CONSISTENCY: MSNBC 2011: Delusional Tea Party Could Become Violent; MSNBC 2014: Arson, Looting ‘Not Necessarily Violence’.
TWINS STUDY: Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence.
A large sample of Swedish twins (N = 10,500) was used to investigate the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence and performance on three musical auditory discrimination tasks (rhythm, melody and pitch). . . . Genetic modelling showed that the covariation between the variables could be explained by shared genetic influences. Neither shared, nor non-shared environment had a significant effect on the associations. . . .
The results suggest that positive correlations among musical aptitudes result from both genes with broad effects on cognition, and genes with potentially more specific influences on auditory functions.
It seems, then, that introducing or expanding a music program in a school doesn’t mean that the existing students will become better at calculus.
DON’T LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY of the preferred narrative.
Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake. . . .
It is no accident that the article came out, and it became apparent almost immediately that there were very tangible things we needed to discuss.
Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth.
Julia Horowitz is an assistant managing editor at The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s student newspaper.
Earlier: Facts don’t matter. Only the narrative does. “While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light.”
CRY WOLF: Before Rolling Stone Was Conned By “Jackie” They Fell for “Billy”. Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone don’t have a good track record. It makes you wonder whether you can believe their other stories.
TOOLS: Boston Protesters Tell White Allies to Get Up Front – Face Police Line. “It happened in Ferguson too.” Don’t forget Toronto:
“Stand behind black folks or between us and the police,” the rules stated.
Though whites and those of other races were told their presence was not only unimportant but should be ignored at all costs, it was deemed incumbent upon them to jump in at the first sign of any potential danger.
Don Geer says his son had his hands raised for about a half an hour and lowered them slightly. He says as his son’s elbows fell in alignment with his shoulders, but hands still in air, that’s when he heard the shot.
Don Geer says he watched his son grab his side, where he’d been hit, and use his other hand to close the door. Don Geer said he wanted to help, but police ‘herded him like cattle’ away from the scene. He said he was in shock, but assumed police would administer medical attention. They did not, his son “bled out,” Don Geer said.
More than an hour later, after a tank arrived and rolled toward John Geer’s front door, heavily armed officers wearing camouflage went in the door and found John Geer dead.
Oh, so the story also involves an actual use of militarized police. Just the sort of thing the folks at Reason would want to talk about, except they haven’t in the year since it occurred. Not sexy enough, I guess.
How about that earlier case involving an unarmed eighteen-year-old white man shot and killed by a black police officer? I guess Reason missed that one, too.
HMM: Saudi-born US naval engineer allegedly gave undercover agent info on how to sink carrier.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia say that during his conversations with the undercover, Awwad arranged to use a dead-drop location along a secluded hiking trail to pass secrets about the Ford, which is being built in Virginia for delivery to the Navy in 2016. . . .
At the Oct. 9 meeting Awwad asked for $1,500 to buy a tiny camera to enable him to photograph restricted material around the shipyard, according to the affidavit.
On Oct. 23, Awwad retrieved $3,000 in cash left at the dead-drop location. He left behind a container with an external hard drive and two passport photos. The FBI later collected the containers.
The day after Thanksgiving Awwad was observed in his Navy office holding what appeared to be aircraft design schematics which he placed on the floor and photographed.
MORE, PLEASE: Incoming president of Massachusetts Senate, 65, under fire after his partner, 27, posts tweets mocking local politicians and bragging about his influence. “Bryon Hefner, who began dating the Senator when he was just 21 after he interned for him [Not that there’s anything wrong with that!], has reportedly taken to social media to brag about the influence he now has thanks to his other half.”
STUDY: The Role of Social Networks in the Recruitment of Youth in an Islamist Organization in Pakistan. Here is the abstract: “Drawing on data from 40 qualitative interviews, this article examines how young people are connected with one influential Islamist student organization in Pakistan. It provides deeper insight into the micro-level mechanisms and processes by which new members are approached and drawn closer to the particular organization. Findings reveal that young people who joined this organization did not necessarily do so because of their ideological affinity, political or social grievances or because of macro-level events occurring in the national or global arena, such as the U.S.-led war on terror. Rather, they predominantly ended up in the organization because of their friends and acquaintances who were activists in the organization.”
