Andrea Grimes (@andreagrimes) used to be a pro-life Christian, until she went to college: “Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch.” By 2009, she had apparently contracted human papillomavirus (HPV) which resulted in cervical dysplasia — “atypical squamous cells” — a potentially pre-cancerous condition that required $5,000 in treatment.
This biographical background about Andrea Grimes is prelude to this: Did you know Columbia University has something with the Orwellian name of “Office of Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct”? I did not know this until I read Cathy Young’s article at the Daily Beast describing Paul Nungesser’s nightmare as the Columbia student accused of raping feminist Emma Sulkowicz. The Daily Beast article spurred a lot of screeching from feminists last week, with Julie Zeilinger ranting about “a disheartening ignorance . . . gender stereotypes . . . idealized virginal purity and simplified fallacies.” It seems that the one possible explanation no feminist can accept in cases like this is the most obvious explanation: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
The source of that saying, William Congreve, was probably a sexist pig, but (a) he’s been dead nearly 400 years, and (b) it’s true.
It is possible (although not necessary) to speculate what actually transpired between Nungesser and Sulkowicz on the night of Aug. 27, 2012. Both parties agree that they had sex, but Sulkowicz claims Nungesser began “choking and hitting her and then penetrated her anally while she struggled and screamed in pain.” Nungesser says none of the choking, hitting or screaming occurred, and that everything was consensual, including the anal penetration. It was more than six months later, in spring 2013, that Sulkowicz went to the aforementioned Office of Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct, claiming Nungesser had raped her. In between, however, there were friendly communications between Nungesser and Sulkowicz — reproduced verbatim in Cathy Young’s article — that certainly seem sufficient as exculpatory evidence, considering that there is absolutely zero evidence to support Sulkowicz’s version of the story. Furthermore, it appears that Sulkowicz decided to accuse Nungesser of rape only after Sulkowicz talked to a girl who had been Nungesser’s girlfriend during their freshman year. After comparing notes, we might imagine, the two of them concluded that Nungesser was a selfish creep and (this being the Rape Culture Era) that they were victims of sexual assault. Nungesser was ultimately exonerated, which feminists say is an injustice, but to repeat: There was zero evidence against him.
And now it’s time to hear from Andrea Grimes:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: But what if she’s lying?
That’s the gist of yet another take on yet another high-profile rape case, this time in the Daily Beast, whose writer Cathy Young trotted it out as the least counterintuitive of all possible premises when it comes to sexual violence. . . .
(Much ranting about victimhood and then . . .)
But there is patriarchy. A perfect, many-armed monster, which lives and thrives in this perfect universe of its own design. And it wields the perfect weapon: rape culture.
The longer we wait for the perfect case to try in the court of public opinion, the more opportunities this many-armed monster has to craft its ongoing attack on justice, to perpetuate a culture of shame and skepticism that silences those who would challenge it.
The monster is smart, and it knows where and when to hide and when to strike. Of course it does. The world is its playground, its lair, a welcoming cavern outfitted with comforting amenities like the phrase, But what if she’s lying. . . .
The monster moves with a kind of vicious grace, countering every attack with cool, collected reserve. Just, you know, asking honest, innocent questions: Why was she wearing that skirt? What was she doing out so late? . . . Why did they have so much to drink? Why did they keep dating? What’s up with those text messages?
Couldn’t it all just have been … a misunderstanding?
You can read the whole thing, if you care to see what kind of paranoid rationalizations feminists use when “the perfect case” they were attempting to “try in the court of public opinion” turns out to be no case at all. Rape is a serious crime, a felony, and given what we now know about the Nungesser case, he could not possibly be convicted of rape in a criminal court. If he cannot be proven guilty of a crime, how can Columbia University justify disciplinary punishment against Nungesser for “Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct” which he denies and which his accusers cannot prove?
Exactly what system would this “dirty, filthy slut” Andrea Grimes wish to substitute for the due-process protections guaranteed by our Constitution to those accused of crimes? Exactly how is any male supposed to protect himself against the possibility of what we shall henceforth call the Sulkowicz Scenario, the casual sex partner who retroactively decides that an unhappy hookup was rape? Let us stipulate, arguendo, that Nungesser is a Bad Boyfriend and not very thoughtful or considerate as a sex partner. This does not make him a criminal, and trying to brand such a person a rapist is an act of spiteful vengeance.
