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A Rationalist's Account of Objectification?
I'm seeking some feminist consciousness-raising, and I'm hoping some LWers (Alicorn?) can help.
Specifically, I've never understood why "objectification" is wrong.
I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be a member of a suppressed group. I still need regular training in avoiding sexist language, etc.
First: my background. When I was 10ish I encountered the word "feminism" for the first time. I asked my mom what the word meant.
She said, "It's the idea that women should have the same rights and privileges as men do."
And I thought, "They have a word for that?" It seemed too obvious to deserve its own word. It felt like having a special word for the idea that left-handers and right-handers should have the same rights and privileges.
So I've always thought of myself as a feminist.
Of course, some activists (the word has positive connotations to me, BTW) pushed too far, as is the case in all large movements. At some times and places (1980s academia, I think), it was common to assert that there are almost no (average) significant differences between men and women that aren't caused by enculturation, except for genitalia. That is of course false. Hormones matter, especially during development.
Such overreaches made it psychologically easier for some non-feminists to dismiss legitimate feminist demands and resist thousands of much-needed feminist advances (which are still ongoing).
Now, on this matter of objectification. I've never understood it. I've tried to get people to explain it to me before, but they were (apparently) not well-trained in rationality. I'm hoping a rationalist can explain it to me.
Here's my confusion about objectification. Depending on what you mean by "objectification," it seems to be either something that (1) is very often perfectly acceptable, or that (2) means something very narrow and is usually not being exemplified when there is an accusation of it being exemplified.
Let me explain.
Earlier, when I tried to figure out what "objectification" was and why it was wrong, the leading article on the topic seemed to be one by philosopher Martha Nussbaum. She lays out the goal of her paper like this:
I shall argue that there are at least seven distinct ways of behaving introduced by the term, none of which implies any of the others, though there are many complex connections among them. Under some specifications, objectification… is always morally problematic. Under other specifications, objectification has features that may be either good or bad, depending on the overall context… Some features of objectification… may in fact in some circumstances… be either necessary or even wonderful features of sexual life.
Using examples, she then outlines seven ways to treat a person as a thing. Rae Langton added three more in 2009, bringing the total count to 10 ways to treat a person as a thing:
- Instrumentality. The objectifier treats the object as a tool of his or her purposes.
- Denial of autonomy. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in autonomy and self-determination.
- Inertness. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity.
- Fungibility. The objectifier treats the object as interchangeable (a) with other objects of the same type and/or (b) with objects of other types.
- Violability. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.
- Ownership. The objectifier treats the object as something that is owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.
- Denial of subjectivity. The objectifier treats the object as something whose experience and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.
- Reduction to body: treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts.
- Reduction to appearance: treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look.
- Silencing: the treatment of a person as if they lack the capacity to speak.
Consider a classic example of objectification from Playboy magazine: a photo of a female tennis player bending over, revealing her butt, above the caption "Why We Love Tennis."
The Playboy image exhibits at least eight features of objectification: instrumentalization, denial of autonomy, fungibility, denial of subjectivity, reduction to body, reduction to appearance, and silencing!
But, let's consider another example of objectification, what I'll call the Muddy People photo:
To us, these people are nothing but objects of our entertainment and pleasure. We have instrumentalized them. Moreover, they are fungible. It does not matter to us which people are covered in mud and looking silly. And just as with the Playboy example, this photo involves a denial of autonomy. Indeed, it is doubtful the permission to publish their photos was obtained. Moreover, we are not much interested in the feelings of these people but only their role in entertaining us as we gaze upon their mud-caked bodies – a denial of subjectivity. Often, nothing of these mud-covered people can be seen or known except their bodies – in many cases, only body parts, sticking every which way. This is the reduction to body. There is also clearly a reduction to appearance. Their mud-covered appearance is their only interest to us. In many cases, the emotions they might be having are totally obscured by the mud covering their faces. They are also, of course, silent to us.
So all the features of objectification found in the Playboy example, which we might feel is wrong somehow, are also shared by the Muddy People photo, which we probably feel is acceptable. Perhaps this suggests that our feelings are poor guides to moral truth. Or maybe what is wrong with the Playboy photo is something other than objectification.
Of course, there are disanalogies to be found. The Playboy example (especially with the caption) involved sexuality, and the Muddy People photo does not particularly do so. But if this is the line of thought that leads us to condemn Playboy but not the Muddy People photo, then we are bringing in another concept besides objectification.
For example, perhaps we want to say that Playboy‘s objectifications harm women by contributing to a culture of sexual prejudice, but the Muddy People objectifications do not cause any such harm. But then we are not appealing to this Kantian notion of "objectification." Rather, we are appealing to utilitarian principles. (Feminist philosopher Lina Papadaki makes similar objections to the notion of objectification.)
We all use each other as means to an end, or as objects of one kind or another, all the time. And we can do so while respecting their autonomy. I enjoy looking at the shapes and textures in the Muddy People photo while also respecting that the people whose bodies make up those shapes and textures are autonomous individuals of great value. But their value as individuals is not the point of the photo. The point of the photo, in this case, is that it's an interesting picture to look at. And that's okay, I think.
Good romantic partners use each other as a means to their own gratification while also respecting each others' autonomy. We use each other as sex objects, as emotion objects, as conversation objects, as knowledge objects, as carpool objects, and as other objects, all the time - while also respecting each others' autonomy and value. It's not clear to me what's wrong with that.
So if something like Nussbaum's analysis of "objectification" is what is meant by the term, then I don't see what's wrong with it. But if it means something much more narrow (what? I don't know), then I doubt it is exemplified nearly as often as people are accused of exemplifying it.
I reject Kant's epistemology, logic, and metaphysics - as I think any scientifically-informed person should. But even if you do accept all three, I still don't see what's intrinsically wrong with objectification as Nussbaum defines it.
Maybe I'm being dense. That has happened before. I'm not posting this with much confidence that objectification is a mostly useless concept. I'm posting this in pursuit of some consciousness-raising.
Understanding the problem is the first step toward fixing it. And right now I don't understand the problem. So if you have the time, please teach me.
Thanks.
Update: below, I'll keep an updated list of the most useful articles I've found so far.
- Meteuophoric, Does SI make everyone look like swimsuit models?
- Shakesville, Feminism 101
- Feminism 101 Blog, FAQ Roundup
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Comments (325)
"thousands of much-needed feminist advances" seems to link to the "sex differences in humans" article.
I agree with you about it being silly to have a word for advocating the moral equality of the sexes (although I use this as a reason not to label myself "a feminist", in much the same way that I would consider it vaguely silly to identify with a word labeling the advocacy of the moral equality of left- and right-handed people).
I don't really like being summoned to do this consciousness-raising job on the basis of "Sayeth The Girl". For one thing, I wrote that long enough ago that I now find it (like virtually everything else I wrote long enough ago) embarrassingly badly crafted, and I leave it up only as part of a policy that I shouldn't delete stuff I publish just because it's gotten embarrassing. For another, I have never wanted the job of Feminism Police on Less Wrong, and have largely stepped back as more people have been willing to do the needed work.
If you are willing to do your consciousness-raising by reading stuff, you could read some blogs and follow links like crazy (feminist bloggers are pretty good about linkage) and keep going until everything you run into looks familiar. This is the sort of topic you need to simmer in more than study like there will be a test later.
If for some reason you think talking to me in particular would be helpful (and you're reasonably caught up on what I've already written onsite on the subject so I don't need to repeat myself) I'm up for it but would prefer to do so offsite, via IM (or e-mail if IM is impractical).
I fixed the link, thanks.
I know you don't want the job of Feminism Police. AnI didn't intend to "summon" you - hence the ? after you name - but I did request help. And it seems you're offering it - via IM - and I appreciate it.
Let me do some more simmering, and then maybe we'll chat in IM.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing if anyone else can provide some insight.
Cheers.
It was the "on the basis of Sayeth the Girl" that I objected to more than the mere fact of the summoning. If you'd summoned me on the basis that I am the most karmalicious female poster or something, I wouldn't have remarked on it except maybe to verbally preen.
AIM: Alicorn24; MSN: alicorn@elcenia.com; GTalk: elcenia@gmail.com
(Anyone IMing me should identify themselves early on so I know you are not a random stranger.)
Thanks.
I'm making the rounds on the feminist blogs again. This one is particularly useful, in addition to those you linked to.
This sounds like saying that you should keep reading authors who share a given ideological standpoint until you're successfully propagandized by them. I don't see how this approach could lead to an unbiased understanding of any subject. [Edit: I mean any subject that is an issue of strong ideological controversy, as this one clearly is.]
I'm not advocating reading them until one agrees with them on every particular, or even any particular. Familiarity is a different goal entirely. It's a little like learning another language: which, sure, learning a new language has its effects on your thought process, but it's not so sinister as you imply. Notably, you could combine simmering in feminism with simmering in men's right's advocacy, or even whackaloon level misogyny, without seriously harming the ability to learn the feminist blogosphere's culture and language.
