= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Sayeth the Girl
Disclaimer: If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.
For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says
As far as I can tell, I am the most active female poster on Less Wrong. (AnnaSalamon has higher karma than I, but she hasn't commented on anything for two months now.) There are not many of us. This is usually immaterial. Heck, sometimes people don't even notice in spite of my girly username, my self-introduction, and the fact that I'm now apparently the feminism police of Less Wrong.
My life is not about being a girl. In fact, I'm less preoccupied with feminism and women's special interest issues than most of the women I know, and some of the men. It's not my pet topic. I do not focus on feminist philosophy in school. I took an "Early Modern Women Philosophers" course because I needed the history credit, had room for a suitable class in a semester when one was offered, and heard the teacher was nice, and I was pretty bored. I wound up doing my midterm paper on Malebranche in that class because we'd covered him to give context to Mary Astell, and he was more interesting than she was. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary. Given the choice, I have lots of things I'd rather be doing than ferreting out hidden or less-than-hidden sexism on one of my favorite websites.
Unfortunately, nobody else seems to want to do it either, and I'm not content to leave it undone. I suppose I could abandon the site and leave it even more masculine so the guys could all talk in their own language, unimpeded by stupid chicks being stupidly offended by completely unproblematic things like objectification and just plain jerkitude. I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended. (In general, I'm very hard to offend. The fact that people here have succeeded in doing so anyway without even, apparently, going out of their way to do it should be a great big red flag that something's up.) If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.
So can I get some help? Some lovely people have thrown in their support, but usually after I or, more rarely, someone else sounds the alarm, and usually without much persistence or apparent investment. There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments that perpetuate the problems, which does nothing to disincentivize being piggish around here - some people seem to earnestly care about the problem, but this isn't enforced by the community at large, it's just a preexisting disposition (near as I can tell).
I would like help reducing the incidence of:
- Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being. (Non-women can also be objectified, and that too should be stopped.)
- Casual use of masculine and/or heteronormative examples in posts and comments that aren't explicitly about gender. It's just not that hard to come up with an unsexed example. Be especially careful when using the second person. If you need to use an example with a gender, there's no reason to consider male the default - consider choosing randomly, or you could use a real person as an example (who isn't presumed to archetypically represent anyone in the audience) instead of a hypothetical one (who might be).
- Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data (responsibly gathered and interpreted). The cost of being wrong about this sort of thing is high, even if the culprits don't bear it themselves, and extreme care should be taken.
- Fawning admiration of pickup artists who attain their fame by the systematic manipulation of women. If it is necessary to refer admiringly to a pickup artist or pickup strategy (I'm not sure why it would be, but if), care should be taken to choose one whose methods are explicitly non-depersonalizing, and disclaim that specifically in the comment.
We could use more of the following:
- Thoughtful use of qualifiers and disclaimers in talk about sex and gender. Robin is not right.
- Attention to the privileges of masculinity and attempts to reduce that disparity. (Note that of course there are also female privileges, but until Less Wrong hosts custody battles or we start suspecting that some of us might be violent criminals, they are unlikely to come into play nearly so much in this location.)
Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Comments (486)
Disclaimer is definitely off-putting. It comes off as implying that you consider criticism to be unwelcome. I can understand the desire to exclude unreasonable people from the conversation, but posting a sign, "No idiots allowed" doesn't accomplish that. It may discourage people who disagree with you from posting, but only because they will assume from the disclaimer that you've made up your mind and that it is therefore not worth their time talking to you. This will occur independently of how intelligent their feedback is, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some reverse selection here where the people who make low effort criticisms will comment anyway, but those who would make more intelligent criticisms won't find it worth their time.
I am not American, but still I had the impression that, as a white male, if I had rooted for Obama some people would have called me sexist and if I had rooted for Clinton some people would have called me racist. (Not that I gave a damn about that -- IIRC I rooted for Obama for reasons not directly related to his opponent's gender, which is enough to count as non-sexist by my definition.)
Sorry if this has already been said, but, to quote a friend, what would constitute a sweeping generalization varies widely. Some people would read this as being close to equivalent to saying 'Don't use heuristics when dealing with stuff related to women', which is impossible and imposes major costs. You can't engage in discussions if you're not allowed to use heuristics.
Probably not. But some heuristics create benefit for you by causing harm to others. Endorsing such a heuristic as acceptable to use entails either:
1) Disputing, on an empirical basis, the existence or amount of harm caused by the heuristic, or
2) Asserting, on an empirical basis, the existence and magnitude of the benefit you receive, or
3) Accepting the harm to others as unproblematic because you receive any benefit at all by using it.
In short, the strongest version of the argument you challenge says that the costs to others of certain heuristics outweigh the benefits received by the heuristics users. Assuming that the generalizations are accurate enough to be considered heuristics.
An Alicorn:
Also, I think we should be persons before humans before genders before races before cultures, at least morally. Notice how each category is smaller than the preceding.
Honestly, I am probably a feminist. I see the problem of, say, difference in wages, between genders, but also how (here in Denmark at least) magically passing the 18 year line increases the wage you can rightfully demand. A 16yo can stock shelves just as well as a 19yo, thank you, that doesn't mean the 16yo should get ~9 euros/hour and the 19yo twice that. Similarly, but subtler, managers tend to be subconsciously biased in deciding who to give wages, in ways that because of the sate of affairs result in gender imbalances. This is just as unfair, but much harder to fix.
I do know that humanity has oppressed half it's population for a long freaking time, which is a reason I don't tolerate Abrahamic religions. That is bad, but it is the past, and so we fix the mistakes in the now. I live in a country that had gender debate driven ad nauseam by crazy feminazis in the 1970's, that is just reversed stupidity.
Foremost my conclusion is that the world is fucked up. When, say, women can no longer reasonably call themselves oppressed, I'll probably stop rooting for them.
Not sure about the ordering of the last three.
Yeah, it's an anthropic principle thing, it is more likely that a human is a woman than a Caucasian (the five or so genetic races, in case that wasn't clear), and again, not all Asians are say, Chinese culture.
I don't see how “we should be persons before humans before genders before races before cultures, at least morally” (emphasis added) follows from that.
ETA: Plus, are you sure that among “the five or so genetic races” there isn't [one] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongoloid) that exceeds 50% of the population? (How do you count cross-breeds, anyway?)
Girly username? "Alicorn" strikes me as pretty gender-neutral. The first mental image that popped into my mind before I learned about your gender, ironically, was a male, although not decidedly masculine, fantasy elf.
But yes, invisibility is a common problem online. I don't myself assign any prior probabilities to any given person online being a certain gender, unless the community is explicitly designated, for example, as "meant for women". But many communicate from a "male as default" standpoint, and maybe the only real way to combat it is to balance the gender ratio to a critical mass at which point that kind of prior simply becomes useless.
On the other hand, Robin is right. This post is not about gender inequality.
Alicorn, perhaps you've changed the wording on this post since I originally read it, because though my initial reaction was negative, upon writing a reply I have very little disagreement with your actual prescriptions in this post. I do have some disagreements with your framing of the discourse on LessWrong.
"Objectification" can be a difficult term due to people defining it in different ways. Yet given the way you define it here, I agree with advocating against talking about or treating people in a way that denies their autonomy or depersonalizes them.
Whether particular examples exhibit objectification is another question. I don't think that phrases such as "getting women" necessarily implies objectification, but since it is often used in that way, I think it's worthwhile to expend a little bit more effort to avoid it.
I agree on the issue of pronouns. "They" isn't really that bad.
As for generalizations: if data is not provided, then whatever evidence (e.g. anecdotes) leads to that notion should be presented, and/or the speculative nature of the claim should be acknowledged.
"Manipulation" is not rigorously defined in this discussion, and people use it to mean different things. Some people use it mean any form of social influence/persuasion (and may defend "manipulation"). Other people use it mean unethical social influence; I think we both share this usage.
I also disagree with fawning admiration of pickup artists who gain their fame by forms of unethical social influence. It's not clear whether you are suggesting that all pickup artists engage in unethical social influence, or just some.
I would also advocate studying the methods of pickup artists who's methods are non-depersonalizing. Or if depersonalizing methods are studied due to some relevance to rationality, I would prefer to see the depersonalizing aspect critiqued.
I agree with attention to unjust advantages based on gender ("privilege" is another non-rigorous term that shouldn't be used without a definition), as long as it runs both ways. I would caution you against assuming that the only systematic disadvantages men experience in society are in the legal system (but kudos for acknowledging the existence of some male disadvantages).
In Love in America, feminist sociologist Francesca Cancian argues that the conceptualization and discourse over love in Western is biased towards feminine expressions of love, and marginalizes masculine expressions of love. She calls this phenomenon the feminization of love.
While I mainly agree with your prescriptions, I disagree with your framing of the content of the discussions on less wrong that relate to gender. You say:
You make the male discourse on the site sound a lot more unified than it actually is. In all objections you've made to certain discourse here, you have received substantial support by males (some of which you acknowledge, which makes me confused by your "masculine guys vs offended women" dichotomy in portraying LessWrong). In the example of "jerkitude" you cite, pjeby took the person involved to task and leveled multiple criticisms, such as a view of "entitlement." So did ciphergoth.
Someone made arguments that came of as overgeneralized and sexist; others came and critiqued him vocally. Sounds like the working of a healthy rationalist community to me, not of a locker room full of uncritical fawning over PUAs.
Finally, your post might give the idea (which I don't know whether you intend or not), that typical discussions on LessWrong that turn the subject of pickup are of a fawning nature. I think that this idea is false.
Personally, while I've always emphasized that pickup is relevant to rationality, I've included multiple criticisms of the community.
In this post, I accuse the seduction community of naive realism, and committing the availability heuristic in their model of women leading to oversimplification. In this post, I mention that some practices in the seduction community are unethical, and discuss my use of moral constraints on pickup techniques. In this post, I argue that some attitudes in the seduction community are overly cynical towards women, and detrimental to success in long-term relationships. In this post, I express skepticism that certain pickup theories are true even if they lead to success, and I suggest that the community falls prey to ideological thinking and that some of its techniques are morally questionable.
I actually have the creds to back up these criticisms. Btw, could you briefly list the pickup materials you have been exposed to so far so I can better qualify your claims about it?
Some of these posts attracted upvotes, but none attracted long threads. Maybe few people read them because I wasn't controversial enough. What I think this shows is that the subject of pickup and seduction can be discussed in a manner that is both complimentary and critical (an example I've attempted to show with my past posts on the subject), yet other threads suggest that people are more interested in participating in polarizing discussions of the subject.
While this may simply be an oversight, your post fails to acknowledge more reasoned and less sexist discussion of pickup on LessWrong that is critical of it (like mine, at least in my hopes), and critiques of pickup ideology when it has been presented (e.g. pjeby's critique of Sirducer's posts), presented by some of the very people who think there is value in the community and discussing it on LessWrong. While I support your requests for non-sexist and gender neutral language, I think your portrayal of the discussions of pickup on LessWrong is skewed due to these omissions.
P.S. I am planning on getting back to you in the name thread... I've been enjoying that discussion.
I haven't, or if I have I am suffering from amnesia.
