LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

Standard Intro

The following section will be at the top of all posts in the LW Women series.

Several months ago, I put out a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW, with the idea that I would compile them into some kind of post.  There is a LOT of material, so I am breaking them down into more manageable-sized themed posts. 

Seven women submitted, totaling about 18 pages. 

Standard Disclaimer- Women have many different viewpoints, and just because I am acting as an intermediary to allow for anonymous communication does NOT mean that I agree with everything that will be posted in this series. (It would be rather impossible to, since there are some posts arguing opposite sides!)

To the submitters- If you would like to respond anonymously to a comment (for example if there is a comment questioning something in your post, and you want to clarify), you can PM your message and I will post it for you. If this happens a lot, I might create a LW_Women sockpuppet account for the submitters to share.

Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.


[Note from daenerys- These two submissions might actually be one submission that had some sort of separation (such as a line of asteriks). If I processed them as separate when they were supposed to be a single entry, this is completely my mistake, and not at all the fault of the submitters. Sorry for the confusion.]

Submitter A

Here's a webpage with more on how misogyny works, including examples in the comments of "mansplaining" minimalizing problems.

Under the article, there's a comment about Stieg Larrson's book, originally named "Men who Hate Women."  To see what motivated such a name, I Googled and found this article about his experiences and guilt.  Guilt is something that many have felt and tried to assuage in various ways, including asking for forgiveness.  I've come to the conclusion that we should never forgive, only demand solutions, so as not to suffer continual sinning and forgiving.  With solutions comes absolution, so forgiveness is unnecessary but for allowing the guilty get away with crimes (like the rapists in the article).

The article about Larsson also has a bit about his partner's contributions not being credited to her, which seems to be typical of man-woman partnerships.  Besides seeing it in other stories, I've experienced it in my own life.  I gave my ex much input and feedback for his works, but others will never know.  Meanwhile, he trivialized and hindered my work.  He recently admitted to purposely discouraging me from going to college or doing well while I was there.  I suspected as much, like when he guilt-tripped me the morning I had to cram for an AP exam in high school, BSing that my not celebrating his birthday with him meant that I didn't love him.  This was when he was in grad school -- he knew what he was doing.  He wanted to keep me for himself, and often said so.  That thinking--a woman serving one men--was a justification for him to rape, physically assault, psychologically manipulate, and limit me (such as when or what I was allowed to write).  Similar thinking exists in other persons' head, including in some women who blame themselves if their partners beat them, cheat on them, etc.  But we can't happily serve one being; we absorb, process, and optimize much, much more than one being, who cannot be processed separate from the rest of the cosmos anyways.  Forcing or planning a body to serve just one body (even one's own body) will involve abuse.  

Due to how our bodies work, a person tends to not respect a partner who is focused on pleasing just that person.  Some poor souls are caught in a vicious cycle of doting on their partners, who in turn, don't love them much or disrespect them and eventually leave, giving imprecise, useless explanations like "the person isn't intellectual enough," as can be seen here.  "Someone who loves you" doesn't necessarily love You, but rather a narrow understanding of You.  In other words, you don't love a person you don't know.  

The men who abuse women and claim they love those women do not know those women, any more than my ex understood my work for the-world-as-I-know-it, which is quite different from the world-as-he-knows-it, a world where women are whores when, to me, many women are slaves to idiots who don't know what's good, like people who perceive rape as cool or fun.  My ex wrote a song called, "Son of Whore," basically saying his mother and other mothers are whores, and also called me a whore, though he was the one forcing sex on me.  On other occasions, he claimed I was the love of his life.  You might think my ex was a sociopath, but no -- he's a normal male, working as a university professor.  His thinking, like most humans', is outdated or out of touch with reality; his map misrepresents the territory.  So now he has to deal with losing the love of his life, whom he neither really knew nor loved.  Plus, he has to deal with my corrective writing to prevent him from harming another person.  In that way, I'm still self-sacrificing to make him and his work better.  How sub-optimal of me when I should be focusing on work helpful to more people.



.....

Submitter B

[note from daenerys- I think I somehow lost the links in this one. Very sorry!]

“Note that with a lot of the above issues, one of the biggest problems in figuring out what is going on isn't purposeful misogyny or anything.”

Those LWers who define rationality as for “winning” can play self-serving games. I'd like to think there's no such thing as purposeful misogyny, but PUA literature (in addition to other things my body has absorbed in my life) has left no room for that naïveté. To be clear, by "misogyny" I don't mean “hatred of women,” which is a useless definition except for denying it exists. Some PUAs point out they "love" women, like some anti-gays point out they love gays and that's why they're trying to prevent gays from committing sins and thereby damning themselves and/or invoking God's wrath towards society. Similarly, PUAs and MRAs can believe themselves to be saving the world from irrational women. They have fallacious utility-maximization rationalizations, like someone I personally know who justified molestation of his biological daughter, with explanations from "she likes it" to [paraphrasing] “it’ll hasten the child's puberty changes and increase her bust size to make her more attractive to potential male mates.” Other family members, including the victim’s biological mother (abuser’s wife) and paternal grandmother accepted the abuser's rationalizations, and hence did not intervene. The molestation escalated into raping the child, which the family members excused. I’ve seen similar stories in the news, where a naïve consumer of such news might be at a loss for why persons close to the abuser didn’t intervene (e.g. Sandusky’s wife).

So, “misogyny,” to have a definition that points to real phenomena, can be said to be apologetics of abusing females, with messages (not just in natural language) or actions anywhere from seemingly benign and rational to full out demeaning or violent. And many females' brains accept and internalize such messages and actions, hence excusing the abusers, blaming the victims, forgiving abuses rather than taking actions to prevent them, or even letting themselves be abused (under some notion that the dynamics are unchangeable). In this news piece on a school spanking and in its comment field, you can see examples of people rationalizing hitting kids and/or letting themselves be hit, even though, as one commenter pointed out, we don’t use corporal punishment on prisoners.

My grandmother used to beat my younger brother to vent her frustrations with the world, including having to serve everyone while my grandfather stayed on the couch in front of the TV all day because he wouldn’t do “women’s work” and he was retired from “men’s work.” Her brain rationalized the beating as necessary for disciplining my brother, even though the only “disciplining” effects were to force my brother to finish eating what she served him. She has come to regret what she did, but I’m not sure she’s aware of the dynamics behind what happened, including the patriarchal inequity and her brain’s imprecise narrative about making my brother well-behaved.

In case you don’t have much history with abuse, perhaps the phenomena I’m discussing will be more concrete to you if you’ve had experiences dealing with men’s porn and meditate on those experiences. This article, “Being Porn,” refers to women internalizing and enacting men’s porn views, rather than trying to enlighten men so they make better use of resources and don’t become or stay addicted to porn. To be fair, though, it’s difficult to enlighten others if one is not good at brain-hacking herself. For example: On the HLN channel, there was a criminal investigations episode on an Evangelical Christian ex-military man who, addicted to porn, used varying excuses like ‘it’s research to save our sex life and marriage’ whenever she tried to get him to stop. Fed up, she asked for divorce, and instead of going through the pains of divorce, he murdered her and their daughter (age 6) in their sleep, put their bodies in the dumpster at his workplace and pretended they went missing. Cases like that illustrate how apologetics can get out of control (talk about affective death spirals), with a person operating on wrong confabulations upon wrong assumptions, while other not very enlightened persons (like the wife and the Evangelical church she tried to get help from) cannot effectively enlighten the outta control person.

Given that brains perform apologetics, how rational can we be in cultures based more on some men’s analyses than on others’ analyses, esp. when others’ analyses parrot so much of those men’s—in cultures like LW’s? There’s potential for your female narratives project to change LW’s stupid (read: “low-effort thought”) analyses, if the women don’t end up affirming what the men have already said. I’ve seen at least one LW woman use some men’s stupid analyses of creepiness as exclusion or dislike of low-status or unattractive persons. Such over-simplified analysis doesn’t account for what I know, which includes not being creeped out when an unattractive guy touches me in a platonic manner and being a little creeped out when an attractive college dormmate poked me on Facebook and then just stared at me for a long time at a social function—even my gay guy friend indentified that behavior as creepy. (The behavior could’ve been called “rapey eyes” if the guy wasn’t shy but rather objectifying me, like I’ve seen some men do. I give them back the evil eyes to remind them to do no evil, and they turn away in shame. I first learned of the evil-eyes’ effectiveness when I got angry at bullying of my brother when I was first grade.

The evil-eyes was just part of the indignation expression, and uses of it made bullies stop in their tracks. This reminds me of an angry-looking deity in some East Asian cultures, icons of which are customarily put in places of business. I used to wonder why, but now I see it may be to remind people to do no evil.) Back to the dormmate…I decided against getting involved with him, as I already had a bf and a lot of stressful things to deal with, and the dormmate (with his possible obsessive desire and my body’s possible compliance despite my better judgment) would complicate things.

My creepy/danger alert was much higher at a meeting with a high-status (read: supposedly utility-generating, which includes attractive in the sense of pleasing or exciting to look at, but mostly the utility is supposed to be from actions, like work or play) man who was supposed to be my boss for an internship. The way he talked about the previous intern, a female, the sleazy way he looked while reminiscing and then had to smoke a cigarette, while in a meeting with me, my father (an employer who was abusive), and the internship program director, plus the fact that when I was walking towards the meeting room, the employees of the company, all men, stared at me and remarked, “It’s a girl,” well, I became so creeped out that I didn’t want to go back. It was hard, as a less articulate 16 year-old, to explain to the internship director all that stuff without sounding irrational. But not being able to explain my brain’s priors (including abuses that it had previously been too naïve/ignorant to warn against and prevent) wasn’t going to change them or decrease the avoidance-inducing fear and anxiety. So after some awkward attempts to answer the internship director’s question of why I didn’t want to work there, I asked for a placement with a different company, which she couldn’t do, unfortunately.

Given all my data, I can say approximately that identification of creepiness is a brain making predictions about someone’s brain (could even be one’s own brain, being introspective about whether you’re being creepy) running on a stupid/unenlightened/unwise apologetic program that could possibly escalate into actions unpleasant or of low utility to the target and/or to him/her/one’s self (e.g. energy-wasting, abuse, heartbreak, etc.). This analysis is backed up by data from studies I link to in this comment.

Back to LWers’ analyses. Tony Robbins said on an episode of Oprah’s LifeClass that women tend to be too affirming, rather than challenging like men. While I’d like to think that’s not true, since my body’s tendency for as far back as I can remember has been to challenge wrong or unnecessary confabulations (I have to remind my body to be positively reinforcing of good actions), Robbins was talking about the same kind of phenomenon I’m writing about here, which in effect, amounts to women not doing more to move people to become less wrong. Unlike Robbins, though I’d say that this is in part due to women using men’s explanations, with men being less challenging than apologetic. I regularly have to counter BS from men in my life or online. The Chinese equivalent of “bullshit” translated into English is bull fart. Not that females don’t make info-poor, self-serving abstractions in public language.

Comments (472)

Comment author: juliawise 15 April 2013 02:40:25PM 11 points [-]

I’ve seen at least one LW woman use some men’s stupid analyses of creepiness as exclusion or dislike of low-status or unattractive persons.

I think you're referring to me. You're free to call the analysis stupid if you want, but it was my analysis and my experience, and when I look back the analysis still rings true to me. It was not men's analysis. It was mine.

Comment author: sockpuppet2 14 April 2013 04:46:10PM *  -2 points [-]

I think the question these women need to ask themselves is, "What do I really want?"

I've had about a hundred close male friends over the course of my life. Not one whom I chose as my friend ever, to my knowledge, beat, abused, humiliated, or manipulated a woman in any of the ways described in this post.

If I can pick 100 men and score, as far as I know, 100% in picking non-misogynistic males, when that isn't even a big part of my criteria, how can so many intelligent women fail when picking just one man? The only explanation I can think of is that it's an even smaller part of their criteria. They want something else more than they want not to be abused.

I try to pick women who are also mentally healthy, but I don't really get to pick. I can only respond to the ones who pick me. And I'll date any woman who's really good-looking at least once. That said, maybe a quarter of the women I've dated let me know that the kind of foreplay/roleplay that turned them on the most was for me to tie them up or pretend to rape them.

Lots of the men on LessWrong are those nice guys, and we know all these women complaining turned down lots of nice guys like us to pick the ones who would abuse them. We've watched time and time again as wonderful, smart women chose the biggest jerk in the room and we couldn't understand why. Then they come back and complain that all men are bastards. And if we ever complain about it we get indignant condemnation.

Women, it is not hard to find a man who won't abuse you, if that's what you really want most.

Rationality is supposed to be about solving the problem. Telling men to be nice will never solve this problem. Women already have all the power they need to solve it themselves. If women stop having sex with men who mistreat women, men will stop mistreating women.

Comment author: drethelin 14 April 2013 06:41:51PM 4 points [-]

A large part of why it's important to make posts like these (if it is) is to show you that your assumptions about the men you know are likely to be WRONG, and that "as far as you know" isn't far enough.

Comment author: sockpuppet2 15 April 2013 02:42:24PM *  2 points [-]

It's a good post. It doesn't give me any information about whether I'm wrong, because both "Most men are brutes" and "Females prefer self-centered males" predict that many women will have such stories.

