Sullivan, making your male audience uncomfortable is as easy as inserting a male-male kiss.
Sexual fantasies of being raped tend to be readily distinguishable from real rape as we know it. Receiving oral sex is a lot more common in rape fantasy than in rape (though (obvious disclaimer) it could certainly be part of a real rape).
But building a Weirdtopia around “nonconsensual lovemaking” or “risky dating” isn’t as simple as substituting rape fantasy for rape, because the concept of “rape” isn’t just about the danger of death or damage. It’s about violation of a boundary of consent that you draw around your sexual persona. (To see the potential independence, consider having a naked photo of yourself posted to the Internet against your will.)
Even the most extreme sort of rape fantasy—the sort I once read a woman describe as “carrying through to where he finally spits on me and walks away”—is still, in some sense, under the control of the fantasizer; you’re choosing to imagine it.
And this will, to some degree or other, be different for women than for men; maintaining/losing control of your sexuality on this deeper level is going to tap into female drives more strongly than male drives, for all the obvious reasons of evolutionary psychology.
The main scenario I was worried about was that women would read the story and assume I didn’t know about that part; I did think I managed to signal that I’m aware of the basics of rape fantasy (as opposed to just supposing that men had free sexual access to everything).
At the same time, 21st-century Western males are shocked by the idea of rape because it violates cultural assumptions about gentlemanly conduct and the rules of how men compete among themselves for women; so another possibility I was wondering about is if, indeed, men would simply be more shocked by the whole idea than women. It just wasn’t clear from the comments whether this was actually the case, or if my female readers were so offended as to not even bother commenting.
In terms of Weirdtopia, I was assuming “the boundaries of sexual consent have been withdrawn in different places” not “this part of human nature has been eliminated”. Maybe you never kiss anyone without their consent—that’s something that a lover freely withholds or gives, not necessarily only to a one true love, but still only to people chosen. So the psychological boundary is still there, the concept of consent is still there—it just doesn’t apply to sexual intercourse, per se.
In this case, they really wouldn’t have any concept analogous to our “rape”—beating someone up while kissing them? Attacking them, taking naked photos, and posting them to the Internet? And “beating someone up while having sex with them” would sound as strange to them, as “beating someone up while kissing them” does to us.
One similarly assumes that brothels are as common as restaurants and that nearly all citizens are rich enough to afford them, so that nonconsensual sex doesn’t become about sexual access for those who don’t have it. In fantasy-rape the rapist has to do most of the work, so if you just wanted sex, it would be easier to buy it.
In our own society, you can probably get away with slapping someone on the butt if they’ve been flirting with you. But doing it to a complete stranger with whom no current sexual tension exists, would be a wholly different matter. In the same sense, you could of course walk around wearing body armor to defend yourself from getting your butt slapped, but most people wouldn’t. In our society, following a complete stranger for an hour through public spaces, would be very unusual and annoying, even though it wouldn’t be at all surprising to do the same with someone whom you’d met only recently. We assume that having nonconsensual sex with a genuine random stranger would be at least that socially disreputable. Likewise, you should not be using lubricant or drugging the man to give him an erection, etcetera ad obvious.
The main remaining question is why Akon seems to think that women are at least somewhat likely to initiate nonconsensual sex. Physical disparities can be overcome by presuming that there’s a standard ‘risky dating’ drug that can easily be slipped into someone’s drink and which reduces muscular strength by 70%, or some such. But the last time I checked the statistics, it went something like “nearly all women and most men fantasize about being raped, but only half of men and nearly no women fantasize about initiating rape”. This is another case where the distributions don’t overlap well; a woman who wants a rape fantasy can with some work find a man with a fantasy of rape initiation, but the reverse case is a lot more difficult. Certainly women may often want to have sex with men who would refuse them if asked, but from there to fantasizing rape and finding the fantasy enjoyable is a different step. In Akon’s world, I’ve been waving my magical wand and assuming this is something that can be overcome with the right cultural upbringing—giving girls the right role models—which may or may not be the case.
