Give Credit Where Credit Is Due; Replace "Silent Sam" with a Memorial to Dean Smith

Despite the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's reputation as a liberal/progressive mecca (Jesse Helms frequently referred to it as the "University of Negroes and Communists"), there is a gigantic racist elephant in the room that only enters the public discourse once or twice every few years. The outrage is usually focused at Silent Sam, a memorial to Confederate casualties of the Civil War that is arguably the most prominently placed monument on campus. I don't necessarily disagree with installations honoring Confederate veterans/casualties (if within reason/tastefully located) because as the costliest (in terms of total casualties) conflict in our nation's history, the Civil War shouldn't be forgotten no matter how deplorable one side's beliefs may have been. What I do have a problem with however, is how monuments to the Confederacy come to be. For example, Silent Sam was primarily funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a lovely little group of ladies masquerading as descendants of the Southern aristocracy. They are the group that argues for institutions' right to display the Rebel Cross, raises money for Confederate monuments/memorials, and engages in many other forms of historical revisionism that intend to replace facts with their fairy tale version of the Civil War. 

****If you are from the South, you can probably skip ahead to the solution. If you're a "Northerner", here's a brief explanation (from my perspective) of race/class dynamics in the South.****

Why? Because the whole "heritage not hate" thing is a way for southern whites to comfort themselves over the fact that black people are also, in fact, people. It's also a form of self-denial. It's a desperate last grasp to stay on top. I realize that as a direct descendent of a Confederate general and owners of a large South Carolina cotton plantation (that yes, owned many slaves), my critique may seem classist. Probably because it is; why else would you take pride in being a loser unless you literally had nothing else to be proud about? The true "Southern gentleman" would graciously concede defeat and follow with some serious introspection about the value (or lack-thereof) of their own beliefs, not continue to beat a dead fucking horse for over a century. 

So why would people not just give up on it after a while? Well, it lies within the inherent disingenuousness of a lot of Confederate revisionists. Want to know a great part about the Civil War? If you were a poor white person that owned neither land nor slaves, the complete societal breakdown that occurred during wartime and Reconstruction afterward gave you a chance to reinvent yourself, even if that new start wasn't entirely true. "See that empty plantation house over there? Used to be mine, but them damn Federal Occupiers gave it away." During Reconstruction, uneducated whites were pretty much unaffected because they didn't have any assets to lose (whiteness can't be taken away, but its power in society can be eroded). Many formerly wealthy landowners lost everything. But since those landowners were educated (most of the time), they went off and did something else to earn their livelihood and lived happily ever after. In fact, the destruction of the slave-based economy allowed for a great level of diversification in enterprise that is still continuing in the South today. The antebellum south was very much defined by its rigid social strata. At the bottom were slaves, at the top were the landowners (who many times were also the most prolific slaveowners as well), and just barely above slaves in the pyramid were all the uneducated white people (think the Ewells in To Kill a Mockingbird). Too poor to own land or slaves, the only thing that gave them any sort of position was their whiteness. This is how absurd the whole system was. In the aftermath of the Civil War, all the white-trash peons just hung on to this idealized picture of the antebellum south, and in many cases (falsely) reclaimed it. That was quite the digression, but that's how you get membership in an organization such as the UDC.

Back to UNC. Many buildings and public art installations on campus have drawn scrutiny. A few are considered here. But think about this; Silent Sam was funded and promoted by an organization who's only gift to the University was the statue itself. What did all those soldiers who died contribute to the University? Probably next to nothing. At most, their impact on UNC wouldn't have been any different than any other student who has ever attended there. Is the University any different because of what they did? No, not really. So this is a monument for sake of having a monument. I understand the historical significance, so it shouldn't be removed entirely. However, giving prime real estate to a monument recognizing negligible contributions towards the community doesn't make sense.

SOLUTION:

There is a lot of disagreement about what UNC should do about its racist history. Yes, buildings should be renamed. But plaques should be installed in a very visible location detailing the building's former name and the controversy surrounding it. That's easy.

In an effort to compromise, some people have suggested that UNC keep Silent Sam and just put a plaque explaining the controversy next to it. Yeah, good idea. But stick that shit down on South Campus where nothing matters.

Dean Smith passed away last night at age 83 following a decade-long battle with dementia. When I lived in Chapel Hill, any time I would pass by the Old Well and saw news vans congregated, I was afraid they were there because Coach Smith passed away. So I would quickly check Twitter to make sure he was still with us. I found out early this morning. Dementia is a terrible condition. I saw it destroy my grandmother. It takes away so much of what makes a person special until there is nothing left. 

Coach Smith deserves a tribute proportional to his contribution to the University and the State of North Carolina. Besides almost singlehandedly transforming the Carolina basketball program into what we know today, Smith was a staunch advocate for social equality and progressive causes during his time in the public eye. He brought Charlie Scott to Carolina, silencing the critics and helping to accelerate desegregation in Chapel Hill. He called Governor Jim Black a murderer to his face.

Dean Smith's legacy is the foundation on which the Carolina community is built. Let's recognize it appropriately with a monument/memorial in the center of McCorkle Place.

Everyone Is Completely Missing the Point of American Sniper

Disclaimer: I have read the 2012 book on which the film American Sniper is based upon, but it has been a couple years. Forgive me in advance if I don't remember parts of the book perfectly, especially since the movie took quite a few creative liberties with the memoir's narrative in order to provide a more compelling story on screen. That being said, I might only reference the book once, because this piece is meant to focus on the movie. It's also worth noting that I wrote this in a few different sittings over the past few days. Also, SPOILER ALERT.

