Cathy Scroggs, who was Mizzou’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs when the incident involving John and Jane occurred, was asked during a recent deposition if the accusation against John satisfied the school’s policy for sexual misconduct regarding one having “power or authority” over another. Scroggs responded, “I think he was perceived as having power over her.”

She was further questioned as to the “nature of [John’s] power over her.” The interviewer asked if it was just John’s “size” that contributed to that “power.”

Scroggs responded: “His physical size.”

The interviewer then said part of the conduct code “doesn’t require him to be a teacher.” And asked, “When it says person of authority, it doesn’t mean, like, a teacher or boss?”

Scroggs responded: “Well, I suppose it could; but in this case, no, I didn’t interpret it that way.”

So while most people would assume “power or authority” refers to a professor or other superior’s relationship with a student, Scroggs indicated that literally being larger than another person and asking them out could be an unfair sexual situation.

Why Don't Women Ask Men Out on First Dates?: ... As noted in the histogram, a great majority of the women, 93%, preferred to be asked out -- only 6% preferred to do the asking. The majority of men preferred to do the asking, 83%, while 16% preferred to be asked out on a date. It is interesting that more men preferred to be asked out (16%) than there were women who preferred to do the asking (6%). That difference suggests that 10% of men may be waiting quite a while for a woman to ask them out on a first date.

Preferences are one thing, but what about actual behavior? We asked the survey participants how many times they had asked someone out on a first date in the past year. As can be seen in the histogram, males reported significantly more instances of asking someone out in the past year. On average males asked four women out on a first date in the past year. In contrast, most females did not ask anyone out on a first date in the past year. We also asked how many times the survey participants had been asked out on a first date in the past year. On average, males reported that they had been asked out about once. Females reported that, on average, they had been asked out about 5 times.

Men of my generation, who went to college in the 70s and 80s, mostly embraced the goals of the feminist movement. Greater equality, or at least equity, between the sexes seemed fair. And, from a male perspective, there might be some benefits for us as well -- including less inhibited female sexuality and the anticipation that women would begin asking us out on first dates. So we waited. And waited... and... we are still waiting!

So, after decades of increasing sexual equality, why are women not assuming equal "risky initiatives" responsibilities? Even if doing so can be at times anxiety provoking and sometimes result in painful rejections that are difficult not to take personally, wasn't one of the goals of women's movement "equal rights, equal responsibilities?" Over this time period, many other aspects of gender-role behaviors have indeed changed -- for example more women than men attend college today. However, this part of the courtship script -- female indirect nonverbal proceptive signaling and male direct verbal initiation -- apparently has not much changed. This suggests that something deeper than arbitrary social gender role assignments may be involved in the development and persistence of this robust sex difference....

(Dec 30, 2018 01:42 AM)confused2 Wrote: Casting my mind back to my youth.. If any girl had asked me for a date I would have assumed she was either retarded or insane.

(Dec 30, 2018 11:26 PM)confused2 Wrote: I recently heard a story about a guy living with a very pretty girl - he swore she kept his balls in her purse. Difficult to simulate.