I won’t respond to the first half of your post because you have done essentially nothing but rephrase my own comment in a seemingly argumentative tone.
Which parts of their past, specifically, would simplicio and his wife—or, if you prefer, Average Het Male and Average Het Female—find “abusive and toxic” ?
Sexual advances that seemed innocuous to the men making them would be perceived as any combination of coercive, inconsiderate, manipulative, objectifying, or something else I can’t think of at the moment
Tones of interaction and patterns of arguments that again, seemed innocuous to the men making them would be considered patronizing, condescending, paternalistic, etc.
Social behaviors that men previously accepted and may have argued for the legitimacy of such as pornography, prostitution, penis-in-vagina sex, body policing of women, objectification of women in media, objectifying language directed towards women, aggressive metaphors and language describing sex, and heterosexual relationships will be seen as tangibly oppressive and violent
Division of various tasks, such as any combination of housework, child-rearing, emotion work (especially emotion work), would be seen as unfair, constricting, and demanding
That was an unfocused four minutes of brainstorming, but if I sat down with a patriarchal textbook used in any undergrad relationship psychology class, I could probably write a novella.
At a first glance your type of feminism seems to seek to put both men AND women in smaller and darker cages, as it seems to seek to ban more and more behaviors for both genders, instead of permit more and more.
Seriously “penis-in-vagina sex”? I don’t think there’s ever been a society so oppressive to both genders as to ban even that.
Within the context of genders, those things are oppressive. I don’t imagine sex of any kind would be problematic in a feminist society.
If you want a more in-depth view of heterosexual sex under patriarchy, I recommend Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin.
But in short, consider the utility distribution of PIV sex for men, and consider it for women, under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex. I’ll leave this as an exercise for you, rather than spelling it out explicitly.
under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex.
What happens if a woman desires to have PiV sex, seeks out a man to have it with (rejecting unqualified men in the process), and enjoys the experience ? The reason Andrea Dworkin (and radical feminists in general) is often portrayed as “sex-negative” (*) is because, as far as I can tell, she denies that such a scenario can exist, thus directly contradicting the life experience of many women.
Thus, we end up in a peculiar situation where radical feminists appear to be seeking to actively make women’s lives worse, by denying them an activity that many women see as an important aspect of their self-expression (not to mention, a lot of fun).
Of course, a radical feminist might answer by saying, “my end goal is not to improve the lives of women, but to destroy the patriarchy by any means necessary”, but I’m not sure if any real radical feminists would answer this way.
(*) It’s also why Dworkin is considered to be a kind of troll by some liberal feminists; IMO unjustly so, since she sincerely believes the things she says.
I did read through Intercourse in college, but it was a long time ago, and, knowing my past self, I probably only skimmed it. My main impression of it at the time was that Dworkin a). really dislikes men, and b). dehumanizes women. IMO (b) is even worse than (a); at least she recognizes that men are people, albeit unpleasant ones.
Anyway, that was a bit off topic. What is it that I’m supposed to be figuring out by reading Dworkin ? And what happens if I do read the relevant passages, but still conclude that she is wrong ?
She talk about women’s wants a lot less than I expected. About cis women who want intercourse with cis men, she writes:
Women have wanted intercourse to work and have submitted—with regret or with enthusiasm, real or faked—even though or even when it does not. [...] Women have also wanted intercourse to work in this sense: women have wanted intercourse to be, for women, an experience of equality and passion, sensuality and intimacy. Women have a vision of love that includes men as human too; and women want the human in men, including in the act of intercourse. Even without the dignity of equal power, women have believed in the redeeming potential of love. There has been—despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex—a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible.
She might be saying “Women only ever want intercourse with men they love”. Even if you count any kind of liking and desire for intimacy as “love”, this rules out cruising for casual sex.
She also says things about women wanting very gentle intercourse without thrusting, whereas men go poundy-poundy. This is quite unlike the reports of sex bloggers and friends, whose preferences are varied.
Then she says women who seek intercourse are like women who accept and perform genital mutilation and foot binding. So yeah, basically “hate it but brainwashed into thinking they like it”.
This seems to be completely unfalsifiable; anyone who says “But I like penis in my vagina, there are nerve endings there that like stimulated” can be told “You’re brainwashed by the patriarchy”, or “You’re not (enough of) a woman so you can never understand”.
There does seem to be a bit of a trope of certain sorts of scholars (the early Wilhelm Reich comes to mind) developing strong and specific opinions on what kind of sex other people are supposed to have — down to specific positions and motions! — in order to be enlightened, liberated, rational, or holy. One wonders by what means a person could arrive at such knowledge, and what other hypotheses were raised to attention and dismissed by evidence.
This isn’t just about sex, of course. There are all sorts of claims that people don’t really want what they say they want, and they don’t want what they seek out, either.
This essay introduced me to the idea that such claims are pervasive. Anyone have a more general overview?
Even at Less Wrong—you won’t really like that shiny toy so much, give the money to SI instead!
And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
I won’t respond to the first half of your post because you have done essentially nothing but rephrase my own comment in a seemingly argumentative tone.
That was not my intention. What I meant was, “we should taboo the word ‘oppression’, and it would be great if everyone else did, too”.
Thanks for your examples. One thing I noticed about them is that they are almost entirely male-centric. For example, you say,
“Sexual advances that seemed innocuous to the men making them would be perceived as any combination of coercive, etc.”