I'd also suggest looking for blogs of people who were active in the feminist movement and left it because of conflicts between the movement (note: not the concept of feminism itself) and other activism, like racial or class or disability or transgender activism, if one wants to hear about issues with feminism-as-a-movement. I can probably even dig up a few examples, if there's a call for it.
Yes please!
Here is the most recent example from my blogroll, and it has links to a few others as well.
It doesn't critique feminism in general, and of course doesn't shed any light on objectification, but that's an interesting inside critique of a large part of a particular movement. Thanks for the link.
I also just came across this, which is a quote from a book that looks relevant. (More quotes from the same book here.)
How do you feel about the practice of advising LW newbies to read the sequences?
Cyan:
The analogy would be if someone didn't understand some well-defined and useful concept that is discussed in the sequences, and you directed him to read the relevant sequence material, which presumably contains an accurate explanation. The assumption is that the concept is useful and well-defined, rather than an incoherent ideological buzzword, and that the sequences contain a correct explanation of it. (And to the extent that these assumptions don't hold, the advice would be bad.)
However, as a different example, suppose someone is confused about some incoherent ideological concept, like, say, the Marxist notion of "dialectic." Now if you direct this person to read Marxist authors persistently until the idea starts to make sense, you're effectively instructing him to submit to ideological propaganda until he is successfully propagandized. (Especially if this person is already familiar with a significant body of Marxist literature and asks a cogent question that seems to expose some flaws in the concept.)
Now, the question is whether the notion of "objectification" and the feminist authors of the linked blogs are more similar to the first or the second example. Clearly, I believe that the latter is a closer analogy, which I don't find surprising, considering that this is an area of intense ideological warfare and the authors in question in fact represent a more radical wing of one side in this conflict.
Yup, that was what I was getting at: contrary to your original statement, your true objection isn't to the approach per se but to the content.
Honestly, I don't see what exactly I wrote that is contrary to my original statement. The content is relevant insofar as the recommended reading represents the output of one side in an ideological struggle, and my original comment is consistent with that.
Could you clarify what precisely you mean by " approach per se" here?
There's two separate issues to be compared:
"Go read the Sequences" : "Go read a bunch of Feminist Blogs" :: "Go read 'Circular Altruism'" : "Go read a particular article about 'Objectification."
"Objectification" and "Shut Up and Multiply" are buzzwords. They are important concepts that you need to understand in depth, even if you disagree with the ramifications and phrasing of them, if you want to discuss particular issues in a meaningful way.
"The Sequences" and "A bunch of a feminist blogs" are large collections of work that include essays of varying quality and importance. "Go read the sequences" is something I've definitely heard a lot here. Outsiders sometimes assume we mean "I don't feel like talking to you until you're part of our cult" when we say it. When in fact, they contain a lot of useful information that will change your mind about some things - but you are unlikely to start updating if you just read one particular article, especially if you've previously been biased against its topic.
There's a tension in your original statement between value-laden phrases such as "ideological" and "successfully propagandized" and the very general remark about the approach not leading to "an unbiased understanding of any subject" (emphasis added). What I'm driving at is that your objection was really to the recommended content; you didn't quite address this head-on in the original statement but rather made an incorrect fairly general counterargument to reading widely on a given subject (or "simmering", as Alicorn put it). (The italicized phrase is my reply to your request for clarification.)
Your reply to my question about the sequences did address this head-on. At this point I'm just trying to clarify my rhetoric.
Thanks for the clarification. In retrospect, I agree that my original comment was poorly worded.
You don't limit bias by restricting what you read, but by exactly the opposite--by reading more, and from more varied, ideological perspectives. Alicorn didn't say to reading nothing except feminist ideology; and you completely missed her conditional, "If you are willing to do your consciousness-raising by reading stuff".
She is obviously speaking to the people who desire to understand the concepts involved. If you want to evaluate feminism, you need to understand the concepts, and to do that you need read things written by actual feminists. I think Cyan is right, you're arguing in a way that you wouldn't if this was about about something that wasn't feminism.
Disclaimer: I'm hetero-male. I strongly consider myself a feminist. It'd be nice if we didn't need a word for moral equity of the sexes. But we have far enough to go that it's still an issue. I work in media production, and media production is heavily steeped in sexism. I have to make a conscious effort to make sure my work doesn't contribute to the problem. I read a few feminist blogs to keep myself thinking about issues I would likely forget about otherwise, or at least not consider as strongly.
I don't consider objectification an inherent bad thing, but in many contexts it produces similar, repetitive detrimental effects on society. You will probably be able to argue about individual cases and find that some aren't that bad or whathaveyou. But the problem is big, and real, and complex enough, that for purposes of encouraging widespread action, it's a lot easier to tell people "objectifying women is bad" than telling them to "carefully analyze how individual artworks are likely to impact society, measure their utility, and censure the ones that cause the most harm."
The people-in-mud photo is objectifying people in general. But what makes objectification bad is that it makes some people into objects and others into people who use objects. The people-in-mud photo is fine because it doesn't make any kind of statement (conscious or otherwise) about specific groups of people. It's just a bunch of folks in the mud. They could be anyone. Because they're covered in mud, it's not even clear what race they are.
The playboy picture is explicitly objectifying women, and setting men up to be the ones who do the objectifying. It's creating an imbalance of power, which is the kind of objectification that's actually wrong.
So, just to be clear: Is it your suggestion that what makes objectification wrong is the imbalance of power it (sometimes) creates, because the power imbalance causes harms to the disempowered group?
It's one thing. There's a lot of interconnected things going on, but it's the most obvious difference between the two photos. I'll have more to say later, but this is a big topic and I want to get it right. As Alicorn says, you should stew for a while.
This post seems to be making the same point, and the ensuing discussion is interesting.
Interesting quote: "No objectification without due subjectification." (Holly.)
I voted this down, as it seems to me that bringing the topic up again will do far more harm than good.
I think the issue is complicated and it definitely skirts the edges of mindkilling politics. But it's an important issue (both to the world in general and to us in particular), and if it's all possible for us to tackle in a respectful manner, we should.
We didn't particularly successfully tackle the issue in the last few hundred commenter-hours devoted to it. I'm worried that there's a comparatively small number of people who just really like talking about these topics, and they tend to dominate the voting because they're a concentrated interest opposing the diffuse interest of site quality.
I'm far from being the right guy to answer this, but my $0.02: if I were one of the people in that photo, I'd probably feel a bit uncomfortable by the fact that the photo had been taken without my consent and republished here.
It wouldn't be a huge thing, but it would be unpleasant.
If I felt like you were treating me like one of the people in that photo when I was, say, going on a job interview or going out to dinner, I would feel extremely uncomfortable and pretty angry about it.
That suggests to me that treating people in my life the way you describe treating the people in that photo isn't actually acceptable.
It more weakly suggests to me that treating people in that photo the way you describe treating the people in that photo isn't actually acceptable.
I can see why someone would be annoyed if treated as an object in all these ways when you're meeting them in person for dinner. But I don't see how that suggests that treating the representations of people in the photo is wrong. What's the logic, there?
Also, if the issue is consent, then do all the photos where women give consent for their nude photos to be published pass the test? I think not. That's not what you were suggesting, but then I'm not sure what you were suggesting with that paragraph. Could you elaborate?
My logic goes something like this:
As I said, I estimate that I would be made uncomfortable by being aware of having my image treated the way you describe treating the images of those people, and I would therefore prefer not to have my image treated that way.
I consider the people in that photo part of the same reference class that contains me -- that is, we're basically all people together -- and thus I infer from my estimated discomfort about my own counterfactual experience that they also would prefer to not have their images treated that way.
My credibly precommitting to the general principle of not treating people in ways they would rather not be treated (whether they know I'm doing it or not) lowers everybody's estimation of the likelihood that I am treating them that way (without their knowledge), which I endorse. (1)
You may be asking a different question, though, which is something like "what's the logic for my being made uncomfortable by such photos of me being viewed in the first place?"
And, well, mostly that's not a reasoned conclusion, it's an emotional reaction. That said, being treated the way you describe constitutes a reduction of my status, and status is a valuable thing, so I might well reason my way to the same conclusion if I had enough data. It doesn't seem a particularly flawed judgment.
And, perhaps unrelatedly: yes, consent is relevant. If I give uncoerced and informed consent for someone to view certain photos of me, I am not made uncomfortable by their doing so. I infer from that, that if someone gives uncoerced and informed consent to having me view certain photos of them, they are not made uncomfortable by my doing so. Which makes that a completely different case.
