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Notes -
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,
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.
I agree we should view it as terrible awful behavior. Not sure it should be criminal.
Question is whether there is the possibility of forgiveness. Brand seems to have gotten his life together and decries what he did previously.
I don't think Brand should face criminal charges unless there's good evidence for the criminal allegations; presumably, as in eg. Weinstein's case, that's something that the police and prosecutors will determine. Social sanction? Well, if people want to judge him for fucking a 16 year old girl when he was 35, that's their right.
I'm curious - how do you actually coordinate on enforcing social sanction besides something like a religion? Aka "wokeism" or the ol' faithful of Christianity.
I think this question is confused.
The non-woke and non-christian parts of our society have large and well-used mechanisms of enforcing sanctions. The courts, being fired by your employer or kicked out of an institution, distributed social rejection. I don't see how this is different in kind from the Church proscribing a behavior or exiling someone. And the Church's moral commandments were developed in ways not dissimilar to our own - some were debated by powerful men and legislated, all were evolved and spread among individuals of varying intellect and interests. Fraud and theft are immoral actions too, and we enforce social sanction against it all the time, both via courts and social media.
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You don't. It's emergent based on what catches on and what doesn't. It's a social sanction so society is the arbiter as a whole.
That's the point really. It's the distributed judgment of your fellow citizens. And when enough agree, a new convention coalesces and through social shaming and gossip it spreads to a critical mass.
Even with Christianity it only works when enough people agree with the tenets. But if Christianity fails to convince enough people, its reach falls. It still spreads through the same mechanism as every other social judgement.
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I’d say social sanction is exactly what he’s facing now, it’s essentially cancellation.
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