I have acknowledged that there are some tactics described by pickup artists that seem to me perfectly aboveboard ethics-wise. It is possible that some pickup artists use those tactics exclusively. I would not object to uncritical discussions of such artists, and do not object to uncritical discussions of such techniques.
I don't assume that; people who are not affiliated with the legal system can suspect others of being violent criminals and act accordingly in discriminatory ways.
The paragraph in question was a caricature. I did not intend that part to be an unaltered representation; people can read the original comments in their original contexts quite easily. I apologize if this was unclear.
I read this blog and usually follow links people post in discussions on the subject here.
Before seeing your reply, I added this paragraph to the end of my post:
Continuing on:
I acknowledge that you have acknowledged that some pickup tactics are ethics. Given that you wouldn't object to discussions of such techniques, where why you suggesting a moratorium on discussion pickup in the other thread?
Ok. When you said this:
It sounded like you were saying that female advantages weren't much of a concern other than particular legal advantages women may have over men. I was pointing out that there are other female advantages in society that may be more relevant to LessWrong, such as the tendency for female perspectives to be seen as the default in discussions about sexuality and romance (see Cancian work I cited on the "feminization of love").
Thanks for clarifying. Still, I think your post in general gives a skewed account of the discussions on pickup on LessWrong; see the paragraph I added into my previous post and quote at the beginning of this one. Consequently, it bothers me that people are considering a moratorium on discussion of pickup partly due to a skewed idea they might have gotten from reading your original post.
I suspect that these materials are insufficient to get an idea of the breadth of the views in the seduction community. For instance, in How to be a Pickup Artist, Juggler argues that pickup:
Here's another couple links for you here and here, demonstrating the extreme "inner game" approach. The Authentic Man Program wouldn't consider themselves part of the pickup community, yet many of the guys who do AMP's programs are into pickup, they advertise in the community, and I see them as basically involved in the same kind of self-improvement project with a different focus.
I wasn't trying to represent the entirety of the discussion on Less Wrong. I was pointing out a problem, and some examples of what might resemble a solution. Your comments don't strike me as problematic enough to call out or solution-esque enough to laud.
Because, as I said, I don't think it's likely that a less clear-cut, brightly-outlined policy will have an adequate effect.
I appreciate the links, but pickup is not a special interest of mine. It is not obvious to me that spending additional time immersing myself in the many and varied types of pickup is something I should do. I've acknowledged that it is a mixed bag; the kinds that are mentioned in the posts I point out as problems may or may not be fully representative, but those posts are still problems.
You may not have intended to represent the entirety of the discussion of pickup on LessWrong, but it seems that others may read your post this way leading to a moral panic.
Right, I agree that those posts exhibit problems. And those posts were roundly criticized. Why is a dogpile of critical comments not enough of a solution? I'll address your other comment you linked to separately.
P.S. In case you're wondering, I'm not the one downvoting your last couple comments.
I guess I don't see it as quite the "dogpile" you do, especially since I feel the need to chime in about it very frequently and (as I said in the toplevel post) this isn't my hobby or anything. I do not want the job; I'd rather hang back, sling votes occasionally, maybe identify simple flaws like misquotes.
I'm thinking of the example with Sirducer, specifically. You, pjeby, and ciphergoth jumped on him. Sounds like a dogpile to me.
ciphergoth's comment was appreciated. As for pjeby, I have (apparently) misunderstood him on such a regular basis that I'm not confident in identifying him as being on any particular side of any particular disagreement. Three people, one of whom is arguably ambiguous and at least one of whom doesn't want to be there, is a fairly pathetic dogpile.
How many dogs it takes to make a dogpile, and how enthusiastic those dogs must be, is really a side question.
The point is that Sirducer encountered significant and vigorous disagreement, disagreement that I think would have been worth mentioning in your original post. And it was from one the people interested in discussing pickup on LessWrong, a category that you seem to think is unreliable for having valuable discussions on this subject. See some highlights from the rather harsh comment by pjeby:
Regardless of whether pjeby is generally on your "side," he sounds like he is in that post. Also, in terms of debunking a problematic post by a PUA, someone with insider knowledge can supply a lot more credibility, and the PUA will be less able to object that his interlocutor doesn't get it or lacks field experience.
Denotationally, the statement above is true, but connotationally, it's false. My only "interest" in this area is correcting misconceptions and answering questions. If there are no questions to answer and no attacks or mistakes to correct, I am perfectly fine with never bringing the subject up myself. To the extent that PUA overlaps with topics of my interest, those topics also apply to marketing, and other less-controversial subjects.
I'm in an interesting/weird(?) position with regard to the problem pointed out in this post in that I have (self-diagnosed, peer-confirmed) gender dysphoria, and in a number of ways do not think "like a guy".
For example: Without going all TMI, I'll just say that I don't relate to the whole heroin analogy, despite having (as far as I can tell) more-or-less normal levels of male hormones running around in my brain (not something I'm at all happy about, mind you, but nonetheless it doesn't seem to compel me that way). I'm not completely unsympathetic; I just don't experience it.
Furthermore, my own observations of more-or-less-normal men suggest that they do not universally see things this way. It is quite possible to be normally-male and heterosexual and yet still be more interested in building a solid relationship (of which sex might become a part) with a person who is a woman than with arbitrarily seeking out women solely for the purpose of obtaining sex as if it were some sort of commodity. (Not that I know how this is done, because I'm not normal.)
On the other hand, while I don't make such remarks myself (because it isn't how I think), I tend to be somewhat oblivious to male-sexist remarks made by others. I'm guessing this is due to socialization as a male: being trained to think that such remarks are normal, so if they bother me I should just keep quiet. (There are a large number of areas in which I have been implicitly trained to just keep quiet, especially with regard to gender. I'm not happy about this either.) I do find it off-putting, but generally the "keep quiet" kicks in and I just move on to the next comment.
It seems to me that framing this as a choice between providing "safe space" and "being able to speak openly" -- an argument from consequences, even, and therefore "not rational" -- is a false dilemma. Claiming that Alicorn's objection is solely based on her "feelings" (or the feelings of women, even) is just as inaccurate, and rather manipulative at that.
What's irrational, I should think, is speaking as if "getting" women were a rational goal -- shared by all men and understood by all women to be part of How Things Are. It is one possible means of achieving a goal which I am willing to term "rational" (if we allow rational goals to be based on hard-wired non-rational needs), i.e. getting one's "heroin fix" -- but pursuing that particular strategy is not intrinsically rational (since there are other techniques which lead to longer-lasting relationships, thus providing more reliable sex if that's all that matters to you, while also not ignoring the value of women as sentient individuals).
Speaking of something in admiring terms when it is arguably harmful to some is not sympathy-inspiring; speaking in a way that is likely to lower one's social standing, if you don't have a compelling reason for doing so, is also not rational.
It seems to me that it should be fine to talk about the need that many men apparently have for regular sex, and various ways of satisfying that need, but talk about the subject rather than framing the discussion in terms which suggest that a particular group's main social function is to meet that need.
In the earlier comment which sparked Alicorn's post, for example, this statement:
is a problem because, as phrased, it implicitly dismisses the harm done by the attitude he is admiring and promoting. It's a little like saying (although milder) that we won't ever really succeed because we don't have sufficient callousness to steal from others when we know we can get away with it.
What he might have said -- if I'm not re-interpreting it too much -- is that we are too little motivated by material pleasures to devote much of our energy towards achieving them, and therefore we are less likely to achieve the influence necessary to obtain such pleasures -- even though this influence would be far more helpful in achieving our goals than are the means by which we more commonly pursue those goals. (sentence fatigue, whew.)
That is a legitimate suggestion, whether or not you agree with it. Implying that it's necessary to exploit women in order to do so, however, is unnecessary and runs against the goals I hope we all share.
My advice: Fight this. Concentrate on it, and fight it tooth and nail. Life's too short.
How about using LW to collect the data to answer this question?
For example by introducing tags to mark comments as sexist/racist/otherwise offensive, and few months period to collect data.
After that period there could be another thread to analyze the data and collectively decide how to continue?
I am not female, and I find some of the language and PUA-related content here to be extremely off-putting. If you really want to refine the art of seduction, I would suggest reading Greene; this blog, on the other hand, is for refining the art of rationality.
Robert Greene? How extensively have you read him? He readily advocates manipulation and refers to the other party as the "victim." I find this off-putting: he is describing things that are (mostly) fair play in a way that makes them sound like foul play, which is exactly how many PUAs sound, leading readers to get the wrong idea.
I find his stance in this regard to be absolutely correct; if you're going to write a book on methods of manipulating people, you may as well call a spade a spade.
The problem is real. I am a 21 year old woman and an aspiring rationalist, and my friends are mostly women and some are also aspiring rationalists. We find much of the conversation about women on this site so off-putting that I for one have never commented before. I read Eliezer's work and enjoy it very much indeed, which is why I stick around at all.
I am simply astounded at the men here confidently asserting that they aren't alienating women when they talk about "getting" "attractive women" and speak of women as symbols of male success or indeed accessories for a successful male. This reduces me and other females (including female rationalists) to the category of a fancy car or a big house, and I feel humiliated when I read it.
I am fully aware that some men think this way, and that in certain social scenes almost all the "players" in the social "game" see it this way. If getting ahead in a social game like that gives you loads of utility then thinking of women in this way might be rational. But if you would derive more utility from having long and close relationships with female rationalists, you might like to know that female rationalists will be less likely to seek out your company and attention if you persist in that attitude.
If a woman publicly asserts that she wants to "get" an "attractive man", would you also think that she is being alienating?
Most people, regardless of whether they are men or women, want attractive partners, and yet, in my experience, only men are accused of being alienating or superficial or even sexist when they are honest about their desires.
In addition, insofar as successful men are significantly more likely than not-so-successful men to attract women whom they find attractive, having an attractive girlfriend does signal that you are successful.
I've seen "superficial". As to the other two, I believe the party line is that sexism requires both prejudice and institutionalized power in order to function, that males are uniformly more socially powerful, and thus that male-directed sexism is impossible. In itself that's little more than a definitional quibble, but in practice this shakes out to a belief that otherwise identical behaviors are less alienating when directed at men.
How seriously you take that probably depends more on your politics than on your observed experiences. That being said, I imagine I'd feel pretty alienated if I'd wandered into a 90%-female community that frequently discussed men in terms of status potential, and I further imagine that that sort of thought experiment should screen off most of the information we'd get from discussing which accusations are more common.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, I think it's generally much easier to convince a group to stop doing something because it's bad than to convince them that its okay when others do it, but only bad when they do it.
Would this imply that, in a truly sexually egalitarian society where niether side posses any systematic power disparities over the other, and both would be free to objectify the other without being sexist?
As a general rule, everyone is constantly accusing everyone else of everything.
This seems deep, open minded, egalitarian and... blatantly false. People aren't constantly accusing everyone else of everything. Moreover some people do more accusing than others, some people receive more accusations than others and some kinds of accusations are received more positively by observers than others. Anyone who believed (or, rather, anyone who alieved) your theory would make poor predictions of human behavior and make correspondingly bad social decisions.
