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Alicorn comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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It's the mental leap from "aw, I feel bad that you are having trouble selling your product" to "aw, someone should take pity on you to the point of buying your product" that presents the problem. I do feel bad for people who have trouble selling, but I categorically refuse to translate that into an obligation on the part of the target market! That kind of thinking scares the crap out of me, because that is the kind of thinking that leads to various evil behaviors up to and including rape.
Yes, but just the same, if you knew about someone having trouble selling a good product, and you took pity on them, one way you would probably not react is by approaching a group of such people and lecturing them in detail about all the unethical practices they shouldn't do, most of which only apply long after a sale, and many of which are commonly used by successful salespeople in a way that satisfies their customers.
And when you think about it, that's pretty much what you do here, if you apply the transformation:
make a sale --> get a date
unethical post-sale practices --> unethical relationship practices, abuse
annoying-but successful sales practices --> PUA techniques, feminist-disapproved language
See the problem?
In Analogy City there are a large number of people who have no education or work experience because they grew up on welfare and never had the opportunity for much of an education. A group of the nations best salespeople decides to do some community service and teach some of these people how to sell things on the street. Among what they teach:
Don't wait to be turned down. Wash that car's windows and then demand to be paid, don't ask first. Take their picture, demand money. Hand them a homemade craft, then demand to be paid, etc.
Be aggressive. The customer's money is your money, it just isn't in your pocket yet.
Look extra poor so that rich people feel sorry for you and give you more. Employing young children is ideal.
Go to neighborhoods Xington, Yville, and Zburg because thats where the unsuspecting rich liberals targets live and they won't be jaded enough to turn you away.
Nothing that is taught is illegal, quite. But some of the people in the city feel that teaching these methods is, nonetheless, irresponsible and dangerous. Do these people have a valid complaint? If they decided to replace the old salesperson teachings with something else would you be surprised if these new teachings included admonitions not to be too aggressive or to give services without asking the customer if they wanted them?
(I seem to hold the uncommon view that both feminism and the teachings of most PUA types are compatible and good things. But insofar as the PUA culture includes beliefs like "men are owed more sex" I don't think the reactions of Alicorn and others are that off-base.)
I agree that there is compatibility between pickup and feminism that is under-explored.
Both PUAs and feminists are heavily focused on the same thing: the needs and preferences of women, and how men can fulfill them. The amount of time and effort PUAs spend trying to figure out and cater to women's sexual desires is crazy. Furthermore, they often consciously make a choice to develop aspects of their personalities and identities that they know will be attractive to women.
Yet PUAs differ from feminists in their views of what women's preferences actually are. PUAs assess female criteria from what women respond to, which may not be the same as stated female criteria. Also, even though PUAs attempt to fulfill a subset of women's desires, they are not always trying to fulfill all of women's desires all the time.
Both PUAs and feminists make some errors in assessing female preferences, but feminists are more wrong: I would give PUAs a B+ and feminists an F (see this and this for some research on female preferences). (On average, feminist women differ from typical straight women. For instance, feminists are probably more likely to have gender atypical gender expression and values, so it's not a stretch to think that they might have gender atypical preferences also. As a result, feminists, particularly feminists who criticize pickup, may be out of touch with typical straight women, and fail to recognize how the aggregate preferences of their sisters are incentivizing the very male behavior that they condemn. I've seen some feminists admit that they are attracted to traditionally masculine or dominant behavior in men, but I've never seen them also think through the implications of their preferences and the incentive structure that they enforce on males.)
Contrary to the guess in your post that PUA culture might include beliefs that men are owed more sex, my impression is that PUAs want women to have sex with them not because of a feeling of obligation, but because they have fulfilled female criteria for having sex.
Some PUAs believe that they "deserve" sex in general, but what they seem to mean is that they are "worthy" of sex, not that they deserve to have sex with any particular women. Other PUAs explicitly disavow the idea that they deserve anything:
...
The whole approach of seduction, as I understand it, is to raise the chance of women wanting to have sex with you for reason of being attracted to you and comfortable having sex with you. PUAs want women to want them.
This approach is not only more ethical than (a) trying to get consent to sex by bypassing women's sexual and emotional preferences (e.g. obligation, prostitution), or (b) trying to coerce women into have sex without consent... it also wins way more and sounds rather feminist!
These discussions are always difficult because they involve comparing movements and schools of thought rather than propositions. PUA culture definitely includes lots of people without especially misogynist ideas. But it also is going to include people who really do have anti-women sentiments.
Feminism is almost certainly more diverse. You seem more involved in those conversations than I am at this point so I'm sure you know this. So why do you think the feminist view on female match preferences is so contrary to the studies you list? I guess there are probably radical feminists who hold views about power dynamics in relationships which would contradict those studies- but surely liberal feminists (where I include myself) don't give a shit about the mating preferences of anyone. Obviously there are views in both camps that can't be reconciled, but I think the best of both can be.
Great blog btw. Is there a post or a series of posts that will summarize your criticisms of feminism? You list of agreements on the site is almost enough for me to want to count you as a feminist.
Thanks... I plan on getting back to this post soon, either here or on my blog, and if I don't feel free to bug me.
Just curious, did you ever followup on this?
I'm actually writing up some stuff for my blog that addresses these issues. I'll link when it's up.
