Recalculating The Gender War

I previously wrote about the U.N.’s quest to censor the internet, how it stems from the UN’s disturbing feminist ideology and the questionable (if not lubriciously flawed) research the UN uses to try to validate itself. The UN is rightly being harshly criticized for its advocacy of censorship (though still not harshly enough by mainstream media).

However, this hasn’t deterred mainstream feminist organizations such as NOW (National Organization for Women) and the Feminist Majority Foundation from recently petitioning the U.S. government to censor/monitor the Internet under the guise of protecting women and people of color.

On October 20th, these organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR (Office of Civil Rights). The letter was entitled: “Request for Guidance Reminding Schools of Obligations Under Title IX and Title VI to Address Sex- and Race-Based Harassment Occurring on Yik Yak and Other Anonymous Social Media Applications”. Basically, the letter demands the OCR offer “guidance” to the U.S. colleges on their responsibility to monitor student/faculty use of Yik Yak and other social media platforms (even though these platforms aren’t affiliated with or controlled by the college). The letter claims that schools must monitor these social media platforms and police for supposed online harassment, cyber-stalking, and “cyber-violence” affecting their students. The letter further claims that schools should be required to locate and punish offenders. Failure to do so could result in a school be found in violation of Tile IX and/or Title VI and losing its federal funding.

Among the 72 organizations that signed the letter are both the Feminist Majority Foundation and NOW (National Organization for Women) as well as 21 local NOW chapters. Organizations at the heart of mainstream American feminism are now demanding government censorship of the internet.

Title IX & Title VI

Some quick context on Title IX and Title VI. In the U.S.A., Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”

Title IX continues to clarify exceptions (such as Greek organizations and military schools). Traditionally, Title IX has mostly been about equal funding for women’s college sports. The actual text of Title IX contains absolutely no mention of sexual harassment or sexual assault.

However, in 2011 OCR issued the infamous “Dear Colleague Letter”. In addition to quoting the flawed “1-in-5” CSA study as justification, the OCR offered “guidance” (not law, because they can’t make “law”) regarding dealing with sexual assault on college campuses (including lowering the standard of evidence necessary to find a student guilty of sexual assault). Schools that didn’t comply could lose all government funding, a likely fatal blow for most American universities. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) offers a great explanation of the OCR’s “Dear Colleague Letter” and its legal problems. It should also be stressed the legality of what the OCR is doing is very suspect.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is similar to Title IX, expect it relates to race, color and national origin instead of gender. It covers all organizations that receive federal funding, not just universities. It states:

“No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Who is the Request for Guidance letter from?

The Request for Guidance letter opens with:

“As organizations working to advance women’s equality and civil rights, we are writing to request that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) promptly issue guidance to universities and colleges reminding them of their legal obligations under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect students from harassment and threats based on sex, race, color, or national origin carried out via Yik Yak and other anonymous social media applications.” (1)

Who is the “broad constituency of U.S. women’s rights and civil rights organizations” (1)? The letter finishes with “Please contact Gaylynn Burroughs, Director of Policy & Research at the Feminist Majority Foundation[…]with any questions, or for additional information”(17), so I imagine the Feminist Majority Foundation is the main architect of this letter. However, a total of 72 organizations have signed the letter (most of which appear to be either feminist or feminist-leaning).

There are several interesting things about this list. First and foremost is the support of mainstream feminist organizations such as the NOW (National Organization for Woman). Not only did the main NOW organization sign the letter, but so did 21 other local chapters! NOW is arguably the oldest, largest and most powerful feminist organization in the U.S. They are about as mainstream feminist as you can get. Even the YWCA (Youth Women’s Christian Association) signed the letter. Again, I want to stress this letter represents the beliefs and goals of mainstream American feminism.

Some seemingly unrelated organizations also signed the letter. It’s obvious why the Feminist Majority Foundation and Hollaback! would be involved in something like this. However, why did the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals sign on!? Is online harassment a threat to student’s reproductive organs? Similarly Advocates for Youth is a organization that deals with youth sexual health and birth control. This only starts to make sense when you realize that many of the organizations dealing with sexual health, rape, domestic violence and other important public issues (the UN..cough..cough) are sympathetic to, if not completely co-opted by, feminist ideology.

What does the letter say?