What about the women, though ? Would the women likewise perceive such behavior differently than they do now ? We are discussing feminism, after all, not male-ism.
Not to harp on this point, but you mention things like “penis-in-vagina sex” and “heterosexual relationships” in general as the kinds of behaviors that “will be seen as tangibly oppressive and violent”. Is it your contention that (most) women today see such behaviors in this negative light ? If not, then why not ? Is it because modern women are almost as brainwashed by the patriarchy as modern men, or for some other reason ? Or did I misinterpret your claim ?
The reason I ask is because, on its surface, this claim sounds like something a “straw feminist” might say, and I want to avoid jumping to any unwarranted conclusions.
child-rearing, emotion work (especially emotion work), would be seen as unfair, constricting, and demanding
What is “emotion work” ? This is the first time I’d seen this term.
Emotional work is everything one needs to do to maintain a positive affect because the positive affect is expected from your social role.
For example, you don’t think that the fast-food worker is really that happy to see you?
If one spouse in a relationship is expected to repress emotions in this way, that’s unfair. If society doesn’t give the spouse credit for the circumstance, that’s even worse.
Historically, that spouse was the wife—hence feminism’s concern about emotional work.
For example, you don’t think that the fast-food worker is really that happy to see you?
If one spouse in a relationship is expected to repress emotions in this way, that’s unfair. If society doesn’t give the spouse credit for the circumstance, that’s even worse.
Thanks, that’s a good example. I had encountered an instance of the phenomenon in the context of male demands for women to “just smile,” but had not generalized it.
What about the women, though ? Would the women likewise perceive such behavior differently than they do now ? We are discussing feminism, after all, not male-ism.
Yes. All my statements should be read as true for both partners.
Is it your contention that (most) women today see such behaviors in this negative light ?
No.
Is it because modern women are almost as brainwashed by the patriarchy as modern men, or for some other reason
Yes, because women are more “brainwashed” by the patriarchy than men.
I consider TimS’s explanation of emotion work to be accurate, with the possible addition of being responsible of the emotional well-being of others at the expense of one’s own well-being.
I am trying to be cautious when googling any terms [radical] feminists use, because the meanings they assign to them often differs radically from common usage. For example, words like “patriarchy”, “oppression”, “privilege”, etc., have very specific technical meanings in a [radical] feminist context, and if I googled them, I’d form a wrong impression. That is perfectly ok, IMO; every discipline has its jargon, f.ex. the words “client”, “handshake” and “slave” are used in computer science in radically different ways as compared to common speech.
Anyway, you said that “PiV sex” and “heterosexual relationships” would be seen by future utopian societies as “tangibly oppressive and violent”, but I find this statement difficult to reconcile with your earlier one, where you claimed that, in a feminist society, sex of any kind would be ok. If PiV sex is inherently oppressive, surely people wouldn’t engage in it, even in a feminist society ? On the other hand, if PiV sex is not inherently oppressive, it would seem that some people could enjoy it even today, if the right conditions are met.
I have a feeling I’m missing a key part of your argument, but I’m not sure what it is.
On the other hand, if PiV sex is not inherently oppressive, it would seem that some people could enjoy it even today, if the right conditions are met.
From what I’ve inferred (this inference may be wrong), eridu seems to be asserting that “radical feminists” (not necessarily including himself) believe that these conditions are currently impossible to be met. My intuition is that this is for the same reason that they became feminists in the first place (a feminist subset of anthropomorphic-like phenomena?) - that is, that they were/are surrounded with almost exclusively ultra-patriarchal-behaving groups, where it is common that men get blowjobs in return for opening car doors for women and obtain sex in return for gifting high-heeled shoes (and yet of course, the reciprocals do not apply).
I feel like most of what this position considers literally omnipresent in everyone but themselves is a poor representation of some cultures and social groups. For example, the PiV point is definitely not applicable everywhere. In my own circles, there is not a single man or woman that considers PiV sex in any way offensive, dominating, or any other of the qualities that would qualify it as “patriarchal”:
There are two people, they play a sport (something very fun for both), one of them happens to be a woman, the other happens to be a man. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
There are two people, they watch pictures of their childhood and reminisce on their grewing up together (something very personal and intimate for both), one of them happens to be a man, the other happens to be a woman. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
There are two people, they rub parts of their bodies together while having strong positive emotions (something very fun for both + something very personal and intimate for both), one of them happens to be a man, the other happens to be a woman. This particular woman-man combination happenstance happens to geometrically permit parts of their bodies to rub in a particular even-more-fun manner which is difficult for other gender combinations. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
By my understanding, even radical feminists agree with my conclusion that, ceteris paribus, none of those three situations are sexist or patriarchal. However, they appear to be implicitly assuming that the third is virtually impossible in our society, because all men are brainwashed to demand sex and deny denial, and all women are brainwashed to not enjoy sex by their own authority or somesuch.
I see and know of tons of “patriarchal” (gender-unfair, discriminatory, negative-emotion-inducing, etc.) behaviors, yes. Are those behaviors common in the circles I frequent? No.