I was honestly going more for silly, cynical, misanthropic and... obviously hyperbole.
If you do not mind me quoting a different part of this thread momentarily:
I do not understand what flawed patterns of thought I am encouraging. Could you elaborate a bit?
It's related to the fallacy of gray.
To me it seems like a joke.
To the extent that it is a joke it is a bad joke, inappropriate to the context, with an undesirable expected influence, encouraging flawed patterns of thought. ie. The feature of humor that allows it to bypass critical facilities would makes the joke interpretation worse than a more direct interpretation.
Something being a 'joke' does not make it immune from criticism. Or, rather, it often does make it immune from criticism but this is unfortunate. This comment in response to the text that it quotes being overwhelmingly positively received is a negative sign. I speculate (or perhaps merely hope) that in a different thread it may not have been given as much leeway.
Sure. I usually wouldn't care enough to object, but it would seem faintly wrong in a way that 'I want to have sex with an attractive guy,' or a concrete statement of any other desire, would not.
And I most certainly would not expect most heterosexual guys to participate in a web-community that often talked about how to "get an attractive man".
If you really meant that, then your experience seems weirdly limited. Or are we just talking about sexual desires? I think the statement still fails in that case, but not as soundly.
Logical fallacy ad hominem tu quoque?
I was not trying to disprove Rachael. I was merely trying to point out the potential use of double standards.
FWIW, I find individuals who talk about men as high-status possessions rather offputting as well, regardless of their gender.
That said, I've never tried to participate in a community I considered defined by such individuals.
This piques a nerve of mine. Thinking about others in terms of evolutionary psychology/ladder theory alone is a pretty huge screw-up, and I'm surprised that it happens frequently enough on this website that this has gotten so many upvotes. Then again, I'm fairly new. When did this happen?
Women reduce men to a fancy car and a big house all the time. I used to find it rather insulting. I'd rather be reduced to a sex object. The grass is always greener.
Both men and women get reduced to status symbols for their mates. That's the way it is. I don't get much heartburn over it anymore.
While it's worth noting that men can also be objectified, I don't see how it follows that this isn't a Bad Thing.
While the statement "unfortunately people from group A undergo experience X" doesn't logically entail anything about people outside group A, it often does pragmatically implicate that the speaker doesn't think that people outside group A experiencing X constitute a problem to be worried about at the moment (otherwise, the speaker would likely not have mentioned group A in the first place: when did you last hear anyone lamenting that so many right-handed people die in car accidents?); therefore, the fact that both people within and outside A experience X is a reason to ADBOC with such a statement.
An excellent point, if perhaps a little strong, (objectifying men could simply be less of an issue,) but dan is saying that "That's the way it is. I don't get much heartburn over it anymore."
It is absolutely worth pointing out that neither sex is immune to objectification. Objectification is still bad. Just because I've been forced to put up with something doesn't mean everyone should just suck it up.
Another interpretation of his point: “It's hypocritical for women to complain about being objectified by men, because they also objectify men themselves.” That's only a valid point if the women who resent being objectified are the same women who objectify men, which is probably not the case.
Other examples of this failure mode are “Jerusalemites hailed Jesus as a deity when he came back, but five days later they were shouting for Pontius Pilate to crucify him” (maybe he had both supporters and opposers, who weren't the same people?) and “people are always protesting about that politician, but he keeps on being re-elected” (maybe young people protest and old people vote for him, or something like that).
It's an inference drawn from a mixture of fallacies of composition and division and the availability heuristic.
"I notice Jerusalemites supporting Jesus, therefore Jerusalem supports Jesus. I notice Jerusalemites opposing Jesus, therefore Jerusalem opposing Jesus. Jerusalem both supports and opposes Jesus; therefore Jerusalem is fickle; therefore Jerusalemites are individually fickle ... and should feel bad about their fickleness."
Or awesome, depending on your preference in the specific instance.
For most meanings of "objectification", I figured this possibility is so unusual as to be irrelevant. Am I missing something?
What do we mean by "objectification"? I would argue that the Baysianism-utilitarianism epistemology cloud around here objectifies all people and all subsets of people by reducing them to the status of tools or victory points, and no one seems particularly concerned about this until the subset being objectified becomes that set of all females.
It seems to have multiple meanings and connotations all blurring into each other. Possible meaning include:
Most people mean many or all of these when they say "objectifying" due to connotations and sloppy terminology. A few also include "Treating someone as governed by instinct rather than as a sentient being", especially when discussing PUA.
Does that answer your question?
Prior discussion about that
I made the same point there as well.
There's no problem with seeing women as status tools or victory points if you explicitly state that what you're playing is a woman-collecting game, or a lay-collecting game, number-close game, etc. Some people might frown at your choice of game for moral reasons, but they'll admit that you're doing the strategically correct thing with respect to your game's objective.
The problem arises when you say that you're winning at "relationships" or you claim your game is what "everyone knows" to be how relationships work or that's how "the" game is played. That is when "everyone" gets pissed. We don't want to be lumped into that group.
That's not the claim. The claim is that everyone does this, but most people prefer to believe they're doing something else.
Oh, I think I agree in that case. Objectifying people is okay because people are really complicated and sometimes you only need to consider one property of a person in order to compute your goals if you're maximizing utility along some one axis. Sure!
Objectifying people is bad when it hurts them.
When people are concerned about it, it's probably because it hurts them.
Or because they expect to gain from indicating concern.
From Rachael's comment:
Or ... look it up. The top three or four results for "objectification of women" on your favorite search engine may be enlightening.
EY is opposed to not-caring-about-whether-your-sexual-partner-is-sentient (which is my understanding of the top Google hit for that phrase), FWIW.
It seems to be a bit more than that. Sometimes sexual objectification seems to include wishing a potential sexual partner were nonsentient — treating people as if they ought to be automata to serve your wishes, and that it's an outrage that they don't act like it.
It's one thing to say, "I wish I had a sexbot." It's another thing to say, "You shouldn't exist; instead there should exist a sexbot in your image, for me."
First thought was, “WTH? If all those people want is to masturbate using someone else's body, why don't they just pay for a prostitute?”, then I remembered that prostitution is illegal in plenty of places. (Now I'm curious whether stuff like date rape drug use is more prevalent in places where prostitution is illegal than where it isn't.)
I'd like to chime in and say that if this seems absurd and incredible and who does that ... Uhh. That's happened to me. It's not fun. Maybe a bit more tangled up, but almost exactly that.
Ah, that part I had glanced over. Well, that's a case of Generalizing from One Example: ‘[I don't mind {noise, clutter, being objectified}, therefore it's not a big deal and] if you complain about it you're oversensitive.’
Do you suggest that people should select their mates randomly?
The multiple negation might be confusing, but basically:
"It's not just A that has horrible things happen to them, A^C also do!" does not imply "It is good/okay that A and A^C have horrible things happen to them".
Him:
Me:
So no, no I don't.
I thought that you implied that it was a Bad Thing, while you were just objecting the logic of the argument. Thanks for the clarification.
The whole point of this website is that we can do something about big problems. Like dying!
I feel like not treating each other like crap should be a much easier problem to tackle than dying. Your comment smacks of System Justification.
Female rationalists are rare enough that I for one think we should proactively endeavour to attract them here, rather than thoughtlessly alienating them and then being baffled by the backlash of those who are interested enough in this blog to even care.
First of all I must say that I do not know if there is in fact a problem on LW, and it is not my goal to definitely say so, I only ask for introspection. There are not enough women on this site to make a proper analysis of how the (obvious) male orientation of some language used generates negative sentiment. However, I think that the simple fact that one person thinks there is a problem is a big indicator of a problem. It takes a great deal of courage (or, I admit, contrariness) to go against an established group consensus, and as far as I can tell, alicorn is not prone to the second. Humans have a tendency to feel protective of in groups, which may account for alicorn's feelings, but the same goes for the men who feel she is overreacting.
I have spent a great deal of time attempting to figure out whether or not I am sexist. All I can say for certain is that I am able to avoid certain very egregious examples of it. Eliezer recently asked what systemic biases prevent humans from ever seeing really obvious things. I must ask if the men in the audience can be certain that they aren't making a similar mistake. Most people are unaware of many biases and will defend their misconceptions even when provoked.
To conclude my plea for introspection I will state a fact then ask a few questions. At least one woman is offended by examples of sexism on LW. Is it okay to offend anyone? If it is not your intent to offend, is it your responsibility to not offend or the responsibility of your audience to not be offended?
Hello,
Again, from a rationalist perspective, Alicorn's aversion to some oft-espoused views on this site about women and sex aren't rational and objective in themselves, but subjective views on the rational consequences of the commentary; I.E. - Possibly repelling a desired demographic's (rationalist women) inclusion and participation here.
So it seems that one of the most rational perspectives on the issue is the question of whether the membership of this site could come to a consensus as to whether they want to harbor some self-imposed restrictions and decidedly un-rational (but civil) biases in order to make that demographic feel more comfortable and welcome? [Also, whether doing so would be detrimental to the overall shared-mission of the site: To deconstruct and address irrationalities within our society and ourselves regardless of how much the process makes us uncomfortable?]
For the record, I am a large black American male, who as both a self-described rationalist and pragmatist fully realize that I have to disengage some aspects of my identity politics to participate more effectively in various groups. Be those politics gender, race, sexuality, political, economic, philosophical, etc. related; Or be those groups different varities of these same categories.
I suspect that one of the best ways we could settle this issue would be to pay equal attention to the irrationalities of the 'typical' American Male, American Female, Feminist and Pick-Up Artist communities and sub-cultures and to try to decide in some manner as to what degree the irrationalities in each can be tolerated here without being counter-productive to the mission at large.
From what you said, I assume that you have personally decided to not be offended when the other person did not mean to offend. You say you are "large" by which I assume you are overweight(1), well, welcome to the club. I too ignore things people say (even things which are deliberately offensive). But although my mother's BMI is far higher than mine, I do not go around making statements analogous to those I put up with to her. I used to believe that the golden rule gave me license to do anything to other people which I was willing to put up with, and to a certain degree, that still makes sense. However, it is rarely my goal to annoy/offend people (it happens any way, but I try not to make the same mistake twice) and as far as I can tell, it is not your goal either. I do not believe that a consensus on how to act is necessary, but just as if someone was offended by my use of the word "retard" I would not use it in their presence unless I wanted to piss them off. You don't swear in front of your grandmother after all.
I do not believe that we are desperately contrary to each other, but I prefer to think in terms of how I wish others to be affected than in terms of how they should interpret me.
(1)notice how I used a more or less clinical term when a more offensive term like fat was available
Hello,
"From what you said, I assume that you have personally decided to not be offended when the other person did not mean to offend."
Well, yes. My acting policy is that I should not react outwardly or overly emotionally to another person's statements if the consequences of these statements have no perceived negative effect on those things I value [my reputation in my community, my life, my property, my loved ones]. It is a policy that has served me well in recent years. I just wish I had adhered to it in earlier stages of my life.
"You say you are "large" by which I assume you are overweight(1), well, welcome to the club."
