Sexual relationships are far more personal, and decided on far more idiosyncratic criteria, than employment relationships. There are fairly explicit and well-defined understandings of what constitutes qualification for a job that do not depend strongly on the personality of the hiring manager. If Human Resources is looking for a new shelf stocker or a new receptionist or a new medical transcriptionist and turn down our heroine as you describe, and they can be shown to be doing it for certain prohibited reasons, they are breaking the law.
Sex is qualitatively different from everything else. Pretend I repeated that a couple dozen times, because I think this concept might be the barrier to understanding in conversations like these.
Would you feel the need to point out—in a rather defensive-sounding way—that employers are in fact free to reject those whom they regard as less-than-qualified candidates? It’s unlikely you would worry too much about such a person turning to violence
You realize that it’s not just made up that sometimes desire for sex turns into violence, right? Let’s hear your priors on how likely it is for there to be a victim of sexual harrassment or assault reading this thread, and how likely it is for there to be someone who was stalked or attacked by a rejected job applicant reading this thread. I am concerned about sexual violence because I have friends who were raped or molested. I am concerned about sexual violence because I have a history providing me with direct empirical evidence that it exists. I am concerned about sexual violence because I live in a society that takes care to remind me, constantly, that I am not safe, that if certain things happen to me it will be because I wasn’t careful enough, that it is eminently reasonable for me to draw the design of my life within circumscribed lines to protect myself from such danger and the stigma of victimization.
I wonder if it’s time someone made the bound-to-be-controversial suggestion that women in modern society are excessively conservative when it comes to granting sexual favors. There is apparently no greater female nightmare scenario than mating with a less-than-optimally-attractive male.
I have met you. I know that you are not an awful (or even creepy) person. I still can’t read this charitably. I’m hoping you’ve just been primed by reading too much Hanson or something. Dude: People are not entitled to get things for free from people who don’t want to give them, even if you think their reasons for not wanting to give are dumb. It is not acceptable to criticize women for inadequate generosity because they are not as promiscuous as would be convenient for straight men.
To the extent that sex is like a gift, you have to be in a relationship with someone that warrants the exchange of such gifts. I don’t expect birthday presents from people who aren’t in a birthday-present-exchanging relationship with me. To the extent that sex is like a commodity, guess what—it’s for sale! No, you can’t buy it from every person who might have it to offer, but not everybody who bakes cupcakes sells them either—you have to go to a cupcake store. If you want homemade cupcakes, you’ll have to make friends with somebody who bakes.
but it should be equally obvious that such behavior is less than rational in our modern era of contraception: sex simply doesn’t have the same dangers that it did in the ancestral environment.
It should also be obvious that eating large quantities of sugar is less rational in our era of processed food. Do you consume sweets? It should also be obvious that avoiding unnecessary physical activity is less rational in our era of labor-saving devices. Do you go to the gym as often as studies indicate you should? Women art godshatter too.
Some things I didn’t get around to posting earlier—Hanson is somewhat on my shit list because he’s posted more than once about how the world would be a better place if women would have sex when they don’t want to. He’s a geek economist, so he gets to speculate about such things, but oddly enough, he doesn’t consider the costs to women in such scenarios.
Consent and fear and all that: There was a previous discussion here about women giving out fake phone numbers, and there seemed to be no grasp of why a woman might do that instead of giving a straightforward refusal.
Imagine a world where all the socially acceptable partners for you are bigger, stronger, and probably more aggressive. You may prefer such yourself, but it’s certainly the case that you’ll take a status hit if you chose otherwise.
Furthermore, you’ve had niceness training—it’s hard work to directly contradict what someone else wants. Doing that amount of work is a gift which might not be bestowed on a spammer.
And you’re not supposed to make the first move, for values of “not supposed to” which range from being blamed if you’re raped to putting off potential partners if you do. I realize both of those vary according to who you happen to be around, and both may have faded somewhat in recent decades, but people do respond to potential risks.
None of this means that giving fake phone numbers is a wonderful thing, but there are actual human motivations for doing so which aren’t just spite—sometimes spite is involved, but the story isn’t nearly that simple.
This is raw stuff, on all sides. I’ve been decently treated here, but some of the theorizing about women is enough to be a partial explanation for why this place is very high majority male.
I think a big component of sex dynamics is, as you said, physical strength. Since women are physically weaker than men, they can’t rely on that to protect them from overly aggressive or hostile potential partners. The only thing keeping those overly aggressive or hostile potential partners in line are social norms against rape and abuse, which are already weak enough that, for example, rape apologism for famous athletes and victim blaming are common. Any talk that can potentially weaken those social norms then becomes a legitimate threat… unless the talk includes ways of subverting other social norms that balance its effect. For example, I think we could solve some problems by giving men “niceness training” instead of women.
A sidetrack: I think men’s physical strength is a minor factor compared to their ability to organize for violence. If the organizational ability were reversed—if men who seriously displeased women were mobbed by 4 or 5 armed and organized women and didn’t have male back-up, the world would be very different.
This doesn’t mean I want that world, but I find it interesting that males seem to almost reflexively organize for violence, and females pretty much never do. Information about girl gangs appreciated if I’m missing something.
“Niceness training” has some real problems—it’s being afraid to express strong desires which might be in conflict with other people’s.
Kindness training—encouraging people to actually treat each other well and having some skills for doing so—would be a whole different thing, and a world where it was common is hard for me to imagine. It would be a world with little or no status enforcement.
As someone who taught women’s self defense courses for years (and am an accomplished martial artist in my own right), I think the willingness to use force—and the expectation that others are willing to use force—is far more important than the effectiveness or quantity of that force.
I don’t mean that skilled martial artists can defend themselves against unskilled but much stronger attackers; people usually assume this, and I agree. What I mean is that after spending a weekend teaching a woman to fight back against a physical assault she knows almost nothing more than she did before, but has the confidence in herself to use force, and that willingness makes all the difference.
Men are statistically more willing to use force to get what they want, and being aware of that, women are forced to be more cautious. I feel like this ought to be more relevant than men being more prone to organizing for violence, especially in the current day western world.
Kindness training—encouraging people to actually treat each other well and having some skills for doing so
Interestingly, this is more of a negative skill: people don’t so much need to learn how to be nice as how to stop being not-nice, especially to themselves. I’ve observed that whenever I stop judging myself negatively in some type of situation, I find myself spontaneously being much nicer to other people in the same sort of situation.
For example, after learning not to judge myself for having made a mistake, I find I’m nicer to people who’ve made mistakes. Previously, I had tried to “learn” the “skill” of being kind to people when they make a mistake, and had failed miserably at it. Assuming I remembered I was supposed to do it, it felt awkward and unnatural and my mixed feelings were probably quite transparent, even though I sincerely wanted to be nice.