Ok, here we go...
Here is an older post on my blog criticizing feminists who reduce women's preferences down to a desire for "respect" from men, and who deny that there are salient sex differences in women's preferences.
The same tropes came up in recent debate between feminists and PUAs, where the feminists denied that anything PUAs do is actually attractive to women. (Generalizing from their own preferences, with no references to any sort of empirical evidence.)
See my responses here, here, and here. There are a few more in the thread, too.
The 'off base' part is the 'insofar as'. Objections, even valid objections can be off base if they are red herrings, objections to positions that really aren't held or being expressed in the context.
Of those analogies, it is ironic that '1)' and '3)' are actually among the first misconceptions that an analogous PUA instructor would drill out of a student. Covert contracts and supplication are terrible strategies and far more prevalent in conventional wisdom than in PUA subcultures.
All this might be the case. Like I said I don't think the PUA stuff is necessarily anti-feminist. But a lot of the commenters here do a pretty good job of being targets for these objections. Put it this way, it isn't a surprise we're seeing this reaction given some of the things that have been said.
Edit: Adding that this entire discussion just looks like people seeing political signaling and then jumping on their respective bandwagons.
I'd like to read more on this, but I couldn't figure out from your comment whether it refers to a real-world event or it's just pure fiction -- all Google searches I tried lead to this comment. If what you wrote above is based on a real event, could you post a link to it?
(To clarify -- I'm interested in salesmanship proper, not in getting laid.)
Analogy City is hypothetical.
Yes, I understand that -- I was wondering about the "Among what they teach" part.
Yes, as far as I know I made the whole thing up. There are programs at shelters which teach the homeless and recently homeless job interview skills and sometimes a trade. But I don't know of anything involving salesmen.
The 'Among what they teach' part was constructed more by translating objections through the analogy than by any significant reference to the reality of salesmanship. I do not think you can glean too much information about salesmanship from the comment in question.
I would be disappointed if you refrained from making this kind of contribution independently of the author out of deference to social bullying.
All these posts referring to people selling themselves as products and so on reflect an extremely commodified view of sex, which can be very harmful. I wouldn't continue with this analogy.
Well, understanding the relationship between men approaching with romantic interest, and salespeople approaching is very important, because men have a good understanding of -- and sympathy about -- the latter. I think the insight the analogy yields outweighs the negative connotations.
I'm a man, and I have little understanding and no special sympathy for salespeople, nor did I ever think of my romantic aspirations in terms of selling myself. I only ever had success when I stopped pursuing.
I meant sympathy for people being approached by salespeople. It's an especially important dynamic at play because women (supposedly) like being approached by some kinds of men, while (supposedly) view the others as similar to salespeople. So what makes a kind of advance wanted or unwanted? Therein lies the problem.
Oh, I see. I got the analogy backwards. (Should have reviewed the thread, obviously.)
Receiving an irritating hard sell isn't anywhere near as threatening as receiving unwanted persistent sexual attention. The latter is an implicit threat of bodily harm. Even momentary unwanted sexual attention isn't like an unwanted sales pitch, because the fear is that it will turn into a longer interaction.
Yes, but unlike unwanted sales, unwanted sexual attention is counterbalanced by instances of wanted sexual attention, including when the "wantedness" gradually develops; while many people on principle refused to buy products pushed on them personally (e.g. through telemarketing), no matter how good the product might be.
Good point. That's why expected value is important. The problem is that with typical straight women, bland approaches and pursuit often doesn't work very well.
As a result, the practice of men making non-bland approaches may be good for women on average in the big picture. How can that be?
Let's assume that typical women require a behavior of type X to be attracted to a guy (or X, if not completely required, is very effective relative to other behaviors in attracting women). Yet women are creeped out when they are approached by men who display behavior X if those men also exhibit unattractive quality Y, or lack overall attractiveness from non-X sources.
If so, we might have a very strange looking situation where most of the time, a man displaying X towards a woman will creep her out, yet simultaneously, a surprisingly high percentage of women are actually dating guys with behavior X!
For someone to find a relationship, they need a reasonable pool of potential partners to select from. If the practice of men approaching and pursuing women in non-bland ways helps women get this pool of potential boyfriends, then that could be a good thing for women, even if results in creeping women out a lot of the time.
What are the ethics of guys displaying behavior X when P( creepy | guy displays X ) = 90% but also P( guy displays X | guy is a boyfriend ) = 90%? I think it can be ethical, but it depends. If there is a similar behavior Z such that P( creepy | guy displays Z ) = 70% but also P( guy displays Z | guy is a boyfriend ) = 90%, then I think X becomes unethical because there is now a viable less-creepy alternative.
And this is only talking women's interests, not men's. There is an optimal level of creepiness-risk in male approaches that gives women the pool of potential suitors they need to find boyfriends. Yet depending on how the numbers work out, that level of creepiness risk might be enough that women, especially of increasing attractiveness, are going to get creeped out a lot of the time by men employing high-risk, high-reward strategies to get them above the bland, just-another-guy threshold.