Comment author: bogus 14 April 2013 06:10:51PM 2 points [-]

And I'll date any woman who's really good-looking at least once.

Really? How very nice of you.

That said, it seems to me that some women told you about things they do like, and you weren't happy with the answer. Perhaps you should educate yourself about the differences between freely-entered-into sexual roleplay and actual abuse or violence.

Comment author: sockpuppet2 15 April 2013 02:29:20PM *  1 point [-]

Several studies have shown that it's common for women to fantasize about being raped. I think it's rare for men to do so, tho I don't remember if the studies showed that. This is relevant though not conclusive information.

Comment author: bogus 15 April 2013 04:57:09PM *  2 points [-]

Several studies have shown that it's common for women to fantasize about being raped. I think it's rare for men to do so ... This is relevant though not conclusive information.

It's not as relevant as you assume, because the description of these as "rape fantasies" is much too simplistic. Most often, such fantasies clearly reject many and perhaps most relevant features of actual sexual violence. (The wiki article has references for this info.) Women are most likely sensible enough to know this and take this into account, so the fact that they indulge in such fantasies does not tell us much about what kinds of men they want.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 April 2013 05:04:01PM 4 points [-]

If I can pick 100 men and score, as far as I know, 100% in picking non-misogynistic males, when that isn't even a big part of my criteria, how can so many intelligent women fail when picking just one man? The only explanation I can think of is that it's an even smaller part of their criteria.

Doesn't follow. It'd suffice for non-misogyny to correlate with your criteria more than with their criteria.

Comment author: sockpuppet2 14 April 2013 05:54:33PM *  1 point [-]

Substitute in correlate for constitute (which is what I was already doing; I assumed "part of" meant "projection of my multi-dimensional evaluation onto non-misogyny dimension), and my point remains the same.

Similarly, women don't necessarily want to be abused. But some quality that women want very much correlates strongly with being abusive. They have to figure out what it is, and give it up. Or keep it, and stop complaining.

I bet that [restated] female receptivity to mistreatment [/restated] goes way back in mammalian evolution. It's common in mammals for "courtship" of a female to consist of a strange new male beating up and driving off the female's mate, then killing her children, then immediately mating with her. Evolution must have programmed females to be sexually receptive to this. In a violent world, it's in her genes' best interests (if not her own) to make her mate with the winner.

I'm not allowed to respond to any other comments to mine, by the fascist group-norm-enforcing requirement to give up 5 karma that I don't have. So I'll respond to the comment below here:

To paraphrase a discussion that went on in a different thread a few months ago... Nerds in school don't necessarily want to be bullied. But they do want to study physics and watch anime, which correlates strongly with being bullied. They have to give it up. Or keep it, and stop complaining.

That isn't at all the same. The nerds want the bullies to leave them alone. It's an involuntary association. The woman dating an abusive man chose that man, and could usually leave him if she chose to.

What people want and what they evolved to do are separate: Irrelevant. I'm making an evolutionary argument to support evidence from observation that women have a mate preference correlated with abuse.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 April 2013 07:26:41PM *  0 points [-]

Similarly, women don't necessarily want to be abused. But some quality that women want very much correlates strongly with being abusive. They have to figure out what it is, and give it up. Or keep it, and stop complaining.

To paraphrase a discussion that went on in a different thread a few months ago... Nerds in school don't necessarily want to be bullied. But they do want to study physics and watch anime, which correlates strongly with being bullied. They have to give it up. Or keep it, and stop complaining.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that if a woman finds that sexy non-abusive men are rare and usually already taken, then the best thing she could do is whine about it; but I can see where she's coming from, and I wouldn't blame her if she doesn't unreluctantly opt to pursue a non-abusive man even if he's not sexy, even though it may be the least of three evils. (The women I personally know typically opt to stay single until the right man comes along, but they might not be representative of the population in general.)

I bet that some female enjoyment of abuse goes way back in mammalian evolution. It's common in mammals for "courtship" of a female to consist of a strange new male beating up and driving off the female's mate, then killing her children, then immediately mating with her. Evolution must have programmed females to be sexually receptive to this.

Downvoted for this alone. What people want and why they evolved to want that are separate questions.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 April 2013 03:53:14PM 3 points [-]

usually already taken

Note Berkson's paradox in action: even if two desirable features are independently distributed among the general population, among the people who are neither so good that they're already in a decade-long awesome relationship with someone else nor so bad that you won't even notice them when looking for potential males those features will end up anticorrelating.

Comment author: Giles 14 April 2013 12:48:23AM 2 points [-]

LW Women Submissions

a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW

Seven women submitted

uh... could this be rephrased?

Comment author: Dahlen 13 April 2013 07:35:29AM *  2 points [-]

[META] Why do LWers seem to get their collective panties in a bunch every time gender issues / women are mentioned?

Comment author: Dahlen 13 April 2013 08:23:43AM *  2 points [-]

What should I understand from the instant negative karma response? That I shouldn't have asked the question, I suppose. If I shouldn't have asked the question, then... I'm supposed to see a new thread in Discussion getting 300 replies in 3 days, remember the same thing happened with the previous threads in the series, and go, "Oh... nothing unusual at all, no special reaction to this topic.". Or, I'm expected to know the answer just like everybody else does, and therefore by asking the question I'm actually expressing an opinion on everybody who commented and I'm not actually looking for an answer.

But I am. Getting worked up about this topic could mean a number of things with respect to your attitude towards gender issues, and I don't know the bunch of you well enough to say which is the prevailing explanation. Hence the question. And I suppose now there's an additional question about why it is so taboo to ask this, which I'm also genuinely interested in.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 13 April 2013 07:07:18PM 6 points [-]

What should I understand from the instant negative karma response?

As I read this, the comment's karma is (0, 50%), so I think the correct answer is "nothing much".

Comment author: Dahlen 14 April 2013 02:47:31AM 2 points [-]

Oh. I asked the question immediately after seeing that the parent comment had gotten -2 within minutes of being posted, so I was expecting the trend to continue. It didn't.

Comment author: drethelin 14 April 2013 04:38:48PM 8 points [-]

never complain about karma, but ESPECIALLY never try to portray a few downvotes as the view of the forum.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 April 2013 07:38:50PM 6 points [-]

I now strongly agree with the part after the “especially”, especially when “a few” equals 1.

Comment author: Kindly 14 April 2013 05:50:48PM 3 points [-]

It's a fair question to ask. The downvotes may not be "the view of the forum", whatever that is, but they're certainly the view of the downvoters.

If I downvote something, it's because I want to see less of it. If the other party wants to cooperate with this, shouldn't they at least know what I want to see less of?

Comment author: drethelin 14 April 2013 06:43:22PM 1 point [-]

If they wanted to explain with a comment, they would've. The point of downvotes is to create a system of feedback that is easy to provide and doesn't clutter up the boards with millions of comments saying "Me too!" or "I think your point was written in a demeaning fashion"

Comment author: Desrtopa 20 April 2013 04:30:45AM 0 points [-]

Karma as a feedback mechanism allows users' perceptions of whether someone is contributing positively or negatively to take on lasting status associations, in a way that comments do not. Plus, it encourages users to provide feedback more frequently than they would if they had no way of doing so other than leaving comments. Karma would most likely continue to fulfill these purposes even if people leaving downvotes or upvotes always explained themselves on request, as requests are infrequent enough that the possibility of having to explain oneself would probably not be a powerful deterrent to voting.

Comment author: Dahlen 14 April 2013 09:37:13PM 2 points [-]

Advice given to newbies, from the current intro thread:

However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn't know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it's perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation.

So which way is it?

Comment author: orthonormal 20 April 2013 04:13:30AM 2 points [-]

As the one who wrote that, I'm obviously in favor of asking for explanations, but drethelin's point (that the first few upvotes or downvotes are not always the start of a cascade) is important to bear in mind before concluding that LW feels really strongly in general.

In addition to random noise, there's the phenomenon that immediate votes are usually from the very active users who are reading Recent Comments, and that those users are often more critical in their voting behavior than the people who only check in sporadically.

Comment author: drethelin 15 April 2013 12:19:54AM 0 points [-]

I don't read the intro thread or write it. Opinions written by Drethelin do not represent in whole or in part the views of Lesswrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Quirinus Quirrel

Comment author: Dahlen 15 April 2013 12:25:24AM 0 points [-]

Alright, so the community is divided on this matter. So then, when you were telling me never to complain about karma, were you advising me on how to optimize for the community's approval, or for your approval?

Comment author: Kindly 13 April 2013 01:41:50PM *  9 points [-]

What should I understand from the instant negative karma response?

You seemed to object in another comment to a response which "could've been an explanation, but in the end it turned out to be declaring sides." Well, your question reads like a straightforward declaration of sides. Hence the downvoting. NancyLebovitz is also correct.

Comment author: Dahlen 14 April 2013 02:00:00AM 1 point [-]

Well, your question reads like a straightforward declaration of sides.

That was... unexpected. It never crossed my mind that people could infer anything about my position on gender issues from that question -- and if you asked me now, I couldn't say which is the side that it supposedly belongs on. (Just to hazard a guess, the answer might be "the enemy side", whichever side you're on, but I can't arrive to that answer without assuming bias on the part of downvoters, and I very much hope that LW isn't the crowd to do that to; besides, it would be uncharitable of me. So, I'll wait for the others to inform me.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 14 April 2013 04:43:46PM *  5 points [-]

I didn't downvote you.

However, if you've read some of the previous discussions on the subject-- the background is the idea that LW defaults to being a sufficiently uncomfortable place for women that women don't stay, and this is a problem.

As a result, asking why are people getting so worked up about the subject looks like saying that the default style at LW is satisfactory, and if women don't like it, that's not important enough to be worth dealing with.

LW Women: LW Online

LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance

Comment author: Dahlen 15 April 2013 12:12:56AM 3 points [-]

Oh. Thanks for the explanation! Of course, needless to say, it wasn't the reason for my bemusement -- for one, it's pretty obvious to everyone who reads the comments that people's concern for how LW is viewed by women isn't the reason why the thread has garnered so many responses. Given what people are saying, the number of comments isn't evidence of their desire to get more women involved in the community, but rather of getting very eager at the opportunity to discuss something as controversial as this.

And that's what surprised me -- at least to my noob's eye, LWers didn't come across as the kinds of people who feel strongly about controversial topics; a more detached, analytical stance was more characteristic of the image I had about this site. I suppose I kind of generalized this impression into thinking that, on average, this was also how LWers thought of themselves and of each other. (Projection?) So, ordinarily you don't see people spontaneously bringing up gender issues in normal conversation on this discussion board, but when someone makes it their personal initiative to see what's up with the overwhelming maleness of this forum -- holy mama! 300+ comments. It looked to me like bottling up one's own interest in the matter, like people cared more than they were willing to admit. So I was like, "what the hell, I thought you guys were the dispassionate scientists looking at things objectively, why are you reacting to this like -- like ordinary people?"

Comment author: TimS 15 April 2013 12:36:07AM 0 points [-]

LWers didn't come across as the kinds of people who feel strongly about controversial topics

Your perception is a product of topic selection. Certain topics are perceived as destabilizing of the community, and thus are downvoted viciously unless they are of unusual quality.

Since writing at that level of quality is hard, certain topics get discussed less. What does get discussed is the stuff where most of us are able to take a "more detached, analytical stance."

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 April 2013 01:26:47PM 19 points [-]

Why do LWers seem to get their collective panties in a bunch every time gender issues / women are mentioned?

Your phrasing implies that people are overreacting and being ridiculous. A more neutral phrasing-- something like "Why are people so angry about gender issues?" or "Why do gender issues get so much attention?"-- probably would have gone over better.

Comment author: Dahlen 14 April 2013 02:45:01AM -2 points [-]

Heh. I went with that word choice because it's a funny little idiom. I like English idioms; my language is not as entertaining in this aspect. But you're right, it isn't optimized for upvotes.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 14 April 2013 03:46:13PM 1 point [-]

It's sounds like you ran afoul of a subcutlural difference-- one of the aspects of the anti-racism and related feminism memeplex is assuming that what metaphors people use tell you a lot about what they're actually thinking, and in particular that hostility and culpable ignorance get revealed that way.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 April 2013 08:04:05PM 1 point [-]

‘Using “lame” as an insult is ableist!’ (By which logic, using “bad” as an insult is binarist.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 April 2013 10:02:40PM 2 points [-]

Not quite, in that many more people understand "lame" to describe someone who can't easily walk than understand "bad" to describe someone who exists on a gender binary, and what I expect people to actually understand by a word does have something to do with what words I chose.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 13 April 2013 08:04:06AM 3 points [-]

Because this is a topic on which there are an unusually large number of true things that it isn't socially acceptable to say.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 15 April 2013 01:00:29AM 8 points [-]

I think it's interesting how many "things you [supposedly] can't say" about society are actually very commonly said, throughout mainstream media, religious preaching, popular fiction and nonfiction.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2013 03:49:13AM *  1 point [-]

Um, no. The reason it seems this way to you is that when you attempt to think of what the "things you can't say" are, your search space is limited to things you've actually heard.

Comment author: MugaSofer 13 April 2013 02:37:32PM *  0 points [-]

Source?