No girls go around in quests of the romance of their prince charming, no would-be gentlemen open doors specifically for attractive women and no one else (in fact, we have a formula, which I devised long ago, for when it is best to open a door for someone and when it is best not to or to offer), no sex happens that isn’t wanted by both parties for the sex (and probably for that reason, it seems there’s a lot more of it going on than for the north-american average relationship), there’s a lot of reciprocal affection, no gender-specific hobbies that I can tell (the stereotypes of shopping, porn, sports games on TV, etc. really do not apply, seriously—in fact, if it’s stereotypically gender-based, it probably doesn’t apply to the people I frequent, unless it’s about reproductive organs bleeding on a monthly basis or wall-mounted urine receptacles or some other thing we literally physically can’t change).
I could go on and on and on (and on and on and on and on and more, but I’ll let you do the copy-pasting mentally and spare my fingers a bit—I must’ve rewritten this post five times overall with all the rewording and correcting and editing before-posting) about comparisons between behaviors I observe here in myself and my circles and what is stereotypical, or what has been mentioned here, but that’s not even the issue. I am being accused, nay, all people including me are being accused of recursive denial-in-denial that prevents even conscious effort towards nondiscrimination from not being “patriarchal”, whatever that word means.
Yes, I get confrontational about it, because yes, it goes against every evidence I have and everything I observe to accept this accusation. I have now read more wikipedia articles and feminist blogs than I care to count on the issue, and I have been extremely careful of selection bias, confirmation bias, privileging the hypothesis, etc., and yet I only see more evidence that the “Patriarchy” we are being accused of does not even exist in my current local subculture.
Yes, the “society at large” outside my own subculture is largely male-dominant in often subtle ways. However, the “society at large” is also experimentally stupid, able to completely do nothing while watching people die and being certain that they are dying, give people cruel and lethal treatment merely because someone tells them to with authoritative voice, etc.
I do not contest that there is a large patriarchy at work in most, not all, of society, but rather the idea that the patriarchy alone/itself deserves special correction, rather than first raising the sanity of everyone in all matters. This, however, is tangential.
What I am opposed to is the general claim that all society (including me and my circles/groups/subcultures/etc.) is necessarily very “patriarchal” and very gender-unfair and not improving nor making worthwhile progress of any kind, with the sole exception of a very specific subgroup that must identify themselves as Radical Feminists.
The above claim is both infuriating and extremely improbable, given the evidence that I see.
Going by all that I have explained in this comment, I therefore infer that it is not an argument that you are missing, but evidence—the same evidence that I am missing.
I’ll stake a 70% probability-in-my-model that either myself or eridu or both is/are missing key strong evidence and that this causes the disagreement, if there is indeed a real disagreement and not merely a problem of falling trees.
we have a formula, which I devised long ago, for when it is best to open a door for someone
What formula, out of curiosity? (In my case, I always hold doors open for people within a few metres behind me unless it’d be more cumbersome for me to do that than for them to open it again—e.g. if I’m carrying a box or something—regardless of their sex, age, physical attractiveness, marital status, and whether I know them.)
I do the same (with the radius of a few meters somewhat larger for elderly people), but I sometimes wonder whether my cutoff distance is the appropriate one, like in the Ambiguous Zone smbc.
In the situation described in the comic, I would ask “need help?” out loud without moving towards them until they say yes (where by “would” I mean ‘recommend’—not sure what I would actually do in such a situation, due to akrasia).
With doors, when there’s someone close but not that close, I push the door forward and move on, so that (if it’s slow enough) it will still be open by the time the person behind me arrives.
I happen to agree with you (I think), but still, it sounds like you’re generalizing from one example. Your personal life experience is no substitute for hard data. Furthermore, if eridu is right, then you are an incredibly poor judge of whether or not the interactions you describe are free of oppression in your personal sub-culture; thus, I doubt he’d find your post persuasive.
What I am opposed to is the general claim that all society … is necessarily very “patriarchal” and very gender-unfair and not improving nor making worthwhile progress of any kind, with the sole exception of a very specific subgroup that must identify themselves as Radical Feminists.
Agreed. As far as I understand, eridu believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of believes regarding gender and feminism, is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/its/etc. own best interests. Only radical feminists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
Eridu, would the above paragraph be a fair—if possibly somewhat harsh—summary of your views ?
Agreed. As far as I understand, eridu believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of believes regarding gender and feminism, is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/its/etc. own best interests. Only radical feminists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
As far as I understand, EY believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of beliefs regarding cognitive bias and probability theory is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/their best interests. Only Bayesian rationalists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
Which is to say, if non-Bayesians are predictably dumb, then a feminist (of any kind, even) would say that non-feminists are predictably dumb.
So yes, the above paragraph is fair, but it’s also misleading—my viewpoint on non-feminists is equivalent to LW’s collective viewpoint on Christianity.
As far as I understand, EY believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of beliefs regarding cognitive bias and probability theory is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/their best interests.
I don’t know if EY would agree with this statement or not. I personally would disagree, however. Sure, without the understanding of “cognitive biases and probability theory”, a person is liable to make suboptimal decisions. However, I believe that most people are competent enough to achieve at least some of their goals in a satisfactory fashion.
The difference between you and me, as far as I understand, is that you believe that unless everyone sets “destruction of the patriarchy using the methods of radical feminism” as their primary goal, they should not be allowed to make any decisions that you don’t approve of. I personally reserve that level of outrage for actions that clearly, demonstrably, hurt other people—f.ex., teaching creationism instead of evolution in schools, restricting women’s right to vote, etc. By contrast, I am perfectly content to let people spend (I would say, “waste”, but they’d disagree) their Sunday mornings in church, if they so choose.