Now, there are a wide variety of situations in which my natural inclination is just to be kind, nice, playful, or any of various other attributes, and I didn’t need to learn any specific skills—just getting rid of the emotional judgments I’d attached to specific situational or behavioral patterns.
A sidetrack: I think men’s physical strength is a minor factor compared to their ability to organize for violence. If the organizational ability were reversed—if men who seriously displeased women were mobbed by 4 or 5 armed and organized women and didn’t have male back-up, the world would be very different.
I’m honestly baffled by what you might have in mind here. These days, in most of the First World, and especially the Anglosphere, there is virtually no organized violence except for the government security forces and the organized crime that’s rampant among the underclass. Even the most rudimentary forms of it that were once extremely common are nowadays rare to nonexistent, and for non-underclass men it’s a completely alien concept. (When was the last time you read about a mass bar fight, or some impromptu vigilante action against street criminals in your corner of the world?)
What would be, according to you, the situations where men’s aptness for organized violence is relevant for the relations between the sexes in the contemporary West?
Ancestral environment, mostly. Other than that, I’ll need to think about whether I just got entranced by an interesting theoretical riff, or actually had something worthwhile in mind.
This isn’t the West, but it is contemporary: Iran is infamous for stoning women for mere adultery This seems like a clear instance of a mob organized for lethal violence. The disparity in sentencing between men and women cited in the linked article also make it relevant to relations between the sexes. (One thing that I don’t know is what the gender composition of the killers at a stoning typically is.)
Why would organizing for violence matter more than physical attributes?
(I don’t know whether men or women are better at shooting. I’ve heard anecdotally that women are better first-time learners with guns, because they’re more conscientious—less horseplay and arrogance. But it would also make sense if men were better because of 3-d spatial skills. I’ll be testing it out later this week when I learn to shoot; if anybody knows data on this I’d be curious.)
From what I’ve heard, people are generally not good at fighting off four or five opponents. Also, the ancestral environment doesn’t include martial arts. And everybody’s got to sleep sometime.
My own limited personal experience with firearms is that women have more difficulty because they seem to be more scared of them.
An accurate shot requires a smooth trigger pull, which requires not anticipating when during that pull the gun will go off—anticipation causes tension, causes the gun to move off target.
The first shot someone makes with a gun (ever) is often not too bad; the noise and force against their hand scares them, and then they have to learn to stay calm while pulling the trigger. This seems to be somewhat easier for the men I’ve taught to shoot than the women, though individual differences are greater than group differences. I’m not a firearms instructor by the way; I’ve been involved in teaching less than a dozen people to shoot, only three of them women.
Sex is qualitatively different from everything else.
Well...yes, as an empirical matter, that was the thesis of my comment! Wasn’t it clear that I was questioning, as a normative matter, whether that ought to be the case?
I have met you. I know that you are not an awful (or even creepy) person. I still can’t read this charitably
Just what is your uncharitable interpretation, such that you would feel the need to make this kind of disclaimer?
I’m hoping you’ve just been primed by reading too much Hanson or something
Probably. I can’t claim to have thought about this kind of thing much before Hanson brought it up.
Dude: People are not entitled to get things for free from people who don’t want to give them, even if you think their reasons for not wanting to give are dumb. It is not acceptable to criticize women for inadequate generosity because they are not as promiscuous as would be convenient for straight men.
First of all, the phrase “it is not acceptable to criticize...” is kind of an alarm bell. Secondly, yes, the issue is precisely at the level of “wanting”. Obviously, given that someone already doesn’t want to give something, then their giving it would be bad, all else being equal. The question is, what to do about this problem of their not wanting, since their lack of wanting causes pain for others.
It should also be obvious that eating large quantities of sugar is less rational in our era of processed food. Do you consume sweets?
(Some, but not very many, as it happens.) Yes, indeed, it is less rational to consume as much sugar as possible nowadays: it leads to bad health consequences.
First of all, the phrase “it is not acceptable to criticize...” is kind of an alarm bell.
How about “it is hurtful and offensive to criticize...”? I realize that being hurtful and offensive is not a reason not to criticize something (see also: religion), but please recognize that I consider my freedom not to have sex with someone I don’t want to have sex with sacrosanct, even above other freedoms that I also consider sacrosanct.
I took your original suggestion to mean that my preferences in that area should be up for debate. Since I am completely unwilling to debate whether or not I should be so reluctant to offer up “sexual favors”, that makes me hurt and afraid.
If you had suggested that I might be happier if I was more willing to have sex with people, I might have bristled a little, but I would at least recognize ways in which that could be a defensible position. However, your initial suggestion came off as “the world would be better if women were altered so that they would be more easily convinced to have sex”. Since you failed to mention any specific benefit to the women so altered, it sounds like coercion and is extremely offensive.
Given that this is your point of view, it is not possible for me to discuss this topic with you.
I cannot psychologically afford to have a bunch of people here calling me “extremely offensive”. That isn’t how I see myself. I’m not one of those people. A comment such as yours is already very distressing to me. Yet, it is now clear to me that if I were to honestly express myself, this is exactly what I would have to expect: more of this.
I stand to gain almost nothing from wading further into this minefield, and on the other hand risk losing almost everything. Except as incidental to other matters, on the topic of sex and gender on LW, I am officially finished.
I was offended by your original comment, but I don’t want you to think that I translated being offended by your comment into finding you offensive. I’ve certainly found you reasonable, and you haven’t yet seemed intentionally hostile. I don’t by any stretch of the imagination consider you one of those people; if I did, I don’t think I would feel that conversing with you would have any point.
I certainly understand you wanting to be finished with this topic. After being downvoted for nearly all my comments on this thread, I’ve begun to feel very unwelcome here, so I should probably take a break from this topic as well. Also, despite the fact that I feel like I’ve been arguing with you, I don’t feel like you have been involved in making me feel unwelcome.
After being downvoted for nearly all my comments on this thread, I’ve begun to feel very unwelcome here
Don’t give too much weight to early downvotes; they reflect only the opinion of the most active users, not necessarily most users. I’ve found it’s best to give it a few days to see what LW in the large really thinks of what you said, and early trends sometimes reverse themselves on controversial topics.
My experience is similar. On especially controversial or social-political subjects I’ve sometimes found an early downvote to be a predictor of a higher later karma score, a far cry from a negative spiral.
I’m not feeling any too pleased with myself or the world, either.
I very tentatively suggest that this sort of discussion is made more awful than necessary (for all participants) to the extent that they think it’s urgent to convince other people faster than one can reasonably expect for them to be convinced.
I stand to gain almost nothing from wading further into this minefield, and on the other hand risk losing almost everything. Except as incidental to other matters, on the topic of sex and gender on LW, I am officially finished.
Kompo not being willing to discuss this ‘minefield’ of a topic on LW which is an indicator that other people will be similarly discouraged. If he and people like him aren’t able to participate in the conversation we lose valuable perspective. I know, lets create another site where people like kompo will feel free to contribute!
