Thawed

There is, it is rumored, a phenomenon known as "the Seattle Freeze," and it is much discussed and argued about here in the Seattle area. Some people swear it's a real thing, and others have determined that it's a myth.

In my own experience as an expatriate Chicagoan living in the Seattle area, I'd long suspected it was something of a real thing, but that's it's mainly a difference in styles and what is considered polite. But I'd been in New York State for the week, and I noticed something striking when I was suburban New York City. Unlike Seattlites, New Yorkers seem to actively enjoy talking to strangers. Random conversations that I would strike up with people, either on the street or across a counter, would routinely run longer than they do here in Seattle. (Not to mention that people just seemed more likely to say "Hello," when you encountered them.)

I, for my part, actively enjoy having random conversations with people I don't know. And the impression that I received from people in New York was that they enjoyed it, too. It was common to come away from a conversation with the idea that the short interaction I'd just had with someone genuinely brightened their day. Not in the sense of a complete turnaround, but that they found value in the chance to talk to someone about something of interest to them, and they were therefore happy to have had the opportunity. I don't get that same vibe from speaking to people in the Seattle area, although they're friendly enough.

And maybe that's why the subject of the Seattle Freeze can be so contentious. I suspect that many Seattlites feel that they're being called out for being, unfriendly, rude or even snobbish for not engaging in what strikes them as meaningless small talk (even though the Seattle Freeze is bigger phenomenon than that). And that sense of being criticized, especially by people who aren't from here, rankles. Maybe what's needed is a new term, or a new way of talking about it. Assuming, of course, you can convince a Seattle native to talk to you...

Churchyard

I'm on a trip to New England (upstate New York, to be {somewhat} precise), and one of the first things I noticed in wandering around is that the old (some dating back to the 1710s) churches have cemeteries in their yards. Which makes sense; it was the way things were done back then. But not having grown up in place where it was still done. I find it interesting.

Nobody In Particular

The original plan was for this to be an "about me" post. Despite the fact that one of my stated goals for Nobody in Particular was that it wasn't going to be about me, this is post #2,000, and so I figured that I'd make an exception for the occasion. And then decided against it, because I still consider myself to be a boring and unremarkable person, and I can't really imagine what anyone would want to know about me. I'm not really that interesting.

But back in 2006, when I started this endeavor, I'd noted that "interesting things happen around me, and in the United States, and I hope to make this into a somewhat interesting place to read about them." I don't know how good a job I've done at that. My ex-girlfriend put her finger on it, I think, when she noted that I tend to use this space to complain about the world, and despite a stated desire on my part to give the blog a more positive tone, I still tend to post about things that strike me as wonky. When I'm playing the part of "Guy With a Camera," it tends to be about interesting things, so the Photography posts don't strike me as having the same negativity. Outside of that, however, things can seem one-note at times.

When I started this, part of the reason behind it was to become a better writer, in a few different ways; to be better able to organize my thoughts and to work on the skill of translating them into a written format. I'm also a terrible typist, and considering the amount of time my job has me writing e-mails or working on documents, weblogging seemed like a good way to hone those skills. I'm not sure that it's been working, despite my having been at it for more than a decade now.

Instead, Nobody In Particular has become about me understanding the world around me; making sense of it and placing it into a perspective that allows me to better relate to it. It's not so much a venue for "thinking out loud," as it were, but one for solidifying those thoughts and being able to come back to them later. I'm something of a forgetful person; going back through my old hardcopy "diary," I was impressed at the number of times I'd had the same epiphany, and decided to write it down. I want to avoid doing the same here, but I have caught myself repeating posts in the past, as I've come across something I've written in the past, cleaned it up and posted it here without realizing that I'd already been through that same exercise.

And I think that I do this because one of my recurring questions about the way that people behave is: "What purpose does this serve?" Because while I understand that people don't do things without having a reason; in a lot of cases, that reason isn't immediately accessible to me. And so I sit down at my keyboard, and I work it out. And I either find and answer or confess to being unable to do so. I should, I think, leave it as a question when I can't sort it out, rather than deciding that some or another action is "a pointless charade that does nothing constructive," as I put it in one of the first time's I used the formulation. (For the same reason, I should also retire the "Rampant Idiocy" label for posts.)

