I’ve asserted occasionally that post-modern moral theories (like the worthwhile parts of feminism) are consistent with empiricism. That is, they look at what as happened before and make predictions about will happen in the future.
That is often down-voted. I suspect that this is because taking feminism seriously would require people to re-think their methods of interacting with others, in a way that would be extremely challenging to their personal identities. That way leads to mindkilling (By the transitive property: The personal is political + Politics is the Mindkiller ⇒ The personal is the mindkiller).
I suspect that this is because taking feminism seriously would require people to re-think their methods of interacting with others, in a way that would be extremely challenging to their personal identities.
I would love to see a rational discussion about feminism.
I guess there are many ideas where I should update, but also a lot of BS… and I have trouble separating these two parts, mostly because saying that “there is a lot of BS” means that I am an evil person not worth discussing with. Asking for evidence is a proof that I don’t believe everything, which of course means that I am an ignorant evil male. So I would like to participate in a discussion where my comment “I don’t think this is enough evidence for X” or “I think there is an alternative explanation” is countered by more evidence, instead of just pointing out that I don’t get it, because I am privileged (because somehow the non-privileged person could never be wrong).
Here is a start at what I’d call empirical feminist. I’m not sure what you mean by rational, if you don’t mean empirical.
More generally, I rely on feminist thought to say:
There are many unstated assumptions about how people should behave. These assumptions are bad, simply for being unstated. If a cultural norm is necessary, it should be capable of being explicit. Once the implicit assumptions are made explicit, it turns out I don’t like many of them. Like “Jocks good, nerds bad.”
From there, I move on to say:
Definitions of pivotal words (i.e. “politics”) have unstated assumptions about how they should be defined. Electioneering is politics, but complaining about inappropriate jokes is not. Yet each is aimed at changing how society is organized, and each has roughly equal chance of causing the aimed-for change. (And each is equally and similarly mind-killing).
For arguments-are-soldiers reasons, many feminists are particularly provocative in their redefinition of worlds. Also for arguments-are-soldiers reasons, other feminists are reluctant to call them on being provocative. That’s a bug, not a rationalist feature.
But notice that redefinition can be quite powerful, like how “queer” has been reclaimed from being a slur to being a positive label. If you weren’t a feminist, would you have predicted this was possible? Keep in mind hindsight bias.
There are many unstated assumptions about how people should behave. These assumptions are bad, simply for being unstated. If a cultural norm is necessary, it should be capable of being explicit.
Those “unstated assumptions” seem to me like an analogy to individual “compartmentalization”. First thought: they should be made explicit. Second thought: maybe they serve some purpose; most likely to prevent public disorder (read: in worst case thousands of people killing each other). Many of them are probably very outdated, so exposing them would just lead to their removing. Some of them may be sensitive, and making them explicit would bring an open conflict.
As an example, I guess many feminists would be very uncomfortable with public discussion of “pick-up arts” (of course unless they could control the whole discussion). Irony is that PUAs are also trying to expose some unstated rules, for the sake of hacking them.
But notice that redefinition can be quite powerful, like how “queer” has been reclaimed from being a slur to being a positive label.
English is not my first language and I don’t live in English-speaking environment, so I don’t clearly see the changes of emotions associated with this word. But are you sure it is the feelings about the word that have changed, instead of feelings towards the queers themselves?
To compare: If drinking beer is socially unacceptable in some society, and then decades later drinking beer is acceptable (even though most people there don’t drink beer), I certainly wouldn’t describe it as “reclaiming the word beer”. Of course the connotations of word beer would be changed from “something illegal that only strange people drink” to “something people drink”, but that would be just a side effect of the real change.
Similarly, there is a lot of effort to invent and popularize gender-neutral pronouns in English, because it is expected to change something, namely to reduce sexism. However, there already are languages that “naturally” contain gender-neutral pronouns, for example Hungarian. So does this theory predict that Hungarians are less sexist than other nations? Can we measure it somehow?
I think the causality is reversed; it’s not like “if we use gender-neutral pronouns, we become less sexist” but “if even the suspicion of being sexist becomes socially unacceptable, then people will use gender-neutral pronouns to signal their non-sexism”. People use gender-neutral pronouns because they are sensitive about something, not the other way around; though perhaps the use of those pronouns can further increase their sensitivity.
Some [unstated assumptions] may be sensitive, and making them explicit would bring an open conflict.
Feminists would say the conflict already exists, but the majority demands that everyone pretend there is no conflict at all, partially as a beneficial tactic in the conflict. We can make arguments about whether society as a whole is better off masking certain conflicts. But the minority has no reason to respect a tactic that is aimed at, and often achieves the goal of suppressing them.
As an example, I guess many feminists would be very uncomfortable with public discussion of “pick-up arts” (of course unless they could control the whole discussion). Irony is that PUAs are also trying to expose some unstated rules, for the sake of hacking them.
Well, I suspect that PUA want to learn the unstated rules in order to take advantage of them. They do not want the rules to become explicit common knowledge because that could/would remove the power and effectiveness of the PUA skill set. Aside from the general feminist principle that unstated assumptions should always be made explicit, one can’t ignore that the particular unstated assumptions PUA aim to hack are precisely some of the normative expectations about how young women should think that feminists oppose even in the absence of PUA.
But are you sure it is the feelings about the word that have changed, instead of feelings towards the queers themselves?
All I can do is assert that the feelings about the word have changed. 20-30 years ago, queer and faggot were only slurs. From 2003-2007, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a reality show playing on TV. But faggot is still a slur.
Alternatively, compare n#@@#r. Given how the word is deployed today, there’s no way “N#@@#r Eye for the White Guy” (helping clueless nerds get in touch with their popular culture side, or something) would ever play on television.
People use gender-neutral pronouns because they are sensitive about something, not the other way around; though perhaps the use of those pronouns can further increase their sensitivity.
This is probably right, and I think feminists learned some of this lesson from the utter failure of the “spelling to reduce sexism (i.e. womyn)” experiment. Have you read this Hofstadter essay? I think it helps show what might be a stake in the vocabulary sensitivity issue.
Some unstated assumptions can be good for minority. Consider for example the idea of religious tolerance, which appeared when society was highly religious. The unstated assumption is that having the right religion does not matter too much, because people not mass-killing each other is more important than believing in the right kind of deity. Now say it too loudly, and religious people will have to oppose this idea, to signal their faith.
More generally, an inconsistent person may be friendly with you in a “near mode”, but your opponent in a “far mode” (IMHO people generally are friendly and believe many strange things). When you point out their inconsistency, you may have manufactured yourself an enemy. Or not. Anyway, it involves some risk, so it is better to think about it first.
Well, I suspect that PUA want to learn the unstated rules in order to take advantage of them. They do not want the rules to become explicit common knowledge because that could/would remove the power and effectiveness of the PUA skill set.
If enough people already know the rules and discuss them online, it would be difficult to protect the secret. So why not make some money teaching it before it all becomes common sense? However, there is still hope that the rules are so much against what our society teaches us, that you could shout it from the rooftops and still 90% of men would either ignore them or somehow rationalize their akrasia.
Historically, one secret that on average worked in benefit of women, was men’s general ignorance (and frustration) about what women want. Simply said, an average heterosexual male would like to have sex with some attractive female, he would like to increase his chances, but he has no idea what is her decision algorithm. So by saying: “X is part of my algorithm”, or more politely: “you know, we women really love X” she can manipulate him into giving her X. It is like playing a game where your opponent can lie about their rewards, and thus manipulate you into suboptimal strategy. Some PUAs are trying to “scientifically” discover the true algorithm, so this one specific advantage is removed, and men can finally play this game with full information.
Given how the word is deployed today, there’s no way “N#@@#r Eye for the White Guy” would ever play on television.
