site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24733 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is this a full blown victim blaming in the most influential printed medium by decorated feminist? Or am I overreacting?

New York Times: There’s a sentence in the new book that I was curious about, and this goes back to the questions about the trickiness of generalizing and of using a certain kind of rhetorical style: You’re discussing the rarity of false accusations of date rape, and you write, I’m paraphrasing, that there are mentally ill or damaged women who will make those kinds of accusations, and the only thing a young guy can do is not have sex with damaged or mentally ill women. That’s a bit of a flip way of addressing that problem, isn’t it?

Caitlin Moran: That’s possibly my most overt piece of feminism. Obviously #NotAllMen, but I have experienced enough men where the thing at a party is that you’re hunting for the girl on the edge of the pack who’s a bit drunk, bit needy. I can remember dads telling their sons in pubs where I come from, “Crazy bitches are always the best [expletive].” It’s just saying to men as a kind and loving mother with some wisdom that if there’s a woman who is mentally ill, disturbed or needy or unhappy or really drunk at a party, leave her alone. The last thing she needs is a penis. If she’s an upset, needy person and you [expletive] her and then the rumor starts going around school, she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.” You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing.

nytimes.com: https://archive.ph/tZn3B#selection-457.82-457.95

How is this different from "You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing by flirting with that guy wearing that dress"?

Yes but sage advice. Just like the sage advice to a young woman is “don’t drink a lot especially around young men you don’t know” or “don’t dress like a slut.” Sure — it is “victim blaming” but the concept makes zero sense. The world isn’t perfect. Telling people “don’t put yourself in a shitty situation” isn’t victim blaming but trying to prevent victims in the first place.

I think the point of "don’t dress like a slut" being "victim blaming" is that you are supposed to be able to dress whatever you like and that your dress is never an invitation to be raped. I actually agree with the concept of "victim blaming" and disagree with you.

And you should be able to leave your keys in a convertible with the roof down in a shitty part of town. But that doesn’t really provide much solace when your car is stolen.

Sure, it would be great if we didn’t have to take precautions against bad actions but telling people to not take reasonable precautions because “that’s victim blaming” is “victim creating” behavior.

Also: if your dad tells you to be careful about what you wear to a party, that's pretty much his job being done correctly.

If the chief of police tells women in general to be careful what they wear to parties, then arguably that's maybe some small fraction of his job in terms of public awareness campaigns, but really his job is supposed to be catching and prosecuting rapists, and ideally doing public awareness/outreach programs that make life harder on criminals rather than on victims.

I feel a lot more confident calling victim blaming on people who are supposed to be fighting the criminals and are instead chiding the victims. This is often an individual vs systemic distinction (eg, giving advice to a specific person you know vs trying to decrease sexual assault rates across the entire city).

How you dress is never an invitation to be mugged, but that doesn't make it a good idea to wear a flashy diamond Rolex in a bad neighborhood. You have every right to do so, and if you're robbed the perpetrator is still 100% at fault, but that doesn't make it a smart idea.

but that doesn't make it a good idea to wear a flashy diamond Rolex in a bad neighborhood.

In a vacuum, sure. The entire discussion is about what type of society we're trying to create, an what things it makes safe or unsafe.

For example: in a vacuum, it seems dangerous to live in a giant opulent mansion while there are droves of homeless people living in camps less than a mile away. They massively outnumber you and are living desperate existences, surely they will just come overpower you and take your stuff to survive. They probably want your mansion and the food and goods inside more than almost any rapist wants to rape someone in skimpy clothes.

But we've set up a society where actually that is an extremely safe thing for a rich person to do, they do it all the time, and the idea that poor people would rise up and occupy their mansion and steal their stuff is something close to laughable. That's because we've built a social order in which there a lots of safeguards against that ever happening, both physical and ideological, and we promise overwhelming consequences against any group that would try it.

The ask here is that we take the same types of steps in order to make a society where women are as safe against rapists at a party with them as billionaires are against the homeless encampments a few blocks away from their mansion.

Of course, the crux of that argument is whether we are trying hard enough to create that type of society vs how possible that even is to accomplish (or how much we'd have to give up).

One side thinks that we don't have a society that ensures the safety of women as well as it ensures the safety of billionaires because we care about the finances of billionaires far more than we care about the sexual safety of women, and we could extend that protection if we wanted to take systemic steps to do so.

