“Please, tell me more about how women get hit because they start shit?” (Photo credit Reuters/Joshua Roberts)
[Content note: sexual assault and domestic violence]
In her efforts to decide whether to uphold the Obama administration’s guidelines for addressing sexual assault on college campuses, or just roll on back to NDAs, unreported crimes, and non-investigation investigations, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will be sitting down for a talk with people affected by on-campus sexual violence.
That’s kind of nice, isn’t it?
DeVos is in the process of arranging meetings with victims of sexual assault and victims of false accusations, victims’ rights organizations, and men’s rights organizations including the National Coalition for Men, which is founded on the belief that domestic violence and sexual assault are overreported because of a conspiracy between women, law enforcement, and the media. There will also be SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments), which lobbies against domestic violence protections because the leading cause of abuse is “female initiation of partner violence.” And FACE (Families Advocating for Campus Equality) claims that colleges are expelling students “with increasing frequency” because of false rape accusations. (The real statistic for expulsions for sexual assault: 12 percent.)
Okay. There are victims’ rights organizations, and there are advocates for the falsely accused, and then there are men who think that most women get beaten on account of they started it. (Interestingly enough, a statement about vindictive ex-girlfriend rape accusers in an interview with NCFM President Harry Crouch is almost identical to the comment made by Office of Civil Rights head Candice Jackson before she had to apologize for it. Go figure.)
It’s like when a news show brings on a basement-blogging climate-change skeptic to sit with educated, published scientists so they can show “both sides of the debate.” The “balancing viewpoint” to a rape victims’ rights group is not a group that publishes online the names and photos of women they’ve declared “false accusers.”
Unless, of course, you’re Betsy DeVos, keeping her tradition of DeVossing around the Department of Education, being completely ignorant about absolutely every aspect of her position and making what seems to be a concerted effort to undo everything that’s good and do everything that’s bad. If that’s your thing, asking the NCFM for advice on college sexual assault sounds just about right.
(If you want to let DeVos know about your own experience with campus rape, you can tweet it to #DearBetsy. She’ll probably just ask FACE what to do with it, but at least you tried.)
[h/t The Mary Sue]