Alternative explanation: If you use the offensive word with the offended person present, how do you estimate the probability of being physically harmed, if the word is (a) “faggot” or (b) “n#@@#r”? I am trying to say, it’s not about how tolerant we are, but how dangerous it is to offend someone. Though this explanation does not explain the difference between “queer” and “faggot”. I’d like to ask: 20-30 years ago were both these words equally offensive, or if you’d have to choose one of them, would “queer” be somehow less offensive?
Have you read this Hofstadter essay?
Yes, I did, and it made a big impression on me. Then I realised some parts of feminism have value. But perhaps it also set my expectations for other feminist texts too high. Well, not everyone can write like Hofstadter.
the unstated assumption [of tolerance] is that having the right religion does not matter too much, because people not mass-killing each other is more important than believing in the right kind of deity. Now say it too loudly, and religious people will have to oppose this idea, to signal their faith.
Simply put, I disagree that this is an accurate summary of history. People explicitly and publicly argued for toleration on exactly the basis you identified. And it was sometimes implemented. Further, I don’t think there is any example in history of the toleration of a community failing because the tolerant were so vocal about it that the intolerant suddenly noticed that the wool was being pulled over their eyes. In short, you’ve identified the assumption/foundation of tolerance, but this foundation was hardly unstated in the sense I mean.
Simply said, an average heterosexual male would like to have sex with some attractive female, he would like to increase his chances, but he has no idea what is her decision algorithm.
Without agreeing on mechanism, I can certainly agree that some women conceal their desires in order to manipulate others. It probably extends to everyone in her social circle, but examples include expecting free drinks and insincerely saying “Nothing is wrong.” when asked. This type of manipulation is bad, and would be much more difficult if the underlying unstated assumptions went away.
So why not make some money teaching it before it all becomes common sense?
It is not inevitable that the changes I desire will ever happen. Further, PUA functions to support the unstated assumptions it seeks to exploit. PUA Bob has beliefs about how women should behave, and he behaves consistent with those beliefs. Bob’s behavior tends to reinforce those beliefs in others. That would be true even if the beliefs were not considered “unstated” by society. But because society does consider them unstated (and punishes making them explicit), reinforcing the beliefs includes reinforcing that they should be unstate-able.
20-30 years ago were both these words equally offensive, or if you’d have to choose one of them, would “queer” be somehow less offensive?
Some of this is before my time, and some of it is far back in my memory. Nonetheless, I’d say that “queer” and “faggot” were about equally offensive when they were both slurs. Queer might even have been worse. (~50% + epsilon for those assertions).
And your discussion of when to expect violence is unlikely to measure offensiveness of different phrases. The culture of poverty is more accepting of violence than the culture of wealth. That is, we would expect an equally offensive statement to cause violence from a culture of poverty when we would not expect violence from a culture of wealth. Stereotypical blacks live in a culture of poverty (because they are poor), and stereotypical homosexuals do not (because the stereotype is that they aren’t poor).
PUA functions to support the unstated assumptions it seeks to exploit. PUA Bob has beliefs about how women should behave, and he behaves consistent with those beliefs. Bob’s behavior tends to reinforce those beliefs in others. That would be true even if the beliefs were not considered “unstated” by society. But because society does consider them unstated (and punishes making them explicit), reinforcing the beliefs includes reinforcing that they should be unstate-able.
The assumptions of society are not the same as assumptions of PUAs. For example, society assumes that men should buy women drinks; but PUAs assume that women prefer men that assertively step out of the crowd—for example by not buying them drinks when socially expected to.
I fail to see how exactly PUA Bob by not buying women drinks reinforces the societal beliefs. He exposes them and invalidates them, though he does not do it explicitly, so it leaves open door to alternative interpretations, such as: “If you are Bob, you don’t have to buy women drinks, but otherwise you have to”; but then is it really Bob’s fault if someone comes to this anti-Occam conclusion?
Bob has assumptions that he perhaps shares on his website, such as “if you [man] step out of the crowd, you become more attractive to a [typical] [heterosexual] woman”. Are these assumptions secret? No. By being a minority opinions, they are not as widely known as “men should buy women drinks”, but if every other PUA writes them on their webpage, I wouldn’t call them “unstated”.
So it seems to me that the only unstated thing is that Bob, while refusing to buy a drink to Alice, did not explicitly say: “Alice, I am not buying you a drink, because I would like to have sex with you, and according to my hypothesis (which if you are interested to know more you can find fully explosed on my website “www.bob.pua”), not buying you a drink makes you percieve me as standing out of the crowd, which increases my chances.” This would be most honest. But can we really expect everyone to speak like this in any situation?
I admit I chose “not buying drink” as the most harmless example. For other examples the analysis may be different. I’m trying to say that a PUA may be etically OK, while still essentially remaining a PUA—a person trying to increase their sexual pleasure by analyzing human true sexual preferences and optimizing according to them. Again, I admit other people may disagree with this definition of PUA, but this is how I perceive it.
My takeaway from this is that we still don’t share a definition of what an unstated assumption is.
PUA has some explicit techniques to seem more appealing to target women. Some of the power of some of those techniques is that they transgress certain norms. I assert that one property of those norms is that society disapproves of discussing them.
But that’s independent of the empirical question that I’d state as follows:
If the effectiveness of behavior X depends on the fact that it transgresses norm A, is it more accurate to say that behavior X supports or hurts the continued existence of norm A? If the answer to that question depends on the circumstances, what specific circumstances make a difference?
I guess the circumstance is: does exhibiting behavior X make the norm A stronger or weaker?
This needs to be analyzed further. Naively, any behavior that transgresses a norm seems to weaken it, but that’s not necessarily the case. First, the transgression must be known. Secret transgression weakens the norm for the person who did it, but has no influence on others. Second, the transgression must be rewarded. If people see the transgression and then see punishment, that makes the norm stronger.
In this case, not buying a drink is a public act, and (when successfully done by PUA) it is rewarded, so I conclude that it hurts the norm.
You need to be a little more explicit here. What particular norm is damaged by what particular behavior?
Let’s look at a different example. One possible norm is “Homosexuality is wrong.” A norm that supports it is “Homosexuality is strange and exotic.” That is, if people believe homosexuality is not strange or exotic, they probably would be less likely to believe homosexuality is wrong.
Enter Katy Perry’s song “I kissed a Girl (and I liked it)” (lyrics here—spoiler: she kissed a girl). It’s pretty clear that the character singing the song is not really a lesbian. But she gets a thrill from kissing a girl—and expects her boyfriend would get a similar thrill.
Chorus:
I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick. I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it. It felt so wrong, it felt so right. Don’t mean I’m in love tonight. I kissed a girl and I liked it
This song seems to transgress the norm “Homosexuality is wrong.” But notice how strongly it reinforces the norm “Homosexuality is strange and exotic” It’s an empirical question whether the strengthening of the primary norm from the strengthening of the secondary norm outweighs the weakening of the primary from the violation of that norm. (I suspect the strengthening outweighs the weakening).
To return to PUA, the buyer of the drinks is a side issue.
I think the norm feminist opposes is the idea that women should be offering sex without commitment (or that sex should be used to buy commitment). PUA obviously has no problem with those norms, and actively seeks to support the first.
On the other hand, a topic that appears in a popular song is less taboo (less exotic) than a topic no one speaks about. The more people sing about it, the less unexpected is if someone does it. The evidence goes both ways, and this direction honestly seems stronger to me.
I think it is good to be sensitive about other people, societal norms etc., but too much of it makes a bias. Just like one does not become wise by reversing stupidity, one does not become fair by reversing unfairness. Trying to signal sensitivity may lead to finding the most offensive interpretation of everything people do. (An unrelated example: Recently in my country a political party was medially accused of racism because their pre-election billboard had a white background.) Then anyone who is not perfectly self-thought-policed, or just not signalling hard enough becomes one of the bad guys.
