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Elevatorgate: Effective Altruism version?Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse
Does anyone remember Elevatorgate? Long story short: the atheist "movement" had gotten going, many books were published and cons were attended. At one a figure in the community "Skepchick"- Rebecca Watson- was propositioned by a man who'd attended her talk in an elevator and made a video stating - in understated tones given the conflagration it started tbh - that she didn't like it and it made her feel unsafe.
Because this was pre-#MeToo and the Great Awokening and atheists at the time kind of prided themselves on being
assholestruth-tellers , figures like Dawkins jumped in, criticizing or mocking her for complaining about such an anodyne event. Dawkins wrote a notorious letter titled "Dear Muslima", mockingly comparing the suffering of a hypothetical circumcised Muslim woman with Watson in the sort of move that wouldn't even begin to fly today.Well...that led to an absolute shitstorm that split the atheist community with some using it to create "Atheism+": basically atheism that was sufficiently woke, after insisting atheism had a racism/sexism/whatever problem. As foreshadowing for a now pervasive social tendency, it then ate itself with circular firing squads and purity spirals.
At the time, there was enough pushback that Watson and her defenders didn't outright win but she probably won the moral victory. Years down the line most of the leftover "100% atheist" communities were pretty woke, see the banning of RationalityRules for arguing against trans-identified males in women's sports.
Now...
...
...
I'm torn.
On the one hand, I recognize the same tactics (and, tbh, it doesn't escape my notice that the first victim seems to have social competition with males for funding on her mind) that ripped the Atheist community apart. I also find most of the examples of harassment to be of the all-too-common nebulous and vague variety that allow people to claim victimhood. I honestly don't know if people are this fragile nowadays, or are exaggerating their fragility for points, but it is a bit absurd. If you're an adult, I don't want to hear about you being groomed. A "22f-44m" relationship is one where one party is twice as old but it'd be absurd to act like one party didn't have agency.
A lot of the complaints also seem to be that alleged rationalists and effective altruists - for some reason - don't just take people at their word.
On the other hand: some of these (e.g. the final one I quoted, the one about a male jumping into a woman's bed at night) are more egregious and the quokka point is well-applied here for those "good" EAs who still encouraged people not to go to the cops. It's exactly the sort of problematic math I can see some people doing. Hell, people did it all the time in churches, schools and so on. It's not a particular foible of EAs.
Also:
I have to say I find this funny. People discovering that looser social and sexual norms allow bad actors - or merely "people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve" - to accrue sexual and social benefits and blur the lines. Quelle surprise.
“My safety at risks” is just an institutionalized version of what the early seduction artists called a shit tests. Girls and feminists now claim this to scare unworthy men from pursuing them. Since the worthy ones will just ignore their claimed victim hood and realize they like male attention.
I’ll make it simple every women wants sexual attention to boost their ego even from unworthy men. It’s just our legalistic culture has now enabled a second game to play that they can sue you for it and then have a course case stating that men can’t help but show interest in them while getting paid.
Ah, the good old "women mean 'yes' when they say 'no' so just keep on going" which never ever ended in assault or rape. I thought this one had gone the way of the dodo, but apparently there are still men out there who don't believe "no" does in fact mean "no" and not "overpower me you big manly caveman".
Like I said in another thread. Rationalists like to imagine themselves as being one step ahead, but the thing about recursive loops is that they are recursive. Being one step ahead is the same thing as being one step behind.
What's that saying, "everything old is new again"? You will always get drama where people are involved, where sex is involved, where the tangles of attraction and current rules and what is or is not permissible are involved. I think all parties in Elevatorgate were to blame to some extent - the guy should have the basic cop-on to recognise that was not the time or place to chance it (the next day when all parties were rested and he could make an attempt at getting to know her a little would have been better), Watson should not have blown it up to the extent she did.
"I am fucking sick and tired of going to conferences and getting hit on by guys who think atheist women are sex-mad because atheist spaces are majority male, men do want sex more than women, and their basic unevolved view is that atheist women will have dumped the attitudes to casual sex along with all the religious rules around sex" is probably the background to her reaction which explains why she took it so far, but this was part of a wider and longer problem than the "guy hit on me in the elevator way too late at night when all I wanted was some sleep" occasion.
Here's some quotes from a random internet search:
None of these are from sites that detail sexual harassment or abuse. So I think the assumption that it doesn't happen is not entirely correct. It is rare, though, and it is true most males and females are at the conference for different reasons. Same as they also in many other places for different reasons, and still couple meet and form relationships at the same place. I don't think there's any place outside of specially designated blind date meetups where a low-rank male could timidly approach a high-rank female and not be forcefully repulsed with strong disgust reaction. And since high-rank females have zero reasons to visit such designated places, there's no place at all.