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(1) I have sort of picked up the impression that some folks arrive in some superior fashion at the same category of conclusions that I get at through thinking about the usefulness of credibly precommitting to a class of actions by way of a notion of acausal relationships between specific actions, and that this is related to a Timeless Decision Theory that is popular here, but I don't understand that well enough to invoke it here.
Interesting.
My own emotions are different. I wouldn't mind being one of the people in the mud pit, having my photo taken unknowingly amidst such a large group.
Also, on the issue of consent: If we required consent from each person in such photographs, it would be nearly impossible to ever publish photographs of large groups of people.
Re: consent... sure, I agree. Or at least more difficult. That doesn't change my conclusions about how consent informs my judgment of whether a particular act is OK.
Re: your emotions... fair enough. If I use you as a reference class for those folks instead of me, my conclusion changes.
I suspect that the main problem with objectification is when it's the only way that certain people interact with certain other people. It doesn't seem to be entirely avoidable, in any case, but recognizing that a person has agency and all that when it's important makes it okay to focus on other things at other times. It's also an issue when people are, or feel like they are, only treated in objectifying ways - socially-normal neurotypicals seem to have an innate need for validation of themselves-as-people that being treated in objectified ways interferes with.
As to the two pictures, the framing of the first, both in the sense of how it's composed and in terms of the caption, seems to me to make it more problematic than it would be on its own, and more problematic than the second picture. There are many fewer contextual and body language cues, and we're specifically prompted to see the subject as a body to be judged and (in a fantasy sense) used. The second picture has no such prompting, and it's entirely possible to read it as a group of individual people, wonder about what they're doing, try to guess at what they're thinking, and so on. (What are those people at the top of the picture looking at? That guy on the bottom near the right, is he helping that person up, or about to headbutt them? The woman in the upper right with her hair in a bun looks like she's having fun, and maybe just made a friend, and I hope that person next to her doesn't fall!)
You may want to see if you can find a good explanation of the term "male gaze". Unfortunately I don't have one - in fact if you do find a good one I'd appreciate it if you shared - but it seems highly relevant from what I've gathered.
What would you think if the Muddy People photo was accompanied by the caption "Mud fights make for pretty pictures"?
"Pretty" in particular is a word that gives me a lot of trouble - I've never actually been able to pin down a coherent, consistent meaning for it. Assuming that you're trying to get at a message of "the only interesting aspect of this picture is its aesthetics", though, I suspect that I would indeed find it objectionable, particularly if the picture itself was also edited to remove any bits that might be interesting for other reasons or to put focus on some particular aesthetic aspect at the expense of allowing other interpretations. (I'm more of a visual thinker than a textual one, so I find the composition of pictures to be more relevant than the captions, which I often don't even read. Some people are the opposite, so both are important in general.)
Male Gaze.
Also.
... I continue to be surprised by and impressed with TVTropes' usefulness when it comes to social issues. Thanks!
The framing allows everyone to turn their mind killers off, and the mission statement of entertainment means that concepts have to be presented so clearly that understanding them takes almost no effort at all, while there simply is no incentive to try to make anything sound profound.
This Katja Grace post is related.
What a great post! Thanks for linking that.
I feel that both that post and the accompanying Robin Hanson article ignore some important issues. I'm working on a response that explains why, but doing it right is going to take time.
I do appreciate the effort, Raemon!
ditto.
If you're not already reading Katja, you should be.
I don't want to make this an issue, at least until I'm more familiar with it. But I recall at least one comment in another thread questioning the concept of "privilege." Can someone link to a good, rational article that argues against the concept of privilege?
If you are unfamiliar with the concept, I recommend this article
(Please don't debate the issue here yet. I think it's relevant but I want to gather information before I decide if it's worth bringing up in more detail. If you do want to talk about it PM me).
Also.
I have nothing against the concept of privilege, but perhaps the name is unfortunate. Privilege is mostly the state of being able to enjoy the absence of discrimination and similar bullshit against oneself so that one never even has to think about such issues, right? The word makes it sound like it's something bad, something you should feel guilty for, when in fact the only problem is that everyone should get that and many groups don't.
Is there a better name you would use for it? I think it means pretty much what it says it means. Note that the article I linked begins by trying to disassociate privilege from guilt.
I think the concept of privilege is probably important, but I'm male and wouldn't totally know.
Maybe defaultness as an alternative word?
It seems pretty non-loaded to me.
Come to think of it, "Status Quo Bias" is pretty relevant.
I think "defaultness" is altogether too non-loaded. To be in the default (the usual term is "unmarked") category does tend to confer advantage, but not always (for example, "rich" or "upper class" are marked). Privilege refers not only to the advantage enjoyed by certain classes of people over some minorities, but also to the blindness that privileged people tend to have toward the oppression the minorities face. It's called "privilege", rather than just "not-oppression", because treating privilege as unmarked contributes to its invisibility.
My impression was that it was enough that you could be blind towards oppression, no actual blindness required, and that you wouldn't stop being privileged just because you became aware of oppression, i. e. that recognition of privilege didn't automatically negate it. Is that wrong?
Er, yes, you're right. Privilege is the advantage enjoyed by the unmarked, or (capacity for) blindness toward oppression. One or the other will suffice, you don't need both.
I will add to this that I frequently make a point of talking about "unexamined privilege" rather than "privilege" when I want to communicate the unmarked nature of it, precisely because the increasingly popular habit of using "privilege" to indicate not only the state of having advantages but the state of being unaware of those advantages causes a lot more confusion than it's worth (e.g., tedious discussions about whether it's preferable to get rid of one's privilege, which with the more confusing unpacking leads to the answer "Well, yes and no.").
The conventional name for the concept FAWS described above is 'rights'.
I think there's a distinction. I have the right to vote. If I were black, living in particular areas or time periods, I might still have to worry about whether that right will end up mattering in the real world. I guess I'd say that "privilege" is the word for rights that are not fairly implemented in practice.
(though I don't actually believe in 'rights' as something that exists in the abstract. They're conventions we use because people collectively prefer to have them.)
I'd like to know why I was downvoted. If I was downvoted because you think privilege isn't a useful concept, I'd appreciate it if you provided a good article (or your own words in PM) discussing why.
The problem I have with the concept of privilege, is that in practice it's used as a way to avoid responsibility and rationalize failure. And not to infrequently guilt trip those who have achieved success, your article's professions that invoking privilege is not about guilt notwithstanding.
Rationalist should win, not sit around whining that they lost because of bad luck/someone else's privilege..
I do not doubt that there are plenty of people sitting around complaining about society rather than accomplishing their goals. But the discussions of privilege I've seen were written from a position of (at least moderate) success, and the point wasn't to identify reasons they failed, but to identify flaws in a system and try to fix them.
The existence of people who use it to complain isn't relevant to whether the problem exists and how to fix it if it does.
This thread is about understanding what objectification is, in order to avoid offensive behaviors, understand why those behaviors are offensive, and better empathize with people who find them offensive.
The fact that people use it as an excuse (what would feminists be excusing?) isn't really relevant, and dismissing the validity of those feelings (especially on the grounds that they wouldn't be acting like rationalists to complain) seems counterproductive. On top of that, I still think that understanding how the concept of objectification works would still be important in understanding what to do about it.
I don't think "avoiding offensive behaviors" is a worthy goal. Especially when you consider that a lot people tend to get offended by truth. Should we stop promoting atheism in the name of not offending theists?
This is not just an abstract question. There are currently people using arguments based on privilege (something like 'western' privilege in this case) to argue that people should avoid saying or doing anything that would offend Muslims.
I think it is a worthwhile goal.
There's a difference between being offensive because someone is fundamentally opposed to something that you're trying to do, something you are, or something you think, and being offensive simply out of your own ignorance about what people find offensive.
A lot of times people aren't offended by the truth so much as how its told. And when someone is actually fundamentally offended by my being an atheist, then whatever, I'm not changing that.
Rationalists should win, and that involves not shooting yourself in the foot for no reason.
Sometimes you win via trying to influence social mores such that a previously disadvantaged group is treated more fairly. Remember, "win" refers to your entire utility function which can include the wellbeing of others.
Well, I'll go ahead and say that I find the terminology suboptimal. If I understand correctly, privelege is what results from not being marked. Therefore while the terminology may accurately reflect the phenomenologically, it misdescribes the supposed mechanism. And ideally the language we use should indeed reflect the mechanisms, to make reasoning about it more intuitive. Instead of the privelege of the unmarked we should (if we think this account is accurate) speak of the dispriveleged of the marked.
I will say that use of the term "privelege" is useful in pointing out just what you gain from not being marked, because naturally that's not something the unmarked thing of very often. But I'm not sure it's the most helpful outside that rhetorical function.
I don't think the function is merely rhetorical. Getting people to understand the advantages they have is an important subgoal of feminism. Ultimately we want to make it so that women have all the privileges that men have. But doing so requires not just the efforts of women but the understanding and efforts of men.