Is someone stopping you? What obstacle to your progress can I remove so I can stop seeing complaints about it?
There is no complaint here. I am taking the opportunity to encourage XFrequentist to follow through with his proposal. I get the impression that he or she is better suited to the social engineering required to make the system a success. Since XFrequentist has actually made moves to test for support and interest he or she seems like the perfect person to take the lead here. I would, of course, be willing and able to provide technical support and hosting.
This is what this whole post was about. The tangent is, Cthulu forbid, interjecting something on topic.
Ok, nobody is going to win any Tony awards for acting ability in this little bit of street theater. Isn’t it time to lower the curtain on this turkey and let the narrator come onstage and explain to the audience wtf the moral of this production was supposed to be?
Ok, nobody is going to win any Tony awards for acting ability in this little bit of street theater. Isn’t it time to lower the curtain on this turkey and let the narrator come onstage and explain to the audience wtf the moral of this production was supposed to be?
Well...yes, as an empirical matter, that was the thesis of my comment! Wasn’t it clear that I was questioning, as a normative matter, whether that ought to be the case?
Because it now is the case that sex is qualitatively different from everything else, attempts to make it be not so or create a norm that it be not so now impinge on the current, existent feelings of people (esp. women) who think about sex as how it now is.
In other words: Sexuality’s differences from other things, if respected, are self-supporting. It opposes these features to try to alter them. Failing to respect sexual rules in these, among other, ways is Very Bad.
First of all, the phrase “it is not acceptable to criticize...” is kind of an alarm bell.
How about “it makes me afraid when people criticize”? Or is that irrelevant?
The question is, what to do about this problem of their not wanting, since their lack of wanting causes pain for others.
I am very good at getting people to give me presents. This ability is only targetable to a certain point, but it is partly under my control. Supposing, probably inaccurately, that I could scale up this capacity indefinitely—not stealing things I wanted, but just acting in such a way that encouraged people to give them to me significantly more than they’d otherwise be inclined—there are things it would be unethical for me to try to get in this way. I shouldn’t encourage people to spend beyond their means, for example. I shouldn’t encourage them to give me things that they need for themselves. I shouldn’t encourage them to give me things that I only want a little bit that they have much stronger interests in. Even if their means are limited by choice, or their need for the needed object is evitable, or their reason for strongly valuing the prized possession is really stupid. If I find myself tempted to seek gifts of such things, the correct place to solve the “problem” is in my excessive interest in owning stuff that belongs to others.
In other words: Sexuality’s differences from other things, if respected, are self-supporting. It opposes these features to try to alter them. Failing to respect sexual rules in these, among other, ways is Very Bad.
This sounds suspicious to me—a bit too Fully General. It seems that you could similarly Engrave In Stone For All Time any set of currently existing norms this way.
I’ll have to think about this more to determine the extent to which I agree.
How about “it makes me afraid when people criticize”?
That’s certainly better and more specific—and would naturally prompt the followup: “afraid of what?”
It seems that you could similarly Engrave In Stone For All Time any set of currently existing norms this way.
I don’t think it’s as fully general as all that. Most norm sets don’t have as their first rule that You Do Not Question The Norm Set. If they have such rules, it’s rarely with the historical context of the rule being there to protect against horrific crimes.
“afraid of what?”
I’m afraid of not at least trying to nip things in this family of thoughts in the bud. I’m afraid I’ll be raped by a guy with expensive lawyers who will use anything I’ve publicly stated that they possibly can twist into making me look like a slut who deserved it. I’m afraid I’ll say something ambiguous and be misunderstood and justify, in someone’s mind, some hurt. I’m afraid that if I check my fear, I’ll overshoot, and I’ll wind up ever so reasonably agreeing with something that can be made to justify attacks on my friends, myself, and others, past and future.
I’m afraid that if I bring in my personal history or that of my friends, the ever-so-reasonable attack dogs on this website will demand that I provide details that are no one’s business, pick apart the possible motivations of the villains and sympathize with them, and speculate about the participation of the victims. I’m afraid that if I don’t make it personal, I’ll look like I’m talking out of my ass. I’m afraid to have conversations about this with people who don’t start by agreeing to the rules of engagement that may help keep me and people I care about safe.
I don’t think it’s as fully general as all that. Most norm sets don’t have as their first rule that You Do Not Question The Norm Set. If they have such rules, it’s rarely with the historical context of the rule being there to protect against horrific crimes.
Actually, my sense is the opposite: that most norm sets do have this rule. (The first of the infamous Ten Commandments might easily be interpreted this way, for example.) And rules are nearly always justified by the supposition that something Bad would happen if they weren’t enforced. So I remain unconvinced, for the moment.
As for the rest, I’m not sure I’m clever enough to come up with a set of words that will simultaneously communicate to you my disagreement and benignity. So, at least for now, I shan’t try.
As for the rest, I’m not sure I’m clever enough to come up with a set of words that will simultaneously communicate to you my disagreement and benignity. So, at least for now, I shan’t try.
Dude, saying this (or a simpler permutation thereof) would have helped me so many times in so many of my relationships. I really wish I’d learned that a kiss on the forehead and saying “Never mind, let’s go bake brownies” is a much better response than two paragraphs of autistic complex-compound sentences explaining how what I’d said was reasonable but how the other’s interpretation was also reasonable given the context. Such paragraphs went half-ignored and were translated as defensive self-justifying and blame-shifting moves. It was so annoying for so long, and I didn’t update until like two weeks ago.
Normal people don’t care about detailed explanations of the motivations behind what you say, they care about the imagined motivations behind what people would say in epistemic and emotional positions that are roughly similar to what they imagine to be yours. This leads to lots of confusion and frustration for the literal-minded.
To the extent that sex is like a commodity, guess what—it’s for sale! No, you can’t buy it from every person who might have it to offer, but not everybody who bakes cupcakes sells them either—you have to go to a cupcake store. If you want homemade cupcakes, you’ll have to make friends with somebody who bakes.
Well said. You nailed the point and gave me a good belly laugh.
I think people familiar with ev psych tend to over-estimate the actual differences between the sexes. They certainly exist, but cultural conditioning and supply and demand effects magnify them into gender roles.
To the extent that sex is like a commodity, guess what—it’s for sale!
Why is it then that the most vocal critics of pornography and prostitution are generally women? Women seem to treat porn stars and prostitutes (and to some extent ‘sluts’) as scabs. Ongoing efforts are made to make pornography and prostitution illegal for the same underlying reasons that any cartel attempts to use the government to increase individual members’ profits by reducing competition.
Why is it then that the most vocal critics of pornography and prostitution are generally women?
Because both industries are full of abuse that is mostly directed at women, which fact has been turned into general condemnation of sex work instead of specific address of the factors that directly precipitate said abuse. “Horn effect” (opposite of halo effect) probably bears some responsibility for the extension of this criticism to harmless subtypes of porn/sex work, such as animated pornography which plausibly never leads to abuse of its (voice) actors.
