Agreed that the insinuation about the 'drink' is irresponsible and borderline idiotic. (The writer also seems to believe that the word 'exotic' in the stockphrase "exotic dancer" has something to do with ethnicity.)

But how can you disagree with this: "The scenario is one of privileged males proving their manhood by staging live porno shows for one another"? Sorry, Bradley, but that's what happened. No entity on a college campus should be hiring strippers (which is not however to say that they should be disciplined for it). It's a sign of immaturity, and no I'm not kidding.

I don't think this quite touches on the larger question of pornography -- at least I hope it doesn't, cause I didn't mean it to. The point is that moral opprobrium toward the Duke lacrosse team is the only decent posture for an adult to take.

Standing Eagle
 

SE,

For what it's worth, the lacrosse players weren't on campus. And in any case, far as I know, it's a legal activity. Obviously, on campus, it's a different matter, but....

Moral opprobrium for the Duke lacrosse team is the only decent posture? Well, if you think it's inherently wrong to hire strippers, then sure. But I can think of lots of other ways to think about these men: immature, horny, confused, macho, growing up, and so on. Seems to me that "moral opprobrium" is the least useful way to look at the situation, though it may be the most satisfying. And, hey, if you feel that way about the people who hire strippers, how do you feel about the drug-taking, single-mom who strips?

IMHO, it's complicated.
 

As usual, you don't notice where we agree, and you then add something that I have to respond to because it's so tone-deaf and obnoxious.

Immaturity is also the word *I* used to describe the lacrosse players. Whether opprobrium is 'useful' I don't know; I don't feel a fiduciary responsibility toward them so I don't know what kind of usefulness you mean.

I think I probably do think hiring strippers, especially under the table where they have no licensing from government (as a club would), so I guess that's where I'm coming from. So we disagree only about how prominently one might mention one's moral judgment in an exchange about what turned out to be unsubstantiated charges of assault. There's some small danger of lionizing these men because they were innocent of a crime; but what they were doing was still sucky.

--Now, as to How should one feel about the drug-taking single mom who strips? How about "concerned"? How about "dismayed"? How about "What kind of drugs, and how dangerous, and how expensive?"? How about "Why mention the drugs which are irrelevant to the question of sex-work itself?"? How about "Yes, class tends to cause us to lump concepts together in this society, so that we assume a single mom of straitened means is irresponsible and would take drugs when the opposite is more likely"? How about "Don't be a jerk"?

Let us judge not the lacrosse players, lest we be judged (my initial post was perhaps overcompensating in that direction, in reaction to what I see as overcompensation after their vindication on the assault charge); but certainly and even MORE let us judge not categories of poor people desperate for a buck, not negligent, and harming no one.

Is that simple-minded? You'll probably think so. But it's decent.

Standing Eagle
 

Oops, looks like I left out the phrase "is wrong" in the first sentence of my second paragraph.

On another note, it's becoming clear that I should get my own damn blog. Wot?

SE
 

i have to say, richard, that while i agree with many of your sentiments about this horrific incident, you completely lost your footing in your commentary in you when you mocked, "(Cups of a drink. I love it.)"

while you know i adore you in person, you've now several times protested about time where women have (possibly) been sexually assaulted.

disagreeing is one thing, derision is another.
 

Alyssa,

I'm not deriding the seriousness of these issues; I'm scornful of the sloppy thinking inherent in this woman's writing. There's been a lot written about the Duke case, but nothing (at least that I've seen) has yet suggested that anyone slipped the alleged victim a date rape drug. Her use of "evidence" would be funny if it weren't so irresponsible. Truth is, this article does no help to women who have been victims in such situations. Nor do highly dubious statistics that overstate the prevalence of rape and attempted rape.

This is a very serious problem, and there's no need for "scholars" to inflate numbers or make up situations for it to be taken seriously. We don't do anyone any favors by allowing this kind of nonsense thinking and writing to go unchallenged.
 

Standing Eagle,

Yes, we agree on immaturity. But how can you say these guys were "overcompensated" after being cleared? Why don't you try living through months of national publicity as an accused rapist, then two weeks of, oh, well, maybe it was wrong, but they're still bad guys, and see if you still think they were overcompensated?

Amazing, the double standard here. If a woman was accused of a serious crime without a shred of evidence, but it was assumed because of her gender and background that she was likely to be guilty, there'd be outrage. Why not here?
 

and see, here we are again: "Nor do highly dubious statistics that overstate the prevalence of rape and attempted rape."

why don't you believe the 1 in four stat? and what is your definition of attempted rape?
 

