9780062675859
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Unwanted Advances audiobook

  • By: Laura Kipnis
  • Narrator: Gabra Zackman
  • Length: 6 hours 56 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: April 04, 2017
  • Language: English
  • (532 ratings)
(532 ratings)
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Unwanted Advances Audiobook Summary

From a highly regarded feminist cultural critic and professor comes a polemic arguing that the stifling sense of sexual danger sweeping American campuses doesn’t empower women, it impedes the fight for gender equality.

Feminism is broken, argues Laura Kipnis, if anyone thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress.

A committed feminist, Kipnis was surprised to find herself the object of a protest march by student activists at her university for writing an essay about sexual paranoia on campus. Next she was brought up on Title IX complaints for creating a “hostile environment.” Defying confidentiality strictures, she wrote a whistleblowing essay about the ensuing seventy-two-day investigation, which propelled her to the center of national debates over free speech, “safe spaces,” and the vast federal overreach of Title IX.

In the process she uncovered an astonishing netherworld of accused professors and students, campus witch hunts, rigged investigations, and Title IX officers run amuck. Drawing on interviews and internal documents, Unwanted Advances demonstrates the chilling effect of this new sexual McCarthyism on intellectual freedom. Without minimizing the seriousness of campus assault, Kipnis argues for more honesty about the sexual realities and ambivalences hidden behind the notion of “rape culture.” Instead, regulation is replacing education, and women’s hard-won right to be treated as consenting adults is being repealed by well-meaning bureaucrats.

Unwanted Advances is a risk-taking, often darkly funny interrogation of feminist paternalism, the covert sexual conservatism of hook-up culture, and the institutionalized backlash of holding men alone responsible for mutually drunken sex. It’s not just compulsively readable, it will change the national conversation.

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Unwanted Advances Audiobook Narrator

Gabra Zackman is the narrator of Unwanted Advances audiobook that was written by Laura Kipnis

Laura Kipnis is a cultural critic and a professor at Northwestern University, where she teaches filmmaking. She is the author of six previous books, including Against Love: A Polemic and Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Yaddo, among others, and has written for Slate, Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Bookforum. Her essay “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” was included in The Best American Essays 2016, edited by Jonathan Franzen. She lives in New York and Chicago.

About the Author(s) of Unwanted Advances

Laura Kipnis is the author of Unwanted Advances

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Unwanted Advances Full Details

Narrator Gabra Zackman
Length 6 hours 56 minutes
Author Laura Kipnis
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date April 04, 2017
ISBN 9780062675859

Additional info

The publisher of the Unwanted Advances is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062675859.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Sharad

January 19, 2018

The first four chapters are really just an expansion of Kipnis' Chronicle of Higher Education article "Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe", where she argues that campus feminism orthodoxy inadvertently erases female autonomy in its quest for justice for victims of sexual assault. By taking on narrow conceptions of power, or so she argues, campus feminism forgets that non-institutional power can exist (conferred for example by youth and beauty). This challenges the simplistic narratives about how (institutionally) powerful men necessarily act in predatory ways when dating those without (institutional) power. This argument along with a number of real cases of egregious title IX overreach would have made for a decent read already. But it's chapter 5 and the coda at the end that really introduce the exciting stuff. Here she argues that the earnestness of the campus activists and administrators in fact obscure the real issues: 1) party cultures on campuses where way too much alcohol and drugs are ritually consumed 2) Gender dynamics at play.Regarding #1, she's clear that she isn't blaming victims, but insists that women consistently putting themselves in situations of diminished capabilities cannot be considered a win for feminism. But the more interesting avenue is #2, where she asks why men and women actually behave the way they do. Does an obsession with a vocabulary of power flatten the real topography? For example, we all know the cultural stereotype of athletes in frats being particularly rape-y (not her phrasing). What then, she asks, is their appeal to women? Here she insists that we cannot understand what's going on on campuses without addressing how gender plays out in complex, maddening, irrational ways. Alcohol can act as intensifier, making some men play out stereotypical aggressive masculinity, while alcohol might help some women exist in the grey space between consent and refusal by keeping at bay inhibitions that wouldn't allow a sober version of themselves from going through. This might enable them to engage in sex, an activity about which a great deal of ambivalence exists, while not quite committing to it. This is pure speculation about how to understand what's going on, but is this narrative any worse that the now standard one about predators and their hapless prey? By opening up lines of questioning like this, Kipnis continues her broader theme from her others works about how people are messy, inconsistent, and often in acute denial about themselves. The book is sure to draw criticism- unlike others Kipnis doesn't treat victims/survivors/accusers with kiddy gloves. She feels free to question, even dismiss, their accounts of what happened when the evidence contradicts it. And more contentious, she speculates about the motives of the accusers in her ironic, Freudian fashion, bringing a cudgel to the usual "believe the victim" imperative. But that's part of what make Kipnis such a challenging (and fun) writer. This isn't to pretend that sexual assault doesn't happen or isn't serious, but that we need to think about these issues while keeping firmly in our minds the fact that these are our usual messy human beings we're thinking about.