To be sure, it’s fairly easy to demonstrate that a patriarchy of some sort does exist, and that it is harmful. But your concept of “patriarchy” is rather more all-encompassing than that held by most other feminists; and in some cases your claims border on extraordinary. That doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, only that I’m not ready to side with you until you (^) have provided overwhelming proof—which you had not done. I’m not saying that you can’t provide such proof, only that you haven’t so far.
(^) Or any other radical feminist, doesn’t have to be you specifically.
As far as I understand, EY believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of beliefs regarding cognitive bias and probability theory is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/their best interests. Only Bayesian rationalists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
“Bayesian reasoner” is a theoretical entity. The folks you meet on LW are “aspiring rationalists” (more or less), and it’s important not to confuse the two — especially important for aspiring rationalists. There is a big difference between learning about a few cognitive biases, and being capable of mathematically ideal reasoning on any topic relevant to one’s best interests. Anyone who claims the latter is, well, probably full of shit.
I happen to agree with you (I think), but still, it sounds like you’re generalizing from one example. Your personal life experience is no substitute for hard data.
He said:
I see and know of tons of “patriarchal” (gender-unfair, discriminatory, negative-emotion-inducing, etc.) behaviors, yes.
So it’s clear that he’s not claiming that his claims about his social circle apply to the rest of society.
and yet I only see more evidence that the “Patriarchy” we are being accused of does not even exist in my current local subculture.
There are lots of parts of popular culture that are fairly blatantly sexist (e.g. Barbie dolls and female body expectations). Does your subculture always condemn those aspects of popular culture? Does it do anything to change those norms?
If not, then “Patriarchy” exists to some degree in your sub-culture. Does eradicating Patriarchy enhance social justice? I think the answer is clearly yes.
Must it be your highest social-justice priority? I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides. For example, my day job is about dealing with disability discrimination in public schools. I wouldn’t assert that this does all that much to eradicate patriarchy.
Does your subculture always condemn those aspects of popular culture? Does it do anything to change those norms?
No and yes.
Many behaviors do clearly slip through the cracks. Present a “perfect Feminist” with the claim that they never act in any manner that could possibly be Patriarchal, and I’m sure most of LessWrong would dispute the claim and find evidence that This Human, Like Other Humans, Is Not Infinitely Perfect. I would like to think that I make no such bogus claims.
The Schelling point/fence, however, is that at the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does, and the rate of improvement seems to me as to be faster than the accumulating-over-time damage of the remaining patriarchy—all obviously attributable to diminishing returns. Patriarchal behavior is, fortunately, not an infinite neg-resource. (a few applause lights here, but this was typed-as-thought, so leaving them in seems useful)
Now, as for whether Patriarchy is present, well, if defined as such (“to some degree”) it is obviously present in these subcultures in at least some way or another—it is even more unlikely that no “Patriarchy”-like behavior whatsoever exists than the claim I oppose in the grandparent.
However, I find that the above does not carve reality at its joints, to use LW jargon—the cluster of behaviorspace, which I was pointed to and told was “Patriarchy”, has mostly in common that it mostly generates or indirectly contributes to / allows gender-unfairness, social injustice, sexism, etc. Many key points like identity, control, status, “dignity” (technical meanings, not the religious-soul or similar connotations), subconscious conformity to expectations, anticipation-of-expected-behavior, behavior programming, subconscious reprogramming of believed-wants (though perhaps not necessarily of true wants), etc. seem to show up too in this space. The radical feminism portrayed in these threads sometimes appears to ignore this concept entirely, and assumes that anything that could, in at least some contexts, become a point of “Patriarchy”, is therefore Patriarchy, and is therefore something to be absolutely eradicated at all costs.
Therefore, if I write a user’s manual for Tampax products, I am an Unholy Beacon of Supreme Evil, for reasons I hope are obvious enough, and that I hope are either very strawman or sufficiently absurd to expose the need for a Schelling fence.
the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
One can argue about whether video gamer culture is above average intelligence (I suspect yes), but here is strong evidence it is nowhere near the marginal benefit line for gender relations. If video game culture were closer to the line, I would expect the described behavior (which is ridiculously unacceptable) would receive far more disparagement than it does receive.
The concept of fan service (particularly the way it is currently gendered) is similar evidence in the anime/manga subculture.
the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
Have you counted opportunity costs? Maybe there is some action his subgroup could take which would have a net positive effect towards eradicating patriarchy, but that would mean they could spend less time taking some other action which could have a larger positive effect towards some other goal.
Such an argument may not be as “dumb or straw-mannish” as all that, depending on your approach to prioritizing problems to solve.
For example, if you believed that destroying the patriarchy was possible given our current limited resources, and that doing so would ameliorate or eliminate a host of other problems, you might focus on it as the low-hanging fruit. Sure, building an FAI and ushering in the Singularity (just for example) would net you a much larger gain, but the amount of effort you’d have to spend on it, as well as the lower probability of success, makes it a less attractive goal overall.
