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/

By Laurie A. Couture

Both mothers and fathers internalize sex-specific biases that lead them to put more focus on protecting their daughters from sexual assault than their sons. Due to incessant false media troupes, feminist rhetoric, and age-old stereotypes that Male = Perpetrator and Female = Victim, mothers and fathers alike tend to view their daughters as more sexually vulnerable than their sons. This myth of vulnerability leads parents to behave more protectively toward daughters than sons. Boys and young men are equally vulnerable to sexual assault as their sisters, yet mothers and fathers tend to suggest by default that sons must be taught not to be potential predatorsrather than taught to protect themselves from them. The harm caused by this inequality in protection is incalculable, as generations of little boys, adolescent boys, and young adult men grow up suffering sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, date rape, and other sexual traumas that might be completely unknown to their parents. The post traumatic destruction that this causes to the young male’s development can devastate his mental health, health, and life.

I could provide you with decades of statistics finding that boys and young men suffer equal and even slightly higher rates of sexual assault by females than the reverse. I could tell you that hundreds and hundreds of boys and young men I’ve worked with have suffered rape, sexual abuse, date rape, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, sexual attacks, online sex crimes, and other sexual trauma at the hands of mothers, fathers, family members, school teachers, baby sitters, peers, partners, “trusted” adults in the community, and online predators. However, if you do not challenge your own biases about vulnerability, especially rooted in how you were viewed and how you viewed yourself as a youth, you might be unable to accept the information. You might, being well-meaning, provide sexual assault prevention messages that confuse reality rather than focus on what actually occurs in the lives of today’s children and youths.

Dads and Moms, step back and take a look at all the ways your son is vulnerable at his age to those who could physically, emotionally, socially, educationally, financially, and digitally manipulate him in a sexual manner. Make sure to have an ongoing, evolving, age-appropriate dialogue with him in a gender-neutral manner about personal body safety, online safety, sexual consent, and sexual responsibility. Please make it clear that this is not a gendered issue: Sexual consent, sexual boundary respect, and personal body safety apply to everyone, and victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse, rape, and other sex crimes can be—and are—male, female, transgendered, and non-binary. Sexual assault prevention is the responsibility of parents, and in today’s world with TikTok, video gaming platforms, and on-demand porn, it is harder to protect our children’s innocence and inviolability than ever before. However, the first steps involve both fathers and mothers challenging the dangerous myths that their sons are less vulnerable to sexual assault than their daughters… and that predators fit a stereotype.

References:

Kavenagh et al. (2023) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213423001102

Depraetere, J., Vandeviver, C., Beken, T. V., & Keygnaert, I. (2020). Big Boys Don’t Cry: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis of Male Sexual Victimization. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 21(5), 991-1010.

French, B. H., Tilghman, J. D., & Malebranche, D. A. (2015). Sexual coercion context and psychosocial correlates among diverse males. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 16(1), 42.

Albert, B., Brown, S., Flanigan, C. M. (2003). 14 and Younger: The Sexual Behavior of Young Adolescents. [PDF file]. Washington, DC: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED477795.pdf

Hines, D. A. (2007). Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men: A multilevel, multinational study of university students. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36(3), 403-422.

By Laurie A. Couture

“Especially.” The word means, according to The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, “chiefly; much more than in other cases”, with synonyms of “first and foremost” and “above all”…

When it comes to the topics of hurt, pain, human suffering, and violence, is it ethical to put the safety of one gender demographic far above the safety of another? More poignantly, should we be putting the safety of a group of adults above the safety of a group of children? Apparently, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, used by millions of riders annually, seems to think so.

Earlier this year, BART partnered with The San Francisco Asian Women’s Shelter and artist, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya to produce a series of vibrant, pop art-style public billboards to “encourage conversations and reflection on healthy relationships, families and communities” as well as to prevent domestic violence. However, there is a caveat to this idealistic, humanitarian-sounding wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing campaign: The word “especially”. The campaign’s message, accompanied by its neon-overload images primarily of confident and supported survivor women (with a token man in one panel bowing his head in submission), is brazenly and blatantly gender-biased. Gripping visuals and text persuade a sexist message that domestic violence should be viewed as a gender crime rather than a human crime, and that we must ensure—here comes the Orwellian Doublethink—“respect for everyone, especially women and girls”. [Italics mine]

It doesn’t take a doctorate degree in psychology to interpret that this campaign does not prioritize respect for everyone, period. Moreover, it even elevates the safety of adult women even over the safety of minor boys. “Especially”, suggests the BART campaign, the public must internalize this propaganda and not think of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and even their own sons and nephews, except to view them as potential predators of women and girls. This campaign is concerning, considering that boys are the primary victims of child abuse and mothers are the primary perpetrators of child abuse and fatal child abuse against their children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020). Domestic violence statistics have shown since the 1970s what Murray Straus (2010; 2011) referred to as “gender symmetry” in domestic violence, with women actually perpetrating more violence in the home than men.

But what about in the Asian-American population highlighted in the campaign? Are women the primary victims? A study by Chang et al. (2009) of Asian-American adults found that, similar to the rest of the American population, both men and women admit that women hit men more than the reverse. While Gershoff et al. (2012) report that Asian-American mothers strike their children less than White, Black, and Latino mothers, 73% of Asian-American mothers admitted to striking (“spanking”) their children. If BART wishes to prevent domestic violence, the first step must to be protect children in the home… and the second step must be to add a hard, non-negotiable period after the phrase, “respect for everyone”.

