If there are any clearer examples of how Leftists want to be in charge of every individual’s life to be had, the wave of authority over the dating habits of adult students who attend colleges and universities sets a pretty high bar …
The redefinition of the word violence continues among revelations that discounting a sexual partner’s feelings and withholding sex constitutes sexual violence at the University of Michigan. The relevant info can be found at the university’s “Stop Abuse” webpage:
Examples of sexual violence include: discounting the partner’s feelings regarding sex; criticizing the partner sexually; touching the partner sexually in inappropriate and uncomfortable ways; withholding sex and affection; always demanding sex; forcing partner to strip as a form of humiliation (maybe in front of children), to witness sexual acts, to participate in uncomfortable sex or sex after an episode of violence, to have sex with other people; and using objects and/or weapons to hurt during sex or threats to back up demands for sex.
Criticizing someone sexually and withholding sex are unkind things to do, but they aren’t violent acts in and of themselves. Indeed, a university spokesperson could only defend the definitions as appropriate within “a larger context,” according to Derek Draplin of The College Fix:
The definitions of behaviors of violence … describe most accurately what occurs in an abusive relationship,” [U-M spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald] said in an email. “Those behaviors not in the context of violence are not abusive. A reader of this site would recognize that it’s described as one behavior in the context of a pattern of behaviors to maintain power and control over an intimate partner.”
But, as Draplin writes, universities make these slips all the time—treating disfavored behavior and physically painful behavior as one and the same. He cites an interview with the sexual violence support coordinator at Brock University in Canada in which the administrator claims “anything that makes someone feel unsafe” counts as violence.
This, of course, is just another facet of the Left’s destruction of any individual agency in intent. Authors or speakers, it matters little what they actually say or what their intent was when writing/speaking, all power of interpretation is located with the recipient — as long as that recipient is a member-in-good-standing of the Leftist orthodoxy.
It has never really been about sex or race or gender or any other “ism” that the Left will demand blood for … it is, and has always been, about power. Authoritarian, totalitarian power.
That explains the irony of witnessing such draconian sexual behavior codes on college students being supported by the same Leftists who take about full page newspapers ads demanding Republicans expel “social conservatives” from their midst.
Left fascism, indeed.
– How much longer before simply withholding the attention these anal retentive obsessives desperately seek is declared “violence”.
– Actually if everyone not party to this OCD behavior did that it would force them all to act out and be exposed for what they really are.
So, if I have understood this correctly, frat boy has sex with drunk chick at party: penalty is expulsion for sexual assault. Frat guy withholds sex from drunk chick at party: penalty is expulsion for “sexual violence.”
Glad we cleared that up.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to stop payment on a tuition check.
Sudden Jihad Syndrome in Chicago?
When we see this term “abuse”, do we think of the fractional term “use”, to say nothing of the other component fraction “ab-“?
Do we think of use in other ordinary contexts, like say, the use of a hammer, or the use of a kitchen knife? Of the use of tools, instruments, in other words?
But how do we think of the use of other human beings as our tools? We “use” them for our purposes, we say. Is this what other human beings are for? To be our tools?
But what of that particle “ab-“, that “off”, away from or against? And what of the antonym of the particle “ab-“: what of “pro”, of toward or for the sake of?
So what of the opposite of abuse? What does the committee say?
Well, in the past I’ve had trolls claim that my refusal to respond to them on my site — when I had a site — is “censorship.”
Anything not forbidden is mandatory.
Higher education, they just know things.
Europeans the Chinese are more dependent on African resources that the US aren’t they?
[…] Darleen Click on Protein Wisdom: U of Michigan — “discounted feelings” & “withholding sex” are just other forms of “… […]
An individual’s feelings are subjective, and do vary according to mood, hormonal fluctuations and other cerebral chemical imbalances. If one feels ‘unsafe’, and that subjective feeling creates what an entity with an agenda can label as ‘violence’, then doesn’t that entity (our ‘sexual violence support coordinator’) gain too much power over all others, thereby creating in everyone else ‘unsafe’ feelings?
Who gets to define and measure these subjective feelings? What exactly is the defined and measurable ‘feeling of unsafeness’ that can then be deemed ‘violence’ by a social worker (sorry, a ‘support coordinator’)?
Arbitrary and subjective ‘feelings’ that can’t possibly be gauged, in this politically correct society, means that one person’s mood swing in the morning can get another innocent person sued, tossed in confinement or worse (labeled as violent for purposes of, say, keeping that ‘violent’ person from ever buying a gun) for what on another day and a better mood might be perfectly acceptable behavior.
In these sorts of contrived and inexact scenario, lawyers will win bucket loads of cash, and the rest of us must go around on tippy-toes, ever mindful that if you hurt someone’s feelings, you’ve committed a violent act and can suffer consequences for it, just as if you’d punched them in the nose.