I think the problem is not privilege in particular (whether you focus on "privilege" of white men or the disprivilege of others is splitting hairs IMO), but the way sexism and racism have become demonized in general. The most obvious forms of prejudice have been driven underground. This is a good thing. But there are still numerous ways in which women are subtly discriminated against. Such as, say, having the entire english language set up in a way that establishes them as "other."
The goal of the privilege discussion is to get men to notice and care about these things. It's possible that focusing on ways women are disprivileged will be more effective that how men are privileged. Dunno. But that effectives is the metric by which I measure the value of the word "privilege."
As I said, I agree it's effective at that. But if that's the whole goal, then surely more accurate/precise terminology should be switched to when actually discussing what's going on rather than getting people to notice?
I really don't think there's anything inaccurate about the language. Privilege vs disprivilege are flipsides of the same coin. Compared to the myriad conflicting definitions of, say, Rationality, the lack of precision with the word "privilege" seems pretty minor to me.
The cost of getting an entire community to change its definition is probably not worth the small improvement that would be gained by clarity to those just learning about it.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think "privilege" really is the right word, and that yes, it needs to place the emphasis on men. There are multiple goals to the privilege discussion, but I think the most important is to fight against the notion that men are "normal" and women are "other."
The article that lukeprog linked had an important point: perfect equality is percieved as biased towards women. A woman who chooses to keep her maiden name is perceived as "owning the relationship," simply because it deviates from the "normal." It's "emasculating." In many circles, a group with 50% female population is perceived as "overwhelmingly female."
See also Eliezer's take on Male Rationality
Being other is inherently status lowering. Framing the discussion in terms of men having "normal" privileges and women having "abnormal" disadvantages is completely counterproductive. The privilege discussion is not about how to fix the problem (where I'd agree that precise language is important to make sure that everyone understands the solution) so much as establishing that the problem exists. And it makes perfect sense for feminists to do so in a way that raises women's status rather than continuing to lower it.
I must object to the idea that the talk a phenomenon should be compartmentalized into different "discussions" with different "objectives" rather than attempting to obtain a sensible unified description that can be specialized as needed. It's true in general very different models may be needed for different aspects of a problem if the problem is hard enough, but that doesn't seem to actually help your case here.
Furthermore:
Er, isn't that the whole goal of feminism?
In any case, it seems like we're talking somewhat at cross purposes. I'm demanding language be accurate so we can discuss problems precisely and work with them, while you are suggesting we sacrifice accurate language in order that we may fight the problem through the language itself. I don't see how we can resolve which approach is better without access to a lot of information we don't have.
I may be wrong about this (I should probably check in on some feminist forums and get opinions from people working more seriously in the field) but I would say that the privileged discussion has a subgoal that is necessary for the supergoal of "actually fixing the problem." The goal of the privileged discussion is there to discuss what the problem IS and get people involved with it, because you can't actually fix the problem until a critical mass of people care. There is nothing inconsistent about that.
I do not think there is such a thing as language without inherent impact. Demanding the kind of precise, abstract language we use here has a way of abstracting problems and removing the emotional context from them. Which is important. Sometimes. But emotional context is not meaningless. It is the emotional context that made the movement necessary in the first place. A technical dialogue that makes men normal and women abnormally is automatically contributing to lower status. It's not neutral.
Agree with this. But my current take is: if the privilege discussion (and feminist movement) were just beginning now, I'd estimate the likelihood of technical language being superior maybe 30-40%. But since there's already a big movement with inertia that has chosen to use certain words, attempting to switch gears now would be problematic in all sorts of ways, and I think the effort of changing reduces the likelihood down to 5-10% tops.
Really though, the issue is that the rest of the world does not share Less Wrong's rational standards. Feminism is part of the rest of the world, and yes a lot of feminists would probably benefit from being more rational. Use of the world "Privilege" is probably no more or less technically accurate than the general level of discourse throughout Feminist blogs. It's also no less technically accurate than the general level of discourse in the Western world. (I actually think it's several steps ABOVE the normal accuracy of discourse about women/men relations).
Feminism is not, the place for a man to show up and say "hey you guys need to be more rational!" "Women are irrational" is one of the very stereotypes they're fighting against. Whether or not it's accurate in this place, it will set off flags that poison the conversation rather than improve it. Whatever rationality that feminism is lacking should be addressed by fixing society in general, not feminism in particular.
And again, in Eliezer's My Way, he notes that his (and probably Less Wrong in general's) approach to rationality is very male. What works for the most men isn't necessarily what works for most women. I don't know how much men really are more technically minded than women, how much is stereotypes, and how much is culture that deserves to change. But I would not assume that the Less Wrong culture is inherently better than what a female dominated rationalist culture might come up with.
I think that objectification of people is kind of like defecation or masturbation. I do it sometimes, I'm pretty sure everyone else does it too, I don't think it is particularly unhealthy, but for some reason people object when you do it publicly.
So I don't.
Interesting.
But I doubt that most women would like it if all men in the world were objectifying them in private. They'd like it better than continuous public objectification, perhaps, but still...
I actually think it's the public thing that specifically makes it bad. The private thing is an issue, but only because saying things in private makes you more likely to say/do related things in public.
This ties in with my issue with the Hanson and Katja Grace articles. Grace and Hanson seem to be approaching the issue from a single metric - guys treating specific women like sex objects and interacting with them with that mindset. When I think a bigger problem (in a torture vs dust specks sense) is all the little comments guys will make that belittle women in their daily life.
I work in an animation studio. For a while I was in a room with 4 guys and 1 girl. The guys had a raunchy sense of humor and with some frequency, joked about things like rape. I never got to actually talk to the girl about it but my sense was that she was uncomfortable, but pretended not to be. (She'd laugh at the jokes, but occasionally I saw her grimace in a way that didn't look too amused)
She left the company eventually. Now I'm in a room with just a few guys. The sexist comments have gone up dramatically. I know the guys are joking, but I also suspect that they've internalized some of the things they say. (For example, in discussing his romantic partner, one guy says on occasion "seriously, I think girls are just crazy." I think he's only half joking, and that his perception of the girls he's been involved with are warped by the portrayal of girls, both in media and in the way he and his friends talk about them).
The last bit of your anecdote illustrates that public speech also influences private thinking. I find it disturbing that men think that way about women. One could argue, on a number of grounds, that the private bit itself is wrong.
Interesting exercise: going through your list of '''10 ways to treat a person as a thing''' and see how many of them the 'LW consensus' satisfies.
1) Instrumentality. The objectifier treats the object as a tool of his or her purposes.
Well, we're mostly consequentialists.
2) Denial of autonomy. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in autonomy and self-determination.
Are you claiming to have free will or something?
3) Inertness. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity.
See 2.
4) Fungibility. The objectifier treats the object as interchangeable (a) with other objects of the same type and/or (b) with objects of other types.
Shut up and multiply!
5) Violability. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.
6) Ownership. The objectifier treats the object as something that is owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.
Ok, we don't do these two.
7) Denial of subjectivity. The objectifier treats the object as something whose experience and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.
Fortunately this isn't that common but there is an occasional tendency by some prominent commenters to dismiss personal experience as anecdotes.
8) Reduction to body: treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts.
What, are you claiming you have a soul or something?
9) Reduction to appearance: treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look.
Ok we generally avoid this.
10) Silencing: the treatment of a person as if they lack the capacity to speak.
There's a tendency to consider some people so hopelessly biased that one should disregard anything they say.
Taking Bayseanism and consequentialism seriously tends to reduce humans to the status of tools and victory points.
Regarding free will, the metaphysics of choice are not actually what is at issue when the list mentions "autonomy", "self-determination", "agency", and "activity". (I can't tell if you knew this, and were making a joke, or not.)
However, there doesn't appear to be a clear 'Schelling line' between the metaphysics of choice and what you do mean by those terms. Thus people and movements that start out arguing against free-will tend to end up arguing against "autonomy", "self-determination", and "agency" in the sense you mean.
Is it at all useful to think of the issue in terms of "treating people as if they had free will/autonomy/etc, as a reasonable way of dealing with the fact that we can't model each other to a consistently acceptable degree of accuracy"?
Really, I think the list overcomplicates matters.
Status is a valuable commodity, so behaving in a way that lowers someone else's status is therefore acting against their interests; non-person objects generally have lower status than people, so treating people as though they were non-person objects is therefore acting against their interests.
Yeah, I think this is pretty accurate.
5) At least I would consider an unwillingness to be uploaded as silly irrationality and do it to people anyway rather than have somehting bad happen to them if that was the other option.
Presumably, in "I don't understand why objectification is wrong" you have a plain English meaning of "wrong" in mind, and not something technical. Still, I wonder if you can explain what kinds of answers you would be looking for to a simpler or more abstract version of your question. Objectification is tendentious and controversial. Is there something more unanimously agreed on to be wrong whose wrongfulness can be explained in rational terms?
