JF

By low stakes, I do not mean that sexual assault as such is a low stakes problem, what I do mean is that they conjured sexual assault into a singular meta-narrative outside the bounds of existing institutions tasked with responding to it, so they couldn't be rebuked or refuted.

why do you say "low" rather than "high" stakes here?

Low stakes vis a vis thier own ability to bullshit without it coming back to bite them. Eg. They would just go buckwild like this re cases being heard in court, or actually being litigated or attended to elsewhere. It was a self contained bubble where they controlled narrative.

the way i remember this stuff, it all started with the "dear colleague" letter and they were going nuts with this 1 in 4 statistic and so on while cases going through the universities were complete shitshows of kids getting railroaded and outright hoaxes as with the UVA "case"

they were the point men of the whole thing, they were completely impervious to challenge, and i think the only thing that stopped them was the trump administration reversing the obama administration's regulatory position (i.e. "dear colleague")