THE FAIRER SEX
Short Stories on Male Privilege
No. 17
Potted Plants
'Hundreds of colleges had zero rape reports
and that could be worrisome'.
- Washington Post
I was the first of our family to go to university. I worked hard all through high school, did all the necessary things, and won a place at a top medical college. I was determined to become a pathologist. Yes, I know. Don't ask.
In my first term I received an email from the Student Behaviour and Conduct Committee. Everyone knew this committee by reputation. It was known as the Star Chamber, sarcastically so and with good reason.
This email made me punch drunk. If you've never been that way yourself, you won't know how weird it is. I stood up, staggered to the window and stared out. This committee had the power to withhold a student's degree. It could also expel students; indeed, it had already done so. Male students, that is.
The damage this committee could inflict was enormous. The punishment was like stigmata. In one fell swoop, a man was crippled: it was pointless to apply for jobs; his career plans were in ruins; his name was all over social media; he remained for ever under suspicion; getting into another university would be difficult. It was the most lonely, horrible nightmare you can imagine. Incidents of this sort were massive exercises in public shaming, the modern equivalent of stocks on the village green. Meanwhile, his accuser faced - well, no consequences at all.
What the email said was this.
A female student alleges that you attempted sexual activity with her, despite her refusal, and that you persisted, despite being told repeatedly to stop.
The victim says that you inserted your middle finger into her vagina without prior consent.
This behaviour is a violation of the college sexual consent rules.
We are obliged under college rules to obtain a perpetrator's version of the events, before establishing guilt according to 'balance of probability'.
You are hereby summoned to an interview, the date and time of which are stated below. Failure to attend will result in your expulsion from the university.
As a part of college enrolment, all male students were required to attend a day-long course in 'sexual consent'. In essence, the college deemed it necessary to tell young men that rape is wrong. We were told that men are sexual predators; that women live in constant fear of us; and that the campus must be a safe space, which currently it was not.
We were also told that all stages in sexual congress required prior and explicit agreement i.e., 'affirmative' consent. The alternative, 'implied' consent, was no longer acceptable, as the male partner must never assume what the female partner wants. We were given a checklist several pages long, and advised to go through it, beforehand, with the female partner. The two parties would tick the various boxes, then append their signatures to the agreement, before coitus.
I knew that only one encounter could be behind this email; it happened during freshers' week. I was in the student union bar, we'd all had a fair bit to drink, I was talking to a female history student, Heather she was called, and we hit it off immediately.
Gradually we peeled off from the others and went to a corner on our own.
We had plenty more to drink.
We ended up in her room at the hall of residence. I cannot, however, recall any explicit invitation as such. The two of us just seemed to have assumed it.
The reader will not, I know, believe this, but I entertained no expectations. After listening to some music and chatting, for an hour or so, with a lot of mirth as well, I got up to leave.
It was then that she pounced.
Her lips were on mine for a few seconds, then she drew back laughing, saying that she'd never kissed a man with a moustache before.
We moved over to the bed and began undressing each other.
When we were lying down and kissing, I put my middle finger in her vagina.
But I was not happy with this. I stopped and drew apart.
'I'm sorry, but I feel a bit awkward', I said. 'I don't think I can go through with it.'
She laughed. 'It's supposed to be me with the headache! Come on, stop joking around and put that condom on.'
'No, I mean it', I said, standing up, starting to get dressed. 'It doesn't feel right.'
'Nothing about me, I hope', she said, sitting up and raising the bedsheet to her neck.
'No, nothing about you. I had no idea anything like this would happen. I should've showered before coming out.'
This remark was not, in fact, true. I had another reason, as I'll explain later. The shower was just an excuse.
'I'd feel better about it if we put this off to another time', I said.
She thought about this for a couple of seconds and then sighed. 'Go on then', she said. 'Clear off'.
'Can I call you?' I asked.
'You get me all excited and then bugger off. If you didn't want this, you shouldn't have allowed it to get started! I can't believe I went to bed with a homosexual.'
'I'm not - '
'Get out!' she said, throwing her shoe.
* * * *
Gertrude sighed: the College Rape Crisis Centre was a boring place. Day after day, hour after hour, you waited by the 24-hour hotline, ready to advise, ready to empathise. Yet no-one called. Why were victims not calling? There was, after all, an epidemic of sexual abuse. Everyone knew this. Several rapes were probably happening right now. Fortunately, members of the Student Feminist Society had explained this paradox: the abused women were too frightened to come forward: they preferred to hide their suffering. That was why no-one ever called. Indeed, the problem was probably much worse than anyone had thought.
Feminist groups had mounted protests, claiming the university was not doing enough to tackle the 'campus rape crisis'; that campuses were full of undetected rapists. These protests gained national media attention. 'We operate on the principle that zero reports don't mean zero rapes', said the college president to the Guardian. 'Under-reporting is the problem'. 'Men must redefine their masculinity in a way that excludes rape'. The president had promised to hire some consultants to discover ways in which female students might be encouraged to come forward and report their abuse. The newly-formed Office of Sexual Assault Prevention would be staffed by twenty fulltime 'rape bureaucrats'. The funds were found by halting construction of the new science block.
Gertrude sighed again: only a few more minutes to her shift. Never mind, it was an honour to fulfil this duty. And she obtained course credits for doing so.
She turned the page in her college textbook, All men are rapists: it's just that some of them haven't got around to it yet.
Presently she felt drowsy. She placed her arm on the desk as a pillow, rested her head and fell into a peaceful, restful doze.
A loud clanging jolted her from slumber. What was that infernal noise? She wiped the sleep from her eyes and looked around. Please let it stop! Where on earth was it coming from? She looked around again.
There it was, on the desk in front of her: the telephone was ringing.
She jumped up and stared at the ringing, vibrating phone. At last, a victim was calling!
She grabbed the phone. 'College Rape-Crisis Centre', she shouted.
'Hi, Gertrude, it's Mary. We're having a right-old shindig. There's some guys here from the college rugby team. You should see their shoulders! Come along, we're having a great laugh.'
'You shouldn't be calling this number. Suppose a rape victim is trying to get through.'
'Yeah, right. I tried you on your own phone.'
Gertrude looked at her bag.
'Hey', said Mary, laughing uncontrollably, 'Heather had some guy in her room. She threw her shoe at him.'
'Let's get as drunk as we can', said a female voice in the background.
There was more laughing.
'Threw a shoe?', said Gertrude, narrowing her eyes.
'Yeah', said Mary, again laughing. 'She started screaming at him, telling him to get out.'
'Hold on, I'll be right there.'
* * * *
The morning after I made a fool of myself, I was still feeling embarrassed about it. I went to my first lecture but couldn't concentrate. I made a few unintelligible scribbles in my lecture notes about the Krebs cycle.
When the lecture ended, Jeremy and I met at the coffee vending-machine downstairs. When he saw me, his face brightened.
'I daresay congratulations are in order', he said, elbowing me and winking. (Both mannerisms were affected.) 'We saw the two of you peel away. We all thought, go on my boy! Dip your yolk! I mean dip your bread.'
My face displayed no consanguineous joy.
'What on earth's the matter?' he said, growing concerned. 'Is it the alcohol? She wasn't incapacitated, was she?'
'Don't be daft. If she'd passed out, I wouldn't have touched her. I'm not that stupid. To tell the truth, I was a bit uncomfortable about sexual relations with a girl I hardly knew. There was some preliminary activity, but then I put a stop to it. I made my excuses and left.'
'What kind of bloke does that? That's the sort of trick that babes pull.' He assumed a female voice and mannerisms. 'I didn't know that she wanted sex. It's not my responsibility, no. I'd no idea that if I got drunk, went to her room, kissed her, took off my clothes and laid down on her bed, then she'd expect sex. One thing led to another. I felt helpless.'
Others around us overheard, and began laughing.
'Fuck off', I said.
Resuming his own voice, he said: 'Well, if you want to pretend that she wasn't after you from the start, and that you had no idea, it's up to you. You should have resisted her sooner and more strongly. If you didn't want to make whoopee, why did you go to her room?'
'We were enjoying each other's company. I entertained no presuppositions of physical intimacy.'
He looked at me doubtfully.
I laughed. 'None at all.'
'Well, it all seems a bit naïve of you. You should be more careful. Girls can get real nasty about that sort of thing - turning them down, I mean. As a bloke you get used to it, you have to, it happens all the time. It takes girls by surprise; they're not used to it. They think you find them unattractive; repulsive, even.'
'I know. I've had a girl walk up to me in a nightclub and start fondling my buttocks. She got real nasty when I told her to stop. Called me a fag. If a guy tried that these days, he'd get six months.'
'Women know that men are always up for it, all the time and with any female. Except for gay men, that is. And religious types. Blokes with haloes and their precious moral purity. If a girl started fondling my buttocks, I'd grab her wrist and put her hand somewhere else.'
'I'm just not into casual hook-ups'.
'Why's that?'
'I don't see the point. To me, affection is a central component of sexual congress. If you remove that, you are nothing more than beasts in the field. I'm coming out -'
'Oh, aye.'
' - as demisexual. Demisexuals must feel an emotional connection first, as only then do they feel any sexual attraction.'
'You're such a dumb-ass, and I'll tell you why. Feminists have attacked the sexual double standard for years. A man has multiple female partners: he's playing the field, he's a jack-the-lad, he's a philanderer, he's a Lothario, he's a Casanova, he's a stud, he's a lady's man - womaniser even has a slight approval to it! But when a woman has multiple male partners, she's a slag, a tart, a skank, a slapper - censorious words. Men have wanted casual sex with as many partners as possible ever since we lived in caves. In other words, feminists have given us everything we wanted.'
'Even so, women quickly discover that this mating strategy doesn't suit them. They think it will; feminism has told them it will; but it doesn't. Over the next few days, the man doesn't call. He doesn't respond to texts. In fact, he's quite indifferent to her. She sees that he's unfazed and attends classes easily; while she's distracted and cannot concentrate. She runs into him on campus, and is embarrassed at re-encountering a sex partner who she barely knows; but he's not at all bothered by it. She sees him kissing another girl. She's confused, but doesn't know why. She's angry, but doesn't know why - she went into it voluntarily. She feels used, but doesn't know why - it was also so noncommittal, but she feels aggrieved nonetheless. Feminism's told her that male-female differences in libido are social constructs; a result of upbringing - and that the right to promiscuity is a cornerstone of sex equality. The fact is, feminism runs counter to women's deepest instincts. In ancestral times, women relying on the short-term mating strategy were deserted - and they left few descendants. We're descended from women who used the long-term mating strategy - the pair bond, in which the man sticks around and supports her. Female instinct says one thing; feminism the opposite. Feminists cannot admit to these innate sex differences, because it'd invalidate social constructivism. I think this drunken hook-up culture creates a lot of misunderstandings. Look at that ridiculous sexual consent course we were force-fed. It treats women like potted plants that can't even tell you when they need watering.'
'Potted plants don't need to tell you when they need watering - you stick your finger in the soil to see how wet it is.'
* * * *
Heather heard a knock at the door. 'Come in', she said.
Mary looked in.
'No, I don't want any more vodka', said Heather.
'It's not that. This is Gertrude. She'd like to speak to you.'
Mary looked at Gertrude.
'How are you feeling? asked Gertrude, with the tender solicitousness we adopt with a recently bereaved spouse.
Heather wrinkled her forehead.
'Okay. Shouldn't I be?'
'I gather there was some argument?'
'Oh that', said Heather. 'There was some guy in here wasting my time so I told him to fuck off. What's it to you?'
'I'm from the College Rape Crisis Centre.'
'Well - '
'Please, if you'll just hear me out. May I sit down?'
Heather gestured to the bed.'
Gertrude cleared her throat. 'We live in a rape culture', she said, 'and no university is an exception. One fifth of female students will experience some form of sexual assault. These perpetrators are not strangers lurking behind bushes. They are male students, attending the same classes as you, sitting in the same library as you, and eating in the same refectory as you. It would appear that you've been sexually assaulted. If you make a complaint, you will be doing your sisters a great service - we must eradicate this odious campus rape-culture. Patriarchy is a monster, and men are its minions.'
'I'd have to go to the police.'
No, you will not have to go to the police. The police are no use, because not enough rapists are charged. Jury trials are no use, because not enough rapists are convicted. College investigations are different: your abuser will not be allowed to question you; he will not be allowed to know who you are; he will not be allowed to question any witnesses; he will not be allowed legal representation; he will not be allowed to record the proceedings. Any inconsistencies in your account will be taken as evidence of trauma, not as evidence of unreliability. The burden of proof will not be "beyond reasonable doubt", as in a criminal court, but "on the balance of probability", which is lower. It has been necessary to lower the evidentiary threshold, because too many men are getting away with it. Women just aren't coming forward. Believe me, I know. I sit by the phone in the Rape Crisis Centre for hours, but no-one calls. That's how bad the problem is.'
'Well . . . I don’t know,' said Heather. 'I may have initiated it. I can't remember. We were both drunk. Yes, I remember now; yes, I did initiate it'.
Gertrude presented her palms outwards. 'Let's hear no more of that', she said. 'It doesn't matter whether you initiated - you were under the influence of alcohol. Your abuser will not be allowed to argue that you'd been drinking - that is victim-blaming. You are not responsible. You can drink as much as you like - it's not drinking that gets a woman raped. The rapist is responsible for the rape - not the woman, and not the alcohol she's drunk. Women are not responsible for putting themselves in harm's way. A woman who's been drinking is unable to consent - he took advantage of you.'
'But he'd been drinking as well. You're saying that drunken women can't give consent, but drunken men are responsible for every fondle or grope. How is it that inebriation strips a woman of responsibility for her own actions, but preserves a man's responsibility, not only for his own actions, but for those of the woman as well. Don't women still have volition and moral agency? I participated voluntarily, after all. What you're saying turns men into women's guardians. Women are so helpless, so passive and so delicate, that they don't even have the strength or capacity to say "no". Isn't that the sort of attitude that feminists are supposed to fight? I thought feminists hated male chivalry.'
Gertrude supressed a sigh - it was so difficult dealing with 'internalised misogyny'. The patriarchy had brainwashed this poor girl into thinking for herself! When a drunken woman drives a car, she is accountable, that is true; but when a drunken woman consents to sex, she is unaccountable, that's also true. Few people understood this subtlety. In fact only feminists understood it.
'Do you regret what happened?' asked Gertrude.
'Well, yes, I suppose do.'
'There you are, then. Any positive feelings you might have had at the time do not negate the fact that it was still sexual assault.'
'I wouldn't normally behave that way. I don't believe in sleeping around.'
'That's another concern women have', said Gertrude. 'These aren't the days when women can be judged and dismissed that way. Nowadays women can be just as promiscuous as men, if they want to be. Female modesty is just one of the many ways in which the patriarchy controls women.
Gertrude saw that Heather still looked doubtful.
'By the way', said Gertrude, 'your academic record will not be negatively affected. You might, however, receive special consideration in assignments and examinations.'
Heather turned from Gertrude and looked at the wall for a few seconds.
'Well, I did feel a little used', she said.
* * * *
'Come in and sit down, m'lad', said my uncle. 'I cannot begin to tell you how much worry you have caused your parents. I will do what I can to help you. I retired twenty years ago, but I've kept an eye on what our universities are up to. First off, were you put through any of those courses on sexual misconduct?'
'In the first week, yes', I said. 'Just for male students. We were told to reflect on our maleness, how it gives us unfair privileges. Men have all the power. The usual kind of guff.'
'Alas, it's everywhere these days. To be a man today is a guilt-ridden business. 'This was a mandatory course, I suppose?'
'Yes. We were told that rape is wrong.'
My uncle chortled.
'Did you experience an epiphany?' he asked. 'A Damascene conversion, perhaps? You were about to unleash a torrent of rapes on society, but this course persuaded you otherwise.'
'Well . . . I'd already sort of figured out for myself that rape is wrong.'
'What acuity! Perhaps if men the world over were told that rape is wrong then rapes would surcease. And with surcease, success. We should also tell burglars that burglary is wrong; muggers that mugging is wrong; drug dealers that drug-dealing is wrong. It would put the police, the judiciary and much of the insurance industry out of business! Were you given any statistics? How frequent rape is? On campus, I mean.'
'Not for rape, exactly. We were told that one in five female students are victims of sexual assault.'
'And do you believe that?'
I shrugged. 'It's what they said'.
'I see. You were presented with a seemingly incontrovertible fact, one which you credulously accepted. And you're studying a scientific subject as well! Well, the motto of the Royal Society is nullius in verba, which I like to translate as "Take nobody's word for it". First, you should ask for a source - you probably won't get one. If you get one, then seek it out and examine it for yourself - you'll find that it doesn't stack up. At best, it'll be feminist flim-flam - a giant edifice of factoids, glued together by numerous whoozles. Well, you need not locate the source of this specious statistic. I have a very good bullshit detector. And what my bullshit detector says is this - no crime of any sort has a victimisation rate of twenty percent. Take America's most violent city, Detroit. If you combine every murder, rape, robbery and assault, in the most violent neighbourhoods, you still only get as far as two percent. If twenty percent of female students are sexually assaulted, then the annual stampede into university is decidedly odd. It would appear that parents are packing their daughters off to a war zone! Unfortunately, evidence and rational argument will change nothing, because this fake crisis is ideologically driven. Anyway, let's proceed to your bacchanalian banana skin. Tell me everything from beginning to end. And remember, I've got an excellent bullshit detector.'
I spoke for several minutes, after which my uncle said:
'There's a deep irony here, my boy. In the 1960s, campus feminists insisted that female students are not children; that female students should not be infantilised by women-only dorms, or by regulations requiring that all female students are safely tucked up by 10pm. Women, said the feminists, must be free to make their own choices, make their own decisions - and their own mistakes, as responsible adults. University staff must not act in loco parentis. Yes, the world is dangerous, said the feminists; but give us the freedom to risk rape. And if girls have lads in their rooms overnight, then that's their business, not the university's.
'Well, the freedom to screw around is also the freedom to screw up. Two generations on, we have this hook-up culture, with casual sex in combination with alcohol. When I was young, drunken men were not at all uncommon. A drunken woman, however, was a very shocking sight. Nowadays drunken women are all over - student halls on saturday nights are full of them. Well, I guess that's what you call equality. And now feminists insist that women must not be held accountable for their actions while drunk. If a drunken woman consents to sex, then on sobering up she's allowed to change her mind - it was not consensual, after all. How on earth is a man supposed to know? She can even change her mind the following week, or six months later! The man, however, is accountable - no matter how much he's drunk! This makes women, does it not, the weaker, more vulnerable sex in need of safeguarding by men - any notion of female agency is lacking. This responsibility is wildly asymmetrical, is it not. Well, I guess the sexes are not so equal after all! Haven't we been here before? Today, the notion that men and women can engage in the same type of behaviour, but with the male held responsible for the female, should be the very antithesis of feminism. Feminists set out in one direction, then ended up right back where they started - women are infantilised again. Sexual liberation was supposed to lead to sexual utopia. Well, it hasn't. The girls can control whether they end up in bed with a lad in an inebriated state; but saying that nowadays is unthinkable, thanks to feminists.