Alas, if it weren’t for spiteful vengeance, there would be no feminist movement, inventing scapegoats — the “perfect, many-armed monster” of patriarchy — to exempt foolish women from responsibility for their own bad decisions. In the feminist worldview, all women are victimized by all men, so that the only question is how to inflict on men the punishment they deserve, for the crime of being male.
Feminism is the Politics of Vengeance, through which unhappy women convert their hurt feelings into sadistic glee. @ShunCampusWomen @Keckhs
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) February 8, 2015
Patriarchy: "A perfect, many-armed monster," says @andreagrimes. http://t.co/a8rzCARSAE No, those are TENTACLES! #Cthulhu #tcot
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) February 10, 2015
Exactly how is any male supposed to protect himself against the possibility of what we shall henceforth call the Sulkowicz Scenario, the casual sex partner who retroactively decides that an unhappy hookup was rape?
By utilizing those horrific, Christian-ist precepts of waiting until marriage. If one doesn’t have sex with a woman, one cannot be accused of nonconsensual sex.
Uh, yes you can….
If she was the victim why was she sentenced to carry that mattress around for the remainder of her time there?
One thing about college life is that the shock of it all triggers all manner of mental health issues with new students moving away from home. It’s been documented as a risk factor for everything from depression to schizophrenic breaks. It seems as though these radical feminists and their women’s studies departments have been operating in a target rich environment. Andrea Grimes looks like that kind of victim.
Grimes, or Grimey, as I’m sure she likes to be called, has discovered through her run-in with HPV that natural consequences are far more non-discriminating than a bit of patriarchially inspired shame.
Yeah…I think that turning down a request for sex is now considered rape.
One gets the impression that railroading a guy for rape would be all the sweeter for feminists if the man is actually innocent of rape. That, after all, is power! Any old schmuck can bring the guilty to trial, but real Transgression against societal norms occurs when innocence is not a defense.
You ask:
“Exactly how is any male supposed to protect himself…”
Surely you are only posing a rhetorical question here, because nothing you have ever written leads me to suspect you of being obtuse.
He is not supposed to protect himself. Being a male is sufficient offense to warrant expulsion.
Pour encourager les autres?
What gets me is that actual rape DOES happen, rapists DO get indicted, tried and convicted. And you know why?
Evidence. Even against a rapist cop.
Here’s an especially creepy one … http://www.ocregister.com/articles/orban-358732-police-jelinek.html
The creep saved the taxpayers by offing himself the day before his sentencing.
I’ve posted this case to the “rape culture” rad-fems who claim men get away with rape “all the time.” I’m told this doesn’t count because of all the “unreported” rapes.
Our empowered young womenfolk may yet realise something of a convergence with homosexual males in their susceptibility to social diseases as their sexual habits more and more emulate those of these males in whom HPV, etc., are epidemic…
I believe it is empowering to have an STD. The more debilitating or deadly, the greater the empowerment.
I’m in agreement here. This is precisely, 100% why there are Biblical moral imperatives forbidding fornication/adultery. No forniction/adultery, no abortion (to speak of). No fornication/adultery, no rape culture (to speak of). No fornication/adultery, no STDs (to speak of). For pity’s sake, if you want to avoid all sorts of unnecessary misery in your life, stop fornicating.
Going all ironic on us, Z?
Reckon so…
I don’t think she was sentenced, Walls. She always carried it around. “Back problems”, you know.
Well, the infectious agent is certainly empowered. You could create a safe space for it, to show consciousness of your multicellular privilege.
It’s like an analogy! HPV is to her body as her movement is to society.
I think it’s very thoughtful of her to bring her own mattress… How many women do that these days?
I denounce myself…
They don’t just have their own opinions — they have their own facts. Like a cult.