Joseph

June 18, 2017

A book with some flaws, but nevertheless an important defense of liberal, empowered feminism over the left-wing version of feminism that is gaining ground (if not dominance) on college campuses. I often didn't like Kipnis' tone (she might be able to reach many of the people she's arguing against without the anger and sarcasm that streams through this book), Moreover, I think she spent too much of the book on a single extended case at her university rather than surveying the variety of views and issues surrounding campus sexual assault around the country. Nevertheless, I think she makes several important points.The first is that the version of femininity that colors the way many left-wing feminists and Title 9 investigators view these cases is actually quite regressive and disempowering. She shows quite convincingly through a highly in-depth set of case studies that these investigators viewed the female complainants as having virtually no agency or choice in the face of the overwhelming authority and coercion of men. So many of the women in this story said later they felt that they could not say no because of the institutional power of male professors. But what has become of feminism when women aren't empowered to say no, especially to men who aren't physically threatening to them? What about a case where the female student invited the professor on the date, went to multiple locations with him, drank with him, posted live Instagram photos on it, and then fell asleep in his bed fully clothed only to wake up (her story) to find him groping her. Clearly this woman exerted female agency throughout this story, but in her recollection (and in the views of the Title 9 investigators) it was his Svengali-like charm and overwhelming power (he was no longer her professor, though) that coerced her into making every one of these decisions. Kipnis notes that this is an old and oppressive story that feminism has fought hard to destroy. It is the woman as the wilting, helpless flower and the man as the devious, manipulative brute. How odd is it that left-wing feminism is taking us back to the gender dynamics of 19th century sentimentalist novels?Second, I thought she was dead-on in arguing that campus sexual assault prevention and our general culture should help empower women to say no and be able to resist unwanted sexual advances or assaults. Two caveats: 1. This does not mean we should stop trying to change men or masculinity. I agree this is a huge problem and that the responsibility for sexual assault lies entirely with the perpetrator. 2. This is also not victim-blaming. Think of it this way: would you want yourself (or your child) to have the emotional and physical tools necessary to say no firmly but also to have sexual agency and to hold themselves responsible for bad consensual choices? Would you want yourself (or your child, or sibling, etc) to have the ability to fight off an attacker, to bust their nose, to make enough noise to get attention? Would you want yourself or themselves to be aware of what situations (frat parties with tons of alcohol, for instance) are more dangerous in a sexual assault sense? This is not victim-blaming; this is a form of empowerment. We cannot wait for male sexual behavior to change before we start encouraging women to defend and empower themselves. Think about the kinds of students that affirmative consent training won't get through to: entitled, pushy, hyper-masculine, often misogynistic deep down. Not everyone can be reached, and male sexual behavior might not be totally transformable. In the meantime it is mere common sense to empower and educate women on how to avoid, object to, and stop sexual assaults while empowering and educating as many men as possible to recognize when these things are happening and be willing to intervene.Lastly, and this is really touchy territory, Kipnis makes the crucial point that we cannot simply trust accusers. Not only is this illegal and illiberal, it also reflects a simplistic view of human psychological and sexual behavior wherein women have no motivations other than seeking justice for offenses. Her cases, and many others, show this isn't true. Women are people, they are flawed. They can pursue vendettas, misremember things, and even play out melodramas or psychological health problems in the campus courts. With the bar being raised ever higher about the meaning of consent (with some on campuses even arguing that regret about sex means you may have not consented), this has led to a flurry of lawsuits and counter-suits built on flimsy evidence. This of course doesn't mean that all or even most accusers are lying or crazy, which Kipnis rightfully acknowledges. If one person sexually assaults another, that person must be prosecuted and punished. What is means is that the parties on both sides have rights and are complex people, and we cannot let and idealized version of femininity and a demonized version of masculinity drive our interpretations of these cases.This book is part of a conversation within feminism that must continue. For me, it is the first sustained foray into this conversation, and I hope my comments above convey respect for anyone touched by this issue. If you think I said something wrong or without sensitivity, please approach in a spirit of charity and I promise to reciprocate. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary feminism or the sexual assault issue on campuses.