Disclaimer 1: There are many, many ways of approaching women that are both potentially creepy and which don't even have a chance of working, such as catcalls. The expected value of these approaches is negative, and as a result they should be expunged from the male behavioral repertoire. Males exhibiting these behaviors need to be shown viable alternatives. While their behavior is oppressive to women, in a way they are also victims of oppression because their culture or subculture has inflicted maladaptive mating behaviors on them.
Disclaimer 2: Some women don't want roguish boyfriends who sweep them off their feet, yet must endure such approaches from men who are simply doing the kind of thing that works with the majority of women. I feel sorry for these women, but I think their main beef is with other women and the incentives they provide men: women with atypical preferences in men are victims of a tyranny of the majority in the female election of male behavior.
It is reasonable for men to approach women in ways that (they have good reason to believe) will have positive expected value with the majority of women (as long as they are willing to back off or tone things down if they are making a woman uncomfortable). A possible solution for atypical women is to find some way of signaling their preferences in men prior to being approached, by style of dress or subcultural affiliation, and I think plenty of women already do this, e.g. dressing like a hipster) girl signals that she wants to be approached by hipster guys who adhere to hipster norms of behavior.
For most people, male or female, it is probably better to receive too much sexual attention than too little (assuming that we are talking just about attention, not about sexual violence). If you do not receive sexual attention, you do not have sex, and you do not have relationships. For people who want these things (the vast majority of people), going without tends to hurt their mental health and warp their self-image.
Also, many people do buy from telemarketers, and many people would never want unsolicited sexual attention. I'm not convinced you're talking about the ordinary cases here.
Most of those purchases from telemarketers are species of akrasia: they don't want to buy, but they feel impolite saying no. They would prefer the calls not happen in the first place, unlike women, who do prefer males to initiate some relationships with them.
And I'm not sure you're using the term "sexual attention" correctly. It doesn't mean "offer/request for sex"; in this context, it just means any approach with romantic intentions that could ultimately lead to sex. To not want sexual attention means to not want any romantic partner, at least where you are not the initiator.
So I don't think that's a relevant observation to my point.
Speaking of your unusual perceptions of the ordinary case, were you really serious when claiming that you see a 50/50 female split in playing Magic and at rpg conventions? You must be the only one in the world who sees this!
Could you explain more explicitly what this problem is? There are two meanings I could extract. One of which I would object to (but suspect you did not intend.)
Well, let me restate the problem: the best way for men to understand what women go through regarding unwanted sexual attention, is (supposedly) to think of how we regard salespeople. However, this analogy has a critical flaw in that women do not universally hate suitors who make advances, but only some of them, while people in general do hate salespeople, telemarketers, spammers, etc., irrespective of the merit of the product they're selling.
The problem is to find a unified theory for what makes these different kinds of advances garner so much hated -- or not.
I don't think that's the problem. If advancing induces hatred in the woman, she was not likely to want you if you approached her in a different way (though if someone's on the fence, having some finess can help). I think the decision of whether or not a woman wants the advance at all is made relatively quickly. The real problem is to find a unified theory of how women want men to be, a much harder sell for men in the self-help section.
I can understand that much, but that still leaves a question unresolved. Let me put it this way: Would you say women dislike being approached by salespeople and telemarketers in a different (and stronger) way than they dislike being approached by men they're not interested in? Or are they in the same category?
What if you compared pushy salespeople to pushy suitors that women have decided they're not interested in (at least not at the moment)?
What if you compared salespeople to suitors that the woman not only isn't interested in, but considers out of her league entirely (i.e. below her)?
Salespeople are wanted if you have explicitly gone into a store expecting to buy a certain kind of product. Then they are helpful sources of localised information. You want what they have and went looking for it.
Salepeople are not wanted if they are intruding and trying to push a product on you when you were not looking for it. If the methods or product are particularly offensive - that just adds insult to an already unwanted situation.
If you prefer, you could frame it as an audition to join a band...
Better. Not ideal, but better.
I've never really grasped the 'objectification' concept, but does this count?
Yes.
Surely this is objectifying the sex, not the participants?
Eh, whatever. It's kind of a silly analogy anyway, because commercial transactions involve persuading people to do things they don't like doing (paying money, giving away goods) in exchange for other things.
Could you point out where someone made that mental leap in this convo? I didn't notice it.
It's not made explicitly here. I don't accuse anyone present of making this leap, but it seemed worth warning against.
I agree that such a mental leap would be a big problem, but I don't think such a leap is implied by cousin_it's post, so I'm not entirely sure why you are bringing it up. Part of the problem of sales is that the target market is not obligated to buy.
Yet I do think your post raises a good point: sales and seduction have different ethical constraints. I believe that truly ethical seduction requires not merely consent, but enthusiastic consent, and minimization of reasonably predictable "buyer's remorse" after the fact. Sales is not always held up to the standard of enthusiasm and minimization of remorse on the part of the buyer (but perhaps it should be).
We have (at least in my country) consumer protection laws. One of them says you can return a product within 14 days of purchase and receive your money back. With this, I think ethical sales standards are fine as they are. Since it's not applicable to the seduction "market", it should be held to the highest ethical standard.
I don't approve of rape and I also despise seeing it used fallaciously to support a political agenda.
I didn't see her doing that.
Can you explain how you think I am fallaciously using rape to support a political agenda, if you think I'm doing that?
Silas explained one of the reasons this particular analogy doesn't hold. (You also argue against a straw man.)
