college
women that they are not in control of their lives, it sends a
paternalist message that someone else will take care of them, and it
misleads them into thinking that their lives will be made safe for
them with no action on their part.

There is an additional insidious consequence of not teaching young
women that they must take care of themselves and their own safety:
these women will graduate and go on to live and work in a world
where the university can not possibly protect them (even if it could
while they were students).  And, while many of them, in part because
they will be graduates of elite universities, will work and live in
relatively safe environments, that will not be true for all of them.

Kipnis is giving us a picture of a world faced by current college
students that has seen profound changes since I was in college in
the 1960's and early 1970's.  In that earlier period there was more
of an inclination by students them selves to view college
administration and bureaucracy with distrust, as the enemy almost.  I
was, keep in mind, a member of the don't-trust-anyone-over-30
cohort.  But, now, students, especially female students feel they
should be able to expect protection from school administration.
Title IX and our Federal government seems to back them up on this.
In response to this demand, colleges and universities seem to have
taken on tasks and formed departments and organizations and hired on
people.  There are economic costs to doing so, and much of that cost
is likely being passed on to students.  Governments, our Federal
government in particular, have a tendency to solve problems by
creating and enforcing requirements *without* providing the funds to
pay for compliance.

And, much of the book is an account of Kipnis's research into some
particularly dramatic (and outrageous, if you are sympathetic with
the accused abusers) investigations and disciplinary actions by
universities.  This account can be taken, I believe, as an attempt
by Kipnis to motivate us to agree that universities should not be
pursuing these cases, that this should be left in the realm of our
legal system, and, especially, that universities should not be
allowed to use procedures that do not protect the legal rights of
those involved.

In case you believe that this issue has been settled, it's not.  An
opinion piece on the Op-Ed page of the N.Y. Times of 8/4/2017 by
Jon Krakauer and Laura L. Dunn titled "Don't weaken college rape
policies" argues in favor of the use of the "preponderance of
evidence" standard for settling claims against those accused of
rape.  Women need and have a right to expect protection, and it's
argued that the use of the "preponderance of evidence" standard
would give them more protection.  However, that article contains
this confusing statement: "Whenever a student is accused of sexual
assault, university administrators need to render their judgment
with tremendous care, because erroneously determining that a student
is responsible for sexual misconduct can cause lasting harm."  It's
hard for me to imaging how using tremendous care can be consistent
with using the "preponderance of evidence" standard of proof, since
that standard only requires a small likelihood for guilt over
innocence.  Given that disciplinary action, in particular expulsion
from school, is being based on that weak standard of evidence, it
should come as little surprise that accused students have gone to
court to seek redress.  I do not have the legal mind capable of
untangling this issue, so I'll have to leave it to others to do so.
However, it seems clear that young women need protection and that
society and universities and colleges should be taking a variety of
approaches to give them that protection in addition to (or perhaps
instead of) making it easier to successfully accuse an abuser (as
recommended in the N.Y.  Times article mentioned above), including:
education on how to protect oneself, more campus police and
security, better outdoor lighting, etc.

The low bar for conviction required by "preponderance of evidence"
standard is not the only objection that Kipnis makes against
universities.  She also criticises secretive proceedings, not
allowing the accused to have legal counsel during investigations,
and other lack of due process abuses.

One of Kipnis's worries is that society and universities are giving
young women a false sense of security.  They need to be taught and
warned about which situations put them at risk and what to do when
they cannot avoid those situations.  To do so runs counter to the
arguments against "blaming the victim", and so Kipnis worries that
young women will put themselves at risk, because they have been led
to believe that someone or some institution is protecting them.
That behavior is dangerous and it infantilizes women.  Kipnis is
saying, I believe that it adopts a paternalistic attitude toward
women.  This attitude, in effect, says "you are not capable of
taking care of and protecting yourselves; we'll do it for you."

An additional downside of the policing role given to universities
and colleges is that it expands their responsibilities, tasks, and
power.  That comes at an added cost to students, since it means
increased cost to the school for personnel and salaries.  In a time
when student costs for higher education are already outlandishly
burdensome, you would think that we'd want to avoid that.

One insightful form of analysis that Kipnis describes is the use of
storyline-before-evidence.  Kipnis claims, correctly I believe, that
it is a powerful way of arguing if you can first create a storyline
and assign roles within that story to people and afterwards search
for facts that fit and support that story.  Following that strategy
and sequence can be very powerful in assigning responsibility for
actions.  

Although I suppose it makes interesting, entertaining, and
outlandish reading, I thought that Kipnis spent too much time on the
story and persecution of Peter Ludlow.  After reading Kipnis's
account, there is no way for me to know whether this is a outlier or
whether their are many more cases very much like this one.  If it's
a one of a kind, then while I'd agree that it Ludlow received unfair
treatment, there is not much that seems to need to be done.  On the
other hand, if this is a very common occurrence, then it could be
used as part of an argument for having more demanding standards of
evidence and for moving the persecution of accused rapists and
molesters away from university administration and into criminal
courts.  This story (about Peter Ludlow and his accuser) makes good
drama and Kipnis knows how to turn it into fascinating
entertainment, but I wonder how much we should really allow it to
influence our thinking about young women in college and the way they
are being treated, both by their peers and by the institutions they
attend.  If you are inclined to be a bit skeptical about Kipnis's
account of the Ludlow case, you might want to read this article at
Slate.com by Michelle Goldberg titled "She’s Not Like Those Other
Feminists ":
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/05/unwanted_advances_by_laura_kipnis_reviewed.html.

Kipnis's overall motivation in writing this book is to criticize and
reduce the dis-empowerment and infantilization of young women.
Without reducing the protections that young women have a right to
expect from universities and society, Kipnis wants to encourage
young women to learn to take care of themselves.  That certainly is
a good justification for this book and the time we spend reading it.

The later chapters of the book that criticize the risky and unwise
behavior of women with respect to sex and alcohol are certainly
worth reading and thinking about, especially if you have a daughter
or granddaughter who is about to go off to college.  However, I
wonder about how prevalent this behavior is among college age women.
This is not a book based on surveys, research, and statistical data,
so there really is no way for me to tell how many women in college
take these kinds of risk with alcohol and sex.  Here are links to
several articles that might give a little help with that issue:

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/beer-pong-body-shots-keg-stands-alcohol-central-to-college-and-assault/2015/06/14/7430e13c-04bb-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html

- http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/10/sexual_assault_and_drinking_teach_women_the_connection.html.  This article contains links to research and survey articles.

So, there certainly is evidence that the behaviors and the negative
consequences of those behaviors that Kipnis talks about are
prevalent enough and damaging enough to be taken very seriously.

One annoyance that I have with the book is that it seems to be
exclusively about *college* women.  That makes sense because these
are the women and students that Kipnis has experience with.  But I
can't help but think that there are many women in our country who
are treated much worse than those Kipnis discusses and who have no
Title IX bureaucracy to help protect them.

It's an entertaining book, and parts of it are very valuable and
provocative.  It's very much worth reading and thinking about.

And, for a discussion of "Unwanted advances" from a very different
perspective, see the article "I am a knife" in the London Review of
Books", by Jacqueline Rose, 2/22/2018:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/jacqueline-rose/i-am-a-knife

08/06/2017

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