If I could choose literally anything to have as a special ability, while I might consciously be tempted to grab a useful, but low-key, superpower, like walking through walls or something, I think what would best fit with my personality would be the capability to consistently and accurately understand people's motivations; to understand what they think they're accomplishing with something. I don't know that Nobody In Particular will move me closer to that. But I've come to find the work of it worthwhile.

Harken

In the time that I've spent reading things on the internet, it seems clear to me that "The situation is getting no international press coverage," or "the mainstream/liberal/conservative media won't cover this" are simply shorthands for: "This isn't generating the response that I think it should, so people obviously aren't be informed of it." In my own experience, it's rare to find a story that "the media" is supposedly ignoring that doesn't immediately turn up in the recent archive the first two or three major news outlets I investigate. Those that don't commonly fall into one of three primary categories; items that are more conjecture or opinion than factual reporting, limited interest stories with relatively low relevance outside of a particular niche and things that are simply out-of-date.

But the idea that "the Media" commands the public's attention, in the sense that it can literally dictate what people do and do not pay attention to, dies hard, perhaps because it's such a convenient way of understand why things that are so important to certain people aren't at all on the radar of everyone else. Some of this is a sense of superior intellect and sensitivity. It's fairly simple, I would think, if others are easily lead astray and "distracted," that they must not be as intelligent or discerning. And so not only is the self-professed media watchdog more upstanding and ethical than the editors and owners of the media outlets they disdain, but they're smarter, wiser and/or more "awake" than the general public. And perhaps this sense of virtue is what keeps the idea going.

Not that there isn't media bias, of course. Media bias and a general bent to story selection are common. My favorite example is National Public Radio; they seem to have never encountered a story about a hardworking, but undocumented, immigrant jeopardized by America's immigration rules that they didn't like. But for me, this is a function of the left-leaning audience that NPR currently has. And to the degree that people who are willing to donate money to the network keep the lights on and the salaries paid, NPR's coverage can be expected to align itself with what prompts those individuals (and organizations) to open their wallets.

And this is my general theory of "media bias." Rather than the media leading the public, the audience leads the media. Sure, a media outlet can get out in front of it's audience. But if it heads off in a direction that the audience wasn't already willing to go, it will find itself alone, and lacking revenue, when it arrives.

Down on the Corner

When We Were Great

Honest question to #MAGA minders. When was America at its greatest? Can you tell me an era that reflects the “Again” that you hope we return to?
Ron Howard - Twitter

This inspired something of an off-Twitter debate, centered around whether it was genuinely an honest question. One the conservatives in the fray said that he felt it was a trap, designed to elicit a response that would allow "the Left" to "defame" the United States of the time with an accounting of its shortcomings.

I thought about this for a while, since it seems that a lot of discussions of American history go this way once partisanship becomes involved.

In my experience, the reason why "Make America Great Again" triggers such passion and argument is, like a lot of things, it's not as simple as it looks. The question can be thought of in multiple ways, two of which being "When would the United States have been at it's best (as a nation state)?" and "When would be the best time (for you) to be an American?" These are separate, but intertwined questions, and the degree to which the answers are different reflects the differences that someone may perceive between national interests/identity, personal interests/identity and national ideals.

For instance, the same person who expressed doubts as to Mr. Howard's sincerity noted that for him, America was at it's greatest at the Founding of the Republic and during the Second World War. And I can agree with his answers, and his rationale for them, if we're examining the issue from the viewpoint of "When would the United States have been at it's best (as a nation state)?" But from the viewpoint of "When would be the best time (for me) to be an American?" both answers fail when compared to the present. The nation may have done an excellent job of looking after its interests during those times, but I perceive that I had been present for them, it would have done a poor job of looking after mine.

In this, I chafe a bit at the suggestion that articulating my reasons for why America is greater now than it was then should be regarded as national defamation, or, as it came up in a similar discussion, "hating my country." Because it doesn't require malice to understand that there is a disconnect between interests. However, for people who don't see much a distinction between the national interest and their personal interests, malice becomes an easily understandable reason for placing oneself ahead of one's nation.