Because both industries are full of abuse that is mostly directed at women
What exactly do you mean by “full of abuse” and how do you quantify it?
I have some friends who worked in that industry, and it has more gender equality than most others—such as almost any of the high tech sectors. Female actresses are paid far more on average and women are fairly heavily involved in the business side now as well. It’s not all peaches and roses of course. But I suspect that most of the image of ‘women being abused’ is based on some hard preconceptions one brings in—namely that pornography is inherently wrong in the first place. If you start with that assumption, it will only be reinforced.
I have no direct personal experience with the production of porn or prostitution. Various blogs I read produce statistics about sex work indicating that prostitutes are commonly abused by clients, pimps, police, etc. I’m sure there’s plenty of live action porn that’s entirely on the up-and-up, and I’m glad your friends found that to be their experience; however, I have heard from people whose information I’m not confident in dismissing that porn participants are not overwhelmingly willing and uncoerced. (I have the impression that coercion is more prevalent in niches like bestiality porn than in mainstream stuff; and I’m told by people who would know such things that hard BDSM productions go to considerable length to prove their consensuality.)
While there definitely is some overlap between prostitution and porn, they are completely different industries separated by the legal divide. When a girl shows up on a porn set, she has undoubtedly given consent—and would typically sign a contract. As porn production companies can operate legally it is just completely against their interests to break the law—especially considering that their end product is video evidence. In the modern era there is no shortage of attractive young women all too willing to perform all kinds of sex acts on camera.
There are certainly incidents where girls are tricked into doing additional acts they didn’t sign for, but there is a huge legal risk to that which you need to consider. You site strong reasons why BSDM productions go to great lengths to show evidence of consent (typically an interview with the actress that goes into details about the subsequent sex acts) - and these are factors which act as massive dis-incentives to coercion.
Prostitution on the other hand is actually illegal, and because anyone partaking in it is already breaking the law it attracts a criminal element and is considerably more dangerous for all parties involved. You can’t really compare the two in terms of safety.
There’s a big difference between something being consensual and something being non-abusive. Just because an actress signs a contract doesn’t mean that she won’t be abused, even if the contract holder never violates the letter or the spirit of the contract.
It’s pretty common in many professions for bosses to abuse their workers in many different ways; the claim is that it is more common and more severe in sex industries. Like Alicorn, I’m glad that your friends didn’t have those experiences, but I’m also under the impression that their experiences are not representative of the norm.
Also, you assume that prostitution is illegal; one of the best arguments for legalizing it is that it seems to significantly reduce the amount of abuse. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a culture of abuse even in jurisdictions where prostitution is legal, just that there are more recourses to fighting it so that it is lessened.
Just because an actress signs a contract doesn’t mean that she won’t be abused, even if the contract holder never violates the letter or the spirit of the contract.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this—what do you exactly consider ‘abuse’ in the context of pornography? Surely not the sex acts themselves, as they are legalized b contractual consent—part of the job. Do you mean verbal abuse?
Perhaps there is a lower standard for that in pornography, but to be honest from my understanding you will find more verbal abuse in the regular film industry.
And like the film industry, porn is largely built around small companies and many independent agents. At a larger production company the regular workplace rules would apply—sexual and non-sexual harrassement and all that.
But there are other notions of abuse. What about a producer who imports foreign girls for porn who speak poor english and provides them with a nice place to live and drugs? Sounds like a pimp, and yet life is never black and white, as there are plenty of young girls who think this is a fine idea and much more fun than being a strugglin waitress.
But I guess the drug part of those situations is illegal.
As prostitution is actually illegal, it can attract criminal elements and there you certainly have issues with other criminal behaviour—assault and other forms of actual illegal abuse. I believe these types of criminal incidents are rare in pornography because of it’s legal legitimacy.
Contracts rarely discuss tenets of human decency. Whether you work in a cubicle, behind a cash register, or in front of a camera, you can have a boss and co-workers that treat you like garbage. I consider being perpetually insulted, looked down upon and laughed at a form of abuse, and am under the impression that these things are much worse in the porn industry than they are in more “respectable” industries. I am also under the impression that more physical forms of abuse, like manhandling, that still fall short of assault, are also much more common.
I think the power dynamics are different in the non-adult film industry in such a way as to make it unlikely to be worse than the adult film industry. I know two people in different parts of the film industry, and while they’ve had negative experiences, none of the situations they’ve dealt with seem like they wouldn’t have been exacerbated in an adult film environment. Also it seems like the rate and severity of sexual abuse would almost certainly be worse in porn.
I imagine that you are correct in speculating that larger studios deal with less of this, but I certainly don’t know.
Indecent is an account of ten years in the sex trade—the author’s experience sounds as though it’s between what you describe and what Jacob describes—bad (mostly because of obnoxious clients) but not horrendous.
The most surprising essay—she talks about the bacon deficiency economy in which restaurants never give you enough bacon, so she cooks and eats four pounds of bacon to be sure she has enough—used to be online, but doesn’t seem to be there any more.
I will tentatively recommend her books to any of the men here who can’t seem to figure out why things keep blowing up when they write about sex, since it seems to me that they have a blank spot in their model of the universe about women having desires and making choices. She’s quite emphatic about the inside of her head.
I’m making massive efforts not to blame the guys—I have some scary blind spots myself, including one that I was at least past 35 before I realized I had. It turned out that I believed women had emotions and men had desires. That is, I believed men wanted things and women had reactions to getting or not getting what they wanted.
What clued me into the blind spot was noticing that men had facial expressions which seemed to indicate emotional reactions, and that I was surprised by this.
Possibly relevant: I was born in 1953-- I hope things were more stereotyped then than they are now, but I don’t think things have completely changed.
any of the men here who can’t seem to figure out why things keep blowing up when they write about sex, since it seems to me that they have a blank spot in their model of the universe about women having desires and making choices.
Since I made the comment that initiated this latest mini-flare-up, I feel the need to make it clear that I am not myself in that category. I see the non-alignment of desires among humans as a general problem, of which the sex issues discussed above are merely one particular manifestation.
Possibly relevant: I was born in 1953
I had actually gotten the impression that you were older than is typical here; and on thinking about it, I suspect it had to do with your first name (which was a lot more popular at around that time than 20-40 years later).
I see the non-alignment of desires among humans as a general problem, of which the sex issues discussed above are merely one particular manifestation.
Grasping that non-alignment is a general problem is an important start, but I don’t think it’s the same as understanding what a specific non-alignment is.
Because both industries are full of abuse that is mostly directed at women, which fact has been turned into general condemnation of sex work instead of specific address of the factors that directly precipitate said abuse.
It seems to me that when people advocate further criminalizing sex work on this basis they are either dissembling (in the way advocates for professional licensing dissemble that it is about ‘protecting consumers’ because it is more effective than admitting they are trying to protect their own interests) or simply horribly misguided in how best to address the (genuine) problems you describe.
I’m sympathetic, but I wonder if you’re jumping to the “godshatter” conclusion too quickly in re: promiscuity.
“Godshatter” is a fairly strong claim to make about a piece of psychology; for one thing, it would seem to require human universality. But there are cultures with much more promiscuous female sexuality than the anglosphere.
“Godshatter” is a fairly strong claim to make about a piece of psychology; for one thing, it would seem to require human universality.
I’ve met people who don’t like candy. Does that mean that taste for sweets isn’t a manifestation of the adaptation execution for seeking high-energy food?
I’ve met people who don’t like candy. Does that mean that taste for sweets isn’t a manifestation of the adaptation execution for seeking high-energy food?
Ever met somebody who doesn’t like sugar at all?
More seriously,
(1) Claiming that the preferences of female westerners living circa 2010 about sex, are all or mostly innate, is a huge claim—and probably false.
(2) Even if true, it’s not clear that innate preferences are automatically ethically unquestionable (more technically, two terminal values may conflict). For example, as someone who has a wonderful relationship with their stepfather, I’m very glad he isn’t hung up on the fact that we’re genetically unrelated. Most humans care a lot about that.
(3) You still leave yourself open to a nice symmetrical reductio where I mention some nasty male preference about sex, and then play my “godshatter” trump card. I agree with kompo that that argument is way too Fully General.
I will also agree with you that criticizing the preferences of a gender or of an individual, has political & social consequences that are potentially ugly. I suggest that this means we need to work harder conversationally, not ban or severely circumscribe the topic.
Sexual relationships are far more personal, and decided on far more idiosyncratic criteria, than employment relationships. There are fairly explicit and well-defined understandings of what constitutes qualification for a job that do not depend strongly on the personality of the hiring manager. If Human Resources is looking for a new shelf stocker or a new receptionist or a new medical transcriptionist and turn down our heroine as you describe, and they can be shown to be doing it for certain prohibited reasons, they are breaking the law.
Sex is qualitatively different from everything else. Pretend I repeated that a couple dozen times, because I think this concept might be the barrier to understanding in conversations like these.
You realize that it’s not just made up that sometimes desire for sex turns into violence, right? Let’s hear your priors on how likely it is for there to be a victim of sexual harrassment or assault reading this thread, and how likely it is for there to be someone who was stalked or attacked by a rejected job applicant reading this thread. I am concerned about sexual violence because I have friends who were raped or molested. I am concerned about sexual violence because I have a history providing me with direct empirical evidence that it exists. I am concerned about sexual violence because I live in a society that takes care to remind me, constantly, that I am not safe, that if certain things happen to me it will be because I wasn’t careful enough, that it is eminently reasonable for me to draw the design of my life within circumscribed lines to protect myself from such danger and the stigma of victimization.
I have met you. I know that you are not an awful (or even creepy) person. I still can’t read this charitably. I’m hoping you’ve just been primed by reading too much Hanson or something. Dude: People are not entitled to get things for free from people who don’t want to give them, even if you think their reasons for not wanting to give are dumb. It is not acceptable to criticize women for inadequate generosity because they are not as promiscuous as would be convenient for straight men.
To the extent that sex is like a gift, you have to be in a relationship with someone that warrants the exchange of such gifts. I don’t expect birthday presents from people who aren’t in a birthday-present-exchanging relationship with me. To the extent that sex is like a commodity, guess what—it’s for sale! No, you can’t buy it from every person who might have it to offer, but not everybody who bakes cupcakes sells them either—you have to go to a cupcake store. If you want homemade cupcakes, you’ll have to make friends with somebody who bakes.
It should also be obvious that eating large quantities of sugar is less rational in our era of processed food. Do you consume sweets? It should also be obvious that avoiding unnecessary physical activity is less rational in our era of labor-saving devices. Do you go to the gym as often as studies indicate you should? Women art godshatter too.
Some things I didn’t get around to posting earlier—Hanson is somewhat on my shit list because he’s posted more than once about how the world would be a better place if women would have sex when they don’t want to. He’s a geek economist, so he gets to speculate about such things, but oddly enough, he doesn’t consider the costs to women in such scenarios.
Consent and fear and all that: There was a previous discussion here about women giving out fake phone numbers, and there seemed to be no grasp of why a woman might do that instead of giving a straightforward refusal.
Imagine a world where all the socially acceptable partners for you are bigger, stronger, and probably more aggressive. You may prefer such yourself, but it’s certainly the case that you’ll take a status hit if you chose otherwise.
Furthermore, you’ve had niceness training—it’s hard work to directly contradict what someone else wants. Doing that amount of work is a gift which might not be bestowed on a spammer.
And you’re not supposed to make the first move, for values of “not supposed to” which range from being blamed if you’re raped to putting off potential partners if you do. I realize both of those vary according to who you happen to be around, and both may have faded somewhat in recent decades, but people do respond to potential risks.
None of this means that giving fake phone numbers is a wonderful thing, but there are actual human motivations for doing so which aren’t just spite—sometimes spite is involved, but the story isn’t nearly that simple.
This is raw stuff, on all sides. I’ve been decently treated here, but some of the theorizing about women is enough to be a partial explanation for why this place is very high majority male.
I think a big component of sex dynamics is, as you said, physical strength. Since women are physically weaker than men, they can’t rely on that to protect them from overly aggressive or hostile potential partners. The only thing keeping those overly aggressive or hostile potential partners in line are social norms against rape and abuse, which are already weak enough that, for example, rape apologism for famous athletes and victim blaming are common. Any talk that can potentially weaken those social norms then becomes a legitimate threat… unless the talk includes ways of subverting other social norms that balance its effect. For example, I think we could solve some problems by giving men “niceness training” instead of women.
A sidetrack: I think men’s physical strength is a minor factor compared to their ability to organize for violence. If the organizational ability were reversed—if men who seriously displeased women were mobbed by 4 or 5 armed and organized women and didn’t have male back-up, the world would be very different.
This doesn’t mean I want that world, but I find it interesting that males seem to almost reflexively organize for violence, and females pretty much never do. Information about girl gangs appreciated if I’m missing something.
“Niceness training” has some real problems—it’s being afraid to express strong desires which might be in conflict with other people’s.
Kindness training—encouraging people to actually treat each other well and having some skills for doing so—would be a whole different thing, and a world where it was common is hard for me to imagine. It would be a world with little or no status enforcement.
As someone who taught women’s self defense courses for years (and am an accomplished martial artist in my own right), I think the willingness to use force—and the expectation that others are willing to use force—is far more important than the effectiveness or quantity of that force.
I don’t mean that skilled martial artists can defend themselves against unskilled but much stronger attackers; people usually assume this, and I agree. What I mean is that after spending a weekend teaching a woman to fight back against a physical assault she knows almost nothing more than she did before, but has the confidence in herself to use force, and that willingness makes all the difference.
Men are statistically more willing to use force to get what they want, and being aware of that, women are forced to be more cautious. I feel like this ought to be more relevant than men being more prone to organizing for violence, especially in the current day western world.
Interestingly, this is more of a negative skill: people don’t so much need to learn how to be nice as how to stop being not-nice, especially to themselves. I’ve observed that whenever I stop judging myself negatively in some type of situation, I find myself spontaneously being much nicer to other people in the same sort of situation.
For example, after learning not to judge myself for having made a mistake, I find I’m nicer to people who’ve made mistakes. Previously, I had tried to “learn” the “skill” of being kind to people when they make a mistake, and had failed miserably at it. Assuming I remembered I was supposed to do it, it felt awkward and unnatural and my mixed feelings were probably quite transparent, even though I sincerely wanted to be nice.
Now, there are a wide variety of situations in which my natural inclination is just to be kind, nice, playful, or any of various other attributes, and I didn’t need to learn any specific skills—just getting rid of the emotional judgments I’d attached to specific situational or behavioral patterns.
NancyLebovitz:
I’m honestly baffled by what you might have in mind here. These days, in most of the First World, and especially the Anglosphere, there is virtually no organized violence except for the government security forces and the organized crime that’s rampant among the underclass. Even the most rudimentary forms of it that were once extremely common are nowadays rare to nonexistent, and for non-underclass men it’s a completely alien concept. (When was the last time you read about a mass bar fight, or some impromptu vigilante action against street criminals in your corner of the world?)
What would be, according to you, the situations where men’s aptness for organized violence is relevant for the relations between the sexes in the contemporary West?
Ancestral environment, mostly. Other than that, I’ll need to think about whether I just got entranced by an interesting theoretical riff, or actually had something worthwhile in mind.
This isn’t the West, but it is contemporary: Iran is infamous for stoning women for mere adultery This seems like a clear instance of a mob organized for lethal violence. The disparity in sentencing between men and women cited in the linked article also make it relevant to relations between the sexes. (One thing that I don’t know is what the gender composition of the killers at a stoning typically is.)
I don’t read about them (bar fights aren’t newsworthy), but they’re hardly unheard-of hereabouts.
I believe the relevant violence is by street-criminals, and they’re all over the place.
“Underclass”? And how, pray tell, does one recognize such a person? Hat color?
More or less.
Why would organizing for violence matter more than physical attributes?
(I don’t know whether men or women are better at shooting. I’ve heard anecdotally that women are better first-time learners with guns, because they’re more conscientious—less horseplay and arrogance. But it would also make sense if men were better because of 3-d spatial skills. I’ll be testing it out later this week when I learn to shoot; if anybody knows data on this I’d be curious.)
From what I’ve heard, people are generally not good at fighting off four or five opponents. Also, the ancestral environment doesn’t include martial arts. And everybody’s got to sleep sometime.
My own limited personal experience with firearms is that women have more difficulty because they seem to be more scared of them.
An accurate shot requires a smooth trigger pull, which requires not anticipating when during that pull the gun will go off—anticipation causes tension, causes the gun to move off target.
The first shot someone makes with a gun (ever) is often not too bad; the noise and force against their hand scares them, and then they have to learn to stay calm while pulling the trigger. This seems to be somewhat easier for the men I’ve taught to shoot than the women, though individual differences are greater than group differences. I’m not a firearms instructor by the way; I’ve been involved in teaching less than a dozen people to shoot, only three of them women.
Well...yes, as an empirical matter, that was the thesis of my comment! Wasn’t it clear that I was questioning, as a normative matter, whether that ought to be the case?
Just what is your uncharitable interpretation, such that you would feel the need to make this kind of disclaimer?
Probably. I can’t claim to have thought about this kind of thing much before Hanson brought it up.
First of all, the phrase “it is not acceptable to criticize...” is kind of an alarm bell. Secondly, yes, the issue is precisely at the level of “wanting”. Obviously, given that someone already doesn’t want to give something, then their giving it would be bad, all else being equal. The question is, what to do about this problem of their not wanting, since their lack of wanting causes pain for others.
(Some, but not very many, as it happens.) Yes, indeed, it is less rational to consume as much sugar as possible nowadays: it leads to bad health consequences.
How about “it is hurtful and offensive to criticize...”? I realize that being hurtful and offensive is not a reason not to criticize something (see also: religion), but please recognize that I consider my freedom not to have sex with someone I don’t want to have sex with sacrosanct, even above other freedoms that I also consider sacrosanct.
I took your original suggestion to mean that my preferences in that area should be up for debate. Since I am completely unwilling to debate whether or not I should be so reluctant to offer up “sexual favors”, that makes me hurt and afraid.
If you had suggested that I might be happier if I was more willing to have sex with people, I might have bristled a little, but I would at least recognize ways in which that could be a defensible position. However, your initial suggestion came off as “the world would be better if women were altered so that they would be more easily convinced to have sex”. Since you failed to mention any specific benefit to the women so altered, it sounds like coercion and is extremely offensive.
Given that this is your point of view, it is not possible for me to discuss this topic with you.
I cannot psychologically afford to have a bunch of people here calling me “extremely offensive”. That isn’t how I see myself. I’m not one of those people. A comment such as yours is already very distressing to me. Yet, it is now clear to me that if I were to honestly express myself, this is exactly what I would have to expect: more of this.
I stand to gain almost nothing from wading further into this minefield, and on the other hand risk losing almost everything. Except as incidental to other matters, on the topic of sex and gender on LW, I am officially finished.
Now, as they say, off to buy some strychnine....
I was offended by your original comment, but I don’t want you to think that I translated being offended by your comment into finding you offensive. I’ve certainly found you reasonable, and you haven’t yet seemed intentionally hostile. I don’t by any stretch of the imagination consider you one of those people; if I did, I don’t think I would feel that conversing with you would have any point.
I certainly understand you wanting to be finished with this topic. After being downvoted for nearly all my comments on this thread, I’ve begun to feel very unwelcome here, so I should probably take a break from this topic as well. Also, despite the fact that I feel like I’ve been arguing with you, I don’t feel like you have been involved in making me feel unwelcome.
Don’t give too much weight to early downvotes; they reflect only the opinion of the most active users, not necessarily most users. I’ve found it’s best to give it a few days to see what LW in the large really thinks of what you said, and early trends sometimes reverse themselves on controversial topics.
My experience is similar. On especially controversial or social-political subjects I’ve sometimes found an early downvote to be a predictor of a higher later karma score, a far cry from a negative spiral.
I’m not feeling any too pleased with myself or the world, either.
I very tentatively suggest that this sort of discussion is made more awful than necessary (for all participants) to the extent that they think it’s urgent to convince other people faster than one can reasonably expect for them to be convinced.
