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gjm comments on Open thread, Feb. 01 - Feb. 07, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am not going to follow that link here at work; for the benefit of others who may be similarly cautious, would someone like to explain what "legalizing rape of private property" means? On the face of it, rape is something that can only be done to people, and there aren't many people around these days who would justify having people as private property.
It's a typo. RooshV wants to legalize rape that happens in private property.
OK, so I briefly considered that interpretation but thought it was more unlikely than that he had some unorthodox meaning attached to "rape of private property".
So apparently he wants rape to be legal as long as it happens on private property.
OK, Clarity, in what possible sense is it a "libel" to accuse Roosh of
if in fact he
I mean, that does in fact mean legalizing a whole lot of rapes. (I would bet that a large majority of rape happens on private property, even if you adopt a narrower definition of rape than the law generally does.)
If I say I want insider stock trading to be legal provided you wear a suit when you do it, I am proposing to legalize insider trading. If I say I want murder to be legal unless it's done with a gun, I am proposing to legalize murder. If I say I want making copies of copyrighted works to be legal if it's done by men rather than women, I am proposing to legalize copyright infringement. And: if I say that I want rape to be legal if it's done on private property, I am proposing to legalize rape.
(For the absolute avoidance of doubt: I am not, in fact, making any of those proposals.)
I believe the relevant term is "satrie". Or should we start accusing Swift of promoting cannibalism.
If you say you want insider stock trading to be legal as long as you wear a suit, but your rationale is "it's so easy to convict innocent people of insider stock trading that the benefits from stopping false convictions outweighs the harm done by the insider trading", then that's the noncentral fallacy--a noncentral use of "want". Normally saying that someone wants X carries the connotation that they like X and don't believe X causes harm, which isn't true in this case.
If you don't want people to be convicted of rape based on evidence obtained by torture, you also "want rape to be legal" (specifically, you want the subset of rapes "rapes where evidence is only obtained by using torture" to be legal) but describing it that way would be misleading. You don't think rape is good, you just think encouraging torture is worse than rape. It would be possible to think that encouraging false accusations is worse than rape as well (especially if false accusations are common) and want to allow some rapes so you can discourage false accusations in the same way that you might want to allow some rapes to discourage torture.
(I really hope it's okay to even talk about this. I would rather not get banned.)
I don't think anyone is saying that Roosh wants rape. Only that he wants (many instances of) rape to be legal. Which is in fact what he wants (or, at least, what he says he wants; he may not be sincere).
There is a risk of the noncentral fallacy here -- if someone proposes to make a small minority of atypical instances of something legal, that's not fairly described by saying they want to legalize whatever-it-is. But AIUI most rapes are committed on private property, even if (as I can imagine Roosh might want to) you take "rape" to imply outright nonconsent and force or threat or the like. (I confess I don't have statistics to hand to back up this claim.) If I'm right about this, then Roosh is proposing to legalize most rapes, and I think it's reasonable to describe that by saying he want to legalize rape.
I'm sure it's true[1] that he wants to do this because he sees bad side-effects of the illegality of rape, rather than because he would like there to be more rape. But I think this is very often the case when people propose to legalize things, and therefore saying "Roosh proposes to legalize rape" doesn't amount to claiming he likes rape.
[1] Or at least true-according-to-what-he-says; again, he might not be sincere.
Given that people call the gatherings proposed by Roosh to be gatherings of rapists, I'm not sure whether that's true.
I don't think "sincere" is the best word to use here.
You're contrasting "interpret him literally" with "assume he's not sincere", but I don't see a connection. It's entirely possible that he's completely sincere in his attempt to communicate certain information through a satirical article. That is, he may be honest in his communication attempt but speaking in a way where interpreting him in too straightforward of a way would lead to misinterpretation.
This is I believe what he's doing. See here for another post of mine, building on the points I made in my previous reply to you. It seems clear to me that he's writing a satirical polemic against a societal trend that he believes exists where women are not expected to bear personal responsibility for certain actions (such as voluntarily increasing their time preference through alcohol consumption).
For reference, did you read his article in full?
My impression is that incivility and social obliviousness is really what gets to people. The couple people I've seen banned here over the past year or so, even though many people pointed to the non-PC content of their posts as the reason for the ban, I believe that was a misinterpretation. They were banned for being unlikeable and uncivil. Simple as that.
This mirrors my experience on almost any forum out there, except where systematic censorship exists for the benefit of a certain established agenda (like selling a product).
The proposal has nothing to do with that. This is Roosh's real proposal: "Pay more attention to me! I'm still edgy and obscene and dangerous!"
And it's working.
Oh, very likely, but Clarity claimed that people were libelling Roosh for proposing to legalize rape when actually he's just proposing, er, to legalize rape. My bemusement at this has basically nothing to do with how sincere Roosh is or what ulterior motives he may have for proposing to legalize rape.
(Unless his proposal is so obviously not intended to be taken seriously that the objection should be not "he wants to legalize rape" but something more like "he thinks legalizing rape is a reasonable thing to propose as a joke", I guess.)
His overall point is that the current memes circulating in the general public on the topic of rape are ineffective at handling the issue, and furthermore that they're so ineffective that getting rid of them altogether and doing something as extreme as legalizing rape on private property would actually lead to a better aggregate outcome for not only men but also women.
At least that's my interpretation.
Note that Roosh writes a lot of satirical essays that are supposed to systematically introduce various details that he thinks are important while suggesting a general conclusion. This I think is a common tactic for people who write on controversial topics or have a lot to allude to and brainstorm about but don't have a fully fleshed out conclusion to simply state directly.