'I daresay your own travails will follow the same, pathetic course. Academics and university bureaucrats with no legal training go blundering in, possibly undermining serious criminal investigations. The university will seek to protect its reputation, and suffer nothing by throwing you under the bus. The university will do everything to help the complainant, but nothing to help the accused. Conflicting testimony and inconsistent statements will be ignored. Text messages and emails from the complainant will be deemed inadmissible. You will be denied due process, and your rights to procedural fairness will be violated, left, right and centre. The legal deficiencies in these Kafkaesque ordeals are glaring. There's a reason why universities are doing this - they're pandering to the feminist lobby. Hence these campus kangaroo courts - they side-step the criminal justice system, with its annoying proclivity for procedural fairness. Cases like yours either fall to pieces under police investigation, or they're thrown out of court. Feminists think that the evidentiary threshold is too high. But campus definitions of "inappropriate sexual behaviour" would not pass muster in a court of law. You've been told that you have no right to record the proceedings? Well, they're not a court, so they can't stop you. A recording will be useful when you sue the university for defrauding you of your education, and for violating your rights. You should consider yourself lucky, in a sense. Many accused men have a lot of difficulty finding out what they're actually accused of. Some of them don't even know the identity of their accuser!
'I tell you what I'll do. I'll call in a few favours and get my old firm to fire off a warning shot. Getting a letter from a top London law firm will shake them up. I tell you what. She kissed you without your prior permission, did she not? Well, that's sexual assault, according to their own definition. We'll see about equal treatment.
''Always remember, my boy, that no-consequence sex is a contradiction in terms; and if people scoff at chastity, then they're unlikely to value fidelity. Civilisation grappled for thousands of years with the challenge of ordering relations between the sexes; there are more practical strategies than giving students sexual-consent check-lists. I've read the one you gave me. I've never seen a document so Pythonesque. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that John Cleese wrote it. Universities are now sneaking back into their role in loco parentis. I wonder how long it will be before feminists demand the return of chaperones!
'Have nothing at all to do with women, when alcohol is involved. I would like to say have no sexual relations when alcohol is involved; unfortunately, that will not give men enough protection, I think; not today. Take your girlfriend back to the college dorm, kiss her goodnight and see that she's safely inside. Then you go back to your own room, and, if you cannot sleep for thinking about her, get up and write her a love poem. This system worked fine for many generations. When I was your age, a girl only needed two answers: "yes" when a feller asked her out; and "no" when he took her home.'
Endnotes
1. Arndt B. (2018). #MeToo (Ch, 12-17), Wilkinson Publishing (2018).
2. Arndt, Bettina (2017). Sexual consent courses should teach 'don't get raped' as well as 'don't rape'.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCenq50fDPc
3. Arndt, Bettina (2021). Innocent male student targeted over UNE rape claim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hItQ9Hd7rD4&t=180s
4. Arndt, Bettina (2022). Shameful star chambers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRnyaRE9bzQ.
5. Arndt, Bettina (2020). CPAC talk on abolishing campus kangaroo courts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RveBGxft_s
6. Arndt, Bettina (2018). Adelaide University investigates rape. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDmYW8TW6nI
7. Arndt, Bettina (2018). Bettina Arndt’s Fake Rape Campus Tour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu7JRmVq3mI&t=982s
8. Cook P.W., Hodo T.L. (2013). When women sexually abuse men - the hidden side of rape, stalking, harassment, and sexual assault (pp. 141-148). Praeger.
9. Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE) https://www.facecampusequality.org/our-stories
10. Johntheother (2017). College feminist kangaroo court. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8rlVDTFVo4
11. MacDonald H. (2018). The diversity delusion – how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture (Ch. 6-9). St. Martin's Griffin.
12. Stepp, L.S. (2007). Unhooked - how young women pursue sex, delay love, and lose both. Riverhead Books.
(c) Cufwulf Montagu
Cufwulf@aol.com