As for political agenda: This is not the first time you have made statements of the kind <support of efforts towards developing male social skills> should be considered <negative feminist language up to and including rape>. I greatly prefer your insights into rationality over your comments on anything to do with males. The quality of reasoning is almost incomparable.
I will now attempt to clarify:
Males developing social skills is great. Social skills are wonderful, rewarding things to have, and I think anybody who would like to learn to interact with other people politely and pleasantly should.
"Social skills as possessed by men (who are attracted to women)" is a much broader category than "the ability to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women (who are attracted to men)". You can use social skills to interact with family members, platonic friends, co-workers, neighbors, classmates, teachers, strangers, students, clients, employees, bosses, fellow members of any club or other social or hobby organization, and any other class of person you will ever interact with. Potential mates are only one of these categories, although of course there is overlap.
Social skills as used by men to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women do not consist entirely of things I would describe with "negative feminist language". Many of these skills are, at least potentially, honest, respectful, and non-threatening.
The attitude that the "target market" of the "product" of the man attempting to pitch himself as a potential mate owes him something is the attitude that I condemn. If nobody has this attitude around here - which is what I must think you're getting at by saying I argue against a straw man - that's great! My heebie-jeebies are for naught! I can walk the streets of Lesswrongburgh safe in the knowledge that no one thinks they are entitled to my attention, affection, personal charms, or set of body parts.
If someone in the studio audience does think that the men who have or want to learn these social skills are owed something by the women in whom they show interest, then I contend that this thought is dangerous because it can lead to evil behaviors, up to and including rape. Among the excuses trotted out by rapists, right up there with "she had on X article of clothing and was asking for it", are variations on "she owed me". So when there starts to be talk about women owing anything to sexually interested men, this starts to make me feel like an Israeli hearing chitchat about how the land my house sits on is owed to Palestine. People who think they are owed something might try to take it.
Do you mean social skills which are used (almost) exclusively for these purposes? Most social skills are general, and in fact are more important to have than narrowly applicable ones.
More to the point, this thought is wrong. (I agree that it feels unpleasant, but I don't know how much it actually leads to such behavior vs. being used to explain it afterwards.)
Good point, to be extent that the insights I've gained from resources intended for developing dating skills have been far more useful for life in general than specifically with women.
I like what you say here and agree that people believing they are 'owed' something in social interactions and particularly those related to mating is absurd.
I don't know how much such ungranted feelings of entitlement encourage rape. Honestly, I've a great faith in the ability of humans to rationalise whatever they do and suspect other claims would flow just as easily. But I do know that belief that you are owed something by the universe is a recipe for failure in general. More so from women who quite reasonably feel this as 'creepy' and guys as 'pathetic'.
I think it is justifiable in some interactions (not in mating). I feel that people owe it to me to behave with a minimum of politeness towards me. Certain social interactions impose a much higher standard, e.g. salesmen who walk up to me uninvited owe it to me to be very polite indeed and never to argue with me ("customer is always right").
I agree with what you're saying. The way I like to frame it is that I have expectations that people behave with a minimum of politeness towards me. I don't so much bother with considering other parts of the universe to 'owe me something' since that is futile. Instead I consider my social boundaries to be part of myself and something I am responsible for enforcing for no other reason than because I want to.
I seriously doubt there is anyone here who has committed rape or felt entitled to sex, for that reason. Here, what you find is a lot of men trying to overcome the lack of knowledge about how to get into a relationship. Men in that position are not the ones out committing rape, abusing girlfriends, abandoning their children, etc. Such victimizers already know how to get to the relationship step as second nature!
Now, with that said, there is a distantly-related (though not dangerous) feeling of entitlement that arises in discussions like these that needs to be addressed. Let me explain.
Let's say I'm told all throughout growing up, what is and is not appropriate behavior around women, and over time I internalize these rules, automatically identifying instances I see (of inappropriate behavior) as bad. This advice matches that given in popular, respected books about dating. And yet despite lots of interactions with women where I have romantic intent, I am utterly unable to generate interest in any of them.
First, let's get a few misunderstandings out of the way: Of course women are thinking, volitional beings who are not obligated to perform for anyone's sake and should not be viewed as slaves or property.
Even accepting all of that, one should anticipate that if I'm following the real female wants and expectations, and am an eligible, attractive male by conventional measures, that it should lead to some non-trivial fraction of these women developing interest. When none of them do, and when women flock in droves, full of desire, to the very same men who steamroll right over the rules I learned, and who appear to be extremely disrespectful toward women ... well, that's very strong evidence that I was not correctly taught what women do and don't want.
I believe that people are entitled to be correctly taught the social "rules of engagement". When men realize that the rules they were taught don't remotely mesh with reality, and they have to "go underground" to get the truth, they feel that they have been deprived of something to which they are entitled -- and I believe they are justified in feeling this way.
This feels nice (people who are like me aren't the raping kind!), and for that reason I suspect it. What evidence is there that such men, once they do get girlfriends/women, are less abusive than the general population?
Other than that I fully agree with your comment.
I don't see where Alicorn postulated a reason for men to feel entitled to sex – did you get the clauses reversed?
Plausibly nobody here has explicitly believed themselves to be entitled to sex, but I doubt none have implicitly held something like this attitude at some point.
