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MugaSofer comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - Less Wrong
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Well, wearing attractive clothing might make you, y'know, more attractive, and thus a "better" target for the rapist. My point is that, as long as you value not -being-raped, it's a good idea to avoid any clothing that increases the odds of rape, whether because it makes it easier to get away with or for some other reason.
I think it is important not to conflate desirability risk and getting-away-with-it risk.
Being targeting because the perpetrator will get away with it - even if caught - is a societal failure mode. Often, it comes in the form "Society does not believe you are a crime victim because you were not behaving the social role that society expected of you." I challenge you to come up with even one other defensible (or actually defended) circumstance where failure to follow social roles leads to a captured perpetrator being released without appropriate punishment.
The social roles are particularly aggravating because the assigned roles are ridiculous.
- Don't dress like you are partying (even though you'd be ridiculous if you didn't).
- Don't drink alcohol (except that personal enjoyment is the purpose of the activity)
In short, don't go out and party at the club. Because enjoying yourself how you want to enjoy yourself is apparently not allowed.
Most importantly, the content of the social rules is outside the victim's control. Until she is the victim of rape, there's no way to know whether the outfit was "too sexy" or "very fashionable." It's hindsight bias and more concerned with enforcing social roles than protecting personal autonomy.
Personally, I suspect that desirability risk doesn't really exist. But regardless, getting-away-with-it-even-if-caught risk is not even vaguely under the victim's control. We ought to change society so that it doesn't exist.
... how?
Yes, it is. That's the whole point of this discussion: dressing a certain way can, to a certain extent, increase risk of rape; and it is reasonable to take this into account when choosing clothing.
Obviously. Until then, however...
Dressing in a certain way will make people believe you that you actually didn't consent to sex. But other than judging based on social rules, what is the relationship between consent and dress?
I'm open to additional evidence, but I suspect a rapist given a choice between the tipsy but extremely hot girl and the falling-down drunk but average girl will pick the average girl >90% of the time. This analysis assumes hotness is related to dress - which I think we all agree is true. But the advice "don't get falling-down drunk" is totally unrelated to "don't dress so that you look hot."
Plus, "Don't get falling-down drunk" is very controlling advice. And we don't acquit muggers because the victim was drunk.
No-one here is claiming that dress can absolve the rapist of blame.
No, but what is being claimed is that the very discussion of whether certain behaviors have an effect on the likelihood of rape creates groundwork that others often use to absolve the rapist of blame, and that it's far better to salt those fields than risk a derailing, even a Rationalist one.
To clarify: I'm not saying your argument isn't rational, or even factually correct. I'm attempting to provide information that will allow you to empathize with people who dismiss your argument out of hand, so that you can better see their map of the social landscape.
If sexy skirts increase the chances of rape, I want to believe that sexy skirts increase the chances of rape. If sexy skirts don't increase the chances of rape, I want to believe that sexy skirts don't increase the chances of rape. I don't care whether it creates a "groundwork" that some hypothetical others may use.
And if believing that "sexy skirts increase the chances of rape" increases the chances of rape, I want to believe that believing that "sexy skirts increase the chances of rape" increases the chances of rape. If believing that "sexy skirts increase the chances of rape" doesn't increase the chances of rape, I want to believe that believing that "sexy skirts increase the chances of rape" doesn't increase the chances of rape.
I mean that statement directly, AND as a reminder that social systems are rife with metacognition.
To explain more explicitly: because you and I are not perfectly rational beings, each belief that we hold does not operate in a vacuum. Holding a belief influences how we interact with other beliefs, in a cascade of interdependent loops. It is entirely possible for a fact to be technically true in the sense that you think you mean it, but to have implications when it interfaces with the rest of your belief system that are not, in fact, rational on the whole.
Being rational about fact X is less important than winning (by which I mean "achieving your goals", not "proving your superiority in an internet debate").
I agree with the gist of that, but:
1) I don't see very solid reasons for believing that "me believing sexy skirts increase the chances of rape" actually increases the chances of rape. There are probably cases where true beliefs have bad consequences, but this isn't on the top of the list.
2) When evaluating whether to believe a lie for the Greater Good, one shouldn't just consider the consequences of that lie considered in isolation, but also the consequences of increasing one's willingness to believe lies.