Take cruelty. If someone posted here "I have never understood why cruelty is wrong" and asked for help and arguments, what would people come up with?
I think this is a very important question but am not sure how to answer it in a way that'd be satisfying to everyone.
I agree that explaining why wrong is wrong is complicated (though, the metaethics sequence, particularly this and this, do a good job).
I'm interested in what people mean when they say "objectification".
So like, what's objectifying, why is it objectifying, etc. Stuff that makes it more obvious to a heterosexual male (who, to his knowledge either hasn't been or doesn't mind being objectified) what people are talking about when they say "objectification". In a way that just fleshes it out some more.
Right; I don't have a technical definition for 'wrong' in mind. Whatever people mean by 'wrong' when they say objectification is 'wrong', that's what I'd like to understanding. I might disagree, but before I can agree or disagree I need to understand what is being claimed.
I think cruelty is a tricky example, because it's wrongness seems very close to axiomatic. But there are more tractable examples. If I ask "I have never understood why driving an SUV is wrong", you can reply that they harm the environment by consuming lots of fuel, and in a car accident they increase the risk of harming the other party.
Here's a stab at the question about the images:
The female tennis player image has (just like words can have) certain connotations that are attached to it and they're mostly the of the type of the 10 things you've listed. The muddy people image, on the other hand, doesn't have those same connotations associated with it. So you can't just analyze the image itself, you have to take a look at it in the context of what's in people's heads related to the image. Just like what you'd do to figure out what people mean by some word.
Reading this post and comments was almost physically painful to me. Offense is a solved problem. Why are we still discussing it? Are we going to have a free will debate next week? Though I understand that people may get offended at the thought that their feelings of offense are how a status-seeking algorithm feels from inside, and all the "deeper" reasons coming to mind are just post hoc rationalizations. It must feel like trivializing the rainbow...
The relevance of that link isn't lost on me, but it's not obvious to me that lukeprog's question is equivalent to "why does objectification offend people?"
Riding my cruelty hobby-horse a little more: I think that I find cruelty offensive. I'm open to a status-seeking explanation for that but it seems likely to me that more is going on.
I think you can get on fine just knowing the answer to the question "how to tell if something will offend someone?", and avoid cluttering your mind with irrelevant stuff like "objectification" and "the criterion of violability".
cousin_it,
Apparently, lots of people think objectification is relevant. I'm asking "Why?"
And no, I'm not asking about offense.
Well, the status hypothesis easily explains why the Playboy photo will displease many women in a way the mud photo won't. Do you have any other puzzling questions?
Do you think that accurate predictions of people's behavior is most of what's required from a theory of right and wrong?
(Sorry for deleting my previous reply, it missed the mark.)
I wasn't trying to answer the question "why is objectification wrong", but rather "why do many people think objectification is wrong?" I think offense is a big part of the answer to the latter. See Righting a Wrong Question. This trick seems to be be especially useful with moral questions, e.g. "why is it wrong to kill" leads to making up stuff like unalienable rights, while "why do people think it's wrong to kill" leads to evolutionary psychology and other issues that at least have the potential of becoming scientific.
Agreed with this as far as it goes, but I think it can go further.
A real understanding of the status issues involved does more than answer "will people be offended by objectification?" It also answers "does objectification harm people?"
This isn't a moral question. That is, whether it's wrong to harm people or not, and in what ways and under what circumstances it's wrong, is a different question.
Yes! Thanks a lot for pointing this out, it makes the picture even more complete.
It gives an answer, but it doesn't necessarily give complete answer, or at least not a complete answer in relation to the reference class 'feminists'.
Lowered status is not just bad in and of itself. It also has other effects - making a certain reference class be considered less desirable for certain jobs or social positions, making a certain reference class be less likely to have their complaints or observations taken seriously, making it more likely that a certain reference class will not have their rights upheld or their needs taken into account when laws are passed, and so on. Feminists and other activists - at least the ones that I'm aware of - tend to focus much more on those kinds of issues, some of which are life-threatening, than on the simple emotional discomfort of being offended.
I know very well that status isn't about "simple emotional discomfort"! Did anyone ever say that it was? Status is up there with money and health among the most important stats of every human being, a huge factor in pretty much everything. Which makes it an even better idea to "follow the money" or "follow the status" whenever you see two parties arguing over something that doesn't look like a factual issue. Even when you yourself are one of the parties.
The comment I replied to doesn't make that clear, and can fairly easily be interpreted as 'they're just complaining because they feel offended; there's no reason to take them seriously, it's just status'. That's not the only possible interpretation, obviously, but it's the one I was speaking to. I'm glad that it's not what you intended.
Same question as to lucidfox above: can you say more about what you think the "more" is? What's left over?
I might have been understating it: it sounds funny to say "what's left over when you take away status" when I meant to express skepticism that status had much at all to do with the bad evaluation of cruelty.
I was trying to point out an abstract bad thing that doesn't seem to be political or coalitional, and therefore not so related to status-seeking. Cruelty seems to be such a thing, much more so than objectification. That I think it's accurate to say that instances of cruelty "offend" me then seems to contradict the thesis that offense is all about status. Maybe this is a semantic problem and you could say that I find cruelty to be horrible not offensive, or something like that.
Yes, I agree that there's a semantic problem here... specifically, as you say, the problem of understatement.
The planet Jupiter is, in fact, larger than a duck... but saying so is a strange linguistic act because there are so many more important things you could have said instead. Cruelty is, in fact, offensive -- but more importantly, it has net negative consequences.
And status actually turns out to be a fairly useful way to talk about the consequences of cruelty (over and above the consequences of equal amounts of non-cruel suffering).
The status explanation doesn't leave as much room for a similar statement about objectification -- in fact it explicitly disclaims that there's a more important aspect of objectification than its offensiveness. I think this is what's at stake for a lot of the comments here that defend the concept and reproach of objectification.
If I see what you're getting at I disagree. For instance it's not usually possible to lower an animal's status, but cruelty to animals is deeply upsetting for me.
I agree with you that this notion that status is something unimportant -- that it's all about "high school popularity contests and all that sort of thing" (to quote Skatche) -- underlies a lot of the discussion so far.
And as I said here, I think this is simply wrong... unwarrantedly dismissive of the real effects of status. Low status gets people killed.
As for animals, yes, we disagree: I would say that an animal being treated cruelly is in a lower-status position, one in which it has less ability to effect its preferences, than one being treated kindly.
To clarify, when A is cruel to B and C observes it (maybe not directly) who is being offensive to who?
A to C
What is almost physically painful to me is declaring problems "solved" when they clearly aren't.
To say the LW provided finished solutions to millennia-old problems would be treating millennia too lightly.
Perhaps.
And perhaps the same goes for any explainer... that is, if it turns out that the "this is what it feels like to be a status-management algorithm" explanation for offense wasn't original with LW, perhaps it wouldn't matter, because it's equally dismissive to assume that anyone solved it.
But surely there has to be a limit to that, doesn't there? Problems, including millenia-old problems, do eventually get solved.
So I guess my question is: why is it clear that this one isn't solved via an understanding of social status and the mechanisms for attacking and defending it? What's left over?
In my opinion, one reason why many people tend to dislike status-based explanations is that these explanations have unpleasant implications because of the fixed-sum nature of status. Status may not be precisely a fixed-sum good, but that does seem to be a very good approximation. Therefore, if the status of a certain individual or group is raised, that usually means that someone else's status has been lowered as result, and the change that produced this rise in status must have come at someone else's expense.
It follows that the advocates of some status-altering social change cannot accurately present it as an unalloyed good and a win-win situation for everyone; it is always analogous to redistribution of wealth, rather than everyone becoming richer. Of course, the former is a tougher sell, and makes for a much less convincing case.
Well, of course a lot depends on how much energy and resources are being expended on maintaining the status differential in the first place, and how much opportunity cost is reflected in it, and how many players the world contains.
That is, if we work for the same company and I'm your manager, and I am spending half my time trying to keep you down and you spend half your time trying to sabotage me, a status-altering social change that rendered us peers might turn out to raise both of our statuses relative to other groups, as well as make both of our lives easier and more enjoyable.
But, yes, I agree with you that many people who resist status-altering social changes are thinking in fixed-sum terms.
There are actually two issues there: the distribution of the status itself, and the cost in other goods and resources expended in pursuing and maintaining it. An arms race in pursuing status (e.g. by expensive signaling, or by costly efforts to keep others down) is indeed a problem of collective action that leads to awful negative-sum games, and a social change that prevents this arms race may be beneficial for everyone if it leads to a similar status distribution, only without the cost. But in contrast, it's unclear whether a Pareto-improvement in status itself is possible.