I think the implicitly-held-similar belief is what I spelled out in the post: they believe they've "done their part to adhere to the standard they were taught", but have been rendered ineffective because they were lied to, and in the absence of that lie, they would ... have had more success. So, it follows, those others deprived them of that success.
Yes, but they may also resent women for not cooperating/rewarding them for following explicit social norms, for willfully being confusing, for cynically advocating (individually or, at least implicitly, as a unitary Matriarchy) these norms with no intent of rewarding them, and probably other similar things.
Okay, I agree with you on that, but that's already quite far from the "feeling entitled to sex" that you suggested before.
I think this is an irrational fear, if I may say so.
While I'm not an expert on violent crime, I am fairly sure that most of it is committed by people acting on impulse, not people who have intellectually convinced themselves they are owed something. I may for instance believe and argue I am owed more money by society, but that doesn't mean I'm about to rob a bank.
People should likewise be free to express the opinion that they are owed more sex, without that being interpreted as a threat of violence.
My understanding is that both parts are needed... to use your money example, if you feel that you're entitled to money, and you find a wallet sitting on the sidewalk, you may impulsively decide to take the money out of it rather than return it intact, but if you don't have that feeling of entitlement, you're much less likely to feel the impulse in the first place to take the money out of it.
Alternately, people get an impulse to rape because their instincts drive them to reproduce. For all that it doesn't work too well in this environment, for some reason the instincts have decided that force is the best route to reproductive success given their host's circumstances. The rest is just noise.
But does it work well in any environment? Someone, I forget where, once argued that rape in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness - where everyone knows everyone - would just get the rapist's skull bludgeoned in by the victim's friends or relatives.
(Though to be fair, a number of possible circumstances where this wouldn't be true could be imagined, I suppose...)
Off the top of my head:
1) When the rapist has sufficient status or allies to prevent negative consequences.
2) If the victim is of a rival group to that of the rapist. Different tribe. Different 'caste'. Different party within the same tribe.
3) The social rules don't enforce a rape taboo strongly. In many cultures rape is defended by family vengeance and not particularly by 'justice'.
4) The consequences to women don't make 'reporting and punishment' the expected outcome.
5) When 'rape' is defined differently to how it is defined by us. (eg. Wives, dates, underage, those under authority.)
6) If reproductive prospects look bleak the expected payoff doesn't need to be particularly high.
There are a great many circumstances where rape has low probability of retaliation. More than enough to justify it as a conditional strategy. In fact, listing out a few examples, it feels as if it's far more often true than not! (And remember that the EEA includes the last five or ten thousand years, during which humans lived in much larger communities and genes and especially memes changed significantly.)
First, a man may rape women from another tribe - and this is ubiquitous when opportunity is present, e.g. in war. This might also contribute to behavior with total strangers in today's society.
Second, many (older) cultures see women not as persons to be avenged but as valuable property to be guarded. If a woman is raped (and tells her relatives), and the rapist isn't completely without connections himself, then a common outcome may be marrying the two. If a woman's bridal value is much lowered once she is not a virgin, this is her only marriage option that brings the virginal-value. OTOH, retaliation's only benefit is in deterrence, which isn't immediately valuable; usually, for vengeance to take place, you need a social custom requiring vengeance - such as in 'honor' cultures.
Third, if the rapist is powerful enough (via relatives, money, social position), such as nobility, he can rape any lower-status woman with impunity and settle the matter with perhaps some money, or just ignore it. Some social systems explicitly allow this in law (e.g., European nobility vs. commoners).
Fourth, if there are no witnesses, many cultures' law would not take a woman's word over a man's. In which case, most cultures would prevent private, illegal vengeance.
Fifth, if a man rapes his wife (or girlfriend), traditional society sees no wrong, and there is often noone to avenge her. (Most modern rapes are commited by husbands/boyfriends/dates.)
I could go on and on...
This is pretty much what I was thinking - if the societal environment is such that there's an instinctual impression that rape is efficient, the societal environment needs to change.
I could write more about that kind of thing, but I actually have a link to an excellent blog post on the topic, so go read what Harriet has to say about it.
Are we sure of that? Is there an analysis of the contribution of rape towards inclusive genetic fitness in modern Western society?
Let us agree that neither the person interested in sex, nor any third party, may in any way compel anyone to provide sex to them. And no-one has promised to have sex and then reneged on the non-enforceable promise. Then what is the meaning of "being owed more sex"?
People aren't obliged to speak sense, either!
I'm afraid I don't see the relevance of this... Sorry if I missed a joke or something.
If there's any doubt, my question was genuine, not rhetorical. I could speculate on what it might mean to be owed sex but instead I'd like to hear from others. Since people defend the freedom to express the opinion that sex is owed sometimes, I thought someone here felt that this is a meaningful opinion?
"I am owed more sex" might express an attitude of entitlement, resentment, etc., not a proposition that the speaker would draw long chains of inference from, or be able to explain how to cash out. I think this is something like wedrifid's point.
I disagree for most values of "obliged".
And for certain values of "sense".
A couple of points:
Although most crimes of battery, murder, etc. can be classified as crimes of passion, a ton of rape is "date rape". It can take place in ambiguous circumstances, without nearly as much violence as might be anticipated. I'm therefore uncertain how well you can apply statements about violent crimes to rape in general.