(Not saying you're wrong, mind.)

Comment author: Dahlen 13 April 2013 08:39:42AM *  17 points [-]

And possibly a hefty amount of socially unacceptable false things too.

It could've been an explanation, but in the end it turned out to be declaring sides.

Comment author: drethelin 13 April 2013 07:53:55AM 6 points [-]

It's the isreal/palestine conflict that everyone can feel involved in. Wherever you live, you're on one side or the other or the other or the other.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:29:50PM *  -2 points [-]

There are some good ideas here - really there are - but this simply isn't good enough to be posted directly to Main. If this was a draft, I'd be encouraging and maybe suggest some revisions, but as it is this is exactly as good as you'd expect a first draft from a random sample of LWers to be.

EDIT: which is, of course, why it isn't actually in Main. Not sure how I hallucinated that. My objection is bunk. Upvoted, naturally.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 03:08:40PM 4 points [-]

this simply isn't good enough to be posted directly to Main

...You realize this isn't in Main, right? And never has been, unless some prankster mod moved it there when I went to sleep, and moved it back when I awoke.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 April 2013 05:44:21PM 0 points [-]

It's been moved to Main.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 April 2013 10:35:59PM 0 points [-]

Actually, it seems to have been moved to Main without showing up on the list of Main posts. I've checked promoted and new on the "text of articles" part of the page, and "recent posts" on the side bar.

Comment author: DaFranker 15 April 2013 02:16:33PM 1 point [-]

Looks like you figured it out

(posting this for the benefit of future confused readers)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 April 2013 02:45:49PM 0 points [-]

Thanks-- that was a loose end I missed.

Comment author: CronoDAS 11 April 2013 06:33:14PM 19 points [-]

Is "contempt" a better word for the attitudes and actions associated with "misogyny" than "hate"? "Hate" seems too active, conscious, and intention-based - it's a strong feeling and when you feel it, you know it.

Comment author: DaFranker 11 April 2013 05:36:48PM *  22 points [-]

TL;DR: Please isolate and clarify what specific experiences and actions you are talking about when you say "rape", "assault", etc. in the same manner that you would want others to if you were talking about taxes and people kept saying "theft" and "slavery". Thank you.

Disclaimer: Not intended directly as a critique or counterargument to the submissions.
Other disclaimer: If reading descriptions of violent sexual assault can trigger traumatic experiences, don't read this.

Nitpick:

Rape rape raaaaaape!

Honestly, when things like "my ex raped and assaulted and abused me" and "forced sex on me" come up, I have no idea what the person is referring to. In context, the person saying this might have a very specific emotion / subjective experience in mind when they say this. However, without direct access to this experience, I'm left hanging...

Does this mean the partner just insisted verbally a lot, saying "it'll be fun", "come on, don't be like that" (with negative connotation), maybe some psychological pressure, and then the victim ended up agreeing to have sex because, who knows, they might enjoy it and it'll please their partner quite a lot if they're that insistent? If so, I've been "raped" like this at least ten times in my life. And I'm a guy.

Or, is it completely on the other end of some imaginary rape spectrum; a male punched a female down to the floor or otherwise used physical violence until the female had no more ability to defend herself, and then the guy ripped apart clothing and forcefully inserted himself, fending off or forcefully countering (perhaps by preemptive hitting to weaken her) her attempts at defense (if any by that point) while just painfully (for her) enjoying his forced sex, control, cruelty, dominance and the humiliation / despair of his victim?

There needs to be some kind of context or perspective here if anything reasonable is to come out of the subject.

I personally don't dislike the first above scenario I described, even though by that (noncentral) definition I was raped. I don't resent it in the slightest, did not have any sort of negative subjective experience, and so on - in terms of my best approximation of my utility function, it was technically a net win, in hindsight (because of how I value the experiences of my partner). Just not a hedonistic net win.

As for the second scenario, I obviously have the immediate gut reaction of wanting to tear that male's groins right off the rest of his body, and then put them in a blender for good measure (and to make sure he can't have 'em reattached). I suspect that something close to the gut-level disgust and hatred is what most people feel whenever the trigger-word "rape" comes up. This is not always the full reality. The ambiguity may also have been deliberate, sometimes even exactly to bring out these feelings.

By this point, I feel the need to point right back up to my disclaimer at the top: I'm not making an accusation on the submitters. I am well aware that there are or may be other circumstances or counterarguments for most of the specific situations to which the above could be mapped. My goal here is to remind people that this intermediary step between that particular situation described in the posts, and the general higher-level abstract discussions, is present and very often glossed over or ignored entirely.

Please keep in mind the empirical cluster, spectrum and connotations of the words you use when discussing this subject, please make an effort to notice when there is a divergence in the usage between two people or comments, and please specify, taboo, reduce or replace with the substance whenever you think it might be ambiguous. Otherwise, we're going to keep getting a lot of noise.

As you can tell, I wrote this because I was really annoyed by said noise and miscommunications.

Other other disclaimer: The behaviors I implicitly reprimand are not things I've observed only in one gender. To the best of my memory, I have observed good and bad epistemological hygiene in this respect proportionally to the base rate of poster, so I tentatively infer that gender is not a factor and that people just make these mistakes. Not "only women trying to get attention by sounding so victimized do this" or "apologetic males who want to keep raping without guilt" - PEOPLE, in even distributions.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:33:48PM 0 points [-]

TBH, I think being forced into sex through emotional blackmail of whatever is part of the same empirical cluster as "real" rape - although naturally it's a less damaging variant, it's also more insidious precisely because it doesn't trigger a violent emotional reaction as easily.

That said, I'll second the request for clarification.

Comment author: TimS 11 April 2013 06:10:32PM *  12 points [-]

a male punched a female down to the floor or otherwise used physical violence until the female had no more ability to defend herself, and then the guy ripped apart clothing and forcefully inserted himself, fending off or forcefully countering (perhaps by preemptive hitting to weaken her) her attempts at defense (if any by that point) while just painfully (for her) enjoying his forced sex, control, cruelty, dominance and the humiliation / despair of his victim?

One major problem with communication on this issue is that the quoted text is not how sexual assault tends to appear in the real world. If that's the definition of rape or sexual assault, then what happened in Steubenville wasn't rape or sexual assault. (Just to be clear, I think what happened in Steubenville deserves to be criminalized as sexual assault).

Here is one analysis of the sociological research on rape. In brief, in a survey of ~ 1800 college students, 6% said yes to questions like:

Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances (e.g., removing their clothes)?

63% of the folks who said yes to those questions admitted to having done it more than once. The mean for that group was 5.8 incidents (median of 3, so some big outliers are skewing the mean).

In a study of ~ 1100 naval enlistees, 13% said yes to a similar question, with 71% of the yes-population admitting multiple incidents. In that research, 61% of all the incidents were based on intoxication alone, with no threat of force.

That looks nothing like "male punched a female down to the floor or otherwise used physical violence until the female had no more ability to defend herself." So if that's what you are looking to prevent, you aren't trying to prevent the thing that seems to be happening.

In short, "He was drunk, she was drunk" sex is a hard problem for policies based on consent and capacity to consent. But it looks very little like "He waited until she was drunk, then took her somewhere private, and had sex with her, knowing that she wouldn't have said yes if she were sober. And he attended the event planning or hoping to do that to some woman."

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 12 April 2013 01:58:17AM 1 point [-]

(Just to be clear, I think what happened in Steubenville deserves to be criminalized as sexual assault).

Care to explain why?

Just to be clear I also find what happened in Steubenville unacceptable, then again I find a lot of sex related things unacceptable that you probably don't.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 02:07:38AM 8 points [-]

Care to explain why [the Steubenville perpetrators should be convicted criminals]?

Their actions weren't consensual among all the participants. The places in law or morality where non-consensual acts between private citizens are allowed are few and far between.

I'm aware of your hypothetical about high caste people wanting a huge physical space from lower caste people. That's not about consent - that's about what acts society requires consent to perform. Physical contact is a pretty clear line.


Whether it was "rape" depends on vagaries in the definitions in Ohio's criminal code. That's why I'm talking about the category of sexual assault.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 12 April 2013 02:55:46AM *  -2 points [-]

That's not about consent - that's about what acts society requires consent to perform. Physical contact is a pretty clear line.

Except that's not where society actually draws the line. For example, there are people who for religious reason don't what what to be touched by any member of the opposite sex who isn't a relative or spouse. Yet we don't demand consent before touching in social situations even though some people might object to being touched.

Edit: also why that particular Schelling point? The history of attitudes towards sex over the past century is a series of Schelling points regulating what is or is not acceptable sex getting overturned. Why, shouldn't this one also be overturned?

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 03:12:37AM 6 points [-]

For example, there are people who for religious reason don't what what to be touched by any member of the opposite sex who isn't a relative or spouse. Yet we don't demand consent before touching in social situations even though some people might object to being touched.

The law surely does require consent. Implied-consent-from-social-context is different from overriding non-consent.

Comment author: ikrase 12 April 2013 06:35:36PM 0 points [-]

Also, I doubt that they suffer anywhere near the level of trauma from this compared to the Steubenville victim.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 13 April 2013 06:49:32AM -2 points [-]

Not obvious given that the Steubenville victim didn't even know about it and thus couldn't have suffered trauma until she found out about it several days later.

Comment author: TimS 15 April 2013 02:50:33AM 0 points [-]

Given how the perpetrators acted, it was virtually certain the victim would find out. Parading her around and bragging about what they'd done might not have been done with the purpose of causing her to find out or humiliate her. But it certainly was an easily predictable consequence.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2013 03:47:13AM 1 point [-]

Would you have objected it they hadn't bragged about it and posted pictures on their website?

Comment author: ikrase 13 April 2013 08:44:16AM 1 point [-]

That's irrelevant as she did find out, probably would have found out eventually, and almost everybody strongly values knowing what happened to them.

Comment author: drethelin 11 April 2013 08:20:17PM 7 points [-]

Isn't the inverse there: "She attended a party, planning to get drunk and sleep with some guy who she wouldn't sleep with if she was sober"?

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 01:27:45AM 3 points [-]

Where's the consent issue? She made a decision when she was sober and had capacity to make decisions.

If you point a gun into a crowd and fire, it's no defense to say to you didn't intend to kill whoever was unlucky enough to get hit.

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 02:25:05AM 5 points [-]

It would be a defense if the crowd showed up to a getting shot party (this is an exaggeration). There's a reasonable argument to be made that people show up to parties expecting to drink and do things they wouldn't usually do except when drunk. That makes it a lot less sinister for someone to plan on going to a party and getting drunk and having sex with a drunk girl, if the social assumption is that's what most people are going to the party for in the first place.

Comment author: ikrase 12 April 2013 06:33:23PM -2 points [-]

Also levels of drunkness, also directedness. IIRC evidence suggests some issues with intentionality.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:37:10PM -2 points [-]

That sounds like a very dangerous social norm, which should probably be changed at the earliest opportunity, but excellent point.

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 06:22:35PM 0 points [-]

I don't necessarily agree. It's dangerous if there's a grey zone and all parties sort of sidle into it and bad stuff happens, but I think it's not bad to have a subset of parties for this purpose. A more socially acceptable and accessible version of play parties :)

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 08:14:29PM -2 points [-]

If the norms were better articulated people could more clearly consent or opt out, but as it is I'd say it's easier to treat drinking as its own thing and create such parties from scratch if you must have them.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 02:44:59AM 4 points [-]

if the social assumption is that's what most people are going to the party for in the first place.

Where did that social assumption come from? Can't someone drink at a frat party without wanting or anticipating having sex?

Comment author: drethelin 12 April 2013 05:11:44AM 4 points [-]

I don't know, but I'm pretty confident it exists. I'm sure someone CAN drink at a frat party without wanting or anticipating sex, and in fact most people probably don't get laid. But I also think it's not as immoral to go to a frat party expecting and planning on hooking up with a drunk person, as it is to rape someone.

Comment author: V_V 15 April 2013 12:39:24PM *  2 points [-]

Even if that person intended to have drunk sex, it doesn't mean that they intended to have it with you specifically. And anyway, I doubt that many people who intend to have drunk sex also intend to have it while drunk enough to be in a state of consciousness so much diminished that they are unable to consent.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 April 2013 01:33:50PM *  4 points [-]

My impression is that both sides in the argument are using the level of drunkness which supports their point.

The people who don't want drunk = non-consent imagine people who are moderately drunk, who are more likely to say choose sex than they would be sober, and who chose to get that drunk because they want to have sex but otherwise wouldn't.

The people who do want drunk = non-consent imagine people who are very drunk-- unconscious or barely able to mumble and make vague gestures.

Neither side is entirely wrong-headed, though my sympathies are with the second group, since it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation.

On the other hand, rules becoming much stricter than necessary happens too.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 October 2013 12:25:09AM 0 points [-]

since it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation.

I think we should start by addressing this problem.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2013 06:29:40PM *  3 points [-]

My impression is that both sides in the argument are using the level of drunkness which supports their point.

Yes; I also suspect many of them don't even realize it -- simply, the typical example of a drunk person is someone who deliberately drinks in order to lower their inhibitions in the minds of the first group, but in the minds of the second group it's a passed-out person, due to the different experiences of the two groups and generalizing from one example.

