Why men don’t get to decide if talk about rape is threatening

In the comments section to Jill’s post about Ciolli’s firing, one commenter, shawn, defended the frequent rape threats at that discussion board thus

you people have a very broad interpretation of the type of serious threat that is not protected speech. However nasty comments are, you have to look at both the message and the context in which it is conveyed.

I didn’t participate in the debate, and only saw the comment a while after it was posted, so I wanted to make some general comments on this general stance.

Men, myself included, don’t get to decide if threats about rape are really “threatening”. Actually, I would even go as far as to say that only the woman that the threat was aimed at gets to decide if it was threatening or not, but right now I am just focusing on why men should just shut the fuck up when it comes to this.

The reason is very simple. We cannot relate to it. Men are not in constant risk of rape happening to them, so it’s quite easy for us to dismiss such threats. Women, on the other hand, are in risk of getting raped (and an all too large number already have), so they can easily relate to such threats.

At this point I could start going into the horrifying rape US statistics, but I have already covered those in an earlier post. Instead I’ll try to tell two stories that one of my acquaintances have told me, in the hope of at least conveying at least part of the difference in what men and women risk.

My acquaintance is not Danish, and these stories relate to her home-country (which I won’t specify, other than say it’s not USA).

The first was a story about when she grew up. When she became a teenager she started going out, mostly in a local nightclub, where there was a dance-floor. It was a local place, where people pretty much knew each others, and it was the same crowd hanging out.
One night, a gang came to the nightclub, barricaded the doors, and raped all the women in there.
My acquaintance was lucky, since she wasn’t there that evening, but no woman in that town would ever feel safe again when going out in town, and especially not to that nightclub, which was the only one in town.

The second story is one that has haunted me ever since I’ve heard it.
In her home-country, it’s quite common to travel into the nature to get drunk and enjoy a good time.
Recently, some of her friends went to a lake and got drunk there. While being there, they could hear that there was a birthday party going on somewhere at the shores of the same lake. It was a girl’s 18th birthday party, and they were obviously having a good time.
Then during the night, the sounds changed, and they could hear that the girl got raped for hours by a group of men.
The people hearing this were powerless to do anything – they tried calling the police, but they were too far away for the police to do anything, and trying to stop the rape would most likely get them killed.

Both these stories are brutal and nasty, and while the men, who experienced them, certainly got traumatized, they were not the ones who got raped. And they are not the ones risking getting raped in the future. Men, like me, who didn’t experience it, can certainly get horrified by such stories, but again, we are not the ones risking getting raped in such brutal matters.

So, since we don't live under the same risks, we don’t get to dismiss the fears of women. We don’t get to dismiss rape threats as jokes, because they are not. Not to the women they are aimed at. And we don’t get to joke about rape. Period.

What do you know? Actions do have consequences.

Even when those actions are inaction when asked to take action on an issue.

I am talking about the story about how a lawfirm withdrew their job offer to a 3rd year law student, who used to moderate a forum, supposedly for debating law related issues, but in reality a free-for-all nest of bigots and misogynists.

The story was covered by the WSJ blog, and was picked up by several other blogs.

To sum the story up briefly, Anthony Ciolli was one of the two executives behind the forum AutoAdmit, the self-billed "most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world". While there undoubfully happened real discussion related to law school admissions, the discussion board was more well-known for it's racist content and outright misogyny (Brian Leiter covers that here). Something which the Washington Post wrote about in this march 7th article.

Coilli, and the other person running the board, Cohen, defended the language and behaviour by saying that they believed in free speech. The same reason was given for not moderating comments that published the personal information of female law students, or that linked to pictures that had been used in breach of copyright.
At the same time, the duo of moderators actually did delete posts that posted personal information (such as the identity) of regular posters to the discussion board, or which their friends asked them to delete. A clear double standard regarding their respect of absolute free speech.

Back when the Washington Post article was covered by Jill (who has been frequently targetted by the discussion board) , I wrote this comment:

If there is any justice, there will be absolutely no jobs for Anthony Ciolli and Jarret Cohen when they have finished their studies. Their current and past behaviour shows them completely wrong for dealing with other people, as lawyers obviously have to do. And they obviously have a very limited understanding of the law.

At the time I didn't realize that Jarret Cohen wasn't a law student, but rather self-employed, so my comments didn't apply to him. Ciolli on the other hand is a law student, and it turns out that I'm not alone in feeling that way. He had a job offer from the law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, who asked him to explain himself.

On April 11, just over a month after the WaPo story ran, DeWitt sent a letter to Ciolli stating that the firm had recently learned of the controversy involving AutoAdmit, in particular its “off-topic” message board, and that “the information we now have raises serious concerns about your joining our firm.”

DeWitt wrote that the content of the messages on the board are “antithetical” to the values of the firm and the “principles of collegiality and respect that members of the legal profession should observe in their dealings with other lawyers.” DeWitt pointed out that in an online letter to another blogger, Ciolli and his partner Jarret Cohen identified themselves as AutoAdmit’s administrators and defended its “free, uninhibited exchange of ideas.”

DeWitt continued: “We expect any lawyer affiliated with our firm, when presented with the kind of language exhibited on the message board, to reject it and to disavow any affiliation with it. You, instead, facilitated the expression and publication of such language. . . . ” He wrote, his resignation from the site was “too late to ameliorate our concerns.” He asked that Ciolli respond in writing.

DeWitt didn't blame Ciolli for the comments on the discussion board, but instead for not disavowing himself from them, and asked him to explain why he hadn't done so. Something Ciolli obviously didn't get.

Ciolli, in a letter dated April 16, recounted the history of AutoAdmit and his joining as education director to “develop educational content and publications” for the site, including a working paper on which law schools place the most graduates at elite law firms, well after the site was founded in 2004. He played down his ability to control content on the site. “While I was free to give input and act in an advisory manner–which I often did, with mixed results–Mr. [Jarret] Cohen always had final say over all rules and policies related to the message board,” and that Cohen “rarely granted” his requests to remove offensive material.

Ciolli added that he was “still in the process of assessing all the lessons to be learned from this incident,” including “the importance of good judgment and proceeding with caution,” values he would appreciate “to a greater extent than a typical first year associate.” He suggested deferring his start date at the firm by a year to “allow me time to develop a series of positive contributions to the legal community that would go a long way toward strengthening my reputation and allaying your concerns.”

Notice something? Nothing addresses why Ciolli didn't disavow the comments. He does say that he can learn the "importance of good judgment and proceeding with caution", yet he cannot even figure out how to address the points raised by DeWitt, nor even say that he has learned these things (note that he said "to be learned").

DeWitt was obviously not impressed by all this

In a letter dated April 20, DeWitt responded that “none of the information you provided resolves the concerns I expressed in my letter regarding your past affiliation with the site,” and that the firm “terminates the employment offered you” on August 16, 2006.

Now, this might seem harsh to some, but I haven't changed my position on this issue at all. It was the right call by the law firm.

Jill has written about the firing, and she is a much more gracious person that I am.