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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28028 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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"Did you lock it?"

A common trait among my social circle used to be that everyone shared an obsession with bicycles. Few of us had or even wanted a car in the city, and having everyone on two wheels made it much easier to roam down our house party itinerary. Between all of us we had a deep well of metis to draw from; everything from which wheels to buy to the easiest way to make derailleur adjustments. We were naturally attached to our steeds and none of us wanted our bicycles to pull a disappearing act, and so we discussed ways to keep safe.

U-locks were ubiquitous and we'd warn each other of the brands that were still susceptible to the infamous pen trick. Some of us of the more paranoid variety installed locking skewers to keep expensive saddles or wheels latched in place. We'd even caution each other to check bolts anchoring bike racks to the ground, since the U-lock was useless if the whole setup could be lifted away. It wasn't possible to reach full immunity but you never need to be the fastest gazelle to escape the cheetah, just faster than the slowest one.

Naturally, if anyone ever suffered the ultimate calamity of having their ride stolen, we would ask if it was locked and how. There was nothing sadistic about our inquiries. Our questions were problem-solving endeavors saturated with sympathy; we wanted to know what went wrong precisely to help others avoid the same fate. Maybe the local thieves discovered some new exploit in our standard security apparatus, or maybe this was just an opportunistic snatch while they left their bike unlocked outside during a quick peek inside.

"If you do X, you're likely to get Y" is the format to an unremarkable factual observation. "If you leave your bike outside unlocked, you're likely to have it stolen" is just reality and, on its own, is a statement that carries no moral judgment. If the victim wasn't previously aware of this correlation, they are now, and are better equipped to evade a rerun.

The parallels to my actual point are probably getting obvious by now.

Kathleen Stock charges right into deconstructing the surprisingly enduring ritual of affixing the "victim-blaming" reprimand to any advice aimed at reducing the risk of sexual assault. Now, in case anyone needs the clarification: I believe that rape is way worse than bicycle theft. Nevertheless the principles at play here remain the same:

Still, given that rape, precisely, is so devastating, I think we have a duty to tell women about which circumstances might make their victimisation more likely, and which might make it less. To repeat --- this is not victim-blaming, nor making women responsible for violations that men choose to commit. It is more in the spirit of "forewarned is forearmed". This is how dangerous men behave, and these are the environments in which they become more dangerous. This is how you can try to reduce your risk, even if you can never eliminate it. No panacea is being offered. Nothing guarantees your safety. Still, a reduced risk is better than nothing.

Consider the victim of the unattended bike snatch again. Imparting wisdom on the implacable chain of consequences is about the most compassionate thing you could do. They can choose to accept that advice, and if it is sound then they'll be met with the disastrous outcome of...not having their bike stolen. Or they can choose to reject that advice and adhere to the mantra that instead of putting the onus on cyclists not to have their bikes stolen, we should teach thieves not to thieve. In which case, best of luck with completely overhauling the nature of man; here's hoping their bicycle budget rivals the GDP of a small country to withstand the inevitable and wholly predictable hits.

1/Victim blaming is not exclusive to blaming sexual assault victim, it is normal, at least in circles of tough keyboard warriors, to blame victims of non-sexual assault too.

"Serves you well, liberal soiboi! If you were real manly man like me, if you were spending all your free time in gym, if you practiced martial arts and carried gun, it would not happen to you!"

2/Victim blaming is not for benefit of the victim, it is to assuage the blamer that nothing bad can happen to him, that he has nothing to fear as long as he follows the checklist and does everything right.

This seems to be missing part of the feminist argument which is that the advice they complain is "victim blaming" is often tied to claims that the advice doesn't actually affect the chance of rape. Which is also related to redirecting the discussion to claims that stranger rape is rare, so advice geared towards avoiding it is a useless distraction.

If your dad or friend tells you to cover your drink at parties to avoid being raped, they are looking out for you and are a good ally.

If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.

The difference, as often happens in culture war issues, is between individual-level advice and society-levels policies.

The types of accusations of 'victim blaming' that you are talking about here, tend to happen when one person thinks it's their responsibility to give individual-level advice, and someone else thinks they had a duty to make societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) instead.

The types of accusations of 'victim blaming' that you are talking about here, tend to happen when one person thinks it's their responsibility to give individual-level advice, and someone else thinks they had a duty to make societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) instead.

I agree, and if the accusations of victim blaming I saw on this topic were directed at officials like the Chief of Police I would agree that it's victim blaming. But the overwhelming majority of times I've seen someone accused of victim blaming they were just other regular joes and jos on twitter or reddit or some forum. And in those cases, the way I see it, the very fact someone is talking and thinking about this in terms of policy proposals is how we can tell they are the mistaken party.

Policies apply to populations, and populations are abstracts. It's terrible when any% of women are sexually assaulted for sure, but there are much better ways to affect policy than arguing with strangers on the internet. What really matters to people is when women they know get sexually assaulted - thanks to Dunbar's number that is pretty much the only time we really care. So of course people offer individual level advice, why would they offer more?

Well, I sort of precisely disagree about the purpose of publicly visible social media, which probably demonstrates why people react so differently to these types of posts.

To my mind, there's little point in a random individual posting safety tips on their social media. Anyone who wants those tips can get an actual guide from an expert source with a 3 second google, and it's much more likely to be accurate and helpful. And women get bombarded with those sentiments all the time, it's not like they aren't already aware.

To me, public-facing social media is much more a process of expressing/creating the public cultural consensus on topics of interest.

If every social media post in existence says that Trump is a corrupt criminal, his political career is probably over. If half the posts say he's a corrupt criminal and half say he's a saintly god-emperor, he probably has a good chance of being president again.

And, yes, those posts are in large sense a reflection of what people already believe. But they also get read by people and pundits and aggregated into stats and that affect what everyone else believes, both about Trump and about how to report on and talk about him and whether it's worthwhile to contribute to his campaign and etc. No individual post has a huge influence on the realty of the culture, but they have a massive determinative influence in aggregate.

Same thing here.

If 100% of posts on social media about sexual assault are saying to teach men not to rape and to reform and enhance police interventions and etc., then that's going to strongly influence us towards a world where men are scrutinized and given the burden of responsibility to address this issue rather than women, where police and politicians are held responsible for addressing the problem materially rather than rhetorically, and where victims are not criticized for their legal behaviors before an assault and there complaints are much harder to dismiss as 'regrets' or 'asking for it' or w/e.

Alternately, if 100% of posts on social media about sexual assault are telling women how to protect themselves and what precautions to take, then that's going to strongly influence us towards a world where women are constantly scrutinized for all their legal reasonable behaviors that are deemed incautious or slutty or w/e, where there is very little scrutiny or pressure on men to police each other or be good allies in these situations, where victims are blamed for their behaviors in ways that make it easier for criminals to stay unprosecuted, that applies no pressure on politicians or police to materially address the problem with the powers of their office, etc.

And then in between those two extremes there's a sliding continuum that influences how much of each of those categories of things happen, and an eternal battle for the soul of the culture between people who prefer one world over the other.

And unfortunately, that battle is fought through the medium of flame wars on social media, because we live in a hell world where recommendation engines and trending topics and the articles written about them influence much of what people believe about reality, and for social/cultural norms what people believe about reality often becomes reality.

(Also, disclaimer- I made the two sides there sound very uneven there to show one side's perspective, but obviously there are strong arguments on both sides or it wouldn't be a divisive issue.)

The thing is though, that this -

we live in a hell world where recommendation engines and trending topics and the articles written about them influence much of what people believe about reality, and for social/cultural norms what people believe about reality often becomes reality.

Is because of this -

public-facing social media is much more a process of expressing/creating the public cultural consensus on topics of interest.