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Watson was entirely in the wrong. As long as it is the case that men, by and large, must initiate in sexual or romantic encounters for them to happen, it must not be ipso facto wrong for them to initiate such encounters (unless perhaps you are a Shaker). At the time Watson made her complaint, conferences were absolutely not places where such approaches were categorically off limits. And as long as men are not mind-readers nor even perfect body-language readers, approaches will happen when the woman is not receptive, and the man has not done anything morally wrong by making such an approach; his punishment should be limited to rejection. Not public shaming, not shaming of the entire community (as happened here), and certainly not ejection from a venue, firing, blacklisting, and all the rest of things that have come along since.
He did do something "wrong", in that the flirting game with strangers has guidelines and he skipped the first half. If he had approached her in a bar in public to start the interaction he is doing so with other people around. Then you can go through the flirting dance while your target has some safety. Its why first online dates should always take place in public places and the like. This is not new information. You escalate but allow easy safe outs. Some pressure yes, but with a safety valve. If at the bar after buying a drink, flirting, reading her body language and so on, he offers to walk her to her room, then in the lift asks her up for coffee he has built the social edifice his sexual request can lean on. At each step both parties are signalling interest.
He didn't do anything criminal but he did make a social faux pas and being shamed is an appropriate response. That's how social conventions become social conventions in the first place.
This is what the flirting game is for, to gauge and slowly escalate interest, you might be able to short circuit that and jump to the end, but you are taking a risk in doing so. Whether you are publicly shamed by having a drink thrown in your face or something else, it is a risk you take when trying to speed run.
Sure you might be in bed with her in 5 minutes flat, but you also might mistime the lift glitch exploit and doom your entire run.
It is also necessary to do things like this to encourage the others...
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Most men who are sexually successful in short-term encounters ignore soft "no's". If you want success with women you need to keep persuing after soft resistance (shit tests) and give plausible deniability instead of being honest about intentions. Sometimes even ignoring the hard "no's" causes the women to submit and often she doesn't tell society / her mate and that starts an affair. There is a reason rape by a more powerful male is a common female fantasy and found in many romance novels, women are complicit in rewarding this dynamic.
"Shit test" is a male conception and invention. I've never heard another woman use such a term. That's not saying there aren't women out there who enjoy making guys jump through hoops because they like the attention and the sense of power, but it is not a female dating strategy or whatever the hell it's supposed to be.
This is men making up explanations for why women say "no" and why they will then give in if you keep nagging, pressuring, and subtly coercing them in order to make you shut up, go away, and leave them alone. It's not "women want to test you to see if you are alpha enough to bother with", it's "women want you to stop making them nervous so they appease you in hopes you'll stop doing that".
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Women fantasizing about rape/= women wanting to be raped.
This is pure PC nonsense. Would you apply the same logic to pedos and child porn?
The reality is that women respond to the same things in real life that they fantasize about, and why wouldn't they? Why else would they fantasize about it instead of the nice guy who asks them politely.
Wow, thanks for this insight into psychology, fjwief! So if I ask a guy "do you want me to cut your toes off with a pliers?" and he says "no", I should just go right ahead and do that - because "ignoring the hard "no's" causes the person to submit and often they won't tell society and that starts an affair". You can't get much harder a "no" than "no, stop, I don't want this, why are you doing this, you're hurting me, aaaaaahhhh!" and that just means I'm succeeding in winning his heart!
I'll head right on down to the hardware store in order to pick up suitable implements and get started on my future romance!
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Even if we posited that the circumstance women fantasize about rape scenarios does in fact imply that they would enjoy those scenarios if they happened for real, it's not like the scenarios they fantasize about involve average men, the typical PUA, or you in particular. Quite a few men also fantasize about being raped by a(n attractive) woman. Does that mean that "just drug and bed him, that's what he actually wants" as advice to an ugly 300lbs woman is (a) useful (as in the man will actually come around that he was just denying his true preference as part of an evolutionary strategy) and/or (b) moral (as in the man's fantasies amounted to forfeiting the right to protest or retribution)?
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Yes, broadly defined. Lolicon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon - includes NSFW images) vs raping children seems to mirror rape fantasies vs actually being raped.
(disclaimer: I am not an expert on this topics nor done research in either topic nor have a personal experience)
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No, but I would apply it to men and "lone hero vs a gang of baddies" situation. It's a fantasy so common we have made movies about it, but I don't think anyone would want to get stuck in Nakatomi Plaza without shoes on Christmas Eve for real.
The fantasy is that the man is so badass that if he were stuck in Nakatomi Plaza without shoes on Christmas Eve, he could still singlehandledly whip the asses of Hans Gruber and his gang.
