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thomblake comments on Missing the Trees for the Forest - Less Wrong
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I don't think there was all that much 'handwringing'. Most references to "all heterosexual sex is rape" are misattributed to MacKinnon, and if Dworkin did any favors for feminist discourse, it was to speed up the loss of credibility for radical feminism.
I was primarily pointing out that it is disingenuous at least to interpret a quote out of context where the context contained the negation of your interpretation.
The issue is whether Dworkin's views imply "All sex is rape", and her personal disavowal of that position when under the spotlight counts for nothing, which is why I don't think it's necessary for context. The critical part is what she still clings to, not what she can sheepishly disclaim.
Look, Thom, most anyone can voice a coherent sentence. So the fact that they say something, even about themselves, does not make it true. (It is weak Bayesian evidence of its truth if the statement is self-serving.)
I'm going to show you a trick:
I, Silas Barta, have the utmost respect for both men and women, and I never use language that is in any way objectifying to either.
See? I made a claim about my statements and character. And that doesn't make it true! In fact, it's going to utterly fail to convince Alicorn.
Can you start to see how the part I didn't quote is less important than what I did quote? Can you start to see why "Oh, no, I totally don't believe that stuff about all sex being rape" doesn't carry much weight?
This is a statement about your prior actions.
This is a statement about her prior statement.
I don't think these two are analogous.
I don't know anything about Dworkin, but when you're telling someone what they really think (in spite of their explicit statement to the contrary), you're on pretty shaky ground. It's much better to just call their statements inconsistent than to insist they really mean X.
EDIT: The fact that you find someone's views weirdly and obviously inconsistent implies one of two things: their internal state is muddled (or they are rationalizing/confabulating), or you don't actually understand their view. I've been on both sides of both cases in my life, it's hard to tell the difference. It's extremely frustrating when people who don't understand my view on something try to tell me what I really think.
They're both statements about the speaker's position, and I explained the parallels, which you need to address. It's elaborated here.
You know what's even better than that? Quoting them. You know what's even better than that? Quoting their reaction to criticism of the view in question. You know what's even better than that? Quoting the part that shows how close the accusation is to being correct, because of what they'll admit to when "defending" themselves.
Look back: which one did I do?
You know what's also frustrating?
-When someone's writing is so vague that most people read it as "all sex is rape".
-When I'm told all my life that I'm an oppressor, and have to watch out for the invisible acts of oppression that I'm committing, which can only be revealed by consultation with a special class of offical censors, all the while men who ignore these rules attract all the women.
Where's my pity party? It seems that patience is reserved for those who say inflammatory things, propogate myths for decades, and then manage to say with a straight face, "no, no, I didn't mean -- what was the unpopular part again? -- yeah, that. That I didn't mean. But yeah, sex is violence. You can keep feeling guilty."
I think you changed the example a little bit there (http://lesswrong.com/lw/13k/missing_the_trees_for_the_forest/yrh). What you wrote there I don't have any problem with. Whether it's a charitable reading of Dworkin or a straw(wo)man, I have no knowledge. Since I don't feel like reading up on her, I am inclined to grant you that interpretation for the sake of conversation.
That's fine, but packing that whole line of thinking into the act of omitting half of a quotation is bound to give people the wrong impression. If you think "all sex is rape" is consistent, on the whole, with someone's work, you can just say that's what you think. Hell, I don't know anything about her in particular and personally find radical feminist thought to be weird and wrong, so I wouldn't even argue with you.
But don't do half a job quoting someone; if in your original comment on the subject contained the words "and I know immediately afterwards she disclaims the obvious interpretation of this sentence, but that is clearly an out-of-character statement for her and probably does not reflect her true view, given all the other things she's said," then we would not be having this conversation.
I certainly don't support what you're reacting to. If it's not already clear, I find radical feminism quite hypocritical, assuming I understand it. I suppose my few comments on this have given the impression that I'm on Alicorn's "side", whatever that means, but I'm actually pretty neutral on the whole thing, I can understand both positions. My comments have admittedly been on the "moderate feminist" side, but only because it's been less well represented (quantity, not quality, my subjective opinion) and I thought I could contribute something positive.