A lot of the American Sniper reviews I've read recently have left me with two questions: a) "did we see the same movie?" and b) "does this person know anything about film criticism?". The majority were negative reviews, with the author citing the perceived "pro-war" message of the film. American Sniper features a lot of ultra-patriotic moments; it emotionally guts you, completely bypassing any ideological disagreements you might hold about US involvement in Iraq/Afghanistan because "right" or "left" does not matter here- we're all Americans, and these brave men and women are dying to defend our right to disagree with each other. I went and saw it with one of my lefty friends, and I don't know about her, but when the end credits started to roll with the real-life news footage of Chris Kyle's funeral procession, I had tears in my eyes. The only other time I've seen that much red, white, and blue was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Walking out of the theater, the feeling of gratitude to be an American in America could only be described as visceral and all-consuming. I wanted to put on my Kerry '04 hat and my "IMPEACH BUSH" t-shirt and go out to find some overweight person with NRA, rebel cross, Pro-Life, Jesus fish, and "Lynch Obama" bumper stickers on the back of their Ford F150 and hold hands and wave American flags and spontaneously break into tearful renditions of "God Bless America" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Except I didn't do any of that because the feeling probably lasted less than 4 seconds before I actually started thinking about (and not feeling) what I had just seen. By the way, I have no doubt that somewhere in small-town rural America, some kind of USA lovefest took place after the film ended. A great many white Republicans with a seventh-grade education may have experienced a strange sense of respect and nonpartisan gratitude towards our current Commander-In-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, who also happens to simultaneously be Satan and an illegal alien from Kenya.

All that being said, most of the critics appear to be guilty of a priori contempt simply because Clint Eastwood sat in the director's chair. Even the usually excellent Matt Taibbi fell victim to this mindset in his Rolling Stone review (which I encourage everyone to read). In the review, Taibbi makes many good points about the distinctly American perception of war-as-virtuous. However, most of his arguments (and others' entire reviews) were built from an extremely superficial reading of the film. These reviews don't even look at the film from a technical perspective. Sure, some of the script seems a little heavy-handed (as is the case in most Eastwood films), but Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller's performances are superlatively good. It is also worth noting that Cooper's bid as Chris Kyle received an Academy Award nomination, of which I think he entirely deserves (especially if you have read the book- more on that later).

Yes, American Sniper makes you god damn proud to be an American; if you watch it with the same level of discern that a nine-year old would watch a Michael Bay Transformers movie. But if you read between the lines and don't just take the ubiquitous red, white, and blue at face value, American Sniper is delivers a strong anti-war message. Interpreting the prominent placement of many American flags throughout the film as blind patriotism completely misses the point. Consider this: the most American thing you can do is burn a flag. Think about it.

Now for how I got this crazy notion that Clint Eastwood made a movie that doesn't glorify war:

The book vs. the movie

A lot has been said about Chris Kyle's penchant for telling "tall tales" (just Google "Chris Kyle liar" to see an exhaustive list of things he has been alleged or confirmed to have "embellished" in the book). I can't remember if the controversy was present at the time that I read it, but the subsequent fact-checking and debunking of some of Kyle's claims doesn't bother me at all personally, because I read every autobiography assuming some degree of unreliability in the narrator; you are getting their account and recollection of events from their perspective, which is the very definition of "subjective". This makes even more sense if you compare traditional memoirs/autobiographies to something like OJ Simpson's If I Did It, in which the reliability of the narrator to present a factual, nonfiction narrative is (ironically) implicitly confirmed by the disclaimer that the work is "hypothetical fiction".

I thought that the Chris Kyle of the book was a fairly unlikeable character. In simple terms, I thought he came off as a douchebag. Only a huge douchebag would write a book for the sole purpose of trying to convince the reader of how great a patriot/hero/'Murican he is. It's in the movie, but in the book I think the only piece of self criticism he offers is that he didn't kill more people. Really dude? How about the fact that you kept getting your extremely loyal wife pregnant and then dipping out on her... to go kill people? As for character development? Zero. He pretty much denies that war changed him because he was so convinced he was fighting the good fight and doing what needed to be done.

The movie is far better than the book because it actually turns Chris Kyle into a human being, not a walking Trace Adkins song. The film is intentionally subjective in its negative portrayal of Iraqis and lack of insight into the conflict as a whole because it is a movie based on an extremely one-sided memoir; the filmmaker is taking a story told in the first-person and preserving that same level of perspective telling the story in the third-person. You can see how combat affects the film's Kyle, even though he denies it every chance he gets. After each tour of duty, he becomes increasingly distant/emotionally withdrawn. You see the hypersensitivity, never ending state of over-alertness, and flat affect that can take place in combat veterans. Certain scenes (watching the TV that isn't even on/the rest of the birthday party, getting his blood pressure taken by the OBGYN, that super awkward scene where the guy thanks him) suggest post-traumatic stress disorder, but it isn't ever explicitly stated. Which is to be expected- Kyle has some very "traditional" ideals when it comes to gender roles and masculinity; talking about your feelings isn't one of them.

Chris Kyle : Mustafa :: Captain Ahab : Moby Dick
Edit: currently writing this on my phone from work, because apparently it's a thing among people nowadays to not show up for your job. But that's what's great about America, right?

