Elsewhere (178)

Ashe Schow on attempts to exacerbate campus “rape” hysteria: 

One of the best tactics so-called researchers have used to conclude that fully one-fifth of college women will be sexually assaulted is to vastly expand the definition of what [rape] is… Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown dissects the [Rutgers University survey], noting the definition of “sexual assault” and “sexual violence” included everything from “remarks about physical appearance” and “persistent sexual advances that are undesired by the recipient” to “threats of force to get someone to engage in sexual behaviour, as well as unwanted touching and unwanted oral, anal, or vaginal penetration or attempted penetration.” There’s an ocean of difference between someone saying you look good today and someone physically pinning you down against your will. To include both under the category of “sexual assault” is just ludicrous, and certainly not a serious way of studying the issue.

These, though, are the standards of Rutgers’ School of Social Work.

And via Ace, Timothy Sandefur tracks the wildly changing politics of Star Trek: 

At no point in the show’s history had Kirk or his colleagues treated the Klingons unjustly, whereas audiences for decades have watched the Klingons torment and subjugate the galaxy’s peaceful races. In “Errand of Mercy,” they attempt genocide to enslave the Organians. In “The Trouble with Tribbles,” they try to poison a planet’s entire food supply… Yet never does the Klingon leader, Gorkon, or any of his people, acknowledge — let alone apologise for — such injustices. Quite the contrary; his daughter tells a galactic conference, “We are a proud race. We are here because we intend to go on being proud.” Within the context of the original Star Trek, such pride is morally insane. Yet in service to Spock’s mission of elevating peace over right, the film [Undiscovered Country] portrays the Klingons not as thugs, but as misunderstood casualties of human bigotry. Kirk and his crew, says Gorkon’s daughter at the Enterprise banquet, represent a “homo sapiens-only club,” devoted to such chauvinistic values as “inalienable human rights.” “Why, the very name,” she quips, “is racist.”

The incoherent utopianism of many Trek episodes – “the pernicious ideal,” as dicentra called it – has been discussed here before, many times, along with the authoritarian types who imagine a similarly ‘progressive’ tomorrow. 

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