I am overweight, but what I meant to express in my original comments was the fact that my height [6'2''], body size and race tend to illicit a reaction in some people that are in my immediate vicinity that I jokingly call "negrophobia". My point was that regardless of these socially awkward situations that I experience in events, organizations and situations that traditionally have little sustained presence of black people in them, I have learned to put them in context; To realize that, again, as long as these situations don't lead to any 'rationally' perceived negative effect, I really should not take offense in them. They are a result of social and psychological phenomena beyond my absolute control, but in which I can influence by becoming a contributing asset in these organizations.
[Sorry for the ranting style of this last comment, but I really wanted to elaborate on my views here.]
"I used to believe that the golden rule gave me license to do anything to other people which I was willing to put up with, and to a certain degree, that still makes sense."
I don't express these views from the philosophical perspective of the "Golden Rule". As a lifelong Southern Gentleman, I tend to favor the sociobiological view of "reciprocal utilitarianism" as my personal guide to ethics... I.E. - "Do unto others as what you feel they may be able to do for you in the near future [or so that they may stop doing against you as soon as possible]."
I'm not entirely certain what your "reciprocal utilitarianism" means. Do you value how people actually respond to your acts or just that you are giving them "good" consequences?
Hello,
Utilitarian theory is the sociological and philosophical theory that all people desire and strive for whatever they perceive to lead to their happiness.
Reciprocal utilitarianism is a theory of social interaction in which you assist others in achieving what they perceive to lead to happiness in the hopes that they may assist you in the same in the near future.
My main focus when interacting with anyone is to ascertain whether they are generally counter-reciprocal or preemptively-reciprocal, honest, trustworthy, reliable and congenial.
In most situations, if these people don't meet these qualities to my satisfaction, I still try to maintain a higher but minimum level in parallel to them to maintain good standing "just in case".
If a person does reciprocate and meet these desirable qualities to my satisfaction, I try to meet or exceed their level of positive return in praise, loyalty or material wealth.
So in answer to your question: Yes, I value how people respond to my actions. In fact, the continuous building of good relations and reciprocity [or the disassociation of myself with undesirable and unreliable people] is the cornerstone of my social life; Not because I believe it is unselfish, but because living in a selfish but 'ethical' manner has worked for me.
[Note: Again, I apologize for the ranting style of this post. I believe that we may have misinterpreted the contents of each other's original posts, but I am enjoying this tangent.]
You mean reciprocal altruism. "Sociobiology" was a dead give-away.
Hello,
Yes! That's the concept! Thank you!
If possible, I would like to apologize for misusing the concept of "utilitarianism" for what should have been "reciprocal altruism".
For the sake of the discussion, please assume that my original comments have been amended to reflect this.
Not to worry. When I started around these folks, I was mistaking their use of "altruism" for what we call "altruism" in ethics, which is a different animal entirely. That's one reason we try not to argue too hard about mere definitions.
Hello,
Aye, thank you.
It is a comfort to me to know I can have my misconceptions knocked out of me in a gentle and civil way here.
I think I'll enjoy learning from this community.
Who defines it this way? It sounds like you're talking about psychological hedonism, or something like it.
Hello,
As far as I know, the definition of utilitarianism that I typed is in wide acceptance by the philosophical and psychological community at large.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
http://www.utilitarianism.com/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utilitarianism
My personal view on utilitarianism is that most people in our culture view it as valid in their broader context of beliefs and pursue it accordingly. Unfortunately, what people often perceive as utilitarian may not actually lead to their satisfaction.
Hence my writing that through the act of assisting people in achieving what they perceive as most likely leading to their happiness, I can usually extract some level of reciprocity in the future for my good intentions and efforts.
I don't see any of this as being hedonistic and neither do I endorse hedonism. My personal suspicion is that the exercise and understanding of rationality in all personal undertakings can assist a person in obtaining sustained satisfaction; As well as the further understanding that sustained satisfaction as one desires it may never come, but one can maintain some level of contentment knowing that they have struggled towards some greater goal in the course of their life. Rationality, from what I have observed and experience, tends to foster a level of self-control in a person that runs counter to hedonism.
I suppose at this point, I should let it be known that my new interest in rationalism comes from my background in psychology and philosophy --- if it isn't already obvious from my writing.
The sources you cited don't seem to support your definition, but rather use the sort more well known to ethicists. The one on Wikipedia does a good enough job:
That is, it doesn't suggest what people actually do strive for, nor does it suggest that people are after their own happiness. Rather, it's an ethical theory for which the following are true:
Of course, there are variations on Utilitarianism and different ideas of what 'utility' means (Jeremy Bentham believed more pleasure / less pain summed it up). But they're all variants on this theory.
The theory that each person only ever pursues what leads to their own happiness is commonly called 'psychological hedonism', and is of questionable worth since it's usually presented in a nonfalsifiable fashion.
Hello,
I did not mean to imply that people generally seek their own happiness over the greater good for all. Nor did I mean to imply that there was a dichotomy between the two at all.
I keep alluding to people pursuing what they "perceive" as "most likely" bringing happiness. I tend to see people's perceptions as to what can make them happy as being inspired by their social and cultural influences --- Family, friends, lovers, associates, religion, economic and political views, social upbringing, etc.
But I do see what you're saying --- and I apologize. I should have elaborated further that my personal views on the role of utilitarianism in society partially deviate from traditional views of the abstract definition of utilitarianism. My primary usage is derived from Nietzsche's criticisms of utilitarianism and championing of the concept of the "Will to Power" as well as my views on the individual being influenced by their participation in a socio-cultural system and the cycle of interaction therein.
I will just call my methods of interaction with others, "reciprocal mutualism" from now on.
EDIT: I was mistaken in my use of "utilitarianism". I really meant to convey the sociobological concept of "reciprocal altruism". I'd like to extend further apologies for this mistake.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/134/sayeth_the_girl/ynt
Hello all,
New rationalist/reader/commenter here.
I originally wrote a rant against PUA culture and then a summation of that rant to post here, but I realized that most, if not all, of my objections to what I perceive to be negative in the PUA community and practice are derived from my biases [and insecurities] rather than a truly rational foundation.
I can object to the PUA sub-culture out of personal distaste, and maybe from a weak ethical point of view, but besides parts of the body of PUA doctrine and rhetoric, there is really nothing irrational about them that I can see.
These men have taken empirical observations and social engineering experiments and created a pragmatic system to utilize for their desired goal in a legal and relatively non-detrimental manner.
So the greater argument seems to be, at least insomuch that the PUA community and their practices are relevant to the original post in this thread, a question of which person-of-interest and group irrationalities/biases are to be sanctioned here for the sake of making certain posters more comfortable.
My main problem with this post is that it attempts to impose social norms based on nothing more than your personal feelings, Alicorn.
I found your "Disclaimer" very off-putting. Though I'm sure you will say that you were either trying to be as straight-forward as possible or that you are just being cute and charming (taking these assumptions from comments you have already posted), I immediately read this disclaimer as saying: "Anyone who disagrees in the comments with what I have to say in this post is almost certainly going to be labelled as sexist." This casts a pallor over the entire discussion.
Imagine if I wanted to post something controversial on AI, something that I knew from past experience with the community was going to get me a lot of challenges in the comments, and I prefaced it with "If you are a stupid person who doesn't really understand AI the way I do, and who can't really do math as well as I can, this post is unlikely to interest you." I'd be laughed off the board, and rightly so.
In fact, one might consider it an excellent piece of evidence of one's own yet-unseen bias if one feels the need to preface a discussion with all-purpose disagreement-deflectors of this kind!
My other objection to the way you have framed this issue is to your twin assertions that you (A) are not interested in feminist stuff per se, and (B) are not easily offended. I believe you on both counts, of course, though I have nothing to go on except your own assertion. Nevertheless, it is my observation that on the particular issues you raise in this post (and many, many times before in the comments of other posts), you are easily offended. To my mind, almost comically so.
But, to follow your rhetorical maneuver here: You (A) aren't particularly a "feminist" and (B) aren't particularly sensitive, therefore (C) you aren't being overly-sensitive on this issue. Well, even granting (A) and (B) on very little evidence, I still reject (C).
However, from where I sit, you have raised some legitimate concerns, and for that reason I upvoted this post. But I want to register that I strongly disapprove of the borderline-coercive way in which you do it in this post and have done it in the past in the comments. This post feels creepily thought-police-y to me, which I am sure is not your intent.
To respond to your specific suggestions, I'd like to register that ....
I agree with #1 in principle but it's clear to me that I have a very different definition of what constitutes an unethical level of "objectification" and therefore this one may calculate out to disagreement on my part.
I agree with #2, though it seems like a rather tiny issue. I know, I know... Male advantage #46, right? Nevertheless, having duly considered my Male Advantages, I still think this is a negligible issue, one that you have every right to try and change if you please, but which I emphatically reject as a norm to be placed on others in this community.
I strongly agree with #3, because those kinds of unfounded generalizations are both unfair to women (or whatever subgroup), and bad-faith argument, and sloppy thinking.
I strongly agree with #4, mainly because I don't see what PUA discussion adds to Less Wrong. I'm actually fascinated with PUA theory and practice, but it's rife with pseudo-science and discussed in such detail on so many other blogs that I'd prefer to see Less Wrong steer relatively clear of it as a serious topic.
Your suggestions for what we can "use more of:"
Number 1: I agree most strongly with this suggestion, both on gender issues specifically and on all topics in general. Thoughtful qualifiers are always a good idea. I actually think these are part of the secret to the power and popularity of Eliezer's writing and Yvain's too.
Number 2: is a useless catch-all that, again, makes me feel creepy. What do you mean "attention"? Should we all post one comment a week that deplores male privilege? I know you are not advocating anything mandatory, and my question is tongue-in-cheek. But do you see how this kind of talk (along with your first disclaimer) casts a gauzy shroud of "guilty of sexism until proven innocent" over the place?
If the evidence linked to in the post didn't persuade you that I'm not alone in those feelings, I'm afraid I don't have any more handy to offer, especially since as I write this comment the site is down and I can't do searches.
When I try to be cute, I usually do a better job. There exist people who assume that if there were sexism around, their keen sexism senses would have detected it; therefore, in the minds of these people, anyone who points out sexism they didn't notice is making it up. Mockery of the "whiny girls" typically follows. The existence of those people and the fact that they are idiots does not mean that I am automatically right when I say there is a problem in this community. However, anyone who, upon reading any statement of sexism that they hadn't already observed, would dismiss it without further thought, would have found the post wasted on them. As you might have suspected, I think I'm right and that people who think that the problems I point out aren't problems are mistaken. That doesn't mean I think every person who disagrees with me about this falls into the category of person targeted by my disclaimer.
That would be quite unlike what my disclaimer said.
This is an interesting claim, and I would like to hear more about why you think it seems likely.
The fact that I am more offended than you by a certain class of things - specifically, by things that have to do with a group I belong to and you do not - does not make me easily offended, any more than the fact that Superman can be quickly brought to his knees by Kryptonite while ordinary humans walk around unaffected means that Superman is easily weakened.
Okay. It's not like I've got an airtight, formally valid proof backing me up there, so you can certainly do that.
