Dr. Foubert said he considered many of those responses a form of “excusing the perpetrator and blaming the victim,” and was very concerned about it. NY Times, 2014-10-28
I could not imagine a more emblematic example of how duplicitous this issue has become than the quote above: Dr. Foubert, responding to details in the MIT study that show that “large numbers” of undergraduates agreed with statements suggesting that the blame for sexual assault “did not always rest exclusively with the aggressor”, says, oh, we can ignore that data. Just pay attention to the results I like.
The results seem to imply that this university campus is just rife with monstrous men committing sexual assault everywhere with near impunity (only 5% of the victims ever report it).
Let’s start with the fact that only 35% of the student body completed the questionnaire. We don’t need to assume that a higher majority of victims than non-victims might be willing to take the time to complete the questionnaire, skewering the results, because it is obvious that that possibility exists. Dr. Foubert trusts this minority when they assert that they have been victims of unwanted sexual conduct, and then heaps contempt on the same minority when “two-thirds agreed that ‘rape and sexual assault can happen unintentionally, especially if alcohol is involved'”.
This is called “cherry-picking” your data. You take the results that support your ideological commitment, attribute fabulous reliability to this data, and then ignore the same “reliable” results that don’t.
Foubert is “concerned” about the fact that many of the supposed victims feel they might be co-responsible for the sexual activity that took place. As, perhaps, in “I guess I shouldn’t have gone to the bedroom with him while I was drunk and my friends were urging me not to”. No no– women must not even be permitted to think that that would be unwise.
In other words, we need to train these women to see things the way we want them to see them, instead of how they actually see them, without having been programmed.
Foubert wants everyone to report every unwanted sexual advance to the campus police and the authorities. He asks the students who did not report these assaults, why they didn’t: “more than half” didn’t think it was serious enough. Perhaps some did not think it worth the trouble (heresy!). Some, possibly, didn’t want to ruin somebody’s life over an incident they feel they can handle.
A few years ago, two children were killed in a car accident on the 401 highway. The driver of a transport truck was clearly at fault. Yet the parents of the children refused to demand “justice”, or severe punishment. They felt that the driver would benefit more from their compassion and forgiveness than from a stern prison sentence. Dr. Foubert would undoubtedly feel a need to insist that these parents demand a pound of flesh. He would be “concerned” that they don’t understand what needs to be done in that situation. He would argue that other parents of children killed in at-fault accidents have been undermined.
Perhaps some of the girls filling out his survey just don’t believe there is a lot to be gained by getting back at someone. Is it really all that satisfying? Yes, yes, we will conduct the charade of “trying to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else”, and we know the necessity of that cover, because otherwise, you know, it looks like revenge.
Oh my, no, — that cannot be permitted. Dr. Foubert will undoubtedly embark on a vigorous program of re-education to correct this deficiency. Everything is serious. Everything is assault, if you don’t have an explicit “affirmative consent” (which is “consent consent”, and will shortly be replaced with something like “affirmative positive consent”, or “consent consent consent”, until the authorities realize that even more gravity is required.