CRY WOLF: Student Fakes a Rape Threat to Advance Diversity Initiatives. “I made the wrong decision after being harassed about the problems I have tried to discuss not being real and wanted to show you all they are real.” Yes, show they’re real by posting a comment and acting like it was someone else making a threat, because fake things are real.
Also: “Someone felt they had to show something extreme to get people to care. Think about that. This is not a justification. But think about what the weight of apathy can force people to do.” I’m pretty sure that claiming someone was “force[d]” to do something is, in fact, a justication. Saying “this is not a justification” doesn’t change that.
BUYING A NEW ELECTORATE: Jeff Sessions: Obama Is Giving Cash Benefits to Illegal Immigrants.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) seized on a White House admission that beneficiaries of President Obama’s immigration orders will receive tax credits, a sign that the orders amount to more than an exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
“This is yet one more illustration of the enormous cost inflicted by the President’s illegal action,” Sessions told National Review Online in a statement. “He has now launched a new $100 million facility and staffing operation to provide illegal immigrants with the exact benefits rejected by Congress – including work permits, Social Security and Medicare. These credits will cost American taxpayers billions every year and represent an enormous cash transfer from American workers to lower-wage illegal workers. These tax credits are not refunds, but a direct cash payment from the Treasury to illegal immigrants – at a time when the Treasury is running huge deficits.”
A LIST OF WHOM TO IGNORE: People In The Mainstream Media Who Used The UVA Rape Hoax To Push A False Narrative.
The above group of people, many of them journalists in publications you read every week, absolutely did not care that due process or the most basic of journalistic fact checking wasn’t used to essentially convict a fraternity for rape, one that we now know did not occur. As you can see from the broad range of outlets represented, the corruption of American media is extensive. Trust nothing and verify everything.
Feel free to share the journalists I missed in the comments below.
GEE, I WONDER WHY this alleged college gang rape isn’t getting much attention.
While Termaine Scott, Jahmel Latimer and Darius Singleton have made $50,000 bail, the remaining two defendants, Garrett Collick, of Paterson, and Noah Williams, of Camden, remain in jail. . . .
The alleged gang rape of the female student occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 25 at a suite in Overlook South, a freshman co-ed dormitory housing 443 students.
The defendants knew each other from the Educational Opportunity Fund Program, which offers low-income students financial aid, college preparatory classes and counseling.
UPDATE: Steve Sailer already called attention to this case, along with two others: “For some reason, these three cases aren’t getting ten percent of the publicity of the Virginia case (although the police don’t yet seem to be treating it as a case). I wonder why …”
JEFF SESSIONS: New DHS Statistics Reveal Admin Misconduct on Gross Scale.
Despite a massive rush on the border, deportations have continued their steady and dramatic decline. Interior deportations have fallen 23 percent since last year alone, and have been halved since 2011—when then-ICE Director Morton issued the so-called Morton Memos exempting almost all illegal immigrants from enforcement and removal operations.
The effective result of the Administration’s non-enforcement policy is that anyone in the world who manages to get into the interior of the United States—by any means, including overstaying a visa—is free to live, work, and claim benefits in the United States at Americans’ expense. Again: this is the result of lawless orders issued by this Administration.
Related: Number of immigrants deported from U.S. dropped sharply in last year.
FACTS DON’T MATTER. Only the narrative does:
- “The overall process was more important than the verdict itself because it brought a lot of attention to the issue.” Except the verdict extracted six figures from a young man who didn’t do what you claimed he did.
- “While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light.” Last time I checked, a series of falsehoods doesn’t amount to a truth.
- “We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to the broader problems that we still face as a nation.” If people distrust authorities because of improprieties, is it too much to ask that we talk about actual instances of misconduct as opposed to made-up ones?
Related: Bret Stephens: UVA, Ferguson and Media Failure: Narratives and allegations are not facts, despite what the media would have us believe. [$] Also discussed: Amorita Randall’s false rape claim (peddled by the NYT in 2007) against men in the U.S. Navy, and Crystal Mangum’s false rape claim against Duke lacrosse players in 2006.
