I would decide on whether a scenario is central or not based on the expected punishment.
Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that there were no violent cases ever, that all rape cases were of the 90% variety you describe: a victim in a potentially sexually suggestive setting like a bar gets too much to drink, possibly due to some generous verbal coercion by the perpetrator, who is, rather overtly, looking for a sexual encounter. No illicit drugs were slipped in, though the lady probably overestimated her drinking capacity. She was severely impaired, but not drunk unconscious and unmoving, she was not gang-raped with pictures posted online and further bullying or blackmail followed, etc. She was not at a higher risk of pregnancy or an STD compared to if she consented. She would not have consented if she had the capacity to.
Does this describe what you think is the prevalent situation? If so, this would be a central case in that hypothetical case of what would be generally understood as “rape”. Would it be punished by hard time and a ruinous life-long sex offender label? Or would an educational campaign of the sort you are describing, “only yes means yes” be a more appropriate way to deal with this case, with significant legal repercussions for the offender, but not nearly as severe as for a premeditated violent physical sexual assault?
What you describe is not what I think the prevalent situation is.
When men answer yes to the question:
“Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone who did not want you to because they were too intoxicated to resist?”
They are not specifying whether or not force was used.
They are not specifying whether or not the victim was drunk to the point of being unable to move.
They are not specifying whether the victim actively and forcefully said no and tried to push them away or if they just mumbled no, or did not say anything.
They are not specifying whether they slipped anything additional into the woman’s drink or not
They are not specifying whether the encounter with the woman getting drunk was something that happened by accident or if they went through significant lengths to persuade her.
They are not specifying whether or not protection was used—my impression is that it almost never is during rape.
Given the way that the question is phrased, my guess is that in the cases of men answering yes to this question, most men answering believe that the woman actually did not want to have sex when he proceeded to penetrate her, and chose to do it anyway. Beyond that, I have little data.
Given so many unknowns, it’s hard to tell from this study alone what the spectrum of non-consensual sex was, and so it’s hard to draw any useful conclusions. It is quite possible that the blog post author is correct and there is a minority of recidivists who account for the large chunk of non-consensual sex acts. Regardless, the explicit consent approach is certainly an excellent idea, as well as working on changing the cultural norms to make it more acceptable for women to initiate the expression of interest.
the amount of non-consensual sex attempts and successes reported in the study, which I found surprisingly and disturbingly high, is likely accurate or under-reported—I’m very surprised that so many guys answered yes, and would think that given our culture, its more likely that more thought yes but did not mark it than that they gave false positives.
the offenders are mostly repeat offenders, who are having or attempting to have non-consensual sex with about a half dozen women per guy. That seems meaningful to me! It means that the behavior is indeed intentional among this group.
if you read the whole article, they talk about how they interviewed the guys and some of what they learned from that, and their findings with the interviews were consistent with the check boxes.
Thanks for expressing agreement on the explicit consent. Its the thing that makes the most sense to me as to something that is likely to improve the situation at this point in time, when we still know so little and have such a hard time dialoging about this in an open manner as a society.
It means that the behavior is indeed intentional among this group.
Now, I am currently reviewing reflexes like this to see if they are actually good, so I’m not going to endorse this statement as true or useful or even relevant. But this was my immediate reaction to your statement:
Humans are uniquely good at concluding the Bad Guys are evil mutants. We demonize, exaggerate, caricature. In almost every instance—possibly every instance that does not concern a specific individual with an identifiable neurological difference—it is factually wrong. This instinctive reaction serves not as an epistemic tool—“He’s a pedophile/nazi/liberal/fundie, now we know he’s a demon in a fleshuit! Fire at will.”—bt as a political rallying cry. In short, this is something a rationalist should probably never say. If you find yourself claiming your enemies are innately evil, you have gone wrong. Retrace your footsteps and try to find where.
Normally this would be a tad more diplomatic and probabilistic, but that stage in my thought process has been replace with noticing the reflex, so...
On my end, I am trying very hard to avoid making the mistake you are describing, despite that this is a very emotionally salient topic for me.
Because this topic is so emotionally salient for so many people, it is almost never discussed in an even manner. I have been very pleased with the comments on this post for so many people making nuanced points on a topic that would normally get shut down very quickly in a manner similar to what you describe in a context such as this where there is not a more uniform perspective among the discussion participants.
I notice that after the first few most recent of her comments, which have not yet received any votes either way, almost all the rest of the first page of her comments have received exactly one downvote, but varying numbers of upvotes. I suspect the downvotes are all due to one person, who has decided to object to whatever she posts. Perhaps the same person who has been downvoting everything that ialdabaoth posts.