Back to the PUA example: I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment. So now that this norm was successfully defeated, I would say that it is rational to approach women with expectation that there is a non-zero probability that they would consent to sex without commitment. How high is the probability, that is hard to guess, it depends on many variables. I would guess that “being in a bar, accepting drinks from strangers” is an evidence in favor of this hypothesis. And I think most PUAs don’t believe that every woman will offer them sex without commitment. It is a long time since I read their websites, but I remember estimates like 1 in 10. The idea was to use the law of large numbers, and approach 10 women in one evening.
So, how not to strengthen the norms? Let’s say there is a norm saying “every X is Y”, and an older norm saying “no X is Y”. I believe that “some X are Y (and some X are not Y)”, and I am looking for someone who is “X and Y”. How exactly should I act so that my behavior cannot be interpreted as strenghtening either of the norms? Bonus points if the behavior will seem natural, because creepy behavior scares people away.
I think that some of the inferential distance we have is based on different concepts of what a norm is. You seem to think they are lists of rules that each person consciously examines to decide what to do. I agree that many norms work that way. By I also think there are norms that are not explicitly examined at the moment of decision-making, that essentially at the level of cognitive bias. The distinction between TimS-norms and cognitive bias is that bias are universal across all humans, while TimS-norms are culturally dependent and sometimes change over time. I think a significant amount of the differences between our conclusions on how to cause social change is based on this difference in our conceptions of norms.
I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment.
Feminists have taken different positions on this issue. The feminists of the 1870s didn’t reject that the social purpose of women was childrearing. They simply opposed involuntary motherhood (i.e. advocated for the accessibility of contraceptives for women). That was the first wave of feminism.
Nowadays, most active feminists are either second wave or third wave. Third wave feminism is more sympathetic to “sex positive feminism,” which endorses the position that female enactment of sexuality could benefit female autonomy. By contrast, second wave feminism generally endorses anti-pornography positions. I suspect that some of the differences in approaches coincides with the discussion we are having about whether norm transgression can (or does in this instance) reinforce a norm. Regarding PUA, sex positivity seems like it would have a lot fewer problems with it than Dworkin or I might.
As I write this, this post is at −3. I don’t see what reasoning mistake I made in this specific post, because I use the same reasoning in all the rest of my posts in this conversation.
Can someone help me understand why this comment got different treatment.
But notice that redefinition can be quite powerful, like how “queer” has been reclaimed from being a slur to being a positive label.
Yes, the “queers” were by no means the first group to reclaim a slur. The Dutch “Beggars” were going it back in the 14th century, see the real life section of this tvtropes page for more examples.
The important part of reclaiming a word is changing the negative connotation. Once, queer’s only meaning was negative. Now, the word is neutral in general society. That’s a little different with naming yourself ironically based on the comments of your opponent. That is, I suspect the Dutch Beggars still had negative opinions of actual beggars of the Dutch ethnicity. Or if some religious group called LessWrong members “Arrogant Assholes.” It wouldn’t be intensely surprising for some of us to adopt that as an unofficial moniker. But that probably wouldn’t change our (or society’s) prior beliefs about being arrogant or being an asshole.
Regardless, the interesting point about “queer” is not that reclamation as I’ve described it actually occurred. If empirical feminism is true, there’s every reason to think it has happened lots of times before. Sans-culottes appears to be one such example. What is particularly interesting about “queer” is that someone wrote an essay saying, “Let’s reclaim ‘queer’ because it has a negative connotation and that’s bad for homosexuals” and the reclamation effort worked. That doesn’t seem to be the same process as “sans-culottes” or other historical examples.
I’ve asserted occasionally that post-modern moral theories (like the worthwhile parts of feminism) are consistent with empiricism. That is, they look at what as happened before and make predictions about will happen in the future.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault’s philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
And I’ll say again the post-modern thought is often co-opted by more mainstream thought. What’s left behind is not representative of the insight-fulness of post-modern thought.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault’s philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
Unfortunately the result appears less insightful then the original Marxist theory.
Society’s response to rape will be more effective if we stop laughing at rape jokes.
I suspect this one is somewhat true.
Society will treat women more equally if we change the spelling to remove “men” from “women” (i.e. womyn)
The evidence seems clear that this thesis is insufficiently nuanced at best, and probably wrong. But consider what social messages might be successfully conveyed by E.E. Cummings and his idiosyncratic punctuation.
Society’s response to rape will be more effective if we stop laughing at rape jokes.
I fail to see how this is a particularly “feminist” prediction, i.e., just about any other social theory makes some version of this prediction.
Society will treat women more equally if we change the spelling to remove “men” from “women” (i.e. womyn)
Ok, let’s do a cross cultural analysis based on whether the native language has this property and attitudes towards women. You will find this prediction rather easily falsified.
I fail to see how this is a particularly “feminist” prediction, i.e., just about any other social theory makes some version of this prediction.
A substantial amount of modern social theory of all kinds draws heavily on feminism. Folk social theory doesn’t seem to agree, as evidenced by the fact that people still make rape jokes.
You will find this prediction rather easily falsified.
First, you say this like I didn’t know this already, when I already said it was wrong in my comment. Second, other empirical fields make wrong predictions as well, so this is hardly proof that feminism is not empirical.
A substantial amount of modern social theory of all kinds draws heavily on feminism. Folk social theory doesn’t seem to agree, as evidenced by the fact that people still make rape jokes.
I was actually thinking of the implicit social theory based on what was considered “acceptable” and/or “respectable” in pre-feminism days.
First, you say this like I didn’t know this already, when I already said it was wrong in my comment. Second, other empirical fields make wrong predictions as well, so this is hardly proof that feminism is not empirical.
Then why did you select it as one of your two examples showing that feminism is empirical? Also, to the extent that the statement is meaningful, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis predates feminism.
I was actually thinking of the implicit social theory based on what was considered “acceptable” and/or “respectable” in pre-feminism days.
What precise time period are you talking about? In post-war America, rape jokes, like racist jokes, were relatively common. In the Victorian era, who knows the prevalence of the jokes, but I’m doubtful their social theories suggested a connection between rape-joke-frequency and actual rape-frequency.
Then why did you select it as one of your two examples
You are right, it’s not a good example of the point I was trying to make.
In post-war America, rape jokes (...) were relatively common.
Perhaps, but the moralists of the day also condemned them. See the Hays code for an example of this. If you were to ask one of these moralists what was wrong with having rape jokes in movies, they’d probably answer some version of arguing that it promotes rape.
I agree that “moralists of the day” have always condemned what they saw was wrong, probably including rape jokes. But the social theory of post-war American moralists held that women’s social purpose was to stay home and have babies. To that end, they asserted the empirically false theory that wearing revealing clothing was a cause of rape. In short, I don’t trust that those types of theories were trying to have an empirical basis.
I’m not sure that the Hays Code is a good example, because it was aimed on more “core” moralist issues (like nudity, non-marital sex, anti-homosexuality, and depictions of crime without punishment). Also, it was limited to movies.
the empirically false theory that wearing revealing clothing was a cause of rape.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying this theory is empirically false; if two women were to walk through a bad neighborhood one wearing revealing clothing, the other wearing concealing clothing, the woman wearing the revealing clothing would be more likely to get raped.
Note, I’m not saying that this means we should necessarily bad women from wearing revealing clothing (since outside bad neighborhoods this effect may be small) and the restrictions on freedom may very well do more damage. But I doubt you favor a bad on rape jokes for the same reason.
In short, I don’t trust that those types of theories were trying to have an empirical basis.
I suspect they had (at least slightly) more of an empirical basis then feminism, mostly thanks to memetic evolution.
I suspect they had (at least slightly) more of an empirical basis then feminism, mostly thanks to memetic evolution.