Once again, I've found that one cannot perform literary analysis without referencing Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In American Sniper, the focus of the narrative becomes Kyle's obsessive quest to kill Mustafa, the elusive Syrian sniper (and former Olympian) who films his kills and puts them on YouTube. While only a very minor part of the book, in the film Eastwood characterizes him as evil incarnate; the ultimate boogeyman. He is the foil to Kyle's character; whereas Kyle always operates in an "overwatch" capacity giving cover fire and taking care of unseen threats for troops on the ground, Mustafa generally just sets up shop and shoots whoever he feels like shooting. It's "civilized" warfare (if there is such a thing) versus the savage and primitive nature of guerrilla insurgency.

With that in mind, Kyle's pursuit of Mustafa becomes an obsession- his time in Iraq isn't finished until he can kill Mustafa. If he fails, everything he has ever done will have been in vain; much like Captain Ahab's suicidal odyssey to kill "the Whale".

It's a different root of the same conceptual tree explored in recent films such as The Hurt Locker, where (if I'm not mistaken) the comparison is present from the title card; a quote about war being a drug. However, in American Sniper, these obsessive neuroses manifest themselves quite differently. Simply put, Chris Kyle has a god complex. That isn't a valid clinical diagnosis, but for the purposes at hand let's just consider it to be a kind of "altruistic narcissism"; Kyle believes that he can singlehandedly keep American soldiers alive. When he doesn't have a good line of sight as Marines are going door-to-door, he decides to take point in one of those squads (against orders I might add). Of course he is "The Legend"- he might as well be a god to all the guys doing the heavy lifting. It is this hubris that makes Kyle's sense of duty in completing his personal mission so powerful. It is also why the outcome doesn't have the intended effect.

The Shot
Couldn't think of a better name for this section. Kyle manages to kill Mustafa with a headshot delivered from over a mile away. The film's intensity building to this moment is palpable- you know he's going to make the shot, but you're gripping your seat anyway. He sees the pink mist through his scope. His buddy confirms the kill, and congratulates Kyle on killing the most ruthless insurgent sniper and achieving justice for all the troops he's killed. Kyle should be ecstatic at this point. This moment is what he has sacrificed so much for throughout the film. Except you see nothing but a man who is finally broken, completely empty, and defeated. It is at this point that he calls his wife to tell her he's "ready to come home". Soon afterwards, you get one of the most powerful scenes in the film- Chris Kyle leaves his rifle and pack on the ground. Not only is this the last thing a Navy SEAL would ever do (or any soldier- that's covered in basic), but there is that scene early on in the film where his father scolds him for putting his rifle on the ground, telling him to never do it again. This is the only time you see him put his rifle on the ground (uhhhh surrender symbolism for $500?) other than that flashback scene.

It's getting the promotion at work that you've convinced yourself will make everything right in your life. It's having a kid. It's graduating college. It's getting married. Or it's breaking down that incredible looking dope you spent all day pawning your possessions to get, finding the one vein in your arm that isn't collapsed, and pushing on the plunger.

Some of these examples offer more immediate reward than others, but not a single one of them brings true and lasting happiness in and of itself. Ultimately, they are just "things".

If you don't get anything else from this, always remember; coming from someone who spent a unfortunately large chunk of their life trying to find the ultimate chemical or behavioral cocktail to make me feel "happy" or "okay", I came to found that the only way to truly be happy is to place others' needs before my own. I need not to just have friends, but be a friend. I need to wake up everyday and try to not think about how I can have a good day, but what I can do to make sure the people around me have a good day. I could go on forever about this, but in short, true happiness and ego cannot coexist.

The ultimate message
Chris Kyle comes home and doesn't have the easiest time adjusting. After a number of incidents (a few mentioned above), he sees a psychologist/psychiatrist at the VA hospital. The doctor asks Kyle if he regrets anything, which he initially brushes off. He finally comes around to admitting that he regrets not having killed more people so that more US troops could have been saved. The doctor responds by telling him there are plenty of veterans back home that need saving.

Bottom line: Chris Kyle doesn't make peace with himself, his family, and his experiences until he begins to devote his life towards selflessly helping other veterans in need. Killing enemy combatants doesn't save lives; it slowly kills the person who pulled the trigger. Suicide kills more US soldiers/veterans than combat operations. The greatest risk to a soldier's life isn't an enemy sniper or an improvised explosive device; it is their own mind, and how what they experience in war tears it apart.



Anti-war messages don't get any more potent than this one.

If you aren't willing to donate twenty dollars directly to a cause you "care" about, don't fucking say that you "care" about it

In case you were wondering, I haven't been posting regularly because instead of being unemployed and sitting around my parents' house all day watching Fox News on full volume with my dad, I got a job and started working forty hours a week. All I will say is that I work for a left-leaning non-profit, and am involved in fundraising. If nothing else, this has just made me more cynical about how much my generation fucking sucks. A lot of people are totally willing to diarrhea their opinions all over Facebook/Twitter/whatever and call themselves "activists", but when it comes to giving money to the organizations that do all the work, forget it. Copying and pasting a link doesn't make you an activist. Best case scenario, it makes me like you more because maybe the link is a good/interesting read (whether or not I personally agree with it). Worst case (and the most often) scenario is that the stuff you post just confirms my assumptions that you're an idiot (but I will get to that later). The overwhelming majority of the people I talk to at work are between the ages of 18-32. This will surprise exactly no one, but the most common excuse they give me is that they can't donate because they're broke. Fucking millenials (and I love how it gives me the red underline for that word). Go to a local (or for a lot of us, not so local) public housing project and talk to a single mother supporting three kids on two minimum jobs, THEN tell me how fucking broke you are. For you, twenty bucks isn't making a choice between not eating for a couple days and keeping the heat on; it's a choice between going out to eat on a Friday night then having a few drinks somewhere and staying home. God forbid you don't go out one night this weekend!