Thank you for the vote. I'm not sure what you mean by coercion. I don't really have the power to (going by Wikipedia) threaten, intimidate, trick, or otherwise exercise pressure or force on anyone here - I mean, I have the power to downvote, and the power to type sternly. But I had that before, and I've made my wishes about gendered language known before. I also would make a terrible officer of the thought police: I can't read minds, can't enforce my rules about the contents of minds, and don't know anybody who can do either of those things and is disposed to do so according to my wishes. My only powers are to read what people type, and vote, and type sternly.
Okay. People are certain to draw the line in different places with objectification, just as we already do with things like lying and violence and other wrong things. My job is mostly done if you think objectification exists and that this isn't cause for confetti.
If it's so tiny, it shouldn't be such a struggle to get people to accommodate the wish. I have less trouble getting my roommate to drive me to another city an hour away and back.
Great :)
I'm sorry you feel creepy. It would be nice if it were possible to confront privilege without feeling creepy. I think it's worth it anyway. By "attention", I mean thought, care, consideration - not necessarily copious chat. As for "guilty of sexism until proven innocent", I don't see it. I'm not descending on a fledgling community in which no one has ever used the words "women" or "female" or even so much as a gendered pronoun and screaming, "You're all male chauvinist pigs and you must obey my law!" I'm pointing out a problem that a handful of posters have perpetuated. I have been and remain surprised by, not resigned to or broodingly resentful of, the fact that these few posters have not been as widely repudiated for these actions as I would have thought.
Thank you for this lengthy and thoughtful reply. I, too, am encouraged to notice the points on which we agree or are not that far off.
I don't really think you are the "thought police," and I didn't mean to imply that. But I do stand by my assessment of your post as vaguely coercive. There is such a thing as coercion by public shaming. I think this is what Roko might have been getting at in his recent post. If you do not see how this is a legitimate concern, then perhaps I can pull an "Alicorn" and just insist that if you were a man, you would know what this feels like. And if you think I am being overly sensitive, well you are just swimming like a fish in a sea: a world that favors your right to say anything you damn please about any gender without automatically questioning your self-awareness, your motives, the amount of serious thought you have put into the issue, and your fish-not-knowing-water-tude.
"I'm sorry you feel creepy. It would be nice if it were possible to confront privilege without feeling creepy." Obviously I'm not saying it feels creepy to confront privilege. That seems like an almost deliberately obtuse statement on your part... though taken in context of your otherwise respectful comments, I'll assume it's meant sincerely.
What feels creepy is the notion that there is some vaguely defined "offensiveness" out there that I — as a person with great affection for and deference to my mother, my three sisters, my wonderful female friends, my respected female co-workers and my stupendous female lovers — cannot sense, and that I must take another's word for it that I am wrong and the other is right. I can perceive most sexism, but there is a special class of sexism lurking everywhere that I am blind to, even though I've thought seriously about these matters. The evidence you link to, incidentally, is rather weak — it is all internal comments, and one might just as easily point to the comments you object to as counter-evidence as each instance is by definition an example of yet another person who feels differently than you on this topic, hence raising your hackles.
Incidentally, Alicorn, for the record (and my apologies to all if this comment is out of place here... I can edit it out if need be...), I actually used to think much closer to the way you do on these topics. I am by no means "blind" to the things you point out, and in fact I used to have a highly developed radar for them. I still pick them out all the time. I just think it is a particular form of contemporary ideology that teaches many people (men and women) that these things are hurtful and must be banished from all hearts and minds, when no one perceived them that way in the past. They are supposed to be inidicative of a disdainful attitude towards women even when, as I assure you is the case with me, no such attitude exists. Or, if the complainant grants that there was no harmful intent, she can still gain traction with the argument that "Well, no, you didn't mean to insult me, but these kinds of so-called innocuous comments are the stuff with which the patriarchy keeps women down and belittles them etc and is therefore unethical. I am insulted, therefore you are the one who did the insulting." This is supposedly what makes gender non-neutral statements about women unacceptable while gender non-neutral statements about men are considered by the same people to be regrettable (or occasionally a laff-riot!), but par for the course. When men point out that people make casual blanket generalizations about men all the time and that men rarely complain and usually just chuckle along, they are told that they can't possibly understand what it feels like from the woman's point of view, and may also be accused of "calling all girls whiney," a specter you raise in your disclaimer.
You come very close to this realization when you say to me "I am more offended than you by a certain class of things - specifically, by things that have to do with a group I belong to and you do not". You see, I'm essentially saying the same thing. Yes, you are more offended than I am, and that's your problem and not mine. As you say in your rejoinder to my "coercion" comment, no one here is trying to "threaten, intimidate, trick, or otherwise exercise pressure or force on" you.
If, in the absence of threats, intimidation, tricks, pressure, or force —that is: in the absence of any actual harm done to you or anyone else— you persist in feeling offended, that is your business. As I said in my earlier comment, that is every bit your right and I would never want to mock or belittle someone for feeling set-upon as you quite apparently do. It's a very unpleasant feeling, I know, and I am in no way trying to say that you are imagining your own feelings. But I feel that it is precisely that: your business, and not that of the community.
So what that means for me is that while, naturally, you have every right to say whatever you want on this topic, I remain unconvinced. Perhaps you never intended for me specifically to change anything, as I note that I personally am not linked to in your catalog of offenders. If that's the case, then bully for both of us, as I have no plans to alter my manner of talking or writing.
My memory informs me of no instances in which you've said anything that tripped my "gah sexism" switch.
I feel this might be the right time to re-state the definition of feminism: "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes." (Websters)
Why isn't everyone a feminist?
No offense meant, rela
"The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes" is not the sort of thing that I feel should have a word for it. So I prefer not to identify as "a feminist" on those grounds.
I am perplexed by this statement. Do you mean that discrimination is always wrong, and so we don't need words for persons who are against particular types of discrimination? Would you therefore also object to the word "abolitionist," for example, if slavery were still a current issue? Or "suffragist"? I'm really just speculating here; maybe you mean something completely different.
"Abolitionist" and "suffragist" referred to groups who advocated specific well-defined policy changes. "Feminist" does not so refer.
You probably don't ask your roommate in such a way as to imply that it's his or her fault that you have no way to get to the city, and that their failure to comply will be considered unethical and/or harm-causing by you. Nor, I presume, have you called upon other residents of your building or block to denounce any other incidents of non-ride-offering, and professed surprise that they have not already repudiated such incidents.
Many people, including myself, do not object to what you're asking nearly so much as to the way in which you asked it. By depersonalizing the issue from being about you and your hurt feelings to some sort of ethical issue, you created a perceived requirement for people to start taking sides -- i.e., signaling their ethical position.
But if you look back to previous calls for inclusive language on LessWrong, I didn't object to them; in fact, I argued in favor of one of them. (I remember it because some of my comments in that thread brought rather large doses of karma.) I believe in being reasonably considerate to people who reasonably request it.
Thus, I find myself in the bizarre-to-me position of being grouped with "masculinists", as though I'm somehow against politeness or in favor of sexist language. This is not the case, and framing my disagreement with your flawed logic (or with your inconsistent and terminally vague definitions) as being something to do with sexism is behavior unbecoming a professed rationalist.
That having been said, I will certainly say that there are plenty of other people in these threads who've said what I was thinking, much better than I was able to say it, and have been able to bring up some of the same points I made with more tact and less directness. I hope that continues.
However, had you said to Roko, "I was put off by this statement, did you mean to imply that I'm an interchangeable commodity? No? Oh, what did you mean then? Ah, I see. Would you mind phrasing it like that in future then? Thanks."... Then I never would've opened my trap in the first place, and everybody would've been much happier. (And yes, I do see the irony in my jumping on you for you jumping on Roko. At least, I do now, and will try to follow my own advice on this point in future.)
The above does not apply to me per se, but this post neverthless doesn't interest me for its content. The poster of this article certainly looks like an immature feminist who is incapable of separating rational inquiry and the asking of hard questions, when they get close to her value system.
I have found Anna's posts way more mature and tackling issues and hard questions with sensible arguments instead of holding a long list of taboo topics and crying foul when anyone ever talks bluntly about them. Similar is the case with other girls that I know of. I particularly recall Robin Hanson's post regarding applying an SAT score correction factor to factor in the prior information of greater variance in the performance of men (which would lead to removing a few points from the high scoring women). While there were mindless argument by immature feminists crying foul, instead of addressing the math, I thought Anna's follow up post detailing how the prior knowledge of variance differences becomes less and less consequential with multiple SAT trials whose scores are averaged or when SAT is coupled with other pieces of information, was extremely insightful.
Anyway, the girl that's posting this article seems only 20 and has plenty of time to grow up. :-) I am hoping that exposure to these politically incorrect communities for enough time will ensure that she "grows up" in a couple of years and fearlessly asks and investigates hard questions and acknowledges uncomfortable realities rather than allow clear thought to be constantly muddied by political sensibilities. Good luck!
Seriously? It would be helpful if you could re-read those two fragments, and resolve the tension.
The resolution of tension is in the following. I do empathize with complaints related to sexual harassment in the workplace, them being under pressure due to "unreasonable" norms etc.
I however absolutely detest lying or soft peddling the truth or refraining from asking hard and important questions, simply because they affect some people's political sensibilities. I have little regard for such political sensibilities that subvert the quest for the truth.
So yes, a woman who complains of sexual harassment in the workplace is not one I would characterize as whiny; a woman who claims that Larry Summers's talk was sexist is certainly one I would characterize as whiny and finding sexism where there is none.
I hope I've made my point clear.
It seems like this comment was misplaced - it does not seem to be a reply to its parent.
Apologies.
My previous comment was moved to a more appropriate place in the thread.
[I am still trying to get used to this site's non-linear commenting system.]
I have the same problem with this post that I would have with a member of an ethnic minority speaking "for" their group here. the type of person who posts on less wrong is a statistical oddity, belief and action wise.
I think what the original poster is really saying: I am made uncomfortable by certain types of recurring posts. Since an individual has little leverage, I will borrow the theoretical support of others.
Note: not trying to completely dismiss the concerns noted in the original post, just my initial reaction to it.
I'm still not sure that the problem is real or at least worth the fuss. It might be, but I'm not convinced. It might be more like the name effect, for example: real, but tiny. The first step before trying to do something about the issue should be to make sure the issue isn't illusory.
So far, I see Alicorn complaining about her aesthetic preferences not met by the prose on the forum, but how typical is it? Some people agree that the writing decisions made by some of the posters are not that great, but how much of it is support of hypothetical preferences of other people isn't clear. A whole information cascade about preferences may form this way, with hardly any of the participants benefiting, but most of them thinking that they help others. A few can't demand of a community what they intuitively think is fair.
Everything that involves arguing that it's important to not drive women away from the site is contingent on the reality of effect of writing style choices on the number of female participants.
In my experience, most women don't have a negative emotional response to men talking about "getting girls". They themselves talk about "getting a man". I suspect that the percentage of women are actually offended by this kind of talk is not large (10%-20%?).
Of course each such statement has to be evaluated separately, but for the word 'get' in this context specifically, I think the above applies.
Maybe we could gather a bunch of such statements and ask women whether they find each one offensive and why. We might be able to gather some statistical data.