Kompo not being willing to discuss this ‘minefield’ of a topic on LW which is an indicator that other people will be similarly discouraged. If he and people like him aren’t able to participate in the conversation we lose valuable perspective. I know, lets create another site where people like kompo will feel free to contribute!
Is someone stopping you? What obstacle to your progress can I remove so I can stop seeing complaints about it?
There is no complaint here. I am taking the opportunity to encourage XFrequentist to follow through with his proposal. I get the impression that he or she is better suited to the social engineering required to make the system a success. Since XFrequentist has actually made moves to test for support and interest he or she seems like the perfect person to take the lead here. I would, of course, be willing and able to provide technical support and hosting.
This is what this whole post was about. The tangent is, Cthulu forbid, interjecting something on topic.
Ok, nobody is going to win any Tony awards for acting ability in this little bit of street theater. Isn’t it time to lower the curtain on this turkey and let the narrator come onstage and explain to the audience wtf the moral of this production was supposed to be?
The moral is clear… we need to create a… ;)
Because it now is the case that sex is qualitatively different from everything else, attempts to make it be not so or create a norm that it be not so now impinge on the current, existent feelings of people (esp. women) who think about sex as how it now is.
In other words: Sexuality’s differences from other things, if respected, are self-supporting. It opposes these features to try to alter them. Failing to respect sexual rules in these, among other, ways is Very Bad.
How about “it makes me afraid when people criticize”? Or is that irrelevant?
I am very good at getting people to give me presents. This ability is only targetable to a certain point, but it is partly under my control. Supposing, probably inaccurately, that I could scale up this capacity indefinitely—not stealing things I wanted, but just acting in such a way that encouraged people to give them to me significantly more than they’d otherwise be inclined—there are things it would be unethical for me to try to get in this way. I shouldn’t encourage people to spend beyond their means, for example. I shouldn’t encourage them to give me things that they need for themselves. I shouldn’t encourage them to give me things that I only want a little bit that they have much stronger interests in. Even if their means are limited by choice, or their need for the needed object is evitable, or their reason for strongly valuing the prized possession is really stupid. If I find myself tempted to seek gifts of such things, the correct place to solve the “problem” is in my excessive interest in owning stuff that belongs to others.
This sounds suspicious to me—a bit too Fully General. It seems that you could similarly Engrave In Stone For All Time any set of currently existing norms this way.
I’ll have to think about this more to determine the extent to which I agree.
That’s certainly better and more specific—and would naturally prompt the followup: “afraid of what?”
I don’t think it’s as fully general as all that. Most norm sets don’t have as their first rule that You Do Not Question The Norm Set. If they have such rules, it’s rarely with the historical context of the rule being there to protect against horrific crimes.
I’m afraid of not at least trying to nip things in this family of thoughts in the bud. I’m afraid I’ll be raped by a guy with expensive lawyers who will use anything I’ve publicly stated that they possibly can twist into making me look like a slut who deserved it. I’m afraid I’ll say something ambiguous and be misunderstood and justify, in someone’s mind, some hurt. I’m afraid that if I check my fear, I’ll overshoot, and I’ll wind up ever so reasonably agreeing with something that can be made to justify attacks on my friends, myself, and others, past and future.
I’m afraid that if I bring in my personal history or that of my friends, the ever-so-reasonable attack dogs on this website will demand that I provide details that are no one’s business, pick apart the possible motivations of the villains and sympathize with them, and speculate about the participation of the victims. I’m afraid that if I don’t make it personal, I’ll look like I’m talking out of my ass. I’m afraid to have conversations about this with people who don’t start by agreeing to the rules of engagement that may help keep me and people I care about safe.
Actually, my sense is the opposite: that most norm sets do have this rule. (The first of the infamous Ten Commandments might easily be interpreted this way, for example.) And rules are nearly always justified by the supposition that something Bad would happen if they weren’t enforced. So I remain unconvinced, for the moment.
As for the rest, I’m not sure I’m clever enough to come up with a set of words that will simultaneously communicate to you my disagreement and benignity. So, at least for now, I shan’t try.
Dude, saying this (or a simpler permutation thereof) would have helped me so many times in so many of my relationships. I really wish I’d learned that a kiss on the forehead and saying “Never mind, let’s go bake brownies” is a much better response than two paragraphs of autistic complex-compound sentences explaining how what I’d said was reasonable but how the other’s interpretation was also reasonable given the context. Such paragraphs went half-ignored and were translated as defensive self-justifying and blame-shifting moves. It was so annoying for so long, and I didn’t update until like two weeks ago.
Normal people don’t care about detailed explanations of the motivations behind what you say, they care about the imagined motivations behind what people would say in epistemic and emotional positions that are roughly similar to what they imagine to be yours. This leads to lots of confusion and frustration for the literal-minded.
Well said. You nailed the point and gave me a good belly laugh.
I think people familiar with ev psych tend to over-estimate the actual differences between the sexes. They certainly exist, but cultural conditioning and supply and demand effects magnify them into gender roles.
Why is it then that the most vocal critics of pornography and prostitution are generally women? Women seem to treat porn stars and prostitutes (and to some extent ‘sluts’) as scabs. Ongoing efforts are made to make pornography and prostitution illegal for the same underlying reasons that any cartel attempts to use the government to increase individual members’ profits by reducing competition.
I agree -- but also take note that it seems that a large portion of those advocating for sex workers’ rights are women.
Because both industries are full of abuse that is mostly directed at women, which fact has been turned into general condemnation of sex work instead of specific address of the factors that directly precipitate said abuse. “Horn effect” (opposite of halo effect) probably bears some responsibility for the extension of this criticism to harmless subtypes of porn/sex work, such as animated pornography which plausibly never leads to abuse of its (voice) actors.
What exactly do you mean by “full of abuse” and how do you quantify it?
I have some friends who worked in that industry, and it has more gender equality than most others—such as almost any of the high tech sectors. Female actresses are paid far more on average and women are fairly heavily involved in the business side now as well. It’s not all peaches and roses of course. But I suspect that most of the image of ‘women being abused’ is based on some hard preconceptions one brings in—namely that pornography is inherently wrong in the first place. If you start with that assumption, it will only be reinforced.
I have no direct personal experience with the production of porn or prostitution. Various blogs I read produce statistics about sex work indicating that prostitutes are commonly abused by clients, pimps, police, etc. I’m sure there’s plenty of live action porn that’s entirely on the up-and-up, and I’m glad your friends found that to be their experience; however, I have heard from people whose information I’m not confident in dismissing that porn participants are not overwhelmingly willing and uncoerced. (I have the impression that coercion is more prevalent in niches like bestiality porn than in mainstream stuff; and I’m told by people who would know such things that hard BDSM productions go to considerable length to prove their consensuality.)