Grumpy girl, that's the point. If you want to define attempted rape so loosely that it's meaning is divorced from reality, then sure, you can probably get to a 1 in 4 ratio. And then "scholars" trot out absurdly high ratios in support of their points, without bothering to explain the loaded language that lets them come up with the high ratios in the 1st place.
 

and again, i ask for the definition of "attempted" rape. because i think it's a whole lot wider than the people disagreeing with the stat believe.

and, additionally, would you accept the substitution of "sexually assaulted"? would that let you believe the stat?
 

The "drink" here was an ugly, and all too typical, brew of class, race and sexual poison. Both the men and the woman deserve opprobrium. The question is whether we should expect more of one or the other. The woman, I don't know. She "chose" to do what she was doing, so I guess she's "responsible", right? But what should we expect of her, given her background? And the young men? Raised in affluent homes, bred to be aggressive and cocky, not a care in the world -- did they get more than they "deserved"? Were they just doing what we expect all young men to do when they're young -- act the fool? Or was something worse going on? It all begins to sound like theater, whether tragedy or comedy I'm not certain. The more interesting question is: who's writing the play?
 

You protest too much, Richard, in your preoccupation with this story and your tendency to take every benefit of every doubt on behalf of the male students and to make assumptions about women that flow in the opposite direction. For instance, you ridicule the writer for what you claim is her implicaton that "the Duke students wanted to hire black strippers because racial dominance was a part of their sexual fantasy." But, in what you quote at any rate, she says nothing of the kind. So where is the bit about racial dominance and sexual fantasy coming from??? YOU is the answer. That is YOUR interpretation. You reveal more about yourself in this analysis than you do of either the case at Duke or the feminist you are criticizing for her overzealousness.
 

I was a little unclear about the overcompensation -- what I meant was overcompensation in general toward the category of immature obnoxious young men who don't commit sex crimes. They don't deserve to be vindicated across the board.

I didn't mean to say that these students themselves had been personally overcompensated. What happened to them in legal terms, defamation-wise, due to this corrupt DA, is tragic.

Standing Eagle

PS. I agree with many of the above posts about Richard's tone-deafness.
 

And, Richard, you chose to overlook the despicable email from one of the players that describes his fantasy (and which he later claimed was simply "a joke")--must be inconvenient to your laissez-faire attitude toward the team
 

He was right about her not having balls, though.
 

Yup, you've got me all right: I care about justice, regardless of skin color.
 

As for the e-mail, I think that's a complicated issue, which is why I didn't get into it—it's a longer conversation. As you probably know but don't mention, the writer of that e-mail explained that he was making a joking reference to Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho...which is something that could either be very disturbing or more innocuous than a literal reading of the e-mail would indicate. I think it's probably a combination; knowing the reference doesn't completely exonerate the player, but it certainly does put the actual text in a different light. I myself could not read the book, American Psycho—picked it up once,started it, got too grossed out to continue—but I've seen the film and there's certainly a credible argument for it as a satire of the money culture.

So the e-mail—if you're going to consider it fairly, which you don't—is a long conversation, and that's why I didn't get into it.
 

We now have your equally idiotic assertions that rape victims are damaged by the "sloppy thinking" of a feminist critic. Hence you tell us: "Truth is, this article does no help to women who have been victims in such situations. Nor do highly dubious statistics that overstate the prevalence of rape and attempted rape. " Guess what? The statistics and the article are basically both irrelevant to rape victims who will spend their lifetimes dealing with a personal tragedy and trauma that your flabby thinking and blathering are completely unimportant to. Do you have ANY IDEA what such a horrific experience entails by way of consequences? Doubtful or you wouldn't say the things you do. What I would like to see you say---since I admire you and your blog most of the time---is something that reflects real sympathy or concern for those who have suffered such violence. We are in complete agreement that bogus accusations against innocent people are terrible and damaging too.
 

Anonymous, you're making assumptions about me and, thanks to the tone of your post, I'm making assumptions about you. Let's both be careful, eh?

I am talking about a specific case—what happened at Duke. And I'm trying to limit my discussion to that case because I think bringing in personal circumstances, external events, politics and so on is irrelevant and often inflammatory and generally not helpful to understanding what actually happened. It provokes statements like, I'd like to see you express some sympathy for rape victims. Well, there are no rape victims in the Duke case, and that is the only thing I'm talking about here.....