Like I said, the average gender abolitionist feminist has no use for a thing like the Constitution. They are paranoid mental cases out for revenge for thousands of years of patriarchy. Grimes fails the Paul Atreides Test, pricks herself in the neck, and civilization suicides as a result. Any extra-legal entities like those which exist in colleges should be sued into the ground. We already have laws and they don’t include special ones for insane asylums that reach out and destroy sane people.
This is a cult that complains of the prison population even as they complain not enough men are convicted. What they really mean has more to do with a racial pie-chart than reality or fair play.
While it’s certainly possible for someone to be the victim of a complete fabrication, the vast, vast majority of these cases where a specific student is named as a perpetrator involve what is initially believed to be or in fact is a consensual sexual encounter. If one avoids recreational sex, one eliminates the possibility of someone changing her mind later and leveling an accusation.
The analogy would be far stronger if you used HIV instead.
A mere glance is rape.
It’s one thing to railroad someone in a “he said, she said” scenario where both parties acknowledge that sex occurred. The argument then is only about consent. If the sex didn’t happen, the quantum of proof necessary to railroad the alleged perpetrator is doubled. Sure there are fabrications, i.e. UVA, but you’ll note with those, the accuser took pains to make identifying a specific perpetrator very difficult.
Uhhh, unless the purported victim goes to the police or the hospital very soon after the “incident,” and has a physical examination, complete with sperm samples gathered, there’s no proof that intercourse occurred.
Having been invited to young ladies’ apartments whilst a student at UK, I can say that rather a lot bring their own mattresses, in a manner of speaking.
One of the problems with the article is that there certainly have been “perfect” cases, cases with evidence beyond the he said/she said, the case of the four Vanderbilt football players being an obvious example. Two men have already been convicted and are awaiting sentencing, while two more will stand trial soon.
What the feminists want is a legal change which will give sufficient weight to the word of the purported victim to be sufficient for conviction, in itself, not just in the absence of any other evidence, but even in the presence of exculpatory evidence.
That’s why I’ve been married for 35 years, 8 months and 22 days!
Miss Grimes wrote:
Well, I am not, nor ever have been, a Catholic priest, nor was my darling bride ever a nun, but somehow, even though we have engaged in sexual activity, there’s no HPV in our histories. I’m not sure where “almost guaranteed” fits in to this.
Exactly. Anyone can search Google news for “rape + arrest” or “rape + guilty” and find numerous accounts of criminal prosecutions for rape, thus demonstrating that the system works. However, feminists want to destroy this system, to do away with the traditions of Anglo-American common law and to substitute for it some new system (of unspecified design and unproven benefit), and if you question the wisdom of their radical scheme, your skepticism makes you a “rape apologist.”
Correct. However, in virtually all of these cases, the male acknowledges some sexual contact. Completely fabricating a story about sexual contact where none occurred against a random acquaintance is a very risky thing to do for an accuser. There are substantial civil and criminal penalties that could apply. Is it possible that someone is evil enough to do that? Sure. Is any method of self-protection foolproof? No. The question, however, concerns making such accusations as difficult as possible to make.
Obviously, the underlying assumption is that everyone now has multiple partners who also have multiple partners ad infinitum. But remember, abstinence education is merely a method by which old prudes can keep young people from having fun!
Or, to be more precise, they wish to do away with the ability to confront and cross-examine one’s accuser.
Back during the child sexual abuse panic, one of the changes in trial procedure was the elimination of the requirement that the victims testify in open court and be subject to cross examination. These changes were made “to protect the child victims.” As a result, people were convicted upon rank hearsay.
The problem is, of course, such a philosophy immediately attaches the label “victim” to one who is merely a complainant.
This is the endgame. It’s not the elimination of exculpatory evidence, is the redefining of the roles within judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings. Simply stated, it is the destruction of Procedural Due Process.
They have their own Community-Based Reality, like most leftists, it just comes in a hate-the-patriarchy flavor.
Rape is a serious crime, a felony, and given what we now know about the Nungesser case, he could not possibly be convicted of rape in a criminal court.