I don’t understand the argument. Feminism is later in time than Hays-morality, so why isn’t it the more evolved? Plus, Hays-morality is the descended from theories that said things like “showing the ankle leads to the end of civilization,” which I think is falsified for reasonable definitions of civilization. That is, allowing women to wear bikinis has not caused a return to the state of nature, but that is what Hays-code moralists seem to have predicted.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying this theory is empirically false; if two women were to walk through a bad neighborhood one wearing revealing clothing, the other wearing concealing clothing, the woman wearing the revealing clothing would be more likely to get raped.
This is intuitive and what one would expect. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. For example, there are reported instances of serial rapists targeting housewives, which is pretty clearly uncorrelated (if not anti-correlated) with revealing clothing. In short, citation desperately needed.
I don’t understand the argument. Feminism is later in time than Hays-morality, so why isn’t it the more evolved?
True, but they made a point of disregarding the accumulated wisdom of their predecessors.
Plus, Hays-morality is the descended from theories that said things like “showing the ankle leads to the end of civilization,” which I think is falsified for reasonable definitions of civilization. That is, allowing women to wear bikinis has not caused a return to the state of nature, but that is what Hays-code moralists seem to have predicted.
BTW, I suspect that the Hays-code people’s main argument against revealing clothing is that it would promote adultery, which it indeed has.
BTW, I suspect that the Hays-code people’s main argument against revealing clothing is that it would promote adultery, which it indeed has.
That’s probably an accurate summary of their intent. I’m still not sure that I believe their empirical claim. Adultery and non-marital sex have been common in pre-immodesty Western history across many social classes.
Adultery and non-marital sex have been common in pre-immodesty Western history across many social classes.
Adultery certainly existed, I don’t think it was as common as it is today. Certainly people were much less likely to have kids out of wedlock, or to not even bother getting married before having kids.
That assertion about adultery might be appealing to believe. But that doesn’t make it true. And citation to an essay asserting increased social stratification is not evidence that out-of-wedlock births are more common now than in the past, or that marriage is becoming uncorrelated with child-rearing.
By the way, do you have a citation that rape jokes increase rape, since near as I can tell the evidence for it is of the same kind of vaguely anecdotal/common sense that you like to dismiss when it supports a conclusion you don’t like.
That’s a fair question. To be clear, my assertion was that society’s response to rape would be “better” if we gave negative feedback to rape jokes, which would reduce their frequency.
I think it is pretty clear that the frequency of rape jokes has substantially decreased since the 1970s, caused substantially by negative feedback.
In that same time period, I think society’s response to rape has significantly improved.
Concrete examples of recent changes:
In many American jurisdictions, rape was once legally defined to include an element of force. That is, proof of non-consent could only be shown by the woman’s “utmost resistance.” Nowadays, the legal definition has been changed to remove the force requirement or interpret it as satisfied by the force of penetration.
Spousal rape was once legally impossible or difficult to prove. Now, spousal rape is treated as legally similar to other kinds of rape.
Once, rape victims needed to worry that their dress or promiscuity would be used to discredit their testimony in court. Now, the rules of evidence have often been amended to restrict the admissibility of this kind of evidence.
At this point, I think the evidence shows a strong correlation between anti-rape-joke attitudes and society’s responsiveness to rape. That’s not proof of the causal mechanism I’m asserting (reducing rape jokes causes attitudes towards rape to change in the general population), but it is suggestive.
Do you mean jokes about prison rape? I agree that prison rape jokes do not appear to have decreased in frequency in the Baby Boomer era.
If you mean jokes that imply women want/deserve/enjoy rape, do you dispute that they were somewhat frequent in the 1970s or that they are relatively infrequent today (in the US)?
I am not making the opposite claim, only expressing doubt. There is a folk narrative that US society was less enlightened in the past, and I agree that the notion that instances of rape jokes have declined does fit into this narrative. But this is hardly an “empirical approach to feminism.” For instance it’s another common folk narrative that US culture has degraded into filth since the 1960s, accordingly one might expect instances of rape jokes to have increased.
I think each of these stories is equally plausible at an intuitive level, though I expect the first to appeal to people with different political opinions than the second. I’d be interested in finding out whether rape jokes have increased or decreased in frequency, at least after making this claim more precise. But you don’t seem to claiming you know how to do this, only that you find the answer somehow obvious.
I see what you mean. It is an article of faith in certain feminist websites. Given the frequency of the generalized assertion, I assumed that there was data supporting it, but web-searching leaves me empty handed.
The best I could come up with was the TVTropes page “Rape as Comedy.” There’s no particular reason to think the lists there are complete, and they certainly aren’t sorted by time. I assume that the media from the 1970s listed in the “Rape Culture” page on wikipedia have contemporary examples, but I don’t have access to them.
Or we could just ask someone old enough to remember the 1950s-1970s.
Edit: And during totally random web browsing, I ran across this story. The incident in question is from 1998, so it probably cuts slightly against my factual assertion. On the other hand, the mnemonic might have been fairly old.
I was writing this long post asking you to be more concrete, but I realized that this is not my true rejection. On reflection, I think you are right that society is now more tolerant of adultery (sex when one partner is married) and non-marital sex than at times in the past, although it’s not clear to me that this has been a one-way ratchet in favor of libertine behavior—compare the 1950s to the 1920s (roaring twenties). Likewise, Victorian era prudishness may have been a reaction to the permissiveness of the Hanoveran Kings before Victoria.
(For convenience, I’m using “illicit sex” as a general term to include adultery and non-marital sex).
My real issue is as follows:
Hays Code moralists (aka sex-moralists) argued that more revealing clothing encouraged illicit sex. That may be so, but different “revelations” of the female body might have different effects on the illicit sex rate. I suspect the move from one-piece swimwear to bikinis had a stronger effect than allowing the exposure of ankles and wrists. And sexual-moralists don’t seem to recognize this difference of effect—for them, every change is the end of the world. Worse, they don’t tend to care about the double standard (in dress and behavior) between men and women.
All of this makes me think that sexual-moralists have a vision of how the world should be, and are willing to say whatever is necessary to push the actual world in that direction. Forcefully asserting that revealing female clothing will lead to the end of civilization will cause (ceteris parabis) women to dress less revealingly. But asserting that when there’s no reason to think it is true is not an empirical project.
I’m not saying feminists haven’t done some similar things—politics mindkills us all, not just those who disagree with me. But that doesn’t mean feminism as a whole is anti-empiricism, any more than assertions that “allowing same-sex marriage will lead to chaos” are proof that all sexual-moralists are anti-empiricism.
[citation please], as in I think your exaggerating their position.
any more than assertions that “allowing same-sex marriage will lead to chaos” are proof that all sexual-moralists are anti-empiricism.
The actual assertion was “allowing same-sex marriage will lead to the end of marriage”, an assertion which I think is perfectly plausible (give it about a generation to work out).
In many American jurisdictions, rape was once legally defined to include an element of force. That is, proof of non-consent could only be shown by the woman’s “utmost resistance.” Nowadays, the legal definition has been changed to remove the force requirement or interpret it as satisfied by the force of penetration.
Why is this an improvement? Beyond the signaling value of “rape is bad, so punishing rapists is good, let’s expand the definition of rape so we can punish more rapists”.
In practice what this means is that a woman can declare any sexual encounter to be “rape” after the fact.
I understand that law can be complicated, but you seem to endorse the following position:
The following is not illegal: A victim has sex with a perpetrator, without consent to have sex from the victim. The perpetrator only threatens to use force and does not actually use force.
That legal position is inconsistent with most other crimes (robbery is taking your property from you without consent—no violence element is included). I think criminalizing sex in the absence of consent is quite justified. I acknowledge that consent can have multiple meanings and that ambiguity must be resolved, but non-consent seems a complete justification for criminalization.
Additionally, the above theory seems likely to put the victim at risk of further harm—my understanding is that most police departments recommend not resisting (both rape and robbery) because of the risk that the criminal will do further injury.
In practice what this means is that a woman can declare any sexual encounter to be “rape” after the fact.