This hell world of algorithms and trending topics didn't exist before social media because it was caused by social media, and more specifically it came about when people discovered they could use social media to influence public consensus and affect policy. Fortunately the tool for dismantling your hell world is in everyone's hands - stop putting any faith in social media, stop allowing it to influence you. While you might only be a drop in the bucket, so is everyone else - the more people who opt out, the less influence it has. Conversely if you refuse to stop playing the social media game, this hell world is your choice.

Also "for social/cultural norms what people believe about reality often becomes reality" is true, but if objective reality disagrees it always wins out. That's why teaching men not to rape doesn't work - men already know not to rape, those who do anyway don't care what twitter says.

Also also this is kind of nuts -

If 100% of posts on social media about sexual assault are saying to teach men not to rape and to reform and enhance police interventions and etc., then that's going to strongly influence us towards a world where men are scrutinized and given the burden of responsibility to address this issue rather than women, where police and politicians are held responsible for addressing the problem materially rather than rhetorically, and where victims are not criticized for their legal behaviors before an assault and there complaints are much harder to dismiss as 'regrets' or 'asking for it' or w/e.

Alternately, if 100% of posts on social media about sexual assault are telling women how to protect themselves and what precautions to take, then that's going to strongly influence us towards a world where women are constantly scrutinized for all their legal reasonable behaviors that are deemed incautious or slutty or w/e, where there is very little scrutiny or pressure on men to police each other or be good allies in these situations, where victims are blamed for their behaviors in ways that make it easier for criminals to stay unprosecuted, that applies no pressure on politicians or police to materially address the problem with the powers of their office, etc.

And then in between those two extremes there's a sliding continuum that influences how much of each of those categories of things happen, and an eternal battle for the soul of the culture between people who prefer one world over the other.

People aren't Schroedinger's rapists based on how many tweets there are saying don't dress like a slut vs keep your dick in your pants. There is also zero evidence that people saying teach men not to rape on Facebook have any influence at all on the rate of sexual assault. This is exactly the kind of unrealistic expectation that I was talking about. If complaining about it on social media was an effective strategy, the number of perpetrators of sexual assault wouldn't have climbed every year since 2012.

If there is a correlation between social media and policy decisions, it flows the other way. People in positions of power and influence determine how they would like the world to look, that seeps out into social media and then social media is used to justify what the influential wanted.

This hell world of algorithms and trending topics didn't exist before social media because it was caused by social media, and more specifically it came about when people discovered they could use social media to influence public consensus and affect policy.

I strongly disagree about the order of events here. I've somewhat followed the development of these algorithms casually and my strong impression is that they were just made by corporate interests to maximize their profits by keeping people on their platform longer, not with any social engineering in mind. There are cases of trying to use them for social engineering but this generally happens like a decade or two after they're put into place, after everyone notices how much influence they're having.

stop putting any faith in social media, stop allowing it to influence you. While you might only be a drop in the bucket, so is everyone else - the more people who opt out, the less influence it has. Conversely if you refuse to stop playing the social media game, this hell world is your choice.

I think if you looked at the expected impact of your actions by fighting for your side in the currently most influential arena, vs ignoring that arena entirely in an effort to make it go away, the individual activist has much higher EI by fighting. This is one of those coordination problems, everyone would be happier without the hellworld but no individual can voluntarily leave it alone without hurting their interests. Tellingi ndividuals to hurt themselves to influence coordination problems generally doesn't work, that's why they're such big problems, and it's why we form governments to solve them.

they were just made by corporate interests to maximize their profits by keeping people on their platform longer, not with any social engineering in mind.

Tricking people into doing something that makes them miserable is social engineering. But it isn't the algorithms or platforms themselves that are to blame, their social engineering is relatively tame compared to the kind humans inflict on other humans when given this potemkin community and influence. It was humans who did the Arab spring, who did gamergate and metoo, who turn the internet into a war zone every four years during campaign season - deploying sock puppets and playing double agents, spreading malicious rumours and photoshopping evidence, these are the kinds of social engineering I am talking about. Back before social media these things happened pretty frequently, but without the outsized influence people ascribe to events on social media there was no sense of the arms race, and no reason to get so worked up (well, for most people).

Here's how the timeline goes imo -

1.) First there were forums, nobody gave a shit.

2.) Then came social media, and everyone wanted in.

3.) But then some shitty arguer got into an argument with a person who was better at arguing than them and they got upset, but couldn't admit they'd lost the argument for one reason or another, and they said "people shouldn't be allowed to argue things I don't like." Old internet still outweighed the new internet at this point though, so he was thoroughly mocked into silence.

4.) After time passes however, the shitty arguers who want to ban arguments they don't like outnumber the other people. Internet policies are changed to reflect this change in values from 'people should be responsible for themselves' to 'we have to save everybody from themselves!' But the only thing that unites the shitty arguers is their fragile egos, they don't have a coherent platform. So there's no logic to the way they censor arguments except who whom.

5.) Hell world.

I think if you looked at the expected impact of your actions by fighting for your side in the currently most influential arena, vs ignoring that arena entirely in an effort to make it go away, the individual activist has much higher EI by fighting. This is one of those coordination problems, everyone would be happier without the hellworld but no individual can voluntarily leave it alone without hurting their interests. Tellingi ndividuals to hurt themselves to influence coordination problems generally doesn't work, that's why they're such big problems, and it's why we form governments to solve them.

So it's not about making it go away - I agree that is a futile waste of time. What I am saying is that the hell world you live in - your hell world - is one of your own design, and one you can leave by dropping social media. This will have the effect of lessening social media's influence, but that is ancillary to the point, which is making you less miserable. If you decide you would rather be more meat for the great political machine to grind into paste, that's your choice. Because that's the choice here, it's not a coordination problem, it's a duplicity problem - you won't hurt your interests by opting out, you will hurt the interests of Bidens and Trumps and Clintons of the world. You have been tricked into thinking you are fighting for your life when in reality they are just stealing your happiness to fuel their ambitions.

It gets worse though, because of course it does, that's the social media slogan: "It gets worse!" Because while they have harnessed the language of war - everything is a battle, there are two sides duking it out and if you miss a tweet you are letting your side down, how dare you put your happiness before your people, people's lives are at stake here! - the stakes are actually significantly diminished. Don't get me wrong - it is an utter travesty when someone commits suicide or loses their livelihood over social media bullshit, but it's a different category of fucked up to actually killing each other.

And the influence goes the other way too - we talk in these grandiose cataclysmic terms, and it affects the way we think about the issues too, so when you said "Tellingi ndividuals to hurt themselves to influence coordination problems generally doesn't work" I nodded in agreement, but actually when I think about it, that's not right is it? Martyrs have had huge impacts all throughout history, and rightly so - they can reset prisoner's dilemmas. It's never easy being a martyr, because nobody wants to suffer and there's no guarantee you'll even have an effect, but there is no denying they can have an effect. But we are conditioned to think there's no escaping social media so that we continue to sacrifice our happiness to it.

If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.

Except, there is little police can do to address this problem other than take reports and hope the half life of the pills hasn't run. There are some crimes police pretense deters, and others where its impractical. Police can really deter DUI's by placing a checkpoint right outside the parking lot of a bar, or near a string of bars and making that checkpoint well known well in advance. People will just Uber. They aren't well positioned to stop date rape and roofie-rape. Those activities occur inside of private property and, frankly, the behavior is subtle. The people best positioned to address this problem are the women themselves and their friends/chaperones. Police can attempt to pick up the pieces for you afterwards, but rape is a very hard crime to investigate and prove in court compared to murder, assault, and other major felonies.

Well, I disagree, but my standard position here is that neither of us are going to be actual experts on this topic, and what I'm advocating for is for the people who are to be given all the resources they need to do as much as they can. If they say they can do nothing then I'll be very surprised, but ok.

