We didn’t have a political thread on LW for a long time, did we? Would be a more appropriate place for this discussion. On one hand, I do not want to ignore your question, on the other hand, I have no desire to make this a long off-topic thread. Unfortunately, political topics are usually heavily mindkilling, they have thousands of connotations, so unless one writes a full book about the topic, there are many ways to misinterpret their answer.
Here are a few things that would deserve a longer discussion, but I don’t want to have all of those discussions right here and right now:
1) Just because a word is used, even if it has its page on wikipedia, does not mean the concept is well-defined. To quote from the wikipedia page: “there is disagreement over what defines a rape culture and to what degree a given society meets the criteria to be considered a rape culture”. What I am trying to say is that I agree that rape is bad, and I also agree that if you write a victim’s report on a web page, you will find many comments blaming the victim. I agree with this completely. The part that I don’t know (and wikipedia says there is no consensus even among people who use the word frequently) is whether this deserves to be called “culture”, and whether that means that only some people have this “culture”, or the whole culture is guilty of having this “culture”. And I have no desire to spend my afternoon having a discussion about definitions. I am willing to talk only about things that somehow translate to expected experience.
2) You speak about “overwhelmingly likely [stupid] response”, but I think that the topic of rape has no monopoly on that. In general, people are idiots. Do you expect them to stop being idiots specifically when discussing rape? I guess this website is all about the hundred mistakes people make when they think. And that’s just about thinking, because that’s what we are obsessed with; we speak about how stupid people are even when they try to be nice, polite, and reasonable. But many people don’t even try. I don’t expect people in general to have reasonable opinions about rape, just like I don’t expect them to have reasonable opinions about anything. Some of them even talk with their invisible friends, for God’s sake! I share your pain; I too wish people would be more reasonable. But today, they are not. That’s not about rape, that’s about… everything. The only exception is when people are massively brainwashed into believing something that coincidentally happens to be correct. This is why most people will give you a correct answer for “how much is 2+2″. So, expending a similar amount of energy, you could brainwash them into having the kind of reaction about rape that you want them to have. Even then, they wouldn’t have that reaction because it’s the smart reaction; they would have it, because it would be what they were brainwashed to believe. It would probably be a good thing. The problem is on the meta level; just as you can brainwash people into believing good things, you can brainwash them into believing bad things. So there is a kind of Schelling point of not brainwashing people too much, even for a good thing. I don’t have a full utilitarian analysis of consequences of breaking this Schelling point.
3) What is the overwhelmingly likely response, depends on what kind of people you interact with. Some people would have this reaction, other people wouldn’t. This is what makes me uncertain about generalizations about a culture. Who specifically is this culture? Which specific subgroup? How many people must exhibit some behavior so we can label the whole culture as a rape culture? Is it about number of people, or rather about what appears in media, or...?
4) When you say something reasonable, it is likely that at least some feminist agrees with it, and at least one feminist disagrees with it. Feminists say a lot of things. Some of them consider prison rape or woman-on-man rape an issue. Some of them don’t. I was specific about my opinion. I am not sure whether majority of feminists agree with this variant, and I don’t consider that information relevant.
5) Whether something should or shouldn’t happen, and whether some behaviors are more risky than others, those are two differently questions. Misinterpreting opinions about one of them as opinions about the other, that’s just one of many rhetorical tricks frequently used in political discussions.
6..99) Really, we could talk about it the whole afternoon.
100) Speaking about an anology with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it. And no, whichever of the thousand connotations anyone thinks about immediately after reading this, if I didn’t write it explicitly, there is a chance I didn’t mean it.
Speaking about an analogy with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it.
Upvoted for making this specific distinction explicit. I think it’s important to note that A and B are not contradictory and should not be treated as if B->!A
Also upvoted the parent; the failure mode it describes is real, whether or not one subscribes to “rape culture” with the quotes.