I think that making men uncomfortable would be best done by simply pointing out that in a society where non-consensual sex was no longer illegal, non-consensual male-on-male sex would also not be illegal.
And at least that would move peoples minds away from imagining a world where women are defending themselves from rapists left and right, to one where men are just as preoccupied with defending THEMSELVES from rape as they are raping others. Clearly neither of those scenarios is what is occurring in the society you have imagined, but hopefully it would move people closer to a more gender-equitable reading rather than assuming youre talking about some sort of Gorean hellhole.
ok, so what you are saying is that in this hypothetical weirdtopia you’ve worked it out that women are more likely to initiate sex and to take it too far and disregard the signals of the male if he’s saying something like “no stop, I don’t want to”
which is certainly different from how we order the world in western society. and a valad premise on which to build a social-sci-fi story about the possible implications of such a role reversal. which is exactly what you haven’t done.
you just used the word “rape” which is a loaded word, when you should not have done so and with out showing the context in the story instead explaining here, I assume there is a scene between two characters later in the story wherein a male is taken advantage of by a female and it all becomes clear.
also female on male sexual assault is a very real thing today and again not to be taken lightly or mentioned but not shown or explained. I am aware I am commenting on your explanation, it is not an in-story explanation, I had to scroll all the way down here to see it.
(I must say here that I looked up Miss Manners on the point of women initiating relations and she says that when one plays the gentleman’s part one must be gentlemanly about it even if one happens to be a lady, the gentleman must gracefully accept a refusal and ladies always have the right to refuse or accept as they choose. this seems to square better with my actual experiences of asking men out.)
also you have supplied what seems like the kind of muddle minded defense and reasoning one might put behind something you as the author are sexually attracted too, which is fine, as I mentioned before you are in the company of sci-fi giants in that regard. might have been better done with an actual sex scene, if you are going for author appeal why not go all out?
I still feel that dropping in “rape is legal and it is not explained why this is so in the story and it was dropped in as a side comment purely to get a rise out of the audience” is an unnecessary part of the story to drop on the reader. I’m more shocked in terms of anthropological criticism than anything else.
oh yes, and I’m shocked, viscerally as a woman, at the idea of not having legal recourse in the case of a sexual assault, and of such an attack being my fault for a lack of constant vigilance. makes me think those anti-rape toothed condom/protectors as more practical than they already are.
someone mentioned that they could not think of an idea that would shock men emotionally and women intellectually the same way. I decided to give it a try: “oh yes and after age 30 we castrate all the males to reduce incidence of children born with trisonomy 23”
A number of people have asked about that feature of weirdtopia, and as far as I know, Eliezer has never answered.
ETA: My mistake. I was going by memory rather than checking the context. Eliezer has an answer upthread. I can’t say it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me, but I’ll give it another reading.
ETA2: I think I understand Eliezer’s ideas. I’m not sure the boundaries of sexual consent are that easily changed.
I can imagine a society where there are clear (or as clear as such things are among neurotypicals) signals for playing rape fantasies out. If it’s the latter level of clarity, it would be a nightmarish place for those who are bad at the signals, but good enough for fiction fodder.
It’s harder to imagine a society where there are no pairs of people where one person is attracted to the other while the other is emphatically and consistently repulsed by the first.
In the real world, men don’t like being bullied or harassed about sex. And this applies to heterosexual men being bullied or harassed by women. It’s just less likely to happen than the other way around.
Something I didn’t get around to posting in a previous discussion of relationships between men and women. There’s been a lot of talk about the difficulties for men of having to make the first move. Those difficulties are quite real, but there’s a non-obvious advantage—if you’re always making the first move, you can be sure (unless you’re being pushed by family or friends) that you’re making your own choices.
