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Continuing on with The Motte's theme of the week, the Australian Federal Government has given the online dating industry a year to implement a 'voluntary' code of conduct in the face of 'online sexual violence' or presumably face regulation.
This ultimatum seems to be motivated by “An investigation by the Australian Institute of Criminology last year found three-quarters of online daters had been subject to some kind of online sexual violence in the past five years.”
Finding the referenced report 'Dating App Facilitated Sexual Violence' (their term, not mine) seems to include amongst other acts:
- Pressured the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule
- Continued to contact the respondent even after they told them they were not interested in having a relationship with them
- Pressured the respondent verbally to perform unwanted sexual acts (eg making promises, lying, repeatedly asking or insisting etc)
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit message
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit photo or video of themselves
- Pressured the respondent to meet them in person when they did not want to
This would include dick pics or non-consensual sexually explicit language sent through a dating app, along with other mundane dating activity. The march to broaden the definition of sexual violence to include 'making women uncomfortable' continues.Australia, is usually a follower of countries like Canada and the UK when it comes to these sorts of policies, but it does occasionally become the first mover when there is the chance of getting a cheap political win (and to seem like it is doing something in the face of more serious issues such as the housing crisis).
The linked news article is kind of buried down the state news media's front page and references the federal government's
karensocial services minister who has previously worked on 'cyber safety' committees. There is a fair chance this is a complete nothing burger that will blow over and is just the govt making noises rather than actually intending to follow through, but time will tell.I might regret engaging with this but... to me these rules appear targeted towards stopping sexual harassment. Most women consider pressure after she's said "no" harassment, unsolicited dick picks harassment, etc etc. And it really does feel unsafe. Now, some uncomfortable and unwanted communication just comes with the territory of being female in the dating world. I do think redefining (most) of these things as sexual violence is bad as it weakens the definition of sexual violence. But... a lot of these behaviors really are highly upsetting to many women, and the other comments saying this is just "normal dating" have me pretty worried about what these posters think is normal behavior.
Pressuring women for contact or sex when she has said no should not be normal. Unsolicited pictures of gentitalia should not be normal. Continuing to contact a woman after she's said no should not be normal. Lying should not be normal.
I think this is more an attempt to legislate men into treating women like fellow humans than trying to control dating. The way the sexes interact is complex enough that I'm not sure it really can be effectively legislated. Ultimately, I guess I agree that this law would be bad (or at least not have the intended effects), but a culture should also never be in a position where people think legislation is the only way for women to be treated well.
What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?
Then women must stop rewarding these behaviors. If you want to actually impose change from on high, your authority has to somehow punish Stacey when she accepts a date with Chad after she turned him down the first time. Just telling men that 'no means never' isn't going to work if they see that guys who get laid are being persistent and guys who aren't persistent don't get laid.
I'm not going to deny that lying, manipulation, and harassing women get men laid. That's been well documented. But if you think that manipulating, lying to, and harassing women is fine as long as it gets you sex, maybe... just maybe... you're the reason Australia is considering this
lawregulation.I'm going to take a step back here: Earlier today, I listened to a podcast on the Free Press, Bari Weiss' site. It was called Are we living through end times?, and was about the signs of social unrest that precede revolution. Our time has many of them. One of the primary signs of impending revolution is “emmiseration of the masses”. One of the things that happens during this emisseration is that people start to see that although their ancestors were able to achieve success playing by the rules, they can't anymore. They come to believe they now have to cheat their way to the top. And indeed, the cheaters win. They win in politics, they win in college admissions, they win at tests, and although the podcast did not address this... they now win in the bedroom too.
But a society cannot function if only cheaters can win. The entire system breaks down. And indeed, our whole sexual system is breaking down. 25% of 40 year olds have never been married, and 6/10 men in their 20s are single. Our birth rate is the lowest it's ever been. The situation is not better for women. I can't find the articles I wanted to cite here, so instead I'll link to an account by a university professor of the confusion she and her students feel when they are told they ought to feel happy about sexual encounters they found exploitative and upsetting. Note that it often takes women years to figure out why they felt used. Do you think Stacy likes it when Chad pushes her boundaries until she has sex with him?
The only winners in today's sexual culture are the small percentage of men who can have dozens of sex partners while an increasing number of men have none at all. We are in the middle of a sexual apocalypse, and we have got to find a way to reverse it.
This bill is an attempt to get men to play by the rules again. There have always been cheaters, but the costs of hurting women were too high for most men when the women they dated were their friends' sisters or people who were going to be in their social circles for years. Now that men can date women none of their friends know, whom they can arrange to never see again, and have a society gaslighting women into thinking casual sex is empowering, men can use underhanded tactics like these to gain an unfair advantage over other men. This is bad for women, it's bad for honest men, it's bad for men who resort to them to compete, and it's really really bad for society. When liars and manipulators win, it corrodes our culture's soul.