THE PROGRESSION of cultural collapse. “Take a look at number 7: Natives becoming marginalized in their own country. Then see this: New Sweden: School leader urges parents to follow children to school after series of attacks in Muslim dominated area. It looks like in Sweden, the process of marginalizing natives is well under way. There’s no indication that the authorities will do anything to protect Swedish children from being attacked on their way to school. We already know about the “no go” areas for police and firemen in certain Swedish cities. Same thing there: rather than do anything, they just declare an area off-limits.”
LEGAL KIDNAPPING: This Mom Checked Her Newborn Out of the Hospital Early, The Next Day Her Baby Was Taken Away.
Tiffany Langwell was thrilled to find out she was pregnant again at the age of 38. She had two children from her first marriage — a 15-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. After separating from their father, she had reconnected with a high school boyfriend, David Hodek, and they had gotten engaged. In August of this year, their baby girl was born healthy, at 8 pounds, with bright blue eyes and a full head of downy hair. Langwell and Hodek had what they describe as a blissful first night home.
The next day, a representative of the child welfare agency in Riverside County, California, took the infant into protective custody.
Wait. Hold on.
She had two children from her first marriage — a 15-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. After separating from their father, she had reconnected with a high school boyfriend, David Hodek, and they had gotten engaged.
So she took two children from their father so she could hook up with her high-school sweetheart?
If her husband had left her, or if he had abused her, that information would have made it into the article so we could sympathize with her more. But no, she separated from him, period. This means that she left without cause.
And now she’s getting worked up over someone taking her child? Welcome to the club, sister.
THE MEN GIVING UP ON WOMEN and checking out of society. “Cruelly derided as man-children and crybabies for objecting to absurdly unfair conditions in college, bars, clubs and beyond, men are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: ridiculed as basement-dwellers for avoiding aggressive, demanding women with unrealistic expectations, or called rapists and misogynists merely for expressing sexual interest.”
SOUNDS LIKE THE MEETING WENT WELL: Ferguson Activist Who Met With Obama in White House Now Calling for Mob Action. “TIME TO SHUT IT DOWN….EVERY THING MUST BE SHUT DOWN…BACK TO THE STREETS.”
I CAN TOLERATE ANYTHING Except The Outgroup.
Today we have an almost unprecedented situation.
We have a lot of people . . . boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine . . .
And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups – straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American, whatever . . .
What is going on here? . . .
The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, . . .
The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, . . .
You can talk all you want about Islamophobia, but my friend’s “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful people” – her name for the Blue Tribe – can’t get together enough energy to really hate Osama, let alone Muslims in general. We understand that what he did was bad, but it didn’t anger us personally. When he died, we were able to very rationally apply our better nature and our Far Mode beliefs about how it’s never right to be happy about anyone else’s death.
On the other hand, that same group absolutely loathed Thatcher. Most of us (though not all) can agree, if the question is posed explicitly, that Osama was a worse person than Thatcher. But in terms of actual gut feeling? Osama provokes a snap judgment of “flawed human being”, Thatcher a snap judgment of “scum”. . . .
My hypothesis, stated plainly, is that if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists – it’s the Red Tribe.
CHRIS ROCK on stand-up at colleges.
I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.
In their political views?
Not in their political views—not like they’re voting Republican—but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.
When did you start to notice this?
About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.
I think Rock misidentifies the problem. Let’s take it one point at a time: (more…)
MARK PERRY: Top 400 taxpayers paid almost as much in federal income taxes in 2010 as the entire bottom 50%. “A small group of 400 of America’s most successful earners in 2010, about the number of residents living in a typical apartment building in Washington, D.C., paid almost as much in federal income taxes as the entire bottom half of America’s 135 million tax filers, which is a population equivalent to the combined number of residents living in America’s 29 least populated states, plus the District of Columbia. What makes this disparity possible is the fact that 41% of individual income tax returns filed in 2010 had a zero or negative tax liability, according to The Tax Foundation. And a recent CBO study (featured on CD here) found that the entire bottom 60% of American households are ‘net recipient households’ and received more in government transfers than they paid in federal taxes in 2011.”
