This is an open thread!
Race and gender goes here. As per the treaty, things which are not race and gender go here.
Comment thread is unmoderated, read at your own risk. If you are a banned commenter, you can post; just wait for me to fish you out of spam.
Thing of Things 
Mumia Ali on gender and race::
http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/mens-issues/why-i-became-a-black-mens-rights-activist-a-reader-responds/
LikeLiked by 3 people
Nathan Cofnas has an article in Foundations of Science where he discusses how widespread moralistic concerns about the potential negative consequences of research can obstruct the normally self-correcting process of science. He utilizes the race and IQ controversy as an example.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Issue that came up in meatspace earlier:
Is 50 shades / abuse fantasy in some way morally reprehensible for something along the lines of glorification of abuse?
I would argue that it glorifies abuse no more than action films glorify violence.
Furthermore, I argue that producing/enjoying media or fantasies relating to x is not equivalent to condoning x or thinking you would enjoy it in real life. (case study: Ozy’s opinion on zombie apocalypses)
Also, the opposition to abuse fantasy seems a lot like hating the lady (or man) boners of people who get off on the notion of submission and having absolutely no control.
Do the wonderful people at the readership of thingofthings have any opinions?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Making a film about an abusive relationship to serve primarily as fap-fodder for people who get off on that would be fine.
Making a film glorifying abuse would be worrisome, but no more so than glorifying war or glorifying the mafia. How comforting an upper bound that is remains an open question.
Making a film about abuse and filling it with BDSM buzzwords is a problem. It spreads the message that BDSM is abuse. Unlike the message that abuse is awesome, this is a message that will find a receptive audience. Two receptive audiences: one which is already uncomfortable with the existence of kink and looking for excuses to crack down and one which is intrigued by kink and seems to be taking 50 shades as a serious guide. Most of the latter will learn better before they hurt anyone, but enough won’t to be a problem, especially given the kink community’s limited bandwidth for assimilating people.
LikeLiked by 5 people
So I’ve had a second-hand exposure only (my wife shows me what she finds hilarious in the text), but my impressions were very well summarized by Cliff Pervocracy in a recent Tumblr post:
“So here’s the thing: a whole bunch of my coworkers read those books, and I talked about my issues with the series (in somewhat discreet fashion), and every single one of them said “but she signed a contract and it’s BDSM!” No one said “sure she doesn’t want it, but this is fantasy!”
I don’t have a problem with nonconsent fantasy; I have a problem with nonconsent fantasy that is repeatedly labeled, both outside and inside the story, as being consensual.
I like horror movies. I have no problem watching a movie about a man who attacks people with a chainsaw. It gets my adrenaline up, it’s a compelling fantasy, I know nobody’s really getting hurt. But. Fifty Shades of Grey makes me feel like I’m watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre… except the title has been changed to The Helpful Woodsman and when I come out of the theater everyone is happily chatting about that nice sweet man who kept offering to let his neighbors borrow his chainsaw.”
LikeLiked by 6 people
Fresh from the presses, for a critical but optimistic view, Erika Moen from OhJoySexToy”.
LikeLike
Seconding this. The same thing applies with the S&M component removed: Rape porn that clearly understands that it’s rape porn and is selling itself as such is not really my thing, but I’m okay with its existence. But coming upon vanilla-marketed porn with obvious (fictional) coercion or active non-consent always alarms me.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s a big one for me. Because no one actually get’s hurt, we can, in principle, do whatever we want with our fantasies. We can do things that might otherwise cause harm, because we can just declare that they don’t cause harm.
I have two caveats:
1) It might still be irresponsible. There’s no indication that this isn’t really how BDSM is done, and a lot of people’s experiences with BDSM are going to skew towards FSoG’s depiction. People who read FSoG, like it, and decide to try out BDSM for real might be less able to recognize abusive behaviour masquerading as BDSM.
2) It could normalize harmful behaviour. One of the things that keeps getting brought up is the way safety words are ignored in the book. I can see people using the most popular BDSM media as an excuse to get away with doing that for real, particularly in a culture where consent isn’t respected much.
Ugh. I’ve seem laments at how women might watch the movies then decide to try it out for real, even coming from men within the BDSM community. I don’t get it: yeah, y’all might get an influx of noobs who have more enthusiasm than clue. That’s a good thing. You use that to build awesome communities.
LikeLike
A large influx of boots with more enthusiasm than clue combined with limited bandwidth and willingness to engage in education sounds like a recipe for things like CSI Effect, misandrist Tumblr-feminism, etc.
We’re not talking about the one person in the world who thought Constantine was a masterpiece of cinema and came into the Hellblazer fandom expecting Keanu Reeves instead of a magical Spider Jerusalem. We’re talking about people with ideas that are going to damage others.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Were those the nature of complaints, I’d have less issue with it.
But no, the complaints was specifically about new people being new and inexperienced, not about their potentially bad ideas.
