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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Russell Brand Accusations

Russell Brand has been accused of sexual misconduct and/or rape by four women in a large exposé by the Sunday Times [2]. The mainstream consensus online is that the testimony of these women is absolutely correct. I wonder, though, how many false accusers we should expect given the context of Russell Brand.

Russell Brand is not just some guy, he was at one point a party icon in the UK. As such, he has slept with 1000 women. And these are not just some women, just like Brand is not just some guy. This is not a sample size of the median woman in the UK. The women he slept with would differ psychologically from the average woman: more likely to make poor choices, more likely to be partying, more likely to be doing things for clout (like Russell Brand), more likely to be involved with drugs and mental illness. A study on the lives of “groupies” in the heavy metal scene found that groupies were more likely to use sex for leverage, to come from broken homes, and to have issues with drugs and alcohol. (This is not a one-to-one comparison; heavy metal is different than the rock n roll persona of Brand).

Scott has written that up to 20% of all rape allegations are false. But with Brand, we have a more complicated metric to consider: how many false accusers will you have sex with if you’ve had sex with one thousand women who make poor choices? Scott goes on in the above article to note that 3% of men will likely be falsely accused (including outside of court) in their life. If this is true, we might try multiplying that by 125 to arrive at how many accusers Brand should have. That would bring us to four, rounding up — but again, this would totally ignore the unique psychological profile of the women he screwed.

There’s yet more to consider. Brand is wealthy, famous, and controversial. His wealth and stature would lead a mentally unwell woman to feel spite, and his controversy would lead a clout-chasing woman to seek attention through accusation. What’s more, (most of) these allegations only came about because of an expensive and time-consuming journalistic investigation, which would have lead to pointed questioning.

All in all, it seems unfair to target a famous person and set out your journalists to hound down every woman he had sex with. It’s a man’s right to have consensual sex with mentally unwell and “damaged” women, which would be a large chunk of the women Brand bedded. Of course, this cohort appears more apt to make false accusations. Quoting Scott,

in a psychiatric hospital I used to work in (not the one I currently work in) during my brief time there there were two different accusations of rape by staff members against patients […] Now I know someone is going to say that blah blah psychiatric patients blah blah doesn’t generalize to the general population, but the fact is that even if you accept that sorta-ableist dismissal, those patients were in hospital for three to seven days and then they went back out into regular society

The sexual revolution involved worsening the lives of a substantial proportion of the population (both men and women) to benefit a tiny minority of men. This was probably always an untenable state of affairs, given that even the men in question often had daughters (by contrast, billionaires and kings do not typically have family who are paupers or peasants). Society - even liberal society - is governed by countless rules, minor and major, designed to prevent some parties taking advantage of others even if it is "consensual". You can't pay someone $2 an hour even if they consent, you can't sign up to 30 years of indentured servitude even if you consent, you can't practice as a self-taught surgeon even if all your patients consent. You can't engage in duels or cannibalism even if both parties consent. So we agree that clearly 'consent' isn't everything; we're not (for the most part) ancaps. Some things are social negatives, and it is understood that tolerating them is bad for society, period.

Part of reversing the sexual revolution is making sure that promiscuity has consequences. Yes, that includes for women (although as Red Pillers seem to delight in reminding them, 'hitting the wall' is the consequence for women anyway, and most slut shaming has always been by other women, which continues comfortably well into the 21st century even in progressive circles). But it also means consequences for men. The '60s rocker lifestyle of fucking a thousand 14-16 year old girls while on tour across the country is a net negative for society. It benefits a small number of men at the expense, in many ways, of everyone else (who is impacted directly or indirectly by mountains of damaged women created as a consequence). Sexual libertarianism is as degenerate as any other form of liberalism, and therefore I really do support measures to give it more consequences. If cases like these act as a deterrent for the next generation of Russell Brands, they will have served their purpose, whatever the truth.

And in Brand's case, he really is an infamous asshole, a pseud, and has a proven record of being a huge piece of shit. So it's hard to feel bad for him.

Yes, that includes for women [...]. But it also means consequences for men.

And yet the consequences for men keep coming, and the consequences for women don't. There isn't any reversing of the sexual revolution going on here. Just the perpetration of a new double standard where men get responsibility for both their own choices and those of women.

Undo rape shield laws. Actually punish single mothers who commit child neglect or abuse. (As of now this is pretty much not happening.) Just two ideas off the top of my head.

If you send single mothers to jail the kids become wards of the state (at what, $100,000 per year minimum?) while they’re there.

Foster care doesn’t cost anywhere near that.

Unfortunately foster care has such high rates of abuse that it’s probably better to just let the kids be abused by their parents most of the time.

What about stripping them of custody and putting the children up for adoption? I'm pretty sure that'd objectively be warranted in many cases, even if it's currently not done.

Unironically, bring back slutshaming.

Promiscuity looks to be, by every measure, a very bad thing that hurts women(and men, but especially women). Women are extremely influenced by societal pressure and the best way to influence them is to tell them that it’ll change their social status.

If it wasn’t about sex I would agree with you, but I just don’t think humans are capable of being nonjudgmental about it.

Slut shaming never disappeared. A favorite Gen Z TikTok topic is slut shaming women based on their ‘body count’. Women still slut shame each other the same way they always have, this is a fundamental way of in-group policing / mate guarding for women. Hoe, thot, ‘for the streets’, all common terms, the problem is more mixed messages from media and conflicting messages from young people which are confusing for teenagers.

Slut-shaming happened in the social context of monogamous patriarchy, where women had neither economic independence nor reliable means of contraception, where early marriage was the norm, and which no longer exists. You know that perfectly well.

I see parts of it repackaged into FDS-like content where women encourage each other to not put out for any random fuckboy. They don't use the word slut and put an emphasis on "they don't deserve you" rather than "you're a worse person for fucking them", but the message remains.

Fair point. It doesn't surprise me. I remember people in the Manosphere making this prediction more than a decade ago, namely that women who feel duped by the message of sex-positive feminism will start advising their daughters or younger female relatives to avoid casual sex in general. But this message is not anchored to any moral code, conviction or worldview, and has no structural basis in current society. Rejecting the sexual revolution out of nothing but spite, regret and resentment will not change anything.

Average age of marriage in some conservative Muslim countries (eg. parts of North Africa) is well over 25, in Algeria it’s 28 for women and 32 for men; it’s unclear that sexual conservatism requires early marriage.

Seriously?

When delayed marriage is normalized, it creates more incentives and also opportunities for promiscuity. Isn't that self-evident?

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This isn't convincing at all - The trendlines for men and women largely track each other and women commit suicide less than a quarter as often.

Wait a second.

Race to the bottom to get male attention at all? I think you are being hyperbolic here.

Everywhere I see innumerable women complaining about.. too much male attention not a lack of it! All those pesky guys sliding into their dms, bothering them at the gym, bothering them at the coffee shop, on the train, on the library, etc. Certainly of all the things women are suffering from a lack of male attention isnt one of them.

What you meant to say was. Attention from the top decile of men, who can dictate the terms. Yes attention from them will require you to race towards the bottom. But as the apex fallacy goes, CEOs and billionaires are not the only men in the world.

Ill actually make an effort post about this soon, with a radical solution that will never happen.

Attractive women wanting to sleep with attractive men is the natural order. Unattractive women also wanting it is natural (who doesn't want better?), but them wanting that and nothing else is what is causing the rip.

Its not as simple as that but correction.

It's not that we need more of these kinds of posts, but you have to admit the phrasing was unfortunate. It's hard to square it with all the "don't even look in my general direction" complaints you see all over the internets.

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great post

Absolutely loved Eighth Grade, and agree that it's a great opportunity to see the perspective of a modern young woman.

I see a lot of assertions that this state of affairs was all young women's idea, and that they need to be punished in order for it to change.

I think both genders collaborated on this group project. I don't want anyone to be punished, but we have the rock of consequences and the hard place of changing tastes. Brand was able to sleep with 1,000 women not despite his reputation but because of it.

How do we make his sexual personality repugnant to women instead of attractive? That seems insanely difficult. Very intelligent people - male or female - tend to pick potato chip partners over celery on a consistent basis.

In return, they don't get the sexual pleasure or status that a rake enjoys.

My hope would be that at least some fraction of his partners derived some pleasure from this, but given the description of what he considered fun sex I'm not sure that's the case. I also struggle to find where a starfucker would cash in on their status beyond maybe getting lucky and being invited to various parties and stuff afterward. It's difficult to steelman.

Honestly I think like a lot of things socially shaming and thus lowering the status of bad actors would do a lot to fix things. If he was socially shamed as a cad, a bore, and so on, women wouldn’t want to be around him because that behavior would make him low status. And he wouldn’t be openly sleeping with thousands or even hundreds of women because he’d lose status not only with women but with other men.

I mean the counterpoint is ‘yes, the sexual Revolution and porn culture is largely men’s fault, but it rests on convincing women to act against their own best interests. The only way anyone can see to fix it which has ever worked involves restricting the range of socially acceptable decisions for women to make, and that might not be fair, but life isn’t fair’.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s an oversimplification. Actually undoing the sexual Revolution entails things like making it harder for promiscuous men to find non-prostitute female companionship. But that, again, is the sort of thing that’s usually affected by restrictions on women’s freedom(her father has to approve before you can date or w/e). But the rat race can only be stopped by stigmatizing running it, and that means that yes, the restrictions are going to fall disproportionately on young women- just like they did historically.

and women commit suicide less than a quarter as often.

That’s because women try to take pills(which has a high failure rate) and men shoot themselves(which does not). For mental health suicide attempts(which are higher in women), not completed suicide, is the better metric to look at.

Suicide attempts that fail because of incompetence (a good metric for mental health) and suicide attempts that fail because they're not honest attempts (which are not) are impossible to disentangle.

Women realising that a failed suicide attempt is a great way to get a bunch of sympathy points/attention/clout would be upstream of the choice of method in this model.

Usual QALY given for depression is something like 0.7 IIRC; suicide is generally considered a much worse outcome than "being depressed for a while".

This assumes that all attempts are equally serious and reflect similar levels of mental anguish. It is also possible that some attempts are less serious and driven by different emotional states. For example, maybe some people are desperate for attention/support/accommodations from the people around them, and understand that an attempted suicide will give them those things. Obviously there are other reasons women might prefer softer options, while still being 'equally depressed', but its not a given that that is what is happening when looking at attempt numbers.

That’s because women try to take pills(which has a high failure rate) and men shoot themselves(which does not).

Sure, but why is that? You imply it's something inherent to men that they happen to choose more dangerous suicide methods, but they could easily choose those methods simply because they're more serious about actually going through with it.

For mental health suicide attempts(which are higher in women), not completed suicide, is the better metric to look at.

This is a very bold claim and seems intuitively wrong. Those who go through with suicide must on average be less mentally healthy than those who are less serious about it.

Young women are depressed and suicidal in record numbers.

The issue is consequences imposed by others, not the essentially mechanical consequences of one's actions.

What consequences do you want for them?

Penalties for false rape/sexual assault accusations, for starters. Serious ones, on the same level as the accused would have gotten if the lie had not been discovered.

Penalties for false accusation wouldn't discourage Russell Brand. But they would be a demonstration that something is going on that has (externally imposed) consequences for men and women. 2rafa is, as I read it, trying to justify the consequences to Brand as part of some sort of reversal of the sexual revolution, which would have consequences for women as well. This is something many of those opposed to consequences to Brand would be in favor of, so it's a way of telling them they're actually getting what they wanted. But they're not; the consequences to Brand are NOT part of any reversal of the sexual revolution and in fact no consequences to women are forthcoming.

other parents

It seems like other parents mostly have your back on this. Your child’s peers, on the other hand…

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Can you believe that I, at least, am sincere in this?

Sure. But it doesn't matter; I do not believe those attempting to punish Russell Brand are doing it for that reason.

But if we want to discourage this extremely familiar pattern of a high status man very publicly using and discarding (often extremely young) women for decades, to zero social censure, with all the abusive behavior that very predictably ensues? We probably don't want to scare off women who come forward and say, "Actually, it wasn't all in good fun."

If it was, indeed, in good fun, we (or at least I) DO want to scare them off. And this logic has been used to justify non-questioning and non-punishing of all sorts of false accusers, from Aziz Ansari's accusor's (where the accusations weren't even of wrongdoing, just ridiculously cringey behavior that she went right along with) to Sabrina Erdely's (she, as you may recall, fabricated an entirely unbelievable story and ended up getting a number of men's organizations punished for it). But in this case that's not my point. In this case, my point is that punishing women for wrongdoing would be evidence that all this is done in furtherance of fixing a problem, not making it worse. Russell Brand would be punished by anti-promiscuity people, feminist activists who just want to stick it to men, and those who want to punish Brand for opposing COVID vaccines. The lack of any attempt at consequences for women rules out the first; that's not the motive here.

How are penalties for false rape accusations going to roll back the sexual revolution and prevent more Russell Brand type lotharios? That’s a complete non sequitur for discouraging male promiscuity.

The non sequitur is claiming that the consequences to Brand are somehow part of rolling back the sexual revolution and therefore OK. You're starting from a consequence, claiming a cause, and then claiming that cause justifies the consequence, when that cause does not exist as can be determined by the lack of the other consequences. That is, you're using "rolling back the sexual revolution" as a pretext to justify the consequences to men of something entirely different.

What would the consequences for women be that they aren’t already? Women are already a main group of losers in the sexual revolution and (as I note) Redpillers already argue that women face great, dire consequences of promiscuity - eg. low social status for having a reputation as a slut, spinsterhood, hitting ‘the wall’, being an ‘alpha widow’, unhappiness, loneliness and becoming a cat lady. By contrast, Brand faced no consequences until now.

Do some napkin math to explain how women are the losers of the sexual revolution. Without any of the variables being plus or minus infinity.

Because this isnt computing.

I could tell you, but I’d rather just copy @raggedy_anthem’s excellent comment:

I'm saying that women are more depressed and suicidal than they have ever been. They are more depressed and suicidal than they were in the Bad Old Days of supposed patriarchy. Like men, they are struggling to find fulfilling relationships or lasting contentment, because the current regime isn't good for them either.

Women are suffering the direct consequences of letting men like Brand loose to enjoy themselves. They are getting raped, taken advantage of, or just used in that sad, grubby way that doesn't amount to a crime. They are getting the resulting STIs and raising the resulting babies by themselves. In return, they don't get the sexual pleasure or status that a rake enjoys. All they get is the fleeting satisfaction of being desired. This is a terrible deal for women, and to be honest it's not one that most women ever even wanted. It's a race to the bottom, where you have to do things you aren't comfortable with in order to get male attention at all. If you want to know what it's like to grow up female post-Sexual Revolution and post-Internet porn, this is a great place to start. Little girls didn't choose this.

I see a lot of assertions that this state of affairs was all young women's idea, and that they need to be punished in order for it to change. That perspective... really lacks empathy or insight into who's actually driving the bus. It's blaming some of the least powerful people involved.

Okay here's my line of thought;

  • "Sexual Revolution" happens.
  • Some winners, a lot of losers.
  • We can do arithmetic all day about as to whether the average, median, modal man/woman is worse off on net on average, etc.

But I do think barring any and all aggregate statistics. The women are still the winners.

Why? Simple. Women are the choosers. They can choose a man of equal status to them and mostly avoid the pitfalls of the sexual revolution. Most women have this option. Most men don't they either get chosen or not. Not doing something is a lot easier than doing something.

Now is it realistic to expect women to do this? Well, no. But on the individual level, this is a non-issue for women.

I think when people talk about these widescale societal issues there is too much meta-talk happening, but a majority of women can avoid the pitfalls, men can't. Focussing on the individual makes this patently obvious.

The elephant in the room remains. Women would rather have this than choose a man of equal status. Revealed preference makes it clear.

Women being choosers, are the only ones who can fix this.

Women in the fifties mostly became married stay at home moms. This is statistically what most women figure out they actually want, eventually. It is also an option that most women do not have access to anymore.

Ergo women have lost something important with the sexual revolution. That’s even leaving out that while yes, it’s easier than ever for women to have casual sex with chads, almost none of them actually want to do so.

So what's stopping an individual woman from marrying a Brad?

I know women as a group don't do this because they are subject to.. a lack of agency, social pressure, retarded messaging, etc.

THem not being able to be SAHMs is more of an economic problem than a sexual one.

My point is yes women as a group have indeed lost something, but that's because they act as a group! Any individual woman can still "defect" and avoid the pitfalls. If anything I will wager it's easier than ever for a woman to get "what they really want a la 1950's" because competition among men is so much more that many will provide it at considerable cost, just to have some coochy.

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having a reputation as a slut, spinsterhood, hitting ‘the wall’, being an ‘alpha widow’, unhappiness, loneliness and becoming a cat lady

We've already been at a point for pretty much decades where any public discussion of these phenomena and their negative social and personal consequences is practically exiled by the controllers of public life to obscure online message boards universally reviled by polite society. In any other place, they're a completely taboo subject. You know that. Let's not fool ourselves.

My impression was you can complain about it all you want, if you blame men.

That's a fair and difficult question. I think this can be achieved if a blanket condemnation/rejection of mainstream feminism and a simplified scapegoating of men in general are both avoided.

Oh, touché. Productive and in the mainstream is indeed a tall order.

Discussion of the consequences is exiled by many corners of public life. But the consequences themselves, as manosphere types will say, occur nonetheless, and they do so whether they are written about or not.

If society denies the existence of something, then it's no longer real, and is not considered to exist.

It is real, society didn’t talk about the opioid epidemic for a long time and clearly the deaths still mounted. I’m not opposed to Deleuzian theories of reality and I suppose your view is ultimately very French, but in a very real sense the consequences do still exist, yes.

Women are already a main group of losers in the sexual revolution

Sure, and the primary victims of war, too, right? The 'consequences' they received have been getting what they want, but not liking it.

That is how Gods punish people that they really hate.

I am not sure that applying the same severe logic one might use for homeless drug addicts to the child-bearing half of humanity is tenable long-term.

The whole ‘women as legally children’ thing was the norm for most of human history and it’s the norm for a minority of societies today. ‘Undesirable’ is possibly a fair criticism, but ‘just can’t happen’ or ‘unsustainable’ are easily disproven objections.

No they are not. Many things which were sustainable in the past are unsustainable today to any noteworthy extent. Example: hunter-gatherer lifestyle (unless you are also willing to cut down the global population by orders of magnitude).

It is trivial that the society can in principle be radically restructured to cope with disenfranchisement of women, but the way from here to there should be more clearly imagined, as well as the costs of the journey – all facets of our world that will not be sustained, as it were.

And specifically, Nybbler's logic of "they reap what they sow" might be unsustainable even in the previous era. Contrary to the feminist narrative, contempt for femaels wasn't an overwhelming consensus among Hajnalis of a few centuries ago.

When the world was harsher to women, TFR was higher. I'm not claiming that's cause and effect, but I am claiming that there's no evidence against such long-term tenability.

Again, why do you think 16 year old girls in 1965 had more power than rock musicians, Hugh Hefner, Hollywood and the ad industry? Blaming women for the sexual revolution just doesn’t stack up.

This is a non sequitur.

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