False accusations are a problem for the criminal justice system in general. I can falsely accuse you of stealing money from me, or hitting me, or harassing me. If I tailor the explanation carefully, the police would have no reason to expect corroborating evidence. You deny the charge, and it comes down to relative credibility. I’m not saying this is ideal, but it is the best we can do in the absence of some kind of truth-oracle. Why is this a bigger problem for rape than other crimes?
False accusations are a problem for the criminal justice system in general.
The problem is that the accusation isn’t “false”, in the sense that if the woman decides she didn’t want the sex after the fact it is rape by the de facto definition .
Why is this a bigger problem for rape than other crimes?
Well for starters, the DoE recently sent out a dear college letter demanding that colleges use the weakest possible standards of evidence for rape cases on pain of loosing federal funding.
There’s no way to read your assertion about de facto rape that isn’t essentially false. Accusations of murder (or child abuse) are huge blemishes, even if you are acquitted. And legally, you can’t revoke consent after the fact—the problem is proof, not definition.
Regarding the letters you mentioned, I’d like to point out if you thought some fact (i.e. someone is trying to attack you) was “more likely than not,” you’d act—not wait until the evidence was “clear and convincing” or “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Also, there are lower evidence standards in the law than “more likely than not.” For example, a police officer can arrest you at a much lower standard.
SO IF A MAN GETS DRUNK AND SLEEPS WITH A WOMAN HE WOULDN’T HAVE SLEPT WITH SOBER, it’s humorous grist for jokes about “beer goggles” and “coyote ugly.” But if a woman does the same thing, woe unto anyone who suggests it wasn’t “date rape.”
I think this nicely illustrates the problem with the definition of rape that feminists like yourself are pushing.
Yes, many feminist thinkers are epistemically unhealthy. That doesn’t prove all or even a majority of feminists are anti-epistemic. Notice how the original advice columnist (on Slate.com—hardly an anti-feminist site) rejected the idea that the woman’s experience was obviously rape. More importantly, she emphatically rejected the idea that attempting to withdraw consent after the sex is over is something that others should respect in any way.
I think you could have made this point without linking to Instapundit. If you don’t want this thread to get totally mindkilled, perhaps it’s better to leave out links to people who elicit highly polarized reactions from different political tribes.
In practice what this means is that a woman can declare any sexual encounter to be “rape” after the fact.
Obviously this happens; however, are you sure that this downside is not outweighed by more security against manipulation, blackmail and such? I’m confident that it is.
In post-war America, rape jokes, like racist jokes, were relatively common.
If you mean relatively common compared to today, it doesn’t sound right to me. You’re far more likely to see a rape joke on TV these days than in the 1950s and 60s. Racist observations are a large part of the output of modern professional comedians.
Although kids entertainment is probably less racist these days than ever before.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault’s philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
And I’ll say again the post-modern thought is often co-opted by more mainstream thought. What’s left behind is not representative of the insight-fulness of post-modern thought.
can you elaborate?
I’ve asserted occasionally that post-modern moral theories (like the worthwhile parts of feminism) are consistent with empiricism. That is, they look at what as happened before and make predictions about will happen in the future.
That is often down-voted. I suspect that this is because taking feminism seriously would require people to re-think their methods of interacting with others, in a way that would be extremely challenging to their personal identities. That way leads to mindkilling (By the transitive property: The personal is political + Politics is the Mindkiller ⇒ The personal is the mindkiller).
I would love to see a rational discussion about feminism.
I guess there are many ideas where I should update, but also a lot of BS… and I have trouble separating these two parts, mostly because saying that “there is a lot of BS” means that I am an evil person not worth discussing with. Asking for evidence is a proof that I don’t believe everything, which of course means that I am an ignorant evil male. So I would like to participate in a discussion where my comment “I don’t think this is enough evidence for X” or “I think there is an alternative explanation” is countered by more evidence, instead of just pointing out that I don’t get it, because I am privileged (because somehow the non-privileged person could never be wrong).
Here is a start at what I’d call empirical feminist. I’m not sure what you mean by rational, if you don’t mean empirical.
More generally, I rely on feminist thought to say:
From there, I move on to say:
For arguments-are-soldiers reasons, many feminists are particularly provocative in their redefinition of worlds. Also for arguments-are-soldiers reasons, other feminists are reluctant to call them on being provocative. That’s a bug, not a rationalist feature.
But notice that redefinition can be quite powerful, like how “queer” has been reclaimed from being a slur to being a positive label. If you weren’t a feminist, would you have predicted this was possible? Keep in mind hindsight bias.
Those “unstated assumptions” seem to me like an analogy to individual “compartmentalization”. First thought: they should be made explicit. Second thought: maybe they serve some purpose; most likely to prevent public disorder (read: in worst case thousands of people killing each other). Many of them are probably very outdated, so exposing them would just lead to their removing. Some of them may be sensitive, and making them explicit would bring an open conflict.
As an example, I guess many feminists would be very uncomfortable with public discussion of “pick-up arts” (of course unless they could control the whole discussion). Irony is that PUAs are also trying to expose some unstated rules, for the sake of hacking them.
English is not my first language and I don’t live in English-speaking environment, so I don’t clearly see the changes of emotions associated with this word. But are you sure it is the feelings about the word that have changed, instead of feelings towards the queers themselves?
To compare: If drinking beer is socially unacceptable in some society, and then decades later drinking beer is acceptable (even though most people there don’t drink beer), I certainly wouldn’t describe it as “reclaiming the word beer”. Of course the connotations of word beer would be changed from “something illegal that only strange people drink” to “something people drink”, but that would be just a side effect of the real change.
Similarly, there is a lot of effort to invent and popularize gender-neutral pronouns in English, because it is expected to change something, namely to reduce sexism. However, there already are languages that “naturally” contain gender-neutral pronouns, for example Hungarian. So does this theory predict that Hungarians are less sexist than other nations? Can we measure it somehow?
I think the causality is reversed; it’s not like “if we use gender-neutral pronouns, we become less sexist” but “if even the suspicion of being sexist becomes socially unacceptable, then people will use gender-neutral pronouns to signal their non-sexism”. People use gender-neutral pronouns because they are sensitive about something, not the other way around; though perhaps the use of those pronouns can further increase their sensitivity.
Feminists would say the conflict already exists, but the majority demands that everyone pretend there is no conflict at all, partially as a beneficial tactic in the conflict. We can make arguments about whether society as a whole is better off masking certain conflicts. But the minority has no reason to respect a tactic that is aimed at, and often achieves the goal of suppressing them.
Well, I suspect that PUA want to learn the unstated rules in order to take advantage of them. They do not want the rules to become explicit common knowledge because that could/would remove the power and effectiveness of the PUA skill set. Aside from the general feminist principle that unstated assumptions should always be made explicit, one can’t ignore that the particular unstated assumptions PUA aim to hack are precisely some of the normative expectations about how young women should think that feminists oppose even in the absence of PUA.
All I can do is assert that the feelings about the word have changed. 20-30 years ago, queer and faggot were only slurs. From 2003-2007, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a reality show playing on TV. But faggot is still a slur.
Alternatively, compare n#@@#r. Given how the word is deployed today, there’s no way “N#@@#r Eye for the White Guy” (helping clueless nerds get in touch with their popular culture side, or something) would ever play on television.
This is probably right, and I think feminists learned some of this lesson from the utter failure of the “spelling to reduce sexism (i.e. womyn)” experiment. Have you read this Hofstadter essay? I think it helps show what might be a stake in the vocabulary sensitivity issue.
Some unstated assumptions can be good for minority. Consider for example the idea of religious tolerance, which appeared when society was highly religious. The unstated assumption is that having the right religion does not matter too much, because people not mass-killing each other is more important than believing in the right kind of deity. Now say it too loudly, and religious people will have to oppose this idea, to signal their faith.