Okay, fair point. I thought it was obvious why the next sentence should carry so little weight, but even so, I should have explained that that was the reason for the exclusion.
ETA: I've added a clarifier to the initial comment.
Thank you; I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised. There aren't many blogs you can see a comment like this on.
We're generally fairly reasonable folks around here, even while having a ridiculous multiple-day politically-charged feud.
Brief intro:
Radical feminism, simply put, is isomorphic to radical marxism. Where the marxist would interpret virtually anything as an instance of "class warfare", the radical feminist would interpret virtually anything as an instance of "oppression by the patriarchy". The "patriarchy", in this sense, is that complex web of behaviors and assumptions that, on the whole, radical feminists believe was constructed by men to keep women down.
There is a charitable interpretation of the "patriarchy" that suggests that it was not created specifically by men, and it is not intended to keep women down, but then "patriarchy" is a bad name. Radical feminist works usually make more internal sense if you just read it as though "patriarchy" referred to an illuminati-like organization with immense power hell-bent on subjugating women using insidious methods like making the Washington Monument look phallic.
While there are still quite a few radical feminists alive and kicking, their views are largely discredited and a serious thinker should be embarrassed to use their arguments.
The Wikipedia article does a decent job of summarizing different movements in feminism. (For reference, when I put on my "feminist" hat, I'm a "liberal feminist". Note that "Liberal" here is used in the same sense as in "Classical Liberal" or "Liberty")
Replying to this separately so it can be voted up/down separatly.
Do you have a bias against feminism that goes beyond disagreement? This sounds to me to be the statement of someone who feels personally injured.
Yes, I do feel personally injured. I'm told all my life what is proper behavior around women and what is not, while, right in front of my face, men flout these rules (as best I understand them) and are, for lack of a better term, rewarded by those women.
I cannot interpret advice, of the type Alicorn has given, any more charitably than "I'm trying to clean the gene pool of any man submissive and stupid enough to actually follow this advice in the real world." To the extent that Alicorn is sincere and honest, she is an extreme outlier, and is asking for special treatment that cannot be justified by preferences of women in general.
To see why it would be special treatment, please refer to my previous comment, which may have the side effect of demonstrating my humanity. It details how I, like Alicorn, experience a negative physical reaction from PUA threads, but, unlike Alicorn, see this as a failing I need to overcome, rather than a reason to demand suppression of a topic.
Then you have impaired translation skills. Alicorn has actually given advice here in the past that -- when properly translated -- is actually quite in accordance with many PUA teachings. She just didn't use PUA buzzwords like "social proof" or "direct game" to describe them. (Granted, she tended to also use very blunt and judgmental language... but no more blunt or judgmental than I'd have expected from a male of her age.)
Outlier, yes. Extreme, no. She may or may not be correct about what "works" for her, but either way, it's none of our business or concern. She has clearly separated her statements about the way she believes things should be from discussion of how they actually are, so I don't think that disagreements with her regarding the "should", should be conflated with her misrepresenting the "are".
Is it not equally likely that you are the outlier? That you have had an unusual experience combination of inaccurate advice from women? Or that you interpret such advice differently than normal?
I think that most people couldn't express consciously what would attract them (as they don't know until they see it-- and everyone on this website is probably an exception to this rule to some extent), so I'm loath to accept your conclusion that they're trying to remove you from the gene pool.
People teaching you "proper behavior around women" are generally not trying to help you in the way you seem to expect. (In my experience, anyway)
Anyway, my only point was that you are not very neutral on this subject (which you admit), and you don't seem to be taking that fact into account.
Silas definitely is not neutral on this topic, and perhaps could do with lowering the snark. That being said, he is not alone.
