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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24748 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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I've dropped a fresh Israel-Gaza megathread here.

In culture war-ish political shifts from Eastern Europe, Poland's opposition looks to have overcome the PIS, meaning that the sometimes notorious Euro-skeptic right-wing government will likely be replaced by a more EU-phile coalition.

While the PIS won the most votes of any single party, with around 36.6% of the vote, this was less than the last election's 43.6%, and there seems to be a lack of coalition partners to reach the 50%. This was a fatal slide, which while having many contributing factors followed a major scandal in which corruption in selling Visas greatly undermined one of the PIS's key policy points- immigration- while validating accusations of corruption. While there will be some pro-forma opportunities for PIS to try and form a government, in practice leaves the likely next government to be an opposition-left coalition, which will likely be led by former prime minister (and former European Council president) Donald Tusk, who leadership in Poland was what paved the road for PIS to rise to power about 8 years ago.

Such a result will likely be greeted as a relief and good news for the European Union elites, and especially for Germany and Merkel, who Tusk was a reliable partner for. Tusk is about as much a Eurocrat as one can have, and has long been a leading voice in European circles shaping anti-PIS narratives as he tried to get back into Polish politics in the name of countering democratic-backsliding.

With a EU-phile government in Warsaw, this means some policies are likely to change. However, the nature of changes are likely to fall short of a 'the opposite of anything PIS did,' due to dynamics of PIS both doing some genuinely popular things which required 50-stalins criticisms, and for the nature of changing paradigms. Some of the dynamics that led to PIS criticism- such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority- aren't as likely to be reversed and re-sold once to the same companies once a shakey three-party coalition mostly united by being anti-PIS. Some things will be reversed, some will be kept, and some things will just be paralyzed due to coalition politics. That said, the European power centers- especially Brussels and Germany- can likely expect a more compliant Polish government for the next few years while Germany and France make a major push for power centralization in exchange for EU enlargement.

Various policy changes to look for movements on might include-

EU-centralization: This is one area where EU policy changes may see or enable significant shifts. One of the PIS's claims to notoriety was its functional political partnership with Hungary to block EU-level efforts to punish/exclude/potentially even suspend voting rights of recaltrant states. While condemned as part of anti-democratic badness, this had a major functional effect of blocking attempts at EU centralization that could sideline and selectively punish bad, or just unpopular, states. Tusk, as a EUrocrat, is almost certainly to step back from watering down issues targeting Hungary, but whether this will translate into a broader centralization momentum is less clear. The Germans and French have shifted from a current-EU-model of centralization (where individual states would be able to punished and lose veto rights- something Tusk might have gone along with) to now proposing a multi-speed-Europe model in exchange for expansion, which has far more serious implications, and which Tusk has opposed in the past (for potential reasons to broad for here).

Judiciary: This will likely be the quickest / easiest reversal, to EU applomb. The Polish judiciary followed a judges-select-the-next-judges, not appointment by the elected party akin to the German or US, and attempts to change that was strongly condemned by the EU (for whom the Polish Judiciary was seen as reliably deferential, despite corrupt origins from the post-communist transition). PIS paid regular political costs, and Tusk will drop that at the first chance while likely trying to prune if not purge the influence of PIS-associated judges (which will not be subject to significant EU-level criticsm)

LGBTQ+WE: This is one where the government line will likely align with the EU consensus of embracing the rhetoric and enabling/encouraging advocacy groups to set up social networks in Poland that were previously resisted. While over action will likely be less than full-throated supported, this was a PIS culture war point that the anti-PIS coalition will likely reverse for internal and external support reasons, though it will easily be a function that plays more to elite interests and foreign legitimization from EU allies than widespread domestic support.

Ukraine: There's very likely to be little substantive change on this. The biggest change is likely to be if there's a change in the distribution of arms vs other aid, which will reflect the military-industrial and rearmament policy more than a desire to aid Ukraine itself. While PIS did have election-rheotric and some disputes with Ukraine, I wouldn't expect the new coalition to substantially different on the conflict points (no Ukraine food dumping on politically significant farmers), and some of the criticisms of PIS on the Ukraine front came as much from a 50-Stalins direction as anything else.

Rearmament: Since Ukraine started, the PIS went on a major armament buying spree to modernize and bulk up the Polish military. Part of this was to free up older platforms to pass on to Ukrainians, while others were about establishing Poland as a military leader in Europe. Pre-election criticism focused on cost, and so reigning in would be natural (which could in turn mean less direct arms transfers in the future). The real interest will be what is cancelled versus what is changed, as various EU-power centers were more opposed that Poland was buying from outside the EU- especially US and US-alllied suppliers- rather than rearming itself. This will likely be a more case-by-case basis as PIS already had the ability to start some contracts that may have clauses making it less feasible to back out and transfer. It would be a major surprise, and reversal, if new-Poland renenges on the Korea tank contracts and goes for a German option.

Military-Industrial Policy: An outset of the Ukraine and Rearmament policies, PIS was establishing relationships and efforts to make Poland an autonomous arms center who could compete with French and German armament industries both inside the EU market and without. This had a dynamic of countering the EU strategic autonomy efforts (which are largely synonymous with French and German led arms projects), so there may be EU-advocated efforts to reign in the potential competition as a part of the rearmament restraint and Ukraine aid reallocation. Look for if South Korea's tank deal is radically restructured, as that was not only a rearmament program but also a lead-in to joint R&D for Polish military production capacity.

Media: One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media. During the post-Cold War period and the early 2000s, part of Germany state-encouraged economic policy was the expansion of German economic interests, especially media interests, in the post-Soviet east. This led to a major centralization of Polish media by German corporations, who weren't adverse to leveraging corporate influence for political influence and themes, including shaping editorial lines on Polish politics. Tusk was a beneficiary of this as part of his German political alliances, given the nature of German government-corporate media relations which can be characterized at times as 'cozy,' but when the PIS took power they compelled foreign-owned media concentrations to sell, which is how the PIS gained outsized media influence that the opposition decried as state propaganda. Despite PIS now losing hold of that, I suspect that there will be no explicit German re-sell/reversal: rather, the Polish media landscape will likely be re-coopted by the new ruling coalition, just with different political interests in charge, or the new government will attempt to compel re-sell, but with an eye for more pro-EU rather than German-specific interests, to try and re-establish a dominant pro-EU media sphere but do so in a way a future-PIS government can't reverse as easily.

Immigration: This is likely to be one area where PIS broke the EU-phile paradigm, and Tusk and the anti-PIS quietly maintain continuity as a whole. While Tusk was a committed EU-phile and ally of Merkel, PIS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance, even getting the grudging German acquiesence when it was used in the 2021 Belarusian-instigated refugee crisis, where PIS preventing migrants from requesting asylum served as one of the only shields preventing an otherwise easy movement from Belarus-thru-Poland-to-Germany during the German government formation process. Given the EU-wide changes to immigration, and especially Germany's, while Tusk may entertain some token-level redistribution support, this will be a topic they step very gingerly around, not least because letting in immigrants corruptly was a key point of what brought PIS down, and could easily do them in again in turn.

There's more to be guessed at, of course, and I don't claim any special insight, but overall I'd expect by next year Poland-EU relationships to be on a fundamentally different tenor, but not at all what they were before PIS took control. Expect a lot of whom and who sort of 'it was really bad when PIS did it, not so much an issue now' tenor as conflicts occur, but one where Tusk and his EU allies try to make longer-term systemic efforts to prevent PIS from returning and cement a pro-EU coalition for as long as possible, but doing so knowing there's very shakey footing that could see them quickly fall and a PIS-coalition return.

Polls with questions like "do you support rights" don't reflect what's actually happening in the culture war, in fact the attempt to conflate the two feels like a pretty explicit smear tactic.

"Flawed" does not begin to give it justice. Most people haven't the faintest clue what "LGBTI+ ideology" is supposed to mean. Even as a culture war junkie I cannot tell you what those specific pollsters meant by that, I can just tell you that what the elites try to sell under the "LGBTI+" label includes things far outside the overton window of most people even in the progressive west, let alone Eastern Europe.

Doesn’t feel like that on the ground. Polish people are Shreks, their support for LGBT can be understood as “do whatever you want out of my swamp”, have all the negative rights you want, such that Im not expected to grant you positive freedom. Polish people react to rumours of LGBT flags in Western courthouses, schools, and libraries with a shock that chooses between “this is terrible” and “this is so terrible it must be PIS Stalinist propaganda to scare me away from the west”.

It's not easy to see it at the first glance, but the supposed coalition will still be quite conservative. A center-right party named 'the Third Way' openly proclaims Catholic morality and values and it seems that without them the parliamentary majority cannot be reached.

such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority

What does this mean? PIS nationalized nominally-Polish companies owned by Germans? Or is it related to the media sales mentioned later?

I appreciate the writeup.

What does this mean? PIS nationalized nominally-Polish companies owned by Germans? Or is it related to the media sales mentioned later?

'Nationalized' isn't technically correct, in that the companies were sold rather than seized, but polandization of media was an established PIS goal partly accomplished in part by using control of the government to ban government entities from buying subscriptions, which undercut the financial viability of a significant number of media outlet. In short- financial viability depended on public purse strings, and so the party in power has power of the purse. (Which is one reason why it's unnecessarily likely to revert to foreign ownership- the same tactic could occur again, and media is even more dependent on state-support than before.)

