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Multiheaded comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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<Bile-spewing rad-fem mode ON! Be warned, I'm not sure I quite get radical feminist thought, so this is a test run.>
I have few doubts here. Indeed this perverse logic looks simple to me, as I am habitually terribly disrespectful to my ideological opponents - so I automatically assumed that the "Dude" above, who presumably counts himself among the savvy "Bigots", went for as much cynicism as possible. So the phrase "disrespect women" should not be taken as a decent modern person would, at face value - "treat them worse than their character and behavior could justly warrant".
Instead, you should assume that our oh-so-savvy Dude considers men to be entirely sex-driven, and indifferent/hostile towards the Other that is a woman's personality, individuality, etc, and so a woman is an entirely commodified barrier (a walking, talking tax) to a rare and precious resource - Consequence-Controlled Sex.
"Risky" sex is more available but the patriarchal society taxes/fines it with a whole lot of potential troubles, so such selfish and casually misogynistic men must go for the safer option, which is bundled with the sacred function of childbirth. So by such a roundabout way the women as a group can get the "respect" of the patriarchal society - it trickles down from the market value of their bodies, and that's it - men aren't taught to seek anything else, instead they're just given the carrot of "proper" sex and the stick of unintended pregnancies of STD.
Gotta love them old good traditional values! They're full of such harmony and beauty, and are totally not quick, dirty, cynical hacks!
P.S.: (looks up and finally notices MixedNuts' username) - might I be preaching to the choir with this?
<Switching rad-fem mode to SLEEP.>
I think the reasoning under "disrespect woman" is as follows:
1) Increased availability of birth control leads to an increased frequency of non-marital sex.
2) Increased non-marital sex must be caused by social pressure on women to have non-marital sex.
3) Social pressure on women to have non-marital sex at a higher frequency than the women "naturally" desire is not respectful to women.
From most feminist perspectives, (1) and (3) seem like reasonable predictions / moral assertions. Step 2 is filled with some noteworthy implicit assertions about how sexual relations are and should be negotiated - for one thing, there's not much female agency in that story.
I'm not sure how much, if at all, that my interpretation differs from yours, except that it doesn't directly require different understandings of words (i.e. "disrespect") than a feminist might use.
I'd add that the "patriarchal" thinking can get perverse enough that 2) might be replaced with "the disappearance of the risk of pregnancy removes the barrier to women's naturally wanton and irresponsible sexuality", so that 3) becomes "if men see the woman's true, uncontrolled sexual nature, they'll disrespect her much as if they saw her uncovered, naked body; both states are savage and animal."
But your interpretation might work too - it's just that mine seems crazy and perverse enough to be the product of cultural adaptation/rationalization while yours is more logical. And damn, I swear I could see my version implied/assumed in the wording of some angry MRA/PUA rants I've read.
(Dear downvoters, what exactly are you opposing here?)
In other words, "I prefer mine because it makes a better strawman".
BTW, see here for a good description of the actual catholic position.
Strawman or not, TimS' version is still very problematic to a modern view of gender, as he says.
And more importantly, why do you believe that most people - especially in a traditional society - even care to apply logic and reflection when thinking about sex? So many other popular beliefs (on drugs, religion, etc) both then and now are full of cached thoughts, inherited memes etc. and lack rigorous reflection!
What does this have to do with it being or not being true?
You seam to be conflating the progressive/traditional distinction intellectual/popular distinction. There were a lot of smart people in the past (who would today be considered traditional) who thought about these things.
This is equally true in non-traditional societies.
It's a response to the charge of me intentionally picking the more strawman-like answer.
Sure, but in traditional societies reflection on sacred matters is officially discouraged, whereas in modern ones there's just the silent pressure to come to the approved conclusion - but many still decide not to! There are more patriarchally oriented people now in the 1st world than there were liberal people in the past.
If neither position is obviously insane and they just stem from different moral instincts, then there must be slightly more freedom of thought today along these axes.
That some didn't stop Christian theologians from doing an awful lot of reflection on sacred matters.
The sacred is a territory that a caste claims for themselves. The edict is about preventing outsiders from impinging on their turf, not one of preventing all from doing the reflection.
Modern scientists tend to take a similar attitude to outsiders who impinge on their turf.
But here the Pope is predicting how the "people" would react, presumably applying his cynicism and savvy.
My point is that over time the Church has acquired a decent working model of how humans behave in large groups.
Would anyone please challenge this? Are there other ways to construe the "disrespect women" line?
I took disrespect woman to mean "treat them worse than their character and behavior could justly warrant".
That's a reasonable definition of "disrespect."
Why should one believe that freely available birth control is likely to cause disrespect towards women?
Freely available birth control -> Fewer direct consequences to having sex -> Men have sex with more women -> Men more likely to think of women only as sexual objects
Why not state the conclusion here as: People have more sex. Just as men have more sexual partners, why wouldn't women have more sexual partners.
When phrased like that, the next conclusion (Women increasingly thought of as sex objects) requires a bit more justification. One could assert that women naturally have fewer partners than men, but surely some or most of that is explained by the relative ease of avoiding the consequences of pregnancy.
I was presenting a possible causal mechanism, not an argument. The argument is that the Pope's prediction did in fact come true.
In case it isn't clear, there is not agreement that the second prediction did come true.
(or the fourth. And the first is simply argument by definition).
Here is Catholic John C Wright describing what they mean.
Modern western societies have women integrated with men in most professions, whereas societies that highly limit sexual behavior with women seem to be the ones who turn women into something other than humans primarily.
Reqiuring women to be coevered head to toe if they appear in public, requiring them to only appear in public when they are with a man from their family who can protect them, and limiting their rights to own property, work, drive, and attend schools are all features of "highly moral" societies and essentially absent from "immoral" societies.
Doesn't this explanation rather rob women of agency ?
If you feel annoyed at the universe for robbing women of agency in this instance, go ahead. The universe doesn't care.
I was complaining about you, not the Universe. If your model of reality includes "women are automatons" as a feature, your model is not very likely to be correct.
"Agency" in this sense (social and moral agency, I'd call it) obviously =/= "Libertarian free will".
What does this have to do with the discussion?