And here's where the problem actually lies:
It's not that "sexy skirts doesn't increase the chance of rape" is a lie. It's that "sexy skirts doesn't increase the chance of rape" is irrelevant when we're discussing the wrongness of rape, which is where that argument often pops up. The problem isn't that this argument is wrong, it's that this argument is hacking everyone's availability bias.
One of the more common tactics is in shifting the argument from the relevance of a fact, back onto the truth of a fact, and then relying on the fact that the human cognitive system will forget about the shift, and uptick both whenever an argument is made about either.
Does that make any sense?
It would seem to decrease the chance of rape. I mean... "Believe X has negative consequence Y. Consider Y when evaluating when to do X. Influence others to do the same. Expect less Y."
There are negative consequences of this true belief when held by people that also have false (and abhorrent) beliefs like "If sexy skirts increase the chance of rape then less blame, shame and punishment should be directed at rapists when they rape women (or men, I suppose) in sexy skirts".
Personally I prefer to see those abhorrent beliefs actively punished and shamed rather than forcing people to believe false things that put them or those they speak to in increased personal danger.
Oh, I know that. It's just best to avoid such confusion from the get-go. If Tim wants to argue our discussion here is itself dangerous that's one thing, but I'l be damned if he's going to strawman me.
My core assertion is that discussion of skirt length increases getting-away-with-it-even-if-caught risk. There's factual dispute about its effect on environmental risk.
I think the best predictor of rape (especially acquaintance rape) is opportunity. Generally, it isn't an accident when a guy ends up alone with a very drunk girl at a party. By contrast, pure sexiness is orders of magnitude less likely to increase rape risk.
Therefore, focusing on skirt-length in discussion of rape risk doesn't do much good in reducing rape risk. If pure sexiness is low enough environmental risk and group norms getting-away-with-it rape risk is large enough, discussing skirt-length increases rape risk.
That's an empirical question, for which we (a) lack sufficient data, and (b) have very different intuitions.
And my core assertion is that refusing to take into account skirt length, as you put it, is irrational and not the winning thing to do, which seems like a bad thing when losing results in, y'know, rape. Not that rapists are somehow innocent because their victim failed to discourage them. Their choices are their own, but so are ours; the universe doesn't care that they broke the rules, you still lose.
I think we need to separate our long-term and short-term goals.
To use an analogy: in the long term, we need to create a world where accidental death from hypothermia (among other things) is virtually impossible -- due to, say, satellite-guided nanotech. But in the short term, we don't live in such a world. Thus, when people go out cross-country skiing in the winter, they need to balance risks and rewards. Naturally, the safest course of action is not to ski at all, but this option sacrifices too much reward. The next best course is to go skiing anyway, while taking as many precautions as is practical. What counts as "practical" depends on the individuals involved, and on the weights they place on all the sub-tasks of skiing.
Similarly, a woman who goes out to a club faces a very real danger of rape. Rapists are part of the environment there, just as cold is part of the environment out in the wintry wilderness. Yes, we do need to change the world to eliminate this danger; but until that's done, every woman needs to balance risk and reward, and take as many precautions as possible without reducing the reward below her acceptability threshold.
Just as there are other options besides "go skiing alone without warm clothing" and "never ski at all", there are also other options besides "party as hard as you can" and "never party at all".
Sure.
But rapists are people, not forces of nature. And the particular worrying about environmental risk that comes out as "Don't dress too sexy" increases the getting-away-with-it-even-when-caught risk much more than it decreases environmental risk.
Plus, it emboldens the let's tolerate the local rapist vibe that makes reporting a rapist you know so much more difficult. Rapists aren't just environment. They are people in a community that the community needs to address directly - hard as that is.
As I said, I think these are two separate issues. From the point of view of a woman who is planning her night out, rapists are as environmental as blizzards, because there's absolutely nothing she can personally do to reduce their numbers in the short term. However, in the long term, that same woman could sponsor legislation and/or community measures aimed at making rape easier to report and harder to perpetrate.
Similarly, a skier who is planning his cross-country trip can't do anything in the short term to make the weather milder or the road safer. However, in the long term, he could sponsor the construction of additional cell towers, emergency shelters, ranger stations, etc., to make skiing safer for everyone.
There's no particular reason to think stranger rape is more frequent than acquaintance rape. The opposite appears to be true.
Focusing on an infrequent type of rape while ignoring more comment types does not seem aimed at decreasing the frequency of the problem.
I think most people were assuming you don't know the rapist in this case.
Not a very sturdy assumption. That's true in a minority of cases.