The media sale was part of the PIS goal of re-polandizing the media, which was a multifaceted fight with both local and foreign interest groups that were actively arranged against the PIS. The role of foreign-owned media in the anti-PIS media sphere was openly acknowledged early on, and often mutually antagonistic. Here is an early 2019 article from DW (a German media company) that's rather frank about the nature of a significant parts of the majority-foreign-owned media sphere being part of the anti-PIS coalition. This is characteristic of the Polish media struggle after PIS came to power in 2016, where the sort of passive 'soft power' German-owned media influence in the earlier 2000s was giving way to more and more overt political influence attempts as part of anti-PIS polish politics.

The breaking point came in late 2020, with the purchase of Polska Press by a Polish state-owned refining company from Verlagsgruppe Passau, the German media company that had been running it since before PIS came in power. Polska Press was a media firm that owned hundreds of local newspapers and websites, including 20 out of Poland’s 24 regional daily newspapers as well as a further 120 regional weeklies. The portfolio of websites were reported to have over 10 million users, and the entire deal enabled access to an estimated 17 million media consumers, when Poland is a country of less than 40 million. Link

If that seems to be a lot, it is. Poland is a country of less than 40 million. But from a media-analysis, and PIS-perspective, the bigger point is that the concentration of ownership already existed.

For all the objections of PIS taking control of the papers, PIS couldn't have taken 20 of 24 regional daily newspapers in a single sale if someone else hadn't exercised collective ownership first, that party had been corporate German since before PIS came to power. While there's always an argument that German media was more neutral and objective and free from government influence, it's not exactly hard to find links between the 2010s German government and German media that enabled the German government to shape corporate media coverage.

It also probably didn't help that anther German media CEO wrote a letter to his Polish media workers calling a PIS politician a loser for opposing Donald Tusk and indicating his intent to apply editorial pressure in his preferred direction. That's the same Axel Springer media group co-owned (and now directly owns) PoliticoEU, one of the primary English-language media groups covering European politics as a direct feeder to the American political-media sphere via it's American cousin, Politico. If you read a media article on how Polish media freedoms were at threat in the later 2010s, there was a non-trivial chance it was either dervied from, or directly from, an Axel Springer outlet.

Axel Springer, completely unrelated, owned a number of Polish media interests in the 2010s that may or may not have been subject to polish-ownership risk.

Put it all together: in the mid-2010s as PIS campaigned to power, the media environment was a majority foreign-owned, especially German owned, with prominent German media actors already indicating a not-so-secret hostility to the incoming party. PIS declared it's intent to re-Polandize Polish media, the German-owned media fought back to preserve their ownership. Arguably, they lost. PIS may have lost this election, but only after a political generation and a general dismantling of the German media empire in Poland.

I appreciate the writeup.

You're welcome.

PiS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance

A major scandal during the campaign was the "cash-for-visa" affair. Moreover, PiS does a lot of posturing on illegal immigration while opening the floodgates to legal migration. In many ways, they remind me of the GOP. Pretty hardline on stuff like abortion but totally hypocritical on immigration

One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media.

Instead, Soros' Open Societies foundation literally bought one of the most prestigious newspapers ("Rzeczpospolita") as part of a wider consortium under their noses, LOL. They simply scaremonger about the Germans while allowing US plutocrats to buy up domestic media instead.

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"?

For me this registers as yet another example of reinventing sexual ethics purity, but with your only available language tools being the ethics of consent. If all sex is morally acceptable between two consenting adults, but you recognize that a hookup might actually be bad for both people, one way out of the conundrum is coming up with a way to say that there couldn't have been true consent.

Except in practice it is recognise that a hookup is bad only for the woman an only she can not give true consent.

I would describe that as a mostly accurate view of that relationship.

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"?

Who/whom.

You also, as walterodim points out below, have a situation where there’s no language to describe sexual bad behavior other than ‘unconsensual’. I think everyone acknowledges that making a move on a vulnerable woman when she’s a bit drunk is taking advantage of her, but it’s not rape. And feminism simply doesn’t have the vocabulary for ‘it’s a scummy thing that everyone involved has consented to’, nor does it have any ability to conceptualize the need for that vocabulary.

I think everyone acknowledges that making a move on a vulnerable woman when she’s a bit drunk is taking advantage of her

I don’t acknowledge that. She probably got drunk partly to get laid. Declining her invitation to jump in the sack because she’s drunk is a grave & insulting violation of her autonomy as an adult, her wishes, and her well-being.

How do you distinguish between someone who got drunk partly in order to get laid and someone who did not? Surely you agree that not every drunk girl at a party is trying to get laid and that there is some level of drunkenness where someone's failure to dissent (or even positive consent) should not be taken very seriously (e.g. if your friend got falling-down-drunk and asked you to help him jump off a bridge into shallow water you would be an awful person if you helped him do so).

How do you distinguish between someone who got drunk partly in order to get laid and someone who did not?

I don't. If you consent to sex, whatever your motives, drunk or not, it's done. It's just sex. It's not like jumping off a bridge. No necks get broken. Nothing morally relevant is happening.

I honestly find this a very strange attitude. First, sex can and often does have nontrivial physical consequences, ranging from mild soreness the next day to pregnancy or STDs. Second, many people obviously have a very strong emotional reaction to sex. I certainly think emotional consequences are different from physical consequences but I don't think they don't matter at all. For example, suppose you had a child and told them they are stupid and unlovable. No necks have been broken and yet it's clear that your actions are morally relevant (I'm not trying to equate this example to drunk sex, just trying to point out that physical harm is not a prerequisite for moral relevance). I think having sex with someone that you know they will later regret carries some moral weight. Obviously a lot depends on the situation, often both parties are partly responsible and just because something is morally wrong doesn't mean it should necessarily be illegal. But I think it's wrong to discount it completely.

I think having sex with someone that you know they will later regret carries some moral weight.

and @hydroacetylene

But it’s still a scummy thing to do to sleep with someone who will foreseeably suffer emotional harm from it.

How would you know/foresee this? I guess if you are positive you are an absolutely terrible lay in every circumstance, you could theoretically have a duty to protect the opposite sex from your depradations... but no, it's their business. You don't have a crystal ball, and it's up to them to carry the consequences of their decisions, whether it's drinking, having sex, driving drunk, having sex while driving drunk etc. Who's responsible if she's drunk and runs some kid over in her car while you're having sex with her? You see my point? Being drunk makes women less responsible for the consequences of their actions when they choose to have sex, but ordinary humans more responsible when they choose to drive.

Both parties share some responsibility; how much depends on the details of the situation. As an analogy, imagine your drunk friend asked you where his keys were because he wanted to drive. If you help him find his keys and then he drives drunk and gets into an accident then he certainly is responsible, but so are you. If you have sex with someone intoxicated and know that they will likely regret it then in my opinion you are partly responsible.

Edit: "How would you know/foresee this?" The same way you try to predict how other people will feel about something in any other social situation. Of course sometimes it is possible to make an honest mistake. For example, suppose that someone wants to have sex with you and tells you over and over that they just want to hook up but later you find out that they really wanted a relationship. In most such situations, I think your position would be quite defensible and the person who wanted to have sex with you should bear most or all of the responsibility for their decision. But I think anyone who's been an adult long enough has seen some situations where a man was knowingly using a woman's emotional neediness for sex and I don't think that's a good thing (and even less so if intoxication is involved). By the way, I think you could read Moran's advice to young men from the OP's post as, in part, advice for "how to know/foresee this."

The same way you try to predict how other people will feel about something in any other social situation. Of course sometimes it is possible to make an honest mistake.

It’s bizarre. Why does the man have the responsibility to look into the future and use his good judgment, when the woman couldn’t be bothered/failed to do so? She could have used “the way to predict how other people will feel about something in any other social situation “ to simply say no in the first place, instead of relying on his predictions, his self-control, to say no for her against her expressed wish. Let’s just consider her acquiescence the ‘honest mistake’ that is nobody else’s problem, problem solved. Do better next time.

More comments

Well yes, you’ve established that it isn’t rape. But it’s still a scummy thing to do to sleep with someone who will foreseeably suffer emotional harm from it.

But in this case, the moral harm entirely comes from the reaction of her social circle, no? She has to lie that he raped her to protect her reputation. It sounds to me like her peergroup is the problem here, not the sex. It sounds like the problem isn't "open sex-positive norms", but "trying to live sex-positive norms while actually in a very sex-negative environment."

How do you distinguish between someone who got drunk partly in order to get laid and someone who did not?

You could ask them if they want to get drunk & laid, or just drunk?

I was assuming we were in the context where the girl is already drunk and perhaps so intoxicated that she may not be making decisions she would agree with when sober. In this context, I think it may be hard to determine if part of her reason for getting drunk was to make it easier to get laid (and I wouldn't necessarily trust the accuracy of an extremely drunk person's response to such a question).

the girl is already drunk and perhaps so intoxicated that she may not be making decisions she would agree with when sober

So you want the man to make the decisions for her? Sounds kind of... patriarchal.

I honestly don't care if it sounds patriarchal or not. I'm not a modern progessive (though I'm not exactly conservative or traditional either) and the things I care about are not based on what sounds patriarchal or not. Consent is not the only moral value that matters in sex and sometimes you do have a responsibility to not enable people to make bad decisions, and especially not to take advantage of their propensity to make bad decisions for your own benefit. That's true when a man does it to a woman, when a woman does it to a man or any other combination of genders.