However, impressions I have on this topic as a non-expert:

-There's always stories going around about such-and-such a city has a bajillion untested rape kits, and whenever someone tests a bunch they find matches indicating serial offenders that the cops could have looked for.

-Ad absurdum argument, if you enhance the penalty for any crime to being slowly tortured to death in the public square over a series of months, that will shift the incentives for that crime enough to reduce its prevalence. I don't think we should do the ad absurdum case, but yes, on the margins the police can do things to disincentivize crimes through threat of punishment.

-Very many women report being reluctant to go to police out of fear that they will be dismissed or treated with suspicion. Police departments do not always make it clear how to get a rape kit or optimize procedures to get one immediately or even educate the public enough about their existence. There is much the police could do to encourage reporting and evidence collection.

-Do tester strips for teh relevant drugs exist? Could police distribute them to bars? If not, they could at least run public outreach programs to educate bartenders on the signs of those drugs being used, how to confirm/deescalate those situations or get police involved quickly, etc.

-I actually care about sexual assaults against sex workers, something that police are notoriously uninterested or unhelpful in prosecuting.

-Etc.

I don't think police can stop all crime from happening, but I do think that even for difficult cases like this they can have reasonably powerful effects on the margins.

Well, I disagree, but my standard position here is that neither of us are going to be actual experts on this topic, and what I'm advocating for is for the people who are to be given all the resources they need to do as much as they can. If they say they can do nothing then I'll be very surprised, but ok.

What exactly are you disagreeing with? My information comes from working with police as a states attorney for a period of time and working as clerk for a judge. Sex crime is very hard to investigate because a lot of it looks like normal courtship just a little on steroids. Which also is often non-criminal. Also, testing strips exist, but mass distribution wouldn't work, they'd expire just like PH strips do.

The reluctance thing is probably real, but most police I've interacted with say this is victim led. The police, unfortunately, are very resource constrained, so complaining witnesses need to be on their game, or the police don't have the resources to extract info from them and follow up. People look at prosecutors having 99% conviction records and don't look any further, they have that because they reject 90% of their cases that aren't simple possession. I've seen people blow 3x the legal limit and get off on a DUI simply by being persistent and thus only 3 of the 4 necessary witnesses are in court on the day of trial.

Imagine the work needed to prosecute these kind of cases. First, our victim needs to come in quickly to report to preserve the evidence. Often they do not. Second we need techs actually capable of doing so. Often they are not on hand. Third we need to test that. Often that is not available. Fourth they need to be confident in their story. In almost all cases, they are not. Fifth we need to get corroborating witnesses or a confession. The former are rare, as are the latter. Sixth we need to assemble all this into a coherent case. Often it falls apart. One easy fail is the verification of physical evidence fails. Or the girl herself collapses under cross.

What is the solution? IMO it is that consent is not a good mediator for sexual encounters, never has been, and likely never will be. Instead we should use a visible public acts standard. Things like marriage, shutting a door, etc are should be what is important in sexual offense law, not subjective things like consent and intoxication.

What exactly are you disagreeing with?

The claim that there's not much police could do, even in principle, to fight sex crimes.

And it feels like your response here points out about a half a dozen ways in which we could give the police more funding, change the priorities o prosecutors, and do public outreach to help victims come forward sooner with better evidence, which would let the police do more.

Those are the kinds of things I'm advocating.

What exactly would be those half dozen ways? All those steps that are hard to do will cost a LOT to improve the situation at each step by even 5%.

If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.

There is a whole range of responses that range from "modern women are sluts that first jump into men's beds and then sober up and cry rape" to "while we do our best to investigate every reported case of sexual assault and put the perpetrators behind bars, there are still first-time offenders. Knowing what situations are more likely to lead to sexual assault and what actions or behaviors can identify a rapist preparing to commit his vile deed can help you protect yourself and people close to you" that all can be called "blaming the victim" and yet this range is huuge.

I am also getting strong "red button vs blue button" vibe from this discourse. Teaching women how to avoid sexual assault is teaching them to press the red button. "Don't do this, and your chances of being sexually assaulted are minuscule." And yet there will still remain some women whose literal job is wearing skimpy clothes in front of horny men and flirting with them to get them to buy them a drink. Some of these women will also have no choice but to walk home through sketchy alleys at 1am after their shift. They get raped, everyone says, "well, what did she expect".

Team blue button thinks that if they can get the majority of women to stop self-policing their behavior, we can just clog the meatgrinder. Sexual assault happens to median women, they go to the police, the perpetrator is convicted, everyone is horrified, the moral barometer inevitably edges towards the new equilibrium, soon everyone is watching out for someone trying to sneak a roofie into their date's drink and bros don't let other bros be rapey creeps. Yes, there's still a chance you might get sexually assaulted, but it's shared equitably by everyone.

And yet there will still remain some women whose literal job is wearing skimpy clothes in front of horny men and flirting with them to get them to buy them a drink. Some of these women will also have no choice but to walk home through sketchy alleys at 1am after their shift. They get raped, everyone says, "well, what did she expect".

Do strippers have a notably high rate of getting raped in alleys? They probably have a high rate of being sexually assaulted while actually working(either as a side gig or while on the clock), but it would surprise me if the rate of getting raped in alleys was elevated(I mean it would also surprise me if they were recognizably the same person both on and off the clock).

I mean I agree with your point, we can tell young women ‘don’t go get drunk at his place if you’re not going to sleep with him’ and some idiot teenager will do it anyways. Just seems like a dumb example.

Or more to the point - does an individual woman following all the advice decrease the total number of sexual assaults by one, or does it just drive their potential assailant to find a different victim that night?

My strongman for the blue button take is that telling women to police their behavior will push the assaults down the chain towards the most vulnerable targets, but does nothing to decrease the overall number of assaults, because it doesn't decrease the number or incentives of potential assailants and it will never be sufficient to actually make it impossible for them to find any victim at all.

If you are a concerned father and actually would prefer that someone else get raped instead of your daughter, give her that advice for sure. But if you're in a position that has a responsibility to society in general, you should be pursuing avenues that decrease teh total number of assaults, and telling women to police their behavior doesn't accomplish that.

Of course, that take can't be 100% true, there is some marginal effect where if a large enough percentage of women police all of their behavior strictly enough at all times it would actually leave few enough opportunities that rates would go down. But the question is whether that means 'everyone has to war burkas all the time and can never be in public unless escorted by a male relative', or if you get meaningful effects at very mild levels of self-policing.

My intuition is no, until you get to really debilitating and universal self-policing the criminals will still find plenty of opportunities and overall rates won't be affected much. And requiring that level of restrictions on women's behavior is holding them responsible for preventing their own victimization (instead of trying to solve it with like law enforcement or w/e), which is semi-reasonably labeled 'victim blaming'.

If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.

Returning to bikes, the chief of police really is apt to say, "buy a good U-lock that isn't easily defeated without an angle grinder, there are simply too many bikes stolen for us to reliably track down the thieves and recover the bike". The police can do their best to track down the most egregious offenders and can include patrols that decrease the likelihood of theft, but carelessness and villainy can't reliably be thwarted by good detective work.

I wonder if the Chief of Police is better off creating a Civic Security Chief sub-position to make these sorts of statements and take the heat from the police as a whole to divorce the role of police with personal responsibility.

If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.

What does it mean to "do nothing else to address the problem"? What if the police is already doing (or is in the process of starting to do) everything they believe they can reasonably do given the available resources? Should they just sit it out to avoid "victim blaming" when they could give useful advice that helps them do their job and solve the problem? I mean, isn't educating people about safety part of the police's job?

Unless he's facing specific criticism and trying to deflect blame, "here's what you can do to help/protect yourself" doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

If he believes he is already doing everything he possibly can through his office, he can say that (and describe what those efforts are, what limitations they face, why they're not trying the various things people are suggesting they do, etc), and the public can decide whether they believe him or not.

The problem is framing the issue as something that is the victim's job to prevent, rather than a problem that society should be trying to fix.

If he believes he is already doing everything he possibly can through his office, he can say that

But that only serves the purpose of covering his ass, whereas giving advice to potential victims helps solve the problem, which is his actual job.

The problem is framing the issue as something that is the victim's job to prevent, rather than a problem that society should be trying to fix.

The victims are part of society, and they have the biggest interest in preventing the crime. Excluding them from being part of the solution only makes sense if you're playing the blame game and want to make sure the "right"* people get the blame, not if your priority is solving the problem.

*IMHO, the people who actually deserve the blame are the rapists.

That doesn't answer the core contradiction. Why is sexual assault the only topic that "victim blaming" is used for?

Over the years, my local police (and a few nearby and/or related organizations) have put out information on protecting yourself from break-and enter, carjacking, bike theft, scams, mugging, and incidental gang violence. None (or at most a few) of those were paired with substantive actions, and none drew serious accusations of victim blaming.

Given that the organizations in charge of societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) routinely give individual-level advice with negligible pushback, what makes sexual assault so special?

The difference between sexual assault and the other crimes you list is that unlike with sexual assault, people generally don't recognize any temptation to get victimized, tempt criminals to victimize you, or falsely claim victimization. When someone claims mugging, no one wonders "Are you sure you didn't just regret giving them your wallet?". People rarely wonder "Are you sure that guy who broke into your house and attacked you wasn't someone you invited in?" -- but you do see people using the term "victim blaming" in the Pelosi case.

If someone gets sexually assaulted, or beat by their spouse, or gets caught with their pants down drinking wine with their assailant, some people are going to wonder "Are you sure you aren't more responsible for this than you're admitting?", and some people are going to get offended at the implication. "Fat shaming" and "alcoholism is a disease" are similar in structure, though you don't hear the phrase "victim blaming" because they're one person affairs.

Feminists object to the existence of sexual assault, not to individual advice, and they frame it this way because they are professional activists. There is no body of professional anti-bike theft activists, hence there isn’t an epidemic of utopian thinking about bike theft.

It's because feminists have framed the question of rape as something "men" as a group do to "women". Not a highly contemptible subset men, but men in general.

If you could have a societal debate about how to stop bike theft WITH bike thieves and their solution was "lock your bike better", you would rightly answer them "no, if we're all on the same page about stopping bike theft here, then the solution is that you JUST STOP STEALING BIKES!". But of course, bike thieves are not interested in these societal debates, they don't show up to them. So it's okay to assume they will keep stealing and it's appropriate to suggest solutions that work around that.

But as I've mentionned feminists have framed the question of rape as being something "men" perpetrate, so when men show up to societal debates and helpfully suggest mitigation strategies they get the same treatment as our hypothetical bike thief who shows up at a how to avoid bike theft debate. And the contemptible subset of men who commit those rapes are not interested in the debate and obviously don't show up.

*EDIT: And I think it's important to note here that feminists aren't necessarily completely wrong here. Think of the prevalence through history of armies "raping and pillaging" after conquest. Of how recently it was that it became unacceptable for husbands to force themselves on their wives. There's a lot of men throughout history who we probably would think of as normal for their time, not a particular small subset of them, who would consider doing what you want with a conquered people's women or forcing a wife to "her duty" as normal behavior.

Of how recently it was that it became unacceptable for husbands to force themselves on their wives.

Sort of serious question: Is this actually true? It seems to me that we have a long history of looking at other groups, and our own people in semi-recent history and repeatedly saying, "look how they treated their women! Appalling!", regardless of the truth of it. I always hear leftists saying things like "just 100 years ago, women were treated like chattel", and the like, but to be honest, those claims don't really hold up. Yes, legal rights have changed. But that means nothing unless we understand the context around which prior people had understood and thought about (or simply not thought about) those legal rights.

A little more than 100 years ago, women couldn't legally cast a vote. But that doesn't mean they were chattel. People didn't necessarily think about being unable to vote as being chattel. Women throughout all of history have had the strong ability to get what they want, despite being unable to vote, even dating back to ancient Rome, when women successfully did things like protest austerity taxes they didn't like. Men generally listen to women, because men are actually really close with women. They're not two competing groups. Men generally define themselves first and foremost by their relationship with their most significant others in their lives, which are their wives. Do you really think that men would treat women like they owned them and be completely happy? The phrase "happy wife, happy life" is well over a century old!

So now we come back to marital rape. I don't know the true answer. I do know that marital rape was outlawed fairly recently, like within the past 50 years, in the US. But does that mean that it was socially acceptable to force yourself on your wife? Does that mean that it was common to do that? I'm skeptical, myself. It might just be a part of the repeated cascade of "look how bad people used to treat women" of our modern world.

Sort of serious question: Is this actually true?

I see no reason to believe it is any more true then than it is now. Spousal abuse has doubtless always existed. Our current system is observably quite bad at handling it, and despite attempting to engineer specific solutions to the problems, the basic failure mode is generally the person being abused. It is at least plausible that more tight-knit communities were better at handling the problem than atomized ones, given the observed failure modes with the current system.

More generally, fictionalization and demonization of the past are absolutely rampant and actively encouraged by the current dominant ideology.

The question almost answers itself.

Part of the problem is the lack of division of forcible or similarly clear rape from things as different as "we both got drunk and had drunk sex I didn't like in the morning" or even "we had sex and I didn't like it after we broke up three weeks later". The only ways to provide advice against the second things are "don't have sex at all", "watch your alcohol consumption", "be more discerning in who you date" or "you're responsible for you're own decisions, regret isn't rape" and all of those are anathema. Advice to avoid surreptitious drugging isn't taken nearly as badly. So the difference is that advice which puts significant responsibility on women when there's a supposedly decent man who could be held responsible is verboten. You can sometimes get away with it for forcible/drugging because in that case the man is a faceless criminal rather than someone she would date.

So the difference is that advice which puts significant responsibility on women when there's a supposedly decent man who could be held responsible is verboten.

This is a good distinction I hadn't thought of before. It seems to track with my bike theft analogy. If someone's unlocked bike was stolen and we know who did it because the thief is riding it around the neighborhood, it does seem gauche to excoriate the victim for not locking it up.

That's not the point and you know it. The difference between that and "bike theft" is that in the case I'm describing, the harm to the woman was in fact partially to wholly her own fault; the guy's error was either mutual (he got drunk with her) or non-existent (she decided she didn't like him later).

I didn't know I misunderstood your post, I apologize for that.

Oh, sorry, I thought that was taken as read: it's because of the other type pf victim blaming, where people actually literally blame the victim for what happened to them explicitly and directly, which happens all the time in cases of sexual assault (and used to happen even much much more in the recent past).

That's why there is such a visceral and powerful narrative around victim blaming in cases of sexual assault. It's correct and justified in most cases, which are just straightforwardly shaming victims for being slutty or leading people on or w/e.

What I was talking about is why that same narrative gets extended to many of the cases that OP is referring to, which are very unlike those cases.

I am pretty certain that you will be unable to provide even a single example where the activists, before accusing someone of victim blaming, check if the person alleged to do so, does nothing else to address the problem.

To many, the fact the problem is happening is proof enough of that. If preventing rape at a societal level is a responsibility of the police, then rape increasing at a societal level is evidence of the police not solving it

The usual point of disagreement is, I expect, at the very start of that chain of logic.

Considering that I have no idea why anyone would document that activity in a way that I'd be able to find a permanent record of, I agree.

My point was, in case you actually missed it (which I doubt), was that

the difference (…) is between individual-level advice and society-levels policies

is an entirely post-hoc justification, invented to excuse the activists who just want to attack anyone who ascribed any degree of agency to a victim of one particular kind of crime. Your whole post makes an argument that’s simply entirely irrelevant in any instance of alleged victim blaming and their denouncing.