In the boss-employee example, the change may benefit both parties by eliminating the negative-sum game in which they're stuck. It may also benefit everyone else by a tiny amount by making the economy slightly more productive. But if both the boss and the worker raise their status in the society at large as a result, that will come at the expense of others' status -- even if it means an infinitesimal reduction of status for each person in a great mass of people who are now below each of them in the status hierarchy, rather than a large reduction for some clearly identifiable party. (It's roughly analogous to how successfully passing a small amount of perfectly forged money represents an infinitesimal taking from everyone else by making their money slightly less valuable.)
I wouldn't say "solved problem" for something so convoluted, and it's worth discussing roughly-understood things to refine the understanding, but I agree that that particular way of parsing the issue has lots of explanatory power.
Yes, but future discussions should at least reference past discussions if they were considered fruitful.
Warning: potentially triggering.
Well, okay, first let's review some statistics. At least one in six women will be raped over the course of their lives; actually the numbers I see are usually significantly higher than this (rape statistics suffer due to extreme under-reporting). Moreover, about half the time it will happen (the first time) before they turn eighteen. Lastly, about two thirds of rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances of the victims.
So, if you take an adult woman at random from your community, there is a significant chance (again, the numbers on the site I linked to are abnormally low, but they give some idea) that she has already been raped or sexually assaulted by someone she knew, and is therefore very aware of this danger; even if she hasn't been raped, she has most likely been taught at a young age to fear rape and to take appropriate precautions (you'd think we'd start teaching men not to rape, but no, it's apparently up to women to stop this from happening to them).
So what does this have to do with objectification? Well, look at what happens on the relatively rare occasions that rapes lead to criminal trials: the woman is interrogated about what she was wearing when it happened, whether or not she fought back (because if she was too scared to move, it must have been consenting), why she was out drinking/walking/dancing, whether they acted in a friendly manner toward the attacker. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the victim is emotionally brutalized for the duration of the trial, and then the rapist never spends a day in jail. Through it all, the implicit message is clear: the only reason women might demonstrate comfort in their own bodies is if they're looking to attract men, and indeed this is their sole purpose, and if they happened to actually "get" a man during that time, they should feel grateful and not niggle over little details like consent.
So, confronted by people who take this objectifying attitude toward women, your average female - who might have already been raped at some point in her life, and is certainly aware of the possibility - is likely to get a little upset, and rightly so. If she feels like you're basically a decent group of men who might just be a little misguided, she might give you the benefit of the doubt and speak out, hoping you will listen. More likely, though - if she's not yet comfortable with the group, or if her voice has been repeatedly ignored - she will remain silent, and take leave of the group at the earliest available opportunity. The risk is not just to her social status but to her body, her sexuality and her dignity.
(I am infuriated by the suggestion that offense is precisely and only a form of status-seeking behaviour. Some white, heterosexual males might perhaps display their progressive values for the sake of signaling social status; but for visible minorities, there is quite a lot more at stake.)
This is not the only reason to avoid objectification, but it is certainly sufficient and compelling enough on its own, I think.
Eric Raymond gives a good discussion here of what's wrong with that statistic.
This doesn't leave me with the feeling that your other statistics are accurate.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that Mr. Raymond's argument is roughly as follows:
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to puzzle out the error in that one. Also note that there's no mention of how "over-reporting" and "false allegations" are determined. My guess is that this is based on the conviction rate (I don't know how else you'd do it), in which case you run into precisely the problems I mentioned.
The point here is that feminists tend to use a definition of "rape" that is vastly more general then what the word commonly refers (it tends to boil down to "any sex you regret in the morning") to in order to inflate the statistics.
I'm not sure, how are you determining your "extreme under-reporting"?
I haven't spent a whole bunch of time on this topic, but I've never actually run into a definition of rape that could be described that way. Citation?
The comment Skatche just made above I think does a pretty good job of explaining what feminists consider rape, and I think it's easy to infer why non-feminists who only hear the cursory explanation get confused and feel that feminists are "exaggerating" it.
I'm actually aware of the concept of enthusiastic consent, and even considered including an explanation of it in my comment. It's not obvious to me how that could look even remotely close to 'any sex you regret the next morning' - the principle of enthusiastic consent leads to a definition that doesn't even particularly correlate with that unless you add a qualification that one of the partners must consider it rape in order for it to be rape.
Considering that some feminists have argued that all heterosexual sex is rape, he's not exaggerating that much. The ones who make the studies he was referencing do things like making questionnaires that ask questions like "Have you ever pushed a girl into bed to make her have sex with you?" and counting that as rape to inflate the statistics, because more rapes = more money for the rape services they work for.
If I came to believe that I'd made someone have sex with me by applying force, and we hadn't previously negotiated the terms of that scene, I would consider that an instance of rape and I would feel pretty awful about it.
So I don't reject the results of that survey on those grounds.
I understand that you do reject it, and presumably you would similarly disagree about that hypothetical case. A lot of people would. I understand why, and I don't want to get into a discussion of which of us is correct because I don't expect it to lead anywhere useful.
But you should at least be aware that your position isn't universally held, even among men who believe in the existence of consensual heterosexual sex.
Well, obviously there's a difference between violently throwing someone into a bed, and joking around and playfully pushing them on the shoulder to signal them to get into the bed, but my point is that the studies conflate the two and everything in between them and classify them all as rape. Just check "yes" in the box, and voila, you're a rapist.
Upvoted for actually bothering to listen to what feminists are saying. That model has long since fallen out of favour, though, for obvious reasons: see e.g. Rethinking Rape by Ann J. Cahill. The "enthusiastic consent" model is currently one of the most popular, and I think it captures pretty accurately what we should consider a healthy, versus an unhealthy or coercive, sexual encounter.
For under-reporting, look here. Even amongst high-school students, the incidence rate was as high as one in five women, and half of these had never told anyone about the incident.
I'm sorry, but this is absolute nonsense. In fact this is precisely the kind of nonsense that gets used to systematically belittle and trivialize rape victims, and which leads to the under-reporting I mentioned.
The typical popular model of sexuality goes something like this. The woman has, i.e. possesses, sex; the man wants to get it from her. She, on the other hand, wants to hold onto it for the best mate she can find (in order to get married, etc.). Therefore his job is to put on the moves, and her job is to put on the brakes. However, if she resists, then she's a bitch, because he deserves it after all, therefore she better not resist. If she does resist she might just be playing hard to get, because after all she really wants it, so as long as she's not resisting too hard you can keep pushing anyway, either ignoring her protests or whining until she gives in. If she regrets it in the morning, well, she shouldn't have been such a slut anyway. Because this is after all the sexual norm, she probably won't even think of it as rape, and might never think to mention it to anyone.
Feminism makes the radical suggestion that this model is totally, balls-out insane and that maybe our notion of a healthy sexual interaction should necessarily include enthusiastic consent on both sides. If you want a more complete summary of the feminist position, "Yes Means Yes" is a good introductory source. I don't think I can do as good a job of explaining as the authors can, so I'm going to leave this off here.
Though obviously the consequences aren't as severe, it works the other way too: it can be the woman who has the model that she must play hard to get even when interested (thereby diminishing the information value of even the sincere rejections), and the man who views this mentality as batshit insane. (Consider the effects on the incentive profile and the kind of man this selects for.)
Yes, absolutely. This is actually where "Yes Means Yes" got its name: the authors were looking for a positive view of female sexuality, which is to say, the freedom for women not only to turn down propositions but also to fully explore their own desires.
But enthusiastic consent doesn't always happen, because women routinely use male sexual aggressiveness as a filter. These women make the man do all of the initiation and all of the advancing, and may put up "last-minute resistance" to having sex the first time, because they only want to have sex with men who are aggressive enough to overcome this resistance.
This is probably related to the high prevalence of rape fantasies among women. Men seldom fantasize about being raped; surveys indicate most women have. And most romance novels depict the heroine being raped, usually by the hero. And I've had women ask me to pretend to rape them, because it gets them more excited.
And it's also related to the strong attraction some women feel towards violent men. Even men who display violence only towards women. Men who are in prison for murdering their wives get unsolicited offers of marriage from women who haven't met them. The more violent the murder was, the more solicitations they get.
The best thing women can do to make men stop acting aggressively towards women, is to stop rewarding men who act aggressively towards women.
(Of course, to do so would be to deliberately change evolved human values.)
The best thing the subset of women who reward men who act aggressively towards women can do is stop rewarding. Those who already don't reward it don't have "stop rewarding it" as an option.
True. But they do have the option of shunning other women who reward it. Or of mentioning it as an option, when they write books about male aggression.
No, his argument is more than that, I suggest you read it again. You seem to have skipped the part where he says that the "1 in 6" statistic covered both rapes and attempted rapes.