More generally, an inconsistent person may be friendly with you in a “near mode”, but your opponent in a “far mode” (IMHO people generally are friendly and believe many strange things). When you point out their inconsistency, you may have manufactured yourself an enemy. Or not. Anyway, it involves some risk, so it is better to think about it first.
If enough people already know the rules and discuss them online, it would be difficult to protect the secret. So why not make some money teaching it before it all becomes common sense? However, there is still hope that the rules are so much against what our society teaches us, that you could shout it from the rooftops and still 90% of men would either ignore them or somehow rationalize their akrasia.
Historically, one secret that on average worked in benefit of women, was men’s general ignorance (and frustration) about what women want. Simply said, an average heterosexual male would like to have sex with some attractive female, he would like to increase his chances, but he has no idea what is her decision algorithm. So by saying: “X is part of my algorithm”, or more politely: “you know, we women really love X” she can manipulate him into giving her X. It is like playing a game where your opponent can lie about their rewards, and thus manipulate you into suboptimal strategy. Some PUAs are trying to “scientifically” discover the true algorithm, so this one specific advantage is removed, and men can finally play this game with full information.
Alternative explanation: If you use the offensive word with the offended person present, how do you estimate the probability of being physically harmed, if the word is (a) “faggot” or (b) “n#@@#r”? I am trying to say, it’s not about how tolerant we are, but how dangerous it is to offend someone. Though this explanation does not explain the difference between “queer” and “faggot”. I’d like to ask: 20-30 years ago were both these words equally offensive, or if you’d have to choose one of them, would “queer” be somehow less offensive?
Yes, I did, and it made a big impression on me. Then I realised some parts of feminism have value. But perhaps it also set my expectations for other feminist texts too high. Well, not everyone can write like Hofstadter.
Simply put, I disagree that this is an accurate summary of history. People explicitly and publicly argued for toleration on exactly the basis you identified. And it was sometimes implemented. Further, I don’t think there is any example in history of the toleration of a community failing because the tolerant were so vocal about it that the intolerant suddenly noticed that the wool was being pulled over their eyes. In short, you’ve identified the assumption/foundation of tolerance, but this foundation was hardly unstated in the sense I mean.
Without agreeing on mechanism, I can certainly agree that some women conceal their desires in order to manipulate others. It probably extends to everyone in her social circle, but examples include expecting free drinks and insincerely saying “Nothing is wrong.” when asked. This type of manipulation is bad, and would be much more difficult if the underlying unstated assumptions went away.
It is not inevitable that the changes I desire will ever happen. Further, PUA functions to support the unstated assumptions it seeks to exploit. PUA Bob has beliefs about how women should behave, and he behaves consistent with those beliefs. Bob’s behavior tends to reinforce those beliefs in others. That would be true even if the beliefs were not considered “unstated” by society. But because society does consider them unstated (and punishes making them explicit), reinforcing the beliefs includes reinforcing that they should be unstate-able.
Some of this is before my time, and some of it is far back in my memory. Nonetheless, I’d say that “queer” and “faggot” were about equally offensive when they were both slurs. Queer might even have been worse. (~50% + epsilon for those assertions).
And your discussion of when to expect violence is unlikely to measure offensiveness of different phrases. The culture of poverty is more accepting of violence than the culture of wealth. That is, we would expect an equally offensive statement to cause violence from a culture of poverty when we would not expect violence from a culture of wealth. Stereotypical blacks live in a culture of poverty (because they are poor), and stereotypical homosexuals do not (because the stereotype is that they aren’t poor).
The assumptions of society are not the same as assumptions of PUAs. For example, society assumes that men should buy women drinks; but PUAs assume that women prefer men that assertively step out of the crowd—for example by not buying them drinks when socially expected to.
I fail to see how exactly PUA Bob by not buying women drinks reinforces the societal beliefs. He exposes them and invalidates them, though he does not do it explicitly, so it leaves open door to alternative interpretations, such as: “If you are Bob, you don’t have to buy women drinks, but otherwise you have to”; but then is it really Bob’s fault if someone comes to this anti-Occam conclusion?
Bob has assumptions that he perhaps shares on his website, such as “if you [man] step out of the crowd, you become more attractive to a [typical] [heterosexual] woman”. Are these assumptions secret? No. By being a minority opinions, they are not as widely known as “men should buy women drinks”, but if every other PUA writes them on their webpage, I wouldn’t call them “unstated”.
So it seems to me that the only unstated thing is that Bob, while refusing to buy a drink to Alice, did not explicitly say: “Alice, I am not buying you a drink, because I would like to have sex with you, and according to my hypothesis (which if you are interested to know more you can find fully explosed on my website “www.bob.pua”), not buying you a drink makes you percieve me as standing out of the crowd, which increases my chances.” This would be most honest. But can we really expect everyone to speak like this in any situation?
I admit I chose “not buying drink” as the most harmless example. For other examples the analysis may be different. I’m trying to say that a PUA may be etically OK, while still essentially remaining a PUA—a person trying to increase their sexual pleasure by analyzing human true sexual preferences and optimizing according to them. Again, I admit other people may disagree with this definition of PUA, but this is how I perceive it.
My takeaway from this is that we still don’t share a definition of what an unstated assumption is.
PUA has some explicit techniques to seem more appealing to target women. Some of the power of some of those techniques is that they transgress certain norms. I assert that one property of those norms is that society disapproves of discussing them.
But that’s independent of the empirical question that I’d state as follows:
I guess the circumstance is: does exhibiting behavior X make the norm A stronger or weaker?
This needs to be analyzed further. Naively, any behavior that transgresses a norm seems to weaken it, but that’s not necessarily the case. First, the transgression must be known. Secret transgression weakens the norm for the person who did it, but has no influence on others. Second, the transgression must be rewarded. If people see the transgression and then see punishment, that makes the norm stronger.
In this case, not buying a drink is a public act, and (when successfully done by PUA) it is rewarded, so I conclude that it hurts the norm.
You need to be a little more explicit here. What particular norm is damaged by what particular behavior?
Let’s look at a different example. One possible norm is “Homosexuality is wrong.” A norm that supports it is “Homosexuality is strange and exotic.” That is, if people believe homosexuality is not strange or exotic, they probably would be less likely to believe homosexuality is wrong.
Enter Katy Perry’s song “I kissed a Girl (and I liked it)” (lyrics here—spoiler: she kissed a girl). It’s pretty clear that the character singing the song is not really a lesbian. But she gets a thrill from kissing a girl—and expects her boyfriend would get a similar thrill.
Chorus:
This song seems to transgress the norm “Homosexuality is wrong.” But notice how strongly it reinforces the norm “Homosexuality is strange and exotic” It’s an empirical question whether the strengthening of the primary norm from the strengthening of the secondary norm outweighs the weakening of the primary from the violation of that norm. (I suspect the strengthening outweighs the weakening).
To return to PUA, the buyer of the drinks is a side issue.
I think the norm feminist opposes is the idea that women should be offering sex without commitment (or that sex should be used to buy commitment). PUA obviously has no problem with those norms, and actively seeks to support the first.
On the other hand, a topic that appears in a popular song is less taboo (less exotic) than a topic no one speaks about. The more people sing about it, the less unexpected is if someone does it. The evidence goes both ways, and this direction honestly seems stronger to me.
I think it is good to be sensitive about other people, societal norms etc., but too much of it makes a bias. Just like one does not become wise by reversing stupidity, one does not become fair by reversing unfairness. Trying to signal sensitivity may lead to finding the most offensive interpretation of everything people do. (An unrelated example: Recently in my country a political party was medially accused of racism because their pre-election billboard had a white background.) Then anyone who is not perfectly self-thought-policed, or just not signalling hard enough becomes one of the bad guys.