QUESTIONABLE: Is the Rolling Stone Story True?
The article alleges a truly horrifying gang rape at a UVA fraternity, and it has understandably shocked the campus and everyone who’s read it. The consequences have been pretty much instantaneous: The fraternity involved has voluntarily suspended its operations (without admitting that the incident happened); UVA’s president is promising an investigation and has since suspended all fraternity charters on campus; the alumni are in an uproar; the governor of Virginia has spoken out; students, particularly female students, are furious, and the concept of “rape culture” is further established. Federal intervention is sure to follow.
The only thing is…I’m not sure that I believe it. I’m not convinced that this gang rape actually happened. Something about this story doesn’t feel right.
Here’s why.
There are useful comments over at Steve Sailer’s post about this. One points to a Reddit thread wherein a commenter points out that the fraternity in question doesn’t do fall rush, which calls into question the timing of the story:
1) Phi Psi doesn’t do fall rush. There would be no pledges at the time the rape took place; every Phi Psi pledge would’ve been initiated the previous May. The idea that an entire fraternity spent a semester incrementally desensitizing its pledges in order to force them to gang rape a first year seems highly unlikely. The idea that a fraternity of 60 or so men being ok with (implicitly or explicitly) gang rape seems even more unlikely.
2) Even if Phi Psi did take a fall class, bid day in Fall 2012 was September 22. The story allegedly happened on September 28. The very first pledge event was a gang rape during a party a week after being offered a bid? The brotherhood barely knows you (and you barely know them) at that point, but they’re going to ask you to commit a felony and not say anything? Somehow, I don’t think so.
IF I HAD A SON: St. Louis: Motorist beaten to death by several juveniles with hammers; 2 teens held.
UPDATE: “If I Had A Son” status confirmed: “St. Louis police Chief Sam Dotson spoke with residents at the street protest Sunday night. He said he was sorry about what happened and sought to reassure people the killing did not appear motivated by race or ethnicity.” The “non-racist motive” line is always trotted out immediately when the alleged perpetrators are black.
MIKE ADAMS on the decline of Campus Crusade.
UNARMED 18-YEAR-OLD SHOT DEAD by police officer, national press yawns because the races are wrong. “Critics also note there has been no rioting or sustained protest in Mobile, even though the slightly built Collar, unlike Brown, never touched the officer and, because he was naked when he was shot, was more obviously unarmed.” He was armed with his white privilege, obviously.
SUCKERS: U.S. CEOs threaten to pull tacit Obamacare support over ‘wellness’ spat.
Major U.S. corporations have broadly supported President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform despite concerns over several of its elements, largely because it included provisions encouraging the wellness programs.
The programs aim to control healthcare costs by reducing smoking, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors that can lead to expensive illnesses. A bipartisan provision in the 2010 healthcare reform law allows employers to reward workers who participate and penalize those who don’t.
But recent lawsuits filed by the administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), challenging the programs at Honeywell International and two smaller companies, have thrown the future of that part of Obamacare into doubt.
DOG BITES MAN: Leftist Media Failed Again in the Brown Case. “When the left’s racial narrative gradually falls apart, just as it did during the Martin case, they retreat to claims of an unfair process or they claim that someone is a liar based on their own faulty BS detector. The more obvious explanation is the one the left, with few exceptions, refuses to contemplate, i.e. this was never the test case they wanted it to be.”
This sounds like a good idea. They can start with these suras.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Short rest between strength-training sets can result in more muscle for men in their sixties.
The researchers got their subjects to do four weeks of strength training first so that they became accustomed to this form of exercise. Then they divided the men into two groups.
All 22 men trained three times a week, and during each workout they trained all big muscle groups in the body, doing 4-6 basic exercises including leg-presses, bench-presses, dumbbell-stepups, Romanian deadlifts, lat-rows and lat-pulldowns. All of the men did 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps for each exercise.
One group rested for 1 minute between sets, the other for 4 minutes.
In the eight weeks that the experiment lasted the men who rested for 1 minute between sets built up more muscle mass than the men in the other group.