There is also a separate issue, and one that dates back much farther than Make America Great Again. Is it possible to go back to only "the good parts" of the past?

If it were possible to go back to the Founding of the Republic without slavery and with universal suffrage et cetera, would things still progress from their in a way that preserved the promise of the future but avoided the injustices? If one believes that the good and the bad come together as a package, it's easy to understand a desire to go back as a threat; a desire to not only recapture the good, but to reimpose the bad that paid for it.

Identified

Amy Chua, she of "Tiger Mother" fame, has written a new book, "Political Tribes." The Guardian has an excerpt from it, titled, "How America's identity politics went from inclusion to division." And the piece is what is says on the tin; it purports to be a brief history of Identity Politics, and a supposed transition from being "inclusive" in the civil rights era, to being much more limited to individual groups today. I'm not sure if I buy into the argument that Mrs. Chua lays out, but it is, after all, and excerpt. Maybe the complete book includes more details.

In any event, the excerpt in The Guardian includes a long quote from a blog post in The American Conservative, which Mrs. Chua considers illuminating, presumably of the reasons why White Americans, and Conservative White Americans in particular, are embracing their own brand of Identity Politics. Here is a part of it:

I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.

There's a part of me that wants to say to this guy: "Welcome to my world. I'm sorry you're here."

This is why I doubt the power of shared suffering to foster empathy. Many people who suffer don't (whether they can't or won't is beside the point) take the time to understand that their reactions to adversity might be the same as other people's. I'm Black. I can tell you hours of stories about what it's like to be regarded as a cancer, a problem and at fault for other people's woes. I can tell you what it's like to be confronted by a friend's father because he was afraid that we may start dating. I can tell you what it's like to be pulled over by a policeman and asked if I've stolen my own car. I can tell you what it's like to be ignored in stores because the staff there don't think I'm worth waiting on. And I can tell you what it's like to be followed around, because the staff suspect I'm a thief. I can tell you what it's like to... well, I'm sure you gotten the idea by now. And my world has vastly improved during my nearly half century. My co-workers wouldn't dream of calling me "nigger" to my face in the casual way my schoolmates used to.

There's a strain of American thought that doesn't understand the need that some have for "a 'safe space,' if you will." They don't understand the retreat into identity so many people have undertaken. Except for their reasoning for doing it themselves. Which makes sense. After all, I've had a much longer time to think about it than they have. At no point in my life past the age of four have I had a permanent home in a neighborhood where the majority of people were Black. For that matter, I've never even had a home in an area where the percentage of black people reached the national average. The bombardment has been constant. For the most part, I don't even notice it anymore. (Leaving the country is an exception - then it becomes first conspicuous in its absence, and later in its return when I arrive back at Sea-Tac.)

As you may have guessed by the fact that I've linked to it, I went to The American Conservative, and read Mr. Dreher's blog posting, which is little more than him posting letters from a pair of his White readers that place the responsibility for their newfound tribal identities on "the Left." "Zapollo" goes on to say:

[People on the Left] have no problem understanding, and even making excuses for, say, the seductive pull of angry black radicalism for disaffected black men.

And in this, he seem to understand that he's not alone in what he's feeling, and to understand that people not like him undergo the same pressures. He concludes:

If the Left can’t let go of identity politics, then let me be clear: What comes next is on THEM. A lot of us don’t want to live in a world of tribes, and we never asked for it. But people will like those young dudes attracted to white nationalism are going to play the game according to the rules as they find them, and they will play to win. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

And that left me with this question. "The seductive pull of angry black radicalism for disaffected black men;" who is THAT on? Who ignored THOSE warnings? Or does he think that it was "disaffected Black men" or La Raza that invented our modern tribalism? If "the Left" is "just feeding, feeding, feeding the growth" of angry White radicalism, who simply fed, fed, fed the growth of angry Black radicalism?