That's a bold assertion.

I disagree.

I would agree that few rank-and-file social media posters who talk about victim blaming could articulate that sentiment in the way I have.

That's not saying much, though; that's true for almost any well-considered/principled/nuanced political position.

I still think that the nuanced versions of those ideas have an effect on the rank-and-file behavior, though. Partially just by filtering down from the pundits to the masses as an attitude rather than a position, but also just because a lot of people can sense and recognize things that they can't clearly articulate.

I agree with you and Stock that, ideally, there is no moral judgement or condemnation but, as Stock's article points out, there are a lot of people who think otherwise. I view the backlash to Giambruno as less about his particular intent and more an attempt to create social pressure against the moral condemnation interpretation on the belief that some observers would interpret his comments that way. I think such advice also often comes across as condescending to the recipient, especially if it's something they already know.

I agree the concern over misinterpretation exists, and that's likely what prompts this "over-correction". I wonder if there is a name for this phenomenon, where a hardline (no matter how incoherent) is seen as a necessary safeguard against the risk of misinterpretation.

The old Feminist trope of 'just teach men not to rape' has been around for years and is a clear non-starter. I used to get really wound up about this (along with lots of other feminist arguments), but now I see it as potentially anchoring a negotiation for additional resources to be spent on women's safety. Not that I find the argument fair or compelling in any way shape or form.

It's another example of feminism exploiting hyperagency/hypoagency when it suits their needs. In this case the argument is that women have no agency around whether they are victims of crime or not and men (as a group) are 100% responsible for the rapes that happen in the world. Men are presumed to have so much agency here that they are responsible for the crimes of other men. You can see this with statements like 'its up to men to stop rape' and dedicated organisations built around this concept.

I'm libertarian leaning and have a strong valuation of agency and an internal locus of control. I despise those that are emotionally manipulative and try to get others to shoulder their personal responsibilities (including the responsibility for personal security). It's probably a large part of why I despise Feminism as an ideology.

Not that I find the argument fair or compelling in any way shape or form.

As always, motte/bailey... you can absolutely go to a highschool and describe 20 different borderline scenarios to 16 year old boys and ask 'which of these are rape/assault and which are not' and you may be shocked and alarmed at the answers that 5% of them give. Not because they are evil or cruel but from genuine ignorance or misunderstandings or cultural baggage. Education can absolutely fix a lot of that.

And the bailey is stupider than that, sure, it always is. But the things that seem obvious to us aren't always obvious to people until they've been taught, especially in a culture where we obsessively shield young people from all sexual topics so they have no idea what they're doing. There really is a role for education there, as one among many avenues.

But the things that seem obvious to us aren't always obvious to people until they've been taught, especially in a culture where we obsessively shield young people from all sexual topics so they have no idea what they're doing. There really is a role for education there, as one among many avenues.

Why don't we teach young women 'please never send mixed signals to men about your sexual interest as ambiguous coquettishness muddies the water around consent'? Why is it 'No means no and if you don't have a yes, it's a no' in the face of all observed human mating practices? All the responsibility for miscommunication around consent is placed onto the shoulders of men by the groups advocating 'education'.

To be fair, I do think there should be some education about consent in the basic Sex Ed taught in schools, but it shouldn't be the ideologically captured garbage that is pushed now (eg 'enthusiastic consent' or its rape). There are consequences to not having any nuance around this delicate subject. As it stands there are a certain amount of sensitive empathic young boys who will take the narrative at face value, twisting their sexuality into a pretzel in order to never violate a girls consent, or even make her uncomfortable by making a pass. This is a recipe for involuntary celibacy and dissatisfaction on both sides.

Why don't we teach young women 'please never send mixed signals to men about your sexual interest as ambiguous coquettishness muddies the water around consent'? Why is it 'No means no and if you don't have a yes, it's a no' in the face of all observed human mating practices? All the responsibility for miscommunication around consent is placed onto the shoulders of men by the groups advocating 'education'.

A lot of female sexuality operates around plausible deniability and genuinely being a lot more 100-0 with potential romantic partners than the male mind can really conceive. I've got a lot of female friends, and the amount of times a prospective paramour has gone from 'I think he's my soulmate' to 'it icks me to even be somewhat near them, they are physically and spiritually repulsive' off a single tiny moment/misplay is way too high. Being a proactive communicator of sexual intent doesn't work when you're wired like that, as the light switch can flip at any moment

I mean that’s obviously true, but that just means that we’re better off telling boys that then what we’re doing now!

Freedom of speech, I guess?

We have a general principle that you can say really annoying things and not get assaulted for it, that physical violence is qualitatively different from verbal/emotional violence and gets treated more seriously.

Anyway, I do agree with what I think is underlying your position here, which is that popular culture has deconstructed the old norms around sex and dating because of all the problems they had and tragedies they led to, but hasn't actually created a coherent new system for young people to use instead.

I don't think it makes sense to frame that as boys vs girls, I think it's much more old people who make culture failing young people who have to live in it. Everyone is being hurt by this cultural failure.

Why don't we teach young women 'please never send mixed signals to men about your sexual interest as ambiguous coquettishness muddies the water around consent'?

Because a small but influential portion of society decided that while marriage norms solve this problem nearly entirely, they are the enemy to their political goals.

You’ll have to be more specific. I don’t believe for a minute that rape, in general, was “solved” in marriage-heavy societies.

Notice the specific question. There used to be a fairly clear way to have an unambiguous socially-recognized signal. The neat thing about this socially-recognized signal is that, in its absence, there is zero leeway for a man to claim any sort of defense like, "But I thought she was giving me signals!" Her signal was something other than putting a ring on your finger? Sorry dude; not allowed, and you clearly and obviously know it.

It's cold outside...

It's cold outside...

It is extremely common for a woman to put up a small amount of resistance before sex. It allows her to tell herself (and her friends, and her family, and her boyfriend/husband) that the sex "just happened", thus giving her plausible deniability, and allows her to weed out any man who would be so weak and spineless as to back off at the first sign of friction. It is a normal part of the human mating ritual, and part of becoming a romantically successful man is learning how to identify and power through these token protests. If you believe the feminist crap about how "no means no" and back off the second she fails to demonstrate enthusiastic consent, then you will never get laid, because that is simply not how women work. See "anti-slut defense" and "last minute resistance".

The modern definition of rape as "sex without consent" is an anti-concept. Women are simply not logical and coherent enough to have or lack such a thing as consent. She says no, but if she really meant no, she could easily stand up and leave or call the police, so she means yes, but when she gets discovered by her family she will not only say that she tried to get away and that she was pressured into sex, but she will sincerely believe it, so she retroactively meant no.

The original definition of rape, the one that actually made sense, was when a man who was not allowed to have sex with a woman, that is to say, a man who was not her husband, had sex with her, thus transgressing against the man who owned her, be that her father, her oldest brother, or her husband. If he was married to her, the sex was not rape, and if he was not married to her, then the sex was rape, regardless of her consent, to the extent that a woman can even have such a thing. Of course, in such a society a woman would never have been left alone with a man who she was not married to in the first place, because in such a society everyone knows what happens when a man and a woman who are not first degree relatives are behind locked doors for thirty seconds.

It is extremely common for a woman to put up a small amount of resistance before sex. It allows her to tell herself (and her friends, and her family, and her boyfriend/husband) that the sex "just happened", thus giving her plausible deniability, and allows her to weed out any man who would be so weak and spineless as to back off at the first sign of friction. It is a normal part of the human mating ritual,

Yes, that's my point: OP claimed that traditional marriage norms used to make these situation never ambiguous, I'm pointing out that's never been true.

You seem to be implying that basically in fundamentalist Muslim or other strict religious societies where women are essentially not allowed to be alone with a man outside there family, there's no ambiguity and therefore 100% of cases of sex outside of marriage are publicly known to be rape and punished as such. Is that correct?

Because I think that claim is just massively wrong empirically. Women in those types of society are punished or executed for adultery when they get raped, or the man is forced to marry them meaning they have to live with their rapist for life and be subject ot their demands, or etc.

We've tried this system, it doesn't work, afaik.

The elephant in the room when comparing sexual assault to other crime -- like say, bike theft -- is that there is a well known, 100% reliable way to legally acquire a bike. Walk into a bike shop and buy one. There is no reason (outside of emergencies) why a normal person should have to engage in any action that could ever be confused with bike theft.

It's actually worse than this. With sexual assault, often times the only difference between "a beautiful night to remember" and "the worst thing that can happen to a woman" is the physical appearance of the person.

I'm not sure exactly how this affects the framework you've chosen, but I do know that any discussion of sexual assault (or sex in general) that doesn't explicitly address these two points has a tendency to go off the rails into La La Land, where nothing said has any correspondence to reality.

It's actually worse than this. With sexual assault, often times the only difference between "a beautiful night to remember" and "the worst thing that can happen to a woman" is the physical appearance of the person.

Are you saying that women don’t think it’s rape if he’s physically handsome?

I had the same question, it's a confusing and ambiguous statement

No, I’m saying consider the subset of women who go to frat parties, bars, and on Tinder dates.

Assertion 1: It is a frequent experience of these women that they get touched, kissed, and more without giving affirmative consent.

Assertion 2: If you were to sort men into bins by attractiveness and plot ”attractiveness” on the X-axis, and “proportion of men in each bin whom a given woman would be okay being touched/kissed by at a party,” there would be a substantial correlation.

That sounds like a rather filter bubbled case. Also, you need to know what each person is ready for.

I think you're overlooking other important things handsome people do because you're only looking at like, the front cover of one of their G-factor proxies.

The elephant in the room when comparing sexual assault to other crime -- like say, bike theft -- is that there is a well known, 100% reliable way to legally acquire a bike. Walk into a bike shop and buy one. There is no reason (outside of emergencies) why a normal person should have to engage in any action that could ever be confused with bike theft.

There used to be a really phenomenal social technology that took centuries to develop which mostly solved this problem - marriage.

i don't think the calculus is so straight forward. imagine that there is a fixed amount of raping that men want to commit. then basically any kind of defence is a defection because the defence is a cost and the same number of rapes is going to happen no matter what. i'm not saying that this is the actual reality but it is a possibility and if you advise defending against rape then you should also be prepared to defend against this. the reality is probably defence is part defection and part reduction but then it is much more complicated question. of course also there is the question of whether the cost of defence justifies the risk reduction. you could not walk across the badly lit field for a x% reduction in rape but is that actually worth the cost of pursuing the alternative route. i fear there is trap where people will sacrifice anything to avoid some kind of negative -EV event but i don't think this is rational.

i think a lot of these decisions are very complicated but unfortunately they are reduced to soundbites like 'i shouldn't have to change my behaviour because some dickheads will fuck with me' or 'you need to take preventive actions so dickheads won't fuck with you'.

imagine that there is a fixed amount of raping that men want to commit.

There is no evidence for this sort of assertion. There are lots of men out their with differing dedications to getting laid on any given night. Some are so dedicated they will sit in a bush to kidnap any woman they see passing alone (still this guy is deterred by a group, only the truly truly truly dedicated man kidnaps a women from the bushes in front of a group of people). Others are dedicated enough to buy some drinks and an illegal pill, and use some tactics to separate said woman from a group (if applicable). Others are dedicated enough to target an already drunk AF woman. Others are just tryin to get some. And others are begrudgingly at a shit place for courtship like a bar because they don't know what else to do.

I don't agree with this framing. This could be applied to smear any and all defensive actions as "defecting".

This means that a gazelle fleeing a cheetah is "defecting" against the group since that cheetah is going to eat something today and it is merely a question of which gazelle is unusually slow and unlucky.

An all purpose argument against self preservation proves too much. But as you mentioned, the rate of victimization being a conserved quantity is not necessarily true. If we advocate running away from cheetahs, we could hope that it eventually starves to death. Or whatever incredibly strained analogy applies to real life human predators.

But as you mentioned, the rate of victimization being a conserved quantity is not necessarily true. If we advocate running away from cheetahs, we could hope that it eventually starves to death. Or whatever incredibly strained analogy applies to real life human predators.

Indeed. For example, if all women avoid badly-lit routes, potential rapists will be forced to either stay home or attack on a well-lit route, which increases the chance of bystanders interfering, thwarting the crime as well as potentially leading to arrest. In the long-term, this leads to a situation where a large number of potential rapists are either in jail or law-abiding to avoid the risk, reducing total rape.

If all women cover their drinks and drink responsibly, rapist will have no opportunities to prey on unconscious victims. Potential victims will be aware and in control, able to fight back or scream for help. Same result.

I feel the other side of this analogy too.

A few years ago, I bought a nice electric mountain bike. Fast, fun, capable (you can ride MTB trails uphill!) - I love it to bits. If I could, I'd ride it everywhere. So what's the problem?

It's that my city has a rampant bike-theft-culture. Within a few weeks of locking it unattended outside, some fucking junkie would try and steal it, and even if they didn't fully succeed, they'd loot it for parts, jamming a screwdriver through the flimsy battery lock and prying it out. They'd go for the wheels, or try and take the seat. They would still end up causing damage. It's enough to dissuade me from riding it, and I feel it's a legitimate frustration with the state of the city that that is just accepted as normal and expected.

I feel this hard. I have a really nice bike that I haven't been able to find compatible locking skewers for the wheels and so I never ride it downtown out of caution because I don't know how motivated the local bike thieves are with snatching a wheel held on with just a common hex bolt. Probably not that motivated, but it doesn't seem worth the risk. I felt the same when contemplating an electric bike and assumed the components would be far more of a thief-magnet and I didn't want to bother with the headache of researching ways to keep things protected (or even if it's possible). I mount my bike lights on my helmet so I don't forget to take them off when I get places, but then if I don't want to carry my helmet around I have to take off the lights & camera before I can lock it up through the strap (but what if someone cuts the strap to steal my helmet??). It's annoying. I'm so envious of (hypothetical?) scenes of bucolic European villages where folks ride a cruiser without a helmet and then just hop off and lean it against a wall when they get to their destinations.

I'm not sure if there ever will be a solution so long as drug addicts exists. They'll continue to be motivated and enterprising in their quest to steal whatever isn't nailed down to feed their habit.

What city?

Vancouver, Canada

Interesting. I nodded along thinking "yes, I've also been a bike owner in California". Sorry to hear the rot has spread.

This sensible advice will always founder on the rocks of female sexuality. Women do not want to be safe, they do not want safe men, and if the literature they consume is any clue, practically every "romance" novel has a positively described rape scene in it. Rape is simultaneously a hideous crime and the central sexual fantasy.

Gay guys don't want to catch HIV, but they want to do all the stuff that produces that outcome. Straight dudes don't want to get stabbed by a crazy girlfriend, but they definitely want all the stuff that produces that outcome. We are all enslaved by our own sexuality to a greater or lesser degree. Some people don't have much trouble with it, but it's a reliable failure mode of humanity.

St. Paul was basically right about human sexuality.

Also, more straight guys should dispassionately and stoically accept that they may get stabbed by crazy girlfriends. If they die, they were weak or something and basically take the crazy GFs out of circulation for at least a while. If they live, they've learned valuable lessons. Their suffering was not in vain: it was arguably for the greater good.

Classic PUA theory states that women want the appearance of danger without personal risk (eg an emotional rollercoaster). They want an intrinsically safe bad boy. Romance novels feed into this by creating a similar 'on rails' 'dangerous' experience.