Plus, I've got a theory that this phenomenon of "slacktivism" (hate that word too) is endemic amongst the "liberal", socioculturally "literate/conscious" (that's the sound of me puking) set. Shit, that's the whole reason the "Voices" section on HuffPo (especially the "College" and "Women" channels) exists; so you can read it, agree with it, post the link on Facebook, and pat yourself on the back for being a great fucking person.

I'd bet that conservatives would be much more willing to give money to a cause they support because most of them truly believe they are saving the USA from a godless liberal agenda. Well with all the money they're willing to give, I WONDER WHY THEY WIN SO MANY FUCKING ELECTIONS.

Wu-Tang was correct in their assertion that "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" (C.R.E.A.M). Your ultra-enlightened liberal intellectualism only goes as far as the monetary value that you're willing to place on it.

Come stand out in the freezing rain with me for eight hours, then you have my blessing to call yourself an activist. Otherwise, shut the fuck up until you actually find something that you're willing to give money to support.

Short point that I will address fully in another post;

All Americans should be required to take some sort of introductory civics/US government course in high school. If you place the blame for your grievances on Barack Obama (or any president for that matter- people blamed W when he was in office far more than people criticize Obama now), it shows that you fundamentally do not understand the US government and how it works.

EDIT: I should really proofread better. Made some grammatical corrections.

Today's edition of "How the Fuck Did This Get Published?"

"How the Fuck Did This Get Published?" might become a regular feature on this blog since I often end up asking myself that question while reading source material related to whatever I'm writing about.

Today, it is this article (and the study referenced within) on Huffington Post. As you might imagine, I am not the biggest fan of HuffPo. Although it is (arguably) at the top of the hierarchy of click-bait garbage (Buzzfeed<UpWorthy<Thoughtcatalog<Gawker<HuffPo), it is still click-bait garbage; this article is no exception with a headline of "Nearly One-Third of College Men In Study Say They Would Commit Rape" when the "study" consisted of a self-report questionnaire given to a convenience sample of only 86 men. That is a sample size and collection method of an undergraduate research project, not a study published in a peer-reviewed journal. The fact that anyone is trying to draw larger conclusions about even the student population from which the sample was drawn shows a fundamental lack of understanding of statistics and the scientific method.

I'm half watching the Green Bay game right now so I'm not really too interested in good transitions. So I'll just go right into explaining my problems with this study. This will make more sense if you read along with me.

INTRODUCTION

The first sentence of the introduction cites the dubious "one in five" statistic. Are you fucking kidding me? It doesn't even cite it correctly. The citation is in reference to the second half of the sentence, which is that the majority of sexual assaults are committed by people who are known by the victim (which is true and supported by data). The full version of the "one in five" statistic (see some of my previous posts for full explanation of why it is bullshit) is that about 19% of college-age women will be the victim of attempted or completed sexual assault during college, with the majority of that 19% consisting of the "attempted" variety, which included vague situations such as "unwanted touching", which could be anything from an unwanted kiss (example: go in for a kiss after a date, she says no, you stop) to getting groped in a crowded place. Furthermore, this isn't even a study; it is a factsheet compilation of many different studies. If you want to quote a quantitative figure like that, you better cite the exact study from which it came.

Further down in the introduction, this passage:

"For example, commentators have suggested that rape only occurs if a woman labels it as such, while experiencing an unwanted sexual experience under the influence does not constitute rape. This perspective demonstrates stereotypical assumptions many people still hold about rape, considering it to be an act of extreme violence perpetrated by an unknown assailant upon an unsuspecting woman who is willing to defend her sexual purity with her life. Such sentiments contribute to a culture that continues to put at least partial responsibility for sexual assault on the victim and normalizes sexual aggression as part of the male gender role."

I cannot read this without seeing <-- WHO???? CITE!?!? angrily scrawled above "commentators". Which is exactly what would be written had this been turned in for a grade. Furthermore, if you are going to call something a "stereotypical assumption", why not cite an example? If it is that widespread, there should be plenty of studies demonstrating how widely held the belief is. Also, since normalization of "sexual aggression as part of the male gender role" is a central research question examined by this study, why are you assuming it already exists rather than presenting it as a hypothesis? Also, WHERE IS THE CITATION ANYWHERE IN THESE STATEMENTS?

The next section explains some of the differences that can arise when asking participants virtually identical questions with different wordings. This has been demonstrated in studies dating back to the 1960s and 1970s when the field of quantitative psychology started to gain significance with their focus on researching the research methods themselves. "Sexual assault" sounds less harsh and carries less stigmatizing connotations than "rape". But here are where semantics get in the way of clarity- all rapes are sexual assaults, but not all sexual assaults are rape. So although "rape" does indeed carry a more stigmatizing connotation, it is also naturally going to be reported less because it is a more specific offense than "sexual assault".

Callous Sexual Attitudes and Hostility Towards Women

I will try to avoid going down the rabbit hole here, for unless you're like me and nerd out over research methods, you probably won't care. I will say that I think the experimental operationalization of these two behavioral constructs is sound. The expected links between callous sexual attitudes (CSA) with coercive behavior and hostility towards women (HTW) with aggressive behaviors respectively makes sense, however I don't entirely buy into the incorporation of hypermasculinity as a key variable, especially since the CSA is only one subsection of a larger measure for hypermasculinity. The hypermasculinity measure contained numerous subscales, which when considered together gave an aggregate indication of hypermasculinity. Basing a measure of hypermasculinity on this subscale alone is like coming to the conclusion that anything with four wheels is an automobile (A-->C), and anything with an engine is a automobile (B-->C), both of which are untrue statements if an automobile's distinguishing characteristic from other vehicles is defined as having four wheels powered by an engine (A&B-->C).