Here is another example of his non-literal exposition style.
The idea of how the law is supposed to benefit woman is by making woman so fearful of getting raped that they don't go home with a boy after a club night.
It's that woman are too promiscuous and have to be forced by fear to to less promiscuous. It's an ugly argument.
You're taking it too literally. See here for a better explanation of what Roosh means.
I agree with this framing for this specific case, but I do want to point out that there are huge noncentral fallacy issues with this framing in general; if I say "hey, we should add an age difference exemption to all the statutory rape laws that don't have one yet" that would be arguing for legalizing some rapes (because it involves redefining rape).
(The steelman of Roosh is basically arguing that, instead of changing campus culture to reflect the law, we should change the law to reflect campus culture. So it's certainly skeevy enough that "legalizing rape" has fair connotations, and that's even before one drops out of the steelman lens and into the literal lens.)
Yup, I agree. That's why I remarked that I think a large majority of rapes fall into the category he's proposing should be legal, even if you adopt a relatively narrow definition of rape.
Of course, I could be wrong. (And I could have said more explicitly that "legalize some instances of X" is by no means always fairly summarized as "legalize X".)
That's his PR strategy, for sure. He wouldn't be nearly as popular if he wrote rigorously thought-out expositions using neutral language and containing a lot of qualifiers to make sure nobody thinks he's a bad person.
While I think part of his mission puts being famous and notorious as an end in and of itself, I don't think we should assume he's not also genuinely motivated by an attempt to disseminate information that he believes is important. For a brief attempt to translate the overall point of his article on legalizing rape into language that's more literal, see this post I just submitted elsewhere in this thread.
I'm not particularly interested in reading it; he's neither my ally nor my enemy, and I find neither what he says, nor how he says it, particularly entertaining or useful. I'd guess it's something along the idea that "Removing safety rails make people behave more safety-consciously", or consideration of its converse, "Safety rails make people behave less safety-consciously". Which is true, but... premature. Society isn't there quite yet. We have at least another decade, although things are accelerating a bit, so it's hard to pin down a time.
Shrug I encountered exposure to his ideas back when I read Captain Capitalism, before that blog turned into yet another outlet for the backlash against the constant overreach of social justice types. I find him... unnecessary.
ETA: Ugh. I regret having participated in this.
No need to read it. I don't think Roosh is very good. For me reading him even for a few minutes feels like akrasia. I guess I'm more entertained by the style than you are, but entertainment is different than education. My priority is the latter.
For reference, it's not just the safety-rail consideration, though that's relevant too. It's also that the current cultural landscape removes personal responsibility in many cases. Women will sometimes regret having sex the same way anyone may regret eating a cookie (they felt good then, but feel bad now). While no man would be proud of being the sexual equivalent of junk food during a one-night stand with a woman, I think today's society is a bit trigger happy in such situations in saying the man took advantage of the woman instead of saying that she indulged in the moment and later thought herself hedonistic.
Making rape legal on private property would be the most extreme version of expecting personal responsibility from women. It certainly goes (way) too far, but within the fog of satire I believe Roosh has a point. Though, again, I wouldn't recommend his writing to someone looking for thoughtfulness or rigor.
Ahh..the: it's not rape if she liked it argument!
rape is a serious accusation and all though some women may feel the way you described/misuse the legal system... I doubt that it's a common occurrence, most women are ashamed to admit they've been raped...don't think many would put themselves through the stress of it willy nilly.
Haven't read the article, but even if the idea of legalizing rape on private property is looked at as sincere for even a second... it falls flat on its face. Marital rape is a thing that happens, seems likely this legalization would condone it. And so long as we're talking about responsibility, it would be the responsibility of the owners of properties legally raping people to put up a sign saying as much..kinda like the beware of angry dog ones...except about rape...which I don't think would catch on.
I assume the "it's not rape if she liked it" argument refers to circumstances where the woman doesn't consent to the sexual encounter, but then changes her mind part of the way through. In other words, we're talking about a shift from "don't want" (when the sex started) to "want" (before the sex is over), and describing the general result as "she liked it". It would be more precise, of course, to phrase it as, "She didn't like it and then she did like it."
Now, which part of my post were you saying fit that argument?
I assume you meant this part.
With the considerations above in mind, I don't see how my point fits the "it's not rape if she liked it" argument. While that argument refers to situations where the woman felt averse to sex but then changed her mind part of the way through (with no specification about how she felt afterwards, the following day, and so on); on the other hand my example refers to situations where the woman wanted the sex both during the initial escalation and throughout the entire act (but then felt regret later on).
Let me know if I misinterpreted you.
I'm under the impression that when alcohol is involved the average person is more likely to use the words "taken advantage of" than "raped" unless the woman is passed out.
I wasn't necessarily referring to misusing the legal system, though that's probably an issue in certain isolated cases. My concern, instead, is that Western culture at this time in history seems to allow women an escape route from admitting personal responsibility for certain actions.
Women may not be flocking to the justice system, but there's certainly a trend where female sexual hedonism is blamed on the men who take up the offers.
It was a satirical article and Roosh has no intention of trying to legalize rape on private property. I don't necessarily suggest reading the article, as it's long and liable for misinterpretation from anyone unfamiliar with the PUA community, but if you want to criticize his reasoning in a disciplined and responsible manner then you're going to have to take the plunge.
If you do decide to read the article, feel free to post in this sub-thread any counterarguments you come up with.
Instead of figuring out an answer to that I'll concede it was a poor choice of words
yep, true, sorry for the typo