UPDATE: SuppVersity covered the study.
SAY YOU’RE A HOMOSEXUAL, GET ASYLUM: Gay Russians Seeking Asylum In The US On The Rise.
UPDATE: There is some useful commentary here. “The article does mention that lobbying efforts are underway at the US State Department to get Russian gays and lesbians designated as a refugee class which would mean we would go fetch them and bring them to the US rather than the present situation where they must get themselves here and apply for asylum. If they were refugees chosen abroad, they would get all sorts of social services right off the bat.”
Earlier: Villanova law students help one of the first gay Russians receive asylum, more on the way.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: The reintroduction of slavery into modern Britain.
This report makes it clear that 13,000 slaves in modern Britain must be an underestimate. When I was born there were no slaves in Britain – but fifty years of dominant and accelerating Leftism have succeeded in re-establishing slavery – as a permanent feature.
The newspaper report also makes it clear that slavery is here to stay – because the government is more concerned about the ‘sensitivity’ of the data (i.e. not mentioning that these new slave holders are recent migrants and immigrants) than actually abolishing slavery.
The whole tone of the report makes it clear that eradicating slavery is a long-term, bureaucratic ‘project’ of the type which is guaranteed not to solve the problem – but instead feed-off the problem: to create and entrench a bureaucracy which ‘addresses’ ‘issues around’ slavery.
Here’s the article being discussed: Theresa May says tens of thousands held as modern slaves in Britain.
RACIAL AGITATION AS POLICY: St. Louis Public School Lesson Plan on Ferguson and “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown.
MATH IS HARD if you’re journalist James Rush of The Independent (UK).
Figures from the Bureau of Justice reveal the startling statistic that the number of black or African American victims of homicide was almost 15 per cent higher than the number of white victims.
While the total number of black or African American victims of homicide stood at 7,380 in 2011 – a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 – the total number of white homicide victims stood at 6,803, a rate of 2.8 per 100,000 residents.
A glance should show that 7,380 is not even ten percent higher than 6,803, let alone fifteen percent higher as the author claims. And this is the first claim regarding statistics in his article, which is titled “Ferguson riots: Nine charts which show what life is like if you’re black in America.” Is there any reason to read further?
This is more helpful: Black And White Homicide Rates: Who’s Killing Whom? “More Blacks kill Whites than the reverse, which strangely is exactly what you don’t hear on TV.”
SOME THOUGHTS ON Marriage and the Black Family. “Despite the determined pursuit of marital unions by freed people, enduring patterns of non-normative male-female relationships had been created by the devastating experience of slavery. These bore bitter fruit in the 25-percent out-of-wedlock birthrate that prompted the Moynihan Report in 1965.”
When in doubt, blame slavery. But the rate of illegitimate births among blacks was lower in the early twentieth century than it was at the time of the Moynihan Report, which in turn was lower than it was decades later. (See the Hoover Institution publication, African American Marriage Patterns, page 102 [PDF page 8]. The rate in 1940 was 17%, and in 1995 rate was 70%.)
Anyway, later in the essay, the author suggests what not to do: signal a return to traditional marriage.
Traditional marriage, though in theory based on the complementarity of man and woman, often resulted in profoundly unfair treatment of women and even in a fundamental devaluation of our worth relative to men. This model also frequently led to extremely unjust treatment and marginalization of gays and lesbians. This includes discrimination in work settings, unfair property laws, and a lack of recognition of the longing of all people for deep emotional connections. We must send the message that we will not return to those bad old days.
Yes, those bad old days of 17% illegitimacy among blacks. Those bad old days when most black children had (presumably) biological fathers in the home. Let’s not go back to that. Better to replace fathers with the welfare state and maintain the status quo of no-fault divorce while expressing worry over the “definition of marriage.”
UPDATE: Related thoughts here: “It’s just political correctness to blame ‘slavery’ for something that was clearly caused by feminism (you don’t need a man to raise a child) and the introduction of massive welfare programs that pay women to have babies out of wedlock.”
BRITISH BARBER: ‘All women should be banned from barber shops’.