I'll take a minute here to distill the hypothesis, because it isn't really clearly stated (more red ink). The researchers think that the results will separate the men into three distinct groups;

• Men who express no intentions to use sexually aggressive behavior; strongest variable relationship between individuals in this subset would be a low score on the HTW scale
• Men who openly endorse intentions to rape women
• Men who endorse intentions to use force/coercion but deny intentions to rape; difference between this group and the group above is expected to be found in the CSA scale- this group will score higher than group above

Materials and Methods, or Where I Completely Lose My Shit

This study consisted of 86 heterosexual men. With a sample size that small, there is no way that this study should have ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal, especially since it is defined as a convenience sample. Do you know when you resort to a convenience sample? When shit hits the fan and you accept the fact that your study is going nowhere. I don't know how University of North Dakota runs things, but at UNC, PSYC 101 students are required to participate in a certain number of research studies for completion of the course. This is a common practice at many other schools as well. The small sample size coupled with the fact that the participants were offered extra-credit for their participation and "most" were juniors tells me that participants were most likely drawn from students enrolled in a single course, possibly a single section of a single course. Additionally, the measures used are self-report surveys, which are the weakest form of data collection. So why such a shitty sample? Most likely because the IRB didn't approve the study for use on the PSYC 101 participant pool (if it exists) for any of the reasons that I've described so far.

To fully understand why such a small sample size should pretty much invalidate the whole study, read this. If you are going to try to use the results of a study to make conclusions about a larger population (which is arguably the whole fucking point of doing research in the first place), you need to have a certain sample size for those conclusions to be valid. According to Wikipedia, UND has an enrollment of 15,000. I don't feel like finding the demographic data, but let's just assume it is 50% male, 50% female. That would make your total population of male college students at UND about 7,500. To conclude anything about the population from the sample, you would need to have a sample size of around n=365, which is about four times larger than this study's n=86.

EDIT: The study had 86 total participants. I originally read that only one participant's responses were excluded. I didn't mention it because it is standard practice to exclude responses from participants who didn't complete all items on the survey. However, upon further examination, a total of 13 were excluded from analysis, thus the results only represent 73 individuals.

Furthermore, the decision to sample only males is curious for a few reasons. Firstly, the researcher most likely falls into the completely unscientific school of thought (thanks third-wave feminism!) that gender is a social construct, so why are characteristics of "hypermasculinity" only being examined along the heterosexual cis-male spectrum? Since gender is ostensibly completely independent from biological sex, why aren't females also included in the sample? While I don't believe gender is entirely a social construct, individuals' chosen form of expression of their gender role is very much constructed; some men behave more "feminine" than others, some women behave more "masculine" than others. Notions of masculinity and femininity have a basis in biological differences, but the behavioral manifestation is a result of culture. So if you want to examine how increased masculine traits may lead to sexually aggressive/coercive behaviors, this finding would be even more supported if women were included in the sample.

Also, the researcher is interested in semantics and word choice- for example the difference created by a behavioral description of "rape" versus a direct question addressing "rape". According to the makeup of the sample, I guess only cis-males are capable of being rapists. This is ridiculous, especially considering the definition of rape presented in the paper's introduction. Both men and women are equally capable of sexually coercive behaviors, though I would say men are much more likely to exhibit aggression. But these differences are important and not widely studied. Again, women should be included in the sample, if for no other reason a control group.

Results/Discussion/Conclusion
Not the statistical analysis I would have used, but I guess it works. I'm just worried that the method used increases Type I error rate by lumping all the variables together.

All you need to know about this is that under the "Limitations/Future Research" section, the researchers do not mention the sample even ONCE. Yet again, imagine me vomiting red ink all over this. You ALWAYS talk about the sample because there is no such thing as a perfect sample. The First Law of Research is "Shit Happens". In fact, that is just about every law of research when it comes to running a study. Eighty-six is an exceptionally small sample. Furthermore, a sample entirely composed of straight men (90% of whom identified as Caucasian) doesn't exactly scream "representative of the population". This section is where you acknowledge its shortcomings and suggest how future research can improve on the current study (larger sample, include women, etc). It is a vitally important practice in science because it enables others to replicate and expand upon current findings. So as a short list, future studies should examine if there are better ways to measure the variables, should have a much larger sample size composed of men and women, and possibly include a variable of whether or not participants have already received some sort of educational intervention on sexual assault and whether or not that influences their responses. Are any of these things suggested? Nope. Not a single one of them. I came up with those in the amount of time it took to type them. This is basic stuff if this is what you were trained to do. But there is nothing of that nature here.

Well, what is suggested?

Mandatory gender and sexuality studies classes for male college students.

How the fuck did this get published?

UVA "Rapegate" Part II: Jumping Sharks with Jackie (edited 12/17)

So I guess you could say I was mostly right. And really, it has just gotten worse the further down the rabbit hole the Washington Post has gone.