(This is an example of a more general pattern, about which I've been thinking of writing a top-level post but kept putting that off.)

it's pretty common for people to drink to the point of incapacitation

I was going to say “is it?”, then I remembered that, according to this article (discussed on OB before BTW), I am from an “integrated” culture and you're from an “ambivalent” one.

Comment author: V_V 15 April 2013 02:53:57PM 0 points [-]

The ability to consent varies continuously with intoxication level, hence it could be technically argued that a gray area exists. But the effect seems quite non-linear, with a sharp transition. As a rule of thumb I would say that if somebody is able to walk on their own then they can consent, otherwise they can't.

I suppose there are cases when somebody first consents, or reasonably appears to consent, then they fall unconscious during the act, then they wake up and OMG I WAS RAPED!!!11ONE1!!
This type of "accidental rape" is possible, but I doubt it's common: evidence suggests that the majority of rapes, including those enabled by victim intoxication, are committed by a small proportion of men who are serial rapists and often have other patterns of antisocial behaviors. These people typically understand that their behaviors violate laws and social norms, yet they do it anyway because they don't care and believe (often correctly) that they can get away with it.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 15 April 2013 02:41:59PM 4 points [-]

I've encountered people who want drunkenness to be non-consent who explicitly reject the reasoning in your second example; they want any reduced capacity to make decisions to render consent invalid. (And I've seen some very convoluted logic about passive versus aggressive sexual behavior justifying why it's still rape when the man has also been drinking from a couple of them.)

(The inability to strawman feminism is really bizarre. It's possible to strawman individual feminists, but for the ideology as a whole, no matter how bizarre a position you can think up, there's somebody that actually holds that belief, and more insists it is proper feminist thought, and who probably also insists that anybody who doesn't agree isn't a proper feminist. And the craziest also tend to be the loudest; Jezebel, for instance.)

Comment author: DaFranker 11 April 2013 06:39:55PM *  15 points [-]

I feel like I'm being read rather uncharitably.

One major problem with communication on this issue is that the quoted text is not how sexual assault tends to appear in the real world. If that's the definition of rape or sexual assault, then what happened in Steubenville wasn't rape or sexual assault. (Just to be clear, I think what happened in Steubenville deserves to be criminalized as sexual assault).

This is, in fact, one of my points. People sometimes gloss over the differences between various points in the spectrum, and speak with connotations as if all forms of rape were exactly as horrible and utility-destroying as the one I described. My nitpick is that this should be avoided. My desire is that people pay more attention to avoiding this error.

In brief, in a survey of ~ 1800 college students, 6% said yes to questions like:

I'm surprised, and not in that direction. 6% seems unusually low if taken at face value. Adjusting for the fact that this is a self-reporting survey, sure, that matches my priors (even though that still feels a bit low, but might be a memory / bias thing). The military stats also somewhat fit within the bounds of my priors, though I'll update a bit on this because I had very little specific information.

I may have to go read the link and related research later, since it's considered a "blog" and blocked by the network I'm currently using.

That looks nothing like "male punched a female down to the floor or otherwise used physical violence until the female had no more ability to defend herself." So if that's what you are looking to prevent, you aren't trying to prevent the thing that seems to be happening.

I'm not specifically suggesting anything to prevent, nor proposing any "rape" redefinitions, nor pointing towards any kind of particular policy (especially not legal or society-wide). I'm not sure how to interpret this part.

I don't know what I did wrong. I'm making a comment about the way people (or LWers specifically) talk about sexual abuse, specifically about the way they conflate various meanings, specific actions, and vastly different ranges of personal experiences and internal monologues for both the victims and the abusers, and often lump everything into one big scary word.

I want to unpack that big scary word because I think we can have more meaningful discussion and less noise if we speak about experiences and actions, rather than an abstract "event" that can include a wide range of different (usually undesirable) activities.

Perhaps also importantly, I believe that the fact that said scary word is "rape" should not make the whole thing suddenly more misogynistic, evil, bad, improper, and worth condemning than if I wanted the same thing about the word "politics" or "theft".

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 01:34:37AM *  8 points [-]

I feel like I'm being read rather uncharitably.

I didn't downvote. Sexual assault certainly is a spectrum. But your two examples are roughly like saying:

There are two likely possibilities. First, DARE is right about everything. Second, drug abuse is not a serious problem in this country.

Suppose I have a strong prior that one doesn't think the second prong is true. Then I should adjust my estimate that one is very confused about drug abuse significantly upward (because DARE is nonsense).

The interventions likely to reduce stranger rape are unlikely to effect skeevy rape. Since skeevy rape is overwhelmingly more common (the linked research says that no one described using force on a stranger), that's where we should focus the discussion.

Comment author: bogdanb 25 April 2013 12:35:33PM *  4 points [-]

For the record, before reading your comment I interpreted the two examples as "here are two extremes, please be more specific about where on this spectrum what you're describing falls", rather than "which of this two was it?"

(This is not to contradict your critique. On re-reading the original text I can see it's not explicitly saying either, I just interpreted differently. I only mean to make known to both the poster and you that (what I assume was) his intent was not opaque to all readers.)

Comment author: TimS 25 April 2013 01:50:43PM *  3 points [-]

Fair enough. I think the best form of my critique is something like:

On a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is DaFranker's first example, and 100 is DaFranker's second example, most rapes are about a 10 - and incidents below 5 are not generally illegal. Rapes rated 80 or greater are so uncommon as to be not worth discussing when the topic is rape, considering both absolute numbers and relative frequency compared to rapes generally. Much like serial killers with > 10 kills are not worth discussing when the topic is homicide.

At that point, the endpoints selected seem more likely to derail the discussion into unproductive areas rather than talking about sexual assault as it actually occurs.

Comment author: DaFranker 25 April 2013 02:48:35PM *  2 points [-]

Aha. This makes some things clearer for me. Perhaps I can also make some things clearer about my thought process:

The intent behind those two specific examples was to give something that seems only a little bit less bad than Judge McJudgington's average rape case, and then give something utterly horrible that can fight for headlines with Jack The Ripper.

My motive for this was that when Judge McJudgington's (really) average rape case (not the one I gave as example) makes the headlines, people thinkof the second example and go all indignant and want the rapist to be punished more than a murderer. Many people on the internets have this model of what "rape" is that matches the extreme example. However, I've also noticed that many (feminists and anti-male-apologists seem to come up more often here) others have for model of "rape" the first example, and anything that goes above that they will decry "rape and torture!" in the same way the previous category of people get enraged at the extreme case.

In all those situations, the headline article for Judge McJudgington's case will cater to both of these groups and try to appeal to their emotions. Thus the entire spectrum, from both endpoints, gets blurred into a single word -- "rape".

That is why I chose those examples. They're the two endpoints where, from my observations, the entire spectrum of the word "rape" get blurred into one when a large representative group talks about it (or a headline news article gets written).

Comment author: TimS 25 April 2013 03:08:51PM 0 points [-]

My motive for this was that when Judge McJudgington's (really) average rape case (not the one I gave as example) makes the headlines, people thinkof the second example and go all indignant and want the rapist to be punished more than a murderer.

I agree that this dynamic occurs and is extremely irrational. I just think the better solution is to avoid talking about extreme-rape as if it is something that actually occurs.

Many feminists find this dynamic very troubling. When they want to talk about rare prevention, people start talking about how to prevent extreme-rape instead of how to prevent average-rape. Thus, those feminists that I find worth reading (like the piece I linked) tend to sharply challenge the assertion that extreme-rape occurs with enough frequency to deserve being the focus of attention (or receive any attention at all).

Unfortunately, most discussion about rape turns quickly into advice that is likely (1) already known to any person not currently living under a rock, (2) not a highly effective intervention, and (3) very judgmental. E.g. "Don't accept drinks from a stranger at a party."
(1) Not exactly new advice to the listener
(2) Doesn't address the social context about other people at the party accepting or endorsing the consequences of skeezy sex
(3) Implicitly, is quite judgmental about women even being at parties.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 April 2013 08:27:26PM *  3 points [-]

Unfortunately, most discussion about rape turns quickly into advice that is likely ... (3) very judgmental. E.g. "Don't accept drinks from a stranger at a party."

(3) Implicitly, is quite judgmental about women even being at parties.

There is a point where this kind of re-framing and attribution of intent goes beyond ridiculous and becomes outright dangerous. The advice "Don't accept drinks from a stranger at a party" is necessary wisdom for people living in the world that is. The same applies to the related personal security knowledge "Don't walk alone at night in a dark alley" (Well, get a cab, you moron! And on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van!.

It would be nice if the world was one in which it was not possible for people to have bad things happen to them. But we don't live in that world. Yet there is a pervasive notion that acknowledging risks and taking precautions is in some way endorsing the need for them. Anyone who tells you to act as if the world is as it should be instead of how it is (on pain of being stigmatised as 'judgemental') is acting as an enemy, not an ally---they are sabotaging you.

(1) Not exactly new advice to the listener

That's great. The cultural transfer of life skills is working as intended. Most instances where things like "look both ways before crossing the road" and "don't accept drinks from a stranger at a party" are shared should be redundant.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 April 2013 06:16:40PM 1 point [-]

Unfortunately, most discussion about rape turns quickly into advice that is likely [bad].

Ozy Frantz tried to remedy that on zir blog.

Comment author: DaFranker 25 April 2013 04:55:32PM *  1 point [-]

(3) Implicitly, is quite judgmental about women even being at parties.

Wait, so when my mother was telling me this when I was 15, it was implicitly judgmental about women being at parties? (ftr: I'm male and always have been.)

I think the inference here is way too liberal and there's way too much Find-The-Mysogyny being applied here. The advice is good, and if it happens to be even more important for women because they have the additional possible negative consequence of getting raped (or rather, much higher probability, since men can and do get raped at parties in rare occasions), then all the better for it to be said and applied.

Certain contexts may or may not make certain phrases like that one judgmental, and your experience may or may not show that such contexts usually do so for this particular phrase... but they don't in my experience.

None of this was aimed as a rebuke to your main point that they can be extremely judgmental.

Comment author: TimS 25 April 2013 06:22:07PM *  0 points [-]

Your mother told you not to accept drinks from strangers at parties? Do you recall her rationale?

If there were no such chemical as a roofie, would the no-stranger-drinks rule at parties be a good idea?

Edit: Yes, it would be a better if men and women received the instruction equally, instead of the suggestion being directed predominantly towards women.

[the suggestion] was implicitly judgmental about women being at parties?

No, it was implicitly judgmental about the listener being at parties (i.e. your mother was expressing some amount of preference that you not go).

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 11 April 2013 02:17:29PM *  34 points [-]

I noticed that in many descriptions of violence against women, it is emphasised that given person is a normal male. I feel this requires deeper analysis than just saying "I agree" or "I disagree and I feel offended". Different people may translate these words completely differently, so let's think about which translations are correct and which are not.

To make this discussion shorter, let's ignore the part that also women can be violent, only let's only focus on what "normal male" means in this context. Here are a few possible translations. Actually, I just pick two extreme ones, and anyone is welcome to add other options (because I don't want to generate too many strawpersons).

  • A man can be abusive towards his wife/girlfriend/random girl even if he is not a psychopath, even if he is very nice and polite towards all his friends and strangers, if he is a good student, productive in his job, or a Nobel price winner. Towards a specific person in a specific relationship, his behavior may be completely different.

  • Deep in their hearts, all men desire to torture women. Some of them are just too afraid of legal consequences.

Let's say that I agree with the first version, disagree with the second version... and I am never sure which version a person had in her mind when she uses these words without further explanation. A principle of charity points towards the first explanation, but I know there are people believing the second version too. So I would prefer if people communicated more clearly.

Comment author: hairyfigment 12 April 2013 08:10:52PM *  -1 points [-]

but I know there are people believing the second version too.

Who, and how do you know?

What rough probability would you assign to a random feminist woman thinking this? What about a feminist woman on LW?

ETA: Let's assume submitter A has at least average intelligence (usually a reasonable claim on LW). Then she must know that LW has many more men than women. She likely also knows that this series exists in part to give those men potentially new information.

Suppose she believes version #2. Then she thinks most of her audience would torture women if they knew they could get away with it. If, like many feminists, she believes rapists have a low conviction rate, she must think the fraction of men committing rape far exceeds the observed figure - or that it would if we knew the truth. (Note by the way that the 6% figure appears in feminist sources.) Why would she tell us any of this? If she thinks we already know, why doesn't she denounce the whole series as a sham? If she thinks we don't know, did she mean to encourage us in our supposed dream of raping and hurting women while holding a respectable job? What, other than anti-feminist tribalism or the assumption of bad faith, could make #2 seem like a reasonable interpretation of the text? If you thought it was almost certainly wrong, but wanted more clarity in the future, you failed to make that clear.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 13 April 2013 08:35:02AM *  3 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 06:32:39PM *  2 points [-]

To make this discussion shorter, let's ignore the part that also women can be violent, only let's only focus on what "normal male" means in this context.

