As discussed in the comments, I completely agree with you that there are male victims of false rape accusations as well as victims of rape, and I would really love to see a system that does not harm one group of innocents as a way to protect another.
Well, I think part of that is a higher reliance on personal responsibility—i.e., prevention techniques need to be discussed without an accusation of “victim blaming”.
This can be done better if the culture’s default attitude isn’t victim-blaming, of course, so now the whole damn thing looks fractal.
To make the recursion explicit: most men who try to offer advice on how not to get raped are not intending to blame the victim, but a certain subset of men are very good at creating an environment of victim-blaming that causes legitimate advice to get swallowed in the ‘victim-blaming’ filter. (These tend to be the same kinds of men who rape.) The biggest problem is that they have a VERY successful game rigged—the behaviors that enable their raping and shaming are all seen as high-status behaviors. If we want to build a new system, the first thing we need to do is to stop worshipping men as success-objects, in the same way that we reduce women to sex-objects.
A properly ‘feminist’ approach would reject the whole masculine idea of adversarial dominance-hierarchies—at core, “victim-blaming” relies on the underlying assumption that there’s always a Right Argument/Perspective and a Wrong Argument/Perspective and they fight like little soldiers.
A LOT of work needs to be done on all sides, to learn to respect narratives and come to understanding rather than play out dominance games with people’s lived experiences.
(That is not to say that there aren’t “more right” and “less wrong” perspectives to have! Just that trying to educate people that there are better perspectives adversarially is a really dumb way of going about it, and we should stop.)
Yup. As you say, this takes very careful thought. As the article linked above describes, those who enjoy partaking in predatory acts are not easy to identify, most likely have the average distribution and range of IQ including very smart ones, and are integrated into society. Some of them are also very personally interested in these topics and influencing policy. That makes changing policy well especially difficult—you have to really consider what is being said and not take anything at face value in public discussion about rape and other such topics. I’m glad that there is a growing movement working on these problems.
That makes changing policy well especially difficult—you have to really consider what is being said and not take anything at face value in public discussion about rape and other such topics.
One quick objection here: I think we absolutely have to take everything that is said at face value, AND ALSO examine the underlying subtext. This is part of what makes it so tricky.
Example: When someone says “but I respect women!”, take that at face value, and assume that they actually DO have a legitimate desire to respect women; they are just confused as to how. Use that to adjust your tactic when dealing with this person, and frame your debate with them in terms of “this is how to show your respect; the way you’re doing it now isn’t working” rather than “you are bad and you don’t actually respect women at all”. If you take that at face value and they don’t act in accordance with it, of course, call them on it.
Example: When someone says, “but she was asking for it!”, take that at face value, and assume that in their warped narrative they actually DO believe that consent was given, if not implied. Use that to adjust your tactic when dealing with this person, and frame your debate with them in terms of “this is why consent needs to be enthusiastic, and these are the failure modes of your approach” rather than “you are a filthy rapist!”. If you take that at face value and they don’t act in accordance with it, of course, call them on it.
Example: When someone says, “bros before hoes”, take that at face value, and assume that they are explicitly identifying who they wish to ally with. Use that to focus your hostility here, at the root of the issue, rather than attacking the epiphenomena “but she was asking for it!” and “but I respect women!” Because in the first two cases, taking them at face value (at least at first) gives you an opportunity to identify potential allies who are stuck behind enemy lines, AND gives you an opportunity to call people out on their bullshit far better than going in guns blazing.
That’s… about as much insight as I have, and it’s of course subject to all the usual disclaimers; we’re all stuck in this together and we’re all seeing it from different perspectives.
Well, I think part of that is a higher reliance on personal responsibility—i.e., prevention techniques need to be discussed without an accusation of “victim blaming”.
This can be done better if the culture’s default attitude isn’t victim-blaming, of course, so now the whole damn thing looks fractal.
To make the recursion explicit: most men who try to offer advice on how not to get raped are not intending to blame the victim, but a certain subset of men are very good at creating an environment of victim-blaming that causes legitimate advice to get swallowed in the ‘victim-blaming’ filter. (These tend to be the same kinds of men who rape.) The biggest problem is that they have a VERY successful game rigged—the behaviors that enable their raping and shaming are all seen as high-status behaviors. If we want to build a new system, the first thing we need to do is to stop worshipping men as success-objects, in the same way that we reduce women to sex-objects.
A properly ‘feminist’ approach would reject the whole masculine idea of adversarial dominance-hierarchies—at core, “victim-blaming” relies on the underlying assumption that there’s always a Right Argument/Perspective and a Wrong Argument/Perspective and they fight like little soldiers.
A LOT of work needs to be done on all sides, to learn to respect narratives and come to understanding rather than play out dominance games with people’s lived experiences.
(That is not to say that there aren’t “more right” and “less wrong” perspectives to have! Just that trying to educate people that there are better perspectives adversarially is a really dumb way of going about it, and we should stop.)
Yup. As you say, this takes very careful thought. As the article linked above describes, those who enjoy partaking in predatory acts are not easy to identify, most likely have the average distribution and range of IQ including very smart ones, and are integrated into society. Some of them are also very personally interested in these topics and influencing policy. That makes changing policy well especially difficult—you have to really consider what is being said and not take anything at face value in public discussion about rape and other such topics. I’m glad that there is a growing movement working on these problems.
One quick objection here: I think we absolutely have to take everything that is said at face value, AND ALSO examine the underlying subtext. This is part of what makes it so tricky.
Example: When someone says “but I respect women!”, take that at face value, and assume that they actually DO have a legitimate desire to respect women; they are just confused as to how. Use that to adjust your tactic when dealing with this person, and frame your debate with them in terms of “this is how to show your respect; the way you’re doing it now isn’t working” rather than “you are bad and you don’t actually respect women at all”. If you take that at face value and they don’t act in accordance with it, of course, call them on it.
Example: When someone says, “but she was asking for it!”, take that at face value, and assume that in their warped narrative they actually DO believe that consent was given, if not implied. Use that to adjust your tactic when dealing with this person, and frame your debate with them in terms of “this is why consent needs to be enthusiastic, and these are the failure modes of your approach” rather than “you are a filthy rapist!”. If you take that at face value and they don’t act in accordance with it, of course, call them on it.
Example: When someone says, “bros before hoes”, take that at face value, and assume that they are explicitly identifying who they wish to ally with. Use that to focus your hostility here, at the root of the issue, rather than attacking the epiphenomena “but she was asking for it!” and “but I respect women!” Because in the first two cases, taking them at face value (at least at first) gives you an opportunity to identify potential allies who are stuck behind enemy lines, AND gives you an opportunity to call people out on their bullshit far better than going in guns blazing.
That’s… about as much insight as I have, and it’s of course subject to all the usual disclaimers; we’re all stuck in this together and we’re all seeing it from different perspectives.
Fair point, thanks.