The College Fix

“Title IX doesn’t make me feel safer. It makes me feel paranoid. I can hardly imagine how much more paranoid it makes my male colleagues.”

This comes from Tamara Tabo, who runs the Center for Legal Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, ruminating on the case of the “porn-linking professor” at Drexel University who accidentally sent an “anal beads” video to her law students.

Writing at Above the Law, the legal blog that broke “Beadgate,” Tabo says:

Lisa McElroy probably did not intend to create a hostile environment for anyone. …

But what if Lisa McElroy were a man? … Would we be as forgiving, even if we concluded that the porn link was a terrible mistake? Would people argue that he created a hostile environment for his female students, no matter what?

There is a terrible irony that laws and policies created to prevent gender discrimination can treat members of one gender differently and unfairly. … Even supposedly “reasonable” people are likely to view sexual conduct or comments as more aggressive, more threatening coming from a man than from a woman.

Tabo complains that she’s tired of being recruited for Title IX complaints, “most recently against someone with whom I was friends outside of our workplace”:

I have, when I refused to be a complainant, been interviewed as a witness. I have, when interviewed as a witness, been grilled over a multitude of conversations and social interactions that took place away from campus, in the company of adults, that I never expected that I would one day have to explain in a formal setting.

I quickly realized that Title IX can be applied in ways that don’t tolerate ambiguity or, God forbid, a bawdy sense of humor. … Two categories emerge: either you are claiming victimhood . . . or you are considered suspicious until you can justify why the hell you did not feel victimized. Basically, you begin to sound nuts for not being offended.

Read the article.

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IMAGE: TamaraTabo.com