I also have objections due to the ambiguity of that word (and its antonym) in a different dimension: is that supposed to mean ‘typical’ or ‘functional’? I think that most people would agree that it's common for men to be abusive, but wouldn't agree that it's desirable for men to be abusive. (In this particular post, it clearly means the former, but it's so common for that word to be used to sneak in connotations in order to induce the reader to commit the naturalistic fallacy that I'd rather less ambiguous words were used instead even in these cases.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:48:36PM 7 points [-]

You might think my ex was a sociopath, but no -- he's a normal male, working as a university professor.

My best take on what "normal" means in that sentence is "not obviously weird or dangerous, and not an especially rare type". However, it's ambiguous-- it could mean "a very high proportion of men who appear normal are that abusive".

I don't think the poster has a clear idea of what sociopath means, since one of the things many of them are good at is passing for normal.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2013 03:22:05PM 1 point [-]

It may also be that the speaker is themselves uncertain. That is, I might have convincing and emotionally salient evidence of the former and less-convincing but still emotionally salient evidence of the latter, and therefore have high confidence in the former and lower confidence in the latter (and similarly low confidence in the negation of the latter). In that case, communicating more clearly won't necessarily help you be sure which version I have in my mind... I have them both in my mind, to varying degrees.

Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 08:07:33PM *  2 points [-]

and similarly low confidence in the negation of the latter [“Deep in their hearts, all men desire to torture women. Some of them are just too afraid of legal consequences.”]

On the off chance that you're speaking personally rather than hypothetically (I hope not)... What??? FWIW, I am a man and, while I can't see arbitrarily deep into my heart, I have no desire to torture women (or anyone else, actually) so far as I can see, and I seldom think about possible legal consequences of my actions. Now I might be lying about that (so you have to take my word for it), or maybe I do have such a desire but it's so deep in my heart that I can't see it (but how would you make that belief pay rent?), but still... I'd find it appalling that anyone would give a non-negligible probability that “Deep in their hearts, all men [emphasis as in the original] desire to torture women”, for any value of deep that wouldn't make that statement useless-whether-true-or-false. (BTW, Gandhi was also a man, wasn't he?)

Comment author: randallsquared 12 April 2013 09:54:18PM 5 points [-]
Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 08:44:02PM 2 points [-]

Your hope has been realized! Hooray!

That said, I also recommend that if you are going to spend very much time around women who have been severely traumatized by their experiences with abusive men, you prepare yourself to be appalled.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 12 April 2013 09:46:11AM 14 points [-]

Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?

There are thousands of ambiguities in natural language, but most of them don't have a connotation that I am a criminal in disguise. If it becomes accepted uncritically, some day it could have negative consequences for me.

How would e.g. a black person feel about a habit of inserting sentences like "this criminal was a normal black person" whenever a crime done by a black person is dicussed?

But also women have a selfish reason to care. Imagine that as a heterosexual woman you want to have a partner, and you want to minimize the risk of being abused. Changing the society and the legal system helps, but that is a very slow process. You also want to reduce the chance that you specifically will choose an abusive partner. So here is a specific man, and he looks attractive.. how can you estimate the probability of future abuse? Is there any evidence available?

Believing that "all men are abusers (when given a chance)" suggests that no evidence exists; there are no red flags you could detect to reduce your chance of future abuse.

I believe that this is false; a fallacy of grey. While there is no 100% algorithm to find a man who won't ever abuse you, there do exist some red flags, and by using them you can reduce the chance. An obvious example would be seeing the man behaving aggressively towards other people. (Some women ignore even this red flag.) I suspect that alcoholism may be another red flag; there are possibly more such red flags known. Discovering these red flags using statistics could be helpful.

Comment author: mwengler 12 April 2013 03:03:35PM 3 points [-]

Sure, you want to avoid ahead of time getting involved with an abuser.

But virtually all abuse stories I hear involve the woman ignoring early red flags, ignoring early pre- or mildly abusive behavior.

So a tremendous amount of abuse could be avoided without needing to predict the future. STOP relationships with people who are starting to abuse you, starting down that path.

I am not saying this to justify the abuser or abusive behavior. Rather to point out that in the puzzle of understanding abuse, understanding the abused's staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle.

Comment author: I_fail_at_brevity 20 January 2015 07:27:37PM 1 point [-]

I would hazard that many red flags--"obvious indicators of danger" are much more clearly seen in hindsight or out of context--these red flags might not have been quite so obvious to these women in abusive relationships. Using words like "ignoring" implies active agency on their part.

This type of statement strikes me as being a very likely reason "normal male" was used as a descriptor. If she allowed herself to be put on the stand for "failing" to see the warning signs, then, in a potential critic's mind, she might be implicitly bearing partial blame, and thus her message might be safely ignored (not that I agree with that--I'm merely stating that this is a common attitude that could easily be expected. "She didn't get out so she's partly to blame for being abused.") To avoid this, she hastened to point out that there was no way in which he did differentiate himself from other men, no "red flags" she'd missed.

More simply, a strong aversion to a common trend of blaming the victim and a desire to skip past that part of the critique.

I am making no statements about you in particular--merely that that's an easy interpretation of your comment.

Comment author: mwengler 20 January 2015 11:36:36PM 0 points [-]

I would hazard that many red flags--"obvious indicators of danger" are much more clearly seen in hindsight or out of context--these red flags might not have been quite so obvious to these women in abusive relationships. Using words like "ignoring" implies active agency on their part.

I'm guessing the thing you would hazard is a guess? You would hazard a guess?

Personally, I am going by experience. The two women I know who were abused were abused REPEATEDLY before they left the abusive relationship. Now I don't know what your relationships are like but I have never "accidentally" hit or even shoved a woman I was in a relationship with. But these women I know who were in abusive relationships overlooked being hit. They overlooked being hit again. I couldn't tell you how many times they overlooked being hit, I have the impression it was a fair number, before the abuse that finally rose to the level of scaring the shit out of them, that made them realize they were risking their lives, happened, and they finally left the relationships.

So I am not hazarding a guess. I may be generalizing from a small data set, but it is not a guess. Of the two women who have been abused that I personally know, 100% of them overlooked at least two instances of violence against them by their significant other before finally leaving. And both of them were pretty frightened for their lives before they finally left, rather deliberately overlooking mere bruising and hitting.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2013 04:44:33PM *  1 point [-]

I guess that in certain situations it can be hard to rebuff someone who's maintained plausible deniability without feeling like an asshole.

I hear Russian borscht is the best. Have you ever had any?” “You must be a commie! Go away!”

EDIT: Or, for a less ridiculous example, see the paragraph starting with “Last of all” in the first post of that series.

Comment author: mwengler 15 April 2013 07:32:23PM 3 points [-]

I guess that in certain situations it can be hard to rebuff someone who's maintained plausible deniability without feeling like an asshole.

This suggests that any woman is pretty much like any other woman, and it is the differing circumstance of the relationship that makes it hard for some women to leave abusive relationships.

I think it is extraordinarily more likely that some women get stuck in abusive relationships that other women would be out of there probably before abuse even started, let alone hanging around for the 3rd trip to the hospital.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2013 06:11:15PM *  4 points [-]

This suggests that any woman is pretty much like any other woman, and it is the differing circumstance of the relationship that makes it hard for some women to leave abusive relationships.

That's not what I meant; I meant that I suspect that in certain cases leaving a relationship is psychologically harder than it may look from the outside, especially if the abuse was turned up slowly boiling frog-style. I didn't mean to say anything about the variances of distributions.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 12 April 2013 04:09:56PM *  19 points [-]

understanding the abused's staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle

Could believing that "all men are abusers" contribute to staying with the one specific abuser? Such model provides only the choice between an abusive man or no man... where a different model would also provide an option of finding a non-abusive man.

(A data point about a slightly different situation: I knew a woman who believed that all men are alcoholics; the only difference is that some are honest about it and get drunk in public, the remaining ones are in denial and get drunk at home; and from these only two options, the former ones are more honest and more social. No surprise that all her partners were alcoholics. She complained about that, but instead about her bad choices, she complained about the bad male nature. Attempts by other women to convince her otherwise only led to responses like: "You are so naive to believe that. Just wait until you know your darling better and you will find out that he is an alcoholic too.")

Comment author: mwengler 12 April 2013 05:21:56PM 8 points [-]

Could believing that "all men are abusers" contribute to staying with the one specific abuser?

Sorta, yes, no. Cart before the horse. I think some women who stay with abusers may rationalize it by believing that all men are abusers. Mostly rationality is used for "understanding" what is happening, not generally to prompt fundamental changes. When I was drinking I had a very warped idea of how much other people drank, I thought I was drinking a little more than them. When I stopped drinking, and especially when I stopped feeling driven to drink, I realized that a tremendous fraction of my world was barely drinking at all, and that even among drinkers, most of them were sober enough to read the bill at the end of the night (which I generally wasn't on Fridays).

The evidence about other people's drinking was always there, I discounted gigantically its difference from what I was doing. In most of modern life, the evidence for other men treating other women differently is there, the question is why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?

Comment author: hesperidia 14 April 2013 04:27:22PM 3 points [-]
Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:43:23PM 5 points [-]

why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?

I'd start by looking at the conditions the two women grew up in.

For what it's worth, I've heard that there aren't really good predictors of who will end up in an abusive relationship, but people from healthy backgrounds get out faster. Unfortunately, I don't have a source.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 01:32:50PM 6 points [-]

True enough.

Another thing I can do if I want to reduce the uncritical acceptance of the second version is to consistently use the first version myself, including when I interpret others (principle of charity, as you suggested), and make this explicit when it seems appropriate.

The set of situations in which I consider modeling my preferred use of language appropriate is much greater than the set of situations in which I consider it appropriate or useful to insist that other people change their language use to conform to it. But on reflection, I'm not sure where that judgment of appropriateness comes from or whether I endorse it.

That aside, I certainly agree that "all men are abusers (when given a chance)" is false for any interpretation of "abuser" and "chance" that doesn't also make "all humans are abusers (when given a chance)" equally true.

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 April 2013 07:00:45AM 4 points [-]

"This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me!"

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 01:31:45PM 8 points [-]

Because anybody speaking out against discrimination against themselves is automatically demanding it take the top priority, and men should just shut up and put up until it's their turn.

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 April 2013 03:05:10PM -1 points [-]

Totally.

Comment author: TimS 11 April 2013 03:03:45PM 7 points [-]

There's a halfway point between those extremes:

Many men do what is socially acceptable, and avoid what is social unacceptable. But their reading of what is socially acceptable allows them to do abusive things.

REGARDLESS of whether those men are reading the social norms correctly, there are effective interventions to (change / make more explicit) the norms those men are trying to follow. For example, the Don't Be that Guy campaign in Ottawa, Canada. Alas, I can't find any data that shows effectiveness. But if data showed actual incidence was not decreased by this type of campaign, that would count heavily against my current model of the world - keeping in mind that there are strong reasons to be unsure of the connection between reported incidents and actual incidents.

Comment author: westward 11 April 2013 07:15:13PM 1 point [-]

What is this "social acceptance" you speak of? Is it defined by some authority? How is it measured?

I'm not trying to be snarky, I've just been listening to A Human's Guide to Words and this term doesn't feel well defined.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 01:52:35AM 4 points [-]

In terms of HGW, the concept is too complex for an intrinsic definition, but there is this thing that exists in the social dynamic that can be pointed out and named as "social acceptance".

Call it SA(behaviour). ~SA(b) predicts Ostracized(Perpetrator(b)) and related phenomenon with higher probability than SA(b), which in turn predicts Encouraged(Perpetrator(b)).

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 01:46:23AM *  8 points [-]

From the "How to Change Your Mind" sequence: Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit. (In other words, "leaving the pack" vs. "joining the rebellion")

What is this "social acceptance" you speak of?

The first rule of human club is you don't explicitly discuss the rules of human club.

Is it defined by some authority?

There is no authority with the power to define, despite the best efforts of Dear Abby and others.

How is it measured?

With great difficulty and much controversy.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 06:27:07PM 13 points [-]

It is significantly more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a man than the reverse. It is more socially acceptable for a woman to sexually assault a man.

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated (a word which refers to the wholesale removal of a man's genitals, incidentally, as opposed to castration, which refers only to removal of the testicles), anally raped, or <insert horrific act here> than any analogous reversal.

These things happen regularly without comment or outrage in our society.

I'm curious to know what exactly your model of the world is.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 06:57:39PM 0 points [-]

It is significantly more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a man than the reverse.

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated (a word which refers to the wholesale removal of a man's genitals, incidentally, as opposed to castration, which refers only to removal of the testicles), anally raped, or <insert horrific act here> than any analogous reversal.

Wait... what? I hear men saying such things about women once in a while, but I can't recall any women saying such things about men (except when talking about convicted criminals, in which case even other men will suggest such things). But then again, I'd guess the situation is worse on the other side of the pond.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:39:08PM 7 points [-]

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

On the other hand, some women are bigger and/or stronger than some men. Size is hardly a hidden factor. Why not use that instead of a surrogate?

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2013 05:48:08PM 3 points [-]

Indeed, if a small, weak man hit a big, strong woman, I wouldn't expect him to be frowned upon as much as the median men hitting the median woman.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 07:49:51PM 3 points [-]

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

The reason isn't terribly important for the purposes of this line of reasoning, so I'm going to largely leave this alone, and simply state that the iterated situation is considerably different than the one-shot situation.