In addition to whatever other voting is going on, my guess is that there is either one person doing this with multiple accounts, or several who have been going down the line and down voting the majority of my comments.
During the day that I was watching the patterns frequently, my karma would stay relatively stable with slow fluctuations most of the time, and the maybe around 5 times would quickly drop 10-20 or so points. I haven’t been writing much lately and am pretty sure I was at 0 for monthly karma before this post, so my current score reflects specifically these ups and downs. For anyone who wants to do math, he post was on main for about half a day before it was moved, and I believe it was at −2 when it was transferred. (up from hovering around −4 most of the day)
Speaking of the math, would you mind giving the formula you used to calculate the range of +/-’s?
Speaking of the math, would you mind giving the formula you used to calculate the range of +/-’s?
Here’s the MATLAB code I wrote, although for looking at your recent posts, the numbers were small enough that it wasn’t necessary to run this, e.g. +1 and 67% has to be +2-1.
For those who know programming but not MATLAB, the code should mostly be clear. The line “a = (ceil(a2):floor(a1))’;” sets a to a column vector of every integer between the two bounds, and all subsequent lines are operations on entire vectors at once. “[b,a,a+b]” is a matrix of three columns: b, a, and a+b.
function v = lwvotes( net, frac )
%v = lwvotes( net, frac )
% Calculate votes for and against, given upvotes as both
% net difference and fraction positive. frac can be expressed
% as a proportion or a percentage.
if frac > 1
frac = frac/100;
end
neg = net < 0;
if neg
net = -net;
frac = 1-frac;
end
frac1 = frac-0.005;
frac2 = frac+0.005;
a1 = net/(2-1/frac1);
a2 = net/(2-1/frac2);
a = (ceil(a2):floor(a1))';
b = a-net;
if neg
v = [b,a,a+b];
else
v = [a,b,a+b];
end
end
I just re-read this and realized the important information I completely glossed over, and that this totally changes my analysis.
That said, I recall thinking that the comments had gone up and down many times when showing 50%, and that perhaps either it was a case that numbers were just more even since they were smaller, or that the calculation was done differently with the comments than the post. I don’t feel up for doing the math to check this with so many comments, but if I had infinite time and energy it would be interesting.
Re: appropriate thing to do as punishment/response—I would really like to have a lot more data before having to come up with an answer to that which would actually be implemented.
I am a proponent of a healthy and prospering society, and do not value making people feel bad for bad things they have done. So ideally I would want a solution that would heal all parties involved. The possibility space in terms of social context is too large to give a meaningful answer regarding what to do in a situation where I was given the choice.
I would decide on whether a scenario is central or not based on the expected punishment.
Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that there were no violent cases ever, that all rape cases were of the 90% variety you describe: a victim in a potentially sexually suggestive setting like a bar gets too much to drink, possibly due to some generous verbal coercion by the perpetrator, who is, rather overtly, looking for a sexual encounter. No illicit drugs were slipped in, though the lady probably overestimated her drinking capacity. She was severely impaired, but not drunk unconscious and unmoving, she was not gang-raped with pictures posted online and further bullying or blackmail followed, etc. She was not at a higher risk of pregnancy or an STD compared to if she consented. She would not have consented if she had the capacity to.
Does this describe what you think is the prevalent situation? If so, this would be a central case in that hypothetical case of what would be generally understood as “rape”. Would it be punished by hard time and a ruinous life-long sex offender label? Or would an educational campaign of the sort you are describing, “only yes means yes” be a more appropriate way to deal with this case, with significant legal repercussions for the offender, but not nearly as severe as for a premeditated violent physical sexual assault?
What you describe is not what I think the prevalent situation is.
When men answer yes to the question:
“Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone who did not want you to because they were too intoxicated to resist?”
They are not specifying whether or not force was used.
They are not specifying whether or not the victim was drunk to the point of being unable to move.
They are not specifying whether the victim actively and forcefully said no and tried to push them away or if they just mumbled no, or did not say anything.
They are not specifying whether they slipped anything additional into the woman’s drink or not
They are not specifying whether the encounter with the woman getting drunk was something that happened by accident or if they went through significant lengths to persuade her.
They are not specifying whether or not protection was used—my impression is that it almost never is during rape.
Given the way that the question is phrased, my guess is that in the cases of men answering yes to this question, most men answering believe that the woman actually did not want to have sex when he proceeded to penetrate her, and chose to do it anyway. Beyond that, I have little data.
Given so many unknowns, it’s hard to tell from this study alone what the spectrum of non-consensual sex was, and so it’s hard to draw any useful conclusions. It is quite possible that the blog post author is correct and there is a minority of recidivists who account for the large chunk of non-consensual sex acts. Regardless, the explicit consent approach is certainly an excellent idea, as well as working on changing the cultural norms to make it more acceptable for women to initiate the expression of interest.