Me, the past two weeks

I've stayed relatively silent about the progressive crumbling of the narrative presented by Rolling Stone/Sabrina Rubin Erdely/Jackie (who you actually blame depends on how much you care about political correctness) in the past couple weeks because quite frankly, a lot that has been written about it recently is stuff I already said two weeks ago.
Recap of points I made that have been made by others:

• UVA doesn't have fall rush/pledging (for the most part), so the whole "rape-as-initiation" assertion is invalid (didn't include a link because it is already linked above).
• The characters and their actions are less believable than characters in car insurance commercials. In the RS story, they might as well have been cardboard cutouts holding up #rapeculture signs.
• Rubin Erdely had a clear agenda; to choose the most sensational (and conveniently least verifiable) story she could find (instead of countless others deemed "too boring") that most closely supported the narrative of rape as the weapon of white patriarchal hegemony, literally and figuratively represented as college fraternity culture.
• Sociopathy/antisocial personality disorder is rare, violent sociopathy even rarer, and violent sociopaths with even the most basic social skills are practically non-existent (we are talking probably <0.0001% of the world population). To suggest there is a "top tier" fraternity at a prestigious university whose membership is entirely composed of the type of violent sociopath to use gang-rape as an initiation ritual is statistically impossible. In other words, somebody would have cracked, and this would have come to light a lot sooner.

If you remember, I was very hesitant to place any blame on Jackie. In fact, I went so far as to suggest that "Jackie" may have been a rough, very poorly-written composite character created by the author to provide an expository narrative validating "rape culture" presented for consideration in the context of UVA's lack of appropriate action. While I don't buy into "rape culture", I do believe that many standard practices conducted by law enforcement and universities in dealing with survivors of sexual assault/rape often amount to "victim-blaming", however well-intentioned the investigator(s) may be. Let's be honest; from the perspective of someone (often a male) investigating a crime, rape/sexual assault victims aren't exactly the easiest victims to deal with. While it's arguable that the primary source of trauma is physical, the degree and severity of emotional trauma inflicted upon survivors is far greater than any emotional trauma experienced by victims of other violent crimes. Try sitting in a room with someone after they have been through the worst event of their entire life and try to get them to tell you about it in a clear, articulate manner. Humans don't operate like that. Logic/rationality and emotion occur in completely different areas of the brain. In many ways for most people, rationality and emotion are best represented as being inversely proportionate to one another; more emotion = less rationality, more rationality = less emotion. Under this framework, it's easy to see why unfortunately, oftentimes rape/sexual assault victims' own accounts of what happened don't make a lot of sense, at least the kind of concrete, unfeeling "sense" that our criminal justice system requires.

All of that being said, I was wrong. Unfortunately, "Jackie" is a real person; a real person who seems to have fabricated her entire story in an attempt to make a guy jealous. It's bad enough to lie about rape, but it is especially enraging that of all the reasons Jackie could have had, it just HAD to be the most misogynously frivolous one of them all; a tangible instance of the completely incorrect but widely accepted suggestion that "women lie about rape for attention".

Furthermore, it certainly doesn't help that Jackie appears to be a fucking nutcase. Her behavior goes far beyond the kind-of-crazy-but-still-common practice of a girl who gets rejected finding some other guy to ostentatiously parade around with to stir up jealously in the guy who originally rejected her. Jackie made up a person. This "person" was named "Haven", ostensibly a third-year at UVA that "types lyk this lol ;):P". Really??? REALLY??? At least now we can confirm that Jackie has no future in writing.

Okay, so she created a fake guy... alright. Maybe she could just casually mention it in conversation. But no. Instead, she did this:

"Jackie told her friends that the number belonged to an upperclassman who courted her, and then lured her back to a college fraternity party where the gang-rape occurred.The cellphone number, when matched through telephone databases, is an Internet phone number that came through on two of the friends’ phones with an Internet domain attached. Several database phone searches confirmed that Internet domain matches an Internet phone and SMS text service called Pinger.Internet phone numbers enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone. They also let users create multiple, untraceable phone numbers for little or no cost while concealing their true identity." 

Ladies and gentlemen, the shark has been jumped.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (Billy Mayes hologram)

"Mr. Duffin said Jackie gave him one cellphone number to text, but when he sent the first text, he received no response. Instead, he received a response from a second phone number he did not recognize. The sender announced himself as Haven explaining that his phone was not working so he was texting from a friend’s phone. Haven then said he would start texting from a third number that was his BlackBerry device, according to the friends.
Mr. Duffin said he eventually asked Haven for a photograph, which the upperclassman sent from the BlackBerry number. Last week, The Washington Post confirmed that the man depicted in that photograph never attended U.Va., but did go to high school with Jackie. The Times called all three numbers supplied by the friends. The third ‘BlackBerry’ number was forwarded to a voice mail with a female voice asking the caller to leave a message, and the other two were “not in service.”
All three phone numbers were labeled as an “Internet Phone” on a database background check; two were labeled as “Pinger Internet Phone,” and the other from “Enflick Internet Phone,” services that allow users to send SMS text messages from a computer or iPad without having a phone number."

EDIT: MORE JUMPING OF THE SHARKS

"Five days later, Duffin said he inexplicably received an email titled "About You" from Haven, the man allegedly behind the alleged sexual assault. (When CNN tried the email address, the message came back "undeliverable.") 

"It was from Haven Monahan ... and it looked like Haven had written, 'You should read this, I've never read anything nicer in my life,' with a page worth -- an essay -- that Jackie had written about me," Duffin said. "Which seemed really weird to me, even at the time, because here's somebody who allegedly just led a brutal sexual assault on a friend of mine, and now he's going to email me this thing about me?" 

Jackie told her friends that Monahan dropped out of the university after the assault, but a university record check by CNN revealed that no one by that name ever attended the university. Another check found no one by that name in the United States."

WTF.