Sullivan, making your male audience uncomfortable is as easy as inserting a male-male kiss.
Sexual fantasies of being raped tend to be readily distinguishable from real rape as we know it. Receiving oral sex is a lot more common in rape fantasy than in rape (though (obvious disclaimer) it could certainly be part of a real rape).
But building a Weirdtopia around “nonconsensual lovemaking” or “risky dating” isn’t as simple as substituting rape fantasy for rape, because the concept of “rape” isn’t just about the danger of death or damage. It’s about violation of a boundary of consent that you draw around your sexual persona. (To see the potential independence, consider having a naked photo of yourself posted to the Internet against your will.)
Even the most extreme sort of rape fantasy—the sort I once read a woman describe as “carrying through to where he finally spits on me and walks away”—is still, in some sense, under the control of the fantasizer; you’re choosing to imagine it.
And this will, to some degree or other, be different for women than for men; maintaining/losing control of your sexuality on this deeper level is going to tap into female drives more strongly than male drives, for all the obvious reasons of evolutionary psychology.
The main scenario I was worried about was that women would read the story and assume I didn’t know about that part; I did think I managed to signal that I’m aware of the basics of rape fantasy (as opposed to just supposing that men had free sexual access to everything).
At the same time, 21st-century Western males are shocked by the idea of rape because it violates cultural assumptions about gentlemanly conduct and the rules of how men compete among themselves for women; so another possibility I was wondering about is if, indeed, men would simply be more shocked by the whole idea than women. It just wasn’t clear from the comments whether this was actually the case, or if my female readers were so offended as to not even bother commenting.
In terms of Weirdtopia, I was assuming “the boundaries of sexual consent have been withdrawn in different places” not “this part of human nature has been eliminated”. Maybe you never kiss anyone without their consent—that’s something that a lover freely withholds or gives, not necessarily only to a one true love, but still only to people chosen. So the psychological boundary is still there, the concept of consent is still there—it just doesn’t apply to sexual intercourse, per se.
In this case, they really wouldn’t have any concept analogous to our “rape”—beating someone up while kissing them? Attacking them, taking naked photos, and posting them to the Internet? And “beating someone up while having sex with them” would sound as strange to them, as “beating someone up while kissing them” does to us.
One similarly assumes that brothels are as common as restaurants and that nearly all citizens are rich enough to afford them, so that nonconsensual sex doesn’t become about sexual access for those who don’t have it. In fantasy-rape the rapist has to do most of the work, so if you just wanted sex, it would be easier to buy it.
In our own society, you can probably get away with slapping someone on the butt if they’ve been flirting with you. But doing it to a complete stranger with whom no current sexual tension exists, would be a wholly different matter. In the same sense, you could of course walk around wearing body armor to defend yourself from getting your butt slapped, but most people wouldn’t. In our society, following a complete stranger for an hour through public spaces, would be very unusual and annoying, even though it wouldn’t be at all surprising to do the same with someone whom you’d met only recently. We assume that having nonconsensual sex with a genuine random stranger would be at least that socially disreputable. Likewise, you should not be using lubricant or drugging the man to give him an erection, etcetera ad obvious.
The main remaining question is why Akon seems to think that women are at least somewhat likely to initiate nonconsensual sex. Physical disparities can be overcome by presuming that there’s a standard ‘risky dating’ drug that can easily be slipped into someone’s drink and which reduces muscular strength by 70%, or some such. But the last time I checked the statistics, it went something like “nearly all women and most men fantasize about being raped, but only half of men and nearly no women fantasize about initiating rape”. This is another case where the distributions don’t overlap well; a woman who wants a rape fantasy can with some work find a man with a fantasy of rape initiation, but the reverse case is a lot more difficult. Certainly women may often want to have sex with men who would refuse them if asked, but from there to fantasizing rape and finding the fantasy enjoyable is a different step. In Akon’s world, I’ve been waving my magical wand and assuming this is something that can be overcome with the right cultural upbringing—giving girls the right role models—which may or may not be the case.