But what makes 'having sex while drunk' a bad decision, per se? Me and one other person in this thread met our wives this way -- it happens a lot. My experience with alcohol is not so much that people do things that they don't want to do when sober as that they do things that they'd like to, but are too inhibited for whatever reasons. Sure sometimes these inhibitions are in some way 'correct', but there's not really a bright line there that I can see. (other than of course if somebody is actually passed out or otherwise physically incapable of articulating consent or lack thereof -- which most people are comfortable just calling 'rape' without any beating about the bush around 'bad decisions' or 'impaired judgement'.

More comments

How do you distinguish between someone who got drunk partly in order to get laid and someone who did not?

Questions of false accusations and such aside, I will say that I think I can probably identify the difference here with pretty high accuracy. The party girl that knows how to drink aggressively but still be mostly doing what she wants behaves differently from the girl that accidentally had too many and is out of it. I might not be able to tell the difference if I'm only encountering them at the end point of drunkenness, but if we were hanging out and drinking together, I think I know the difference.

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that you can perfectly tell the difference. Even so, many other young men probably cannot and for these young men, Moran's advice is probably useful.

Also, it's sort of funny that you are confident you can always tell the difference and fuckduck9000 thinks it is impossible (though in a slightly different context).

To be clear, I'm one of the people that thinks Moran's advice is good advice. I also know that I've hooked up with drunk girls, received no complaints, and married one. I'm not saying my judgment is literally perfect, but I also don't think this is anywhere near impossible.

I don't think @fuckduck9000 thinks it's impossible either just that the difference doesn't matter. Unless I'm misunderstanding.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I agree that it's certainly possible to make an accurate guess in many situations but I also don't think everyone possesses this skill.

I don't think @fuckduck9000 thinks it's impossible either just that the difference doesn't matter. Unless I'm misunderstanding.

He said "How would you know/foresee this?" in response to my comment "I think having sex with someone that you know they will later regret carries some moral weight" which was in the context of potential problems with having sex with drunk people. It's not quite the same as saying it's impossible to know when a drunk person really planned to get drunk in order to have sex and when they didn't, but it's not so different.

(e.g. if your friend got falling-down-drunk and asked you to help him jump off a bridge into shallow water you would be an awful person if you helped him do so).

Yes, but jumping off a bridge into shallow water is an objectively bad idea, whereas having sex is not.

If my friend wanted to jump off a bridge while sober, I also wouldn't help him with it.

Though, as XKCD notes.

Imagine reading this on CNN: "Many fled their vehicles and jumped from the bridge. Those who stayed behind..." Is something good about to happen to those people?

True, but I think it's important to try clarifying why that is. They could have the vocabulary for that only if they were willing to be flexible enough ideologically to say that women, unlike men, aren't prone to engage in sex for the sake of sex itself, but normally engage in sex as an act of exchange, basically.

Who/whom.

? sorry I am not native speaker and I don't understood what you mean.

there’s no language to describe sexual bad behavior other than ‘unconsensual’

This is just a wordplay. All depends on your definition of "sexual bad behavior".

vulnerable woman when she’s a bit drunk

Moran also talks about "needy or unhappy" or "damaged", please don't build a weakman.

Very relevant: http://www.thetruthcounts.com/blogtraducciones/2018/11/14/jugaad-ethics/

As others have noted, the sexual revolution is slowly being reversed, even though the proponents of this reversal (mostly) don’t understand what they’re doing. Before the sexual revolution, if you ‘improperly seduced’ (‘took advantage of’) a girl of reasonable social standing and this behavior was revealed (by her or others), you’d answer to her male relatives. Now you will answer to the government (this in itself is not a new phenomenon, the same shift from responsibility of the tribe to responsibility of the state has happened with welfare, policing, consumer fraud protection etc).

In the end, it is likely that some arrangement between men and women will be reached. Until then, Moran is right to warn men that the age of unimpeded sexual libertinism and rockstars fucking their 15 year old groupies without social sanction has drawn to a close.

It feels like you're conflating situations here. Are you suggesting two intoxicated people having sex is "unimpeded sexual libertinism"? It's certainly only comparable to rock stars fucking 15 year olds in the most uncharitable view.

I’m saying that Moran’s imploring “don’t stick your dick in crazy, you might get falsely accused of rape” is - in effect - saying “be very careful around casual sex”. Obviously one night stands are sexual libertinism, sure.

That is an inherently sexually conservative message, even if it perhaps unfairly places the burden of avoiding promiscuity on men.

One-night stands are one thing, but arguably a different thing. The one-night-stand is never intended to extend past the morning. Drunk coupling isn't always the same. I'd argue, like Seinfeld, that alcohol actually is what brings a lot of people together.

Men the world over know the saying "Don't stick your dick in crazy," as you are aware. It's not something we need to be told by Moran. What she seems to be saying is that men are predators, that the women who have sex with them are the weak and wounded. Otherwise presumably why would they be doing so? I take issue with this.

Or, more to the point, we are none of us particularly rational when it comes to sex--or, perhaps we can be, but only when imagining it from afar, as we are doing now.

Of course I live in a dramatically different universe as far as sexual mores go. I am not sure what's going on in the US. Less and less do I recognize it as a place I understand at any depth.

I think this is hopium. The OP is more like a shift in posture to maintain balance while continuing the march of progress. The people saying this still support porn, casual sex, that it's good to never marry if you don't feel like it, and have on average below 2 children per woman. That one of the many ways to cast women as exploited by men also casts some casual sex as bad doesn't really affect the overall trend. Caitlin is more "sex-positive" than many earlier radical feminists.

The people saying this still support porn, casual sex, that it's good to never marry if you don't feel like it, and have on average below 2 children per woman.

Of course they say these things. It’s like Hanania notes, America’s most liberal upper middle class progressives are also one of the most likely groups to get married, stay married, have children within a marriage etc all while arguing for social liberalism for themselves and everyone else.

In practice modern #MeToo feminism amounts to an assertion that casual sex exploits women by many feminists, and an attempt to enforce sexually conservative mores by randomly punishing men who sexually exploit young women in grubby, but perhaps not previously illegal (or at least not widely punished) ways.

Obviously these people aren’t going to lose all their convictions overnight. They’re still feminists. They’re not suddenly going to go full trad and declare all women who sleep around whores or whatever Twitter read types would like. But it amounts to an organic partial rejection of the status quo in a way that will only grow over time.

Before the sexual revolution, if you ‘improperly seduced’ (‘took advantage of’) a girl of reasonable social standing and this behavior was revealed (by her or others), you’d answer to her male relatives. Now you will answer to the government (this in itself is not a new phenomenon, the same shift from responsibility of the tribe to responsibility of the state has happened with welfare, policing, consumer fraud protection etc).

The difference here is that the government is expected to be neutral between all its subjects while her male relatives are expected to be biased in favour of the woman. Equality before the law is fundamental to how modern societies are expected to function (and this is one of the few good sorts of equality there are), and the choices here are to either break that or come up with a settlement that the woman who got "taken advantage of" by and large wouldn't be happy with, as half the consequences would fall on her shoulders. There is no similar presumption (nor should there be) that private citizens are expected to treat random strangers as equal to their own family members.

Before the sexual revolution, if you ‘improperly seduced’ (‘took advantage of’) a girl of reasonable social standing and this behavior was revealed (by her or others), you’d answer to her male relatives. Now you will answer to the government (this in itself is not a new phenomenon, the same shift from responsibility of the tribe to responsibility of the state has happened with welfare, policing, consumer fraud protection etc).

Moreover, answering to the government on charges of ‘improper seduction’ isn’t new either- almost every state in the US at one point had, and some still have, laws against seduction with false promises to marry, for example.

In the end, it is likely that some arrangement between men and women will be reached.

Yes- this arrangement tends, from the perspective of the man, to begin thus:

"She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy."

It is not an accident that Orwell managed to predict what the (emergent) tenor among young-men-as-class-interest would be when set against a small group of older men and a much larger group of young women in permanent bureaucratic control of a post-industrial country. The only reason this prediction is 40 years late is because the socio-economic effects of winning WW2 really did delay 1984 by that much.

As others have noted, the sexual revolution is slowly being reversed

Anything but. We're not witnessing the "reverse-engineering traditional sexual norms". They're reverse-engineering the half where men are 100% responsible for everything that happens before, during, and after sex. That's it.

Notice that there's no restrictions on women or power over them by men being "rediscovered". It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

I've actually come up with a name for this. I kinda had to because I'm seeing it more and more these days, and it's more aggressive than ever. I call it "Dark Femme". It's basically this mix of traditional and modern gender norms that always benefit one direction, and frankly, is often incoherent.

I'm just going to put my two cents here, just to make it easy. I do think there's something to avoiding the crazy. However, let me say this. I've seen a lot lately, discussion about it's not actually "All Men" and maybe women should have some agency and responsibility for recognizing and avoiding red flags. And people do not react well to this at all.

Frankly, this Dark Femme culture wants the toxicity and excitement of the red flags, but in a safe controlled way. One of the first things I said when I abandoned Progressive politics (before it was even really a thing TBH) was that I rejected the "theme park" expectations that society be made into a super-safe but still exciting place that caters to people's wants and desires in a perfect way tailored for them. It's just not possible.

So yeah. Don't stick your dick in crazy seems like good advice. But that advice doesn't go down well at all when it's coming back around.

I've actually come up with a name for this. I kinda had to because I'm seeing it more and more these days, and it's more aggressive than ever. I call it "Dark Femme". It's basically this mix of traditional and modern gender norms that always benefit one direction, and frankly, is often incoherent.

I've seen it beautifully summed up on the A Voice for Men website:

Feminists promote gender equality, as long as it benefits women. Anti-feminists promote gender inequality, as long as it benefits women.

It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

As they have always been. Now it's up to men to let women fall hard. Find a good woman, have many children and teach every single one of them not to be promiscuous. Tell your sons to beware of promiscuous women, the general atmosphere of city life and so on.

Feminists will either have 0 or few children that they will have trouble raising on their own or with cowardly, weak feminist men.

You don't need to do anything to give these women their just reward, they will find it on their own.

Easier said than done. I for one don't live in a religious enclave and I don't have the wealth to isolate my child from the world without it turning sour. Or maybe there are good ways to accomplish this that I am unaware of.

Well I don't have teenagers yet so I can't tell whether any of my efforts will bear fruits.

Ideally you would homeschool and keep them in a more traditional environment. It may all be for naught in the end anyway. I don't think it's possible to keep up the efforts without a religious conviction that this is what God intends you to do.

From an individual point-of-view, it may be more beneficial to fully embrace the world and its mores and go where 'Progress' says you should be going without looking back. Embracing 'white boy summer' might catch you syphilis or a fentanyl OD but maybe not.

Tragedy might just as likely strike the god-fearing Christian. Perhaps it will be easier for them to recover thanks to the virtues imbued in them by the tradition, but they may still end up in objectively worse circumstances, from a strictly worldly perspective.

Feminism should not be an issue to the modern godless man. They just need to learn to play it like an Andrew Tate or a Trump. The moral rejection of the sexual revolution and its consequences can only be downstream of religion, not whatever ideology is currently wearing the skin of Christian civilization.

It's just the parts where men are responsible for everything.

As @PierreMenard says,

As they have always been.

To follow it up slightly differently, the prior equilibrium still had men being responsible for everything, but the rules were much much clearer. She didn't put a ring on your finger? Not acceptable, dude, and you clearly and obviously know it. People decided to destroy these rules and the equilibrium with them. Some would say that a few intentionally destroyed these rules so as to exploit their high status and multiply their own sexual partners. There was a brief window of hope where proponents thought they could formulate a new equilibrium around a different solitary rule: consent. Setting aside a philosophical discussion of whether this actually does the thing we want it to do from a theoretical perspective, it has been tried for a few decades now and found desperately wanting. As @Walterodim points out, this is the last gasp of hope by its proponents to patch over the glaring issues. I think it likely that this will be double and triple downed on, to ever higher levels of absurdity and oppression, but it will eventually topple under the weight of its inherent contradictions. Is it likely that it'll collapse back to the prior equilibrium, which had proven relatively stable for thousands of years? Probably not. But it will likely collapse to some other equilibrium. These sorts of revolutions are a bit unpredictable when they finally come crashing down, so it's too difficult to call whether the new equilibrium will continue trying to retain the feature where men are responsible for everything or whether that feature will actually be weakened for the first time in search of something new.

I think it likely that this will be double and triple downed on, to ever higher levels of absurdity and oppression, but it will eventually topple under the weight of its inherent contradictions.

See also - age gap discourse and the evident belief that 22-year-old women are basically children when it comes to romantic decision-making. Frankly, I can't even disagree with the underlying claim, but failing to articulate the actual concerns coherently results in recursively weird commentary on how immoral it is for a 30-something man to sleep with women that just graduated college. People can't say, "it's a dirty trick because you know she actually wants commitment, you cad", so we wind up with discussion of power dynamics that doesn't make any sense if you believe that the women involved are actual adults.

It seems like this accusation gets thrown at men providing commitment more often than at men who hookup and leave, though.

You are correct. Consider that Megan Fox and E Ratajkowski are now examples of feminism. Making men to lust for you is now considered empowering. So this is not a reversal of sexual revolution for both genders.

This doesn't really contribute to the conversation imo. I agree with the direction, but it's mostly just 'boo outgroup'. They're reverse engineering a small part where men are responsible if they have sex with women who are too drunk to make good decisions. Not everything! Everything would be something like 'if you have sex with any woman you have to marry her'.

In the end, it is likely that some arrangement between men and women will be reached.

Agreed. It's going to be different, given:

  1. Washing machines, broadly defined as readily available labor-saving home appliances that essentially eat electricity and shit household tasks.
  2. Birth control, broadly defined - the Pill, sure, but also condoms.
  3. Modern medicine: antibiotics, effective treatment for STIs, perhaps even AIDS treatment and prophylaxis.

A question: could the Sexual Revolution have happened in a world without penicillin? What would have happened to sexual mores and norms had AIDS remained as deadly as it had been in the early 1980s...and if there was no effective or reliable test for it?

In the end, it is likely that some arrangement between men and women will be reached

Western men had zero negotiation power in that respect for at least two decades. The only fight there is is between young hot girls and old or ugly women about the price of sex that women should expect to extract.

Why do you think western men have zero negotiating power? A majority of western men, including many 30th and 99th percentile men, are happy with current arrangements (because they get to have sex with women sooner without risk of social sanction). Elite men were instrumental in driving the sexual revolution. If the interests of men and women suddenly rapidly diverged, we would come to a compromise. In practice though, if 80% of men suddenly came to believe sex before marriage was bad, whatever caused that would also cause like 70% of women to believe sex before marraige was bad, so there wouldn't be that much of a problem.

rockstars fucking their 15 year old groupies without social sanction has drawn to a close.

Strawman.

I'm very confused. How it is not the exact opposite? This seems like a fairly central example of "don't teach women to not get raped; teach men to not rape". The advice can be paraphrased into "if you see a woman at a party and you think she's not in the right headspace to meaningfully consent to sex, don't try to have sex with her". It fits very cleanly into a sex-positive consent-focused framework.

Does the author believe that a woman being "mentally ill, disturbed or needy or unhappy or really drunk at a party" makes her unable to meaningfully consent? It's not totally clear from the text, but to me it reads like she acknowledges that not all of those conditions would remove a woman's ability to consent.

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.”

This quote suggests to me that the author thinks a woman who's upset and needy might simply regret any sex she had while in that state after the fact, not that it would be rape. But she goes on to say that if a woman in that position accuses a man she agreed to have sex with of rape "for the defence of her reputation" (so, not because it's actually true, but just because it would be less embarrassing for her if people thought that's what happened), well, it's basically his fault for being a jerk and a dumbass, even if he didn't actually rape her.

This seems to actually go beyond victim-blaming to the point of justifying false rape accusations so long as they're aimed at men who acted sufficiently sleazy and callous according to some vaguely-defined, subjective standard.

Sorry, but yes, you are confused. The discussion is not about rape, the discussion is about false accusations. Moran is talking about a hypothetical situation where women already gave a clean consent after which she "might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.”"

So instead of "don't teach women to not get raped; teach men to not rape" say "don't teach men to not get falsely accused; teach women to not falsely accuse". Sadly, Moran is teaching men to not get falsely accused.

The advice should be perhaps paraphrased into "If you are not in the right headspace and you made a young man at a party believe you gave a clear consent to sex, don't falsely accuse him afterwards just because you might need to defend your reputation."

Sorry, but yes, you are confused. The discussion is not about rape, the discussion is about false accusations.

I'm not saying this is what happened in this situation, but I've certainly noticed that when it comes to rape, the concept of false accusations tends to cause a lot of confusion. Any time I see a rape accusation, I tend to hope that the accusation is false, because, as awful as being falsely accused of rape is - particularly in the case that it's knowingly and maliciously false - it still seems far less horrible to go through that than to be raped (for the typical cases of these, anyway), and so a world in which someone experiences the horrors of a false rape accusation while not having imposed the horrors of a rape on someone seems better than a world in which someone experienced the horrors of a rape. But I almost never express this hope, because I've noticed that when other people express such a hope, the hope is almost always confused for belief. The very idea of entertaining the possibility - which is necessary for hope - is tantamount to belief and therefore doubting of the original claim. And whoever expresses this hope gets tarnished as if they're someone who holds this belief. I think there's something about the extreme emotional nature of this crime that makes it easier for people to get confused about these issues.

And since "victim-blaming" in the context of rape is almost always about the victim of rape rather than the victim of a false rape accusation, this particular confusion here doesn't seem too surprising.

Thanks for sharing your point of view - I never thought about it this way.

From my perspective, the average false accusation is worse than the average rape. Hear me out. When we say rape, we imagine blodied women in torn clothes left to die in a ditch, right? But that is far from the average case. When I look around me, when I read the media, I mostly see very different rape. They were both 16 and he is now accused of statutory rape (she is not). Or they both had couple-lot of drinks, he is now accused of rape (she is not). Or he was in position of power and she was sleeping with him for years until she realised he was actually raping her the whole time. Or he was rich and famous and now he does not want to pay. Yes, there is lot of the he was pressuring her too much, she did not really wanted it, she did not really know how to say no. Then there is the she changed her mind afterwards, she was embarrassed, afraid for her reputation, afraid of her family, her friends socially pressured to report it as a rape. There are the scorned lovers. And of course all the accusations in custody and divorce battles.

I would trade any of those for being falsely accused, any time. Firstly, you have to prove your innocence, not the other way around. Even if you are super lucky and there is a physical evidence in your favour, this may not help you at all. You will be tried in a kangaroo court. Your boss/employer will much rather face your lawsuit for wrongful termination than face the negative public image of protecting a rapist. Your career is over, your social life is over, your private life is over. You will probably be arrested, you will be threatened with a long prison sentence, you will be blackmailed by a prosecutor offering you a sweet deal if you confess to what you did not do. Exonerating evidence will be withheld by rogue police and prosecution. Your reputation will be ruined. You will be depressed, bankrupted, marked for life, registered as sex offender. You will forever loose access to your children. (Do you have children? Can you imagine someone can legally take them away from you for ever?)

Again, I would much rather suffer average rape than average false accusation.

Notably, Moran is talking about exactly such "average rape". I quote: "woman who is mentally ill, disturbed or needy or unhappy or really drunk at a party, [...] If she’s an upset, needy person [...] she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.”"

Perhaps this counts as "victim blaming" according to the way the phrase is generally used in popular culture, but it also seems like relatively good advice and to me, that's the more important thing. To slightly steelman the argument, I think there are a few key points:

  • There are actions that you can take to reduce your personal risk. Yes, maybe in a perfectly just world, people who don't lock their bikes would never have their bikes stolen, but that's not the world we live in. In practical terms, advising someone to never lock their bike because advising otherwise would be "blaming the victim" would be doing them a huge disservice. Advising young men (and young women) to be careful about who they sleep with is good advice for a whole lot of reasons.
  • Not every false accusation is completely false. In reality, viewing everything as a dichotomy between "totally rape and a horrible crime" or "totally consensual and completely fine" is wrong. There are lots of things that are not clearly rape but still bad. For example, most people would agree that having sex with an unconscious stranger is clearly rape and having consensual sex with a sober person is fine. But what about in-between? How intoxicated or incoherent does someone need to be before it counts as rape? The most accurate view is that there's a sliding scale of badness with "unconscious" at one end and "sober" at the other. So if you have sex with someone in the middle of that spectrum and they accuse you of rape then maybe it could be considered a false accusation, but you still did something wrong.
  • Some things that are legal are still wrong. This seems to be one of Moran's main points. Suppose you are a young man and you meet an emotionally unstable young woman, have (consensual) sex with her and then ignore her. Yes, you haven't raped her and you haven't broken any laws, but you still haven't treated her well and her life is probably worse because of you. And if you did so knowingly and intentionally to fulfill your own sexual desires, that's even worse.
  • The optimal amount of crime is not zero. Reducing the incidence of some type of crime comes with costs and it is usually the case that the costs outweigh the benefits before the amount of crime is literally zero. False accusations of rape are the same. Adjudicating "he-said-she-said" cases are difficult, especially when one or both of the parties was intoxicated at the time of the incident. Always believing the accuser is probably not optimal, but neither is always discounting what the accuser says. In this environment, advising young men to try to avoid potential "he-said-she-said" situations is both good advice on an individual level and potentially makes adjudicating such cases easier in general since it decreases the number of false accusations.

Some things that are legal are still wrong.

Definitely agreed; a pretty central example is adultery. That's usually considered wrong - and yet is legal in most Western countries.

So too, marital rape was legal in 18th-century England; commentators at the time (Blackstone, IIRC) were of the opinion that it was odious and wrong but the justice system of the time couldn't effectively deal with it. Freedom isn't free; justice isn't free, you get the justice you pay for, in blood and treasure.

You could equally steelman the argument of those who oppose "victim blaming":

  • Not taking an action to reduce your personal risk does not make what happened to you (being raped or falsely accused) more deserved or justified. Victim blaming creates an atmosphere where the crime is slightly more acceptable thus slightly more likely to happen.
  • Not every consensual sex is 100% consensual (to be honest this is BS and your corresponding argument is BS too).
  • Even if you are doing something illegal or wrong it does not mean rape or false accusation is justified. Just because you are full of coke and dancing topless it does not mean your rape is somehow deserved or justified. Even if you are deliberately banging a psycho chick that you don't really like, because you don't want to be a virgin any more, it does not mean that her falsely accusing you is somehow deserved or justified.

I don't find your response very convincing.

  1. I didn't say that "not taking an action to reduce your personal risk" makes what happened to you "more deserved or justified." I simply said that advising people to take actions to reduce their personal risk is good advice. I think it's less clear what Moran meant but she does not every unambiguously say that simply not taking an action to lower your risk means what happened to you is more deserved or justified. She does seem to say that some men who are falsely accused of rape have done something wrong but here argument seems to be more "the circumstances that most commonly lead to false rape accusations also tend to include some wrongdoing on the part of the man" rather than simply that the man is to blame for being imprudent.
  2. Calling my argument BS with no explanation is simply not a convincing reply to anyone who doesn't already agree with you. I stand by what I said: classifying every sexual act as either totally-rape-and-completely-horrible or totally-consensual-and-completely-fine is simply an inaccurate picture of the world. There are sexual behaviors that I view as less bad than "jump out of the bushes and attack a stranger" rape but still not completely okay. There's a reason that we have categories like manslaughter which are in-between murder and self-dense/no-fault accident. The world often does not consist of sharp dichotomies and does not necessarily perfectly match the categories we try to impose on it.
  3. "Even if you are deliberately banging a psycho chick that you don't really like, because you don't want to be a virgin any more, it does not mean that her falsely accusing you is somehow deserved or justified." I never said this and I don't think it's clear that Moran would agree with it either (though I am not certain about her beliefs). Saying that something is good advice does not mean that the consequences of not following it are "deserved or justified." Saying that even in a situation where someone has been wronged they may have also acted badly does not mean that they "deserved" the wrong that was done to them. Honestly, you and I probably agree on a lot. I think that false accusations are more common than the media often makes it seem, that a false accusation is often really horrible and completely screw up someone's life and that even when a falsely accused person has acted badly, it's still very wrong for them to be falsely accused. But I can think all of those things while at the same time acknowledging that there are some behaviors that put you at greater risk of false accusations, that it's (often) worth avoiding these behaviors, and that some people who are falsely accused of rape have done something wrong (even if it wasn't rape and they don't deserve to be accused of rape).

Aside from these specific responses, I want to make a broader point. You say "You could equally steelman the argument of those who oppose 'victim blaming'" and the main substantive argument you present seems to be "Victim blaming creates an atmosphere where the crime is slightly more acceptable thus slightly more likely to happen." Actually I mostly agree with this. The kind of advice Moran gives might well contribute to an atmosphere where false accusations are slightly more acceptable. So we have a tradeoff here: there's some value in giving people good advice and in trying to say true things that you believe but there are also some downsides to doing that. Different people may have different opinions on where the balance of that tradeoff lies; I think in this case the downsides are smaller than the upsides. Perhaps you disagree. But the broader point I want to make is that this type of tradeoff is completely normal and the existence of downsides to something does not mean the upsides don't exist (or vice-versa). So sure, you can steelman a case against Moran's advice. That doesn't mean the case for it is wrong, it just means that Moran's advice may have both upsides and downsides, which is not surprising.

I didn't say that "not taking an action to reduce your personal risk" makes what happened to you "more deserved or justified.

Correct, you did not say that. You steel-manned your argument, I steel-manned mine. That does not mean my argument represents a direct refutation of your argument.

Calling my argument BS with no explanation is simply not a convincing reply to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

You are right. Your argument that not every false accusation is completely false is partly appeal to ignorance and partly middle ground fallacy. Better?

I never said this

Again, you you steel-manned your argument, I steel-manned mine. That does not mean my argument represents a direct refutation of your argument.

So we have a tradeoff here

I think this is a false dichotomy. Moran could have easily used different words to both give a good advice to young men while not victim blaming falsely accused.

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

The motte of the feminist complaint about "Victim Blaming" type methods as a rape-prevention strategy for women, is that they are being asked to not do very basic things. People accused of Victim Blaming are often telling women not to dress in such and such a way, to go to such and such a place, to never drink to excess, to never trust a strange man, to never trust her boss, to never put herself in a position where a man might have leverage over her, at some point to never leave the house without male escort.

Men, here, are being asked to not fuck crazy, drunk, sluts. There are plenty of happy, relatively sober sluts to fuck instead.

To be fair, I cosign both forms of advice, within reason.

I agree, there are reasonable and unreasonable frames for each form of ‘victim blaming’ (ie advice on precautions).

Stuff like “don’t go into your boss’ hotel room” is reasonable, “don’t drink around men you’re not related to” isn’t always if you’re in many normal environments. On the other hand “don’t leave home without a male chaperone” would be good advice in Afghanistan but would be considered an unfair burden in modern day America. People are always going to have different risk profiles, I’ve had friends who at 17 would walk halfway across Manhattan, drunk, by themselves in the middle of the night home from parties. They were lucky, some people aren’t.

“Accept all possible risks if you decide to deal with women” is an unfair burden on men. “Promiscuity can have negative consequences by making you vulnerable to the kind of damaged women who disproportionately (it’s not only them, as you say, but it is disproportionately them) have lots of casual sex” isn’t an unfair burden, but a fair precaution.

How is the man supposed to carefully screen out "damaged" women though? Where is he supposed to gain that knowledge and experience? From whom and where?

Well, that takes you back to the custom of tradition and the ways people usually met. You can’t know anything with absolute certainty, but that was why you trusted your network of family, friends and community; and why neither party had unrestricted license to behave as they wished.

The abandonment or outright and ill-advised disavowal of that, is what makes the sexual and dating arena as anarchic as it is today. Nobody has a reliable frame of reference for making sound determinations. It’s winner-take-all and everyone for themselves. It’s a situation that can’t sustain itself indefinitely, and will ultimately be replaced by a traditional restoration of one kind or another.

Men, here, are being asked to not fuck crazy, drunk, sluts.