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Probably. Most people want harsher punishments for the former over the latter.
Do you only fantasize about stuff that you would want to happen to you in real life? How about non-pornographic media? Do you only enjoy films and books where you want to be the characters? Do you only play games where you would want to live in that world?
I generally fantasize about things I want, yes.
Not the question.
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I fantasize about taking people I don't like outside and beating the shit out of them; and yet somehow it has never happened!
Almost as if there is a difference between
imaginationand reality.It hasn’t happened because you would go to jail if you did it. That had nothing to do with whether you want to do that. If you lived in a different world where you wouldn’t go to jail then you likely do it. Like if you were a conquistador you probably would have beaten up some natives and enjoyed it.
You can "want" something on one level without actually wanting it. I "want" to eat 2 pounds of ice cream right now, but don't really want to because I don't want the consequences. Jail is one consequence, yes, but there are plenty of others, from social ramifications to the possibility that you lose the fight.
Fantasizing about something, and even wanting it on one level, doesn't mean that you actually want it.
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Fantasy and reality often have a sheer chasm between them. There definitely is some truth to the fact that some girls enjoy some level of non-consensual encounters, but there is also a wide range from "I said no, but if he ignores that it gives me cover to not feel bad about cheating" to "Some random stranger held a gun to my head and forced me to blow him."
I don't think many, even those who have non-consensual fantasies, would enjoy the latter.
The non consensual fantasies are not about some low-life dragging them into the ally raping them. It’s being raped by 35 year old Donald Trump or Tom Brady or perhaps even for an ugly version something like Harvey Weinstein. So I guess the fantasy still has consent since it’s only with someone desirable. But that person not being able to control himself and taking her without caring about her opinion of the matter.
Of course it’s obvious why females evolved to have rape fantasies. It was a survival tactic. Females survived by being able to emotionally deal with being raped by the more powerful. The rape of the Sabine was a founding story of Rome. 5-10% of the population in some regions have dna directly tied to Ghengis Khan. The Aztecs took the females of their conquored as additional wives (who could become high status)
In a thread full of pretty terrible hot takes, it may be unfair to single this one out, but since you've been particularly plentiful in providing them, I'm going to use this post as an example to point out the rule to proactively provide evidence for inflammatory claims. Is it "obvious" that women evolved to have rape fantasies, or is this your personal theory, or an evpsych just-so story? You provide zero evidence that it is an "obvious" fact. We are pretty lenient with interesting, even inflammatory, hot takes, but when you're talking about a large group of people you still need to justify your claims about how they all evolved in a way that happens to conform exactly to your assumptions about them with something more than possibly-apocryphal stories about Ghengis Khan and the Aztecs.
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Or, more probably, a possible patrilineal ancestor of Genghis Khan who was also the ancestor of a bunch of other Mongols that did a lot of raping. We don't have Genghis Khan's remains, so we don't even know if he was part of this patrilineal line.
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That’s very uncharitable to equate a man showing interest and flirting as the same thing as supporting grab her and drag her into your cave and take her.
That seems fitting, since it was very uncharitable in the first place to assert that women generally both want attention from men and will cry victim to get status when they get said attention. Two wrongs don't make a right, sure, but your original post was super uncharitable.
Bro - I actually believe that. So there’s nothing wrong with saying what you believe. There is something wrong with accusing someone of advocating for rape when I clearly did not say rape was ok.
By your own rationale - if he believes you said rape was OK, then there's nothing wrong with saying that. I don't agree with that logic, but if you're gonna defend your own uncharitable post with that logic then it applies to his too.
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This is far more attractive to women than saying "please say yes to sex with me" or any variant of that. It's quite bizarre because feminist women I've met often say they want explicit consent, but get off to the forced dynamic.
[citation needed]
I am not disputing that some get off on it, I am disputing that all or even majority would consider "grab her and drag her into your cave and take her" as actually attractive.
I would expect that more than 99.999% of woman would prefer to not be raped.
This does not mean that they want doormat as partner or someone powerless! But if anyone considers that being rapist is more desirable by woman than equally powerful and attractive etc person that is not a rapist then they are heavily misinformed and dangerous.
I guess that rich, powerful charismatic powerful rapist may be more attractive than poor lame doormat - which is not changing that "rapist" part is not really helping here.
Situation is made worse by people who cannot imagine other expression of masculinity than through a rape, both on male (red pill "how to get prostitute for free" vision of relationship) and female spectrum (bad romance stories).
If women don't want a doormat, why does western society work so hard at bullying us into being doormats?
If the Soviets didn't want to starve, why did their society work so hard to collectivize agriculture? Societies often do things with consequences that the people in those societies don't actually want.
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That's a test. If you are successfully bullied, you fail.
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