We can't function like this. This
lawregulation isn't the answer. Other posters are right that the worst offenders will find ways to slip through. This law is a bandaid slapped on a hemorrhaging amputated arm. Our sex culture needs a deeper culture change in order to work for most people again, but we have to find a way to fix this! Our whole future is riding on it.I'm behind you on "manipulating" and "lying". On "harassing"... I think you may be looking at the problem backwards. I think the stigmatisation of deep love is part of what you correctly decry here, and I think rolling that back in law but also in culture is a necessary part of any reversal. Say what you will about stalkers, they're about the least-likely people to cheat on you.
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I agree with most everything you say but the way you phrase certain things, as exemplified by the 'triggered' @Folamh3 reply you got, undermines it and makes it seem like you are coming from a point that completely misunderstands why these problems arise to begin with. At least as far as it relates to what I assume is a popular opinion here; that society changed in this way to a large extent because of women's empowerment.
Now, I think it would behoove us, instead of blaming some vague thing like 'society', to recognize just what happened. Why were things allowed to change to begin with? Why didn't the men, who then had power, stop it?
The verbiage in your post is steeped in the sort of meaning that feels similar to what one would hear from a lone brave professor who decided to teach the first woman who attended his lectures despite all the men in the class leaving in protest. Or the rhetoric of a universalist 'egalitarian'.
"Fairness."
"Our future"
There are no 'fair' solutions to this problem. The very idea of 'fairness' and 'equality' between men and women was part of what created it. There is no 'us'. The only 'working' societies in the world subjugate women. The universe does not owe anyone who wanders outside of that dynamic a solution to their self inflicted problems.
To that end, regardless of how highly you think of your post, I don't think you are saying a lot. The impression I get from reading it, for whatever that is worth, is that the drowning mans salvation lies at the bottom of the ocean.
Outside of that I am all ears to an actual solution to this problem that doesn't come from Catholic neo-reactionaries and the like.
Wow I can't remember the last time someone accused me of being "triggered" by something.
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Nice way to pass the buck there, blaming this on "society" rather than "feminist media".
This is antagonistic and a bit low effort. Do less of this please.
Understood, apologies.
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Is the complaint about throwing blame or understanding the nature of the problem?
The 'honest men' losing in post-modern societies are frequently losing because they listen to what women say, rather than watching what women do, as @The_Nybbler suggests.
The current regime of sexual promiscuity was demanded by women a generation ago. Blaming 'society' for the predictably poor outcomes removes the agency of all the people who fought for the current regime. I understand that many may be unhappy with the result, but something something about a fence.
@CanIHaveASong does not address the cohorts in our post modern societies that still marry and reproduce despite men being mean to women on the internet. Many of these cohorts rejected most of the sexual / cultural revolution at least in aspiration if not practice. Many of the most fertile women in America have rejected telephones.
Many of the women who are most unhappy about 'men these days' seem to be the least likely to advocate for a return to traditional marriage and religiosity.
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This isn't the Motte anymore. Look- I wasn't expecting my post to be accepted with applause and universal agreement, but my thought out, nuanced, cited post gets 4 upvotes, while apologia for sexually harassing women (that dismisses out of hand what I wrote) gets 30+? I used to write things that got a lot of pushback, and I knew to expect some heat, but this is different. It's just unwillingness to engage with what I wrote. This place isn't about exchange of ideas anymore. Oh, there's some interesting discussion, still. You've generated some here. I didn't follow the Motte over from reddit because it had become uncomfortably closed-minded and misogynistic, and it's noticably worse now. If this place is just about people confirming their own worldviews to eachother, then what is it?
I'm disappointed in this place. I don't know what I expected popping in again. I guess I'd expected some resistance, but hoped for open minded natures to triumph. I don't feel like my presence is welcome here anymore. This whole thing confirms to me that my time and my mind are better used elsewhere. :-\
Perhaps I'm missing something, but your post seems to have 29 upvotes and 16 downvotes, net 13? That's pretty good reception imo. I don't think it should be downvoted, but whatever.
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For what it's worth, I made a long series of posts and replies on a topic that went wildly against consensus here (largely on nuclear power, although my takes on the Ukraine conflict aren't popular here either) and most people were actually polite and respectful, with one person even thanking me for providing a contrary perspective. I still got downvoted to hell, but I think paying attention to those funny little internet points is a mug's game. What mattered to me was the quality and strength of the arguments I interacted with, and those were usually still a lot better than other places on the internet. If you think that engaging in debate is fun and worthwhile, I think just ignoring the internet points is a good suggestion and will let you get a lot out of this place.
