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Alicorn comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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Comments (568)
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.
Sorry, didn't see your comment before I posted mine! You pretty much summed it up.
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.
Oh! Of course, that looks the correct reading. I've been silly for not understanding :-/
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.
Not at all. I'm talking about my reactions and also saying I would have a different guess as to whether someone (be that Alicorn or not) would make moves in the direction of censorship. I would have been clearer if I quoted the particular statement which prompted my reply.
I wish to point out that there is an important difference between censorship and saying that something ought not to be said. Censorship is taking steps to prevent the saying of a thing, or prevent it from being readily heard by interested audience members. Saying that a thing ought to be said does not call for censorship, nor imply that censorship is called for. For instance, I do not think that people ought to tell strangers on the street to smile, and I encourage people to refrain from doing that. I do not advocate preventing anyone who wishes to ignore this encouragement from telling others to smile, nor do I want to somehow protect all possible recipients of the smiling instruction from exposure thereto.
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.)
That might be analogous, but I have never lived in any location that drafts women and I have an unusually strong negative reaction to the idea of military service in general, and so I can't know for sure.
Israel does, although it's possible for women to get out of it if they really try.
Then the analogy serves it's purpose, doesn't it?
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.