Back to the PUA example: I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment. So now that this norm was successfully defeated, I would say that it is rational to approach women with expectation that there is a non-zero probability that they would consent to sex without commitment. How high is the probability, that is hard to guess, it depends on many variables. I would guess that “being in a bar, accepting drinks from strangers” is an evidence in favor of this hypothesis. And I think most PUAs don’t believe that every woman will offer them sex without commitment. It is a long time since I read their websites, but I remember estimates like 1 in 10. The idea was to use the law of large numbers, and approach 10 women in one evening.
So, how not to strengthen the norms? Let’s say there is a norm saying “every X is Y”, and an older norm saying “no X is Y”. I believe that “some X are Y (and some X are not Y)”, and I am looking for someone who is “X and Y”. How exactly should I act so that my behavior cannot be interpreted as strenghtening either of the norms? Bonus points if the behavior will seem natural, because creepy behavior scares people away.
I think that some of the inferential distance we have is based on different concepts of what a norm is. You seem to think they are lists of rules that each person consciously examines to decide what to do. I agree that many norms work that way. By I also think there are norms that are not explicitly examined at the moment of decision-making, that essentially at the level of cognitive bias. The distinction between TimS-norms and cognitive bias is that bias are universal across all humans, while TimS-norms are culturally dependent and sometimes change over time. I think a significant amount of the differences between our conclusions on how to cause social change is based on this difference in our conceptions of norms.
Feminists have taken different positions on this issue. The feminists of the 1870s didn’t reject that the social purpose of women was childrearing. They simply opposed involuntary motherhood (i.e. advocated for the accessibility of contraceptives for women). That was the first wave of feminism.
Nowadays, most active feminists are either second wave or third wave. Third wave feminism is more sympathetic to “sex positive feminism,” which endorses the position that female enactment of sexuality could benefit female autonomy. By contrast, second wave feminism generally endorses anti-pornography positions. I suspect that some of the differences in approaches coincides with the discussion we are having about whether norm transgression can (or does in this instance) reinforce a norm. Regarding PUA, sex positivity seems like it would have a lot fewer problems with it than Dworkin or I might.
As I write this, this post is at −3. I don’t see what reasoning mistake I made in this specific post, because I use the same reasoning in all the rest of my posts in this conversation.
Can someone help me understand why this comment got different treatment.
Yes, the “queers” were by no means the first group to reclaim a slur. The Dutch “Beggars” were going it back in the 14th century, see the real life section of this tvtropes page for more examples.
The important part of reclaiming a word is changing the negative connotation. Once, queer’s only meaning was negative. Now, the word is neutral in general society. That’s a little different with naming yourself ironically based on the comments of your opponent. That is, I suspect the Dutch Beggars still had negative opinions of actual beggars of the Dutch ethnicity. Or if some religious group called LessWrong members “Arrogant Assholes.” It wouldn’t be intensely surprising for some of us to adopt that as an unofficial moniker. But that probably wouldn’t change our (or society’s) prior beliefs about being arrogant or being an asshole.
Regardless, the interesting point about “queer” is not that reclamation as I’ve described it actually occurred. If empirical feminism is true, there’s every reason to think it has happened lots of times before. Sans-culottes appears to be one such example. What is particularly interesting about “queer” is that someone wrote an essay saying, “Let’s reclaim ‘queer’ because it has a negative connotation and that’s bad for homosexuals” and the reclamation effort worked. That doesn’t seem to be the same process as “sans-culottes” or other historical examples.
My experience is the exact opposite.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault’s philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
And I’ll say again the post-modern thought is often co-opted by more mainstream thought. What’s left behind is not representative of the insight-fulness of post-modern thought.
Unfortunately the result appears less insightful then the original Marxist theory.
Ok, how about a pair of feminist prediction:
I suspect this one is somewhat true.
The evidence seems clear that this thesis is insufficiently nuanced at best, and probably wrong. But consider what social messages might be successfully conveyed by E.E. Cummings and his idiosyncratic punctuation.
I fail to see how this is a particularly “feminist” prediction, i.e., just about any other social theory makes some version of this prediction.
Ok, let’s do a cross cultural analysis based on whether the native language has this property and attitudes towards women. You will find this prediction rather easily falsified.
A substantial amount of modern social theory of all kinds draws heavily on feminism. Folk social theory doesn’t seem to agree, as evidenced by the fact that people still make rape jokes.
First, you say this like I didn’t know this already, when I already said it was wrong in my comment. Second, other empirical fields make wrong predictions as well, so this is hardly proof that feminism is not empirical.
I was actually thinking of the implicit social theory based on what was considered “acceptable” and/or “respectable” in pre-feminism days.
Then why did you select it as one of your two examples showing that feminism is empirical? Also, to the extent that the statement is meaningful, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis predates feminism.
What precise time period are you talking about? In post-war America, rape jokes, like racist jokes, were relatively common. In the Victorian era, who knows the prevalence of the jokes, but I’m doubtful their social theories suggested a connection between rape-joke-frequency and actual rape-frequency.
You are right, it’s not a good example of the point I was trying to make.
Perhaps, but the moralists of the day also condemned them. See the Hays code for an example of this. If you were to ask one of these moralists what was wrong with having rape jokes in movies, they’d probably answer some version of arguing that it promotes rape.
I agree that “moralists of the day” have always condemned what they saw was wrong, probably including rape jokes. But the social theory of post-war American moralists held that women’s social purpose was to stay home and have babies. To that end, they asserted the empirically false theory that wearing revealing clothing was a cause of rape. In short, I don’t trust that those types of theories were trying to have an empirical basis.
I’m not sure that the Hays Code is a good example, because it was aimed on more “core” moralist issues (like nudity, non-marital sex, anti-homosexuality, and depictions of crime without punishment). Also, it was limited to movies.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying this theory is empirically false; if two women were to walk through a bad neighborhood one wearing revealing clothing, the other wearing concealing clothing, the woman wearing the revealing clothing would be more likely to get raped.
Note, I’m not saying that this means we should necessarily bad women from wearing revealing clothing (since outside bad neighborhoods this effect may be small) and the restrictions on freedom may very well do more damage. But I doubt you favor a bad on rape jokes for the same reason.
I suspect they had (at least slightly) more of an empirical basis then feminism, mostly thanks to memetic evolution.
I don’t understand the argument. Feminism is later in time than Hays-morality, so why isn’t it the more evolved? Plus, Hays-morality is the descended from theories that said things like “showing the ankle leads to the end of civilization,” which I think is falsified for reasonable definitions of civilization. That is, allowing women to wear bikinis has not caused a return to the state of nature, but that is what Hays-code moralists seem to have predicted.
This is intuitive and what one would expect. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. For example, there are reported instances of serial rapists targeting housewives, which is pretty clearly uncorrelated (if not anti-correlated) with revealing clothing. In short, citation desperately needed.
True, but they made a point of disregarding the accumulated wisdom of their predecessors.
BTW, I suspect that the Hays-code people’s main argument against revealing clothing is that it would promote adultery, which it indeed has.
That’s probably an accurate summary of their intent. I’m still not sure that I believe their empirical claim. Adultery and non-marital sex have been common in pre-immodesty Western history across many social classes.
Adultery certainly existed, I don’t think it was as common as it is today. Certainly people were much less likely to have kids out of wedlock, or to not even bother getting married before having kids.
That assertion about adultery might be appealing to believe. But that doesn’t make it true. And citation to an essay asserting increased social stratification is not evidence that out-of-wedlock births are more common now than in the past, or that marriage is becoming uncorrelated with child-rearing.
By the way, do you have a citation that rape jokes increase rape, since near as I can tell the evidence for it is of the same kind of vaguely anecdotal/common sense that you like to dismiss when it supports a conclusion you don’t like.
That’s a fair question. To be clear, my assertion was that society’s response to rape would be “better” if we gave negative feedback to rape jokes, which would reduce their frequency.
I think it is pretty clear that the frequency of rape jokes has substantially decreased since the 1970s, caused substantially by negative feedback.