Indeed. Where these issues bump into such empirical questions, it seems like we should need statistical, rather than merely anecdotal, evidence.
But the evidence that we do have is anecdotal, and it does suggest that some valued members of our community are made uncomfortable (to the point of considering leaving) by some inconsiderate use of language. And those who like this site are already a statistical anomaly.
When Alicorn wrote, "some people seem to earnestly care about the problem", she accompanied it with a link to [a comment][1] made by me, in which I said that "I want to increase the female: male ratio [here]. So if you ever see me using language that objectifies women or that alienates you, please let me know."
Let me clarify that although I want to hear Alicorn's objections to my statements about women (especially since she is better than most feminists at explaining the grounds for her objections) I might not be able to cater to all her objections.
For example, most existential-risks activists (scientists doing networking and research about risks like unFriendly AI) are male, and I plan a top-level post to assert that not having reliable access to sex with the kind of sexual partners who can most improve the life of an existential-risks activist should be considered a large disability in a male prospective existential-risks activist -- in the same way that, e.g., an inability to stop rationalizing one's own personal agenda should be considered a large disability.
Note that recruiting existential-risks activists (though he did not use that exact phrase) is one of the stated goals in Eliezer's creating this web site.
Since a large fraction of the young men who have many of the other qualifications for existential-risks activism (such as extremely good mastery of math) do not currently have the knowledge necessary to obtain reliable access to sex with the kind of partners who can most improve their lives, I have a strong interest in trying to convey knowledge about it to them (because doing so decreases existential risk according to my current models of male psychology) and it is possible that despite persistent strenuous effort on my part, I will not be able to do a lot of that without alienating Alicorn and other feminists.
Maybe the correct course is for me to start another site where male prospective existential-risks activists can acquire this sort of knowledge, but sex is such a large part of life that it seems overly limiting for the 90 or 95% or so of the participants on this site who are heterosexual men to refrain from discussing how to identify the prospective sexual partners who can most improve their lives and how to increase one's sexual chances with those prospective partners.
Wouldn't that just eat up a lot of their valuable existential-risk minimizing time? I might be stealing an idea from Hopefully Anonymous, but I'd ideally like to clone large numbers of the most effective minimizers and devote every waking hour of theirs to minimizing our existential risk (really, maximizing my odds of persistence, but that goal won't get as many other cloners to buy in). In the absence of that kind of control, convincing them that they can never obtain partners and should just give up would be second-best. I believe Narses put so much effort into living on through his accomplishments precisely because, as a eunuch, he could have no progeny.
On a related note, I've got a post saying we should be grateful for diversity-induced anomie. Bryan Caplan & Mencius Moldbug have both had interesting things to say on the virtues of abject surrender.
I feel some skepticism that you possess special knowledge on this topic. The language above seems objectifying even to me. Do you have a record of success here?
You may think this is a great contribution you can make, but it's probably simpler and more effective to donate money.
OK, nerzhin, I'll bite: donate money to whom?
If your goal is to deal with existential risks, maybe the Lifeboat Foundation or, of course, the Singularity Institute. It just seems to me that handing out sex advice to potential existential-risk activists is a pretty indirect way to help.
Of course, I'm not helping either, so I should probably just be quiet.
I didn't get the impression that there was proposed any sort of prohibition on ideas that can be discussed. Rather, just perform a quick 'sanity check' against the criteria and make sure you're not needlessly alienating vast numbers of potential members of the community.
I don't think anyone is even going so far as advocating 'political correctness', and I laughed out loud at calling Alicorn a 'feminist' (reluctantly pushed into that role as she is).
I support this solution.
Edit: although I'd extend it. Not all males prefer women, not all women prefer males, some women will also want to learn seduction of their preferred sex, and there are a bunch of gender categories in the middle (trans, queer, intersex, etc) who can be either the source or object of sexual interest. I have never heard that seduction is much studied outside male-wants-female.
I have never heard that seduction is much studied outside male-wants-female.
What? Clothing lipstick fingernails haircut tan waxing liposuction diet aerobics... Women strive to improve their seduction abilities much more than men.
Agreed. It is more socially acceptable for women to improve their attractiveness to the opposite sex than it is for men. Women can also get more improvement of their attractiveness through these methods. Additionally, it's considered acceptable for women to use various forms of psychological influence over men; see this NYT article I critiqued on my blog advocating training men like animals. When men do this, it's evil.
Hair and clothes are very important for men, though, not just because of physical looks, but because of the status and sexuality that they do (or don't) convey.
Clothing, haircut, diet and aerobics apply equally to men as well, and waxing has shaving as a counterpart.
Also, do you have figures on what percentage of women undergo liposuction? Or tan regularly?
Seems to me that all you've done is generalized from a couple cliches.
The amount of rationalization in this thread is disturbing me. Seriously... apply equally? How many dresses do you have? How many shoes? How many shampoos? Skin care products? Do you regularly shave your arms and legs? Did you ever try to wax any part of your body, and do you have any idea how it feels? Were you ever seriously concerned that the tips of your hair were splitting ever-so-slightly and you must do something about that? Do you want me to go on?
What do you think I'm rationalizing?
You've displayed a severe lack of synthesis here. What you should have been thinking about were analogous items that a male would possess for sex appeal. You're seriously trying to make a point by asking me how many dresses I own? Obviously I own none, and obviously that does not speak at all to the amount of effort I exert trying to impress women. I also own precisely zero skirts, zero bras, and zero tampons!
To my knowledge, a male's sex appeal is not significantly improved by most of the items you've gone to the trouble of listing. I've never felt that I would be more sexy if my legs, armpits, etc. were waxed (although I have plucked my unibrow a few times). Nor, with the exception of acne control, do I think skin care products would increase the average man's sex appeal.
You've apparently failed to accurately conceptualize the idea of sex appeal. When I brought this up, rather than ask for apparently relevant or informative information (how much money will I spend on a date? how nice is my watch, jacket, car, apartment, etc? how much effort will I actually go to in order to seduce a woman or get laid? do i wear deodorant/cologne? do i use contact lenses? how often do i shave? how much do i care about hygiene? what kinds of clothes do i wear? what is my job?), you came asking about how many dresses I own and whether I regularly shave my legs, etc.
Male sex appeal is quite different than female sex appeal, but there is a common ground. Clothing, hair (dye, rogaine, plugs, transplant, cutting and grooming), diet and exercise fall inside that common ground.
In a vacuous sense of the word, all organs are reproductive organs and you can feasibly claim that your job and apartment are part of your seduction routine, just like Bill Clinton's job and apartment were. But can you somehow delineate "seduction-related" activities from "other" activities and somehow make men and women spend the same amount of effort on "seduction-related", without making "other" an empty set? Try it! I don't think you will succeed. For example, any reasonable delineation would classify work time as non-seduction-related, which instantly skews the ratio towards women.
This seems to mistreat the Evolutionary-Cognitive Boundary.
Thanks, you're right. Good catch. The whole discussion is off track.
My figure's no good for a dress, but I do have more than one good-sized closet full of clothes.
Due to a condition, I mostly just wear sneakers. However, I do have a couple of other pairs of shoes for when it's really important to look good or match an outfit.
I have one, which is as many as my wife has. How many do you need? I did an evaluation of which shampoo works best with my hair several years ago, and technology really hasn't advanced enough in the past decade and a half to bother re-evaluating Pantene Pro-V (though knock-off brands do perform just about as well). I also use the same brand of conditioner, and a couple different kinds of hair product.
Not anymore. Cutting oneself shaving is an avenue for infection, and I've had problems with skin infection in my legs. Also, my hair grows too quickly so I have serious stubble just a couple hours after shaving. Armpits, though, are a must.
Yes. Really not impressed with the performance as compared to depilatory creams, which are much less painful.
No way. That's terrible for your hair. I have tried colored gels, but haven't found any that really work with my color.
Yes, but it's always a cost-benefit analysis, as I don't want to cut my hair shorter than I have to, and Pantene does a decent job of 'repairing' those sorts of problems, to some extent.
Was there a point to these questions?
Drawing any statistical conclusions from your answer would be invalid because you have self-selected to reply to me. A reply from PeterS, or lack thereof, would be more meaningful, but it still wouldn't outweigh the data about men I know personally.
Most of this is part of some silly game which women play amongst themselves: some of it may be male-directed, but it's definitely a minor portion. Overall, F2M seduction and "focused self-improvement" are still woefully underexplored.
It is possible that I have misunderstood your comment. So, I hope that you will not mind if I reiterate in order to make sure that I have understood correctly: Women spend time on "clothing lipstick etc" primarily because they are concerned about the impression other women will form of them.
I'm afraid that any response will be purely anecdotal: but I can say that I am much more likely to shave my legs when I go to have coffee with a group of women, as compared to with a group that contains men. And I am almost certain to shave my legs before going to coffee with a man who I would be interested in dating.
Best, rela
Great point. Since women have an easier time finding partners than men due to greater female selectiveness (at least when perceived choice is high, which is the norm for typical dating), women may more easily reach a basic level of satisfaction with their abilities to attract and relate to the opposite sex. Or conversely, women may be less likely to reach a level of dissatisfaction that they are motivated to engage in systematic programs to improve their attractiveness and relational abilities, other than in societally typical ways such as improving physical attractiveness.
Yet I do think women would benefit from improving their ability to attract and relate to men, analogous to what pickup artists are doing. Pickup artists often study men who are "naturals" with women. Likewise, I think there are female "naturals." I've known some women who do very well with men, both in the sense of attracting men, and in fulfilling their goals (typically, long-term romantic relationships). These women take care of themselves physically without being incredibly high maintenance, they are intelligent and accomplished, they are a joy to be around, they like men and understand them relatively well, a large percentage of males who come in contact with them get crushes on them. They don't have the common complaint of trying to date guys who only want their bodies, and they are in multi-year relationships.
Clearly, there is something that these women are doing right, or something about their attitudes, personalities, and/or upbringings which is leading to across the board positive results with men, while other women of equal or greater physical attractiveness constantly experience difficulties with men. Whatever it is, it can be broken down empirically and other women can learn from it, similar to how pickup artists are breaking down the behavior and mindsets of men who are successful with women.
In fact, I would argue that a lot of the difficulties some women may experience in their interactions with any attractive men with options (including many pickup artists) is due to their lack of corresponding sexual and relational skills. To explain why this is, I'll back up and use an analogy.
Many men who aren't very good at interacting with women complain of various difficulties around women. A particular complaint is only being seen as a friend, rather than as a romantic prospective, and may feel that females "lead them on" and then only want friendship. Yet for men who have significant skill at attracting and relating to women, these kinds of problems simply go away, or reduce in frequency. I'm less likely to receive this response nowadays. Often I will see the "let's just be friends" situation coming from a mile away, in which case I keep her as a friend and pursue other women. If I don't see it coming, my understanding of female sexual psychology will offer me explanations other than the woman trying to "lead me on." I have enough perspective to realize that she may have given me a chance to attract her, and I simply failed to convey my attractive qualities to her, or she didn't find me attractive. Yet I'm not crushed, because I know that I will be meeting new women next weekend, and I am free to maintain a friendship with her if I so choose.