Bank robbery has a higher clearance rate than rape. Many rapists are never reported, much less caught and convicted. Bank robberies are generally pretty high-profile events; it's hard for one to go by without anyone knowing it has occurred.
The following looks like a plausible line of reasoning to me: 1. I am owed more sex from people who I'm interested in, such as Woman X. 2. Woman X will not have sex with me, and in so refraining, denies me something I am owed. 3. In general, it is appropriate to arrange to take things from people who will not give them when they are owed. For instance, if Woman X owed me five hundred dollars, I would be justified in bringing in authorities to oblige her to give me five hundred dollars. 4. The law will not compel Woman X to have sex with me. 5. When the law will not address injustices, such as failing to discharge an obligation, it is permissible for private citizens to address the injustice. 6. Compelling Woman X to have sex with me would be taking from her something that she owes me. 7. I can compel Woman X to have sex with me.
Sure, you could stop at any point in this chain of reasoning, reject some inference and avoid #7. But the subset of people who won't, may do serious harm to poor Woman X - who never owed anyone anything.
It is your opinion that Woman X never owed anyone anything -- but the fact that you (and probably most people) feel that way is not sufficient justification for making the contrary opinion (premise #1) a thought crime.
Keep in mind that among the things we are in the business of doing here are (1) critically examining ethical intuitions, and (2) proposing and exploring potential means of (ultimately) improving the world that may not necessarily strike us immediately as "tasteful".
My feeling is that someone ought to be permitted on LW to argue, for example, that the law should compel Woman X to have sex in some circumstances. Suppose for instance that some commenter were to float the idea of sex as a form of judicially enforced community service for those convicted of certain crimes (perhaps as an alternative to incarceration). Would you consider this idea so dangerous that it ought to be censored, for fear of encouraging rape or sexual assault? I'm guessing (hoping) you wouldn't , even though it's clearly an example of discussing sex as an obligation, in a way quite foreign (even opposed) to the norms of our current society.
I would consider that okay (though quite distasteful) so long as it stayed very clearly hypothetical. (I suspect that such a discussion would result in a better clarification of why we consider rape unacceptable, which I'd find useful.) The original point about it being acceptable for men to consider themselves entitled to sex was clearly not hypothetical and not obviously intended to spark such a discussion.
I'd also like to point out that in one of EY's stories, he mentioned that rape was legalized. I have a feeling that if he had chosen to expand on that and provide more of a description or a rationalization, and even if they weren't very good or complete, no one would have been asking to censor the whole post.
Personally, I think prostitution should be legal and regulated, like it is in Germany. Then the utilons would be money, not punishment. Seems strange to imagine forcing criminal women to trade sex for utilons when there already are normal women who do without coercion. I also wonder what a bored woman would do that a fleshlight don't.
We don't need compelled sex. We need more sex toys for men!
Yes. Anyone should be permitted to argue anything, so long as there is a (new and reasonable) argument towards a desirable goal (and not, e.g., "that way I'd get more sex" [at the expense of women]). Lacking any such argument though, any idea such as your example should be modded down to the nether hells and torn apart in replies (and I believe would be).
I believe that such treatment, showing rape is very much against the social code, would improve the meme pool more than censoring/prohibiting mention of it - which tends to give rise to theories of secret unvoiced support for politically incorrect opinions.
Of course, if such baseless suggestions were posted more than once or twice, we might ban further pointless discussions because they'd be, well, pointless (as well as rather offtopic).
Wow. That is an out there 'guess'. I would definitely expect attempts even here to censor that kind of thinking. I personally would not consider the suggestion dangerous. But while I wouldn't desire censorship this may be an instance where I refrained from reacting to censorship demands and from refuting any emotive less-than rational objections. In fact, I would actually argue that scenario is rape.
I think one of us is mis-parsing what K said... as I understand it he was guessing that Alicorn would not demand that the proposed conversation be censored, not that she'd consider the proposed scenario an acceptable one, or something other than rape.
I do not believe that most rapists stop, before the act, to justify it by an elaborate rational chain. Even if they come up with it afterwards, when accused, I don't think it can be called the cause of the rape. At most you could say it's an enabler, but I'm not even convinced of that.
The real problem that I see is that people saying things like this may effectively support publicly accused rapists, in the courts and in public debates. (Which does not mean that's what these people mean or want!) And this effect on "public" opinion causes an increases in rapes. (Or prevents a decrease, rather.)
As far as I can see (and in line with Hansonian explanation styles :-), a better and simpler explanation of rapes is that rapists don't expect to be condemned or punished by others. And not that they can prove to themselves it's a permissible act under some ethical system.
Further, false accusations of rape give cover to actual rapists. Because it's credible that Kobe Bryant was falsely accused, he can buy off his accuser for (to him) a small amount of money.
You don't see too many false accusations of bank robbery :)
I would like it if I could stop people having (or at least expressing) an attitude of entitlement. Unfortunately it is easier to condemn such thoughts in low status people than high. It's the high status people with entitlement that are the real danger. They'll, say, take over the country. That sort of thing.
