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daenerys comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - LessWrong
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I think we need to taboo "looking hot", as opposed to "looking nice", because of the cultural baggage that comes with the idea of "hot". If you describe a woman as "hot" people assume more sexual clothes, and an effort to be "sexy" looking. "Hotness" does not effect levels of catcalling as much as "looking decent-ness". For example, I would still get catcalled almost as much while wearing generic nice-looking clothes, as while wearing something "hot".
To avoid catcalling, the level of "looking good" has to be extremely low. As in, lower than I would want to go out in public in. For example if I don't shower, wear baggy sweatpants and stained sweater, and have lanky uncombed hair in my face, then yeah, I can avoid catcalling, probably. If I am at all dressed decently (not necessarily "hot"), street harassment will occur.
Regarding "flaunting" how "hot" you are: I can think of some middle eastern cultures that have solved the problem this way. "Let's blame the women for making men feel lustful, so have the women all walk around in big black tents that only show their eyes!" This is not my preferred solution.
Yes, I do think the benefits of looking decent/ not looking like a homeless person outweigh the negatives of street harassment. However, this does not make street harassment an acceptable thing that shouldn't be complained about.
For example, say that people with blue eyes (and only people with blue eyes) had to get punched in the face every time they went on a date. Now, if they continue going on dates, they obviously find it a worth the punching, but that doesn't make the punching acceptable.
You're the second commenter who didn't get that I'm saying that "Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, better pick the latter" might be reasonable, but that "Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, you shouldn't want to, stop complaining" is stupid assholery. I thought my second paragraph was quite clear!
We have a Problem with the immense overlap in female fashion between "flattering" and "sexy". Do you think that's related? I can't see a woman in a men's business suit getting catcalled (though I'm no expert), whereas women's business attire is all "LOOK, LEGS AND BOOBS!".
There's definitely a tragedy of the commons going on here. If women all decide to dress more conservatively to be left alone, the standard just drops until just being out of the house is immodest. And any women who don't follow suit might as well wear a "victim-blame me!" sign. So you can't fix harassment that way. But an individual woman acting selfishly would apparently benefit from it.
Stop! Bayesian time! does stupid dance in baggy pants
An environment exists. In that environment, creatures called Oogs often say things that aggregate to "'Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, better pick the latter' might be reasonable". Many of them also often say things that aggregate to "Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, you shouldn't want to, stop complaining". When called on it, many of them attempt to argue that they did not actually mean "Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, you shouldn't want to, stop complaining" (by saying things that aggregate to "'Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, better pick the latter' is stupid assholery"), but later go immediately back to saying things that aggregate to "Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, you shouldn't want to, stop complaining".
In this same environment, there are other creatures called Arghs who say things that aggregate to "'Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, better pick the latter' might be reasonable". They also say things that aggregate to "'Since you can't both be hot and not get catcalled, better pick the latter' is stupid assholery".
Oogs utilize aggressive mimicry to appear to be Arghs. Someone shows up who begins saying Argh-like things. Should a smart Bayesian who does not want to get eaten by an Oog assume it is dealing with an Oog, or an Argh?
Conversely, this is, to me, an EXCELLENT point. It would be nice if women weren't punished for wearing men's business clothes (which they often are - in college-level debate competitions, for example, there are strong norming pressures for women to show leg).
To stick to your metaphor, Arghs have the right to complain about being treated like Oogs, especially if they suspect that Oogs-pretended-to-be-Arghs may not exist, and that the Oog-hunter caste seems to be gaining suspicious amounts of power and influence from how it gets to boss people around.
Though I'm not a huge fan of that phrasing either, the whole thing begins to turn into an oppression contest.
Also, this is a theoretically valid concern. I hope I have not implied at any point that people who disagree with me deserve to be bossed around, only that what they perceive of as 'bare facts' have teleological and deontological implications within the social environment, and those need to be examined with the eye of an engineer before addressing the facts as 'bare facts'.
:( Welcome to primate politics. It's... nasty.
The best I can suggest is to look at the people on each side, and say "what does the world look like if they are in charge?"
Because if the discourse has become so polluted that you can't tell who's oppressing who, at a certain point it's time to just pick a side and hope for the best.
Dear lord no I don't want to pick a side! That's the road to brain damage! And I don't care much about who's oppressing who, it's not a very useful frame for looking at things (as if being oppressed made anybody more likely to be right!).
A more interesting question is determining what a disagreement is about, and on what points disagreeing sides can agree. Often loud advocates on either side of a disagreement couldn't even describe accurately what their opponents think!
This is important and valid. Thank you for saying it. I will reexamine the processes that led to that statement and report back, but this may take a bit of time. Is that acceptable?
Sure! These threads are getting kinda tentacular, and I don't think anybody will be very offended by a lack of answer.
(I'm constantly surprised at how many threads here don't degenerate into shouting matches)
What evidence is there for this position?
In this community? You don't need a lot of evidence that something "may not exist", if it hasn't been observed so far. What's your evidence that Jews plotting the downfall of Western Civilization may not exist?
If you're talking about the world and general then yeah, they exist, sure.
If you're talking about imaginary Oog and Argh-land, then I'm not sure what kind of evidence you're expecting.
So, X% of the world is sexists willing to assert quasi-reasonable arguments that are either fully general counter-arguments or not-true-rejection behavior. And we seem to agree that X > 30.
The LW community is drawn from that world. I'm not aware of anything in the selection process that selects against the attitudes described. Even if there is some selection pressure, the assertion that literally no one with the problematic attitudes makes in through that process is an extraordinary claim.
Consider that LW strongly selects for people who want to think about the problems inherent in hard-takeoff AGI. Yet there is a substantial component in this community that is skeptical that hard-takeoff AGI is possible.
From an object level point of view, I think that some of the motivation for discussing whether short skirts increase stranger rape risk is not-true-rejection behavior to avoid discussing acquaintance rape - a far more frequent kind of rape that requires very different responses.
Or it requires the same response but it is much harder and less likely for people as individuals and as a community to actually perform in practice. That response obviously being "lock the @#%@ up then when the term expires take whatever rehabiliation and recurrence prevention measures research finds to be most effective with criminals for ensuring the safety of others."
Fair enough.
I'm not certain how different the responses actually are in this particular context. We might expect effective risk-minimization behavior to look different overall, but if there's anything to the theory that victims' social presentation styles are a risk factor for rape in general, I'd expect them to be a risk factor for acquaintance rapes unless we have some particularly good reason to think that rapists of strangers have unique psychology in this respect.
Indeed, the only empirical data I remember being linked in this thread found its strongest links for date and spousal rape, though the association looks to be on the weak side either way.
The study looked as though it was pretty hypothetical.
There's one I can't find at the moment which was based on interviewing rapists, and it concluded that rapists select for vulnerability (a drunk woman at a bar who's by herself) rather than by clothing.
What does it tell about me that the first thing I thought was “Why don't they just wear brown contact lenses”?