So far nobody has completed the exercise I was slightly obtuse about asking for, which was to give a breakdown of the distribution of outcomes and expected utility for those outcomes of PIV sex for men and women under patriarchy (feel free to substitute varying different locales, such as “sex-positive liberal feminist patriarchy” and “christian conservative patriarchy” and even “DaFranker’s utopian subculture”).
I won’t respond to the first half of your post because you have done essentially nothing but rephrase my own comment in a seemingly argumentative tone.
Sexual advances that seemed innocuous to the men making them would be perceived as any combination of coercive, inconsiderate, manipulative, objectifying, or something else I can’t think of at the moment
Tones of interaction and patterns of arguments that again, seemed innocuous to the men making them would be considered patronizing, condescending, paternalistic, etc.
Social behaviors that men previously accepted and may have argued for the legitimacy of such as pornography, prostitution, penis-in-vagina sex, body policing of women, objectification of women in media, objectifying language directed towards women, aggressive metaphors and language describing sex, and heterosexual relationships will be seen as tangibly oppressive and violent
Division of various tasks, such as any combination of housework, child-rearing, emotion work (especially emotion work), would be seen as unfair, constricting, and demanding
That was an unfocused four minutes of brainstorming, but if I sat down with a patriarchal textbook used in any undergrad relationship psychology class, I could probably write a novella.
At a first glance your type of feminism seems to seek to put both men AND women in smaller and darker cages, as it seems to seek to ban more and more behaviors for both genders, instead of permit more and more.
Seriously “penis-in-vagina sex”? I don’t think there’s ever been a society so oppressive to both genders as to ban even that.
Shakers!
Ah, true. And they were rather egalitarian-minded too.
It’s not often one sees single-word comments this insightful on the Interwebz. Kudos!
Within the context of genders, those things are oppressive. I don’t imagine sex of any kind would be problematic in a feminist society.
If you want a more in-depth view of heterosexual sex under patriarchy, I recommend Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin.
But in short, consider the utility distribution of PIV sex for men, and consider it for women, under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex. I’ll leave this as an exercise for you, rather than spelling it out explicitly.
You might also want to read the blog articles from radtransfem.wordpress.com that I linked above.
What happens if a woman desires to have PiV sex, seeks out a man to have it with (rejecting unqualified men in the process), and enjoys the experience ? The reason Andrea Dworkin (and radical feminists in general) is often portrayed as “sex-negative” (*) is because, as far as I can tell, she denies that such a scenario can exist, thus directly contradicting the life experience of many women.
Thus, we end up in a peculiar situation where radical feminists appear to be seeking to actively make women’s lives worse, by denying them an activity that many women see as an important aspect of their self-expression (not to mention, a lot of fun).
Of course, a radical feminist might answer by saying, “my end goal is not to improve the lives of women, but to destroy the patriarchy by any means necessary”, but I’m not sure if any real radical feminists would answer this way.
(*) It’s also why Dworkin is considered to be a kind of troll by some liberal feminists; IMO unjustly so, since she sincerely believes the things she says.
Why don’t you read Intercourse for yourself and figure out if that is indeed the case?
Figure out if what is the case ?
I did read through Intercourse in college, but it was a long time ago, and, knowing my past self, I probably only skimmed it. My main impression of it at the time was that Dworkin a). really dislikes men, and b). dehumanizes women. IMO (b) is even worse than (a); at least she recognizes that men are people, albeit unpleasant ones.
Anyway, that was a bit off topic. What is it that I’m supposed to be figuring out by reading Dworkin ? And what happens if I do read the relevant passages, but still conclude that she is wrong ?
She talk about women’s wants a lot less than I expected. About cis women who want intercourse with cis men, she writes:
She might be saying “Women only ever want intercourse with men they love”. Even if you count any kind of liking and desire for intimacy as “love”, this rules out cruising for casual sex.
She also says things about women wanting very gentle intercourse without thrusting, whereas men go poundy-poundy. This is quite unlike the reports of sex bloggers and friends, whose preferences are varied.
Then she says women who seek intercourse are like women who accept and perform genital mutilation and foot binding. So yeah, basically “hate it but brainwashed into thinking they like it”.
This seems to be completely unfalsifiable; anyone who says “But I like penis in my vagina, there are nerve endings there that like stimulated” can be told “You’re brainwashed by the patriarchy”, or “You’re not (enough of) a woman so you can never understand”.
There does seem to be a bit of a trope of certain sorts of scholars (the early Wilhelm Reich comes to mind) developing strong and specific opinions on what kind of sex other people are supposed to have — down to specific positions and motions! — in order to be enlightened, liberated, rational, or holy. One wonders by what means a person could arrive at such knowledge, and what other hypotheses were raised to attention and dismissed by evidence.
This isn’t just about sex, of course. There are all sorts of claims that people don’t really want what they say they want, and they don’t want what they seek out, either.
This essay introduced me to the idea that such claims are pervasive. Anyone have a more general overview?
Even at Less Wrong—you won’t really like that shiny toy so much, give the money to SI instead!
This is one of my favorite essays on libertarianism, by the way.
Most likely they are just rationalizing in a pseudo-scientific/moralistic light whatever sexual fantasies/phobias they happen to have.
And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
Good point.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
Better value for money? If you check the coefficients on the perceived quality increase, they pretty strongly recommend saving your money.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
Yes, that was my initial criticism of that argument. There are other flaws as well.