And that is where the empathy fails. Because here you have someone who is convinced that the bitterness and hatred that is infecting his community is being driven from outside of it by people who believe they mean well, but stops short of seeing the bitterness and hatred that has infected other people's communities may have been driven by his family and friends. I don't recall anyone in my childhood, in my extended family asking to live in a world of tribes, either.

The people I went to school with, less than twenty years after the end of the Civil Rights movement, were so convinced that racism, in all it's forms had been stamped out, that they could recite its obituary by heart, even while they sprinkled it with racial epithets. The American desire to see the nation and its people as unfailingly just (if perhaps misguided at times) prevents many of those same people from saying, "Maybe some of this is on me." People will look high and low for places to fix blame, as long as it isn't in a mirror.

Mark Lilla made the point, in his interview for The New Yorker, that:

But there’s no denying that the [Identity Politics] movement’s decision to use this [police] mistreatment [of African-Americans] to build a general indictment of American society and its law-enforcement institutions and to use Mau Mau tactics to put down dissent and demand a confession of sins and public penitence played into the hands of the Republican right.

And, according to The Atlantic, Mrs. Chua herself makes this same point:

[Mrs. Chua] blamed “coastal elites” (identifying herself as one) for not being able to understand what gave rise to the president’s “Make America Great Again” motto, and also for “weaponizing” words in the form of identity politics. Berating from the left, she said, drives bigoted ideas underground, and “that’s where the real extremity is.”

But does the Right's desire to demand a confession of responsibility for the resurgence of White radicalism or their berating of others "weaponize" words and drive radicalism underground into the hands of extremity? We understand that this has happened. We understand that White use of violence to enforce racial hierarchy goes back a long way, even before the Ku Klux Klan was a home-grown terrorist organization. If the Alt-Right can, with help from people outside their number, claim that their radicalism is not of their own making, can the rest of us? Or does that, as I suspect, stretch empathy too far?

Nasty Words

One of the things that has slowly seeped its way into political conversation, mainly from the Right, but from other quarters as well, it the idea that Liberal/Progressive disdain for President Trump and the people who voted for him, pushed those voters to make that choice, and will do so again in 2020. I, for my part, doubt this. I've never made a choice to cast a ballot simply because someone I didn't like made it clear that they didn't like me, either, and I don't know anyone who has.

On the other hand, I do understand the idea that people who don't feel respected by other people are going to feel that those other people likely don't have their interests at heart, and I can completely get behind people not wanting to vote for people who don't come across was wanting to make their lives better. But I think that there's a fairly simple argument against the whole idea that talking down to Trump supporters will drive them to the polls.

Dirty tricks.

Many of the people I know, even the politically active ones, are not particularly literate when it comes to the views of people that they don't agree with. And this manifests itself in an inability to distinguish between a genuine argument with which they would have a disagreement, and a parody or strawman version of the same. And this leaves plenty of room for impersonation. One could simply create a website devoted to some real or imagined Liberal cause, and lace it with virulently anti-Trump (and anti-Trump supporter) rhetoric. And if this were as sure-fire a way to increase voter turnout, you'd expect to see it happening. Of course, these people wouldn't openly identify themselves as pro-Trump tricksters, but that's kind of the point. They wouldn't be identifiable at all. They'd simply be out there disrespecting people all the way into the voting booth. And when anyone went looking for the paper trail, they'd simply find a dead end.

Because why wouldn't you? Considering the sorts of whisper campaigns, mudslinging and character assassination that makes up the typical political campaign, if all you had to do in order to get even 1% higher turnout was hire some random shmoe off the street to insult voters and pay them under the table, no political operative worthy of the name would ignore that opportunity.

And so I suspect that it's  nowhere nearly as effective as it's cracked up to be. Otherwise, it would be everywhere.

Life on the Inside

So there's an interesting article on The Atlantic about how common notions of masculinity are stifling. Like the others that I've read, it's written by a woman. There's no real problem with that, as many women are excellent writers. Every so often I come across a critique of masculinity from a transgender man. But what seems missing from the materials, at least the ones that I've read, is a critique of what it's like to be a man, written by someone who's always lived it. I presume that they're out there, and that some work on my Google-Fu would turn up one or a hundred of them, but they seems to be missing from the media outlets that I typically read. My working theory is that I don't spend time on feminist media; maybe that's where the action is. I don't know whether or not that's accurate, but it makes sense to me because so much of the discussion seems to center on the gender/sex relations aspect of the whole thing.