Well, that's the motte. And from the male side, "don't stick it in the crazy" is oft-given (though less-oft-followed) advice. But the bailey is that it's on the guy to figure out beforehand that said "slut" is in fact crazy, is in fact "too drunk" (as opposed to pleasantly buzzed), and that if he fails in this he deserves everything he gets including the false rape accusation, which should be believed.

I mean I'll just confess from personal experience:

Every bad hook up experience I ever had with a girl acting crazy, I kinda knew in advance I shouldn't have done it. There was no mystery there. Did that mean I "deserved" it? Well, I don't really think so, I don't think I did anything wrong. But I knew it was stupid and a bad idea.

And looking back, how would this response have differed if one of those hookup’s unknowingly gave you HIV?

I’m genuinely curious.

You know, that's hard for me to wrap my head around in all honesty. Statistically that would have been wildly unlikely given the ways I chose to have sex, but I guess not impossible.

I'd imagine I would consider those incidents far more of a turning point in my life, and far less of a weird thing that happened along the way, as it would have changed my future behavior and impacted my health significantly in that time.

Except that the advice given to women is in you example is pretty exaggerated. The places women are asked to avoid are generally places that are dangerous to men as well. General safety means not going to seedy bars, not walking in dark alleys and not getting blackout drunk. Other than “wear clothes that fully cover your reproductive organs and breasts” I’m not seeing anything that would seriously curtail normal life for most people. Nobody is telling women to stay home and wear a burka except in their imagination.

We can go back and forth all day citing our Mottes and Baileys of shitty men and shitty women. People are absolutely out there willing to blame any woman who gets raped, they do it in every high profile case. Is that the majority or even an important minority of people? Idk, depends on your perspective I guess, and your tolerance of slipperiness of slopes.

Is that the majority or even an important minority of people? Idk, depends on your perspective I guess, and your tolerance of slipperiness of slopes.

It also depends on where you live. In heavily Islamic communities, the view that women invite rape by being outside without a chaperone is often times so predominant that it is integrated into the law as well. Given the high levels of Islamic immigration into western nations, this is far from just an academic concern as well.

In heavily Islamic communities, the view that women invite rape by being outside without a chaperone is often times so predominant that it is integrated into the law as well. Given the high levels of Islamic immigration into western nations, this is far from just an academic concern as well.

True. If they pull that crap over here in America, we'll fight 'em; these are essentially two mutually incompatible views of morality, male nature, and civilization. Besides, we've got all kinds of shit like guns and contraceptives and washing machines that they didn't have in the Middle East a thousand years ago - so that way of life and set of cultural norms is likely deeply maladaptive in a modern, industrialized society. It might have worked OK in its time, but using a camel caravan for hauling instead of an 18-wheeler isn't any good in 'Murrica or for that matter the West.

Wasn't chaperoning a normal custom before the Sexual Revolution in the USA as well? At least among the upper classes, I assume.

Yes, although my understanding of pre-first-sexual-Revolution courtship norms are that it was relatively rare because entertaining a suitor in the woman’s parents home or close nearby was the norm.

To some extent but not quite as far as "women can't go outside without male escort"

That much is indeed true.

Except one could argue the stronger case here, that the incentive structure has changed to favor shitty behavior. This is helpful to absolutely nobody, but nobody wants to make the changes necessary to see to it that this doesn’t happen to them.

If you want to curb abuse and shitty behavior, you need the sociocultural mechanisms in place, that put a very high cost on the behavior that people today are accustomed to. The reason this won’t happen however, is because negative trends are rarely reversed. Dysfunctional cycles have to die and be reset. They won’t be remedied. People want their sexual and dating successes/advantages to be preserved and extended, while being shielded from having to be impacted by negative events.

Both sides arguing over ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ is overwhelmingly a cover for envy, and the power plays both sides try to routinely use on the other.

I think there's a distinction here between 'advice reasonable people would give to women as a preventative measure' and 'details unreasonable people pick out to blame a woman after the fact.'

Unfortunately you can find examples of really heinous after-the-fact victim blaming, especially when the alleged perp is someone people like, like a celebrity.

The heinous examples stick in people's minds when they condemn victim blaming, and the reasonable examples come to mind when someone defends giving advice, and the sides often talk past each other.

People accused of Victim Blaming are often telling women not to dress in such and such a way, to go to such and such a place, to never drink to excess, to never trust a strange man, to never trust her boss, to never put herself in a position where a man might have leverage over her, at some point to never leave the house without male escort.

Except that this advice, no matter how well-intentioned, is entirely impractical in the context of the current mating marketplace where the usual course of action for many women is to compete with one another in pandering, or overtly promising to pander, to the sexual preferences of the top men. The sum of all this advice more or less amounts to telling women to voluntarily capitulate from the sexual rat race by avoiding any venue where sexually attractive men normally congregate and knowingly reducing her own attractiveness. It's no wonder that such advice is usually met with angry dismissal and obnoxious eye-rolling.

… this advice more or less amounts to telling women to voluntarily capitulate from the sexual rat race by avoiding any venue where sexually attractive men normally congregate and knowingly reducing her own attractiveness. It's no wonder that such advice is usually met with angry dismissal and obnoxious eye-rolling.

If you’re playing with fire, you’re going to get burned. Someone’s failure to find sympathy with this isn’t a moral infraction of any kind.

In a world where women are 100% emancipated from men (whether you believe they should be or not) and are free individuals, you have moral obligations to yourself. I’ve never understood how women imagine they’ve been wronged in playing a sexual game, that was never a good idea for them to play in the first place.

It's marginal because she's trying to walk a tightrope of depicting this behavior of picking up needy unstable women for sex and then dumping them and maybe spreading rumors about it as not-quite-assault-but-definitely-predatory-and-damaging-to-them.

So she's depicting the men who end up in this situation as, not quite criminals, but some type of perpetrator who is getting retribution for misdeeds.

Of course, if you're the type of person who believes that men in those situations have done nothing morally wrong, then from that perspective this would be straight-up victim blaming.

And similarly, if you believe that women who dress skimpy or flirt or drink too much are doing something morally wrong, then you could apply the logic she's talking about here to say a lot of statements are not victim blaming, which she would think are.

This is definitely a case where she's proposing a standard for what type of condemnations of people who had something bad happen to them are or are not ok, which would lead different people with different perspectives on the situation to disagree about what is or isn't justified to say after the fact.

That is definitely shaky ground for feminism, since it creates more grey area to justify statements they would consider victim blaming.

She is trying to use this to claw back moral ground for her side by implying 'false accusations are ussually made against bad actors anyway, so they're not as bad as the other side says'.

But I think this ploy is pretty bad and almost certainly loses more ground than it gains, both by leaving the door open to justify victim blaming against women and by proposing what will look like a blatant double standard to anyone who disagrees with their perspective.

Hopefully this meme will not catch on with other feminists, we'll have to see.

Note, if anyone cares about my own position: I generally feel that blame is non-transferable, one person getting more blame in a situation doesn't mean the other gets less, teh two calculations are entirely independent from each other.

There are a lot of legal ways to be an asshole.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Is that a problem with the law or morality?

Hopefully this meme will not catch on with other feminists, we'll have to see.

Whether other feminists emulate her is one thing. The question is why is no one protesting such formulations in The New York Times? How come she is not "cancelled"?

... because the people who would do that do not have the perspective that these men are non-predatory, and therefore don't consider them victims, same as her.

I would expect that lots of people like the people talking about it in this thread are complaining in the same way that 'cancellations' normally happen, there just aren't enough of them, or not enough in influential enough positions, to actually have much impact.

Quoth Betteridge…

It’s different because it involves initiative. In both cases, the actual sex is initiated by the man. Even if she consents! That’s the point at which this author would say he’s been foolish.

Because rape is rape; the harms of a false accusation aren't over and done with the moment it is made. On one extreme, they could lead to a lengthy prison sentence or even death. On the other, they could result in no damage at all to the falsely accused, and nobody cares at all. This being said, it does seem wise to counsel young men to not get themselves involved in ethically or morally ambiguous or murky sexual situations. At least, not without a very good reason.

*Something like, say, Loving vs. Virginia might qualify; the Southern racists of the day might well have argued that interracial sex and marriage were morally wrong or unethical.

Because rape is rape;

Is it? Because whenever one of these is publicly litigated, the outcomes range from "being forcibly violated" to "I retroactively withdrew consent because he didn't call me back".

If you don't have enough rape to keep the donations into non profits flowing just extend the definition of rape until you have enough. Same with racism.

I ‘do’ think women get pressured into having sex they otherwise wouldn’t have, if they didn’t have an instinctual hesitation to tell a larger, stronger and more violent and anger prone gender “no.”

When you go around living most of your life in deference to men, and with the knowledge any one of them could overwhelm you at any point, you’re not going to be as forthright in saying or doing something that puts you potentially at greater risk of physical violence by not falling in with their suggestion.

The problem to me isn’t inherently the concept, but it’s about as workable in practice as installing cameras in everyone’s home to prove child abuse.

There was a time when men were primarily tasked with safeguarding the virtue and modesty of women. Then that came under attack for its sexist and controlling excesses, but the basic logic at play was sound. If men are to be held responsible for policing other men’s behavior to ensure the playing field was safe for women, then women are obliged to follow men’s rules at the end of the day.

On the other, they could result in no damage at all to the falsely accused, and nobody cares at all.

I can't imagine such scenario. Maybe in the 90s, but I can't image any institution, be it school, employer or the police to downplay a rape accusation and not to start an investigation immediately. As soon as accusation is investigated, it gets public and it causes lot of damage - even if the accused has strong evidence to his favour, which is rarely the case in a he-said, she-said situation.

