Good Men Defending Title IX Protections from Sexual Assault
Title IX protects both women and men.Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to weaken Title IX
Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss wants to weaken Title IX protections from sexual harassment and violence in schools.
Why should men join in the fight to block her proposed changes? Men, like readers of this blog, seek justice and equality.
And, as it turns out, Title IX protections help men too!
Read more at The Good Men Project.
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Posted on January 24, 2019, in rape and sexual assault and tagged Betsy DeVoss, Department of Education, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, Title IX. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
Title IX is important protection for women from unwanted sexual harassment. The current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos- who already has a personal agenda to seemingly dismantle public education and have students indoctrinated in her own personal brand of “education”- seeks to undermine the basic sexual harassment protections in Title IX by attempting to narrowly redefine sexual assault in a way that would ostensibly reduce if not eliminate reporting- not eliminate actual assault. She also wants religious schools exempted so that students would have to abide by that school’s policies- which undermines Title IX. Even more chilling her proposal that the accused can cross-examine the accuser- to what affect seems only for intimidation. In fact, intimidation seems to be the whole point here. Intimidate victims so they do not report assaults and that “solves” the problem. I think the problem would be better solved if Devos stepped down.
I think it is extremely important for men to be supporting and being involved in helping and supporting women. I found the article that was attached “Defending Title IX Protections from Sexual Assault” extremely interesting and there were very strong points made that I completely agree with. Secretary DeVos’s proposals for change raises many concerns with Title IX protections and has many implications for women who have been sexually assaulted but do not report the incident. One of the strong points made was the definition that Secretary DeVos uses to define sexual assault and how that can affect women not reporting incidents. The way in which DeVos defines sexual assault can make women rethink reporting the incident because they do not believe their case was “severe” enough when this should never be the case. Women not reporting incidences of sexual assault allows the perpetrator to continue to think what they did was okay and they can go and do this to another person. I believe it is very common for women to believe that their case of sexual assault was either there fault or they think they will get in trouble for some reason or they will not be believed. Women not only have trouble coming forward and reporting it but at times are ashamed of what happened and think it is their fault so will not even tell people close to them.
I think it’s critical for men to be really involved with this, not only as supporters but as ambassadors of woman’s rights against violence and assault. It’s shameful that Betsy is basically doing word acrobats with her updated definition of sexual assault. The original definition was just fine on its own and was able to capture the esence of what sexual assault is, “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Why would you need to get more granular than this? I just don’t understand how defining sexual assault as “conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive….” so what assult is not pervasive or severe enough to be considered sexual assult? I feel it should be either consensual or not…there shouldn’t be a middle ground or gray area here. I feel like this opens doors to pervasive acts that, deemed by whoever decides, can say “oh it’s not pervasive enough to be considered sexual assault”. Not sure what Betsy’s end goal is here?
Men over women is part of domination culture. If you can get people to except the domination of one group of people over another it’s easier to sustain acceptance of it in a variety of areas. Betsy DeVoss is interested in the rich dominating everyone else. So she wins economically and personally probably doesn’t have to worry about being raped much.
The changes proposed by DeVoss promote revictimizing individuals and leave survivors to wonder if they will be taken seriously or their abusers more likely to be free to commit the act again. Victims of sexual assault and abuse are already traumatized, should their accusers be allowed to cross examine them or Religious schools be allowed to handle the accusation based on school policies many assaults will go unreported by victims. This topic brings to light the importance of men supporting women in upholding the current Title IX Civil Rights Legislation. Men seem to be torn between supporting women and loved ones who are the victims of these crimes and the possibility of being the victim themselves of false accusations. These allegations if found true, should be upheld through legal means, not by school policies that can be narrowly or loosely interpreted should the accuser come from a wealthy and powerful family. Removing the legal system from objectively reviewing evidence and witness statements, creates opportunity for gender-bias and unequal rights based on male-dominance and power.
I’m glad that there are a lot of men out there who support women!
Men should be leading and not only joining the fight against Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss. As the article explains, her attempt to weaken Title IX protections from sexual harassment and violence in schools affects men the worse. Being more lenient and allowing toxic behavior to go unpunished is detrimental to men’s good image and even the majority of men who act in a considerate manner towards women will end up being associated with violent and disrespectful actions. And if men truly care about the well-being of their daughters, wives, mothers, and loved ones, they should see no problem with punishing any level of misbehavior towards women. I think part of the problem is that some men fear being falsely accused of rape and/or sexual harassment in the workplace. And the low percentage of such occurrences is enough to put fear into people’s minds and spread the idea that this is something that frequently happens. Educating people about sexual harassment and violence is the first step in ensuring that society will treat such crimes in a fair and appropriate manner.
I really appreciate the partnership of men who join in the fight!
I think this article has very strong views on sexual assault, I think women should not put men down and pin point and say they are the reason so many young women get sexually assaulted because it’s not just girls who are the victim it’s the men out there too. But yet all the men get the blame on the worse and I think we need to start not looking at all men as a whole but an individual to start seeing change of what’s happening to the way society has changed and in the way we think of things being. These things have happened to us because we are in a vulnerable state of being and we get forced into doing things we don’t want to do which this all needs to stop we need to be aware of these things happening and wake up and realize that these things are not okay and that it’s okay to feel embarrassed.
Fortunately, the vast majority of men do not commit rape and sexual assault. Yet the vast majority of those who do commit such crimes are men. Which ends up hurting other men. So yes, sexual assault harms both women and men.
So glad that so many men are against violence against women. See these, for instance, this organization: Men Against Violence Against Women https://mavaw.org
And this terrific video: