By Mark Sutton

Dear Title IX Allies,

We are writing because we are concerned about the 2024 Title IX regulations which are scheduled to be published early this year. We are specifically troubled about the proposals that will strip due process rights and impede the ability to file official complaints to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of Title IX Violations committed by educational institutions receiving federal funds.

YOU have the opportunity to share input with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the proposed Title IX Regulations.

You can schedule a phone call with OIRA and share your opinions directly with them.

The comment period opened on Feb. 5, 2024. You have up to 90 days to complete your call, and the period may be extended, however, it is recommended to schedule your call as soon as possible. The meeting request form on the government website is called EO 12866 Meeting Request.

We need as many people as possible to call in and oppose the proposed Title IX regulations!

Meetings can be conducted by phone.
You should be able to use a pseudonym.
SCHEDULE your meeting here: EO 12866 Meeting Request
The more meetings and discussions about the damage of inequitable policies, the more impact!

The more meetings, the longer it will take OMB/OIRA to assess comments and delay OCR from publishing the final rule. This delay could increase the chance of the next Congress in 2025 rescinding the final rules.

What COMMENTS and CONCERNS SHOULD YOU discuss?

Whichever topics are most important to you. Consider the following:

• Loss of due process for students and faculty
• Do not roll back expansion of control including off campus; schools should not be forced to police activity outside of campus
• For OCR Reviews, reverse the removal of appeals of OCR decisions
• Do not support creating a standing requirement to file OCR complaints
• Free speech issues

Be prepared; the meetings will likely consist of you reading your statement, followed by a few questions. Plan on speaking for about 20-30 minutes.

Here are a few links with helpful information from our friends at TitleIXForAll.com:

• New arguments and data
• This guide from the Ethics and Public Policy Center
• This recent post explaining how the due process provisions of the 2020 Title IX regulations were successful
• TitleIXForAll comment to the Department of Education

Arguments from attorneys and other advocates well-versed in these matters

PLEASE HELP ensure OMB/OIRA makes INFORMED DECISIONS ON TITLE IX policies:

Schedule a meeting now EO 12866 Meeting Request
If you don’t schedule a meeting, you will ALLOW OTHERS TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE; those assessing and rewriting the Rules must credit both the complainant and respondent’s experiences.

Your help is sorely needed. THANK YOU!

By Laurie A. Couture

Just like every metalhead of my generation, I rocked out to the song, “Hot For Teacher” by Van Halen; however, as an adult, I find it abhorrent that any teacher would actually breach the boundary of caretaker and exploit the emotional neediness or the confusing raging hormones of any student, regardless of age. The lyrics of the song are a powerful testament to the vulnerability of adolescents—who are learning how to cope with a flood of hormones and intense feelings—to the inappropriate attention of school authorities who exploit youths in their “care” for their own gratification.

Whether 18, 19, or younger, a K-12 school student is a vulnerable child who is often at the mercy of school teachers and school authorities. The power dynamic is absolute, with the school authority wielding total power over a subordinate student. Teachers and school staff can manipulate youths with praise, attention, gifts, favors, recess, discipline, and even power over a youth’s grades, transcript, diploma, scholarship, and sports team position. Abusive teachers gravitate toward students who lack support, supervision, and secure attachments at home, and some parents will align with these teachers in punishing their own children. The prison-like power dynamic of school makes it impossible for there to be true sexual consent between a student and school teacher or staff, regardless of age.

Typically, however, while male school teachers who rape and sexually exploit female students have gotten the full weight of the law thrown at them, including decades of prison time, female school teachers who rape and sexually exploit male and female students have tended to get a “slap on the wrist”, sometimes doing no more than pay a fine or serve probation. Moreover, the media treats the cases like soap operas, with headlines such as, “Sexy Substitute Gets No Jail Time” and “Middle school PE teacher, 40, arrested for sex romp with teen boy student”. In a Utah case, Judge Mark Kouris admitted to his own gender bias in sentencing a 29-year-old female substitute teacher to 36 months of probation and a fine for sexually exploiting a 17-year-old boy (WND, 2006). Judge Kouris said to the perpetrator: “If this was a 29-year-old male and a 17-year-old female, I would be inclined to order some incarceration”.

However, New Hampshire is in the process of testing their commitment to a 2021 law that makes it a felony for any type of employee, contractor, or volunteer at a K-12 school to engage in any sexual activity with a student, even if the student is 18 years of age or older. It even extends 10 months past the graduation date of the student. In March of 2022, 38-year-old teacher, Bridgette Doucette-Howell was indicted following an investigation into accusations that she kissed and had sexual intercourse with an 18-year-old male student. The law that Doucette-Howell is being prosecuted under is known as the “Howie Leung Loophole Law”. It went into effect in 2021 after a group of students reportedly witnessed Leung, a male teacher, kissing a female student from their school who was legally an adult—This occurred while he was standing accused on out of state child rape allegations. The Doucette-Howell case will be the first case tried under the new law, and NH Rockingham County Attorney, Patricia Conway stated in an article that she intends “to prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law”, based upon the evidence (Schinella, 2022). I believe strongly in every defendant’s right to due process; however, we will have to wait and see whether the evidence or gender bias determines the outcome of this case.

References:

Schinella (2022): https://patch.com/new-hampshire/concord-nh/teacher-amherst-first-face-howie-leung-loophole-law-charges

Chiaramida (2022): https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/local/2022/04/21/nh-teacher-sex-assault-case-first-under-howie-leung-loophole-law/7367903001/?utm_source=ourcommunitynow&utm_medium=web

WND. (2006, September, 19). ‘Sexy substitute’ gets no jail time. Retrieved February 29, 2020, from https://www.wnd.com/2006/09/37982/

WND. (2008, April 15). The big list: Female Teachers with students. Retrieved April 15, 2008, from https://www.wnd.com/2014/08/39783/

By Laurie A. Couture

Young men are at a disadvantage in career recruitment, father’s rights, and relationships. Women earn 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60.8% of master’s degrees, and 54% of doctorate degrees. Women also enjoy numerous women-focused business leadership, ownership, mentorship, grant, and recruitment opportunities funded by multi-million and billion-dollar corporations and donors. In the parenting and relationship sphere, around 80% of custodial parents are women. The number of single, lonely young men is increasing as young women are eschewing romantic relationships with males that they find educationally and economically inferior to them–and many are opting for an LGBTQ+ identity instead of being with young men sexually and romantically.

Frustrated men are, in small numbers, beginning to realize that they must stand up to the unceasing political efforts to push them to the sidelines of humanity. They are doing this using a “join ‘em” strategy and the “abandon ship” strategy.

For example, the years 2022 and 2023 saw a collapse of jobs in the tech industry as dozens of tech giants laid off over 160,000 employees. While the layoff data by sex is inconclusive due to lack of company reporting by sex (and a small study that used convenience sampling vs. random sampling), it appears that men made up the majority of those laid off. This seems consistent with The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as men were listed as having slightly higher unemployment rates than women between September 2022 and September 2023. Given their unemployment situation, it would make sense that in late 2023, men flooded one of the largest tech job fairs in the world in hopes of meeting with job recruiters. However, the “Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing” conference was intended for women and non-binary people. Men listed themselves as “non-binary” (when they were not) in order to access the event, which legally cannot discriminate against men attending but clearly discourages men from accessing job recruiters at the event. There was no counterpart conference for men.

In matters of parenthood, men are also being driven to “join ‘em”. Rene Salinas Ramos of Ecuador has made a bold statement by legally changing his gender in hopes that it will help him gain custody of his two daughters, who he alleges are suffering abuse in their mother’s home. Although Rene is reportedly not transgendered, Rene now legally identifies as “a mother” in order to have a better legal opportunity for obtaining custody and protection of “her” children.

In an age of incessant male-shaming, plutonic “marriages”, straight women hooking up with women, and financially successful young women not wanting to “date down”, young men are “abandoning ship”. While some lonely, touch-starved young men are drowning themselves in video games and porn, a growing segment are now turning to AI “girlfriends” in order to receive a little empathy, caring, and emotional support—and perhaps some compliments, too.

Predictably, the media has criticized men’s self-advocacy (survival?) efforts, viewing the men as con artists and losers rather than people desperate to make a living, protect their children, or find some semblance that they are worthy of love. Feminist ideology has set a tone since the late ‘90s for boys and men to be shamed in our institutions and media, then society mocks and shames them some more for trying to find their way in a world that doesn’t want them to exist. Maybe these men who are calling discrimination’s bluff will spark true equality, empowerment, and mutual caring for all.

References

National Center for Education Statistics. (2021b, May). Table 318.30. Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by sex of student and field of study: 2018- 2019. Digest of Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.30.asp

The Hill: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-young-men-are-single-most-young-women-are-not/

Finbold: https://finbold.com/tech-layoffs-statistics-q1-2023/

Computerworld: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3685936/tech-layoffs-in-2023-a-timeline.html

Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/media/womens-tech-conference-overrun-men-claiming-non-binary-draws-amused-reaction

Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/

Axios: https://www.axios.com/2023/07/06/tech-layoffs-2023-female-workers

365 DataScience: https://365datascience.com/trending/who-was-affected-by-the-2022-2023-tech-layoffs/#3

NDTV: https://www.ndtv.com/feature/man-changes-his-gender-to-female-to-fight-for-custody-of-his-daughters-report-3674381

NY Post: https://nypost.com/2023/01/06/desperate-dad-legally-changes-gender-to-female-in-bid-to-gain-custody-of-kids/

Healthnews: https://healthnews.com/mental-health/self-care-and-therapy/ai-girlfriends-addressing-the-loneliness-epidemic/

NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/ai-powered-virtual-girlfriend-caryn-marjorie-snapchat-influencer-rcna84180

Frishberg, H. (2019, September 6). Broken men are hurting American women’s marriage prospects. The New York Post. https://bit.ly/2lPK6wM

Ingraham, C. (2019, March 29). The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3hJOSp1

Laughlin, S. (2016, March 11). Gen Z goes beyond gender binaries in new innovation group data. Wunderman Thompson. https://www.wundermanthompson.com/insight/gen-z-goes-beyond-genderbinaries-in-new-innovation-group-data

Lee, K. M. (2020, February 14). Settling Down: Romance in the Era of Gen Z. Yale News. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/02/14/settling-down-romance-in-the-era-of-gen-z/