Führende US-Unis der Männerdiskriminierung bezichtigt – News vom 4. April 2017

1. Bevor wir zu den Universitäten kommen, zunächst noch ein anderes Thema:

Eine Asylbewerberin aus Eritrea muss sich in Israel vor Gericht verantworten, weil sie ihren vierjährigen Sohn selbst beschnitten hat. Ihr wird Kindesmissbrauch vorgeworfen. Der Frau drohen bis zu 14 Jahre Haft. Dabei sind in dem Land 98 Prozent der männlichen Juden und fast alle Muslime beschnitten.

Wie die lokale Nachrichtenseite "Haaretz" berichtet, führte die Frau den Eingriff im März des vergangenen Jahres bei sich zu Hause durch. Dabei benutzte sie aber nicht die traditionellen Instrumente, die bei dem jüdischen Ritual üblicherweise verwendet werden. (...) "Die Angeklagte ignorierte die Schreie des Geschädigten und fuhr damit fort, die Haut vom Sexualorgan abzutrennen", heißt es in der Anklageschrift. Die Verteidigung argumentiert jedoch, dass dies von allen Beschneidungen behauptet werden könne.

Hier findet man den vollständigen Artikel.



2. Die US-amerikanische Universität Harvard diskriminiere Männer, behauptet der Präsident und Geschäftsführer der North American Interfraternity Conference.



3. Auch der Universität Yale, wie Harvard eine der prestigeträchtigen Ivy-League-Hochschulen, wird die Diskriminierung von Männern vorgeworfen, allerdings in einem gänzlich anderen Zusammenhang. Im folgenden zitiere ich einen aktuellen Artikel des Wall Street Journal darüber im Volltext. Das erscheint mir diesmal notwendig, damit überhaupt klar wird, welche Kontroverse sich in Yale gerade abspielt:

Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, took to these pages last October to affirm that "we adhere to exceptionally strong principles of free expression." He invoked Yale’s exemplary 1974 Woodward Report, which states that the university’s educational mission is inextricably bound up with "the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable."

A February lawsuit tells a different story. Tucked inside the amended complaint, Doe v. Yale, is the extraordinary claim that Yale punished the anonymous male plaintiff for writing a class essay in which he condemned rape.

Like dozens of lawsuits now working their way through state and federal courts, Doe v. Yale alleges that university officials grossly mishandled sexual-assault allegations. According to the complaint, a university panel found in spring 2014 that Doe had engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent. He alleges that the woman expressly consented and on that evening she harassed him. He adds that Yale’s disciplinary procedures were stacked against him and administered by biased officials who presumed his guilt.

This case is unusual in several respects. Doe advances one relatively new and one completely novel legal theory. The relatively new one revolves around Title IX, the 1972 federal law that provides that "no person" may be discriminated against based on sex in educational programs that receive federal assistance.

In April 2011, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a "Dear Colleague" letter declaring that Title IX imposed a duty on colleges and universities receiving federal funding — as virtually all do — to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate sexual-assault allegations and impose punishments where appropriate. The letter also directed schools to reduce due-process protections for the accused, typically men.

Doe insists that Title IX must protect men as well as women. In punishing him for sexual assault on the basis of allegations that were either unfounded or refuted by facts to which both sides of the dispute agreed, the lawsuit argues, Yale discriminated against him on the basis of his sex in violation of Title IX.

The novel legal theory flows out of a reading of "state action" doctrine developed by Jed Rubenfeld of Yale Law School, who served as Doe’s faculty adviser during the university’s sexual-assault proceedings. Doe argues that through the “Dear Colleague” letter, the Education Department conscripted Yale to enforce criminal law — thereby transforming the private university into an agent of the government.

That would subject the university to constitutional limitations. Thus Doe alleges Yale violated his 14th Amendment rights to due process and equal protection of the law.

This case also involves free expression because it began, Doe alleges, with Yale’s draconian regulation of his speech. According to his lawsuit, in late 2013 a female philosophy teaching assistant filed a complaint with the university’s Title IX office about a short paper Doe had written. In the context of Socrates ’ account in Plato’s "Republic" of the tripartite soul, the paper argued that rape was an irrational act in which the soul’s appetitive and spirited parts overwhelm reason, which by right rules.

According to the lawsuit, Pamela Schirmeister, Title IX coordinator and an associate dean in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, summoned Doe to her office and told him his rape example was "unnecessarily provocative." She ordered him to have no contact with the teaching assistant and directed him to attend sensitivity training at the university’s mental-health center. She also informed him that he had become a "person of interest" to Yale, which meant that the university had to intervene to ensure he "was not a perpetrator himself," in the lawsuit’s words. A few months later, the same Title IX office initiated the sexual-assault investigation against him.

Through a spokeswoman, Yale described the lawsuit as "legally baseless and factually inaccurate" but declined on confidentiality grounds to address any specific factual allegations.

If the lawsuit’s account is accurate, Yale has reached a new low in the annals of campus policing of speech. Surely no female student would incur criticism, much less censorship or punishment, for providing weighty philosophical authority in support of the proposition that rape is wrong.

If Doe’s story is true, Yale is no longer satisfied in enforcing correct opinions. To utter the correct opinion, Yale also demands that you be the correct sex. Far from protecting the right to "discuss the unmentionable" in accordance with the Woodward Report, Yale is stretching the boundaries of censorship by abridging the right to discuss even the uncontroversial.

Immerhin: Das Thema "Männerdiskriminierung an amerikanischen Unis" ist aus den Foren angeblich durchgeknallter Männerrechtler im Wall Street Journal gelandet – und zwar in einer Form, die es sehr ernst nimmt. Die Katze ist auch hier aus dem Sack, und ich behaupte, man bekommt sie unmöglich wieder hinein. Das Thema Männerdiskriminierung ist inzwischen in so vielen unterschiedlichen Zusammenhängen aufgemacht worden, dass man es nicht mehr einfach zum Verschwinden bringen kann. Sobald das Tabu einmal bröckelt, melden sich immer mehr Betroffene und andere kritische Stimmen zu Wort, weil sie merken, dass sie mit ihren Wahrnehmungen nicht alleine stehen.



4. Allerdings geben sich die Reaktionären noch immer alle Mühe, das Thema unter der Decke zu halten. Wir müssen uns mühevoll erkämpfen, dass man unseren Argumenten überhaupt zuhört, statt sie mit einem Tabu zu belegen und die Debatte zu unterbinden. Das zeigt beispielsweise ein aktueller Text von Cassie Jaye über die Aufführung ihres Filmes "The Red Pill" in Calgary. Ein Auszug über den aktuellen Stand der Dinge::

A new screening was scheduled at Calgary's Plaza Theatre for April 4th.

All was seemingly going well until yesterday when the Plaza Theatre posted on their Facebook that they would be canceling the screening after receiving emails threatening to boycott the theater if they play the film.

Many people wrote to the Plaza Theatre in support of the film - and ultimately in support of free speech. This open letter to the theatre from Karen Straughan was particularly impactful:

Today the Plaza Theatre decided to reverse their decision to cancel the screening, and so it's back on!

*Phew!*

Now we're where we started, but with thousands of more people hearing and knowing about the film.

Eines ist klar: Im feministischen Lager herrscht eine Scheiß-Angst, dass das Thema "Wie behandelt unsere Gesellschaft eigentlich die Männer?" auf breiter Ebene ins Gespräch kommt. Deshalb gibt man sich in diesem Lager die größte erdenkliche Mühe, genau das zu unterbinden.