For what it’s worth, I second this recommendation. But the book is mostly literary criticism.
If her mother hadn’t had PIV sex, she wouldn’t exist in the first place.
That was not my intention. What I meant was, “we should taboo the word ‘oppression’, and it would be great if everyone else did, too”.
Thanks for your examples. One thing I noticed about them is that they are almost entirely male-centric. For example, you say,
What about the women, though ? Would the women likewise perceive such behavior differently than they do now ? We are discussing feminism, after all, not male-ism.
Not to harp on this point, but you mention things like “penis-in-vagina sex” and “heterosexual relationships” in general as the kinds of behaviors that “will be seen as tangibly oppressive and violent”. Is it your contention that (most) women today see such behaviors in this negative light ? If not, then why not ? Is it because modern women are almost as brainwashed by the patriarchy as modern men, or for some other reason ? Or did I misinterpret your claim ?
The reason I ask is because, on its surface, this claim sounds like something a “straw feminist” might say, and I want to avoid jumping to any unwarranted conclusions.
What is “emotion work” ? This is the first time I’d seen this term.
Emotional work is everything one needs to do to maintain a positive affect because the positive affect is expected from your social role.
For example, you don’t think that the fast-food worker is really that happy to see you?
If one spouse in a relationship is expected to repress emotions in this way, that’s unfair. If society doesn’t give the spouse credit for the circumstance, that’s even worse.
Historically, that spouse was the wife—hence feminism’s concern about emotional work.
Thanks, that’s a good example. I had encountered an instance of the phenomenon in the context of male demands for women to “just smile,” but had not generalized it.
Yes. All my statements should be read as true for both partners.
No.
Yes, because women are more “brainwashed” by the patriarchy than men.
I consider TimS’s explanation of emotion work to be accurate, with the possible addition of being responsible of the emotional well-being of others at the expense of one’s own well-being.
The term is very googlable.
These are all good answers.
I am trying to be cautious when googling any terms [radical] feminists use, because the meanings they assign to them often differs radically from common usage. For example, words like “patriarchy”, “oppression”, “privilege”, etc., have very specific technical meanings in a [radical] feminist context, and if I googled them, I’d form a wrong impression. That is perfectly ok, IMO; every discipline has its jargon, f.ex. the words “client”, “handshake” and “slave” are used in computer science in radically different ways as compared to common speech.
Anyway, you said that “PiV sex” and “heterosexual relationships” would be seen by future utopian societies as “tangibly oppressive and violent”, but I find this statement difficult to reconcile with your earlier one, where you claimed that, in a feminist society, sex of any kind would be ok. If PiV sex is inherently oppressive, surely people wouldn’t engage in it, even in a feminist society ? On the other hand, if PiV sex is not inherently oppressive, it would seem that some people could enjoy it even today, if the right conditions are met.
I have a feeling I’m missing a key part of your argument, but I’m not sure what it is.
From what I’ve inferred (this inference may be wrong), eridu seems to be asserting that “radical feminists” (not necessarily including himself) believe that these conditions are currently impossible to be met. My intuition is that this is for the same reason that they became feminists in the first place (a feminist subset of anthropomorphic-like phenomena?) - that is, that they were/are surrounded with almost exclusively ultra-patriarchal-behaving groups, where it is common that men get blowjobs in return for opening car doors for women and obtain sex in return for gifting high-heeled shoes (and yet of course, the reciprocals do not apply).
I feel like most of what this position considers literally omnipresent in everyone but themselves is a poor representation of some cultures and social groups. For example, the PiV point is definitely not applicable everywhere. In my own circles, there is not a single man or woman that considers PiV sex in any way offensive, dominating, or any other of the qualities that would qualify it as “patriarchal”:
There are two people, they play a sport (something very fun for both), one of them happens to be a woman, the other happens to be a man. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
There are two people, they watch pictures of their childhood and reminisce on their grewing up together (something very personal and intimate for both), one of them happens to be a man, the other happens to be a woman. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
There are two people, they rub parts of their bodies together while having strong positive emotions (something very fun for both + something very personal and intimate for both), one of them happens to be a man, the other happens to be a woman. This particular woman-man combination happenstance happens to geometrically permit parts of their bodies to rub in a particular even-more-fun manner which is difficult for other gender combinations. This is not sexist or patriarchal, ceteris paribus.
By my understanding, even radical feminists agree with my conclusion that, ceteris paribus, none of those three situations are sexist or patriarchal. However, they appear to be implicitly assuming that the third is virtually impossible in our society, because all men are brainwashed to demand sex and deny denial, and all women are brainwashed to not enjoy sex by their own authority or somesuch.
I see and know of tons of “patriarchal” (gender-unfair, discriminatory, negative-emotion-inducing, etc.) behaviors, yes. Are those behaviors common in the circles I frequent? No.
No girls go around in quests of the romance of their prince charming, no would-be gentlemen open doors specifically for attractive women and no one else (in fact, we have a formula, which I devised long ago, for when it is best to open a door for someone and when it is best not to or to offer), no sex happens that isn’t wanted by both parties for the sex (and probably for that reason, it seems there’s a lot more of it going on than for the north-american average relationship), there’s a lot of reciprocal affection, no gender-specific hobbies that I can tell (the stereotypes of shopping, porn, sports games on TV, etc. really do not apply, seriously—in fact, if it’s stereotypically gender-based, it probably doesn’t apply to the people I frequent, unless it’s about reproductive organs bleeding on a monthly basis or wall-mounted urine receptacles or some other thing we literally physically can’t change).
