Comment author: pencilears 28 July 2010 07:48:56AM 0 points [-]

god damn this is annoying. why is "let the babyeating ailens alone to have their reprehensible cultural practices the way they want them and expect them to do the same to us" not an option? obviously their ideas of what constitutes moral behavior differ from our own but that's true of any culture.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 February 2009 05:33:12AM 10 points [-]

Sullivan, making your male audience uncomfortable is as easy as inserting a male-male kiss.

Sexual fantasies of being raped tend to be readily distinguishable from real rape as we know it. Receiving oral sex is a lot more common in rape fantasy than in rape (though (obvious disclaimer) it could certainly be part of a real rape).

But building a Weirdtopia around "nonconsensual lovemaking" or "risky dating" isn't as simple as substituting rape fantasy for rape, because the concept of "rape" isn't just about the danger of death or damage. It's about violation of a boundary of consent that you draw around your sexual persona. (To see the potential independence, consider having a naked photo of yourself posted to the Internet against your will.)

Even the most extreme sort of rape fantasy - the sort I once read a woman describe as "carrying through to where he finally spits on me and walks away" - is still, in some sense, under the control of the fantasizer; you're choosing to imagine it.

And this will, to some degree or other, be different for women than for men; maintaining/losing control of your sexuality on this deeper level is going to tap into female drives more strongly than male drives, for all the obvious reasons of evolutionary psychology.

The main scenario I was worried about was that women would read the story and assume I didn't know about that part; I did think I managed to signal that I'm aware of the basics of rape fantasy (as opposed to just supposing that men had free sexual access to everything).

At the same time, 21st-century Western males are shocked by the idea of rape because it violates cultural assumptions about gentlemanly conduct and the rules of how men compete among themselves for women; so another possibility I was wondering about is if, indeed, men would simply be more shocked by the whole idea than women. It just wasn't clear from the comments whether this was actually the case, or if my female readers were so offended as to not even bother commenting.

In terms of Weirdtopia, I was assuming "the boundaries of sexual consent have been withdrawn in different places" not "this part of human nature has been eliminated". Maybe you never kiss anyone without their consent - that's something that a lover freely withholds or gives, not necessarily only to a one true love, but still only to people chosen. So the psychological boundary is still there, the concept of consent is still there - it just doesn't apply to sexual intercourse, per se.

In this case, they really wouldn't have any concept analogous to our "rape" - beating someone up while kissing them? Attacking them, taking naked photos, and posting them to the Internet? And "beating someone up while having sex with them" would sound as strange to them, as "beating someone up while kissing them" does to us.

One similarly assumes that brothels are as common as restaurants and that nearly all citizens are rich enough to afford them, so that nonconsensual sex doesn't become about sexual access for those who don't have it. In fantasy-rape the rapist has to do most of the work, so if you just wanted sex, it would be easier to buy it.

In our own society, you can probably get away with slapping someone on the butt if they've been flirting with you. But doing it to a complete stranger with whom no current sexual tension exists, would be a wholly different matter. In the same sense, you could of course walk around wearing body armor to defend yourself from getting your butt slapped, but most people wouldn't. In our society, following a complete stranger for an hour through public spaces, would be very unusual and annoying, even though it wouldn't be at all surprising to do the same with someone whom you'd met only recently. We assume that having nonconsensual sex with a genuine random stranger would be at least that socially disreputable. Likewise, you should not be using lubricant or drugging the man to give him an erection, etcetera ad obvious.

The main remaining question is why Akon seems to think that women are at least somewhat likely to initiate nonconsensual sex. Physical disparities can be overcome by presuming that there's a standard 'risky dating' drug that can easily be slipped into someone's drink and which reduces muscular strength by 70%, or some such. But the last time I checked the statistics, it went something like "nearly all women and most men fantasize about being raped, but only half of men and nearly no women fantasize about initiating rape". This is another case where the distributions don't overlap well; a woman who wants a rape fantasy can with some work find a man with a fantasy of rape initiation, but the reverse case is a lot more difficult. Certainly women may often want to have sex with men who would refuse them if asked, but from there to fantasizing rape and finding the fantasy enjoyable is a different step. In Akon's world, I've been waving my magical wand and assuming this is something that can be overcome with the right cultural upbringing - giving girls the right role models - which may or may not be the case.

Comment author: pencilears 28 July 2010 07:11:52AM 6 points [-]

ok, so what you are saying is that in this hypothetical weirdtopia you've worked it out that women are more likely to initiate sex and to take it too far and disregard the signals of the male if he's saying something like "no stop, I don't want to"

which is certainly different from how we order the world in western society. and a valad premise on which to build a social-sci-fi story about the possible implications of such a role reversal. which is exactly what you haven't done.

you just used the word "rape" which is a loaded word, when you should not have done so and with out showing the context in the story instead explaining here, I assume there is a scene between two characters later in the story wherein a male is taken advantage of by a female and it all becomes clear.

also female on male sexual assault is a very real thing today and again not to be taken lightly or mentioned but not shown or explained. I am aware I am commenting on your explanation, it is not an in-story explanation, I had to scroll all the way down here to see it.