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Although subjectively explaining vote counts almost never works out, this one seems to make sense to me (as a lurker throwing around upvotes).
Your first post framed this as exasperated leaders at their wits end just honestly trying to get men to treat women as fellow humans, which apparently doesn't ring true or sound too compelling to people here. "What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?" as a question is totally dependent on the legitimacy & good faith of the premise "people think this is the only way", which is the main contention in most of the other top-level replies.
The_Nybbler seemed to cut through right to the key point, that attractive/desirable men are going to keep winning in online dating regardless of how many rules they follow or break. So making more punishments and penalties available to women to use against men they aren't interested in is continuing the same one-sided trend we've been in, which can feel unfair and avoidant of root issues.
Then you spun that into a long and somewhat interesting comment (though with about 3 too many links) about how we're screwed if we just let 'cheaters' win, which also characterized persistence in the most nasty way 'lying/manipulation/harassing to get laid'. But the point wasn't that we let cheaters win, it was that desirable men win online dating whether they cheat or not.
So to an average observer, it looked like you had perfect form and a great-looking swing, but you just whiffed the ball on both swings. Meanwhile The Nybbler had a bit of a lazier swing but nailed the ball square-on. Hence you not being downvoted to oblivion or anything, but just receiving merely mild internet reward points.
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You end your post with that and expect pleases and thank yous?
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Yeah and it kinda sucks that he got 30 upvotes.
But I don't believe you don't care about only getting 4, because at the end of the day you aren't downvoted into the ground like with other echochambers.
The best achievement you can get in a place where there are serious debates happening is to go against the groupthink and come out on top, which you've done.
Jfc conventional BBSs like system remains superior to reddits.
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Oh absolutely, this place has become an echo chamber every bit as bad as /r/politics or whatever leftist hangout you care to name, and this subthread has been especially bad. There's just no interest in the actual reality - each event simply serves as a jumping off point to go back to the same old grievances and resentments.
I accept it for what it is and farm the downvotes - I've seen what gets upvoted and want no part of it. If you actually want substantive discussion though? Yeah, you're going to have to look elsewhere.
So why are you here then?
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And where would that be?
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I sympathize with your vexation here. I'm not sure how productive these discussions can be if we have to regularly pause for interjections of "you haven't assigned enough (or any) blame to my outgroup". I think he could have made a better post than that.
At the same time, I also think we would be remiss to completely talk around a very obvious link between female promiscuity and popular progressive feminist messaging. A certain subset of men may benefit the most from modern dating/hook-up college, but this culture has never been broadly or enthusiastically condoned by men, at least out loud. A man may be happy that prostitutes exist if only to satisfy his base urges, but he's not exactly proud of it. And since humans aren't consistent, principled thinkers - while he may be happy that some women sleep around if only for the opportunity for him to get laid, he's probably not thrilled to find out his wife/girlfriend had dozens of partners prior to the current relationship. "X in the streets, Y in the sheets" kinda sums up the attempted propriety.
By contrast, it is feminism that has railed against "slut-shaming", argued that women who sleep around are unfairly judged compared to Chads, whitewashed sexual exhibitionism as personal exploration, and so much more since at least I was in Jr High. I'm not even interested in blaming anybody for our current state of affairs - just an admission that there is an obvious (if not clear) relationship between the dashed expectations of young women and this ubiquitous ideological memeplex. I don't think you can assign more culpability to men for herding women towards the Sex Party - gently pushing against their backsides and reassuing them to not worry, this will all be so fun - versus an industry of Grl Power media that is assumedly produced mostly by women.
As such, I am not interested in curbing or punishing legions of cheating/insistent men that potentially threaten the structural integrity of our society. Not until we dial the lens out far enough to indict a few other groups. Zero interest in "getting men to play by the rules again" when both sexes have defected from them (with women running the full sprint, one could argue), and when the fairer one routinely acts like it never has any agency in these affairs whatsoever - which is unacceptable when you've spent decades trumpeting how you know what you want, you are self-empowered, you don't need anybody to hold your hand or 'mansplain' things to you, and being chaste is just an insecure demand from the patriarchy.
Short of actual rape, there's a lot I'd give amnesty to until this conversation space starts looking halfway reasonable. But I'm not optimistic, and it is for that reason I reluctantly agree that this wound may not heal. All the "stitching up" has to happen on the men's side, and women act like they're just oblivious passengers that never saw the dozen road signs warning "POTENTIAL LANDSLIDES AHEAD".