References

BART’s Let’s Talk About Us campaign: https://www.letstalkaboutus.org/about and https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2023/news20230215

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020): https:// www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2018.pdf#page=21

Straus (2010): https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrpa/1/3/332.abstract

Straus (2011): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178911000620

Chang et al. (2009): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449838/

Gershoff et al. (2012): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988802/

By Laurie A. Couture

Millions of people, young and old, suffer physical, emotional, or sexual abuse without equal acknowledgement, validation, or even protection by local, state, and federally funded domestic violence programs and agencies. The primary groups who are under-served and excluded are boys of all ages, adolescents, men, elders, lesbian women, and gender minorities. Do these domestic violence (DV) programs simply need a little education in the needs of the communities they serve? A deeper look reveals that the philosophy that guides the mission and values of most state DV programs isn’t lacking in education, it is lacking in honesty, professional integrity, and empathy for the victims who do not fit their paradigm (Straus, 2010) https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrpa/1/3/332.abstract and (Hope et al., 2021) https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/6038/. Their outmoded, 1960s-era paradigm is political rather than empirical, and it is irrelevant to today’s society.

Rather than being community needs-focused, the paradigm boils down to a single feminist tenant: Males are oppressors (and cannot be victims) and females are oppressed (and cannot be perpetrators). The overwhelming focus of DV organizations is on serving adult women (and sometimes their daughters) abused by males, treating as a trifling low priority any demographics that do not fit that narrow Male = Perpetrator/Female = Victim focus. At least since the 1970s, empirical research, in which both men and women and children were fairly represented, shows us time and again that domestic and dating violence—and even sexual assault—are human crimes passed along by generational trauma, not crimes of gender playing out an academic political theory. A brief look at the following demographics reveals:

• Men suffer similar rates of domestic and sexual violence by their female partners as the reverse
  • Straus, 2011 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178911000620
  • Straus (2007/2008) https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.494.4717&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Boys are the primary victims of physical abuse by their mothers, girlfriends, peers, and by school authorities
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020): https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2018.pdf#page=21
  • Civil Rights Data Collection (2013-2014) https://ocrdata.ed.gov/estimations/2013-2014
  • Straus (2007/2008) https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.494.4717&rep=rep1&type=pdf
  • Ybarra, M., Espelage, D. L., Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J., Korchmaros, J. D., Boyd, D., & Basile, K. (2013, July 31)
  • Mulford and Giordano (2008) http://longmontdomesticviolence.org/images/Printed%20Materials/NIJJournal_TeenDatingViolence_Oct08.pdf
  • Wang, K., Chen, Y., Zhang, J., & Oudekerk, B. A. (2020). Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2019. NCES 2020-063/NCJ 254485. National Center for Education Statistics
• Adolescents suffer abuse at home, in school, and in youth residential and detention facilities, yet are under-served by state agencies
  • Thoma, R. (2005, December 1). A Critical Look at the Foster Care System: How Widespread a Problem? Lifting The Veil.
  • Polgreen and Worth (2003) https://web.archive.org/web/20220821131331/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/nyregion/new-jersey-couple-held-in-abuse-one-son-19-weighed-45-pounds.html
  • U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2008, April 24). Residential Facilities: State and Federal Oversight Gaps May Increase Risk to Youth Well-Being, GAO-08-696T, Testimony Before the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives. https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08696t.pdf
  • Polonsky, M. (2007, January). Maia Szalavitz on the Epidemic Abuses of the Teen-Help Industry. The Sun, 373, 5-12
  • (Bernstein, 2014) https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/abuse-kids-prison-weve-been-here
  • Beck, A., Cantor, D., Hartge, J., & Smith, T. (2013b). Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2012. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry12.pdf
• Boys are at high risk for sexual abuse
  • French, B. H., Tilghman, J. D., & Malebranche, D. A. (2015). Sexual coercion context and psychosocial correlates among diverse males. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 16(1), 42
• Elders suffer abuse by their adult children or in nursing home facilities, yet elder abuse is under-reported, and this may be an under-served population by state agencies
  • Acierno et al. (2010) https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2009.163089
  • Greenlee (2020)  https://generations.asaging.org/elder-abuse-prevention-older-adults-funding
• Certain demographics of the LGBTQ+ community, especially lesbian couples, suffer high rates of DV and have been under-served by domestic violence organizations
  • Gilligan (2013) https://www.calhealthreport.org/2013/02/26/lgbt-survivors-of-intimate-violence-have-fewer-shelters-and-resources/
  • Calton et al. (2016) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26638153

Today’s DV organizations continue to cling to a paradigm that doesn’t fit the reality of suffering in their local communities. It isn’t lack of education, but denial that perpetuates sex, gender, and age stereotypes by local DV organizations, which in turn, puts over 50% of the public at risk for abuse and domestic violence—then leaves them without adequate support when they do suffer victimization.

Additional Reference:

Cook, P. W., and Hodo, T. L. (2013). When Women Sexually Abuse Men: The Hidden Side of Rape, Staling, Harassment, and Sexual Assault. Praeger.