In my own understanding, masculinity as a fortress that kept women out is falling by the wayside. It's not completely dead, and it may never be, but it's not as powerful and idea as it used to be. But, at least in my own understanding, it's still a prison that keeps men in. And while I'm not really a fan of that, in the end, I don't mind the life of an inmate. In other words, I more or less conform to a fairly broad notion of what it means to be "a man," even if I've taken a pass on drinking beer, watching football or driving pickup trucks. I'm perhaps more in touch with a nurturing side of myself than fits the general stereotype; after all, I was a psychology major in college, and I spent four and half years as a child care worker, a profession where being nurturing was a necessary skill. But I don't think of myself as being anywhere near as tuned into to people's emotional states as women are typically described as, and listening to someone talk about a problem, rather than rushing in with a fix, takes effort on my part.

I'm fortunate, I think, in that I don't move in circles where really strong gender-role expectations in either direction are the order of the day. While I've never been very invested in proving that I can out-man anyone, I do have a bad habit of not backing down from challenges; which can be a problem in and of itself. Likewise, I don't have to prove to anyone how non-conformist I am, which is also nice. If settling into a comfortable, but conforming, role is like living in a small town, I'm the person who genuinely likes it there, and somewhat resents the more well-traveled calling them out for their lack of broader experience.

But by the same token, I feel that I honestly do understand that masculinity can be a prison, and so while I may be perfectly content to hang around within the walls, I get that it's not for everyone, and I'm perfectly happy to assist other people in jailbreaks. As long as they're okay with me waving goodby to them from the walls.

The Plan

The post was titled, simply enough, "10 Steps." And the eponymous steps were as follows:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

10 is, of course, an arbitrary number. It's possible to make a slide into "things being bad" into any number of steps one chooses. Decompose a step or two here, consolidate a few there, and it's fairly simple to create any number of steps one wants. Even the order is somewhat arbitrary. But only somewhat. Because it's likely, and I think that history bears this out, that the first step always deals with fear.

"10 Steps" makes this seem as if there is an external entity, whether that be a person or an organization, plotting out how they are going to take over and seize power for themselves. But the fact of the matter is that this process repeats itself over and over, just as a matter of everyday life. Any group of people with something to fear has a chance of starting down this road, and taking the process as far as their collective powers will allow.

Which may seem disheartening, but it points to the idea that there is a straightforward, if not easy, way to disrupt things.

1. Relieve people of their fear.

But that requires something difficult. And that is: disinvestment in others' fears. And it's difficult because coming to see the fear of others as an asset may be simply part of human nature. People value allies, and fears can be powerful allies. And to the person who views the fear of others as a benefit to themselves the disappearance of that fear can be a tangible loss, no different than a loss of another's goodwill can be seen as damaging. And from there it's only a short step to seeing someone who does something to help other people assuage their fears as an opponent.

Sometimes, though, the best way to deal with an opponent is to beat them to the punch.

In the 10 Step program, Step One concerns itself with amping up people's fears to the point where Steps Two through Ten seem like reasonable, or even necessary, means to calm those fears. Which is why it's the starting point. But it's also a single point of failure, because undermining Step One removes the need for whatever follows. It speaks to the depth of the investment in fear that people won't do more to eradicate it.

Embodying Change

The recent suicide of designer Kate Spade prompted Ivanka Trump to offer the usual platitudes. Which in turn prompted a critic to dismiss her statement as just words, citing reductions in the federal budget for mental health services.

For the record: Pot. Kettle. Black. It's all words, and no one is saved by them.

"How," I asked myself, "does sniping at Mrs. Trump make anything better?" Given that government spending priorities are not set by consulting Twitter comments between the President's family and their random Internet critics, the comment came off as little more than anti-Trump virtue signalling. And, like most virtue signalling, it prompts others to feel good about the virtue being signaled, but doesn't actually move the needle. In case you haven't guessed, I'm much more in the "be the change you want to see in the world" camp. Being there for someone who is in crisis does much more to prevent suicide than whining to the President's children.