Similarly, many women complain of a situation where they have become sexual with a guy who is "just not that into her." In fact, this seems to be a fear of some women who hear about pickup artists: they think pickup artists are going to go around seducing them and then moving on. Yet whether a man will move on from a woman after having sex depends on his perception of her appeal for a relationship. This variable is partly under the woman's control. If she can display qualities that make her appeal to him as a relationship partner, and differentiate herself from other women of equal or greater attractiveness, then he is less likely to move on. Furthermore, with a better knowledge of male sexual psychology, she can more easily guess in the first place whether he would be plausibly romantically interested in her, and move on if not.
There are genuine cases of women taking advantage of men non-sexually, and of men taking advantage of women sexually, by lying about their intentions. There are other cases in which people are ambiguous about what they are looking for, and negligently lead another party who wants something more with them into false beliefs about their availability. Yet in my view, the problems underlying "let's just be friends" and "pump and dump" scenarios that are equally as common really lie at the feet of the "friend," or the "dumped." And those problems include the following:
People tend to use their sexual and relational skills to seek what kind of arrangement they want with members of the opposite sex. Yet if members of sex A want arrangement X with members of sex B, while members of sex A are lacking qualities, skills, and understanding necessary for members of sex B to want that kind of relationship with members of sex A, then we have a curious zero-sum situation: a member of sex B's goals will be different from a member of sex A's goals with each other. Since members of sex B finding members of sex A underwhelming in a certain way, their preferred arrangement will be to have a narrow interaction in which they get what they want, while members of sex A do not get what they want (and perhaps feel "used"). However, if members of sex A had more "game" (or whatever you want to call it), then they would be less likely to encounter the situation of members of sex A only wanting them in such a narrow way, in which case members of sex B would use their own "game" in order to seek arrangements that are desired more mutually.
Either men or women are A or B depending on the context. Imagine a matrix of group A's level of game crossed with group B's level of game (where I define "game" as ability, conscious or otherwise, to understand the psychology of the opposite sex, and to attract and induce members of the opposite sex to be more likely to want the kind of sexual/romantic situation that you desire with them; I have reservations about the word "game", but it's late and I need to save typing):
Neither A nor B have game: mutual blundering
A has more game than B: A "uses" B because A only wants a narrow kind of interaction with B
B has more game than A: B "uses" A, reverse of above
A and B both have considerable game: both groups are more likely to want non-zero-sum interactions with each other because they both desire each other in the ways that the other desires them, and members of both groups can more easily identify and avoid potentially zero-sum situations where an asymmetricality of desires occurs
In short, a woman with relational game should be less likely to fear men with seduction ability, because men will be more likely to fall for her.
Assuming that individuals cannot systematically change the preferences of the opposite sex, the best way for both men and women to get want they want sexually and romantically is by members of both sexes:
a) maximally understanding the preferences the of the opposite sex, and b) maximally learning to fulfill the preferences of the opposite sex, subject to certain basic constraints of authenticity, ethics, and one's own preferences
Rational and empirical investigation would be helpful in pursuing these goals. For now, people will have to do this on their own, or with like minded people. Yet in the future, rather than make everyone reinvent the real, these abilities should be instilled by general socialization. To some extent, they already are (at least if you were popular when growing up). But the average quality of advice about the opposite sex is laughably bad for both sexes (especially for men) in society, and dominated by oversimplified stereotypes (e.g. "men only want one thing") and true-but-useless platitudes ("just be yourself," "every woman wants something different").
Downvote explanation requested. I am already considering moving this post somewhere else; it is on-topic for the comment it is responding to, but it may drift from the topic of the thread. Objections to the argument of this comment, or of the language and framings it contains, is also invited.
Perhaps use "positive sum" instead of "non-zero-sum"
This should be a top-level post. It would counter both the pervasive misunderstanding of what PUA is about and Eliezer's point about PUA being locker-room man talk.
I would consider cleaning it up and re-writing it as a top level post if others request, and/or consider it out of place in this thread.
Please do. It deserves to be top-level.
Systematically?
Also, a whole lot of that stuff (most?) is for intra-women signaling.
What do you mean by "systematically"? There's lots of magazines for females that discuss the exact set of topics I enumerated, add sex and relationship advice into the bargain, and very little else. This approach works, so women don't need to study evo-psych or whatever PUAs study.
I defy your claim about signaling because it seems wildly improbable to me. Why would women want to signal their attractiveness to other women? Give a citation or something.
Shoes and handbags are probably an adequate citation. Clothing as well, perhaps, but that's at least somewhat ambiguous. There may be a lot of men out there who pay close attention to the shoes and handbags of the women they are interested in, but I can't say I've met any of them. I'm not entirely sure what the motivation is for women who buy these things (I dated a woman with numerous $500+ purses, and she was in college), but I am pretty sure it's unrelated to attracting men, and it would make a great deal of sense if it's status signaling towards other women.
There may be a lot of men out there who pay close attention to the shoes and handbags of the women they are interested in, but I can't say I've met any of them.
That's a strawman argument. Of course men don't pay close attention to the individual aspects, only the general impression matters. The point is to make the guy want you, not make him want your handbag. I don't mentally note the price of girls' shoes and purses, but I certainly note when they fit in with and "enhance" the rest of their attire; knowing some girls with an extraordinary sense of color and style taught me to perceive this stuff consciously some years ago, but it's always had an unconscious influence as far as I feel.
On the other hand, I can't dismiss the idea of signaling as completely as before. I just haven't yet heard a convincing explanation why women would benefit from signaling high status to each other, as opposed to (say) signaling friendliness and caring.
I don't think it's a straw man argument. Yes if a woman is wearing a nice dress and a pair of Crocs, that's an issue, but from what I've seen the marginal effect of shoes is pretty small from most men's perspectives. My impression, both from personal experience and from popular culture, is that women actually notice accessories and men do not. That sounds like signaling towards women; in fact, women I know who spend a lot on accessories have admitted as much to me. If someone has actually gathered hard data on this, I can't find it and would love to see it, but I'd be really surprised if women who shop for accessories seriously are doing so to attract men.
So? The behaviour either happens or it doesn't. Your ability to explain it is totally irrelevant. Granted my evidence is undesirably anecdotal, so you may have not seen evidence that women buy accessories for other women to see. Still, the fact that you can't explain it (especially that you can't explain it with ev-psych specifically) does not preclude or remove the event from existence. I'd still believe men have nipples even if I couldn't figure out how it were evolutionarily advantageous.
But I'll try to offer an explanation (and an alternative). People seek social status. That simple. Women may also want to signal friendliness and caring (they're not opposed to status), but they benefit strongly from being high-status. Similarly, it may simply be a social thing. My parents encouraged me to dress one way and not another. Clothing is a significant indicator of social status. Thus, people come to believe a certain style is "right," and what style that is does a lot to signal what social niche they come from. This lets the whole thing operate without any consciousness of signaling.
An alternative. People value looking good for obvious reasons. The only evaluation they can make of "looking good" is by their own criteria, thus they seek primarily to look good to themselves. Thus, if some women like accessories, they will seek them out seriously, because they want to look good and they view them as vital to achieving that end, even if men don't agree.
Hah. Neither of your offered explanations discriminates between men and women (the first one would actually imply men dressing up more, because men have more to gain from status), and neither explains why women consciously try to stand out from the group when dressing up, e.g. get upset when they see some other woman dressed identically (both explanations would imply the reverse reaction). My obvious explanation of sexual selection accounts for both.
Your "obvious" explanation of sexual selection does not explain why (some) women spend inordinate amounts of time and money seeking out accessories that men don't notice or care about, and continue to seek these out well after they have married and (sometimes) over the objections of their spouses. Also, I was talking about accessories, not clothing.
My explanation does not discriminate between men and women; society does. Each has a different method of showing off status. Men show off status via different accessories, namely gizmos like phones and watches and conspicuous consumption and in some cases shoes and jewelery (and cars, but those signal between genders, as well). And just because men may have more to gain by signaling status, that does not predict that they will gain status through the same mechanisms. Men who spend a lot more on clothes than their actual status justifies tend to be looked down upon by other men - status is one of those things that if you try too hard to show you have it, you lose it. The same standard (to my knowledge) does not generally apply to women.
Or, more simply, most men don't really see much about how they dress (or their appearance generally) as relating to their social status, where more women see it as being more important. This would be an evolutionary motivator (show high status) operating through a social outlet (by dressing a certain way).
I was explicitly not talking about clothing, but about accessories, so the "same outfit" really is a straw man. Though I am uncertain how sexual selection explains it better than status signaling (if someone is wearing the same thing as you that seems like it would obviously dilute your status signal heavily), but that's not the point since I was talking about accessories specifically.
My "people value looking good" also explains both of these phenomena FWIW; men don't see nice clothing as necessary to looking good, and women might have their self-image of looking good (and special) harmed if they show up dressed exactly like another woman.
Peruse Vogue any time. None of that stuff is for males. it signals things like: I'm rich, I'm young, I'm cultured, I'm upper-class, I'm able to devote effort to display, I'm socially well-connected...
What evolutionary reason could a woman have for wanting to signal being rich and cultured to other women? 'Cause it doesn't make those other women want to become her allies; rather, it aggravates them. And do you consider it a weird coincidence that all the things I listed (tan, lipstick etc.) also increase the woman's attractiveness to men?
Pecking order.
Evolutionary reason? Sounds like you're automatically discounting the possibility that the specific status games of a specific group of people in our specific society are a result of cultural development that has no particular basis in evolutionary psychology.
I'm sorry, but that's just a wierd question. Why wouldn't women want to play status games?
Most of those things were originally developed as seduction aids and do double duty, but they have been adopted as status aids and probably are more important in that role. (Signaling only to men, women can get away with much less work - compare porn.)
In their original pure seduction aid role, some stuff - lipstick and perfume for example - used to be extremely disreputable.
Also some obvious fashion fetishes are void of signal to males - handbags are an example.
You didn't answer. Why would women play status games? Men play status games to rise in the dominance hierarchy and ultimately get many girls; that's the obvious evolutionary reason.
My working hypothesis for now is simply that women claim they strive to look good primarily to show off to other women, and you're accepting this claim uncritically. The reason they claim that (and actually believe that, evolution's weird) is that explicitly admitting that you dress up to steal high status men from other women would make those other women feel threatened, so this behavior has evolved into a harmless "game". That also addresses your objection why women adopt those ornate displays instead of just undressing.
There actually are reasonable-sounding evolutionary hypotheses behind status competition for women in addition to competition for males: competition over food, particularly food for infants.
Further reading: Male, Female by David Geary Mother Nature by Sarah Hrdy
It seems to me a lot of this has to be female-female signaling as proposed. Most men do not seem to care what I'm wearing, and would probably prefer it was 'nothing'. I have NEVER had a guy bring up something I'm wearing unless it was clearly being used as an opening for chatting me up.
For the record (I don't think this is objectifying, but my calibration's pretty confused lately), yes we'd probably prefer it was 'nothing,' but we still notice what you're wearing and respond strongly to it, and no, it's not as simple as "less is better".
I assume 'chatting me up' is being used here to mean something involving dating? An internet search for the expression just turned up synonyms for "making conversation", which wouldn't make sense in context.