For his unapologetic stance – which he insists isn’t anti-woman but pro-man – Johnny has received death threats, having previously had his shop vandalised and even soiled tampons posted through his door.
Yet despite all this – and perhaps in part even because of it – his men-only door policy has been a soar-away success with his punters, who daily queue around the block at both branches for a £24 trim.
Inside, customers are free to enjoy “ male banter”, plus there’s a bar, poker, cigars and his stylish sidekicks called the Scoundrels, who look like tattooed extras from Boardwalk Empire who’ve been on the bourbon.
CULTURAL ENRICHNENT: UK: Thirteen Somali men convicted of running Bristol sex ring that targeted vulnerable British girls as young as 13. “The victims were passed around the gang’s friends for as little as £30 or ‘rewarded’ with alcohol, drugs or gifts to perform sex acts on older men in a horrifying catalogue of abuse with echoes of cases already effecting Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and several other areas across England.”
STUDY: Low level drinking in pregnancy not associated with higher risk of poor birth outcomes. “’While this study and others finds no evidence of harm from low to moderate alcohol consumption, more research is needed to investigate this contradiction,’ said senior author Michael B. Bracken . . . ‘Our findings also demonstrate alcohol exposure is most prevalent in the first month of gestation, which is typically prior to pregnancy recognition, and a period of early fetal development. Whether these associations of reduced risk are due to healthier lifestyles of women consuming low to moderate alcohol and especially wine cannot be fully ruled out.’”
GERMANY: Coalition Talks Yield Plan for Gender Quota. “Negotiators working to form a new German goverment coalition agreed . . . to introduce a gender quota of 30 percent on the supervisory boards of publicly traded companies in the country in 2016. The issue has been the subject of intense debate.”
BREAKING NEWS FROM 2009: Obamacare offers firms $3,000 incentive to hire illegals over native-born workers.
This was pointed out years ago in a report from the Heritage Foundation: Employment Discrimination in the Senate Health Care Bill.
MUGGED BY UNREALITY: Student mugged, says he deserved it because of his ‘privilege’. “Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as ‘thugs?’ It’s precisely this kind of ‘otherization’ that fuels the problem.”
DENMARK: 19-Year-Old Recovers as Doctors Start to Harvest Her Organs.
A documentary was aired earlier this month which showed family members reacting in anguish to the news that their 19-year-old daughter was brain dead after a car accident, agreeing to donate her organs and allowing doctors to turn off her respirator. About 1.7 million viewers tuned in to the heart-rending drama.
But Carina Melchior did not die after her respirator was removed. She is now undergoing rehabilitation and may make a full recovery. About 500 people immediately removed their names from Denmark’s organ donor register.
REVERSE REVERSE SEXISM: Former Catholic school tutor, age 35, explains to jury how 15-year-old student manipulated her into a sexual relationship.
In testimony punctuated with weeping, Simon said the teen within a matter of weeks in the spring of 2013 used physical intimidation, psychological manipulation and rape to control every aspect of her life – even to the point that she did what he wanted when she was on the other side of the country. . . .
The teen testified he was in love with the woman and all the texts and their sexual acts were done at her initiative or with her consent.
Simon paints a completely different picture, saying she was incapable of getting away from the boy’s control because he would threaten to kill himself or threaten her with violence.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this for a 15-year-old,” Simon said. “I know it sounds unbelievable.”
If she were to say simply that the sex was consensual, she would be found guilty. So she has say that she, a female adult with no known mental disorder (aside from that caused by two X chromosomes), was manipulated by a high-school boy into having sex with him repeatedly. She bears no responsibility because he controlled her behavior.
The fact that this can be viewed in any way as a legitimate defense shows that “true feminism” (the idea that the sexes should be regarded as equal) is dead. Imagine a 35-year-old male tutor defending himself against a handful of statutory rape charges by saying that his 15-year-old female student manipulated him into having sex. No one would take that seriously.
The only reason that this woman’s defense is being taken seriously is that everyone involved believes that adult women are children compared to even adolescent males.
This is a classic case of reverse reverse sexism. Such special treatment infantilizes women.
Earlier: Claim: Female guards are prone to seduction, can’t be trusted.