We didn’t have a political thread on LW for a long time, did we? Would be a more appropriate place for this discussion. On one hand, I do not want to ignore your question, on the other hand, I have no desire to make this a long off-topic thread. Unfortunately, political topics are usually heavily mindkilling, they have thousands of connotations, so unless one writes a full book about the topic, there are many ways to misinterpret their answer.
Here are a few things that would deserve a longer discussion, but I don’t want to have all of those discussions right here and right now:
1) Just because a word is used, even if it has its page on wikipedia, does not mean the concept is well-defined. To quote from the wikipedia page: “there is disagreement over what defines a rape culture and to what degree a given society meets the criteria to be considered a rape culture”. What I am trying to say is that I agree that rape is bad, and I also agree that if you write a victim’s report on a web page, you will find many comments blaming the victim. I agree with this completely. The part that I don’t know (and wikipedia says there is no consensus even among people who use the word frequently) is whether this deserves to be called “culture”, and whether that means that only some people have this “culture”, or the whole culture is guilty of having this “culture”. And I have no desire to spend my afternoon having a discussion about definitions. I am willing to talk only about things that somehow translate to expected experience.
2) You speak about “overwhelmingly likely [stupid] response”, but I think that the topic of rape has no monopoly on that. In general, people are idiots. Do you expect them to stop being idiots specifically when discussing rape? I guess this website is all about the hundred mistakes people make when they think. And that’s just about thinking, because that’s what we are obsessed with; we speak about how stupid people are even when they try to be nice, polite, and reasonable. But many people don’t even try. I don’t expect people in general to have reasonable opinions about rape, just like I don’t expect them to have reasonable opinions about anything. Some of them even talk with their invisible friends, for God’s sake! I share your pain; I too wish people would be more reasonable. But today, they are not. That’s not about rape, that’s about… everything. The only exception is when people are massively brainwashed into believing something that coincidentally happens to be correct. This is why most people will give you a correct answer for “how much is 2+2″. So, expending a similar amount of energy, you could brainwash them into having the kind of reaction about rape that you want them to have. Even then, they wouldn’t have that reaction because it’s the smart reaction; they would have it, because it would be what they were brainwashed to believe. It would probably be a good thing. The problem is on the meta level; just as you can brainwash people into believing good things, you can brainwash them into believing bad things. So there is a kind of Schelling point of not brainwashing people too much, even for a good thing. I don’t have a full utilitarian analysis of consequences of breaking this Schelling point.
3) What is the overwhelmingly likely response, depends on what kind of people you interact with. Some people would have this reaction, other people wouldn’t. This is what makes me uncertain about generalizations about a culture. Who specifically is this culture? Which specific subgroup? How many people must exhibit some behavior so we can label the whole culture as a rape culture? Is it about number of people, or rather about what appears in media, or...?
4) When you say something reasonable, it is likely that at least some feminist agrees with it, and at least one feminist disagrees with it. Feminists say a lot of things. Some of them consider prison rape or woman-on-man rape an issue. Some of them don’t. I was specific about my opinion. I am not sure whether majority of feminists agree with this variant, and I don’t consider that information relevant.
5) Whether something should or shouldn’t happen, and whether some behaviors are more risky than others, those are two differently questions. Misinterpreting opinions about one of them as opinions about the other, that’s just one of many rhetorical tricks frequently used in political discussions.
6..99) Really, we could talk about it the whole afternoon.
100) Speaking about an anology with bullying, I think that: a) bullying is morally wrong and bullies should be punished; b) some actions can make bullying less likely, and it would be good to tell the victims about it. And no, whichever of the thousand connotations anyone thinks about immediately after reading this, if I didn’t write it explicitly, there is a chance I didn’t mean it.
Upvoted for making this specific distinction explicit. I think it’s important to note that A and B are not contradictory and should not be treated as if B->!A
Also upvoted the parent; the failure mode it describes is real, whether or not one subscribes to “rape culture” with the quotes.