 So this brings me back to a point I wanted to make in my first piece but never got around to it; it seems like the only person Sabrina Rubin Erdley (who I will start referring to as SRE) even tried to interview was Ryan Duffin ("Randall"). The article said that "Randall", "citing loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed". This raised red flags for me. I don't know if she was directly quoting him, but no one who is in a fraternity calls it a "frat". Just a simple lexical tell is one of those idiosyncrasies that made me so suspicious of the veracity of the original article.

But as it turns out, Duffin was never contacted by RS. Furthermore, Duffin isn't a member of any fraternity. This leaves us with two equally possible scenarios.
1. Rubin Erdely is lying
In the past couple weeks we've seen again and again that SRE is much more concerned with promoting her personal agenda than reporting what actually happened. However, she has been open about not contacting any of the accused rapists (due to an agreement with Jackie). Admitting to that is basically saying "I am a really shitty journalist and I don't care about facts as long as the story fits". I mean, she must have known people would tear this story apart- why would she lie about actually doing her fucking job and attempting to contact a source?
2. Rubin Erdely is telling the truth
Taken at face value, this would be the one that people would naturally want to believe. However, consider the implications; no one at RS ever contacted Ryan Duffin, so who in the world denied to be interviewed by SRE? Well considering that Jackie has already catfished/spoofed/I-don't-know-if-there's-a-word-for-it her friends, is it really that much of a stretch to suggest that Jackie gave SRE bogus contact info for Randall, and that she was the one to decline an interview in his stead?

Kansas is going bye-bye

So what does that leave us with? The generally accepted narrative is that "something happened" to Jackie that night, for the one thing everybody agrees on is that Jackie seemed extremely distressed. Distressed enough for rape to be a plausible explanation. 

Except what if nothing happened? What if Jackie abnormally reacts to situations with extremely intense emotions that aren't justified by whatever caused them? What if Jackie was having an intense emotional reaction to feelings of rejection and isolation that night? Just explaining "I'm upset because this whole manipulate Ryan into liking me thing isn't working how I thought it would" doesn't exactly justify that level of emotion... and it sounds "crazy". What if Jackie felt the only way for her (very real) emotions to be validated was to present a situation justifying that level of emotional trauma... like gang rape?

Maybe you're thinking no one would ever do that. But they do. It's called borderline personality disorder. Go ahead and read about it there, because there is absolutely NO way I could ever present an unbiased summary of BPD due to my experiences in relationships with women who have BPD. Spoiler alert: I got lied to and manipulated. A lot.

So here's the thing. Just calling Jackie "crazy" is stigmatizing and insensitive. She is obviously a very sick person, and she needs to get appropriate help. But she also needs to quit feeding everyone bullshit. She needs to come clean about what (if anything) happened. For herself and for everyone else. 

Assorted thoughts and observations for Sunday, December 14th

Johnny Manziel Might Be the Hugest Douche to Ever Play in the NFL
A lot of people are saying "Johnny Football" is just the "new Tim Tebow". Comparing Manziel to Tebow is FAR too generous. Yes, Tebow finished the 2011 season with the lowest pass completion rate for any quarterback in the NFL. Except Tim Tebow pretty much single-handedly carried the Denver Broncos to the playoffs that season. Furthermore, as one of the most talked about players in the league, Tebow's NFL career ended in the most unceremonious manner possible. It says loads about his character that he has been able to roll with the punches, because I really think about 90% of the people who watch football every Sunday wanted Tebow to fail. Even among Florida Gators fans, Tebow was a very controversial figure. Broncos fans were equally divided. Pretty much the only demographic to unconditionally support Tebow were Evangelical Christians, due to his much-maligned public displays of faith.

But here's the thing; Tebow seems like a generally good human being. Like the type of good human being who you wouldn't mind being stranded on a deserted island with because you would trust he wouldn't kill you in your sleep to cannibalize you. Think about it. There aren't that many people in your life today who you could trust to not eat you under those circumstances. Tim Tebow wouldn't eat you. Tim Tebow would protect you with the circle of Jesus fire surrounding him. But unfortunately for Tim Tebow, being a good human being doesn't make you a good NFL quarterback.

On the other hand... Johnny Manziel would eat you. Not only that, he would probably take fucking selfies of himself feasting on your leg, "medium rare lol!!!!". Keep in mind this is on a desert island, no possibility of rescue. No one is going to see these. The phone itself might even be dead by this point. Maybe there isn't even a phone. But unless it's a Johnny Football selfie, it didn't fucking happen... because as of now, the only thing of note he has done in the NFL is take a bunch of selfies.

Did you know that "Johnny Football" is a registered trademark?

Furthermore, his signature sign/taunt/mark of being a fucking asshat is "money". Really dude? The best fucking thing you could come up with in thousands of Instagram posts is either two middle fingers or the "money" sign?

No one else in history has behaved in a fashion as such to beg humanity to punch him in the face then take a picture doing the "money sign" while teabagging him.

Today, Mr. Football got his first start of the (mostly done) season. The Browns lost 30-0 to the Bengals. Manziel was 10 for 18 with two interceptions, and was sacked three times.


$$$$$MONEY, BITCHES$$$$$

(I was going to take that picture with cash and a gun, except I don't have any cash on me and I don't own a gun)

Part II: The Misguided Racial Politics of Rape Culture

Before I begin, I will posit that if "rape culture" was real, this figure wouldn't exist:

Self-Explanatory

Nor would this statement from the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) in a letter to the White House: 

"In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming “rape culture” for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime"

You would think that the nation's largest and most respected survivor's advocacy group debunking rape culture would mean something. Apparently not, because you can't go two days without reading about the ubiquitous "one in five" statistic, which has been repeatedly shown as highly misleading.