In terms of the views of the 'people', my general impression is that most men are openly very supportive of the increased availability of sex outside of long-term committed relationships, and that many are openly supportive of the availability of one-night stands. In terms of the public statements of 'intellectuals' - I think thrre were a lot of male intellectuals in the past who supported the 'sexual revolution', and there continue to be so today?
I agree that feminism support male and female promiscuity, but male feminists and female feminists both support it.
I don't think it is really possible to get an accurate picture of sentiment here given the overwhelming amounts of social control and messaging on the topic. Most men are in fact openly very supportive of the ideologies that they are required to support in order to remain employed, but I'm not sure how much of that translates to actual, real support. The constant witch-hunting that takes place these days is, to me at least, a sign that this outward support isn't always matched behind the mask.
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Thanks for expressing the basic point I was trying to make in greater detail. I'm having one of those days where the words aren't coming to me with ease.
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This is an extreme "mistakes were made" non-apology.
Sure, it's not incorrect to say that "society" sends young women a lot of messages which glamorise casual sex - but which components of "society" are sending these messages, exactly? Presumably young women aren't going down to their local mosque, church, or synagogue to hear preachers gush about the satisfaction of being a bad bitch who fucks a dude then leaves him on read.
To fix a problem, you have to identify its source, and you have to do it with more precision than pinpointing it to "society".
Was the sexual revolution invented by women? No, so why suggest it was? Feminism predates the sexual revolution.
I don't recall suggesting that the sexual revolution was invented by women.
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I didn't think it was a literal apology. A "non-apology apology" presents itself as though the speaker is trying to make amends for wrongdoing, but if read closely, the speaker is very careful to avoid admitting guilt or accepting responsibility for wrongdoing (hence the weasel phrase "mistakes were made").
I thought it was a similar kind of evasiveness on /u/CanIHaveASong's part to attribute young women coming to believe that casual sex is empowering as a result of the messages sent by "society", as opposed to any more specific agent or group contained therein.
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It's not a law! No one is considering a law!
"You do this thing we want you to do 'voluntarily' or we'll do it for you" is the most transparent of fig leaves. That it's regulation by threat rather than code doesn't make it less de facto required.
I mean, I wouldn't even call it a fig leaf. There's no pretense the government isn't driving this. They had an announcement and everything.
But it remains the fact that there is no law being proposed and this remains an important distinction! The government is saying "hey we think this is a problem, come up with some ways to address it". So yes, it is compelling action. But it is allowing the apps to decide themselves on the specific action, it is not imposing penalties for breaches, and it is not putting legislation in place that will endure beyond the term of the current Minister. This is the lightest of light touches.
I agree with you that this is currently not actually a law, but I think you are being slightly dishonest when you claim that "No one is considering a law!" - this is the sort of action which frequently precedes legislation on the topic, as the problems the code is meant to address remain unaddressed. I find it hard to believe that even the most ardent supporter of a code like this actually believes that it will do anything at all to fix the problem of men continuing to propose alternatives when their first data idea gets shot down.
No, it isn't. I challenge you to provide me with even one example.
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right-o. regulation. So law by a non-lawmaking agency. I'll update my post accordingly.
(Despite the sarcasm, genuine thanks)
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I entirely agree. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is willing to make the compromises that are necessary to solve this problem, because even suggesting most of them is taboo. There will need to be a technological solution or natural selection will eventually solve us for it.
What does natural selection solving it for us look? An Amish and Muslim future?
Don't forget the Quiverfull evangelicals!
I absolutelt endorse this future
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Laws catch the little sharks while the big ones just bull through. Maybe this is a feature designed to catch horny persistent careless-at-best individuals that aren't Chad.
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I'm not Australian, so it's not likely. But "lying" and manipulation and "harassment" (that is to say, not taking 'no' or even just evasiveness as 'never') have been part of the human mating dance at least since language was invented. Probably before.
That is correct. But what these rules do is empower cheaters more. The normal guy who is just trying to respond to an intentionally ambiguous situation is discouraged or punished. Chad, being Chad, doesn't care and does what he always does. And usually gets away with it.
Yes she does. Perhaps years later after Chad #5 or #10 or more she realizes that chasing that feeling was unwise, but at the time she loved it. And she put up barriers specifically to filter out men who wouldn't push them.
It can't fix the incentive structure. It can punish men who do things likely to get them sex, but all that does is empower even more the most brazen ones who for whatever reason can get away with it (i.e. Chad). It can force men out of the game, but the only way to get men to play by "the rules" is if playing by "the rules" can actually result in success.
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