How about this one: a patient in a psych ER accuses a resident or attending of rape. Cameras everywhere. They go through the cameras, realize it's bullshit, and nothing happens.

Ok, an extreme example, here is an extreme answer: before they review the tapes, the resident will be sent home, maybe put on administrative leave. Even after he is cleaned some people will keep whispering about the accusations. That is not a "no damage at all".

More realistically: Guy filmed a gal begging him for sex and preventing him from leaving. He left. She accused him, he submitted the video as evidence but was expelled anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Feibleman_v._Columbia_University

Or this one: Mr Hawker, who had been at Devonport High School for Girls in Plymouth for five years, was suspended, arrested and then fired for 'gross misconduct' – despite reports that the girls had admitted they lied about everything 'because it was fun'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12635681/Male-teacher-sacked-sex-assault-wins-45000.html

Ok, an extreme example, here is an extreme answer: before they review the tapes, the resident will be sent home, maybe put on administrative leave. Even after he is cleaned some people will keep whispering about the accusations. That is not a "no damage at all".

This is not what I have seen as a medical student at a US teaching hospital. Patient in the psych ER accuses resident of having raped her; IIRC, it was in an interview room. Of course it was utter and complete bullshit. I don't recall whether the resident was sent home for the day or not, but the tapes were reviewed within hours. By the end of the day the next day, the resident was cleared and all concerned just called it bullshit.

The resident had a couple things going for him:

  1. He had video footage of all his interactions with this patient; he never even touched her, and that was corroborated by the tapes.

  2. He was a resident; she was a schizophrenic psych patient brought to the local psych ER by police.

As far as I know, nothing happened to the resident - not even rumors. There were plenty of witnesses and plenty of videotape to prove his innocence.

Ok, you are right. That being said, I don't think your extreme example brings much value to the discussion.

This being said, it does seem wise to counsel young men to not get themselves involved in ethically or morally ambiguous or murky sexual situations.

There are essentially two points being made here.

a) Moran says

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.”

The word "need" there shows a mindset that I normally see from Far Eastern shame cultures, where it's considered socially acceptable to commit crimes to cover dishonour as long as it winds up with you getting away with it. Here the girl doesn't want the true reputation of being a girl who gets drunk and sleeps with strangers, so she does something far worse - slander at the very least, quite likely perjury - but this is something she "need[s] to" do because it leads to her looking better in the eyes of society. No. This is evil behaviour and shouldn't be excused.

b) The point of the analogy to wearing revealing clothing is that there's a difference between positional and absolute goods: if you get everyone an absolute good, everyone is better off, but if you get everyone a positional good, that's wasted effort because only relative quantities of it matter. Wear less-revealing clothes as a society and the (rare) marauding rapists consider more skin covered to still be "asking for it". Give everyone a year-12 education and the bar simply rises to "do you have a tertiary education".

Londondare is (AIUI) saying that "avoid situations where you might draw the Eye of Sauron" is a positional good; the Eye of Sauron can and will target a finite number of men, so avoiding its gaze merely causes someone else to bear it instead, and telling everyone to avoid its gaze won't achieve anything (the Eye will merely lower the bar for what's objectionable).

Of course, then you get into the question of "is it better if there are more or less drunk hookups". I'm leaning toward "more" if only because romance is good and necessary and drunk hookups probably help somewhat with starting relationships (assuming neither party's cheating), but there's legitimate room for disagreement on that.

Here the girl doesn't want the true reputation of being a girl who gets drunk and sleeps with strangers, so she does something far worse - slander at the very least, quite likely perjury - but this is something she "need[s] to" do because it leads to her looking better in the eyes of society. No. This is evil behaviour and shouldn't be excused.

I mean, consent is murky when you are drunk.

Were they both equally drunk? If they weren't, did she deliberately get drunk in order to sleep with someone at the party? Was the guy mostly sober and deliberately targeting drunk women? What are the facts around this? It is possible that the guy is an asshole; it might even be that he is deliberately predatory and at best in a rather dark grey area.

He is at best...a little careless, and at worst a predator and genuine rapist. Guy's not a Boy Scout, but he's also not necessarily an evil rapist. Using the law to call this guy a "rapist" seems...disproportionate, there are a lot of legal ways to be a predator/asshole/piece of shit.

However, talking about "the defense of her reputation"...seems to imply an interesting culture, being charitable. Basically someone in a shitty situation who will face genuine victimization for getting a reputation as a "slut" and as such winds up getting a guy who's maybe half innocent tarred and feathered to save her own hide. Maybe if you're in high school and moving isn't exactly a live option, or if your family's going to honor kill you or something, that could be pardonable. Other than that I agree with you, more or less.

TL;DR doing this to go after assholes/rapists is a grey area and disproportionate unless he's actually a rapist, not just an asshole engaging in legal assholery. Doing it to defend your reputation is a shitbag move if you're a Westerner.

It seems that Moran is knowingly conflating three very different phenomena of the sexual marketplace. (Yeah, I just used that Manosphere phrase. For a good reason.) First of all, it’s true that there are many dads who will more or less advise their sons that “crazy bitches are always the best [fucks]”. But as someone who got this very advice, and has many male friends who claimed to ’ve gotten the same, I can say with certainty that this advice is normally given in the very specific context of assisting a hormonally charged teenage male virgin in order to experience memorable sexual pleasures in a way that leaves him with a positive view of women and sex so that he doesn’t turn into an “incel”.

Such advice stems from the assumption that this guy isn’t likely to gain such an experience from most of her female peers, because the average teenage girl will feel hesitant, scared and intimidated in that situation, and will just lie there like a dead fish or a log, just not being into the whole thing. The crazy bitch, on the other hand, will know how to give blowjobs and handjobs, take the initiative, be familiar with sex positions other than the missionary etc. Any girl with such an attitude will usually be considered a “crazy bitch” if the normal assumption is that women don’t experience sexual desire in the same way men do, and will not usually seek out casual sex for the sake of casual sex.

Now, it’s also true that “don’t stick your dick in crazy” is also an advice that is routinely given to young single men (Moran seems to allude to this being sound advice, but doesn’t use the exact phrase). In fact, I’m sure if you turned to 10 of the dads who used to suggest to their teenage sons to seek out crazy bitches 10-15 years later and asked them whether it’s a good idea to stick your dick in crazy, 9 of them would agree. This probably seems like a contradiction but it isn’t because the two pieces of advice are given in very different social contexts. As far as I can tell, the advice “don’t stick your dick in crazy” basically means “don’t make a move on some skanky-looking woman who obviously seems to be mentally inbalanced just because you think she’ll be a) good in the sack b) OK with casual sex”.

With regard to the spectre of needy, scared, insecure wallflower girls getting preyed upon at house parties by predatory men for a quick pump & dump, I don’t see how that has anything to do with any of this, and I think even objectively sexist men will mostly look at this as sleazy and cringe. Was there ever a society where such dishonest and manipulative behavior was condoned? I doubt it.

Anyway, the quoted part raises a couple of questions. Why does Moran seemingly equate being needy and drunk with being mentally ill? Why does she assume that anyone initiating sex with a drunk and “needy” girl does so with the manipulative aim of a pump & dump? What if the man is also drunk and needy? Why does she assume that such a girl will necessarily find the sex act hurtful and regrettable afterwards?

Was there ever a society where such dishonest and manipulative behavior was condoned? I doubt it.

Ogden Nash:

Candy is dandy
But liquor is quicker

In other words, if you want sex and you want to overcome her hesitation (because Nice Girls Don't) then get her drunk so both of you have plausible deniability.

Wasn't that an ironic poem though?

First of all, it’s true that there are many dads who will more or less advise their sons that “crazy bitches are always the best [fucks]”.

The only advice I got from my father was, "Keep it clean as a whistle, or it won't be blown."

Regardless, surely the "crazy" in "crazy bitches are the best" refers to a different phenomenon than the "crazy" in "don't stick your dick in crazy." As you note, the latter refers to women "who obviously seem to be mentally imbalanced." Doesn't the former refer to something else, such as a woman who is wild or a member of a subculture like punks or goths?

Yes and yes, hence why I'd question conflating the two.

Regardless, surely the "crazy" in "crazy bitches are the best" refers to a different phenomenon than the "crazy" in "don't stick your dick in crazy."

They're at least very well correlated.

sexual marketplace. (Yeah, I just used that Manosphere phrase

TBH I am MRA but I never connected sexual marketplace with Manosphere. How about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_economics?

"She needed to lie about him to protect her reputation" is the real banger here. Something on the level of "he had to rape her to avoid being called a virgin".

Yep. I find it somewhat strange that as (I suppose) a dedicated feminist she sees it as self-evident and unworthy of any criticism that the needy, scared etc. girl in question has a certain reputation, which is ruined if she is seen consenting to a sex act that is presumably a one-night stand at a house party, and that falsely accusing the fucker of rape is therefore a normal course of action to be expected of her. I only find this somewhat strange, but it's still strange.

falsely accusing the fuckee

Point of grammar, this should be "the fucker", presumably the accuser is "the fuckee".

Grammar Nazi awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

You're right.

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.

Strangely enough, this license isn't given to male rapists to portray them as 'damaged or mentally ill'. No, rapists are completely culpable. Actually the men around them are culpable for the act too.

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.”

This is literal apologia for a false rape accusation; "she might need to". Ok if she needs to commit a crime to protect her reputation, seems like she gets a pass.