I encourage everyone to read the original study that produced that figure. I won't go so far as to say (as many conservative pundits have) that the study was "highly flawed", but I will say as someone who has designed and conducted similar studies (and knows a good bit about research methods) that the conclusions many have drawn from its results are incredibly unfounded. The study was a self-response, web-based online survey. I've run a couple of these, and can say that half the time, people either won't finish or they will skip questions. Most researchers who care about getting good data will only resort to this design as a last resort. Additionally, if you look during the portion of the paper that discusses the survey itself, you can see that all the questions are pretty ambiguously worded; researchers thought this was the best route to take rather than specifically ask participants if they had been raped or sexually assaulted. While in theory this sounds like it would strengthen construct validity because it gives accounts of situations rather than relying on the participants' own personal definition of "rape" and "sexual assault", items were coded as such in the analysis. For example, "sex while intoxicated" was considered rape under the justification that one cannot give consent while intoxicated. True, but the majority of responses interpreted as "rape" came from this response or a couple others like it. In other words, while researchers designated participants' responses to be rape, many of the participants (both men and women) probably wouldn't consider themselves rape victims. Have you ever had sex while drunk? According to the interpretation of this study, you were raped. Have you ever had sex with a drunk person? Guess what; you're a rapist.
I won't even get into the problematic demographics of the study, which like most studies of this kind using college students as participants, was over 80% white.

Now here are some more figures from RAINN. Black women have a slightly higher rape/attempted rape prevalence rate (18.8%) than white women (17.7%), mixed-race women are higher than both (24.4%), but Native American women have the highest at 34.1%. Rape is a legitimate epidemic on reservations, yet I never hear ANYONE talk about it.

Rape on reservations is an empirically confirmed problem, but why isn't it a focus for activism? Short answer: the victims and perpetrators aren't white, so it doesn't fit in with the convenient assumption of rape as the weapon of white patriarchal hegemony. There is this dimension of (mostly) white women who seem to think that the "oppressed" status of their gender due to rape culture's ubiquity negates any privilege afforded to them by their race. The fact that anyone even tries to make this assertion is fucking laughable considering a century of demographic/sociological data that clearly establishes race as a much stronger variable in predicting socioeconomic status than gender. It is even more absurd considering that the majority who make this claim are upper-middle class college-educated white people. 

Look no further than the viral "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman" video; white privilege is being able to afford to get offended when black and Hispanic men catcall you when you walk through their neighborhood. Furthermore, it isn't like these guys are just black and Hispanic men on their lunch break, it's dudes loitering. Forget calling attention to how easily the racial disparities in unemployment can be seen just by walking through non-white neighborhoods, this is men behaving like pigs on camera. Street harassment isn't okay, and maybe you could go so far as to say that for these individuals, similar patterns of behavior might be why they can't hold down a job. Women shouldn't have to be fearful to walk around in public. But guys that catcall women are only slightly less pathetic than guys who drunkenly creep on/grope women at the bar. Call people out who behave as such, and tell them that it isn't okay... or just punch them in the face. I'm not a huge fan of cultural relativism, but in this case, ask yourself whether or not anyone who is inherently sexist will really change their behavior just because a white woman got offended? Fuck no. Just take a minute to consider how much it sucks to live amongst people who treat women as such on a daily basis. These women are in the most unfortunate position possible because they literally can't afford to get offended for their own safety and livelihood. That is true oppression. 

How about a followup video called "10 Minutes of Walking in Johannesburg/New Delhi/Islamabad/Kinshasha as a Woman"? Probably will never happen because rape culture actually exists as the status quo in these places. It isn't just some nebulous concept supported by bad science thrown around by women's studies majors and feminist bloggers, it is a sad and horrific reality for many women of color around the world. 

I'll probably come back to this later at some point, but these are just a few of the points I wanted to make in my previous piece today that felt much better addressed on their own. A note on the statistics: every study that has ever been done on how vastly underreported rape is compared to other violent crimes has confirmed that only a small fraction of rapes that occur are ever reported to police. The figures above are only a reflection of reported rapes, not the prevalence of how many are actually committed. Judging from the points I've made above and in other pieces, I think one can reasonably infer that non-white women are significantly less likely to report being raped, whether it be due to cultural stigma, fear, distrust of authorities, or all of the above. I find this unacceptable. I find it equally unacceptable that many who promote rape culture conveniently whitewash the fuck out of it, conveniently ignore situations that don't support their own understanding, then attack anyone who opposes their views as a rape-apologist or misogynist. I hope that I have sufficiently demonstrated that I am neither. I just don't like misguided agendas.


EDIT: 12/12/14 12:08PM-

Yesterday (or maybe the day before), the Department of Justice released the results of a study comparing the rates of rape and sexual assault victimization of college-age females from 1995-2013. Guess what? Women ages 18-24 who are not enrolled at a college or university are 1.2 times as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted compared to their student peers. Again, we can probably infer that the "student" sample was predominantly white and the non-student sample was predominantly non-white. However, contrary to my original hypothesis, students were more likely to NOT report being raped/sexually assaulted than non-students. This is probably the most troubling finding of all, and (I believe) accurately reflects the way many colleges and universities handle sexual assaults- keep it internal, don't get the police involved. Anyway, read the study for yourself. Either way, I think we can put the nail in the coffin for the "one in five" figure.