(I must say here that I looked up Miss Manners on the point of women initiating relations and she says that when one plays the gentleman's part one must be gentlemanly about it even if one happens to be a lady, the gentleman must gracefully accept a refusal and ladies always have the right to refuse or accept as they choose. this seems to square better with my actual experiences of asking men out.)

also you have supplied what seems like the kind of muddle minded defense and reasoning one might put behind something you as the author are sexually attracted too, which is fine, as I mentioned before you are in the company of sci-fi giants in that regard. might have been better done with an actual sex scene, if you are going for author appeal why not go all out?

I still feel that dropping in "rape is legal and it is not explained why this is so in the story and it was dropped in as a side comment purely to get a rise out of the audience" is an unnecessary part of the story to drop on the reader. I'm more shocked in terms of anthropological criticism than anything else.

oh yes, and I'm shocked, viscerally as a woman, at the idea of not having legal recourse in the case of a sexual assault, and of such an attack being my fault for a lack of constant vigilance. makes me think those anti-rape toothed condom/protectors as more practical than they already are.

someone mentioned that they could not think of an idea that would shock men emotionally and women intellectually the same way.
I decided to give it a try: "oh yes and after age 30 we castrate all the males to reduce incidence of children born with trisonomy 23"

Comment author: timtyler 22 November 2009 08:47:30AM *  2 points [-]
Comment author: pencilears 28 July 2010 06:35:11AM 0 points [-]

fair enough.

Comment author: Michael_E_Sullivan2 02 February 2009 11:42:19PM 6 points [-]

Eliezer Y: The fact that it's taken over the comments is not as good as I hoped, but neither was the reaction as bad as I feared.

Heh, well, I will (perhaps?) make the reaction worse. It is interesting what people choose to use as an example of what would be "shocking" but possibly/arguably better. I will note that this choice (non-consensual sex) is guaranteed to make a lot of women uncomfortable to the point where they may, pretty justifiably, have difficulty responding in an unemotional, bayesian manner to it as a purely hypothetical premise. But I don't see your typical white male geek having quite the same problem, even if it is still shocking to us.

I'm pretty sure it would be possible to find a premise where it would work the opposite way (women would be shocked, but mostly capable of discussing the ramifications as rationally as humans tend to, while men would have a lot of difficulty holding even to that weak standard), but oddly, I've seen a few of these ventures on blogs (I don't mean to imply that this is the whole point of your story, which is very interesting, and I look forward to the next installments), yet I've never seen a guy come up with such a suggestion when the time comes to hypothetically discuss things that might shock people horribly. Just a thought.

I'm not saying that I think you should make it your business to be avowedly feminist, but it might be useful to observe the difference in reactions, and it's worth considering the ways in which your (and other reader's) gender influences their response to that part of this story. I see that no identified women have commented in this part of the discussion yet. Of course, there are few enough regular female identified commenters here that it could be random.

Comment author: pencilears 22 November 2009 08:31:47AM 10 points [-]

alright, you've taunted me into posting. girds my uterus

I wasn't going to post just because weird and anti-female ideas about what sexuality should be in an ideal world are obsequious to science fiction. the idea that women should be nude all the time is a common example, or just that sexuality should be free from emotional commitment (drama), that sex should be considered healthful and natural to be engaged in with as many people as possible with no jealousy or competition. that these ideas are common to science fiction says more to me about what kind of person writes science fiction and what they think of sex than what would be realistic or reasonable. but this series references the ship having it's own 4chan, realism is not to be expected and I understand that.

it's just, I wish the author had thought about what non-consensual sex, about what rape as a concept, as a thing used to torture and to dominate women, really meant before tossing it off as a badly explained line about how much more mature and well adjusted this polyglot culture of the future is.

does the author mean that in this supposed shining utopia of the future that a person can attack another person if the context is sexual? does it mean that all ideas of pair bonding, of marriage and commitment between equals has been abandoned in favor of one night stands? were those stands initiated through an attack, through an impingement on another person's right to autonomy? does it mean that rape in the context of arranged marriages between unwilling strangers is the norm?

this is not explained. rape is legal, that's all there is to it. rape of the underage, rape of the indigent, rape of minors, legal of course, the right of a free society. as far as this was explained.

it seems odd to me that a people so viscerally opposed to cultural infanticide would condone sexual attack.

because that is what rape is, it is an attack. is harming people in other ways legal as well? can I go out for a night on the town of stabbing people? no?

anyway, allow me this moment to object, as rationally as I can, as a person in actual possession of a working vagina, against the idea that rape is, was, or could be, legalized or condoned in any way.

if by rape the author did not mean rape, as many commenters suggest as a defense, then he is either insufficiently articulate or misguided, if he did not mean Rape-rape, but merely snuggle-kisses-rape-hugs then that intent should be better reflected in the text itself. as it is not I am forced to conclude that by rape, the author meant the forcible unwanted sexual victimization and attack on a person or persons by another person or persons.

I would suggest the author examine the blowback around the idea of the Open Source Boob Project for more articulate arguments about the right of women to posses their own bodies. http://feministing.com/archives/009066.html