The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law (2014)

newyorker.com

15 pointsTomte11 comments

All seems reasonable enough, except for showing a documentary about child-abuse in class without even having the basic human courtesy to warn people of the contents.

If people can't wrap their heads around why that might be an unpleasant experience for certain people, then I find it hard to take their other opinions seriously.

You'd think, if the topic was at all important to them, which they repeatedly claim it is, that this utterly minor concession to logic and reasonableness might not be worth taking a stand against, yet apparently their right to spring upsetting material onto students without warning trumps their desire for well-educated lawyers.

How can there possibly be a political divide over this? I don't get it. My best guess is something like climate change, where people have to ignore reality because they don't like the policy responses that it points to.

How is giving a "trigger warning" a concession to logic and reasonableness? I don't know what the documentary was about, so perhaps it could have started with a "this is graphic." But as I understand it, this was a course on rape law, isn't everything potentially "triggering?" And why is rape so special, that we can't even teach lawyers how to deal with it? That a teacher can't even use the word "violate?" How is that student going to be prepared in the real world, and how will that student handle other rape cases? But, again, why is rape more special than any other heinous crime? Murder, home invasion, assault?

> except for showing a documentary about child-abuse in class without even having the basic human courtesy to warn people of the contents.

I didn't get the impression that the author disagrees with that. I guess just mentioning the fact that it's a documentary about child rape would do the job (rather than just hitting play, which I'm pretty sure they don't do).

As far as I'm concerned the article could have been written without mentioning that particular example.

I got a completely different message from that paragraph than you did. I just went back and read it again, and it seems even harsher and more callous the second time around.

The author clearly disagrees that advanced warning of potentially sensitive topics is warranted, which is a strange stance to take if the plan all along was to give advance notice when the topic was incest/rape/child abuse.

That interesting. I've read it a second time as well and I still don't get it. (Just to be clear: We're talking about the paragraph starting with "Something similar to the 'second rape' concept," right?)

> The author clearly disagrees that advanced warning of potentially sensitive topics is warranted [...]

Are we talking about the documentary or any class on rape law in general? I think he would disagree with warning his students any time they talk about violent crimes (presumably that comes up a lot), but not disagree with warning them when he shows a documentary that contains very graphic descriptions of such crimes.

The key bit for me was the fact that students asked (after they'd seen the video) that they be given warnings about that kind of content. Which seems to imply that no warning was given. The rest of the paragraph seems to be the professor making the argument that giving such a warning would offend their principles in some way and that they have no intention of providing this courtesy in the future either.

Ironic that the pseudo-psychology of 'triggering' is being used to coerce those who experienced trauma into a state of perpetual victimhood. Rather than dealing with their experiences via safe discussion and exposure and eventually moving beyond them, they are urged to see themselves as irreparably damaged and fragile; to alter and censure their own identity, behaviour and the behaviour of others.

In addition it is failing to give today's students the tools they need to handle tomorrow's victims

Disgusting, PC nonsense getting in the way of education on an important subject.

> Trials often included inquiries into a woman’s sexual history, because of the notion that a woman who wasn’t virginal must have been complicit in any sex that occurred.

I thought it was to counteract arguments that an apparently virginal woman would not engage in such sordid behavior, therefore making it apparent it must have been rape - when she had in fact engaged in such acts and they would not have been out of character in the least.

There is this claim that sexual history will hopelessly bias the jury, therefore should be banned - but they seem quite happy for other biases - such that women don't aggressively engage in casual sex or that young girls have no concept of sexuality - to stand and influence the outcome.

The page just does not scroll on my phoone's Chrome browser.

Waited for the page to fully load, swiped my finger. Nothing.

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