The other thinks that this is a genuinely harder problem because it happens behind closed doors and leaves little evidence afterwards, and also trying harder to solve it would involve tradeoffs in freedoms and due process and etc that would not be worthwhile, so effectively we're already pretty close to the optimal boundary and it's just unfortunate this is a hard problem.

(as per usual, my opinion is that the truth is somewhere in the middle, I do think there's room for some improvements - especially ideological ones - but it's definitely a harder problem and there isn't a ton of low-hanging fruit that's easy to grab her e in terms of improvements)

Difference between victim blaming and common sense advise is when the narrative impacts the perception of the crime and makes it more common.

Flashing a diamond in a bad neighbourhood is an extreme example. Better example is locals in a bad neighbourhood closing an eye to a normal tourist getting mugged there, and even buying stolen goods, because everybody knows he should have know better? The general narrative you repeat influences the reality.

Difference between victim blaming and common sense advise is when the narrative impacts the perception of the crime and makes it more common.

Just like with Murder and Cancer, the optimal amount of victim blaming is non-zero.

Not giving certain kinds of advice also makes certain types of crimes happen more often, e.g. not locking your front door when there's been lots of thefts in your area, or e.g. not warning people of pickpockets in a tube station and telling them to keep any eye on their belongings. The blame for the thefts lies 100% on the thief, but you are an idiot for not locking your door at night and calling out your stupidity serves to get other people to lock their doors more. Yes calling you out here hurts you, the victim, but it is a good deal for society if it prevents further thefts. Same with many other things. Western society does not victim blame anywhere near the optimal amount.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving is non-zero.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after the recipient was just raped is zero.

The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after the recipient was just raped is zero.

This quickly gets interpreted into, "The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving right after anyone is a victim of a crime is zero." Which, of course, means that since crimes happen pretty much every hour of every day, it can be easily rounded off to, "The optimal amount of crime-avoidant advice-giving is actually always zero, due to Rule 2."

Alternatively, we can just ask you to give one example of an acceptable time/place to give crime-avoidant advice. Note that the OP here has literally nothing to do with anyone in particular being raped.

This is assuming the advice is meant for the person who just got raped, it's not, the advice is meant for the rest of society, and giving it temporally close to when a incident happened when the event is fresh in society's minds is actually the best time to do it. The person who got raped is irrelevant, they could spontaneously combust and the right amount of advice to be given would be unchanged.

Even better would be to give the advice right before the rape happened, because the victim might have benefited from it beforehand an the incident may never have taken place (just like how "best practices to avoid getting struck by lightning" advice is normally given close in time to events with lots of lightning), but unfortunately unlike the weather we can't predict when a rape will happen with much degree of accuracy, so we're forced to give it after the event.

the optimal amount of victim blaming is non-zero

I agree with you in many things and disagree in some.

Seems a bit like positivism/normativism. This is the current state of the world I think the optimal behaviour is X is not endorsing the current state of the world.

it is “victim blaming” but the concept makes zero sense

I was whining last week about how lousy our language is about distinguishing "action X makes Y more likely" from "action X is to blame for Y" ... but it's not really a language problem, is it? We're just not good at thinking that way. Victim blaming makes sense as a concept, but it's so close to non-victim-blaming that even when you're trying to distinguish them you risk just falling down on the other side of the line. Compare "you should know better than to pay money to that sketchy-looking fraud; it's too late now" (fraud is a crime, a fraudster is to blame, and shifting the blame off the criminal is victim-blaming) to "you should know better than to pay money for that cheap-looking product; it's too late now" (caveat emptor, "no returns" policies aren't a crime, and aside from other "implied warranty of merchantability" sorts of considerations the most a customer is owed here is a chance to leave a bad review).

but it's not really a language problem, is it?

The language problem that I see, and that I think @zeke5123 is referencing, is that the concept of "victim blaming" gained currency in the first place. It's so ingrained that when someone is accused of victim blaming, their first response is apt to be, "no, I'm just saying that they adversely impacted the probability that they would become a victim", when it's actually fine to just say, "yeah, that victim is a moron and created the situation where they got victimized". In the most extreme examples, I might feel effectively zero sympathy for the victim. If someone gets mauled to death by a grizzly bear because they thought said bear looked really cute picking berries and decided to approach the animal the proper response is enshrining them in the Darwin Awards. Accusations of victim blaming in such a situation should be met with, "yeah, I blame him, he was the dumbest sonofabitch alive and he paid for it".