Unless I missed it, this is a claim no one has made. There is a very clear distinction between spreading memes that increase the likelihood of violence and making a threat. Obviously claims of desert don't necessarily entail a threatening violence to take the deserts- but that doesn't mean popularizing some memes doesn't have bad consequences. This is fairly basic memetics and how we account for a great deal of behavior. There might also be some positive consequence to spreading such memes but so far no one has argued that claiming loveless men are owed more sex will actually lead to any kind of beneficial change.
This is a very good clarification. Something can be dangerous without actually being a threat, and in fact the response here has been what I'd expect for an indirect danger - I don't know about anyone else, but I don't usually stick around to try to educate someone who's actually threatening me, or causing me to be in immediate danger.
Think of it as the difference between teaching people to hotwire cars, and actually stealing them - the former might not actually harm the car owners in question, but they're unlikely to think kindly of someone who does it.
Let me again quote from Alicorn's comment:
The comment clearly expresses the fear that someone who says or thinks they are owed more sex from women -- and, keep in mind, that could be something along the lines of "I don't think that women are doing their part in alleviating the suffering I feel as a result of not having access to sex" -- may be led to "evil behaviors, up to and including rape". I think that -- at least in the context of this site -- that fear is unfounded, perhaps even slightly on the paranoid side. (Of course I hesitate to say a thing like that, as an anxiety sufferer, throwing stones from my glass house!) In any case I feel reasonably confident in asserting that neither Alicorn nor anyone else stands more than an infinitesimally small chance of being raped by a lonely Less Wrong participant holding the above misguided opinion. Indeed (and to answer some other commenters), I suspect that the proportion of potential rapists among the people who hold that opinion is probably so small that even if all rapes were attributable to the holding of that opinion by the perpetrator, that still wouldn't justify censoring the opinion itself (and thereby failing to even consider the question of whether lack of access to sex is a legitimate ethical problem worth solving).
This is also a larger debate (about whether and how to stop the spread of memes which may have harmful effects) which transcends the specific issues here. It applies even to memes that are definitely good in some contexts, e.g. atheism.
Robin Hanson implies this -- or at least raises the question -- quite regularly. See here for the most recent example.
This isn't a clean dichotomy. Verbal argument might help to maintain and strengthen someone's feelings of entitlement, resentment, and rage, until these feelings reach the point of motivating a rape (or any kind of violent act) that wouldn't otherwise have occurred.
I'm not expressing an opinion on the actual issue, but this is somewhat a strawman. The more defensible version of the argument is that some land is owned by particular, sometimes identifiable Palestinians.
Yeah, I know. As I typed the example, I was thinking "this is a lousy example but I have no superior ones at the moment". Any suggestions for a replacement?
A wealthy person being told he owes money to the government, or to the poor? It could even be someone who won the lottery (the way attractive people won the genetic lottery). But then is taxing lottery winners analogous to forcing women into sex? There's another implication here as well, in that if taxation isn't theft then forced promiscuity doesn't seem to be rape. In retrospect, a most unpleasant analogy that thankfully breaks down under a more nuanced view of property (wish I had more time to refine this comment).
Well, if Alicorn was an Israeli settler in the Gaza Strip, then people around her might well feel entitled to the land beneath her house. And she might definitely have some reason to worry about it. That's kind of a "tribal" attitude really, but it's what the issue is all about.
People who argue that a wife owes obedience to her husband. And incidentally sex.
Using a sex example would kind of ruin the point of having an analogy at all.
You're right. How about: people who claim I owe three years' servitude at risk of life and limb, in the service of "my country".
(Actually, that should be "owed", because they did get what they wanted. But that distracts from the analogy.)
I've heard that lifetime incidence of being raped for women is about 3% worldwide. I expect it's considerably less in orderly societies. I definitely consider that high enough that were I a woman, rape would come to mind when thinking of frustrated males.
That said, there are a lot of steps between approaching women out of sexual interest, and rape. I imagine anyone capable of being reached by anti-rape arguments is not a psychopath; I also imagine that only psychopaths actually rape.
I'm also reminded of the recent woman-killer who brought a gun to his gym. Apparently he really did feel that (young?) women as a class owed him some level of sexual validation. It's true that this is rubbish thinking.
Except for some form of therapy+prostitution that doesn't exist except in science fiction, I don't see any help for men who go berserk to the extent of raping+killing in response to general rejection except certainty of punishment, which is any case useless against those who've already decided to off themselves. Perhaps a more convenient and self-only way of killing themselves could be made available.
I really doubt this; surely acculturation against (or for) rape has an effect.
Agreed; implicit context was a society where rape is punished.
That's much lower than the estimates I usually see. E.g., the Wikipedia article Estimates of sexual violence quotes a self-reported rate of 14.8% lifetime incidence among U.S. women, not counting failed rape attempts. This refers to this study[1], which quotes two previous studies with similar results, and also estimates a 22% lifetime incidence rate under a broader definition of sexual assault.
There are whole countries out there where the rape incidence in any single year is far above 3%. Even putting "unstable" countries and temporary situations (those lasting one generation or less) aside, there are many societies where the structure of marriage is such that we ought to estimate a daily incidence of rape, perhaps far above 50%.
[1] Tjaden P, Thoennes N. Full report of the prevalence, incidence and consequences of violence against women: findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Washington, DC, National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000 (NCJ 183781).