The main point of the Request for Guidance letter is to convince the OCR to issue new “guidance” that will force universities to censor, monitor and police the internet or face Title IX/Title IV sanctions. The letter puts special emphasis on Yik-Yak and other anonymous online forums:

“Academic institutions have not responded consistently or appropriately to the growing use of anonymous social media applications as a tool for harassment, threatening behavior, and intimidation. Given the use of these applications to create sexually and racially hostile environments, institutions that fail to take immediate and appropriate action to end and prevent the recurrence of sex- and race-based online harassment and cyber-violence are in violation of their legal obligations under Title IX and Title VI.” (12)

Completely lost on the letter’s authors is that “Yik Yak,¹ 4chan,² BurnBook,³ After School,⁴ Fess,⁵” other social media outlets are not supported or controlled by the college (7). Unless college faculty are making these posts, there doesn’t appear to be any possible ground to claim Title IX or Title VI violations.

Also, notice the use of the word “cyber-violence”. This isn’t just a UN buzzword anymore. It has entered the wider feminist vocabulary.

As expected, the letter has disturbingly casual dismissals of serious free speech concerns:

“Many schools have shirked these legal obligations by citing vague First Amendment concerns. At the University of Mary Washington, for example, administrators and lawyers for the University repeatedly stated that, as a public university, they were bound by the First Amendment to permit threatening posts on Yik Yak and could not disable the application.1 The school’s Title IX coordinator also sent an email to students informing them that the university has “no recourse for such cyber bullying” and instructed students to file a report with Yik Yak if they became the subject of threatening or abusive comments on the social media application.²” (12)

And here:

“Nonetheless, academic institutions, many mistakenly citing the First Amendment, have not been quick to take action to properly investigate anonymous online harassment and cyber-violence. Many schools have taken the stance that they have no recourse for students experiencing harassment on these sites. Students are therefore left to fend for themselves against vicious threats and harassment simply because it is conducted on a new platform.” (15)

Students are not “left to fend for themselves[…]simply because it is conducted on a new platform”. First, students can contact the service in question or the police (you know, the only organization that is supposed to deal with crime). Second, it has nothing to do with social media being a “new platform”. It has everything to do with free speech concerns, lack of actual credible threats and the fact that colleges simply can’t control these social media outlets.

The statistics

It wouldn’t be a feminist moral panic without a few questionable statistics. The letter loudly proclaims that “Online Harassment Disproportionately Affects Women and People of Color and is a Significant Problem Among Young Adults” (4). It’s source is the 2014 Pew Research Center poll on Online Harassment, which I gave a short critique of in my previous post because the UN used it too.

The Pew Research survey results are questionable because it barely gives any definitions for its terms in its survey questions. Not strictly defining survey terms is the kiss of death for surveys. For example, respondents are asked if they have “[b]een sexually harassed” (4), but there is no explanation for what sexual harassment actually involves. This leaves it up to the respondent to decide what “sexual harassment” (an incredibly vague and open-ended word) means.

The letter quotes the differing rates of online harassment by race the Pew study found, implying this is the result of online hate speech. However, while the Pew study claims African-Americans and Hispanics report more online harassment then whites, the study offers absolutely no data on whether this online harassment is racially motivated. The perpetrators of this harassment may also be African-American or Hispanic. These differing rates could mean a lot of different things.

More importantly, I suspect the entire Pew Study simply makes a mountain out of a mole hill. Most supposed victims of “online harassment” (60%) simply ignored it and (83%) reported this made the situation better. Of the remaining 40% that took some form of action, 75% reported this make the situation better. The most common actions were overwhelming “unfriend or blocked the person” or “confronted the person online” Only 15% of those who reported online harassment felt their reputation was hurt. If anything the Pew Research Study shows the rising hysteria around preventing supposed “cyber-violence” is unnecessary.

The letter cites two other studies on harassment of LGBT individuals (whether Title IV/Title IX even apply to LGBT issues is another can of worms I won’t bother to get into). The First, 2010 State of Higher Education for LBGT, is behind a paywall. I’m not going to pay $25 to research the vague milquetoast claim that “LGBTQ college students are more likely to experience harassment than their heterosexual peers than non-LGBT individuals” (5). I’ll just wonder how they defined and recorded “harassment”.

The second is Out Online: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth on the Internet. However, the letter openly admits the study surveyed 13-18 year olds. The survey report states it used a “sample of 5,907 U.S. 13-18 year olds” (3). In other words, this study has almost nothing to do with LGBT college students! High school and college are very different experiences for LGBT students in the U.S. Unlike high schools, many universities have influential LGBT organizations, LGBT awareness/acceptance campaigns and outright LGBT celebrations. I’m not going to bother digging into the methodology of survey, it simply shouldn’t be applied to this letter. However, the letter’s authors seem to think it should (with little justification as to why).

The anecdotes

In addition to questionable statistics, the letter includes some skeletal anecdotes to support its point. I don’t care about most of these because 1) the plural of anecdote is not data, 2) somebody saying something unpleasant on the internet does not justify Orwellian censorship.