Oh, and by the way, anonymous: I don't see how it's so crazy to say that false accusations of rape, whether by a stripper or a writer, are not harmful to real rape victims. As we all know, many women in such situations find it enormously and understandably difficult to come forward and talk about their experiences. One reason: They're afraid that people won't believe them. False accusations of rape can promote skepticism of rape claims even when those claims are valid. That's not "idiotic" thinking; it may be banal and obvious, but it's self-evidently true.
 

and yet once again, i am asking for YOUR definition of "attempted rape" by those who doubt the stats.

why won't any of you explain this?
 

Oh! This changes things a bit:

"I am talking about a specific case—what happened at Duke."


Your reference above to the drug-taking single mom who strips made it sound like a category rather than an individual. I think you were unclear but in any case I retract my paragraph about class-baiting.

Unlike the writer above who asks What can we expect of such a person given her background?, I'm not hesitant to say that we expect her not to make defamatory accusations. This individual is to blame on that one, game, set, match, upbringing notwithstanding.

The particular case is truly so cut and dried, with all the blame for the brouhaha necessarily accruing to the false accuser, that I assumed, Richard, that you were trying to talk about the categories. The case itself is relatively uninteresting, albeit tragic, because it turned out to be so simple. (One wishes the grand jury had done a better job stifling the election-oriented DA.)

The question of how rape accusers and poor people are treated in public discourse remains an interesting one. But it shouldn't have been raised by this post. I blame overzealous commenters like myself.

Standing Eagle
 

Standing Eagle,

We're pretty much in agreement here. I think that's an interesting and important discussion as well...more tk.

Richard
 

Last one on this subject---the problem I see in what you say about the Duke case is that you generalize like crazy on and about it, make assumptions, THEN are in a lather about the assumptions of others. You invited, for example, people to speculate about single moms who strip. Not about A SINGLE MOM who did. Of course you are writing about the case as an emblem of larger issues---you have done so all the way along. Just own up to it---and let others conclude what they will about your comments. It is part of the exchange you have initiated.
 

Small thing:

"If a woman was accused of a serious crime without a shred of evidence, but it was assumed because of her gender and background that she was likely to be guilty, there'd be outrage. Why not here?"

You miss the fact that the lacrosse players were not just accused but INDICTED. There must have been shreds of evidence for that to happen -- although there were also large hunks of evidence withheld from the grand jury. Getting an indictment tells society at large that there's at least SOME likelihood that the accused will turn out to be guilty (which is not however to excuse media excess, sensationalism, etc.).

So yes, I AM outraged: but not at feminists: at D.A. Nifong! His sole job is to cull legitimate accusations from illegitimate ones, and he failed spectacularly and on purpose.

Plenty of outrage is called for these days, and really wherever there is democracy and public trust formally vested in officials. But the outrage should amost never be toward categories. It goes toward individuals!

This is the same distinction as that between outrage at the current government and pseudo-outrage toward 'politicians,' or 'the system,' or some chimera, of the sort that got Ralph Nader some crazy number of votes in Florida in 2000. Members of this administration are MORALLY and legally culpable, and platitudes about 'lessons learned' cannot stand in for legal accountability for their failings.

Based on what I've read about withheld evidence, I for one hope Nifong goes to jail.

Standing Eagle

PS. A rant:
Most problems are not systemic but result from *people* doing the wrong thing or being negligent. Lack of corrective action might be a systemic problem, if there are mechanisms of correction missing or ill-designed -- but given our Constitution and its history it makes more sense to conclude in the current federal scenario that Republican Congressmen are to blame, not the division of powers itself which is DESIGNED to check presidential excesses, and has worked so well on so many occasions.

Our society has way too many fingers pointed at systemic and discursive problems (for example, in the Duke post-mortem, whatever the current lingo for that straw man 'political correctness' is), in cases where it's individuals that are truly to blame.
 

It occurs to me to remark that "The Thin Blue Line" is a phenomenal and important movie. But it falls short in not getting the D.A. himself on camera.