I draw the conclusions:
the amount of non-consensual sex attempts and successes reported in the study, which I found surprisingly and disturbingly high, is likely accurate or under-reported—I’m very surprised that so many guys answered yes, and would think that given our culture, its more likely that more thought yes but did not mark it than that they gave false positives.
the offenders are mostly repeat offenders, who are having or attempting to have non-consensual sex with about a half dozen women per guy. That seems meaningful to me! It means that the behavior is indeed intentional among this group.
if you read the whole article, they talk about how they interviewed the guys and some of what they learned from that, and their findings with the interviews were consistent with the check boxes.
Thanks for expressing agreement on the explicit consent. Its the thing that makes the most sense to me as to something that is likely to improve the situation at this point in time, when we still know so little and have such a hard time dialoging about this in an open manner as a society.
Now, I am currently reviewing reflexes like this to see if they are actually good, so I’m not going to endorse this statement as true or useful or even relevant. But this was my immediate reaction to your statement:
Humans are uniquely good at concluding the Bad Guys are evil mutants. We demonize, exaggerate, caricature. In almost every instance—possibly every instance that does not concern a specific individual with an identifiable neurological difference—it is factually wrong. This instinctive reaction serves not as an epistemic tool—“He’s a pedophile/nazi/liberal/fundie, now we know he’s a demon in a fleshuit! Fire at will.”—bt as a political rallying cry. In short, this is something a rationalist should probably never say. If you find yourself claiming your enemies are innately evil, you have gone wrong. Retrace your footsteps and try to find where.
Normally this would be a tad more diplomatic and probabilistic, but that stage in my thought process has been replace with noticing the reflex, so...
Note that I did not use the words good or bad. I used the word intentional.
What caused you to think I was needing this advice?
[edit]
Okay, I see that you say the statement might not be relevant, and that it is your reflex.
On my end, I am trying very hard to avoid making the mistake you are describing, despite that this is a very emotionally salient topic for me.
Because this topic is so emotionally salient for so many people, it is almost never discussed in an even manner. I have been very pleased with the comments on this post for so many people making nuanced points on a topic that would normally get shut down very quickly in a manner similar to what you describe in a context such as this where there is not a more uniform perspective among the discussion participants.
Could the person who voted down the parent comment please explain their reasoning? I am genuinely curious.
I notice that after the first few most recent of her comments, which have not yet received any votes either way, almost all the rest of the first page of her comments have received exactly one downvote, but varying numbers of upvotes. I suspect the downvotes are all due to one person, who has decided to object to whatever she posts. Perhaps the same person who has been downvoting everything that ialdabaoth posts.
In addition to whatever other voting is going on, my guess is that there is either one person doing this with multiple accounts, or several who have been going down the line and down voting the majority of my comments.
During the day that I was watching the patterns frequently, my karma would stay relatively stable with slow fluctuations most of the time, and the maybe around 5 times would quickly drop 10-20 or so points. I haven’t been writing much lately and am pretty sure I was at 0 for monthly karma before this post, so my current score reflects specifically these ups and downs. For anyone who wants to do math, he post was on main for about half a day before it was moved, and I believe it was at −2 when it was transferred. (up from hovering around −4 most of the day)
Speaking of the math, would you mind giving the formula you used to calculate the range of +/-’s?
Here’s the MATLAB code I wrote, although for looking at your recent posts, the numbers were small enough that it wasn’t necessary to run this, e.g. +1 and 67% has to be +2-1.
For those who know programming but not MATLAB, the code should mostly be clear. The line “a = (ceil(a2):floor(a1))’;” sets a to a column vector of every integer between the two bounds, and all subsequent lines are operations on entire vectors at once. “[b,a,a+b]” is a matrix of three columns: b, a, and a+b.
I just re-read this and realized the important information I completely glossed over, and that this totally changes my analysis.
That said, I recall thinking that the comments had gone up and down many times when showing 50%, and that perhaps either it was a case that numbers were just more even since they were smaller, or that the calculation was done differently with the comments than the post. I don’t feel up for doing the math to check this with so many comments, but if I had infinite time and energy it would be interesting.
Re: appropriate thing to do as punishment/response—I would really like to have a lot more data before having to come up with an answer to that which would actually be implemented.
I am a proponent of a healthy and prospering society, and do not value making people feel bad for bad things they have done. So ideally I would want a solution that would heal all parties involved. The possibility space in terms of social context is too large to give a meaningful answer regarding what to do in a situation where I was given the choice.