Basically he looks for where the "1 in 6" figure comes from, and finds a figure that are lower. You may criticize his methodology, but recalculating the value yourself seems like a better strategy than repeating a statistic of dubious origin.
By the way, I've been reading through the comments on that post, some of them are quite good, there's some willingness to work the maths out, change one's mind that seem to be signs of mature, rational discussion (there's also a bit of political feces-flinging, but that can be easily ignored).
I suspect you underestimate the effects of status.
I have watched my status in the U.S., as a queer man, increase significantly over the last twenty years; this has translated directly into increases to my safety, my liberty, pretty much every aspect of my life. There is quite a lot more at stake in seeking and protecting status than you seem to be respecting.
All of that said, I apologize for infuriating you.
FWIW, I and many of the men I know were in fact taught not to rape. So we do seem to be starting to teach that, in at least some places and times.
Well, fair enough. I still feel that the term "status" carries all the wrong connotations - images of high school popularity competitions and all that sort of thing - but I can see that wasn't your intention, so I'm sorry for singling you out.
Yeah, progress is being made. I mainly see this sort of thing happening on university campuses, which means it's still only reaching a minority, but it's a start. I'd like to see this (handled properly) as part of standard high school sex education before I'd say we're really getting there, and ideally it would be taught at home to each individual child by their parents.
Re: the connotations of "status" -- for my part, I care more about having some label for the thing we're talking about than I care what the label is.
Do you have a preferred term?
In some contexts one can talk about "rank," or "privilege," or "juice," or "clout," or even "wealth," but I find them all too specialized for general use. I use "status" precisely because it can apply just as readily to high-school students trying to avoid ostracism as prison inmates trying to avoid assault as poverty-stricken peasants trying to avoid starvation, which is useful when trying to talk about the thing they all have in common.
"Kyriarchal advantage" is a bit of a mouthful, but it might be useful, especially if you want to differentiate between status that's granted as a result of being in a particular reference class vs. status that has been personally earned.
Thank you for that post. I'm not sure what "Kyriarchal" is supposed to mean, but the article made a lot of sense and shows how complicated it is.
Well, "Kyrie" is generally translated as "Lord," so a kyriarchal system is presumably one which is ruled by the people who rule it.
Yep, basically that - any system where certain people intrinsically have more status/power than others is kyriarchal. Notably, most activism communities are still just as kyriarchal as mainstream society, except with regards to the specific issue that they're doing activism about. (Some of them are even kyriarchal with regards to their own issue - notably disability activism, where many activists focus on getting more power for people in situations like their own without much concern for other kinds of disabilities.)
Glad it's appreciated. I've been waiting for an opportunity to pull that out. ^.^
I thought about it, and unfortunately I can't think of a good, widely-known alternative, although as far as neologisms go, I find this "Kyriarchial advantage" rather appealing.
Defense against status attacks is in no way illegitimate, status is one of the most valuable commodities humans have, and often considered literally worth dying for, as proven by countless suicides in defense of status ( seppuku, Romans falling onto their sword etc). Just because current society brands recognized status moves as illegitimate doesn't mean denying the status component of social problems makes it go away, or that they can still be usefully analysed without.
Yes, describing a legitimate behavior in status terms factually constitutes a very serious attack on people who depend on the viability of that behavior if it is accompanied with the usual delegitimazation. And discussion here so far possibly hasn't taken that into account sufficiently and so inadvertently damaged many legitimate causes that depend on the power of offense. But that doesn't change any facts.
Rape looks in large parts like a status problem to me (I in no way mean to make light of rape, as said status is extremely important, even worth dying for). One of the things that make rape so horrible is that it's pretty much the largest status degradation possible (and since status can be worth dying for the status component alone can move rape into roughly the same moral class as murder).
My suspicion is that most of the difficulties rape victims you describe can in large part be attributed to rape victims having lower status in the relevant eyes just for being rape victims, and pretend status blindness preventing anyone form recognizing this and compensating for it consciously. And one cause for the prevalence of rape seems to be the completely unfair way womens status is lowered just by being sexual while the opposite is true for men.
I suspect that if women had a higher status in general rape would also be less frequent, but since differences in rape incidence between countries seem to be dominated by the rate of underreporting and the wideness of the legal definition of rape there seems to be no way to check this by comparing the rate with womens apparent status in each country.
That only holds if the fact that rapes are under-reported was not used in calculating the estimate that one in six women will be raped. The site you linked to gives no reason to think that's the case, it's pretty likely that less than one in six women reports a rape, and then estimates of reporting rate were used to get an estimate of one in six.
(Edit to add) That is, if the "1 in 6" is an actual estimate of rapes; the Eric Raymond piece Eugine Nier linked seems to indicate that there never was such an estimate, the 1 in 6 number originally also included attempted rape, and then turned into a number of actual rapes by a game of Chinese whispers.
Actually, most of the numbers I've seen in my researches are in the ballpark of one third to one half, with about one quarter of women being raped before they turn 18. The site I linked to was simply the first that came up in a Google search, so I wouldn't have to dig for references, and so that I could give an estimate on the conservative side.
It's true that such statistics are methodology-sensitive, but everything I know about rape seems to suggest that the weight is heavily toward under-reporting. Women who report being raped are liable to face an onslaught of abuse and victim-blaming from the criminal system and even from their own peers, and rape trials rarely end in conviction, so a lot of victims never bother. Even then, many rape victims suffer from psychological problems (which contribute to their being targeted), and therefore come to believe that they deserved what happened to them, no matter how degrading or violent. In this case they may not conceive of it as rape, especially if the rapist is their partner or spouse.
In order to flourish, humans need to be both subjectified and objectified-- that is, they they need to feel like they are in control of their life and that their wellbeing is taken as an end in itself by others (subjectified) but they also need to feel useful and wanted by others (objectified).
Of course they ideal balance between these two paradigms probably varies greatly between individuals and between groups. But I think it is plausible that our culture, in general, over-objectifies women and under-objectifies men. I don't think this is actually that controversial, most narrative protagonists are men, most people who make money from their physical attractiveness are women. Bosses tend to be men, secretaries tend to be women. Traditionally men headed families, went to work and made the important decisions. Traditionally a woman's role was to support her husband, cook for him, raise his children and look nice.
Now, if we assume that, whatever the ideal ratio of objectification to subjectification is for women, our culture over objectifies it becomes clear why feminists would oppose female objectification (one would also suspect that outspoken feminists would be among the most over-objectified relative to their ideal). The person doing the objectifying is contributing to patterns and trends that, on balance, make life worse for women. Conversely, men might be under-objectified and that is why they don't understand why women object to certain instances of objectification. For example, most men probably want to be stared and desired just for their bodies more often than they are right now.
I don't mean to suggest that the situation is symmetrical for men and women, exactly. It seems likely being over objectified is worse than being under objectified (a free person who isn't needed or wanted by anyone is probably still better off than most slaves). Men and women may also, on average, prefer different levels of objectification.
In general, if we want a culture that provides something close to the ideal amount of objectification and subjectification for everyone we probably want a system that doesn't objectify whole groups-- better for people to get the objectification they need on an individual basis which should be better calibrated.
I think that this is a very interesting and useful way of looking at it. I do think that it's better modeled as a 2d space than as a bell curve, though - I can imagine people needing very little of either kind of interaction (and probably being introverts in general) or needing unusual amounts of both (and probably being extroverts) as well as needing mostly one or mostly the other or near-equal amounts of both.
Agreed. It's probably more multi-dimensional than that actually- people's preferences regarding objecthood and subjecthood vary over different domains as well. There are people who want to be totally independent financially but dominated in bed and there are people happy to be dependent on another for income so long as they get to be on top. Further, people's preferences change over time.
As usual, treating people as generalizations of their subgroup is dangerous.
There's an associated Catch-22 actually. Finding out the degree of objectification someone desires is really difficult unless you ask them (and give them the freedom to learn and explore the relevant options). But of course, this subjectifies them (to a rather extreme level relative to the tremendous restrictions on autonomy our ancestors faced). This paradox plays out constantly as far as I can tell. For example, some people are turned off when others are overly concerned with getting prior permission to engage in romantic and sexual behavior. Person A may want person B to "just grab me and lay one on". Person B may want to do the kissing but doesn't know if A wants to be objectified in this way. B can ask A, but that would subjectify A ruining the moment if, in fact A did want to be objectified. The way out is for B to find out A wants to be kissed like that in a way that either doesn't subjectify A (reading body language) or in a way where A doesn't realize (s)he's been subjectified (secretly finding out from person C who heard from person A).
Thats a pretty mundane example but I think this paradox often arises when modernity has given us choices we didn't culturally or biologically evolve to have. For example, some have suggested that a variety of purposeless is the result of most people being free to choose their profession and role in society. The freedom to live almost wherever we like perhaps damages our desire to have a place we call home. These are the kind of things the much disparaged post-modernists and adjacent thinkers talk about-- modernity undermining traditional folkways and whatnot.