But here's the thing about trotting out "be the change you want to see in the world;" it presumes that they currently aren't. But what if they are? What if the way people act is precisely indicative of how they want the world to be going forward? It would explain a lot. And it makes sense in the broader context of human nature. Forging a relationship with another human being that is strong enough that when they are at a crisis point in their lives, one that becomes a literal life-or-death situation, is a lot of work. And that work has very real costs that, like many things, won't always seem to be worth it. And in the end, when that crisis point comes, it may not help.

Maybe, rather than pushing people to be the change they want, it would be better to ask them to be honest, with themselves and with us, about the change they want. When we look at the ways in which people interact with the world, it becomes more or less clear that many, if not most of them are in their comfort zones. In this instance, it's not that virtue signaling is easier than working to save lives; it's that a world in which people die, and the survivors preach their choirs about how others aren't doing enough is simply more desirable, for whatever the reason happens to be, than a world in which those "needless" deaths are prevented.

I understand that this is a fairly bleak and cynical viewpoint, even for me. (Ironically, I understand how my outlook on life {among other facets of my personality} puts me at increased risk for depression.) I'd like to say that I take no comfort in it, but that would be inaccurate, because I do take comfort in the idea that I understand the world around me; to the degree that I can, anyway, given the fog of my own experiences and perceptions.

But it doesn't take a clinician to understand that simply hating on Mrs. Trump isn't going to prevent the death of the next Mrs. Spade. I'm not sure that I can think of anyone who honestly thinks it does. Given this, there is an understanding that the time spent sniping at people for not being aligned with one politically is time not spent working to save someone's life; just as the time I spend on this blog is time not spent looking after the people in my own life who I understand are at risk. Yes, I understand that when push comes to shove, I have other priorities than the change I claim to want to see in the world; and I own that.

Perhaps I've simply come to believe that if people really wanted certain changes in the world, they'd be doing more to actively, and constructively, bring them about. Maybe I've fallen into the trap of not realizing that just because something seems clear to me, that this doesn't mean that it's true. It could be that I find people's actions so wrong-headed that this is the only possible explanation I can come up with. I don't know. But I do believe I know that it isn't a secret that what people are doing now isn't working. Unless, of course, it is.

Limited Interest

I was looking at a headline that showed the latest count of "false or misleading claims made by President Trump," and I found myself wondering: Who cares? Not in the sense that this something that people really don't care about, but in the literal sense. Of the people who encounter the statements the President Trump makes, which of them care whether or not they are factually accurate?

We live in a society that's built, in large part, on lying. Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing depends mostly on our understanding of the context surrounding a lie. Most of the people who seem to have difficulty with President Trump and his relationship (or lack thereof) with what they consider the truth tend to view him as someone who deceives others for his own benefit, or for the benefit of other people who deserve no such benefits. If, on the other hand, people don't care about the delta between presidential statements and the truth, they view it as being about making a greater point, or just unimportant.

And this, overall, seems to be a partisan viewpoint. Which is unsurprising. Partisans tend to have strong views about the world, and this creates a filter for information that allows two people to take the same set of information about the world and come to wildly different conclusions about what is happening and what should happen next.

The conclusion that I came to is that the people who care about the truth or falsity of President Trump's statements are mainly people who are virtue signalling; where "virtue" is defined as opposition to the President, his policies and, to a lesser extent (perhaps), his supporters. And that's unfortunate in that it perpetuates the "rooting for the other guy to fail" mentality that has lead the country to this point. But it's also perfectly understandable. No-one wants to be a chump, and giving the other side the benefit of the doubt has become a sure-fire way to be seen as one.

Mind the Step

Okay, here's the quick and dirty synopsis.

At some point in the past, college student Jane Roe alleges sexual misconduct on the part of college student Harry Poe to the Title IX office. Harry is found guilty and expelled from ROTC program, of which they are (or were) both members.