Standing Eagle
A HUGE Fan of Errol Morris
 

I live in Durham, I work at Duke and I have a daughter who attends the same school as that stripper. I'm kind of amused by y'all's speculation and debate here. If you ask me, there's blame enough to spread all around, like a chunky P&J on a fat slice of sourdough. Nifong got himself in deep trying to score some political points with us dark folk. The stripper is what she is, and it starts with a H. And those boys on the lacrosse team, well, if you want to know what I think, they shouldn't be down here, because that ain't a game that makes any sense below the mason dixon line anyway, and when they get home their mamas ought to spank their behinds red like lobster. And as for all these thinkers on here, why don't you leave the blogger alone and save your brain cells for something important, like Iran and Iraq.
 

Agreed about Iraq, and about the lobsters.

At Harvard we tend to think the word you mention starts with a W. But that's just because we wear scarlet H's on our chests all the time.

Standing Eagle
 

a: calling the woman a whore, or a ho, well, that's just vile and frankly makes me disresepct all of your opinions. whores and hos are derogatory statements.

and yes once again, i'm finding it terribly curious that not ONE person here debating the one in 4 stat will explain to me their reasoning.

perhaps thinking about a night where you were sexually aggressive as a night you bordered on sexual assault makes your stomach turn? just a thought. (and that's is directed at nobody in particular)
 

Alyssa,

I don't love the "whore" language either, but it does appear to be factually true (though not at the Duke party).

Also, I'd be careful with your implication—I think that's out of line. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not proposing a statistic because a) I'm not qualified to do that, and b) even to ponder it would take a fair amount of time, which I don't have at the moment. But it doesn't mean that I"m thinking back to a night where I was sexually aggressive; it just means that if you don't have real certainty about such numbers, volunteering them isn't useful.
 

Grumpy Girl,

There are only two people who expressed any doubt about that number, and one of them is Richard.

Why not point the finger at him only, instead of diffusing your frustration by addressing it to the audience generally? You're implying that a lot of people dispute those numbers, when really it's just Richard and one other random person who may not even be around.

Richard? Why question the one-in-four attempted sexual-assault number? For me, I've had far too many acquaintances in various scenarios turn out to be victims to believe it false.

Also, what difference does it make? One in forty is FAR too many for a society worth the name. It's a real issue. My idea: release all drug offenders except the real dealers, and lock up all the sexual assailants. Get good convictions, where possible, at any expense. Throw away the latters' keys. (Enough of them will be affluent enough that politicians will become obliged to improve prison conditions across the boaard.)

Standing Eagle
 

Richard,

Why did you ignore the part where she said very clearly that she wasn't addressing that last part at you?

On the other hand, yes, I think it's overheated rhetoric on her part.

Standing "GOD, my opinions are FASCINATING" Eagle
 

Listen y'all, H stands for hooker in my book, so don't be correcting my spelling Mr. Professor. And as for you grumpy girl, where I come from anyone who goes over to some house they don't know and shakes their bare behind for a bunch of whooping and hollering college boys is as good as a hooker. When's the last time you did that?
 

I questioned the one-in-four number because it seemed high, I've heard it kicked around before in political arguments about rape, and it's often used but very rarely attributed. So I looked it up and found that the social science behind it isn't very convincing.

I ignored GG's suggestion that she was speaking generally and not about me because I was one of the people who questioned that statistic, and so I wanted to speak to her point.
 

hooker, ho, and whore are all derogatory.

prostitute is not. big difference.

and again, my question hasn't been answered. wasn't directed at you, richard, i made that clear. if i thought that of you i wouldn't be your friend and i would tell you that to your face. but i do think there are other people who feel as i inferred.

bhut you, richard, are not answering my question. you asked me what i defined as attempted rape, yet you're not doing the same.
 

Hey, Durham, it's a (self-denigrating) joke! J is for joke. H is for Harvard, or, if you regard us as intellectual prostitutes, for Ho; as in, Ho-Oops Prize.

W of course is a letter we despise for other, much less self-serving reasons.

Not H, W.

See? Joke.

Standing Eagle


--reminded of the joke about the southern woman who visits campus and asks where the library's at. Professor says, At Harvard we do not end sentences with prepositions. Lady says, okay, Where's the library at, asshole?

Oldie but a goodie.
 

Prostitute not derogatory? Hey grumpy, call me a prostitute to my face and see what happens. Sometimes you really do gotta call a spade a spade.
 

I honestly quit reading the posts about half-way down, because it's scary to see how many people argue with your take. This article was ridiculous, laugh-her-out-of-the-house rubbish. EXCELLENT CALL and deconstruction.

PS Please do get your own blog, Standing Eagle, if you can't limit your comments a little better.
 

Yes: ONW. See Strunk & White.