The kind of experiences Silas mentions seem common for men with certain types of personalities and social experiences (or lack thereof). They are common in the seduction community, which is massive (there is a pickup club called a "lair" in almost every major city in the world). It's not at all uncommon for the following drama to unfold:
I've done several posts on this subject on my blog: When You Have Feminist Guilt, You Don't Need Catholic Guilt and Why Respecting Women as Human Beings is not Enough
I don't think that female misstatement of their preferences is an attempt, conscious or subconsciously evolved, to eliminate men from the gene pool, however things may look. I summarize some research comparing female preferences and behaviors here.
I can't really argue with this. I fit your described demographic quite well, but I don't have a very similar experience. If it weren't for the internet I'd probably still be single (and by now, bitter, too, perhaps...)
Very interesting - thank you for the links.
No, it not equally likely that I'm the outlier. Keep in mind, PUA instructors consistently, universally have the problem of "unlearning" their students of their previous conception of how to treat women. My shackling to this unhelpful carefulness about "respecting women" is typical. So typical, in fact, that simple misogyny often results in improvement in generating attraction.
The cause of an adaptation, the shape of an adaptation, and the consequence of an adaptation, are all separate things. It's not necessary that women be trying to remove me from the gene pool, but certain adaptations give them certain rules for handling certain kinds of men. The useful advice that PUAs give, diverges sharply from any advice any woman will openly give you. So why is female advice so consistently divergent from working advice?
See how the mechanism might work? Women want male children that can "get the job done". One way to filter out men who can't given them those genes, is to feed bad advice to men. The only one who will listen to it are the ones who would let women walk all over them. And so they're more likely to encounter men with good genes.
I'm not proposing this as a theory; I'm just showing how my proposal (women give bad advice to feed out the dumb and submissive) doesn't require any ill will or conscious deception on the part of women; it can just be something they naturally gravitate toward without understanding why.
If what I expect is something that will actually lead to a relationship with mutual desire, that is correct.
I'm not neutral on the topic, but that doesn't matter. I'm the living evidence of what it's like to walk on eggshells around women in the possibility that I might accidentally oppress them. That biases me in favor of telling others not to fall into the trap of buying into feminist standards while you get crowded out of the dating pool.
You make the mistake of thinking that women prefer alpha males/assholes consciously and intentionally while lying to you. This is almost certainly not the case. This is strange since the whole reason for PUA stuff coming up is that it represents an incidence of often unconscious bias.
In any case I firmly reject the view that "game" requires you to be a misogynist. My bet is that line of thinking is a useful error that some men find helpful for overcoming their previous tendencies to place women on pedestals and worship them. If you have general self-confidence treating people as your equal will end up resembling some versions of PUA style game.
Good points, but I object to these:
I don't think it's that. I see two scenarios that are more likely to generate what I observe:
1) When women give advice, the question they are answering is, "Which attributes would I like to add to a guy, while changing nothing else?" rather than "What would make me actually attracted to a guy?" and the difference is enormous. Frequently, when I get advice from women, what I'm thinking in my mind is, "No, you're telling me what you would like. I'm asking for what would work."
2) Women have a hard time articulating what generates attraction in them, and, once they put it through the filter of "social acceptability" and "hurting feelings", it just reverts to a repetition of what they think they're supposed to like.
I don't think it's an issue of misogynist/not misogynist. It's an issue of "doing/not doing what I have been taught is 'respectful'". That is, the autistic-spectrum male "learning algorithm" may mistakenly infer certain behaviors as being "not respectful" and therefore "don't do", while this was not actually entailed by any teaching received from a female (at least, given the female's implicit assumptions).
Part of the problem might be boys learning to respect women by respecting their mother or some other female authority figure. But boys don't treat their mothers as equals, they treat them as superiors. I wonder if there is a correlation between men who are popular with women and those with little sisters. In any case, the solution surely isn't to get pissed at feminists but to recalibrate your understanding of what it means to respect women.
Respect=/=defer.
The author of the "Double Your Dating" products actually explicitly teaches men to treat a woman they're interested in as if she were "your bratty kid sister", so clearly at least one PUG has noticed this connection.
Off the cuff, my advice would be to find someone for whom you don't need to worry about what behavior "would work" and instead find someone who genuinely shares your interests and is a joy to be with, and pursue a relationship with them.