I wonder where I read 3% (it was very recent) - unfortunately all I can see now are order-of-magnitude higher estimates for what i presume is the broader category of "sexual assault".
You're right.
I found my "source" - it was a blog comment
I've seen 4-10% elsewhere.
That comment uses the figure quoted by the previous comment. But look at the pdf linked there for the UN report - that's not a number of rapes, that's a number of "crimes recorded in criminal police statistics!" No wonder it's much lower than the real figure. (I don't even know if it includes all reports/accusations or just counts found guilty by a court.)
Incidentally that document is missing some of the more interesting statistics for the US, while it has them for other countries. "Rape average prison sentence served" is one.
Yeah, exactly. So these efforts are wasted on me, since after all, I'm not a psychopath. Why, if I could push a button that would KILL all the psychopaths, I'd do it!
Wait...
I finally read the linked scenario. It's fun, but I'm not sure what to take from it.
It's scary to imagine people really believing in overarching arbitrary rules that a sane person would only consider in hypothetical philosophy play. I guess some religions encourage it, but thankfully they usually come with enough hypocrisy or compartmentalization to avoid the fearful consequence.
Heh, I was just trying to be funny, not even really trying to relate to your post.
Personally, I just think the very idea of the psychopath button scenario is funny: "Yes, I'd love to be responsible for the death of all mass-murderers ... no, wait, that makes me a ..."
There is certainly a degree of irony. But pushing that button out of moral concerns proves that you are not a psychopath, irrespective of whether it is an immoral act.
I've heard considerably higher quoted statistics for "sexual assault" (one in four women, it is said, will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime). I don't know what percentage of sexual assault cases are "actual" rape, though all things that fall under the sexual assault umbrella are frightening.
Don't think that, unless in so thinking, you also think that "a psychopath" can be a functional, indistinguishable member of society who you'd never once know even through extended association unless he happened to tell you about that one time at that frat party (or whenever).
This. I know or have known three people who survived rapes and were comfortable enough with me to tell me details of the situations. One was in a mental institution, and was raped by the staff - I don't know much about the details in that situation, but the person or people involved were indistinguishable enough to be employed in that situation. Another friend was assaulted by her twin brother when they were teenagers; other than that, to hear her talk about him he doesn't sound psychopathic at all. The situation I know the most about involves a friend who, as a teenager, passed out from hunger in the presence of a male acquaintance - almost a 1:1 correspondence with the 'lost wallet' scenario. We've talked at some length about him, since he tried to get back in touch with her recently, and while he has quite the sense or entitlement and is in denial about the situation, he's pretty definitely not a psychopath. (Unless I'm very much misremembering my research on psychopathy, psychopaths don't do denial in the same way he was doing it, if at all.)
Completely correct. I speak not just from reading about it, but also from knowing one woman (that I know of) who was assaulted and the case quite clearly did not involve psychopaths. It involved a gang of ordinary teenage boys egging each other on when she was in their power.
Rape is (statistically) normal human male behavior, and is not correlated with any diagnosable psychological or physiological condition that I know of.
I do indeed think psychopaths aren't readily detected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_surrogate
Sadly, this is not true.
That seems entirely off-base to me.
Well... you're absolutely right! I'm on my second project right now, and would never dream of guilt-tripping a client into a sale :-) But still, a lot of successful projects get started without much regard for ethics. This especially applies to online communities: LessWrong's launch is actually an outlier. Creating hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to simulate active life on the site is pretty much standard industry practice, Myspace got its startup push from a huge spam emailing (insider info I saw somewhere), etc. Because the choice is either this or 5 visitors/day, month after month, who look at your comatose website and leave.
For an especially clear-cut example, SEO is certainly unethical from the customer's point of view, but I absolutely have to do it, and will. Sounds a bit like PUA practices, no?
SEO is not unethical when it focuses on findability. Making your site reachable by the people who are looking for it is not manipulative - it's just good customer service.
If you are doing something unethical, you should reconsider whether you "have to" do it. Hurting your customers is not good business, and you're making yourself an enemy of the people you purport to help.
I have been unable to find folks who'll verify this for me. I'm pretty well-read on Internet startups, and I've never found a serious source suggesting it.
This InformationWeek article cites Sanford Wallace as the source of this rumor, and I was unable to find anyone else claming this happened. Given his reputation, I seriously doubt this is true.
I think it's quite possible in principle to be successful at pickup and seduction, even for beginners, while maintaining regard to ethics. I run a quick expected value calculation on just about anything I do.
The reason it is difficult in practice is because some of the ethical standards applied to men learning conscious seduction are bogus and would not hold up if applied to female mating behavior, or to naturally skilled men who do exactly the same thing unconsciously. Such standards would ban large swathes of human social behavior if applied consistently.
Applying a reasonable moral framework is not much of an impediment to learning and practicing seduction, yet there are certain bloated, anachronistic, non-reality-based, moral frameworks that are. In the extreme, we can see radical feminists John Stoltenberg and Robert Jensen who have come to believe that participating in heterosexual sex is currently unethical because it is so oppressive to women, and turned towards celibacy (Jensen's essay is titled "Patriarchal Sex," but I don't see it available online for free anywhere).