The Left Continues to Transition Away From Protecting Women — a clear look at political double standards, campus debates over consent, and criminal justice decisions affecting women’s safety.
If the Left didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any. The fallout from Eric Swalwell’s sexual misconduct scandal shows Democrats and friendly media knew for years that Swalwell behaved inappropriately with women, including staffers. That history raises uncomfortable questions about which offenses get ignored and why.
Swalwell kept his role because he voted the right way on key issues and kept a hard line against political opponents. His critics now argue he was pushed out because he refused to leave the California governor’s race, creating a crowded Democratic primary. The timing looks political, and that matters for accountability.
The pattern repeats beyond one congressman. The Left will often prioritize political advantage over protecting the voters they claim to defend, and that extends into academia and identity politics. A recent academic book asks whether “queer professor-student relationships” should face the same rules as heterosexual ones, sparking debate about consent, coercion, and equal standards.
It looks at cases where “queer female professors were accused of sexual harassment by graduate students” and then sympathetically reviews arguments against such rules, including that they “disregard students’ consent,” “advance anti-queer and erotophobic agendas,” “require and reinforce fictions of female vulnerability,” and even “perpetuate neoliberal ideologies.”
The author concludes that if there is ANY problem at all with queer professor–student relationships, it’s supposedly “not exclusively or even primarily sexual” but “pedagogical.”
Instead of simply saying professors should not sleep with their students, this chapter attempts to reframe the issue when the professor identifies as “queer.”
Basically, everything is excused if you’re “queer.”
“These policies, which call into question the legitimacy of consent across significant differences of power, emerged largely out of efforts to protect female students from the coercion of male professors. But should queer professor-student relationships be subject to the same scrutiny?” the highlighted text asks.
“This chapter rehearses and evaluates the key arguments that well-intentioned scholars have posed against such regulations: that they disregard students’ consent and undermine their autonomy; advance anti-queer and erotophobic agendas; require and reinforce fictions of female vulnerability; and perpetuate neoliberal ideologies that locate sexual injury in individual agents rather than power structures.”
That line of reasoning ignores basic power dynamics. Professors—regardless of sexual identity—hold authority over students, and that authority can coerce consent even when a student appears willing. If the argument is about autonomy, then heterosexual professor-student relationships deserve the same scrutiny as any other.
These inconsistencies show up in other parts of the criminal justice and corrections systems too. A trans-identified man who killed a baby in 2001 was reportedly released from prison 30 years early after litigation over gender-affirming care pressured a state to avoid paying for treatment in custody. The implication that legal or medical maneuvering can affect punishment raises real safety concerns for victims and communities.
Nicholas John Roske’s case is another example. Roske, found guilty of trying to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and caught with a Glock, a knife, pepper spray, and zip ties, faced up to 30 years. Judge Deborah Boardman handed him eight years and said, “I am heartened that this terrible infraction has helped the Roske family … accept their daughter for who she is.”
Those decisions and comments color public perception about equal treatment under the law. When punishment or prison placement shifts to accommodate identity-based claims, women can lose safety and recourse. Reports of trans-identifying men in women’s prisons include allegations of rape, abuse, and retaliation against women who speak up.
Accountability becomes optional when someone checks the right ideological boxes. Policies meant to protect women—for example, “believe all women” norms and rules banning professor-student entanglements—get applied inconsistently. Whether the issue is a politician, a campus scandal, or corrections policy, the same pattern emerges: rules are enforced selectively, and the people those rules were designed to protect often suffer most.