I could go on and on and on (and on and on and on and on and more, but I’ll let you do the copy-pasting mentally and spare my fingers a bit—I must’ve rewritten this post five times overall with all the rewording and correcting and editing before-posting) about comparisons between behaviors I observe here in myself and my circles and what is stereotypical, or what has been mentioned here, but that’s not even the issue. I am being accused, nay, all people including me are being accused of recursive denial-in-denial that prevents even conscious effort towards nondiscrimination from not being “patriarchal”, whatever that word means.
Yes, I get confrontational about it, because yes, it goes against every evidence I have and everything I observe to accept this accusation. I have now read more wikipedia articles and feminist blogs than I care to count on the issue, and I have been extremely careful of selection bias, confirmation bias, privileging the hypothesis, etc., and yet I only see more evidence that the “Patriarchy” we are being accused of does not even exist in my current local subculture.
Yes, the “society at large” outside my own subculture is largely male-dominant in often subtle ways. However, the “society at large” is also experimentally stupid, able to completely do nothing while watching people die and being certain that they are dying, give people cruel and lethal treatment merely because someone tells them to with authoritative voice, etc.
I do not contest that there is a large patriarchy at work in most, not all, of society, but rather the idea that the patriarchy alone/itself deserves special correction, rather than first raising the sanity of everyone in all matters. This, however, is tangential.
What I am opposed to is the general claim that all society (including me and my circles/groups/subcultures/etc.) is necessarily very “patriarchal” and very gender-unfair and not improving nor making worthwhile progress of any kind, with the sole exception of a very specific subgroup that must identify themselves as Radical Feminists.
The above claim is both infuriating and extremely improbable, given the evidence that I see.
Going by all that I have explained in this comment, I therefore infer that it is not an argument that you are missing, but evidence—the same evidence that I am missing.
I’ll stake a 70% probability-in-my-model that either myself or eridu or both is/are missing key strong evidence and that this causes the disagreement, if there is indeed a real disagreement and not merely a problem of falling trees.
What formula, out of curiosity? (In my case, I always hold doors open for people within a few metres behind me unless it’d be more cumbersome for me to do that than for them to open it again—e.g. if I’m carrying a box or something—regardless of their sex, age, physical attractiveness, marital status, and whether I know them.)
I do the same (with the radius of a few meters somewhat larger for elderly people), but I sometimes wonder whether my cutoff distance is the appropriate one, like in the Ambiguous Zone smbc.
In the situation described in the comic, I would ask “need help?” out loud without moving towards them until they say yes (where by “would” I mean ‘recommend’—not sure what I would actually do in such a situation, due to akrasia).
With doors, when there’s someone close but not that close, I push the door forward and move on, so that (if it’s slow enough) it will still be open by the time the person behind me arrives.
I sorta prefer a closed door to a door swinging toward my face.
I happen to agree with you (I think), but still, it sounds like you’re generalizing from one example. Your personal life experience is no substitute for hard data. Furthermore, if eridu is right, then you are an incredibly poor judge of whether or not the interactions you describe are free of oppression in your personal sub-culture; thus, I doubt he’d find your post persuasive.
Agreed. As far as I understand, eridu believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of believes regarding gender and feminism, is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/its/etc. own best interests. Only radical feminists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
Eridu, would the above paragraph be a fair—if possibly somewhat harsh—summary of your views ?
As far as I understand, EY believes that anyone who does not subscribe to his very specific set of beliefs regarding cognitive bias and probability theory is simply not competent enough to judge what is in his/her/their best interests. Only Bayesian rationalists are competent enough to make those kinds of decisions.
Which is to say, if non-Bayesians are predictably dumb, then a feminist (of any kind, even) would say that non-feminists are predictably dumb.
So yes, the above paragraph is fair, but it’s also misleading—my viewpoint on non-feminists is equivalent to LW’s collective viewpoint on Christianity.
I don’t know if EY would agree with this statement or not. I personally would disagree, however. Sure, without the understanding of “cognitive biases and probability theory”, a person is liable to make suboptimal decisions. However, I believe that most people are competent enough to achieve at least some of their goals in a satisfactory fashion.
The difference between you and me, as far as I understand, is that you believe that unless everyone sets “destruction of the patriarchy using the methods of radical feminism” as their primary goal, they should not be allowed to make any decisions that you don’t approve of. I personally reserve that level of outrage for actions that clearly, demonstrably, hurt other people—f.ex., teaching creationism instead of evolution in schools, restricting women’s right to vote, etc. By contrast, I am perfectly content to let people spend (I would say, “waste”, but they’d disagree) their Sunday mornings in church, if they so choose.
To be sure, it’s fairly easy to demonstrate that a patriarchy of some sort does exist, and that it is harmful. But your concept of “patriarchy” is rather more all-encompassing than that held by most other feminists; and in some cases your claims border on extraordinary. That doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, only that I’m not ready to side with you until you (^) have provided overwhelming proof—which you had not done. I’m not saying that you can’t provide such proof, only that you haven’t so far.
(^) Or any other radical feminist, doesn’t have to be you specifically.