I don't think women want real danger. They (and this is a very very broad brushstroke here; by 'they' we are probably only talking about a certain type of thrill-seeking girl commonly found in nightlife venues) want the appearance of 'danger' right up to the edge of the cliff where there are actual consequences.

For myself I've got quite a few sexual fantasies that I would never want to attempt in real life. I'm pretty sure that rape fantasies have no impact or subconscious influence on girls actually wanting real life rape.

Classic PUA theory states that women want the appearance of danger without personal risk (eg an emotional rollercoaster). They want an intrinsically safe bad boy. Romance novels feed into this by creating a similar 'on rails' 'dangerous' experience.

This is generally how I frame this issue. I eventually learned my lesson but early on I was aghast at how many women I dated were enthusiastically into being choked, slapped, thrown around, hair pulled, called degrading names, etc etc but usually only after enough comfort and safety is established. At that point they basically get the best of both worlds: the male aggression and violence they find so alluring, but without any actual danger.

Yep. Human sexuality - IMO - is pretty disgusting. That goes for both men and women. To deal with it is to endure this disgust for bonding or for the glory of the next generation. This is admirable.

It is absurd to infer that women want a thing to be done to them because they read fiction about it being done to other people.

The "other people" it happens to is always an audience surrogate for the female reader to self-insert into, in the same way the ordinary high school student at the center of a harem anime exists for male viewers to relate to.

Sure, in a fantasy where they are in control and can stop at any time. Actual rape is not like that!

That statement is totally true, but it isn't just "reading fiction about it being done to other people". Is it absurd to infer that men want to have sex because they frequently masturbate to videos of other men having sex? Women don't just read fiction about this, they actively enjoy it, create it and seek it out. Hell, they frequently talk about how much they enjoy it in public! The inference gets a lot less absurd when you look at the real world context here, and you can even use this knowledge to make accurate predictions about women's preferences (i.e. they prefer it when men do not ask them for explicit consent for every single physical escalation).

Women don't just read fiction about this, they actively enjoy it, create it and seek it out. Hell, they frequently talk about how much they enjoy it in public!

I feel like it is important to note that "it" here is still fiction! I play video games that involve killing dozens or hundreds of people. I enjoy it, I seek it out, I talk about how much I enjoy it in public. Can we infer I want to kill or would enjoy killing dozens or hundreds of people on that basis?

The inference gets a lot less absurd when you look at the real world context here, and you can even use this knowledge to make accurate predictions about women's preferences (i.e. they prefer it when men do not ask them for explicit consent for every single physical escalation).

I encourage you to ask any women you know if they would enjoy being raped and report back how it goes.

I play video games that involve killing dozens or hundreds of people. I enjoy it, I seek it out, I talk about how much I enjoy it in public. Can we infer I want to kill or would enjoy killing dozens or hundreds of people on that basis?

I can absolutely infer that there's a significant portion of the male population that enjoy war, violence, combat and competition, even to the point of lethality. Given that I know absolutely nothing else about you (maybe you're ex-special forces and have in fact killed lots of people before), the idea that you would enjoy or get some kind of pleasure out of a lethal competition is actually a reasonable inference. It won't be totally accurate, but we're talking about inference here rather than divine revelation - "this is likely" is just fine for that particular bar, and the inference gets more accurate the more information you volunteer about yourself.

I encourage you to ask any women you know if they would enjoy being raped and report back how it goes.

I've spoken to multiple women who actively told me that it was a sexual fantasy of theirs and asked me to be more "rapey" with them. Maybe my proclivities just lead to me encountering more women of a certain type, but c'est la vie. But as for the actual question you'd have to get a lot more specific, because asking whether they would enjoy being raped is like asking if they'd enjoy eating food - the precise details do in fact matter. And in my experience, people do actually want to experience their sexual fantasies, even if they would prefer/only do so in a matter that doesn't have severe consequences for the rest of their life. Hell, there are women who actually set up and arrange "consensual non-con" orgies in the rationalist community.

Your boyfriend being sexually aggressive in bed is obviously absurdly different to being raped by a stranger you’ve never met. The latter involves a core component of fear that the former doesn’t. There are a handful of Bay Area weirdos who arrange polyamorous orgies for programmers, yes.

The average woman would find it pretty easy to have aggressive, anonymous (and therefore zero blowback) sex with a large number of male strangers on an extremely regular basis and yet the vast, vast majority don’t.

If you say “they want it without the risk and fear and horror” [which are inherent to violent rape] then you have literally ceased to describe violent rape. So the point is void either way.

I can absolutely infer that there's a significant portion of the male population that enjoy war, violence, combat and competition, even to the point of lethality.

The military is always looking for recruits, and for those with a more lethal view of blood sport there’s always Ukraine. Again, the obvious difference between Call of Duty and real life is that in the former, there is no real fear. That makes it a useful analogy. By contrast, the male porn analogy is not useful because we know that most men would fuck anything. The same isn’t true for women.

The military is always looking for recruits, and for those with a more lethal view of blood sport there’s always Ukraine.

And for those of a more introverted or solitary bent...or for those that don't have the stomach for the moral injury of war...there's always the trackless wilderness of Alaska in late winter.

Given that I know absolutely nothing else about you (maybe you're ex-special forces and have in fact killed lots of people before), the idea that you would enjoy or get some kind of pleasure out of a lethal competition is actually a reasonable inference.

Can you clarify what a "reasonable inference" is here? At least in my case it's definitely false.

It won't be totally accurate, but we're talking about inference here rather than divine revelation - "this is likely" is just fine for that particular bar, and the inference gets more accurate the more information you volunteer about yourself.

Sure, what I'm saying is P(wants to be raped | has rape fantasies) is, like, < 0.0001. A very small fraction of women who have rape fantasies would actually enjoy being raped.

I've spoken to multiple women who actively told me that it was a sexual fantasy of theirs and asked me to be more "rapey" with them. Maybe my proclivities just lead to me encountering more women of a certain type, but c'est la vie. But as for the actual question you'd have to get a lot more specific, because asking whether they would enjoy being raped is like asking if they'd enjoy eating food - the precise details do in fact matter. And in my experience, people do actually want to experience their sexual fantasies, even if they would prefer/only do so in a matter that doesn't have severe consequences for the rest of their life. Hell, there are women who actually set up and arrange "consensual non-con" orgies in the rationalist community.

I feel like this paragraph evinces a misunderstanding of what is bad about rape. Rape is not bad because rapists are rough or sexually aggressive. Plenty of women enjoy those things in a consensual setting. Rape is bad because of the lack of consent, the loss of control, and uncertainty about what is going to happen. Even in CNC scenarios the parties have generally agreed in advance what is going to happen, who is going to be involved (and how), and should have a safeword to call the whole thing off if it gets too intense.

Can you clarify what a "reasonable inference" is here? At least in my case it's definitely false.

Making a reasonable judgement in line with pre-existing knowledge and information. If I know that you're male, I can infer that you have higher grip strength than the median woman. Of course there's a chance you lost both of your hands in a tragic boating accident and had them replaced with hooks and hence have zero grip strength at all, but absent that information the prior inference is still understandable.

Sure, what I'm saying is P(wants to be raped | has rape fantasies) is, like, < 0.0001. A very small fraction of women who have rape fantasies would actually enjoy being raped.

I think that this depends on the circumstances, in the same sense as "I like to eat food" does not mean that I would enjoy being forced to eat a giant bowl of virgin boy eggs with a side of gutter oil. There are absolutely women who would actually enjoy being raped if it matched up to their fantasies. Again, maybe the women I've encountered are non-representative outliers, but it matches up with the studies I've seen on the topic. And more than the studies...ever had a look at AO3 or what's popular on there?

I feel like this paragraph evinces a misunderstanding of what is bad about rape.