Ah, but there are crimes and there are CRIMES, you see. I suggest that you are exercizing your white… er… male privilege and applying the patriarchical concept of Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali, which completely ignores how rape culture is inflicted on female bodies. Don’t you see that, for the oppressed victim of the cis-heteronormative patriarchicy, sexual relations are merely a yet another tool – one of the many arms, if you will – used to degrade women? That the epistomelogical transience of sexual gratification in a temporal sphere of supposed binary equality can be realized as a sociological construct of trans-intersectional oppression even long after the fact?
Really, your antiquated thinking most be seen further evidence that you hate women, something that is abundantly clear from the fact that you have kept one in the oppressive chains of so-called heteronormative “marriage” (you call her “my wife”, as though she were an object that belongs to you) and even (shudder) made her bear you children, MALE children at that. People like you is why women are slut-shamed because it can take them months – even years – to realize that their personally integrity and sense of vaginal goddesshood has been violated and why nobody wants to believe that, just because they continued to have friendly relations – even sex – with a guy, they haven’t actually been raped.
Get with the program!
/sarc
If the sex didn’t happen, the quantum of proof necessary to railroad the alleged perpetrator is doubled.
I gather that feminists are not into “proof”: that a woman accuses is sufficient for a conviction.
This could protect you from an accusation of rape if no sex ever occurs but probably doesn’t protect you from an assault charge or unwanted sexual advancement charge. Both definitions of these have been so expanded that even if not a criminal matter they still would come under the purview of the campus investigative apparatus. Alas, the only way to not be accused would be to not have any social contact with females and maybe not even look at them which is the real objective being sought by the rad-fem establishment.
Accusations are the only evidence needed….and feelings.
Remember the old PSAs about how if you slept with someone, you were sleeping with all the other people they had slept with, and vice versa?
Evil enough or just stupid enough or mad enough?
This, unfortunately. RS’s advice is sound — keep your pants on and your defense will be stronger by a factor of 10 — but the continual attempts to ‘redefine’ rape and sexual assault still mean you may be facing assault charges if a woman takes a dislike to you, even if you lead a life that would make a Franciscan monk look at you and say ‘Overdoing it a bit, aren’t you?’.
How did you spout all that and not suffer cognitive damage?
Nwever saw those, but middle school health class did mention them.
Much bitter experience, in the same way that an experienced doctor can rattle off the symptoms of a disease.
By laughing at the insanity.
I see no evidence of any risk to a liar who brings false charges. In the case cited in this article the accuser has been lionized by the media, the femnazis and at least one US Senator. Mattress Girl chose only to pursue this through the campus kangaroo court system. Had she, after waiting for months, gone to the police and tried to have charges pressed and failed, do you really think she’d have faced any legal sanctions? The difference between making charges after regretted sex and making up charges entirely is merely a matter of motive. Short of an ironclad alibi for the accused the dynamics would play out the same.
And speaking of rape, a rapist named Harold Seymore was finally sentenced today for raping a female tourist in South Beach back in 2005. However, after raping a woman, Seymore decided to be a woman, and will go by the name Sofia.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/os-ap-charged-man-convicted-woman-20150210-story.html#page=2
Consider though, two recent cases, each of which generated a lot of media buzz: UVA and Columbia mattress person.
In the former, it was ultimately discovered to be a complete fabrication, because there was no real perpetrator. In the latter, the alleged perp admitted to having an affair up to the incident in question which included anal sex. He said “consent.” She said “no consent” after the fact. The latter case takes on a whole new dynamic if he were to have said, “there was no sex.”
Again. Is it possible that some evil person can pick “Adobe_Walls” and level false charges? Certainly. But those charges will eventually fall apart if there’s no “there” there.
As I’ve often told people, you cannot protect yourself from being sued in a BS lawsuit. You CAN, however, put yourself in a position to win. Even if an evil, lying accuser does not face criminal sanction, she can be made to suffer in civil court as a defendant in a common law defamation suit.
That’s what they want, certainly. However, until all due process is eliminated from our jurisprudence, there are still problems with throwing around untrue allegations. Colleges and universities will be finding out in short order–in fact, they already are–that Title IX is a two edged sword. Courts, state and federal, are always open. In the words of Glenn Reynolds, you punch back twice as hard. Enough monetary verdicts regarding these things and the pendulum will swing in the other direction.