Wait... what? I hear men saying such things about women once in a while, but I can't recall any women saying such things about men (except when talking about convicted criminals, in which case even other men will suggest such things). But then again, I'd guess the situation is worse on the other side of the pond.

"Any analogous reversal" doesn't mean "men talking about men." It's not limited to the social acceptability of women as violence-initiators; it also includes the social acceptability of men as violence-receivers.

Comment author: maia 12 April 2013 01:01:38AM 6 points [-]

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated ...

This is true in my social circle, but I'm not at all confident that it is true in most.

It is more socially acceptable for a woman to sexually assault a man.

This is not true in my social circle. Again, not sure about others.

These things happen regularly without comment or outrage in our society.

Again speaking for my own social circle only: Things like this are generally said in jest. My guess is that it is more acceptable to joke about this because it is less of a serious problem than male-on-female assault/rape.

But, I'm not convinced at all that this is typical.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 03:19:15AM 12 points [-]

Wedding Crashers. Yes Man. 40 Days and Nights (although in that case, there was a bit of popular backlash).

I'm not going to go through cases for the first thing you quoted.

But it's not limited to speech. If a woman hits me, most witnesses will assume I deserved it; I did or said something they didn't see. If I hit a woman - well. Men who have called 911 after being assaulted by their wives or girlfriends frequently find -themselves- locked up.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 03:33:19AM 16 points [-]

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker is an interesting example. He starts by explaining that he became fascinated by finding out how to predict threat levels because his mother was extremely violent. The rest of the book assumes that an aggressor will be male.

The Emotional Terrorist and the Violence-Prone by Erin Pizzey is her account of starting one of the first domestic violence shelters in the British Isles, and being surprised to find that a bit over half the women were habitually violent themselves. I've heard confirming information from at least one other source. This doesn't mean you should assume that any women who reports violence in her marriage is partly at fault-- note that the odds are close to even.

I think women who are domestically violent against men are a serious problem, and it's going to take a lot of men speaking up (something which is quite difficult, and not just because of feminists) to get any sort of a solution.

Comment author: TimS 11 April 2013 06:30:57PM *  1 point [-]

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated (a word which refers to the wholesale removal of a man's genitals, incidentally, as opposed to castration, which refers only to removal of the testicles), anally raped, or <insert horrific act here> than any analogous reversal.

What on Earth makes you think that I find that dynamic acceptable? Non-consent is non-consent.

Comment author: DaFranker 11 April 2013 07:14:57PM *  5 points [-]

OrphanWilde: [Factual, empirically-testable claim that:] For Set A: X > Y
OrphanWilde: [Query:] (For Set A) Does X > Y imply f(X) > f(Y)?
(got downvoted)

Response: I don't find X acceptable. (Edit: Or perhaps: "I don't find (X > Y) acceptable.")
(got upvoted)

Someone is being misread and uncharitably misinterpreted here.

Edit: Here's a translation of my pseudologic above:

[Factual Claim] For some culture: Social acceptability of female-to-male violence ("X") > Social acceptability of male-to-female violence ("Y")
[Query, perhaps rhetorical?] Does the social acceptability of gender-to-gender violence ("X" and "Y") correlate with the actual frequency of corresponding gender-to-gender violent actions ("f(X)" and "f(Y)")?
[Implication] If so, we should expect that X > Y ==> f(X) > f(Y) ; that is, we should expect that there are more female-to-male acts of violence than the reverse, by this logic.

[Response] I don't find the fact that (female-to-male violence is socially acceptable) acceptable. (Or perhaps that it's more acceptable than the reverse, but I doubt that would be the intended meaning. )

( Anyone else notice that the response, while probably true and definitely admirable, does not engage in any way with the point? Anyone else notice that the one that points to a flaw in the earlier logic gets downvoted, while the other that responds with something barely related but applause-lighted gets upvoted? Anyone else notice that I got downvoted at first for attempting to point this out (the last two sentences)? )

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 08:20:14PM 3 points [-]

I don't think my interpretation was uncharitable; I think TimS indicated that reducing social acceptance/increasing social stigma for male-on-female violence would result in less violence, and if this didn't work, his model would be challenged. (Or are you saying I was being uncharitably read? Having reread my comment; my point wasn't very explicit at all, and kind of begged for an uncharitable reading. So I don't hold the uncharitable reading against anybody.)

(Incidentally, don't worry too much about the upvotes/downvotes in this post, they're not necessarily indicative of the reasonableness of your position. There are definitely people who have very firmly taken sides, and are upvoting/downvoting anything they perceive to be on or supportive of the opposing side. Environmental hazard of touchy social issues, not much you can do.)

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 06:41:20PM 7 points [-]

I didn't imply you find it acceptable. The question was, if you think social acceptability is predictive of behavior, do you expect to see more violence against men than women - that is, should you expect that violence by women against men is a larger social problem, given that it is more socially acceptable?

Comment author: torekp 13 April 2013 11:02:54PM *  -1 points [-]

No, you should not expect that. Social acceptability is only one variable. Other things are not equal.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 01:51:58AM 4 points [-]

I see what you are asking. I think my most relevant response is that I don't think the word "more" in the quoted text is accurate.

The Steubenville victim got death threats from people who knew her. Someone making the unacceptable comments you describe would generally be faced with awkward silence.

Incidentally, I'm no fan of speech codes, but I suspect ridiculous overreactions to stupid speech happens with somewhat equal prevalence on both political extremes. One ridiculous overreaction is too many, of course.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 02:43:22AM 1 point [-]

I see what you are asking. I think my most relevant response is that I don't think the word "more" in the quoted text is accurate.

By "more" I don't mean society approves of it more, but disapproves of it less, if the distinction makes a difference.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 03:15:32AM 1 point [-]

As I understood you, you meant "Society disapproves of female-on-male sexual violence. But society disapproves more strongly of male-on-female sexual violence."

I just think you are factually wrong in that assertion, based on the differences in responses like the ones I noted.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 03:27:48AM 2 points [-]

Ah. I follow you now. And I find your comparison dishonest. First, you're trying the general case against a specific case, and using your assumptions for the first. Second, you're not comparing like cases; you're comparing what angry family members said following a rape trial to reactions to speech. Third, you're using an exceptional and unusual case.

Comment author: TimS 12 April 2013 03:41:04AM 3 points [-]

The threats weren't from family members. And the very debate we are having is whether Steubenville is exceptional and unusual for what happened to the victim or simply because it became world famous.

General vs. specific is a reasonable point - but looking at headlines from news sources that we each already agree with is unlikely to help us resolve this issue. I could point to examples from the yesmeansyes blog, but obviously they filter the evidence to focus on what they find problematic. No doubt you could also point to mostly reputable news sources for examples that you find problematic.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 April 2013 02:39:16PM 12 points [-]

A man can be abusive towards his wife/girlfriend/random girl even if he is not a psychopath, even if he is very nice and polite towards all his friends and strangers, if he is a good student, productive in his job, or a Nobel price winner. Towards a specific person in a specific relationship, his behavior may be completely different.

A variation:

  • Friends, strangers, and society in general normalize the abuse, spending cognitive effort finding ways to rationalize it. Possibly because he is a good student, etc., they try to fit him into the "good student box" instead of the "wife-beater box".
Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 12:55:53PM 30 points [-]

An older woman is abusing her position of authority to violently take out her frustrations on a young male she has authority over - and that's patriarchy? Really? Reverse the situation, and that might be "patriarchy." Or it could just be a messed up person. The position the author takes in that post trivializes women; they can't help it, they're not responsible for their actions, because Patriarchy. Well, "misogyny" is right. It just applies to the person writing that post.

And the porn comment, as well. Men need to be fixed, because their sexuality isn't desirable or acceptable.

And I'm sure I'm "mansplaining," a sexist term which boils down to trivializing male perspective. Regardless of whatever bad things it has been used to describe, I've seen it far more often used to attack reasonable discourse. When you're discussing things rationally you can say exactly what is wrong with a statement; you don't need terms like "mansplaining."

Also, a minor comment in regards to Author A - please don't trivialize women who do prefer the contributing, doting role. They aren't doing it wrong, they're doing it different, and they experience no small amount of hostility from other women who have replaced one kind of misogyny with another. Your comments about doting women are extremely similar to PUA comments about "beta" males, not a little because both are fulfilling similar roles in relationships, and because your comments, like theirs, essentially add up to the suggestion that any relationship entered into in a supportive role is necessarily doomed because nobody will ever respect them. Indeed, swap the genders and it wouldn't be out of place in a PUA blog.

Or, to put it another way - read this post with the genders reversed and few would hesitate to call the result misogynistic. This is my personal yardstick for discussing gender issues; swap the genders and see how it reads. I doubt the LW Women series of posts would be anywhere near as well-received if the genders involved were editorially swapped.

Comment author: Clarity 11 February 2016 05:39:43AM 0 points [-]

This reminds of the viral video of Senate estimates hearing where one senator's Mansplaining accusation backfires badly. Go gender equality! Fight both patriachy and matriachy!

Comment author: maia 12 April 2013 01:20:08AM 11 points [-]

Your tone in this comment is hostile and defensive. This suggests to me that you've had discussions with feminists who were very aggressive and possibly unreasonable. If true, I'm sorry that you had to experience that. But please try to keep in mind that not all women/feminists are like that, and that it's possible to recognize misogyny as a phenomenon without blaming each individual man for all of the the gender inequalities in our society.

And the porn comment, as well. Men need to be fixed, because their sexuality isn't desirable or acceptable.

I also think the porn comment wasn't great, though I think you read a bit more into it than I did. As someone who would describe themselves both as "feminist" and "sex-positive," it bothers me when people associate "watches porn" with "psychopath." This story doesn't seem too relevant to an overarching narrative of misogyny; it's just a tale of woe that could have happened to anyone unlucky/foolish enough to marry an insane person.

An older woman is abusing her position of authority to violently take out her frustrations on a young male she has authority over - and that's patriarchy?

I agree that that wasn't substantively about patriarchy. The comment about the older woman having to do all of the household work, however, was.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 03:02:30AM 12 points [-]

Your tone in this comment is hostile and defensive. This suggests to me that you've had discussions with feminists who were very aggressive and possibly unreasonable. If true, I'm sorry that you had to experience that. But please try to keep in mind that not all women/feminists are like that, and that it's possible to recognize misogyny as a phenomenon without blaming each individual man for all of the the gender inequalities in our society.

Hostile, yes. I reserve my hostility towards those who are aggressive and unreasonable, however. For an example of a self-described feminist who I like, Quizzical Pussy. (Yeah, yeah, I have black friends.) But I wasn't actually angry about the misandry, although I noted it, and criticized the hypocrisy. I was angry at the -misogyny-.

See:

"this is in part due to women using men’s explanations, with men being less challenging than apologetic" "the victim’s biological mother (abuser’s wife) and paternal grandmother accepted the abuser's rationalizations" (and the bit about the grandmother)

The persistent theme in the post is denying the women involved any agency. There's patriarchy, they're just victims, helpless. They're not complicit, they're abused. It's a narrative in which women are -too stupid to know any better-, and must be enlightened. THAT is what pissed me off. I have contempt for feminists who hate men, but they don't make me angry. Feminists who deride the patriarchy for dictating the lives of women, and demand women live by these other dictates in order to fix it - they piss me off. That's a betrayal of the basest order.

I agree that that wasn't substantively about patriarchy. The comment about the older woman having to do all of the household work, however, was.

The entire paragraph was building up to excusing the abuse; she creates a narrative in which patriarchy is responsible for an older woman beating a young male in her care.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2013 03:28:38PM 14 points [-]

Or, to put it another way - read this post with the genders reversed and few would hesitate to call the result misogynistic. This is my personal yardstick for discussing gender issues; swap the genders and see how it reads.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (The Red Lily; Anatole France)

Which is to say, insisting on treating two people identically when they are embedded in a system of inequality sometimes leads us to absurd conclusions.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:52:27PM 1 point [-]

To be absolutely clear here - you're saying actual, overt sexism is acceptable, as long as it's women doing it to men?

Well, that's pretty damn sexist, so I guess you're consistent, at least. Or ... maybe not, because your username implies you're male, and Wilde was accusing the OP of misogyny as well as misandry.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 01:23:12PM *  6 points [-]

To be absolutely clear here - you're saying actual, overt sexism is acceptable, as long as it's women doing it to men?

I'm not sure if I'm saying that, since I'm never quite sure what people mean by "sexism", let alone "actual, overt sexism".

But I am saying that in a system that differentially benefits group X over group Y, I consider it much more acceptable for an individual to treat X and Y differently in a way that differentially benefits Y than in a way that further differentially benefits X. If that's actual, overt sexism in case where (X,Y)=(men, women), then yes, I'm saying actual, overt sexism is sometimes acceptable as long as it's being done to men. (The gender of the person doing it is irrelevant.)

If that's itself pretty damn sexist, I'm OK with that. My purpose here is not to avoid nasty sounding labels, but to reduce the (net) differential in distribution of social benefits (among other purposes). So if I have a choice between "being sexist" while reducing that differential and "not being sexist" while increasing it (all else being equal), I choose to reduce that differential. Labels don't matter as much as the properties of the system itself.