Furthermore, I’m suspicious that in many of these examples the supposed victims appear to have had unpleasant things said about them in public online forums, not because they were women or “people of color”, but as a result of their actions as toxic meddling hyper-sensitive pseudo-activists:

“At the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for example, Yik Yak users sexually harassed a feminist student group by threatening sexual assault and physical harm after individual members spoke out against rape culture and incidents of sexual assault on campus.¹ At Eastern Michigan University, students posted dozens of demeaning, crude, and sexually explicit comments and imagery about three female professors on Yik Yak.² Student activists who spoke out against sexual assault, racism and homophobia at Dartmouth College became the target of anonymous online posts declaring that they would be raped, lynched and shot,³ and at Kenyon College in Ohio, several Yik Yak posts were made threatening violence,and even sexual assault, against the women who lived and worked at the campus’ center for women.⁴” (11-12)

I am also very skeptical of feminist claims about threats they receive. Feminists have too often been shown to embellish or invent these threats to give themselves coveted victim status, which can be leveraged to silence legitmate criticism, bully political gatekeepers, rally a political base, etc. In addition, feminists often treat criticism of feminism as hate speech against women, because feminists believe they inherently represent (if not outright own) all women. They do not. This would be like saying criticizing communism is the same as criticizing Chinese people. Plenty of Chinese people aren’t happy with communism, just as plenty of women aren’t happy with feminism and they have good reason to be critical of it. Feminism is an ideology. Women are a biological people group.

University of Mary Washington - the spark that caused the letter

The one anecdote worth exploring in detail is University of Mary Washington because it may be the driving force behind the letter. The feminist student group in question at University of Mary Washington is FUC (Feminist United Club; yeah, that is their real name). FUC seems to have turned many on campus against it by both crusading against allowing Greek organizations on campus and against the school’s rugby team.

A January 2015 op-ed in the school newspaper by FUC president Paige McKinsey explains a lot. It also drips with self-righteous unearned victimhood. In a clumsy tirade about how anti-feminist the campus is, McKinsey writes that “insidious misogyny and hatred [are] very much alive at UMW.”

McKinsey condemns allowing Greek organizations on campus (which UWM decided to allow) by referring to nameless uncited “studies and research which shows that institutionalized Greek life on campus increased the number of sexual assaults.” She seemed shocked that her opponents pointed out that she was promoting an unfair and offensive stereotype of Greek organizations. In an earlier debate on the issue McKinsey is quoted as saying:

“Rape culture in fraternities is not a stereotype, it is a fact,” said McKinsey. “This is sexism, this is classism, this is discrimination, and we do not want it here.”

McKinsey claims the school’s rugby team once performed a chant that she claims “discussed violence against women, including murder and battery, sexual violence against women, including assault, necrophillia and rape, and used derogatory words to describe the women in the chant.” These claims would lead the entire men’s rugby team to be suspended in March.

The op-ed also mentions some of the supposedly negative messages posted up on Yik-Yak, which (as I suspected) appear to be directly at campus feminists, not campus women. The examples McKinsey gives also don’t actually sound that threatening.

Some of the article’s comments are also enlightening. One anonymous commenter critical of the op-ed wrote “I’ll remain annonomus here out of fear of being attacked from this club.” Another wrote:

“I know exactly which rugby song you’re talking about. Did you know that women sing the same exact same song but it’s about men? I don’t see any mention of that in the article. Also a lot of people are attacked on YIK yak for stupid reasons I don’t understand how that’s a valid argument.”

Another wrote:

“God, I wish that we had a feminist group that wasn’t a typical bunch of hateful radfem bullies. I became a feminist to seek equality with men and promote actual causes, not to censor and ban certain groups of people by misinforming others with a manipulative, terrible article that cites “yakking” as its one and only source of anti-feminist rhetoric at UMW.:

Everything took a turn for the crazy in April, when FUC member Grace Rebecca Mann was found murdered in her off-campus home. With the help of the Feminist Majority Foundation (who appears to be the driving force behind this recent Request for Guidance letter to the OCR), FUC filed a Title IX complaint against UMW claiming that it had ignored their concerns about Yik-Yak harassment. Supposedly the Title IX complaint was in the works before Mann’s murder, but it was still implied that Mann was a feminist martyr and that Mann could have been saved if UMW had taken the supposed Yik-Yak threats seriously. The media and feminists activists had a field day hinting at connections between Grace’s murder, alleged Yik-Yak threats/harassment, the men’s rugby team and the school’s Greek organizations.