I'm being a bit trite here and I know this conversation is framed towards actions that men can take to protect themselves. I'm actually a fan of internal loci of control and would give similar advice to young men. My issue here is just that this attitude is clearly unidirectional and feminists in the majority would never give practical advice like this towards women to keep themselves safe from rapists. Including avoiding spending time with 'damaged or mentally ill' attractive men.

Everything about the exchange in the article is to preserve hypoagency to be used as a shield by women if necessary. Someone else has already coined this term, but this sort of 'Schrodinger's Agency' where women can be agentic or not according to whether it suits them in the particular circumstances (even applied or withdrawn retroactively) is one of Feminism's great Motte and Baileys.

the only thing a young guy can do is not have sex with damaged or mentally ill women

That's good and necessary advice, and men have to be aware of the dangers around sex now. Just because you're all in an environment where people are drinking, having a good time, and down to party does not mean you can assume whoever you hook up with is safe.

Women have had to be careful around men on this for a long time, now it's the turn of the guys. It's not fair and it's not nice, but it's reality. But there is no excuse for "she had to say it was rape" unless maybe in a situation of "she had consensual sex with her boyfriend but her family will honour kill her if they find out".

Could be that this crap is a feature, not a bug. The timid and cowardly get got as do the awkward chumps that got too big for their britches. Persistent horndogs and competent predators survive, as do Chads.

Which raises the question of ‘do women genuinely have less agency?’

I mean we know that there are some major sex differences in things that it seems like should be correlated with agency(conformity, risk taking). And it seems like the whole point of affirmative consent was that (some)women don’t say no even when they feel no, which points in that direction. That feminists want to use weird vocabulary terms doesn’t make them wrong, at least not inherently.

If we're to punish men on the theory that women have less agency, we should just generally treat women as if they have less agency. Perhaps if they're 60% as agentic we can count their votes as 6/10ths of that of a man, for instance?

In a way they are hyper-agentic. A woman and a man make the same decision. Then later the woman detemines it was the wrong decision, and overturns the consensus, alone, and the man bears responsibility for the discrepancy. Her agency trumps all other agencies, even her own.

Hah, yeah 'agency' is not really a well defined concept is it?

You could theorize that overt hypoagency is covert hyperagency, but I’m not an agency expert, even the FBI wouldn’t take me.

Wellllllll...

Her agentic boost, the ability to overturn a prior decision, comes from the outside, not from within, premised upon her supposed lack of agency. Affirmative action, if you will. An outside finger on the scale to mask weakness is not actual strength.

I’m on record opposing women’s suffrage. Women have less agency, and it’s wrong to take advantage of that just as it’s stupid to expect them to behave like a man.

That feminists want to use weird vocabulary terms doesn’t make them wrong, at least not inherently.

No, but that they are flip-flopping on their view of women makes them inherently wrong.

As @The_Nybbler points out, if you really believe women have less agency, you should oppose women's suffrage. If you, @hydroacetylene do, that's consistent.

But how many feminists do you know who oppose women's suffrage?

I do, in fact, oppose women’s suffrage, and my mental model of feminism is less ‘aiming at peaceable gender relations for a healthy society’ and more ‘class interest movement for professional class urban women to get the best possible deal, even if that defects on the commons a bit’. With that as a terminal goal, it is consistent to both talk about false rape accusations as if women have less agency and support women’s suffrage.

Of course I don’t have that as a terminal goal, and I think feminism is bad for that reason. But there’s no logical incoherency there.

But there’s no logical incoherency there.

Yes, there is. It's exactly what logical incoherency is.

Having a rational strategic reason to employ flawed arguments doesn't make them any less flawed or the the self-contradicting position any less wrong.

We were talking about whether feminists were wrong, not about whether they were acting irrational in support of their goals, and you shouldn't confuse "logically inconsistent" with the latter.

she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.”

That's absolutely stupid and very dangerous. If she has the reputation of being easy/loose/crazy, then "I was raped" is no defence, and it ruins an innocent person.

There is a real warning here, which should be taken heed of. Young men as well as young women need to be aware of the dangers around casual sex and do both need to take responsibilty.

For women, it's "don't dress like a slut if you don't want to be taken for a slut; don't drink until you are so drunk you black out or are incapable of consenting to sex".

For men, it's "young men are horny but that doesn't mean the drunk slut you hooked up with feels the same way. You got off and forgot all about it. She woke up the next morning, had hazy to no memories, and decided you roofied her and raped her. Don't stick your dick in crazy and especially don't stick your dick in drunk/high crazy".

I disagree with the second part of your comment. There really is a social mechanism by which blaming the dress encourages the perpetrator.

"You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing by flirting with that guy wearing that dress"

Because in the quoted example the woman hasn't done anything wrong, whereas in the Moran example it's implying that someone is exploiting a woman's drunkeness/mental illness to get them to do something they would not if they were thinking straight.

In Moran's example the woman was "damaged" or "disturbed or needy or unhappy" and "an upset, needy person". By shifting the argument to "drunkeness/mental illness" you are making a weakman version of it which brings little value to the discussion.

I think there is an unstated premise that all (or most) casual sex is rape, but sometimes women allow men to get away with it.

There is an unstated (on the progressive side) premise among all people that casual sex is a bad deal for women and devalues or dishonors them in some way.

To be clear about your point, are you saying non progs think causal sex is a good deal or that non progs are happy to state it is bad?

Non progs are usually more happy to state it's bad, certainly in the case of religious conservatives.

Did progs always have that premise, or did it appear at one point? And why?

Well radfems always did have this current of political lesbians that think all heterosexual sex is rape, but this is probably just a feature of class interest in a movement dedicated to the interests of a class.

Feminism is constitutionally incapable of blaming women for anything. Including the excesses of the sexual revolution.

Actual sex is bad for women, but teasing men or using your looks to get paid is apparently liberating for women. Hence the new wave of feminism by the likes of E Ratajkowski or Megan Fox.

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.

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".

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 victim blaming is non-zero

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

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.

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 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.

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)

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).

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.

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"?

It's not especially different, that's it hypocritical though, doesn't make it bad advice.

Is it prudish? Yeah, it probably is.

We (both sexes) desperately need to rediscover our prudence though.

How is this different from "You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation ...

That's exactly the point. How come we are victim blaming and not addressing the problem? (rhetorical question)

It just points out how one sided it can be sometimes ...

I'd like to read the whole article but archive.ph loops on the captcha page. Does anyone have a workaround, or can copy and paste the text here?

Does it? There seem to be something wrong with archive right now.

It's something I've had happening with archive.ph since forever. Not sure what the issue is.

Edit: Took five minutes to look into a bit and other reports point to it being due to my using Cloudflare for DNS lookups. There's a workaround posted at https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/118haqg/archiveph_webpage_archive_as_site_is/jwhqbsh/ but I don't care enough to go digging in my network's config to apply it right now.

It works for me right now (shrug emoji)

I read the article, and was surprised to find I agreed with most of what she said. Every one of her opinions is about as manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish as you could imagine being printed in the NYT in 2023.

The new book being discussed is about how modern feminism has not just failed men, but effectively forbidden productive discussion of their problems. Bravo!

Every one of her opinions is about as manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish as you could imagine being printed in the NYT in 2023.

manosphere/redpilled/motte-ish? I don't understand what it means.

I think it's worth pointing out here that our three biggest media rape spectacles of our lifetime are probably the Duke Lacrosse team, Rolling Stone's UVA frat, and Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. Based on every piece of evidence, not only was there no gray line crossed, but the accused(s) had never even met the accuser. Nonetheless the claims were considered by many to be true in some sense and led to more protections and measures against the imagined crimes.

On the other hand, quietly we are learning tens of thousands of English women, and increasingly now French, Dutch, and German had been subjected to extremely hard core rapes by muslims. We're talking group orgies of adult men on teenagers with forced consumption of alcohol and narcotics and victim intimidation. When possible, police suppressed the evidence. The media never reported any of these allegations and even convictions never made it into a news cycle. This was never allowed to become a talking point in immigration debate.

Even far outside anything like college bar scene, we Westerners now all live on eggshells in any "institution" - since any accusation, no matter how frivolous or demonstrably wrong can destroy our career. The court system is designed to take a maximalist view of harassment, where simply psychological damage can be seen as grounds for million dollar settlements.

Stepping back and examine the system, we see it is clearly not in place to protect women, or even render them justice. It is in place to ram through socially engineered change at the cost of millions of women raped, and millions of men ostracized or imprisoned, leaving almost all of us worse off ... except the skilled manipulators who use this system to their advantage. As such there can be no reform of the system - the Media/HR/Academia sex-police - or engagement of its defenders. It must be completely destroyed.

I think it is uncontroversial ones behavior can affect ones chances to be victimized. If you leave your bike unlocked in a city, you don't deserve to get it stolen: the thief wronged you as much as if you had locked the bike. Of course one never has control over all the circumstances, sometimes a thief might break into your garage and steal your bike despite it being locked down.

The same applies to rape and false rape accusations. What really bugs me is the text:

she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.”

I feel that is a bit too much sympathy for a criminal. If we turned the genders around, the text might read:

However, if he is really sexually frustrated, he might need to release that frustration by raping you.

Both of these versions excuse something which is inexcusable.

Also, just as date-rapists generally don't have "DATA-RAPIST" tattooed on their forehead, the face tattoo "CRAZY" is equally uncommon. In my experience, "just have sex with one of the five certified sane, sober girls who have been trying to flirt with you all evening" would probably not capture the reality of the median guy looking to get laid.


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