While there definitely is some overlap between prostitution and porn, they are completely different industries separated by the legal divide. When a girl shows up on a porn set, she has undoubtedly given consent—and would typically sign a contract. As porn production companies can operate legally it is just completely against their interests to break the law—especially considering that their end product is video evidence. In the modern era there is no shortage of attractive young women all too willing to perform all kinds of sex acts on camera.
There are certainly incidents where girls are tricked into doing additional acts they didn’t sign for, but there is a huge legal risk to that which you need to consider. You site strong reasons why BSDM productions go to great lengths to show evidence of consent (typically an interview with the actress that goes into details about the subsequent sex acts) - and these are factors which act as massive dis-incentives to coercion.
Prostitution on the other hand is actually illegal, and because anyone partaking in it is already breaking the law it attracts a criminal element and is considerably more dangerous for all parties involved. You can’t really compare the two in terms of safety.
There’s a big difference between something being consensual and something being non-abusive. Just because an actress signs a contract doesn’t mean that she won’t be abused, even if the contract holder never violates the letter or the spirit of the contract.
It’s pretty common in many professions for bosses to abuse their workers in many different ways; the claim is that it is more common and more severe in sex industries. Like Alicorn, I’m glad that your friends didn’t have those experiences, but I’m also under the impression that their experiences are not representative of the norm.
Also, you assume that prostitution is illegal; one of the best arguments for legalizing it is that it seems to significantly reduce the amount of abuse. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a culture of abuse even in jurisdictions where prostitution is legal, just that there are more recourses to fighting it so that it is lessened.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this—what do you exactly consider ‘abuse’ in the context of pornography? Surely not the sex acts themselves, as they are legalized b contractual consent—part of the job. Do you mean verbal abuse?
Perhaps there is a lower standard for that in pornography, but to be honest from my understanding you will find more verbal abuse in the regular film industry.
And like the film industry, porn is largely built around small companies and many independent agents. At a larger production company the regular workplace rules would apply—sexual and non-sexual harrassement and all that.
But there are other notions of abuse. What about a producer who imports foreign girls for porn who speak poor english and provides them with a nice place to live and drugs? Sounds like a pimp, and yet life is never black and white, as there are plenty of young girls who think this is a fine idea and much more fun than being a strugglin waitress.
But I guess the drug part of those situations is illegal.
As prostitution is actually illegal, it can attract criminal elements and there you certainly have issues with other criminal behaviour—assault and other forms of actual illegal abuse. I believe these types of criminal incidents are rare in pornography because of it’s legal legitimacy.
Contracts rarely discuss tenets of human decency. Whether you work in a cubicle, behind a cash register, or in front of a camera, you can have a boss and co-workers that treat you like garbage. I consider being perpetually insulted, looked down upon and laughed at a form of abuse, and am under the impression that these things are much worse in the porn industry than they are in more “respectable” industries. I am also under the impression that more physical forms of abuse, like manhandling, that still fall short of assault, are also much more common.
I think the power dynamics are different in the non-adult film industry in such a way as to make it unlikely to be worse than the adult film industry. I know two people in different parts of the film industry, and while they’ve had negative experiences, none of the situations they’ve dealt with seem like they wouldn’t have been exacerbated in an adult film environment. Also it seems like the rate and severity of sexual abuse would almost certainly be worse in porn.
I imagine that you are correct in speculating that larger studios deal with less of this, but I certainly don’t know.
Indecent is an account of ten years in the sex trade—the author’s experience sounds as though it’s between what you describe and what Jacob describes—bad (mostly because of obnoxious clients) but not horrendous.
Amazon’s first pages look interesting—any chance you have an e-copy? Bittorrent is proving useless.
Google has most of the book—all but the last two chapters. I have a paper copy.
Her Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things that Are Very, Very Bad for Me is likewise amazing.
The most surprising essay—she talks about the bacon deficiency economy in which restaurants never give you enough bacon, so she cooks and eats four pounds of bacon to be sure she has enough—used to be online, but doesn’t seem to be there any more.
I will tentatively recommend her books to any of the men here who can’t seem to figure out why things keep blowing up when they write about sex, since it seems to me that they have a blank spot in their model of the universe about women having desires and making choices. She’s quite emphatic about the inside of her head.
I’m making massive efforts not to blame the guys—I have some scary blind spots myself, including one that I was at least past 35 before I realized I had. It turned out that I believed women had emotions and men had desires. That is, I believed men wanted things and women had reactions to getting or not getting what they wanted.
What clued me into the blind spot was noticing that men had facial expressions which seemed to indicate emotional reactions, and that I was surprised by this.
Possibly relevant: I was born in 1953-- I hope things were more stereotyped then than they are now, but I don’t think things have completely changed.
Since I made the comment that initiated this latest mini-flare-up, I feel the need to make it clear that I am not myself in that category. I see the non-alignment of desires among humans as a general problem, of which the sex issues discussed above are merely one particular manifestation.
I had actually gotten the impression that you were older than is typical here; and on thinking about it, I suspect it had to do with your first name (which was a lot more popular at around that time than 20-40 years later).
Grasping that non-alignment is a general problem is an important start, but I don’t think it’s the same as understanding what a specific non-alignment is.
It looks like p. 28-333 are not included.
Apologies—I trusted that the chapter links in the drop-down menu meant the chapters were there.
Old comments, but I used to know the author and I feel I should pimp for her—pardon the pun.
It seems to me that when people advocate further criminalizing sex work on this basis they are either dissembling (in the way advocates for professional licensing dissemble that it is about ‘protecting consumers’ because it is more effective than admitting they are trying to protect their own interests) or simply horribly misguided in how best to address the (genuine) problems you describe.
I’m sympathetic, but I wonder if you’re jumping to the “godshatter” conclusion too quickly in re: promiscuity.
“Godshatter” is a fairly strong claim to make about a piece of psychology; for one thing, it would seem to require human universality. But there are cultures with much more promiscuous female sexuality than the anglosphere.
I’ve met people who don’t like candy. Does that mean that taste for sweets isn’t a manifestation of the adaptation execution for seeking high-energy food?
Ever met somebody who doesn’t like sugar at all?
More seriously,
(1) Claiming that the preferences of female westerners living circa 2010 about sex, are all or mostly innate, is a huge claim—and probably false.
(2) Even if true, it’s not clear that innate preferences are automatically ethically unquestionable (more technically, two terminal values may conflict). For example, as someone who has a wonderful relationship with their stepfather, I’m very glad he isn’t hung up on the fact that we’re genetically unrelated. Most humans care a lot about that.
(3) You still leave yourself open to a nice symmetrical reductio where I mention some nasty male preference about sex, and then play my “godshatter” trump card. I agree with kompo that that argument is way too Fully General.
I will also agree with you that criticizing the preferences of a gender or of an individual, has political & social consequences that are potentially ugly. I suggest that this means we need to work harder conversationally, not ban or severely circumscribe the topic.
I’m exiting this thread now.
Have you met a culture that doesn’t like candy?
I haven’t met many cultures.