All that said, I do agree that treating women who abuse their family members as though they lack agency and merely express the patriarchy, while treating men who abuse their family members as though they do possess agency, is unjustified.

My objection was not to that, nor to the other statements in the OP that I didn't quote, but rather to the sentences I quoted and the "personal yardstick" they suggested using, which I don't endorse.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 08:26:35PM 6 points [-]

Well alright, as long as you're consistent ;)

Personally, I would say most "sexism" is less taking from Y and giving to X and more just harming Y, which benefits X only through weaker competition. I suppose if you view the battle of the sexes to be a zero-sum game, that yardstick doesn't make much sense. However, if you thing misogyny and misandry hurt everyone, it does. Looks like there was an inarticulated assumption in OrphanWilde's post, I guess.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 08:40:56PM 3 points [-]

I don't necessarily think the distribution of social benefits is a zero sum game; in fact, I find that unlikely.

However, it's also irrelevant to my point. I can value equalizing the net playing field for X and Y whether that playing field is on average rising, on average lowering, or on average staying the same. My point is simply that if I value equalizing the net playing field between X and Y, I should endorse reducing the (net) differential in distribution of social benefits between X and Y.

One of the many benefits a society can provide its members is protection from harm. So differentially harming Y is one of many ways that a (net) differential in distribution of social benefits to X and Y can manifest.

And, again, if we want to label reducing the (net) differential in distribution of social benefits between men and women, with the goal of ultimately altering our society so that it provides women and men with the same level of benefits, "sexism", I won't argue with that labeling, but I also won't care very much about avoiding things labeled that way.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 09:49:52PM 0 points [-]

I don't necessarily think the distribution of social benefits is a zero sum game; in fact, I find that unlikely.

[...]

One of the many benefits a society can provide its members is protection from harm. So differentially harming Y is one of many ways that a (net) differential in distribution of social benefits to X and Y can manifest.

Unless I've misunderstood the term, what you describe is, in fact, a zero-sum game.

And, again, if we want to label reducing the (net) differential in distribution of social benefits between men and women, with the goal of ultimately altering our society so that it provides women and men with the same level of benefits, "sexism", I won't argue with that labeling, but I also won't care very much about avoiding things labeled that way.

If I had persuaded you by changing the label, I'd be pretty ashamed of myself for using Dark Arts in a LW discussion.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 09:57:02PM *  2 points [-]
One of the many benefits a society can provide its members is protection from harm. So differentially harming Y is one of many ways that a (net) differential in distribution of social benefits to X and Y can manifest.

Unless I've misunderstood the term, what you describe is, in fact, a zero-sum game.

One of us is misunderstanding the term, then.
It might be me.
We might do best to not use the term, given that.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 10:32:14PM 3 points [-]

Taboo time!

"A situation where harming one side is equivalent to helping the other - perhaps because the first to pull ahead by a certain number of points wins, or because they both derive utility from the disutility of the other side."

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 11:23:00PM 3 points [-]

Thank you for clarifying.

OK, soo you're claiming that when I say that one of the many benefits a society can provide its members is protection from harm, so differentially harming Y is one of many ways that a (net) differential in distribution of social benefits to X and Y can manifest, I'm implicitly asserting that harming Y is equivalent to helping X?

If I understood that, then no, I think this is simply false.

For example, suppose there are dangerous insects about and I have a supply of insect-repellent, which I choose to give only to group X. This is a differential distribution of social benefits (specifically, insect repellent) to X and Y, and sure enough, Y is differentially harmed by the insects as a manifestation of that differential distribution of insect repellent. But it doesn't follow that harming group Y is equivalent to helping group X... it might well be that if I gave everyone insect repellent, both X and Y would be better off.

Comment author: Randy_M 11 April 2013 08:51:20PM -2 points [-]

What if that system of inequality is biology? Is is still absurd to treat them equal?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 02:13:15PM 2 points [-]

What if that system of inequality is biology? Is is still absurd to treat them equal?

Sometimes, sure. For example, if there's some task to be performed, and because of their biology X is capable of performing it and Y is not, it's frequently absurd to behave as though X and Y were equally capable of performing it. Having a long "conversation" with a deaf person who is not looking at me can be absurd, for example, as can giving a pregnancy test to a man.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 April 2013 11:15:06PM *  5 points [-]

Biology doesn't dictate your values. Avoid the naturalistic fallacy.

For instance, even if the descriptive claims that PUAs make about women's desires were true, this would not make it right to demean women.

It is surely the case that women and men have morally significant biological differences. Perhaps the biggest of these is pregnancy and childbirth — the vastly greater cost that women bear in childbearing. However, it would be the naturalistic fallacy to claim that women should bear this cost (e.g. that the creation of artificial wombs would not be a moral improvement); and it would be rationalization of misogyny to claim that women should be treated as baby-makers.

(Tim Wise makes a related argument about why it's silly for progressives to worry too much about race-IQ research: we don't believe that smart people have more political rights than average people, so even if it were shown that one racial group were on average smarter than another, this wouldn't change anyone's commitments to political equality.)

Comment author: Randy_M 11 April 2013 11:24:10PM 3 points [-]

I'm not sure what you mean by demean women. Do you mean that to even make truthful observations that could make a woman feel bad is wrong?

I'm not sure what treated as baby makers means. I think it entirely reasonable, in this universe without well functioning artificial wombs, to take as a default that women will bear children, even to have incentives towards such. I like humans existing.

I don't know what your footnote references.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 April 2013 11:57:59PM 8 points [-]

I'm not sure what you mean by demean women. Do you mean that to even make truthful observations that could make a woman feel bad is wrong?

No.

Some descriptive claims associated with the PUA memeplex seem to come with an addendum that could be crudely rendered as "... and therefore, women are your inferiors." Women are manipulable; therefore, you have the right to manipulate them. Women desire approval, therefore, you should manipulate their desire for approval to get sex out of them that they may otherwise not want to have. And so on.

(To make a geek analogy: "Their server has a security vulnerability; therefore, they are morons and you should hack them and take all their stuff.")

I'm not sure what treated as baby makers means.

Perhaps I should have said "treated merely as baby-makers"; as opposed to thinkers, dreamers, desirers, planners, possessors of values and goals, colleagues, rivals, partners — you know, people.

I don't know what your footnote references.

Blaaah ... that's because I removed the sentence it was a footnote to, and didn't remove the footnote. Edited.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 06:08:21PM 7 points [-]

You don't get a pass on your own biases merely because you oppose somebody else's. You especially don't get a pass on your own biases when you're using them as the basis to assert somebody else's.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 02:13:53PM 4 points [-]

Sure, I agree with all of that.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 April 2013 01:53:27PM 12 points [-]

In general I disagree with your remarks, but the only one I feel we can make progress on is probably:

And I'm sure I'm "mansplaining," a sexist term which boils down to trivializing male perspective.

You know, I'm pretty sure it's sometimes used that way, but I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.

Why do I say this? First, I've seen examples of it among my coworkers. Second, I've experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what's going on, and end up being completely wrong.

Now I'd agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that's just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don't exist.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 12:53:52PM *  2 points [-]

I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.

Well, yes. It also involves women explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance. Because the category in question is, in fact, that of people explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 12:57:27PM -2 points [-]
Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 08:28:15PM *  1 point [-]

I fail to see why being certain while uninformed and powerful vs. being certain while uninformed and powerless is a good Schelling point. I suspect this is why that comment was downvoted.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 08:53:51PM -2 points [-]

If you're not going to give reasons why you don't think it's a valuable ontology, then there's nothing more to say.

The comment was clearly downvoted for political reasons. I should never have wasted so much time arguing with someone who had admitted they were mind-killed. Please don't act like karma is remotely representative of the correctness of comments.

Comment author: drethelin 13 April 2013 07:46:51AM 6 points [-]

of course it was. the entire concept and topic of mansplaining is political. It's overtly a status move, seeking to reduce the status of men explaining to women. We can ignore whether or not this should be the case, or whether the current disequilbirium in the splainosphere towards men doing the splaining is something that deserves to be corrected, but to say that "mansplaining" carves reality at any joints but political ones seems untrue to me.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2013 10:24:06AM -1 points [-]

but to say that "mansplaining" carves reality at any joints but political ones seems untrue to me.

That's all I was saying. For instance:

I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc... but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don't have the same qualia.

"Qualia"? Goals, motivations, and revealed preferences (that is, the things that separate "explaining" from "mansplaining" and from "splaning" in general) aren't qualia.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 April 2013 01:07:32PM 3 points [-]

I never would have guessed that anyone could have meant that by "qualia". I take it to mean the experiential aspect of the world.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 09:20:23PM 2 points [-]

The comment was clearly downvoted for political reasons.

If you're not going to give reasons why you think it's a valuable ontology, then there's nothing more to say.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 06:02:20PM 9 points [-]

You know, I'm pretty sure it's sometimes used that way, but I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.

This is part of humanity. It's not unique to men.

I've experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what's going on, and end up being completely wrong.

Being bisexual, I know exactly what you're referring to. However, again, the typical mind fallacy is not unique to straight people, or men.

Now I'd agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that's just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don't exist.

The issue with this argument is that "male" doesn't belong in your last sentence. Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they're illegitimate. If you can't, you have no business responding to the argument.

"Mansplaining" is sexist. It's kind of like the term "hysterical." Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term "mansplaining" complaining about the sexist origins of the word "hysterical."

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 10:19:53PM 4 points [-]

"Mansplaining" is sexist. It's kind of like the term "hysterical."

Well... I'd guess that many of the people who use the word "hysterical" aren't aware of its etymology, or at least aren't thinking about it. (Is the word "bad" *ist because it originally meant "hermaphrodite"?)

Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term "mansplaining" complaining about the sexist origins of the word "hysterical."

Yes.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 11:11:58PM 5 points [-]

The root of the word refers to the Greek word hystera, which refers to the uterus. Hysteria -originally- referred to female sexual dysfunction, but medical quackery resulted in becoming a catch-all diagnosis in women experiencing unidentified symptoms.

Given that the treatment was using vibrators or other mechanisms of inducing orgasm, and given that the culture of the era was that men weren't supposed to desire sex/sex was demeaning to them, and women were supposed to be sex-crazy (the reverse is actually a fairly recent phenomenon - watch older movies and you'll still see traces of these attitudes), I suspect that women were frequently more than a little complicit in that particular bit of quackery.

Freud and other contemporary psychologists started using one of the quack versions of the word to describe emotional issues, and it stuck.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 April 2013 11:18:41PM 8 points [-]

At least some feminists today prefer the term "splaining", precisely because the behavior isn't unique to men.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 12:37:12AM 7 points [-]

It's better (although it still fails to reject an argument on its merits, or lack thereof), but I'm not sure the term can really be rehabilitated in such a manner. First, the connotation has already been established among too many people, and it's bad, and second, most of those I've encountered who use that term write it as `splaining.

It comes across less as addressing a problem and more as hiding it. It becomes a code word - whitewashing the explicit sexism, but maintaining the implicit.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 April 2013 01:21:44PM 4 points [-]

The other problem is that when a problem has become a topic of public discussion, people say the same things again and again. It's not just the other side who uses bingo cards.

("Bingo cards" is a term used to deride your opponents saying the usual things.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 April 2013 06:32:30PM *  0 points [-]

I feel I've responded to most of this in the sibling thread (tl;dr: fallacy of gray, ignores social/political contexts, not useful to generalize as "being an ass"), except:

Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they're illegitimate. If you can't, you have no business responding to the argument.

A wrong argument is still wrong, even if the social/political cost of responding to it is too high. A correct counterargument is still correct, even if the social/political cost of stating it is too high.

Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term "mansplaining" complaining about the sexist origins of the word "hysterical."

It's cognitive dissonance provided you ignore the political, social, and historical context of each utterance.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 07:17:27PM 7 points [-]

I assume you believe that your belief in the significance of that context is rational. What evidence could I present that your understanding of the context is incorrect?

Because absent that, I don't see this argument as being fruitful. Your essential argument comes down to the point that I lack sufficient perspective pretty much on the basis that my perspective doesn't match yours.

(I will confess that my own perspective probably won't change. There was some fucked up shit in my childhood which I won't get into that is going to permanently color my attitudes; suffice to say I have little sympathy for people who insist misandry can't happen or is somehow different or less significant because context. Those are my experiences you're trivializing there.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 April 2013 08:32:22PM 1 point [-]

What evidence could I present that your understanding of the context is incorrect?

For example, evidence that women were a dominant group during the period when "hysteria" came into use. Then I would agree that "hysteria" is largely equivalent to "mansplaining."

Your essential argument comes down to the point that I lack sufficient perspective pretty much on the basis that my perspective doesn't match yours.

I find that I'm confused. I thought we were talking about whether or not social and political forces were relevant (in a "carving reality at the joints" sense) to interpreting a certain kind of behavior.

suffice to say I have little sympathy for people who insist misandry can't happen or is somehow different or less significant because context. Those are my experiences you're trivializing there.

Excuse me, but I've not said anything about your experiences, and I do in fact believe that misandry exists and is significant.

I just don't know how to talk about either "women being told things they already know by ignorant men" or "men being told things they already know by ignorant women" without actually distinguishing the two as subclasses of the class of actions I've called elsewhere "being an ass."