In that same time period, I think society’s response to rape has significantly improved.
Concrete examples of recent changes:
In many American jurisdictions, rape was once legally defined to include an element of force. That is, proof of non-consent could only be shown by the woman’s “utmost resistance.” Nowadays, the legal definition has been changed to remove the force requirement or interpret it as satisfied by the force of penetration.
Spousal rape was once legally impossible or difficult to prove. Now, spousal rape is treated as legally similar to other kinds of rape.
Once, rape victims needed to worry that their dress or promiscuity would be used to discredit their testimony in court. Now, the rules of evidence have often been amended to restrict the admissibility of this kind of evidence.
At this point, I think the evidence shows a strong correlation between anti-rape-joke attitudes and society’s responsiveness to rape. That’s not proof of the causal mechanism I’m asserting (reducing rape jokes causes attitudes towards rape to change in the general population), but it is suggestive.
This is not clear to me at all.
Do you mean jokes about prison rape? I agree that prison rape jokes do not appear to have decreased in frequency in the Baby Boomer era.
If you mean jokes that imply women want/deserve/enjoy rape, do you dispute that they were somewhat frequent in the 1970s or that they are relatively infrequent today (in the US)?
I am not making the opposite claim, only expressing doubt. There is a folk narrative that US society was less enlightened in the past, and I agree that the notion that instances of rape jokes have declined does fit into this narrative. But this is hardly an “empirical approach to feminism.” For instance it’s another common folk narrative that US culture has degraded into filth since the 1960s, accordingly one might expect instances of rape jokes to have increased.
I think each of these stories is equally plausible at an intuitive level, though I expect the first to appeal to people with different political opinions than the second. I’d be interested in finding out whether rape jokes have increased or decreased in frequency, at least after making this claim more precise. But you don’t seem to claiming you know how to do this, only that you find the answer somehow obvious.
I see what you mean. It is an article of faith in certain feminist websites. Given the frequency of the generalized assertion, I assumed that there was data supporting it, but web-searching leaves me empty handed.
The best I could come up with was the TVTropes page “Rape as Comedy.” There’s no particular reason to think the lists there are complete, and they certainly aren’t sorted by time. I assume that the media from the 1970s listed in the “Rape Culture” page on wikipedia have contemporary examples, but I don’t have access to them.
Or we could just ask someone old enough to remember the 1950s-1970s.
Edit: And during totally random web browsing, I ran across this story. The incident in question is from 1998, so it probably cuts slightly against my factual assertion. On the other hand, the mnemonic might have been fairly old.
Also if now social changes count as evidence, I’d like to point out the recent changes in attitudes towards adultery.
I was writing this long post asking you to be more concrete, but I realized that this is not my true rejection. On reflection, I think you are right that society is now more tolerant of adultery (sex when one partner is married) and non-marital sex than at times in the past, although it’s not clear to me that this has been a one-way ratchet in favor of libertine behavior—compare the 1950s to the 1920s (roaring twenties). Likewise, Victorian era prudishness may have been a reaction to the permissiveness of the Hanoveran Kings before Victoria.
(For convenience, I’m using “illicit sex” as a general term to include adultery and non-marital sex).
My real issue is as follows: Hays Code moralists (aka sex-moralists) argued that more revealing clothing encouraged illicit sex. That may be so, but different “revelations” of the female body might have different effects on the illicit sex rate. I suspect the move from one-piece swimwear to bikinis had a stronger effect than allowing the exposure of ankles and wrists. And sexual-moralists don’t seem to recognize this difference of effect—for them, every change is the end of the world. Worse, they don’t tend to care about the double standard (in dress and behavior) between men and women.
All of this makes me think that sexual-moralists have a vision of how the world should be, and are willing to say whatever is necessary to push the actual world in that direction. Forcefully asserting that revealing female clothing will lead to the end of civilization will cause (ceteris parabis) women to dress less revealingly. But asserting that when there’s no reason to think it is true is not an empirical project.
I’m not saying feminists haven’t done some similar things—politics mindkills us all, not just those who disagree with me. But that doesn’t mean feminism as a whole is anti-empiricism, any more than assertions that “allowing same-sex marriage will lead to chaos” are proof that all sexual-moralists are anti-empiricism.
[citation please], as in I think your exaggerating their position.
The actual assertion was “allowing same-sex marriage will lead to the end of marriage”, an assertion which I think is perfectly plausible (give it about a generation to work out).
Not that it’s worth much, but here.
Divorce is becoming more acceptable over time, but that significantly predates the rise of the gay marriage movement.
Why is this an improvement? Beyond the signaling value of “rape is bad, so punishing rapists is good, let’s expand the definition of rape so we can punish more rapists”.
In practice what this means is that a woman can declare any sexual encounter to be “rape” after the fact.
I understand that law can be complicated, but you seem to endorse the following position:
That legal position is inconsistent with most other crimes (robbery is taking your property from you without consent—no violence element is included). I think criminalizing sex in the absence of consent is quite justified. I acknowledge that consent can have multiple meanings and that ambiguity must be resolved, but non-consent seems a complete justification for criminalization.
Additionally, the above theory seems likely to put the victim at risk of further harm—my understanding is that most police departments recommend not resisting (both rape and robbery) because of the risk that the criminal will do further injury.
False accusations are a problem for the criminal justice system in general. I can falsely accuse you of stealing money from me, or hitting me, or harassing me. If I tailor the explanation carefully, the police would have no reason to expect corroborating evidence. You deny the charge, and it comes down to relative credibility. I’m not saying this is ideal, but it is the best we can do in the absence of some kind of truth-oracle. Why is this a bigger problem for rape than other crimes?
The problem is that the accusation isn’t “false”, in the sense that if the woman decides she didn’t want the sex after the fact it is rape by the de facto definition .
Well for starters, the DoE recently sent out a dear college letter demanding that colleges use the weakest possible standards of evidence for rape cases on pain of loosing federal funding.
There’s no way to read your assertion about de facto rape that isn’t essentially false. Accusations of murder (or child abuse) are huge blemishes, even if you are acquitted. And legally, you can’t revoke consent after the fact—the problem is proof, not definition.
Regarding the letters you mentioned, I’d like to point out if you thought some fact (i.e. someone is trying to attack you) was “more likely than not,” you’d act—not wait until the evidence was “clear and convincing” or “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Also, there are lower evidence standards in the law than “more likely than not.” For example, a police officer can arrest you at a much lower standard.
As Instapundit points out here.
I think this nicely illustrates the problem with the definition of rape that feminists like yourself are pushing.
Yes, many feminist thinkers are epistemically unhealthy. That doesn’t prove all or even a majority of feminists are anti-epistemic. Notice how the original advice columnist (on Slate.com—hardly an anti-feminist site) rejected the idea that the woman’s experience was obviously rape. More importantly, she emphatically rejected the idea that attempting to withdraw consent after the sex is over is something that others should respect in any way.
I think you could have made this point without linking to Instapundit. If you don’t want this thread to get totally mindkilled, perhaps it’s better to leave out links to people who elicit highly polarized reactions from different political tribes.
I find it rude to quote people without linking to them.
I meant that quoting him was unnecessary; the idea is almost certainly not original to him anyway, so you could restate it in your own words.
Obviously this happens; however, are you sure that this downside is not outweighed by more security against manipulation, blackmail and such? I’m confident that it is.
If you mean relatively common compared to today, it doesn’t sound right to me. You’re far more likely to see a rape joke on TV these days than in the 1950s and 60s. Racist observations are a large part of the output of modern professional comedians.
Although kids entertainment is probably less racist these days than ever before.
I’m not sure racial humor= racist humor.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault’s philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
And I’ll say again the post-modern thought is often co-opted by more mainstream thought. What’s left behind is not representative of the insight-fulness of post-modern thought.
This is so true.
Oddly enough, this is probably correct.