But then, having been in a love-at-first-sight sort of situation, my advice is probably as helpful as "let them eat cake."
I'm glad you acknowledge this is a "let them eat cake response." Not worrying whether one's behavior is "working" is a privilege of those with behavior that works.
Of course, it sounds mechanical, perhaps even objectifying to be talking about whether one's behavior "works" "on" others, as if they were a machine being fed input. Yet this pragmatic mode of thinking is forced on some of us by being the only viable way to solve deficits in social and dating experience and knowledge, deficits that were also forced on us due to negligent socialization.
I really do not know how to feel about this comment. While I appreciate the honesty, I really have problems with things like this:
I think it is strange that you have essentially acknowledged a pack of inconsistencies in your experiences and teachings but are unable to show charitably to one particular side. Why that side? Why does the fault automatically lie in this direction? I assume there is a long history filled with reasons and this probably isn't the place to hash everything out. But if you are unable to see Alicorn's side charitably it is likely there is something wrong with your perspective.
Btw, how is that different from Alicorn feeling 'personally injured' (or offended) by us having PUA discussions on LW? Can't SilasBerta feel offended by any attempts to censor the topic?
I wasn't trying to say he shouldn't be offended. My implication was that because he's offended, SilasBarta is having trouble dealing with the issue rationally. If Alicorn has a similar bias, she hides it better. (Disclaimer: I haven't read all the comments on all the posts this has come up)
Have I claimed to be "personally injured" anywhere? I don't think I have, but if I said something that sounds like that, I'd like to know.
What I'm implying is that both you and SilasBerta are having a negative emotional reaction. Can you say your reaction is justified while his is not?
I don't think I can answer that question unbiasedly, because SilasBarta routinely makes me very frustrated.
Well, he can, but I wouldn't put "being offended by [topic]" and "being offended by being offended by [topic]" in the same categories.
Alicorn is offended by a certain problem she perceives (objectification of women).
SilasBerta is also offended by a problem - silencing of discussions on a problem unrelated to Alicorn's problem, but discussions on which happen to possibly include objectifications of some sort.
I don't see why both shouldn't be on an equal standing.
I think there may be a typo in there somewhere.
I am not trying to downplay SilasBerta's feeling offended, and it is very possible that SilasBerta's offense and Alicorn's offense are about the same topic from different sides. If that is the case than my comment is probably out of place.
Why not?
In my opinion, getting offended by [topic] reflects a potential issue with [topic] that may be worth addressing. Ideally, the offense as a result of the [topic] should disappear due to either (a) [topic] becoming less offensive or (b) the offended becoming unaffected by [topic].
Being offended by being offended by [topic] can be resolved by resolving the first layer of offenses. If there is a problem with the initial offense, getting offended doesn't actually help since the initial offense is not likely to be resolved with the secondary offense.
In addition, a terrible cycle can appear if the initial offended takes offense to the offensive of the initial offense. Granted, you do not always get to choose what offends you, but when dealing with multiple layers of offense I think it is best to deal with the initial offense.
So, perhaps "categories" can be replaced by "priorities."
Not if resolving the first layer depends on resolving the second layer first. I.e. he can't resolve his problem because he's being silenced when he attempts to discuss it.
Said much more diplomatically than mine. Good job.
Were your parents killed by angry feminists when you were a child?
This has been happening all your life? I've actively studied radical feminism and I don't feel like I've been exposed to such a dire situation. And radical feminism lost credibility and practically died over decade ago now (I believe most scholars of feminism place it around when Carlin Romano penned his now-famous "Suppose I raped Catherine MacKinnon" review). Really, give it up man, war's over, Dworkin's been dead for many years and nobody important takes her work seriously.
EDIT: removed undiplomatic remark.
If you're going to interpret her charitably, then her clarification that she doesn't mean to say that all sex is rape is relevant to understanding what she did mean. Leaving out her clarification is deceptive.
If you're not going to interpret her charitably, then it doesn't matter what she said, as you can twist her words into meaning whatever you'd like.