Of course, for most people at most time there has been too much objectification. Such paradoxes aren't good arguments for returning to a patriarchy that tolerated rape in certain circumstances or a caste system or peonage system. And I'm not actually sure how to measure the anxieties these paradoxes create.
Tentatively-- I don't think being a subject always means being able to explain what one wants. I'm pretty sure that words are as much an alien (at worst) or learnable with difficulty (at best) mode for some people as feeling and body language are for many of the people here.
I am not a typical feminist.
But my take (somewhat reinforced by feminist blogs and earlier feminist writers like Germaine Greer and Joanna Russ) is that a person can be portrayed as either observed or as an observer. And there are far more media representations of women as observed than as observers. The problem with this is that it promotes a habit of thinking of women as NPC's. For example: thinking of the man as the desirer and the woman as the desired, even though women also have desires. Or thinking of the man as the artist and the woman as the muse. The man as the narrator and the woman as his obsession, inspiration, or enemy.
So: the issue, in my view, is not any single act of "objectification," but a predominance of representations of women that only portray them in relation to a male observer. It promotes the idea that women don't have their own point of view or creative capacity.
On the train today I saw a lottery advertisement that said "Good things can happen any time." It featured a man and woman in a movie theater. The man is staring up at the screen, ignoring the woman, who is staring at him with a coy smile on her face, about to make a move.
Potentially unusual anecdotal evidence; I have been groped three times in as many years by complete strangers (who were females of about my age). It wasn't a big deal to me, and I imagine that anyone who knew about it would just find it hilarious. Sexual harassment of men is probably heavily underreported, so people tend to forget it exists.
The media just reflects popular assumptions, so if you encourage people to reconsider their beliefs about how each gender behaves you might be able to equalize objectification.
The Playboy picture likely counts as objectification but seems like a terrible example. I'd illustrate it using someone keeping women around as status symbols. And note that it matters little for our purpose if one makes the women wear skimpy clothing like Hugh Hefner does -- giving them curfews and rules against dating so as not to embarrass the old man -- or puts them all in burqas. By contrast, finding a women attractive in part because she wants to have sex seems very far from objectification. (Technically I believe making a women sincerely beg for sex can never count, though it might fall under a different offense.)
I mention this because I saw commenters saying that men want to feel more objectification, and this seems false almost by definition. Men want more sexual attention that respects their wishes. Maybe someone with more time or smarts to spare can link this with the status discussion in an interesting way.
Perhaps I have been studying AI to much, but I do not really think of myself or anyone else as an observer at all. Sure I have an unusual capacity to react to my environment, but the entire process can be reduced down to a large number of electrical signals interacting in predictable ways. What I find strange is NOT thinking of people as objects. Does this have any effect on how I treat women? I don't think so... except perhaps an unusual ability to ignore people of both genders completely.
If by "too much" you mean "you are now a very different algorithm from most of humanity," then yes.
For the record, I think of people as objects AND as observers (or, really, as "people.") I think in terms of objects when I'm trying to solve derive an answer for my own purposes and remain objective. I think in terms of people when I want my "human relationships" needs to be filled.
I've read through the comments thus far, but relatively quickly, so please point out and forgive if any of this is exact rehash.
First, and directly concerning text in the post: one of the listed Ways to Objectify is denial of autonomy, and that is discussed briefly after the list. In later examples, lukeprog describes how we...
"...all use each other as means to an end, or as objects of one kind or another, all the time. And we can do so while respecting their autonomy."
The post implicitly casts denial of autonomy as the defining Bad Thing about objectification. On the surface, I'd agree that that is one of, if not the most inherently negative aspect of objectification, but I need to think about it some more.
Ultimately, I do not think objectification (action with one or more of the listed traits) is necessarily a Bad Thing; if I did it would place me in the anti-pornography, anti consensual sadomasochism camp of feminism, which of course involves a desire to restrict the autonomy of adults... and while that circle isn't usually trotted out as an argument for why objectification isn't inherently bad, the symmetry is worth noting, at the least. It also lends some sense to the idea that denial of autonomy is, in fact, the major problematic factor out of those listed.
On the broad scale, I'm inclined to agree that the feminist argument against objectification is primarily utilitarian rather than categorical (and utilitarian for all the reasons that various people have already explained). The feminist utilitarian arguments (of which the rape culture argument is one) also usually depend on the unequal circumstances of women in current society. The takeaway message should then be to be aware of and understand how and to what extent you're interacting with, and yes - objectifying - people you meet. If you're a photographer who hires a model for a photoshoot, the resultant photos are going to involve several aspects of objectification, but (presumably) no harm or attack on the model. If you're treating a woman who works with you in some manner that is not dependent on her appearance with any of the listed behaviors beyond instrumentality, you're committing harm.
Having said that, it should also be fairly obvious that I don't consider instrumentality a problem.
- Marilyn Monroe
"I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be a member of a suppressed group."
Females are suppressed, and so are males. Gender roles suppress both genders. They also offer advantages to both genders.
List of male privileges: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
List of female privileges: http://masculistadvice.blogspot.com/2008/06/female-privilege-list.html
It is true that popular discourse paints females as the suppressed group and males as the non-suppressed group.
"So I've always thought of myself as a feminist."
Feminism goes beyond technical gender equality of having the same rights and privileges. I'm a feminist too, because I think politics should solve problems facing women. And I'm also a masculist (or a men's rights activist), since men's problems should be solved too.
"Of course, some activists (the word has positive connotations to me, BTW) pushed too far, as is the case in all large movements."
The main problem with feminism today is that all the political gender equality resources are directed to feminism. It should be evenly distributed between masculism and feminism.
Can you clarify what you mean by "evenly distributed"?
For example, by "evenly" do you mean 50/50 between these two causes?
Do you mean distributed proportionally based on the number of men and the number of women in the community?
Do you mean distributed proportionally to reflect the gender distribution in the community (which is noticeably more complex than "number of men" and "number of women")?
Do you mean distributed proportionally based on the degree to which different genders experience differential harm under the current arrangement?
Do you mean something else?
Thing is, none of these criteria justify a 1000:1 funding ratio. (estimate pulled out of thin air)
Well, my question had to do with the 1:1 aid-resource-split policy suggestion.
If you want to suggest instead that the aid-resource split be N:1 where N<1000, in favor of a group o be determined later, I would support that... though I think it's a woefully underspecified policy.
"For example, by "evenly" do you mean 50/50 between these two causes?"
Yes.
More information here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/4vj/a_rationalists_account_of_objectification/3r3j
I don't quite see the connection between the information you cite, and the 50/50 split policy recommendation.
From my perspective, if we can spend resources in such a way that we collectively get the most bang for the buck and reduce the spread of the curve, that's a win. (In real life those goals are often in conflict, but that's beside my point right now.)
If it so happens that the way to do that is to equally support men and women in a particular community, then a 50/50 split of resources makes sense in that community.
If that's not the case, then a different resource split makes more sense.
Whether that split is weighted towards men or women will depend on the facts of the situation. Maybe I conclude based on the information you cite that I should support Finnish men more than Finnish women, for example.
But I don't see how that data justifies a 50/50 split.
My data justifies slightly more resources for men, but until we have proper scientific research on the question, I'm okay with a 50/50 split. The split is currently about 97/3 in favor of women, so going to 50/50 would help significantly.
Ah, OK. If you are proposing 50/50 as a political compromise rather than actually asserting that it's the correct target, then my questions are beside the point. Never mind, then.
I made a list of problems in a comment on a website. That's not a good way to make politicial decisions. We need a proper study of the question. I think a priori the 50/50 split between genders is a good balance. You can call that a political compromise, I call it "don't make quick decisions without proper scientific research".
So, I have to actively disagree with this. Not for any reason having anything at all to do with gender or politics or any of that, just on pure decision-making grounds.
At every point, we ought to make decisions based on our best estimates based on the evidence we have. If your best estimate isn't 50/50 (which it isn't: you believe the data justify slightly more resources for Finnish men) then it isn't, and there's no reason to use 50/50 rather than your actual best estimate.
This has nothing to do with avoiding making quick decisions. You'd be making an equally quick decision to support 50/50 as to support 51/49 or 52/48.
This has nothing to do with gathering more data. By all means, study the question properly, and change your estimates as new evidence comes in. Absolutely. But in the meantime we still have to do something, and specifically we ought to make decisions based on our best estimates based on the evidence we have at that time, which in your case is not 50/50.
Of course, we've got a cultural (and possibly genetic, I don't know) bias towards an equal-distribution strategy... that "feels fair." So it feels like 50/50 is some kind of special number that you should support instead of your best estimate.
But I see no reason to endorse that bias (other than the political one of it being easier to sell a solution that "feels fair").