I never really considered it before, but where did this stupid phrase even come from? Well, Wiki has my back:

Psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 book of that title.[3][4][5][6][7] In the book, Ryan described victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States.[6] Ryan wrote the book to refute Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report).[8]

Moynihan had concluded that three centuries of oppression of black people, and in particular with what he calls the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery as opposed to its Latin American counterparts, had created a long series of chaotic disruptions within the black family structure which, at the time of the report, manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. The black family structure is also being affected by media through the children.[9] The Black family is usually portrayed as gang affiliated, single-parent or very violent. Aggression and violent behavior in children has been linked to television programming.[citation needed] Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.[citation needed]

Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.[10][11][page needed]

Ah. Well, that checks out.

If someone gets mauled to death by a grizzly bear because they thought said bear looked really cute picking berries and decided to approach the animal the proper response is enshrining them in the Darwin Awards. Accusations of victim blaming in such a situation should be met with, "yeah, I blame him, he was the dumbest sonofabitch alive and he paid for it".

Right, but bears aren't moral actors.

There's a difference between "You acted stupidly by sticking your dick in the crazy and this rape accusation is a direct result of that" and "You acted stupidly by sticking your dick in the crazy and now you deserve to be accused and convicted of rape".

Sure, there’s a difference, but is it really in anyone’s interest to have a society where official organs are first and foremost about sympathy with people who make bad decisions?

Obviously there’s a certain level of hypocrisy- ‘you went back to his apartment for a drink, what did you think was going to happen?’ Is probably not going to be acceptable anytime soon. But nobody owes grizzly man sympathy.

Sure, there’s a difference, but is it really in anyone’s interest to have a society where official organs are first and foremost about sympathy with people who make bad decisions?

No, but even less should they be about further victimizing people who were harmed as a result of foolishly putting themselves into dangerous situations.

Grizzly man will still get first aid after being mauled, possibly while getting chewed out for his stupidity, and if there's triage, he might be last. He will not get a police dog sicced on him "because he deserves it for being dumb about dangerous animals".

A rape victim with a short skirt will not get raped again by the police (or if she does, it would be a scandal of the highest order.)

A man who was falsely accused of rape, however, will have the weight of the law come down on him. This is the proper consequence for a crime, but certainly not for foolishly putting yourself into a dangerous situation.

Except that false rape accusations happen in the context that rape is a serious crime that sometimes happens, and it’s impossible to tell false rape accusations from true ones without investigating first.

A man who’s accused of rape should be investigated. If he was falsely accused because he decided to have sex with a crazy chick, that’s deplorable, but it doesn’t actually change the job of the police. If the rights of the accused aren’t being respected, of course that’s terrible, but it’s also a separate issue.

If it were just about investigating there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't. And to be fair, the police are currently doing reasonably well. But other party of society are not, and there's also a context of calls for the police to go harder on suspected rapists.

You don't just get to declare that a separate issue, it's intrinsic to how we should deal with rape accusations, and "maybe the people victimized by one failure mode deserve what we do to them" is an implication that should be pushed back against.

Sure, there’s a difference, but is it really in anyone’s interest to have a society where official organs are first and foremost about sympathy with people who make bad decisions?

I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that the official organs not use "you knew she was crazy" or "you knew he was an asshole" to impose the consequences on the person who was in fact either the lesser offender or not an offender at all, by treating the other person's actions as not being subject to judgement in the way a bear's would not be.

I think people would be best served by treating the worst people they encounter as having about as much moral agency as a grizzly bear. I wouldn't personally extend this to insane women at parties, but I would extend it to situations like that leftist that got stabbed to death in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago. Yes, the victim really is to blame when they tangle themselves up with lunatics.

That view can IMO only reasonably apply to direct consequences -- getting stabbed, or the crazy person vandalizing your house or something. If you go so far as to accept official organs applying punishment on behalf of the crazy person, you're demanding people treat society itself as crazy and blaming them if they act otherwise.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats