Columbia University Anscombe Society

11/12/2018

An eloquent argument and viewpoint on the importance of reframing "s*x" and discovering the beauty in relationships that look beyond consent. Well done Anscombe Society !
"While consent is obviously essential to the very nature of s*x, there is so much more to it than just a verbal assent extracted from the other party in order to do whatever one desires."

Harvard teaches us from our very first week on campus an oversimplified attitude towards s*x that we might call the “consensual” philosophy of s*x.

03/07/2018

The choice to love can be a powerful force for justice.

01/12/2018

From the New York Times Opinion Section: "Like many people, I had once measured my worth by my capacity to produce things and experiences: to be productive at work, share responsibilities at home, “show up” equally in my friendships and rack up achievements. Being sick has been a long, slow detox from capitalist culture and its mandate that we never rest. Slowly, I found a deeper value in relationship beyond reciprocity: an unconditional love and care based in justice, and a belief that all humans deserve relationship, regardless of whether we can offer anything measurable back. In these discoveries, I’ve been led by other sick and disabled people, whose value had always been apparent to me. Amid the brilliant diversity of power wheelchairs, service dogs, canes and ice packs, it’s easy to see that we matter just as we are.."

Being sick has been a long, slow detox from capitalist culture and its mandate that we never rest.

12/01/2017

"Why I feel qualified to write a book on addiction is because I have been addicted to heroine, crack, fame, money, s*x, relationships, other people’s approval. I see this phenomenon emerge again and again ,and I am starting to think that the label of addiction in itself is too confining That actually this is the human condition in motion. Yearning itself — yearning.”
"We all know at some point in our lives when human connections seem deeply meaningful to us. We know these connections exist, and we thrive on them. They are based on an ethical understanding and an idea of love for one another. But, we are often driven actually to relationships trying to seek affirmation in the wrong places. They become very toxic and sometimes society can promote those types of relationships, which we know can be very detrimental to ourselves– to our emotional well-being, to our intellectual well-being– and yet we still strive for them even though we know they are completely empty and meaningless or indeed nihilistic, in terms of our own sense of self."

Author and friend Professor Brad Evans gets under my skin regarding my new book “Recovery”. We discuss the age of addiction, the ability to be liberated from...

09/29/2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cheap-s*x-and-the-decline-of-marriage-1506690454 [Full article in FB post!]
Kevin, a 24-year-old recent college graduate from Denver, wants to get married someday and is “almost 100% positive” that he will. But not soon, he says, “because I am not done being stupid yet. I still want to go out and have s*x with a million girls.” He believes that he’s figured out how to do that:

“Girls are easier to mislead than guys just by lying or just not really caring. If you know what girls want, then you know you should not give that to them until the proper time. If you do that strategically, then you can really have anything you want…whether it’s a relationship, s*x, or whatever. You have the control.”

Kevin (not his real name) was one of 100 men and women, from a cross-section of American communities, that my team and I interviewed five years ago as we sought to understand how adults in their 20s and early 30s think about their relationships. He sounds like a jerk. But it’s hard to convince him that his strategy won’t work—because it has, for him and countless other men.

Marriage in the U.S. is in open retreat. As recently as 2000, married 25- to 34-year-olds outnumbered their never-married peers by a margin of 55% to 34%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, those estimates had almost reversed, with never-marrieds outnumbering marrieds by 53% to 40%. Young Americans have quickly become wary of marriage.

Many economists and sociologists argue that this flight from marriage is about men’s low wages. If they were higher, the argument goes, young men would have the confidence to marry. But recent research doesn’t support this view. A May 2017 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, focusing on regions enriched by the fracking boom, found that increased wages in those places did nothing to boost marriage rates.

Another hypothesis blames the decline of marriage on men’s fear of commitment. Maybe they just perceive marriage as a bad deal. But most men, including cads such as Kevin, still expect to marry. They eventually want to fall in love and have children, when their independence becomes less valuable to them. They are waiting longer, however, which is why the median age at marriage for American men has risen steadily and is now approaching 30.

My own research points to a more straightforward and primal explanation for the slowed pace toward marriage: For American men, s*x has become rather cheap. As compared to the past, many women today expect little in return for s*x, in terms of time, attention, commitment or fidelity. Men, in turn, do not feel compelled to supply these goods as they once did. It is the new s*xual norm for Americans, men and women alike, of every age.

This transformation was driven in part by birth control. Its widespread adoption by women in recent decades not only boosted their educational and economic fortunes but also reduced their dependence on men. As the risk of pregnancy radically declined, s*x shed many of the social and personal costs that once encouraged women to wait.

These forces have been at work for more than a half-century, since the birth-control pill was invented in 1960, but it seems that our norms and narratives about s*xual relationships have finally caught up with the technology. Data collected in 2014 for the “Relationships in America” project—a national survey of over 15,000 adults, ages 18 to 60, that I oversaw for the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture—asked respondents when they first had s*x in their current or most recent relationship. After six months of dating? After two? The most common experience—reported by 32% of men under 40—was having s*x with their current partner before the relationship had begun. This is sooner than most women we interviewed would prefer.

The birth-control pill is not the only s*xual technology that has altered expectations. Online p**n has made s*xual experience more widely and easily available too. A laptop never says no, and for many men, virtual women are now genuine competition for real partners. In the same survey, 46% of men (and 16% of women) under 40 reported watching p**nography at some point in the past week—and 27% in the past day.

Many young men and women still aspire to marriage as it has long been conventionally understood—faithful, enduring, focused on raising children. But they no longer seem to think that this aspiration requires their discernment, prudence or self-control.

When I asked Kristin, a 29-year-old from Austin, whether men should make sacrifices to get s*x, she offered a confusing prescription: “Yes. Sometimes. Not always. I mean, I don’t think it should necessarily be given out by women, but I do think it’s OK if a woman does just give it out. Just not all the time.”

Kristin rightly wants the men whom she dates to treat her well and to respect her interests, but the choices that she and other women have made unwittingly teach the men in their lives that such behavior is noble and nice but not required in order to sleep with them. They are hoping to find good men without supporting the s*xual norms that would actually make men better.

For many men, the transition away from a mercenary attitude toward relationships can be difficult. The psychologist and relationship specialist Scott Stanley of the University of Denver sees visible daily sacrifices, such as accepting inconveniences in order to see a woman, as the way that men typically show their developing commitment. It signals the expectation of a future together. Such small instances of self-sacrificing love may sound simple, but they are less likely to develop when past and present relationships are founded on the expectation of cheap s*x.

Young people in the U.S. continue to marry, even if later in life, but the number of those who never marry is poised to increase. In a 2015 article in the journal Demography, Steven Ruggles of the University of Minnesota predicted that a third of Americans now in their 20s will never wed, well above the historical norm of just below 10%.

Most young Americans still seek the many personal and social benefits that come from marriage, even as the dynamics of today’s mating market conspire against them. It turns out that a world in which it is possible to satisfy our s*xual desires much more immediately carries with it a number of unhappy and unintended consequences.

—Dr. Regnerus is associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. This essay is adapted from his new book, “Cheap S*x: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy” (Oxford University Press).

Why is marriage in retreat among young Americans? Because it is now much easier for men to find s*xual satisfaction outside marriage, argues Mark Regnerus.

09/14/2017

[Full New York Times article below]

"Last week I wrote a column praising Betsy DeVos for announcing that the Department of Education would revisit the Obama administration’s 2011 “guidance” on campus s*xual assault. The new guidelines, often interpreted with Procrustean severity by nervous campus administrators, had all but eliminated elementary aspects of due process for the accused.
The results, in far too many cases, were bad verdicts, ruined reputations and permanently damaged lives.
It’s in our moral and constitutional DNA that we take extraordinary pains to safeguard the rights of the accused, even when it means letting the guilty go free. But we also believe in justice, and the fact is that s*xual assault is a brutal reality of modern campus life, abetted in too many instances by a culture of binge drinking. How best to change this without compounding one injustice with another, or intruding too far into private life, or violating fundamental rights is a matter of debate. That it has to change isn’t, or shouldn’t be.
After the column’s publication, a young friend wrote me a personal note to share her experience of being r***d in college. Her letter is so detailed, devastating, honest and thoughtful that I thought the best thing to do was give her the full stage of an Op-Ed column in The Times.
Here is her letter. She asked that her name be withheld to protect her privacy.

Dear Bret,
I wanted to write you about your Betsy DeVos column. I found it wanting in the way I find many pieces on this subject wanting. I hope you’ll hear me out.
I agree with you that the current system is bad, that the guidance issued by the Obama administration should be reformed, that due process should be safeguarded. I do. In fact, I think the backlash from the bad guidance issued will make things only harder for victims of assault.

And so, that being said, may I suggest a follow-up column? I’ve seen many pieces by sensible people on the violated rights of accused ra**sts. I have seen zero pieces from the center-right on the rights of s*xual-assault victims. I have seen zero pieces that take the problem of s*xual assault seriously. The best we get is a glancing line, and then a question about statistics.

But if one took as a given that there was some kind of s*xual assault crisis going on at the campuses — even one that resulted in more bad accusations along with real accusations — well, then, can you tell me what should be done about it that doesn’t violate due process and that doesn’t make it harder for the victims to come forward and get a conviction?

If you want to get some perspective on the issue, perhaps you could do more than look at some studies. At least give the victims the same careful attention you give the accused.

I can be your first interview. In college, I once blacked out drunk at a party and someone offered to walk me home. I don’t remember what happened after that, but when I woke up my clothes were on inside out. I started screaming. I didn’t know what had happened, but I did know that some part of me had died forever, and that I had been violated.

It had happened in my empty apartment, late at night, and no one had seen it but us. Both of us had been drinking. I was clearly incapacitated, blacked out, walked home shoeless, had bruises from falling over.

How does one prove I wasn’t passed out at the time of the event itself? We were the only ones there. I couldn’t remember enough from the night to even defend myself. What if I had said O.K.? I didn’t learn till later that incapacitated people can’t consent.

At the time I didn’t know enough about r**e laws to know that it wasn’t my fault. And I didn’t think that anyone would believe me even if I had been unconscious when it happened. I had no proof. Not more than 50 percent, anyway. Another girl at my college had reported a r**e and had been forced to sit through peer mediation with her ra**st. I didn’t want to go through that. I was a strong, tough girl. The prospect of losing a case seemed worse to me than the prospect of sucking it up and moving on.

So I survived. I would wake up sweating from nightmares. I would call up my mom in the middle of the night hysterical and she would stay on the phone with me until I fell back asleep. I lost about 30 pounds. I would gaze into oncoming traffic as I walked to work and think about jumping in.

It took about a year, but I finally got myself to a place where I could talk about what happened to someone who knew better about this sort of thing. And then I wanted justice. But by that time, there was no “preponderance” of evidence to debate. There was no evidence at all.

If the s*xual assault crisis on college campuses shouldn’t, and can’t, be addressed by the Department of Education or by changing Title IX, then who can change it and how? I suspect many of the solutions to this crisis are cultural and moral rather than legal, and perhaps there isn’t a clear policy solution. You’re a columnist, and you care about the culture, and it’s well within your purview to examine the moral questions of our time.

It seems to me that conservatives and mainstream liberals have abdicated concern about s*xual assault to the far left. It’s an astounding moral blind spot, and frankly it breaks my heart.

In an era where I had to choose between voting for a man who had bragged about s*xual assault or a woman who had enabled a husband accused of it, in an era where we can’t even convict Bill Cosby of s*xual assault, in an era when a Brock Turner-type gets nothing but a slap on the wrist, the general public still has to be convinced that r**e and s*xual harassment are real problems. It’s easy to believe there’s an epidemic of false accusations, but not that there’s too much s*xual assault. It’s a cognitive dissonance I can’t explain with any charity.

I know in my bones that Brock Turner got convicted only because he assaulted that girl in public. If it had happened like it had happened to me, in an empty house, with no one to see — if there had been no photos — that boy would have walked away with nothing at all. He would have been as unscathed as the one who r***d me.

I have helped too many of my friends recover from similar stories to question whether or not this country has a s*xual-assault problem. Campuses are a funny focal point, of course. I am sure it is worse for poor women, uneducated women, those outside the bubble of privileged young people at elite institutions. But it still happens on campuses.

I hate having to use my own life as an example. But honestly, so many of the conservative men in my life won’t listen to me on this argument until I tell them my story. So here I am. I was r***d. He got away with it, because I didn’t know enough to do everything right and because I was a “bad victim.” I had been drinking. I had no witnesses. There was nothing the law could do for me.

So yes, some boys have been kicked out of college unjustly, or put through a bad system and been traumatized by it. But my ra**st walks free. Many others do as well. What can be done for the next girl who wakes up with her clothes inside out and her world ripped apart?"

What can be done for the next girl who wakes up with her clothes inside out and her world ripped apart?

09/14/2017

[Full article in post!]
Dear female members of the class of 2021:

Now that you’ve set up your rooms and purchased your course materials, it’s time for some straight talk about s*xual assault. If you follow the news, you’ve probably heard that 1 in 4 of you will be s*xually assaulted on campus before graduation. Don’t panic. Your parents did not just drop you and your belongings in a crime zone. Claims of a “campus r**e crisis” are wildly inflated, and a little common sense will go a long way toward keeping you safe.

The assertion that nearly a quarter of all college women are s*xually assaulted is based on surveys that ask vaguely worded questions about behavior ranging from an unexpected kiss to r**e. In analyzing the responses, those who lump all such conduct into a catchall category of “s*xual assault” deliberately create a false impression in order promote their view of the campus as a “r**e culture.” The truth is, you are far less likely to be r***d than women your age who are not in college. The Justice Department estimates approximately 1 in 53 college women will be victims of r**e or s*xual assault—an unacceptable number, but hardly an epidemic.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

So what are campuses doing about it? Many have instituted mandatory training sessions aimed at changing cultural attitudes about s*x and r**e and making sure students are aware of college resources for addressing misconduct. Schools have built large administrative bureaucracies to investigate and respond to charges of campus assault. But while such responses may placate gender activists and insulate colleges from legal liability, they do little to keep you safe or punish criminal offenders.

Why? To begin with, the resources colleges offer are institutionally biased. The first job of any college administrator is to protect the college. College victim advocates and Title IX coordinators may have an interest in appearing “tough on assault,” but they also have an interest in avoiding bad publicity, which means limiting your options and discouraging police involvement.

Workshops and training sessions will also do nothing to keep students safe if those sessions ignore the elephant in the room: the hookup culture. Academics and college administrators today operate under the assumption that alcohol-infused s*x between virtual strangers is a matter of “private choice.” They fear that any warnings to avoid such risk-fraught encounters will be lambasted as old-fashioned or, worse, judgmental. They live in fear that if they tell the truth about alcohol and hookup culture, they will be accused of “blaming the victim.” So they refuse to give you tips that might actually keep you safe:

• Do not get drunk and go home with someone you don’t know. Anyone who has followed the recent turmoil knows that binge drinking is the common denominator in reported incidents of campus assault. A drunken stupor never justifies criminal behavior, but staying sober can help avoid dangerous or compromising situations.

• There’s safety in numbers. If you are out for a night of revelry, stay with friends. Don’t leave the group to go home with that cute guy you just met. If he is really interested (and worth your time), he will contact you tomorrow—when you’re both sober.

• Reject the hookup culture. S*x without trust and commitment often ends poorly. It may sound old-fashioned, but it’s really common sense: If you don’t know someone well, and you are unsure whether you can trust him, is it really a smart idea to be alone with him in a state of partial undress?

• Be self-confident. It’s OK to meet a guy around the keg or at the pong table, but hold out for a real date. You deserve it.

• Buyer beware. If you do decide to participate in the “hookup” culture, go in with your eyes open. Promises made in the heat of passion are meaningless. Suitors will promise the moon to get you into bed. Many of them will want nothing to do with you the next day, which will (understandably) leave you feeling humiliated and exploited. That doesn’t make you a r**e victim. It makes you naive.

• Be clear about your wishes. If you do not want to do something, say so clearly. You are an adult, and you have free will and moral agency. You have a right to say no at any stage. But do not expect your partner to infer reluctance from your demeanor. Only you know what makes you uncomfortable, and it is up to you to articulate it.

• If you are assaulted, seek immediate help from someone you trust who is not affiliated with the college. Remember, the college’s interests are not your own. Call your parents or another trusted adult, call 911, seek medical attention, or call a r**e hotline. Do it as soon as possible.

Although you won’t hear any of the above common-sense advice on campus, the best way to protect yourself is to follow it. College should be four of the greatest years of your life. Enjoy it, but be careful. And if, God forbid, you are assaulted, remember that the best way to punish offenders is through the criminal justice system. Don’t let college administrators or ideologically motivated activists scare you into thinking otherwise.

Ms. Braceras is a lawyer and writer in Boston.

Be prudent about alcohol, and know that school administrators don’t have your interests at heart.

09/14/2017

Columbia Hookup Culture As Told By Someone Who Knows Nothing About Columbia Hookup Culture

We’ve explained frat rush. We’ve explained srat rush. Now, we’re explaining another painfully confusing and time-consuming process that forms part of the backbone of Columbia student life: the hookup culture. This post is a satirical explanation of that culture, as understood by a second-semester sophomore who is on the as*xual spectrum, just got out of a serious long-distance relationship, and has yet to hook up with anyone at Columbia. ...

…

09/14/2017

poster campaign 2017! Find us all around campus :D

09/06/2017

Great article to reflect on and to start the year!

"Today’s college students desperately want to change the world, but too many think that living a meaningful life requires doing something extraordinary and attention-grabbing like becoming an Instagram celebrity, starting a wildly successful company or ending a humanitarian crisis.