Fortunately, UMV President Richard V. Hurly wrote an excellent open-letter to the Feminist Majority Foundation president regarding their actions with FUC. He chides them from rushing to create a media circus instead of discussing the matter with him. He claims he is understands that "FUC may be upset that UMW has not ceded to its demands to ban Yik Yak from campus” but reminds the Feminist Majority Foundation:

“it is important to understand that as a public university, UMW is obligated to comply with all federal laws – not just Title IX. The First Amendment prohibits prior restraints on speech, and banning Yik Yak is tantamount to a content-based prohibition on speech. (And in any event, banning Yik Yak from UMW’s network would be ineffective because students could still access the app using their personal wireless data plans.)”

He also points out that the “the majority of the offending Yik Yak comments submitted with FUC’s complaint” were reactions to Paige McKinsey’s op-ed and she was “the only student referenced by name in any of the Yik-Yak comments included with the complaint, and those comments primarily refer to the opinions she expressed in her public statement.” Again, despite all the hysteria around supposed rape and death threats, it sounds like the Yik-Yak “harassers” main crime was daring to disagree with campus feminists. Of course, if the Feminist Majority Foundation thought the public would take these supposedly Yik-Yak threats seriously, its strange they haven’t publicly released the UMW Title IX complaint that supposed details these specific threats (although its supposedly available upon request).

Finally, Hurly tears apart any suggestion that Yik-Yak threats or the school’s rugby team had anything to do with Mann’s murder:

“Other than the fact that Ms. Mann’s housemate played rugby eight years ago, and Ms. Mann was a member of FUC, the Feminist Majority Foundation and FUC have not identified any evidence that Ms. Mann’s death is linked in any way to her activities with FUC – much less that it is related to threatening posts on Yik Yak.”

The Michigan Standard also wrote and excellent article detailing FUC’s divisive activities on campus and showing the murder to be an unrelated event. It’s interesting to note there is no mention of Mann’s murder in this recent Request for Guidance letter to the OCR.

Letter’s recommendations - censor/monitor the internet, punish offenders, destroy free speech

Let’s be clear. The letter is not asking the OCR to clarify what colleges’ responsibilities are. The letter is asking colleges be given new responsibilities, many of which (even ignoring the incredible moral dilemmas) colleges simply could not fulfill:

“As the perpetrators of harassment and intimidation on applications like Yik Yak are anonymous, OCR should also clarify the steps an academic institution can take to satisfy its civil rights obligations. OCR should reiterate that “if harassment has occurred, doing nothing is always the wrong response,”¹ and also provide concrete examples of what kinds of actions might be appropriate. These examples could include, but are not limited to:

• investigating all reports of online harassment, whether or not perpetrators are “anonymous”;
• initiating campus disciplinary proceedings against individuals engaging in online harassment;
• geo-fencing of anonymous social media applications that are used to threaten, intimidate, or harass students;
• barring the use of campus wi-fi to view or post to these applications;
• prompt reporting of anonymous online threats of physical and sexual violence to police and the social media application, as appropriate;
• monitoring social media applications to ensure immediate response to online harassment and intimidation;
• providing counseling and appropriate accommodations for targets of online harassment and intimidation and others affected by it; and
• conducting mandatory training or intervention programs for students, faculty, and staff, including Title IX Coordinators and other appropriate administrators, on the use of these social media applications to engage in harassment and intimidation.”(17) [EMPHASIS ADDED]

Feminists are trying to push for anti-sexism/anti-harassment censorship. They will then claim (often very legitimate) criticism of feminists or feminism is criticism/hate speech against women and any disagreement is harassment/threats. We have already seen some of this with feminist abuse of anti-harassment laws in the U.S. and Canada.

Feminists are obviously riding on the sucess of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter that forced colleges to establish (possibly unconstitutional) pseudo-courts for sexual assault that can simply ignore basic due process rights (they aren’t real courts - worst they can do is expel you, destory your career and brand you a rapist for life). Now they are trying the same trick again. Feminists seem to want to establish universities as a kinda of feminist-imagined judicial system free from the confines of constitutional protections. I can only imagine the insanity that will follow if the OCR demands colleges extend their kangaroo courts to also cover the vague realm of “cyber-violence”.

All this will create a great incentive for false reporting. Feminist organizations that want to whip up support can create an artificial hate campaign against them on social media and then play the victim (this has already happened at at least one university). It’s unlikely they would get caught and unlikely they would be severely punished if they did (you don’t want to be accused of discouraging victims from coming forward). Students may be able to bully colleges into incredible acts of appeasement. You can’t find our mysterious cyber-harasser? Well, we won’t file a Title IX compliant if you give us funding for a new feminist cyber-violence awareness program.