I'm not trying to claim that rape is a good thing or that it isn't bad - but people want and enjoy things that are bad and bad for them all the time. But more importantly, I don't really care about answering the question "is rape bad" - I'm fairly certain that question has been settled already. The question at hand is whether or not some women would enjoy rape, and I responded because I've had several women tell me that yes, they would. I think heroin is a terrible drug that has awful consequences, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend that nobody would ever want to do it when plenty of people make it clear that actually they would seek out and use it.

That said, if seriously challenged on this topic I'm going to retreat to the feminist definition of rape (all heterosexual sex under "patriarchy") and wave a victory flag from high atop the motte.

I feel like it is important to note that "it" here is still fiction! I play video games that involve killing dozens or hundreds of people. I enjoy it, I seek it out, I talk about how much I enjoy it in public. Can we infer I want to kill or would enjoy killing dozens or hundreds of people on that basis?

I can absolutely infer that there's a significant portion of the male population that enjoy war, violence, combat and competition, even to the point of lethality. Given that I know absolutely nothing else about you (maybe you're ex-special forces and have in fact killed lots of people before), the idea that you would enjoy or get some kind of pleasure out of a lethal competition is actually a reasonable inference.

Addendum to this - I would wager that the games @Gillitrut enjoys involve killing people that damned well have it coming, or at least are legitimate targets for violence within the context of whatever character is being played. The gameified version will probably be amped up and more extreme than plausible real-life situations, but at the core of the game is a fantasy that a lot of men really do find pretty cool and would find satisfaction in accomplishing in real-life. I'm going to play some XCOM at some point today, and while I don't actually want aliens to invade Earth so I can lead a rebel group and kick their ass, I have to confess that I think it would be pretty badass if I led a rebel group kicking alien ass. Likewise for actions taken in Cyberpunk, RDR2, and others.

Perhaps the correct inference is more directional than literal. In games and fantasies, we can amp up something that we feel a bit of an urge for to a comically high level, tearing apart corpo mercenaries with cybernetic gorilla arms, which probably isn't something that many of us would want in real-life, but the basic urge to do violence against evildoers is actually quite common.

Your inference is incorrect. In fact, sometimes in these games I'll make a quicksave and just go on a rampage murdering innocent people. Do you think I'm some aspiring mass murderer now? What does this fact tell you about my proclivity to killing actually innocent people?

This is one of the strangest things my wife and I disagree about. When I play a sandbox computer game, one of the things I will try fairly early on is going on a violent spree and seeing what happens (normally along the lines of "the city guards come and beat your puny low-level arse"). My wife is horrified by this. My son is getting into minecraft, and when he said "I spawned all these villagers so I could throw them into the lava" my wife came to me and said we needed to do something about his developing violent streak, and I insisted that violence against computer sprites didn't count.

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I've spoken to multiple women who actively told me that it was a sexual fantasy of theirs and asked me to be more "rapey" with them.

This is a real thing, but there is context to this. I myself have had a few women attempt to provoke me into.. lets call it encouraged non-consensual behaviour. Even then, they are choosing the man they are doing it with and when they are doing it. They are looking for an 'on rails' experience and at worst the verisimilitude of rape, but not actual rape. Not walk down an alley and get your clothes torn off by gangbangers rape. Not 'guy I don't know who enters the room while I'm high or passed out' rape. Even the borderline girls.

I could see some women choose poorly or encourage/flirt/provoke clumsily, leading to a 'date rape' situation by someone without self control, social sense or who ranks too high in the dark triad, but that would be a rare exception and still wouldn't be a 'I want rape'. I'm not excusing 'regret rape' or buyers remorse either. Just saying girls don't want real rape.

You are being uncharitable, and what is more, you are incredulous. The number, of course, is 57%*

*on the high end. 31% is the lower bound.

and that is the first link I found for 'women rape fantasy percentage'. Do you... not look up public studies on the internet for things you would like to know, or do you prefer to remain blissfully unaware?

“Rape fantasy” if you go by the actual associated smut that women read is:

‘Some extremely handsome, rich, single (very important) and charming man falls for me in seconds and is so obsessed by how incredibly beautiful I am compared to any other woman that he has to have me, takes me by surprise, attends to my pleasure and falls instantly in obsessive love with me afterwards while begging me to forgive him for his transgression, showering me in affection and gifts, worshipping at my feet and being utterly loyal to me until I give in and marry him’.

Please describe (tagging @JTarrou to answer too) where this corresponds to anything more than, well, pretty much zero actual cases of rape in the real world?

I can't believe this needs to be said but people fantasizing about something and people actually wanting that thing to happen are different. Incest porn is a very common genre of porn, for example, but I am skeptical the people who watch it would actually want to fuck their family members (I certainly don't). People have fantasies about all kinds of things they don't actually want to do.

Yeah. I corresponded online with /u/rhirhirolls from Reddit during the spring and summer of 2017. She'd had sex with her father after lengthy family discussion with her parents; at the time she maintained she was fine. She wrote the most eloquent and most revolting defense of incest I ever read. Not an unintelligent individual.

If you give someone a holodeck card their fantasies give you probabilities about what they're going to do with it. The fantasy is different from reality in that you can choose which parts of the scenario you want and can explore them safely.

At the end of the day, what they actually find out they want probably remains aesthetically horrifying to naïve sensibilities.

Incest Porn's a weird one, since arguably a lot of the stepcest stuff has come out of it being exceedingly affordable and practical to create versus other content of a similar level of taboo. A standard porn shoot can become an incest shoot with the addition of 5 lines of dialogue, without requiring sourcing actors who are either physically outliers or willing to do dangerous and/or weird acts.

Sure, but my point is that inferring that people wanted to fuck their step siblings by their consumption of such porn would be a bad inference. Feel free to exclude stepcest porn. What fraction of women who watch daddy/daughter porn want to fuck their fathers? What fraction of men who watch daddy/daughter porn want to fuck their daughters? I think the percentage is very low in both cases.

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I must ask: how the hell does one look up public studies for these things, then, whatever the topic? I don't think going to Google (or even DuckDuckGo) and asking "how many women have rape fantasies" would be such a hot place to start.

I ask because I'm starting to suspect that, despite my education, I was never really taught how to research anything.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=rape+sexual+fantasy+statistics&btnG=

You just have to use the right search engine and look up the sources of what you find.

Do you have any source re: rape in romance novels? I know it’s a stereotype, I know it’s popular; they’re called “bodice rippers” for a reason. But I’d be interested in seeing any stats on the matter. I’m sure someone has done a detailed survey of erotica.

Anyway, I remain skeptical that “wanting safe men” would be a prophylactic. Out of the stereotypical risky decisions—provocative dress, heavy drinking, walking home alone—which would you say are calculated to attract dangerous men? From where I’m standing, they’re not so targeted. The desire for fun and attention is not very specific. Hence why men choose very similar things, despite not generally trying to bait in strong, threatening dudes.

They ain't called "bodice unlacers".

I don't have anything handy, no, and I'm packing for a fishing trip early tomorrow morning, so I won't be looking for one any time soon. If anyone can show that rape is rare in by female for female erotic fiction, I'll withdraw my assertion based on nothing more than the dozen or so that I've read.

Fair enough. Enjoy the trip.

Do you have any source re: rape in romance novels?

I would not defend the original claim without some considerable caveats, but my wife is a romance novel enjoyer, and the male love interests really, really do not practice affirmative consent, in a way that has heavy overlap with the definitional games that are commonly played, ie equivocating "sexual assault" with "rape", where the former covers "unwanted" touching, kissing etc. A lot of what happens would be grounds for criminal charges, not to speak of cancelation.

Eh.

There really ought to be some sort of large-scale survey, but romance novels have often seemed like a notable blind spot in the general discourse of feminism. It wouldn't surprise me if no one ever has bothered to look.

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