“Bayesian reasoner” is a theoretical entity. The folks you meet on LW are “aspiring rationalists” (more or less), and it’s important not to confuse the two — especially important for aspiring rationalists. There is a big difference between learning about a few cognitive biases, and being capable of mathematically ideal reasoning on any topic relevant to one’s best interests. Anyone who claims the latter is, well, probably full of shit.
He said:
So it’s clear that he’s not claiming that his claims about his social circle apply to the rest of society.
There are lots of parts of popular culture that are fairly blatantly sexist (e.g. Barbie dolls and female body expectations). Does your subculture always condemn those aspects of popular culture? Does it do anything to change those norms?
If not, then “Patriarchy” exists to some degree in your sub-culture. Does eradicating Patriarchy enhance social justice? I think the answer is clearly yes.
Must it be your highest social-justice priority? I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides. For example, my day job is about dealing with disability discrimination in public schools. I wouldn’t assert that this does all that much to eradicate patriarchy.
No and yes.
Many behaviors do clearly slip through the cracks. Present a “perfect Feminist” with the claim that they never act in any manner that could possibly be Patriarchal, and I’m sure most of LessWrong would dispute the claim and find evidence that This Human, Like Other Humans, Is Not Infinitely Perfect. I would like to think that I make no such bogus claims.
The Schelling point/fence, however, is that at the current state of behavioral patterns and rate of improvement in gender-fairness of “my” (for lack of a better label) subculture (and, if I may presume, many other subcultures made of smarter-than-average people) is currently right before the line whether spending more to eradicate Patriarchy becomes more damaging than the amount of patriarchy it would remove currently does, and the rate of improvement seems to me as to be faster than the accumulating-over-time damage of the remaining patriarchy—all obviously attributable to diminishing returns. Patriarchal behavior is, fortunately, not an infinite neg-resource. (a few applause lights here, but this was typed-as-thought, so leaving them in seems useful)
Now, as for whether Patriarchy is present, well, if defined as such (“to some degree”) it is obviously present in these subcultures in at least some way or another—it is even more unlikely that no “Patriarchy”-like behavior whatsoever exists than the claim I oppose in the grandparent.
However, I find that the above does not carve reality at its joints, to use LW jargon—the cluster of behaviorspace, which I was pointed to and told was “Patriarchy”, has mostly in common that it mostly generates or indirectly contributes to / allows gender-unfairness, social injustice, sexism, etc. Many key points like identity, control, status, “dignity” (technical meanings, not the religious-soul or similar connotations), subconscious conformity to expectations, anticipation-of-expected-behavior, behavior programming, subconscious reprogramming of believed-wants (though perhaps not necessarily of true wants), etc. seem to show up too in this space. The radical feminism portrayed in these threads sometimes appears to ignore this concept entirely, and assumes that anything that could, in at least some contexts, become a point of “Patriarchy”, is therefore Patriarchy, and is therefore something to be absolutely eradicated at all costs.
Therefore, if I write a user’s manual for Tampax products, I am an Unholy Beacon of Supreme Evil, for reasons I hope are obvious enough, and that I hope are either very strawman or sufficiently absurd to expose the need for a Schelling fence.
If this is true of your subgroup, your subgroup is wonderfully exceptional. It certainly isn’t true of most smarter-than-average subcultures.
One can argue about whether video gamer culture is above average intelligence (I suspect yes), but here is strong evidence it is nowhere near the marginal benefit line for gender relations. If video game culture were closer to the line, I would expect the described behavior (which is ridiculously unacceptable) would receive far more disparagement than it does receive.
The concept of fan service (particularly the way it is currently gendered) is similar evidence in the anime/manga subculture.
Have you counted opportunity costs? Maybe there is some action his subgroup could take which would have a net positive effect towards eradicating patriarchy, but that would mean they could spend less time taking some other action which could have a larger positive effect towards some other goal.
(This assumes that patriarchy is not the only problem in the world (nor the only problem worth trying to solve). I don’t expect anyone to disagree with that, but I’m afraid to “underestimate the universality of the law that there is no argument so dumb or straw-mannish that someone somewhere has not made it”.)
Such an argument may not be as “dumb or straw-mannish” as all that, depending on your approach to prioritizing problems to solve.
For example, if you believed that destroying the patriarchy was possible given our current limited resources, and that doing so would ameliorate or eliminate a host of other problems, you might focus on it as the low-hanging fruit. Sure, building an FAI and ushering in the Singularity (just for example) would net you a much larger gain, but the amount of effort you’d have to spend on it, as well as the lower probability of success, makes it a less attractive goal overall.
Yes.
That’s why I quoted that part of DaFranker’s post as opposed to some other part.
I explicitly mention marginal benefit in my first substantive example.
The post DaFranker is responding to concludes with the point that improving society need not include any activity directed at patriarchy.
I’m well aware of the concepts of opportunity cost, cost-benefit analysis, and diminishing returns.
Do you live on a commune or something?
So far nobody has completed the exercise I was slightly obtuse about asking for, which was to give a breakdown of the distribution of outcomes and expected utility for those outcomes of PIV sex for men and women under patriarchy (feel free to substitute varying different locales, such as “sex-positive liberal feminist patriarchy” and “christian conservative patriarchy” and even “DaFranker’s utopian subculture”).
(70% seems low.)