I don’t care. As Clinton would say, “I could care less”, but I prefer “couldn’t care less”.
What is this story doing on TPM??
It took them four years to investigate this and do something about it? The people who did this are no longer undergraduates, no? The people being punished were in high school when this all happened, no?
Can we suspend a Presidential candidate for essentially doing the same fucking thing? That’s the bigger question. The “fine young men” at this institution are only modeling behavior of their presumptive future overlord as their role model. Amiright?
According to the article, the behavior has continued. The 2012 stuff was just the starting point for the investigation.
University President Drew Faust said in a statement Thursday night that an investigation into the 2012 team found that their “appalling” actions were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few, but appeared to be more widespread across the team and continued through the current season.
Sexually “ranking” members of the opposing sex, no matter how boorish and crass, is several miles below bragging about sexually assaulting them.
Don’t hold Harvard students to the pitifully low standards Republicans have adopted for those who would seek to lead our country.
“Never mind…”
Emily Latella
- Our future president (maybe) is a self-confessed, serial molester of women. As Andrew Sullivan just wrote in New York, “His relationship to women is entirely a function of his relationship to men: Women are solely a means to demonstrate his superiority in the alpha-male struggle. Women are to be pursued, captured, used, assaulted, or merely displayed to other men as an indication of his superiority.”
- He’s running against a woman, who if elected will become our first female president.
- At least 4 in 10 voters do not believe that his statements and actions relating to women are disqualifying.
- Women all over the country have been sharing for the first time, with their families and/or publicly, their stories about sexual harassment and molestation.
- The gender gap in the presidential vote this year could be the largest ever.
- Harvard is the most prestigious university in the country, if not the world.
- The Harvard men’s soccer team’s scouting reports over several years about first-year players on the women’s soccer team are aptly characterized by this one comment: “Yeah … she wants cock.”
- The Harvard president (a woman) has suspended a first-place sports team at her university and required it to forfeit the remainder of its games, because enough is enough.
- “She wants cock” is not “several miles” below “grab them by the pussy,” as @etylczak claims.
- Nothing will change — i.e., we’re looking at an endless line of Donald Trumps — until we start changing. In your own small way, therefore, on this male-dominated comment board at TPM, do your part.
At first, I was thinking that, while as a young man I never would have participated in it, ranking females by attractiveness in and of itself is not an actionable offense. But when you publish a list, and then put it online, you’ve crossed a line.
No. The original issue, the document from 2012, was discovered in October 2016, according to the article. Investigations in the last 30 days have shown that 2012 was not the only year of it, that today’s current team did the same thing again (still).
The most important piece of information in this article was that the “student newspaper” uncovered the rating system. This gives me hope for the future.
Cudos to those student journalists. You set the example for all.
Glad to see the college admin did the right thing even though they were on the back end of this.
No, it went very far beyond that, including matching each incoming women’s soccer player to a sexual position, e.g., doggy style, missionary position, etc.
If that’s all they did, in their heads rank women, then that would be “just” boorish and crass. Creating an environment in which those female players must interact with the men all colluding on this dehumanizing practice is palpable and dangerous. If you’ve never felt what it’s like to walk into a room and realize you are prey, then I’m happy for you, but that’s why you don’t think this is a big deal.
Yeah but in’t this how Facebook got started?
Yeah, but again, if one says those things to a fellow student who isn’t threatened by it (e.g., another young creep who shares your thoughts), it’s not actionable, it seems to me. It’s when one publishes those thoughts, or expresses them to a female athlete, or any female in a university setting I suppose, that one exposes oneself to sanction.
[quote=“carlosfiance, post:18, topic:46359, full:true”]
Yeah, but again, if one says those things to a fellow student who isn’t threatened by it (e.g., another young creep who shares your thoughts), it’s not actionable, it seems to me. [/quote]
I don’t want to belabor this and we can agree to disagree. But the facts of the matter are that the report was produced each year and circulated, it seems, to all of the members of the men’s soccer team. So the situation is this: suppose you’re a decent young man who thinks that it’s appalling that your teammates are doing this. You have this choice forced on you: (1) speak up and quite possibly be ostracized or at a minimum be distrusted or (2) keep silent and give your tacit consent.
“Locker room talk” is always coercive, to some degree. At least it seems so to me. Cheers.
yes. I retract.
It has been a while since I have been in a locker room, but here goes: if I overheard two people talking about ranking people based on their sexual desirability, and even talking about how they imagine how those people perform sexually, I would find it offensive, but I wouldn’t be so officious as to report those people to my coach, as it would seem to me to be their business. If, OTOH, that talk was pervasive in the locker room, or perhaps people purposefully were expressing those thoughts within my hearing, and I was offended by it, then I would feel perfectly justified to tell the proper authorities.
But if I were not offended by it, should I report it? Because it’s offensive outside the locker room?