M

April 13, 2017

Laura Kipnis has written an exceptionally smart, courageous and insightful book that dares to challenge the knee-jerk, lockstep orthodoxy of so-called "progressive" thinking (while demonstrating its sexually regressive foundation) in Title IX procedures. She documents with tart wit, an able lawyer's gift with evidence and her own bona fides as a feminist to expose the travesties of justice perpetrated on college campuses. The book reads fluidly and swiftly, with elements of a legal thriller, as she traces one professor's, as well as her own, experiences before Title IX Torquemada's, exposing the egregious deprivation of due process, fairness or sanity in the inquisitions that are increasingly common across university campuses. Kipnis provokes readers to consider the nature of sex, sexual violence and moral responsibility in more complex, more honest and more substantial ways than most writers addressing the topic today. She is an exemplar of the value, importance and power of intellectual freedom and authentic intellectual inquiry in our conformist climate. She accomplishes all of this with a bravura writing style that is accessible, jargon free and, at times, mordantly funny. A terrific book.

Lynn

April 19, 2017

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in academia. The topic of interest is professor-student romantic relationships. Such relationships used to be common: for instance when I joined a small college there were 5 male professors married to former students. More recently these relationships have been outlawed on many campuses. The book is by a tenured professor. She wrote about these romantic entanglements in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her thesis: that female students have sexual agency and should be able to decide with whom they have sex. She also spoke in defense of a fellow “student dating” professor who was facing dismissal (even though such relationships were not illegal on their campus.) Suffice it to say the article got a lot of buzz and not all of it good. She herself was brought up on "Title Nine"charges for writing the article. Her book provides a feministic and provocative look at human sexual relations in academe. She is smart, witty, and tells it like it is.

Jeff

November 08, 2017

The issue of Title IX on college campuses in regards to sexual assault has been on my radar for a while. There have been a lot of issues of due process raised, and no amount of articles written about the issue. This book is largely about one specific experience, but is one of the first books to really cover the issue from start to finish with the sort of precision and detail necessary to do it justice. The book was an upsetting read for me in many ways if only because of the political climate we’re in right now as well as the issues raised by multiple articles involving due process. Reading this during the significant national conversations concerning Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey only magnified the message of this book and the need to get it right, and how much we’re failing. This book is far from perfect even if it’s necessary. Its focus on one story above many diminishes the problems on campus, and it could have used a more persuasive tone. Still, in terms of what it actually offers as a cautionary tale, it’s an important record of an insane time that’s worth having. This book offers nothing new to those on a certain side of the discussion, and needs to be read by those who are troubled by the alleged problems of sexual assault on college campuses to give some perspective. My one concern is more that I do not think those who need to know this information will get it, or be open to receiving it. A necessary, sobering read in any regard.

Jordan

August 18, 2019

Laura Kipnis is probably familiar to most people as 'that woman who hates rape survivors' or something along those lines. Her book, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive account of bureaucracy gone mad regarding the abuses and limits of Title IX complaints.The Title IX complaints that were struck against the author in particular highlight the ridiculous abuse of power that they have over people. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the complainants arguing that Kipnis' essay had created a 'chilling atmosphere'. If a niche academic article can really wreak such distinctive emotional havoc on you then perhaps it's not the author's problem so much as your own melodrama. I suppose Kipnis could have been more fair by including more reports of Title IX which successfully got sexual offenders removed from campus. But I think her overall point here isn't that speaking up and calling this stuff out is bad, it's that the systems currently in place in American universities are hopelessly incompetent and that the universities are more apt to take action to appease the popular consciousness of 'believe all accusers' than to actually hold a fair trial and then judge where to go from there. That may sound like I'm against believing sexual assault survivors but I'm not, I believe in believing them so long as all the evidence does not point to the contrary (as in the two cases brought against Peter Ludlow in this book). Kipnis also has a larger issue with the current climate of feminism and its discussions of sexuality. I agree with her a lot on this point because it raises up some uncomfortable truths about where we're at right now. Firstly, many of the Title IX accounts in this book are not always sexual assault, there are examples of drunken hookups, being entreated to give a blowjob by her boyfriend when she didn't want to, or in the case of Peter Ludlow: having a 3 month long consensual relationship with a 25 year old postgraduate student with scores of evidence that completely disavow any complaint of non-consensuality. It's clear that the boundaries of 'consent' are being tested and stretched to fit the charges. One of the issues she particularly hones in on at the end is drinking culture, and I think she hits it right on the nose. Getting drunk loosens everyones inhibitions and (unless there's a significant sobriety divide between the two parties) it's usually equally an expression of repressed sexual feelings when sober. I think she's fair to make the point that it is unwise to drink to such a level that you lose your memory, become incapacitated etc. (for members of both sexes). The other big point Kipnis makes that I agree with her is the fact that certain trends in contemporary feminism parallel explicitly with conservative anti-pornography feminist ideas of the 1970s/80s. In the narratives told by a lot of these stories women are framed as inherently meagre, weak and subject to manipulation by anything with a dick. Particularly in Ludlow's two accusations, both times the students initiated the off-campus social occasions but the (quite frankly) extreme weirdness of a student wanting to hang with their 50 year old philosophy professor is lost on everyone. But more importantly it betrays the fact of their sexual agency, Ludlow was not a direct teacher of either of them at the time they engaged in off-campus socialising so there was no legal repercussions for what he did. Whether he sexually assaulted either of them is another issue entirely, but the evidence seems more inclined to produce an innocent verdict if only due to the inconsistency of the students accusations, and also their straight up lies. Anyway, all this creates the idea that women are just inherently susceptible to the wiles of manly men when really that's not the case, or at least it shouldn't be. In this line of argument Kipnis brings up the issue of also teaching 'harm-reduction' rather than solely focusing on 'rape prevention' methods of education. She acknowledges the victim-blaming charges here, but I think she has a point in some regards. There does seem to be a narrative that sacrifices the fact of female sexual liberation and agency for a wilting passivity and claim to victimhood. To clarify: I don't refer to survivors of sexual abuse or rape here where non-consenuality has been expressed explicitly and ignored. Instead I refer to the girl who retroactively pressed charges on an ex-boyfriend for 30 seconds of choking during a blowjob, or the two girls who felt that their female teacher stared at their breasts for too long, or for anyone who has had an unwanted advance but felt themselves unable to speak up at the time. For all the rape prevention training done on men, it's not enough without equal pushback from the other side. It's time to speak the fuck up. (Obviously you can't always speak up if you think your life or career is threatened and it can be difficult in certain situations but learning how to speak truth to power to some asshole guy you just met whose hand is already up your ass is important.)

Dan

March 18, 2018

This was a great book. It is a really eye-opening investigation into sexual harrasment allegations on college campuses. There are very aggressive administrators who raise concerns about violating due process and the standard that we are innocent until proven guilty. What ends up happening, according to Kipnis, is that women are seen as passive and weak. This is the opposite of what feminism was supposed to achieve.

Carrie

September 23, 2018

Interesting

Neil

February 27, 2018

I admit I was reluctant to put Unwanted Advances on my reading list, because this might put me at odds with new liberal orthodoxy, which I suppose helps prove some of what author Laura Kipnis is trying to say.Kipnis, a professor of media studies at Northwestern, is at her best when she analyzes the implications of the new liberal take on sexual assault. There is a dogmatic quality to the dialogue about sexual assault on college campuses, and although it comes from the left, much of it doesn't seem very liberal. Deciding that women must be protected not only from physical threats but pestering and emotional pressure references the age-old notion that women are delicate, which is a strange position for feminists to take. Setting up Star-Chamber tribunals that operate in secret and provide nearly no protections for the respondents is another oddity in the new liberal playbook. Kipnis doesn't hesitate to take on these any other shibboleths of the modern left.Kipnis is at her best when she critiques these, but she's at her worst when she delves into the details of accusers and their allegations. While it's certainly acceptable to question the motives of someone who levels a less-than-substantiated claim of assault, I think it's dangerous to over-speculate about what other human beings are thinking, particularly when the subject is as sensitive as this one.All in all, I found Unwanted Advances an engaging read, and a book with something to teach us all even if--and especially because--it's bound to cause some discomfort.

Hina

November 01, 2017

This book is everything I expected it to be, and so much more! Kipnis lays it out in plain and simple terms - modern day feminism has actually regressed women's emancipation by taking their sexual agency away and feeding the victim narrative to young and somewhat confused women on college campuses. Men have bore the brunt of this "advancement", and we can not address campus sexual assault without involving women and making them take ownership of their own actions (which very often take place under the influence of heavy drinking). Women need to own up the role they also play in campus sexual politics.I can not recommend this book enough, to men and women, and ESPECIALLY to self-identifying "feminists". If feminism is to survive, it needs to take a cold hard look at itself and accept the shortfalls and false narratives it has been feeding young women about what it means to be a woman who has autonomy over her actions and her life. Without question, the best book I have read so far in 2017.

Giorgio

February 04, 2019

I don´t want to date ever again, after reading this book! :PTo my luck, I am getting old, so I don´t need it to... :D

Patti

July 21, 2017

I knew very little about the Title IX process before reading this book. I was slightly put off by Kipnis' snarkiness at the beginning, but the more I read, the more I respected her information/presentation.What I learned was this- that women are once again being told that they are victims in sexual relationships. That Title IX charges are conducted like Kangaroo courts in which the accused is usually not told the charges nor who brought them. That the accused are considered guilty until proven innocent, and are not allowed to speak out about their experiences so that some sort of transparency can be introduced.That Title IX charges can be and have been used for political purposes in the academic community..Given the outrageous events she chronicles, Kipnis also holds a pretty appalling mirror to campus culture- that in which drinking and unwanted sexual encounters are far from unusual. It could be depressing, but this kind of book begins to examine a way out of the mess academia finds itself in.I applaud her for a marvelous examination of a very important issue!

Kim

December 31, 2018

Interesting and compelling if not entirely convincing. Kipnis sometimes throws rhetoric over gaps in her evidence, but I like her writing and her humour and I think this book is an important contribution to complex and ongoing debates about sexual agency and women. Exercise judgement, enjoy the writing, have your thoughts provoked.

Julian

July 02, 2021

Laura Kipnis has written a devastatingly clear indictment of extrajudicial Title IX proceedings at institutions of higher learning, but it's also much more than this. It's also an indictment of simplistic, slogan-wielding social justice warriors who seek to paint a black-and-white picture of victims and aggressors in "sexual assault" situations. I've put those terms in quotes because Kipnis convincingly argues that many supposedly clear-cut scenarios are anything but, and, at least on campus (but also, I suspect, in the broader world) the term has come to encompass any kind of sexual awkwardness or hurt feelings arising from young people navigating their first relationships with one another.The black-and-white treatment of these issues, Kipnis concludes, ironically ends up reinforcing historical gender roles where women are the helpless damsels in distress and men are always cunning, unflinching aggressors. All this would not be half as damaging were it not for the excessive ambiguity and contradictory nature of Title IX directives coming from the United States Department of Education, with hefty penalties, either explicit or implicit, applicable to schools should they not be "diligent" enough in conducting these investigations. What has resulted is a sort of kangaroo court conducted by amateurs in which nobody actually benefits. (True situations of nonconsensual sexual assault are not actually effectively addressed, nor is the full range of possible preventative measures considered for fear of "victim blaming" or "slut shaming".)Regardless of whether you believe romantic relationships between professors and students are repulsive, a rational analysis would seem to indicate that so long as the professor is not in a position of power over the student, and both are consenting adults, such relationships shouldn't violate any code. I personally look askance at some of these relationships, but on the same level as, say, BDSM sexual practices: they're not for me, they're a little repulsive in my opinion, but who is actually harmed in the end?Unwanted Advances is an extremely courageous book, and I'm sure Kipnis has taken more than her share of heat from being such an outspoken iconoclast. Plus she's an incredibly gifted writer. Whether you agree with her arguments or not, she is quite effectively deploying her power as a tenured professor to inject arguments that desperately need to be surfaced in the public discourse. If nothing else, Kipnis efficiently dispatches such ridiculous slogans such as "believe women" (uncritically and unconditionally, it is presumed) and "rape culture" (not a thing). One imagines that if Kipnis were to cast her net wider, "defund the police" and other such terms of the pitchfork-wielding "progressives" wouldn't be that far behind.

William

May 13, 2017

Along with KC Johnson's The Campus Rape Frenzy Laura Kipnis’ Unwanted Advances is about the college rape industry. Oh, yes. The industry besides being on every college campus in America has its association and even a trade show. Universities have plundered their meager resources to enhance these Title IX offices which investigate –and many times fabricate-- cases involving campus rape. (By the way “rape” is used as a catch-all for unwanted advances, touching, jokes, and in Dr. Kipnis’ case even for essay writing.)Along the way various administrators have milked the cash cow and enriched their salaries and those of countless lawyers and outsourced training, surveys, and contracts. As a bi-product academic freedom left the building. Also leaving the building are the rights of womenAll of the struggles for women have now been washed away by this new breed who look upon anything female always as a victim, sometimes a “survivor” of a new found Victorian concept of a helpless woman. She is –to the administrators—totally controlled by others and unable to make decisions about her life, sexual and intellectual. Kipnis hammers away at an obvious problem which the universities will not address: alcohol abuse. Many of the cases involved alcohol. The author’s affirmed feminist stance makes the problems stand out even more in a bas relief of sexual and intellectual paranoia. What is the source of the paranois that feeds this 21st Century witch hunt? Why it is the Title IX folks are running rough shod over what used to be such concepts of innocent until proven guilty, due process, and justice? And why do we let these minions rule? The answer s we have cease to care about the higher education as it has ceased to care about itself.Although she uses mostly examples from Northwestern University, a division of pharma giant Pfizer, who gave 1.4 billion to the school, she has her own reasons. She herself was charged as a defendant in a Title IX action because of an article she wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education. She became an active observer in another case. Granted she is a bit too shrill at times in her protests, but all of her words ring true. Along with the shameful Duke scandal of invented sexual abuse covered in The Price of Silence by William Cohan, one sees how how our universities have fallen into ruins as real as Henry VIII’s monasteries. (Thankfully, Dr. Kipnis is much briefer than Cohan.) Dr. Kipnis refers many times to thank her tenure so that she is protected. On today’s campus, only a minority of faculty are granted tenure, much less a full time position. She is indeed lucky. "Ozymandias" writ large.

Kate

December 14, 2017

This appalling, important book details the sometimes Kafkaesque nature of Title IX investigations into sexual assault on college campuses in recent years. While Kipnis is certainly attempting to prove a point, the facts she presents about how these investigations are handled are damning: the accused not only don't get to face their accusers, they are not even entitled to know what the accusations are, never mind present their own version of the truth. Innocent men have undoubtedly lost their careers to proceedings that Kipnis not unfairly compares to witch trials.She also discusses the message this culture sends to young women, one I have worried about as a teacher at a high school that has started showing seniors "The Hunting Ground" every year. We are teaching our girls that they are prey, helpless victims in the face of male desire and lacking any agency of their own. To teach women assertiveness and strategies to protect themselves is considered "blaming the victim" rather than an acknowledgement that two things can be true: men can (generally) be responsible for nonconsensual sex, AND women can take some control of their own actions rather than relying on the machinery of college administration and the federal government in order to claim as much power as men (or more).Kipnis' larger, and perhaps most terrifying, point is about the nature of truth and whether or not our academic institutions even still care. She herself was a respondent in a Title IX complaint for an article she wrote, calling into question her academic freedom and free speech rights. Universities are so afraid of losing federal funding and getting bad press for not believing "survivors" (Kipnis makes an interesting point about how accusers in Title IX investigations are officially referred to as "survivors" and how that language itself shapes outcomes) that due process is simply not a consideration anymore. In the last pages of her book, she quotes John Proctor at the end of The Crucible, asking "Are the accusers always holy now?" and declares that on college campuses, the answer is yes. It is clear from this book that the pendulum has swung too far; a balance must be struck between the rights of the accusers and accused, a balance that will be most likely to allow for truth to emerge.

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