More recently, college student John Doe (also in ROTC) and Jane Doe have an alcohol-fueled one-night stand. John alleges sexual misconduct to the Title IX office, and Jane is found guilty and suspended from school until John graduates.

Jane sues, claiming that John and Harry are friends, and John's sexual misconduct complaint is actually an act of revenge against Jane for her complaint against Harry, and his subsequent punishment. "On information and belief, John Doe was motivated to file a Title IX Complaint in retaliation for a prior Title X Complaint Jane Roe had filed against his friend."

Following all that?

This is one of those things that falls into the bucket of "You can't make this stuff up," because if you did, you would likely run into accusations of attempting to undermine protections against sexual assault on campus, because it neatly encapsulates some serious problems with the way things work.

• Jane Roe alleges that John Doe is cynically abusing the system to punish her for complaining against Harry Poe. And the way the system is set up, this is plausible.
• It's also plausible that John Doe genuinely feels that Jane Doe is sexually predatory, and Jane is simply being held to the same standard that John would have been had she complained about him first.
• Jane's attorney, Josh Engel, says that it's unfair that if they were both drunk, and they both engaged in the sexual contact, that only Jane is being punished, citing Doe vs. University of Miami, which effectively says that if both students are inebriated, and therefore neither can consent to sexual activity, both students must be investigated for sexual misconduct against each other. (To take this silliness a bit further, I'm waiting for someone to be caught masturbating while under the influence and be investigated for sexual misconduct against themselves. It just doesn't seem as far-fetched anymore as it genuinely should.) Not that this argument, that a regime that says that "alcohol precludes consent" effectively means that two drunken students are effectively assaulting each other, hasn't been made before. But it tends to be countered rhetorically with common gender-role stereotyping and procedurally by the fact that the first complainant wins. The Sixth Circuit, however, says that this is a discriminatory lack of due process.
• Reason's Robby Soave, meanwhile, posits that John Doe's motive was to do unto Jane before Jane did unto him. Which makes sense, given that since both students were intoxicated, a finding that their (barely) sexual encounter was non-consensual was effectively a foregone conclusion; which meant that if Jane had gotten the jump on him, John would have been the one suspended until her graduation.

And the issue is, that while three of the proceeding four theories might fall into the category of unintended consequences, they're not unforeseen consequences. Whether the system is being intentionally abused or has just fallen into absurdity, these are outcomes that are perfectly predictable, as the process was very clearly set up to presume a certain level of both good faith and knowledge of intentions without taking any steps to ensure either of them. And while I understand the idea that an imperfect system may be a useful first step to solving a problem, the rest steps also have to be taken. And it seems that they're slow in coming, if they're in the pipeline at all.

This is not to say that the perfect should be the enemy of the good. Rather, that the deeply flawed should not be considered "good enough," and therefore, not in need of urgent improvements; especially when the flaws are understood from the outset. A system that cannot protect itself from either cynical manipulation or simple silliness is not good enough to be a workable solution to a problem. And it doesn't make sense to wait for it to fail to attempt improvements, especially given the understanding that the ease of abusing it can easily lead people to conclude, for whatever reason, that such abuse is, in fact, an intended consequence of the system.

Part of the issue is that a standard that says that regardless of any or all other factors, sexual activity with a student who is intoxicated is sexual misconduct. Not because I'm discounting the idea that plying someone with alcohol to lower their inhibitions and then claiming consent is reprehensible. But because it was, in part, designed to automate the system. It seeks to remove old biases and stereotypes by taking people out of the loop, while not being sophisticated enough to replicate human judgement in nuanced or edge cases. In this, it reminds me of the corporate sexual misconduct training that I've had to sit through when starting a new job. The situations put forward are so obvious that it's difficult to understand how anyone could possibly screw them up, and so I've never learned anything useful; because the intent seems to be to allow Human Resources to check a box that absolves the company of responsibility should I do anything criminal to another employee. It's not designed to help me understand where the line is, but to protect the company when they fire me for crossing it.

I don't know if many students perceive campus sexual misconduct rules in the same way. But they seem to have the same M.O. That should be an encouragement to take the further steps needed to improve them.