I’m also very suspicious about who would exactly be monitoring social media applications. Will this job be taken by the same feminist ideologues that often end up being Title IX or diversity coordinators? Maybe it will out-sourced to organizations to like WAM!? The same goes for the “mandatory training or intervention programs”. It will all just be more pork for career feminists and more chances to indocrinate the student body. Sorry your already insanely high tutition rose again American students, but stomping on your right to free speech isn’t cheap. They may be a large market for for-hire feminist internet censors in this Orwellian future feminists seem desperate to build.

The letter also shows little understanding of technology. Yik Yak is a chat app for iOS/Android - a smartphone app. A college can only try to block internet traffic from a specific app or website on its own network. As the UMW President pointed out, a college cannot “geo-fence” an app when it doesn’t use their network. The only organization that could realistically “geo-fence” the app is Yik-Yak itself and Yik-Yak is very clear about this:

“We only geofence middle and high schools (primary and secondary) and will not geofence an entire town or college campus.”

Yik-Yak is a private company, not a school, so Title IX doesn’t apply to it. Furthermore, I doubt Yik-Yak receives any federal funding, so Title IV wouldn’t apply to them either. The same is likely true of all other social media apps/websites - Title IX/Title IV doesn’t apply to them and you can simply access them on your smartphone. Colleges may be able to control their own network, but even after ignoring all the moral problems, they simply can’t police the whole internet.

Mainstream feminism is anti-free speech

The most important thing about this letter is that it shows that mainstream feminism is now actively campaigning against free speech. When feminism does something questionable feminists often respond that only supposed “radical” feminists do that/hold that belief (even though the “mainstream” feminists never seem to challenge the “radicals”). However, there is simply no blaming “radical” feminism here. The Feminist Majority Foundation, NOW, the YWCA - this is about as mainstream feminist as you can get!

Most people who have been watching feminists with a critical eye for the last few years probably already knew this - from EU trying to censor the entire internet on feminist grounds to WAM!’s campaigns against social media outlets and rise as the official feminist censor of Twitter to the full-on global government internet censorship being promoted by the UN.

If the OCR rejects their letter will NOW, Hollaback! and the Feminist Majority Foundation just give up? No! They will likely just try something else. Feminists are already pursuing internet censorship from multiple angles and they will likely continue for the foreseeable future. This isn’t a one time battle, its a new front in an on-going war.

Mainstream feminism is actively campaigning against free speech! I can’t make this point strongly enough. This isn’t just a couple of feminist organizations you can ignore, this is the core of American feminism. This means that any support of “feminism” in general is now support for internet censorship regardless of an individual’s belief. Individual feminists may consider themselves pro-free speech but simply by supporting feminism as a movement they directly/indirectly support Orwellian censorship - its that simple.

A pro-free speech feminist’s only viable option now is to reject and condemn mainstream feminism (and maybe jettison other bigoted feminist belief while you are at it). Say “hi” to Christina Hoff Sommers for me.

We have to fight feminist censorship because mainstream media, academia and the tech industry won’t!

I don’t know enough about Yik-Yak’s leadership. Their position on geo-fencing gives me hope they won’t cave to feminist pressure. Unfortunately many tech organizations lack the bravery to stand up to feminist bullies or have similar ideological leanings. It’s been very disappointing to see no less than the Electronic Frontier Foundation suspiciously sit on its hands as the UN advocates worldwide government censorship of the internet in the name of feminism. Mainstream media has also been very silent about feminist censorship. They were completely uncritical of the UN’s ridiculous report calling for internet censorship, until #GamerGate and smaller media outlets like Breitbart started calling them on it.

Frankly, I imagine this is why feminists want censorship of the internet so badly. There is little meaningful criticism of feminism from academia and mainstream media. However, there is a lot of intelligent criticism from bloggers, Youtubers and smaller media websites. The UN’s recent (but sadly only temporaily) retraction of their report calling for government censorship of the internet shows that these small bloggers have the power to really challenge the increasingly authoritarian exploits of feminism.

So keep speaking out. Keep posting, tweeting and blogging. Let people know what is happening! Contact the OCR and let them know that you are concerned and do not want them to issue any guidance that could possibly inhibit college students’ right to free speech. If you are a U.S. citizen, contact your congressional representatives. If you are a U.S. college student, consider organizing a student email campaigns to the OCR. Maybe tell the OCR you aren’t happy about the 2011 Dear Collegue Letter while you are at it. Speak out now, because if you don’t, the next time it might be illegal.

Endnotes

Since this is university related, it looks like FIRE is also going to be keeping an eye on this.