Curious... where are you from?
ETA: thanks to anonym below.
In that case, it seems odd to me that guys you know never bring up anything you're wearing. Do you have many male friends? Maybe this is a cultural thing, or am I the 'odd one out' here?
If Alicorn goes beyond discouraging certain modes of expression and starts discouraging certain ideas from being expressed at all, that's beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned. Hope she thinks so too.
I find this a very disturbing comment.
Why do you invoke Alicorn? Why not just "that's beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned"?
This is by far the strongest one of a very few comments on this thread (and no prior threads) that make me think Roko is right about cliques.
Well said.
Obligatory XKCD link.
Is it me, or was this post a little heavy on the other-optimizing? Yes, there's been a bit of talk about wanting more female posters here, but I haven't even seen an agreement that that's a priority, much less a request for advice on the topic. (Did I miss one? I'll admit I haven't been following the comments that closely recently.)
Well, there's been nothing like a vote on it. But I've definitely gotten the impression that we're doing community-building here, and attracting potential rationalists was one of Eliezer's stated goals. So it seems that a community norm against repelling potential rationalists would be a good one.
This post (and the comments on it) made me finally to register in here, partly because I had few discussions about similar topics just a few days ago.
As knb said: "This site is hugely less sexist than society at large." While this might be true, it only means that most people in here are "less wrong" than society at large. This does not mean that they are right. It also has the same ring to my ears as "Some of my friends are black/jewish/<insert minority here>".
Gender bias is rampant even in the internet where it should hold no sway (there are no visual clues, no pheromones etc.), and denying its excistence only enforces it. If you want to see it, just try using feminine nickname for few weeks.
On the topic of objectification and PUA, I have decided to read "The Book" because I know that I hold a bias against it.
Heteronormative examples actually bother me more than masculine ones, and this might be because there are no gender specific pronomins in my native language. My brain just seems to skip over the usual "he/his/him" and interpret it as a gender neutral version.
Generalizations of certain type of either sex are very annoying. By this I refer to things like "men don't cry" and "women are such gossips". My annoyance with things like these most likely stems form two points. First, I don't recognize myself or anyone I know in them (I know, anecdotal evidence and all that). Second, they put up a framework according which one should behave.
As Alicorn says, costs of this type of thinking can be very high. For excample, because of "women are the weaker sex" they were effectively shut out of the intellectual community until about 100 years ago. Because of "men are not caring" they still lose custodity battles more often than not, and end up being deprived of their children.
Basically, assigning certain attributes to either sex effectively prohibits those attributes in the other sex. That is not useful or rational, that is just limiting the potential.
Upvoted for this but... in a way this reminds me of the Tversky and Edwards experiment mentioned in the Technical Explanation where participants are shown a sequence of red and blue cards and asked to guess the next in the sequence. Since 70% of the cards are blue the best strategy is to always guess blue, but participants irrationally guess a mixture of blue and red as if they could predict the sequence.
So, if you are confident that a group exists (confident that you are 'carving reality at its joints'), are confident that an individual is a member of that group, have good evidence that more than half of the members of the group have Trait X, and no further information about a member-of-the-group and you must make a decision based on available information with no opportunity to gather more information (or it is prohibitively expensive to gather information), you should assume that member-of-the-group has Trait X. In all other cases it is not rational to operate under the assumption that the individual has Trait X.
(Reading back through that my point seems kind of pedantic. But that's what we do here, right? Anyway.)
Using gendered language or (much worse) thought experiments in a discussion that has nothing to do with gender adds noise and impedes understanding. This is the danger of using PUAs as examples of winners in "rationalists should win"* discussions. It brings in irrelevant assumptions and excludes women by using an example most of them can't relate to (technical details about picking up women in bars or bookstores or the singularity summit or whatever.) So what I'm saying is discussions about sex (in both senses of the word) should be deliberately kept seperate from other discussions of rationalism, and that allowing irrelevant sex talk to bleed into our discussions distorts them and our conclusions.
*This phrase bugs me so much!
You raise a good point. There are certain statistically proven differences between sexes and making generalizations based on these statistics is a good strategy for example under the conditions you specified. Differencies of this kind include things like "men on average are taller than women" and "women on average have higher percantage of body fat than men". I don't think anyone in here has a problem with generalizations like these.
My point was that there is a different class of generalizations which is problematic. One of the examples I used above was "men don't cry". This implies that if you don't adhere to the norm described, you don't fit in. Showing emotions is "unmanly" and and boys are actually told this when growing up (using a masculine example purely intentional). While the claim "men don't cry" might have some statistical support, we should think about the causal relations between the claim and the reality. The fact that the claim exists and is used bringing up boys will establish a situation where it becomes a norm. Men will not cry because they are told not to, not because that is inherently built in the Y chromosome. With generalizations like this everyone in here should have a problem.
On your comment about excluding discussions about sex from other discussions about rationalism: I think this would generate a unneccessary blind spot. Rationalism should be applied whenever possible, and I find discussions about sex in no way an exception to this "rule". The area is difficult because humans are so interested in it and it affects us in many ways, most of which are hard to see. This is why there might be a lot to gain.
This is simply a case of confusing normative statements with descriptive ones. If we raise the sanity line enough, such misconceptions should vanish spontaneously.
That's a two-way process as well. One of the ways we can raise the sanity line is to clearly demonstrate an understanding of the difference between those statements.
::clicks links::
Wow, I go away to Otakon for a 3-day weekend and LW decides to go throw a flame war. (And my very old grandmother is sitting on our couch refusing to go home, but that's not relevant to the discussion here.)
What the hell, LWers?
::sigh::
Don't make me take matters into my own hands.
Hilarious.
But seriously, if this is what you call a flame war, then you haven't been 'round the Internet much.
I'm pretty sure we're still in 'honest disagreement' territory, though I don't think the conversation is going anywhere currently; too many tangents.
Yeah, I know. This is nothing compared to some real flame wars out there, but people are still getting upset. We've got a bad case of meanings being garbled in the transition between different people's brains, and that's never good. We aren't even at the stage of honest disagreement, since we haven't been able to successfully paraphrase each other's positions. (And this is very important.) In other words, we don't understand what we disagree about, which is worse than simply disagreeing.
I concur. I agree with a lot of what you say... I get upset frequently because of things said about women, many just offhandedly.
I am here, I've been reading for over a year and am a huge advocate of this site, but was not counted in the survey. But I'm 20 years old and rarely feel like I have anything valuable to offer the community... and because of that actually feel hesitation to respond to these kind of things. I also don't live a life about feminism or being a girl and would hate to be perceived that way.
I know what you mean - I don't live a life about affirmative action or being black, and I hate playing the role of "black".
If you think you will be in a better position to contribute in 10 years, that is a positive fact about your current self, not a negative one. Note that I am 30 and I'm convinced that my contributions would be more valuable in 10 years as well, but that doesn't seem to be a reason not to contribute now.
I'm twenty years old, too - so?
Ah. Interesting... I guess I should stop making excuses then... I have occasionally felt like posting things but... I'm so nervous! Everyone here impresses me so much generally.
User Chronophasiac lives near me, and I've talked to him about some of my concerns about the conversations about gender we have on lesswrong/OB. My concern is that because of the lack of female presence in rationality forums, that perhaps males have to generalize on a small sample. Rationalist males are noticeably different from the average male, and rationalist females are probably comparably different from average females. I guess I often have a bit of a negative response to how rationalist males talk about females... because even though they might be making correct decisions about most females, they're certainly not right about me. It's possibly irrational- but I guess I have a strange worry that they don't know that. Ah, I remember that these feelings were triggered when they were discussing why there aren't more women here. But I have no reason to think they haven't considered it, in fact, I remember Eliezer mentioning that... I should link but I'm lazy.
I'm not mad at the males here for trying to figure out why females aren't here, and trying their hardest. But... I'm female and I'm here... and all the proposed ideas sounded so off to me. I've been trying to think of better ideas though and failing... since I like it here. I guess my best hypothesis is that there are still less women in the topics related to Less Wrong and Overcoming bias, due to the kinds of reasons they've proposed for that (past inequality, culture, etc...). But I digressed.
I guess the best thing I can do is just contribute to the site more. In the meantime, just consider what it would possibly be like if lesswrong was ran by women, and we were trying to figure out how to bring in more males, and we wondered if we should consider how males liked hunting, and let that inform our decisions. I mean, you'd know we were trying our best, but those of you who don't really care for hunting would be like "we really have to let them know we aren't all like that, and we wouldn't appreciate it as much as they think".
I suspect this might have drifted off-topic, but my large ego won't let me transmit it elsewhere.
LOL'd and upvoted. I will be tempted to cite this comment every time I see a discussion anywhere by a bunch of men trying to figure out "how to bring in more women" to some group, without actually asking any women.
This is a pet peeve of mine in IT forums, where guys often have no idea how offensive their special treatment proposals are to precisely the sort of women that they'd want to have participate, and are bemoaning that no women apply for IT jobs, when I managed to run a gender-balanced IT department for over five years without any "affirmative action" hiring. (i.e., it fell naturally out of our choosing to evaluate based on group fit and potential, rather than out of any need to have a gender balance.)
x
I think that your efforts would be better spent taming the "sex-crazed maniac" part of your brain, frankly.
x
Easier != better than.
This idea does not have my approval.
That last example is particularly amusing slash enlightening - I think in part because the original version feels like it intends: "You are such a nerd, you will never earn high social status".
(Which is why it's so wrong, actually - it objectifies women as symbols of male achievement.)
Huh? If somebody says to a woman, "you're so ugly, you'll never have a man," is that objectifying men as symbols of female attractiveness?
(I'm not saying either putdown is sensible; I'm just saying I don't see how either of them is objectifying to the opposite sex from the target of the putdown. Arguably, the "nerd" putdown objectifies men as having value to women only for their status, whereas the reverse objectifies women as having value to men only for their physical attractiveness. I suppose you could say that each putdown also implies the opposite sex is shallow, but is that really objectification?)
Hmm ... no, they're still parallel: the man is objectified as a symbol of female achievement, with unattractiveness being cited as the barrier to a relationship.
The thing is, you don't address the thing you objectify, you just talk about them like it is an object.
(That's not to say that the content you point out in both examples isn't toxic and sexist, just that it falls under a different heading.)
I still don't get it. How about, "your research is so awful, no respectable scientists will cite you." Are we objectifying scientists, then?
AFAICT, these statements are of the form "you lack quality X, therefore those who desire quality X will not give you the form of approval or validation you desire." That is, the statement takes into account the expected goals of the agent being putdown, as well as a presumed class of agents whose approval is sought. That doesn't sound like anybody's being considered an "object" whose goals don't count; it's saying, your results don't align with this other group's goals.
True, the assumed goals may not apply to every member of the presumed class (perhaps there are some "respectable scientists" who will cite your work), but this doesn't somehow reach out and harm every single "respectable scientist"! (It doesn't even harm the scientists who would cite the work, unless they take the putdown to indirectly imply that they are not "respectable".)
The researcher reward is citations - those are the objects. In the other two cases, the rewards are people.