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 08:54:12PM 7 points [-]

I find that I'm confused. I thought we were talking about whether or not social and political forces were relevant (in a "carving reality at the joints" sense) to interpreting a certain kind of behavior.

Excerpting something you've written in another comment: "If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same." Am I mistaken in taking your position on the matter as that all gender relations should be viewed through historical context?

Excuse me, but I've not said anything about your experiences, and I do in fact believe that misandry exists and is significant.

You are, however, insisting that it's different/less significant. My statement was addressing a broad class of gender relations contexts that I cannot accept. My childhood self had neither input into nor knowledge of that context, and your position reads to me as requiring that historical context makes my experiences less significant than an analogous experience by a girl. I refuse to accept a worldview which dehumanizes me.

I just don't know how to talk about either "women being told things they already know by ignorant men" or "men being told things they already know by ignorant women" without actually distinguishing the two as subclasses of the class of actions I've called elsewhere "being an ass."

Why do you insist on carving reality at those particular joints, however? Why are woman-man and man-woman the appropriate places to carve reality? You're coming into the discussion -assuming- those joints are appropriate places to carve.

"Mansplaining" is offensive, and it's used by precisely that group of people who believe man-woman and woman-man are appropriate places to carve reality. I can only take it as a -deliberate attack on my gender-. People using the word "hysteria" aren't generally aware of its original meaning or intent. The words are no longer the same. "Hysteria" is no longer reasonably offensive, because it is used by people who do not know that it could be; it takes education to even know that it is something you could take offense at. "Mansplaining" on the other hand is used almost exclusively by people who know exactly what they're doing, and it is almost exclusively directed at people who know exactly what it means when they're doing it.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 April 2013 10:56:23PM *  -1 points [-]

You are, however, insisting that it's different/less significant.

Different? Yes, of course it's different; it's a different activity with different characteristics that occurs in substantially different ways. Less significant? No.

Why do you insist on carving reality at those particular joints, however?

Because that's where we started when we started talking about mansplaining. (In fact, I also made a gay-straight distinction that is also not completely true.) It's not the only place, but it is a place, and I've tried to argue here that treating both classes of interaction (or, more broadly, the whole continuum of interaction) as a single class is not helpful.

I'm done being accused of misandry when all I've said generalizes to a broad variety of classes of interaction and kinds of power struggles within many different groups.

EDIT: Perhaps I should have explicitly said I was tapping out. Suffice it to say I agree with very little of OrphanWilde's interpretation of the views I've presented in this thread.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 02:44:13PM 10 points [-]

I haven't accused you of misandry. (Seriously, this should be an "I am confused" moment. Please stop trying to fit what I am saying into a predefined narrative.)

What I've accused you of, effectively, is supporting a dominance hierarchy that dehumanizes me, that makes my experiences less significant. More than one guy has said in this post that he finds the term "mansplaining" to be offensive, and a strong signal that his gender will be held against him, and anything he says will be ignored. Why do you persist in defending it? Because you insist on a dominance hierarchy that makes their experiences matter less than... what exactly? The ability of feminists to be offensive? Because you think being in a dominant class confers an immunity against hurt?

The dominance hierarchy didn't protect me from an emotionally abusive misandrist. It didn't protect me from the college professor who routinely flunked or kicked out every male student who ever made the mistake of taking a class with her without asking around about her reputation first. It doesn't protect me from rape or violence. It does not, in fact, confer any protections at all. Instead, it strips them away, and then I get thrown to the bottom of the pile and told "We'll get to you when we're satisfied everybody else's problems are solved first".

And hell, I don't even demand anybody fix the problems; I'm not a crusader, nor do I want to be, because the pay is shit and everybody hates people who stand up for men, if only because they think it's distracting attention from the "real" problems. All I want is for the people who claim to be fixing these problems in general to stop heaping shit on top of me, actively working to make things worse. I really don't think it's all that unreasonable, nor do I think it's unreasonable to call out the people who -are- actively making things worse.

Comment author: Jack 11 April 2013 04:01:17PM *  22 points [-]

I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.

People certainly explain things in a tone of certitude from positions of ignorance, like, all the time. And I find it plausible that this is more common among men since exuding competence and knowledge tends to be more important for male status and men seem to be more concerned with "winning" arguments than women. But I don't see any good reason to make the phenomenon about the relationship between genders. I'm male. My male friends "mansplain" to me all the time. I "mansplain" to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women-- and all of them "mansplain" to me too.

It's a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful. It's talking to seem impressive instead of talking to learn or share. It's important for rationalists to avoid it. But I think it's really absurd to suggest it is something only men do-- to the point of referring to it as "mansplaining". Especially since the issues on which -in my experience- women most often talk with certitude from a place of ignorance is gender politics, particularly regarding the experiences and motivations of men.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2013 04:38:16PM 14 points [-]

But I think it's really absurd to suggest it is something only men do-- to the point of referring to it as "mansplaining".

Sure. Similarly, I think it's absurd to suggest that complaining loudly and aggressively is something only women do, to the point of referring to it as "bitching."

And yet, terms like this are common in our linguistic environment.

Of course, that's not in and of itself a good reason to accept them. My culture no longer uses "Jew someone down" as a way of describing sharp negotiation practices, for example, because it's seen as expressing and encouraging a view of Jews that we collectively no longer endorse. (Though we still use "gyp"in similar ways.) Many communities reject "bitching" for similar reasons as applied to women. And we could certainly reject "mansplaining" as harmful to men.

But it's also worth asking where our energies are most usefully spent.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 April 2013 04:29:18PM 0 points [-]

But I don't see any good reason to make the phenomenon about the relationship between genders.

I sense a fallacy of gray coming.

I'm male. My male friends "mansplain" to me all the time. I "mansplain" to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women-- and all of them "mansplain" to me too.

The reason for distinguish this genre of discourse (which one might merely call "being an ass") from mansplaining and its related categories (e.g., the other day I overheard in a Starbucks a guy solicit two Asian students, ask them their "ethnic origin", and then reassure them in all seriousness that "We'll send that Dennis Rodman guy back to patch things up.") is that the explanation revolves around the minority party's everyday life. Therefore, e.g., your male friends don't mansplain to you (provided you're not a woman) because you all live in the context of being male.

Calling it all merely "being an ass" conceals the political and social mechanisms lurking under the surface of the exchange.

It's a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful.

The latter -- sometimes. The former? Carving reality at the joints is a good epistemic habit, and I think this does the trick.

But I think it's really absurd to suggest it is something only men do-- to the point of referring to it as "mansplaining".

Of course "being an ass" isn't something only men do but because of the power differential, it's socially acceptable for men to call women out on being wrong, and not the reverse. If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 12 April 2013 08:47:25AM *  10 points [-]

Perhaps we could use a new word "blackstealing" for describing when a black person steals something from a white person.

I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc... but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don't have the same qualia. Blackstealing is a specific phenomenon and deserves its name in our discourse.

(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of "mansplaining". I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)

(More meta: This comment is probably just another example of mansplaining. It would have to be written by a woman to deserve a serious thought.)

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 12:45:23PM *  -2 points [-]

Nice try, but "black crime" (see 1st paragraph) is actually a thing that people study.

Now, if you wanted it to mean specifically racially motivated stealing, there's that too:

Also published by the federal government is the Known Offender's Race by Bias Motivation, 2009.[22] According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report database, in 2010 58% of hate crime offenders were white (including latinos), 18% of offenders were black, 8.9% were of individuals of multiple races and 1% of offenders were Native Americans.[23] The report also reveals that 48% of all hate crime offenders were motivated by the victim's race, while 18% were based on the victim's religion, and another 18% were based on the victim's sexual orientation.[24] The report states that among hate crime offenses motivated by race, 70% were composed of anti-black bias, while 17.7% were of anti-white bias, and 5% were of anti-Asian or Pacific Islander bias.[24]

Oh well.

(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of "mansplaining". I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)

It is a pity your satire fell flat.

EDIT: Also, regarding:

I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc... but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don't have the same qualia.

"Qualia"? Goals, motivations, and revealed preferences (that is, the things that separate "explaining" from "mansplaining" and from "splaning" in general) aren't qualia.

Comment author: Larks 12 April 2013 01:11:49PM 7 points [-]

And because base rates are important, according to the CIA factbook, the US is

white 79.96%, black 12.85%, Asian 4.43%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.97%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.18%, two or more races 1.61% (July 2007 estimate)

Comment author: Jack 11 April 2013 11:25:42PM 3 points [-]

The reason for distinguish this genre of discourse (which one might merely call "being an ass") from mansplaining and its related categories (e.g., the other day I overheard in a Starbucks a guy solicit two Asian students, ask them their "ethnic origin", and then reassure them in all seriousness that "We'll send that Dennis Rodman guy back to patch things up.") is that the explanation revolves around the minority party's everyday life. Therefore, e.g., your male friends don't mansplain to you (provided you're not a woman) because you all live in the context of being male.

Calling it all merely "being an ass" conceals the political and social mechanisms lurking under the surface of the exchange.

I understand that this is the position of those who like using the term. But my comment was explicitly denying that there is any obvious political or social import lurking under the surface of the exchange. My position is precisely that what is called "mansplaining" is just "being an ass" and that there is no need to attribute any darker, oppressive content to the exchange. Your reply is begging the question.

The latter -- sometimes. The former? Carving reality at the joints is a good epistemic habit, and I think this does the trick.

I actually wasn't talking about "using the term 'mansplaining'" here. I was talking about the behavior the word refers to. Obviously, I don't think it carves reality at the joints, though.

Of course "being an ass" isn't something only men do but because of the power differential, it's socially acceptable for men to call women out on being wrong, and not the reverse.

I'm aware there are parts of the world where this is the case and I'm sure there are retrograde parts of the West where it is true as well. But this claim is totally and hilariously laughable in my social circle and demographic. Most of my friends are women. I get called out for being wrong all the time.

Comment author: Randy_M 11 April 2013 08:49:13PM 3 points [-]

It's a patent absurdity of the social justice dogma that every man has power over every woman.

Comment author: ikrase 12 April 2013 06:45:31PM 8 points [-]

My Yvain-inspired view of this is that there are several different levels of power, and social justice dogma tends to conflate them. This sometimes results in things like trying to solve things like institutional, situational poverty using discourse, and in pushes that will leave one side without self-respect and the other side no better off materially than before.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:32:51PM 2 points [-]

If they push intersectionality to its logical conclusion, they'll actually be paying attention to what's happening in individual lives. I don't have a strong opinion about whether this is likely to happen.

Comment author: ikrase 13 April 2013 08:51:55AM 0 points [-]

I'm... not sure what you mean by that.

I've noticed a tendency for groups to join a very specific political cluster (Kind of blue-green-ish maybe?) once they find out about and internalize intersectionality. This happened with New Atheism, and while I think it's for the better, I don't like it. It also seems to result in Inclusivity Wars being incredibly messy and inordinately high-stakes.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 April 2013 01:05:03PM 0 points [-]

What happened with the New Atheists?

My notion is that intersectionality allowed people to bring more of their identity into a discussion than previously-- for example, allowing that a person could be both black and homosexual rather than having to choose one.

If the process is allowed to go to its logical conclusion (not something you should count on with human beings), then a person's whole experience becomes relevant.

I have a notion that one of the things that goes wrong in social justice movements is that they don't allow enough for specialization-- everyone is supposed to care equally about a huge list of injustices.

I've wondered about the history of the acceptance of the idea of intersectionality. This seems like a safe place to ask.

Comment author: Bugmaster 15 April 2013 06:49:26AM 2 points [-]

What happened with the New Atheists?

As far as I can tell, some of the leading New Atheists decided to expand their identity to include certain political stances, as well as certain political labels. By doing so they formed a distinct in-group, and immediately became embroiled in an escalating series of in-group vs. out-group skirmishes. At present, as far as I can tell, New Atheists in both groups spend more time on inter-group fighting than on advancing their original goals.

Comment author: ikrase 13 April 2013 01:52:27PM 1 point [-]

The New Atheists: this is just my perspective: Started out with becoming aware that New Atheists should cooperate with other social issues, and should try to appeal to people outside of white, educated, ex-Christians, combined with (correct) realization of problems within community: Elevatorgate, skeptics uninterested in actually useful applications of skepticism to social issues, Dawkin's Islamophobia, etc. Meanwhile, New Atheism ceased to be lonely dissent. Bunch of talk happened, some factions adopted intersectionality and kind of just merged with the rest of modern quasiradical/moderate Social Justice, others went contrarian on other stuff and became (un-thoughtful) reactionaries, etc.

My (somewhat fuzzy) criticism of intersectionality is basically that it discourages keeping ones identity small, specifically on stuff that is usual Social Justice fare, and tends to encourage the congealment of a big body of politics where somebody can always spam 'but that doesn't include _' or 'but that wouldn't work for _' whenever they run into an idea they disagree with.

That said, I do think that the basic concept is important and needs to be understood.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 April 2013 04:28:34PM 24 points [-]

I detest the term "mansplaining" because it conflates gender issues and errors. It's better to point out actual problems with what's being said.

As a side issue, though, when I was trying to find out whether mansplaining might refer to something real, I did notice on NPR shows that the people who called in and took up more time by using obvious statements to lay groundwork for their questions were typically men.