Having idealistic aspirations is, of course, part of being young. But thanks to social media, purpose and meaning have become conflated with glamour: Extraordinary lives look like the norm on the internet. Yet the idea that a meaningful life must be or appear remarkable is not only elitist but also misguided. Over the past five years, I’ve interviewed dozens of people across the country about what gives their lives meaning, and I’ve read through thousands of pages of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience research to understand what truly brings people satisfaction.

The most meaningful lives, I’ve learned, are often not the extraordinary ones. They’re the ordinary ones lived with dignity.

There’s perhaps no better expression of that wisdom than George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” a book I think every college student should read. At 700-some pages, it requires devotion and discipline, which is kind of the point. Much like a meaningful life, the completion of this book is hard won and requires effort. The heroine of the novel is Dorothea Brooke, a wealthy young gentlewoman in a provincial English town. Dorothea has a passionate temperament and yearns to accomplish some good in the world as a philanthropist. The novel’s hero, Tertius Lydgate, is an ambitious young doctor who hopes to make important scientific discoveries. Both hope to lead epic lives.

Both Dorothea and Tertius end up in disastrous marriages — she to the vicar Mr. Casaubon, he to the town beauty Rosamond. Slowly, their dreams wither away. Rosamond, who turns out to be vain and superficial, wants Tertius to pursue a career lucrative enough to support her indulgent tastes, and by the end of the novel, he acquiesces, abandoning his scientific quest to become a doctor to the rich. Though conventionally “successful,” he dies at 50 believing himself a failure for not following through on his original life plan.

As for Dorothea, after the Reverend Casaubon dies, she marries her true love, Will Ladislaw. But her larger ambitions go unrealized. At first it seems that she, too, has wasted her potential.

Tertius’s tragedy is that he never reconciles himself to his humdrum reality. Dorothea’s triumph is that she does.

By novel’s end, she settles into life as a wife and a mother, and becomes, Eliot writes, the “foundress of nothing.” It may be a letdown for the reader, but not for Dorothea. She pours herself into her roles as mother and wife with “beneficent activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.”

Looking out her window one day, she sees a family making its way down the road and realizes that she, too, is “a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.” In other words, she begins to live in the moment. Rather than succumb to the despair of thwarted dreams, she embraces her life as it is and contributes to those around her as she can.

This is Eliot’s final word on Dorothea: “Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

It’s one of the most beautiful passages in literature, and it encapsulates what a meaningful life is about: connecting and contributing to something beyond the self, in whatever humble form that may take.

Most young adults won’t achieve the idealistic goals they’ve set for themselves. They won’t become the next Mark Zuckerberg. They won’t have obituaries that run in newspapers like this one. But that doesn’t mean their lives will lack significance and worth. We all have a circle of people whose lives we can touch and improve — and we can find our meaning in that.

A new and growing body of research within psychology about meaningfulness confirms the wisdom of Eliot’s novel — that meaning is found not in success and glamour but in the mundane. One research study showed that adolescents who did household chores felt a stronger sense of purpose. Why? The researchers believe it’s because they’re contributing to something bigger: their family. Another study found that cheering up a friend was an activity that created meaning in a young adult’s life. People who see their occupations as an opportunity to serve their immediate community find more meaning in their work, whether it’s an accountant helping his client or a factory worker supporting her family with a paycheck.

As students head to school this year, they should consider this: You don’t have to change the world or find your one true purpose to lead a meaningful life. A good life is a life of goodness — and that’s something anyone can aspire to, no matter their dreams or circumstances."

Emily Esfahani Smith (), an editor at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of “The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed With Happiness.”

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Social media make it seem as if meaningful lives are the extraordinary and attention-grabbing ones. That’s rarely the case.

08/13/2017

What are the guiding basics on relationships and how do we convey that, especially to children as discussed in the article?

"...But when you look at the s*x ed curriculum in most schools, it's really grounded in issues related to disaster prevention — like preventing STDs or abstinence or consent. It's not geared in the same way toward teaching kids the nuanced and complex skills they need to have a relationship — and that, if they choose to enter a relationship, it could end up being one of the most important parts of their life."
..I do a lot of work in the younger grades with friendship skills: reciprocity, reflective listening, turn-taking, sharing. All of these very basic skills that you need to teach young kids so that later on, they not only have the skills to maintain a healthy relationship, they'll know how to identify a healthy relationship, too."

One school counselor's take on how to help teens get past the pop culture myths.