I think that making men uncomfortable would be best done by simply pointing out that in a society where non-consensual sex was no longer illegal, non-consensual male-on-male sex would also not be illegal.
And at least that would move peoples minds away from imagining a world where women are defending themselves from rapists left and right, to one where men are just as preoccupied with defending THEMSELVES from rape as they are raping others. Clearly neither of those scenarios is what is occurring in the society you have imagined, but hopefully it would move people closer to a more gender-equitable reading rather than assuming youre talking about some sort of Gorean hellhole.
ok, so what you are saying is that in this hypothetical weirdtopia you’ve worked it out that women are more likely to initiate sex and to take it too far and disregard the signals of the male if he’s saying something like “no stop, I don’t want to”
which is certainly different from how we order the world in western society. and a valad premise on which to build a social-sci-fi story about the possible implications of such a role reversal. which is exactly what you haven’t done.
you just used the word “rape” which is a loaded word, when you should not have done so and with out showing the context in the story instead explaining here, I assume there is a scene between two characters later in the story wherein a male is taken advantage of by a female and it all becomes clear.
also female on male sexual assault is a very real thing today and again not to be taken lightly or mentioned but not shown or explained. I am aware I am commenting on your explanation, it is not an in-story explanation, I had to scroll all the way down here to see it.
(I must say here that I looked up Miss Manners on the point of women initiating relations and she says that when one plays the gentleman’s part one must be gentlemanly about it even if one happens to be a lady, the gentleman must gracefully accept a refusal and ladies always have the right to refuse or accept as they choose. this seems to square better with my actual experiences of asking men out.)
also you have supplied what seems like the kind of muddle minded defense and reasoning one might put behind something you as the author are sexually attracted too, which is fine, as I mentioned before you are in the company of sci-fi giants in that regard. might have been better done with an actual sex scene, if you are going for author appeal why not go all out?
I still feel that dropping in “rape is legal and it is not explained why this is so in the story and it was dropped in as a side comment purely to get a rise out of the audience” is an unnecessary part of the story to drop on the reader. I’m more shocked in terms of anthropological criticism than anything else.
oh yes, and I’m shocked, viscerally as a woman, at the idea of not having legal recourse in the case of a sexual assault, and of such an attack being my fault for a lack of constant vigilance. makes me think those anti-rape toothed condom/protectors as more practical than they already are.
someone mentioned that they could not think of an idea that would shock men emotionally and women intellectually the same way.
I decided to give it a try: “oh yes and after age 30 we castrate all the males to reduce incidence of children born with trisonomy 23”
A number of people have asked about that feature of weirdtopia, and as far as I know, Eliezer has never answered.
ETA: My mistake. I was going by memory rather than checking the context. Eliezer has an answer upthread. I can’t say it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me, but I’ll give it another reading.
ETA2: I think I understand Eliezer’s ideas. I’m not sure the boundaries of sexual consent are that easily changed.
I can imagine a society where there are clear (or as clear as such things are among neurotypicals) signals for playing rape fantasies out. If it’s the latter level of clarity, it would be a nightmarish place for those who are bad at the signals, but good enough for fiction fodder.
It’s harder to imagine a society where there are no pairs of people where one person is attracted to the other while the other is emphatically and consistently repulsed by the first.
In the real world, men don’t like being bullied or harassed about sex. And this applies to heterosexual men being bullied or harassed by women. It’s just less likely to happen than the other way around.
Something I didn’t get around to posting in a previous discussion of relationships between men and women. There’s been a lot of talk about the difficulties for men of having to make the first move. Those difficulties are quite real, but there’s a non-obvious advantage—if you’re always making the first move, you can be sure (unless you’re being pushed by family or friends) that you’re making your own choices.
Um, grandparent of above comment much? http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_confessor_48/qtf
inspiring