(Many were mocking how these women won’t know what they’re getting into. Concern for their or others well being was not present.)
LikeLike
Seems like 90% of people I see objecting to it are rationalising the following: “this is quite like porn/bdsm/fanfic which I am in to. However it is very low status and doesn’t fit my aesthetic. But lots of people like it. I wonder how hard I can signal ingroup by hating this.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Doesn’t fit our aesthetic”? More like “stomps all over our sacred values”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ho boy, have I had things to say on this topic. Here are my two main Facebook posts:
There’s a call going out to boycott the 50 Shades of Grey movie because it depicts an abusive relationship and excuses it as BDSM. I have no love for the series or the misunderstandings about kink that it’s spawned, but I get the impression that some of its critics are missing the point.
Here’s the thing: The relationship depicted in 50 Shades is not what a healthy BDSM relationship looks like…but BDSM porn doesn’t always depict a healthy relationship, and that’s by design. When your fantasy is to lose control, reading about someone who really doesn’t have a choice can be hotter than reading about someone who has a safe word ready. There are prolific, respected BDSM writers whose stories involve unambiguous rape, murder, pedophilia, and every kind of abuse you could think of. The quotes being passed around are nothing compared to some fantasies, and I can’t blame anyone for enjoying them.
There’s a subtle difference between saying, “The relationship depicted is abusive,” and saying, “The depicted abusive relationship is presented as desirable and normal in a real world context.” I haven’t read the books, and so I can’t tell which side they lean toward, but the media coverage has suggested the latter.
I know the BDSM community feels a powerful impetus to depict itself as healthy, but it’s not accurate to pretend that our porn – and 50 Shades is porn – doesn’t contain every permutation of human filth and immorality you could imagine, because that’s what many members of the community get off to, and there isn’t anything wrong with that. Sanitizing that reality by claiming that a pornographic depiction is wrong because it isn’t an accurate depiction of real relationships is dishonest. If you’re going to go after 50 Shades, be careful about which critique you’re using.
***
There is a stunning level of ethical squick in BDSM porn, to the point where even I find things that I seriously question. The practice that comes closest to crossing the line (in my view) is glorifying buchasing: not just advocating barebacking for pleasure, but advancing philosophical arguments in erotic stories that condoms are evil, and that it’s a good idea to deliberately expose yourself to HIV. I have read a collection of gay male erotica that had several allegories for bugchasing, and the author outright stated that they reflected his views.
It was also – not coincidentally – one of the hottest things I’ve ever gotten off to. Some of that was the writer’s skill, but some of it was the allure of the forbidden. My degree is in Public Health; I wrote my thesis on the horrors endured by the gay male community in the US during the early years of AIDS, and I still can’t think about it without tearing up. The idea of transgressing that boundary – of tapping into that history and opening yourself up to the emotions of it – holds tremendous power over me.
(Another example: I know a woman who – in her words – gets off to Patriarchy, a kink she acquired from reading “The Second Sex” and related texts as a teenager and eroticizing the scorn she imagined she would receive from the authors for being a submissive woman. She’s not into being dominated – she’s into being *hated* for being dominated.)
I’ve seen BDSM writers express their fear that their kinks will become mainstream, not because they’re afraid vanilla people will hurt themselves, or will stampede all over the community they had to themselves, but because not being spat on for liking what they like takes some of the eroticism out of it.
Shame and the allure of the forbidden are powerful things. If you’re not ashamed of much, or you don’t see a lot of taboos in the world, what gets to you might be something obscure like my bugchasing kink; however, if you view large portions of human sexuality as forbidden, you might be able to get that charge with a blindfold and a few light slaps. That’s not weak or watered down to the people who are experiencing it; same principle, different aesthetics. I cannot stand kinksters who look down on 50 Shades of Grey because it’s not extreme enough for their tastes, because what counts is the emotion behind the charge you’re getting, not what you wrap it up in.
Go ahead and hate on the prevalence of stereotyped BDSM portrayals. I cheered when I watched the BDSM episode of “Forever” because it included electricity play, which I had never seen appear in a piece of mainstream media, even though it’s a huge part of the scene I came out of. Everything outside of explicitly BDSM porn is leather, and lace, and dominatrixes, and spanking, and whips, and chains, and consensual nonconsent gone wrong; nowhere is there needle play, or bundles, or cupping, or latex fetishism, or suspension bondage, or a million and one other permutations of sexuality. It’s frustrating when the same old depiction is the one that strikes gold at the press; as someone who is unusual even in kink spaces, I get that.
As with the division between, “This is an abusive relationship,” and “This suggests an abusive relationship is normal and desirable,” there is a distinction between, “This is a cliche that misrepresents our community,” and “This is too boring for our community.” Maybe it’s boring for you, but there’s no need to sneer at someone who finds it transgressive, because transgressive is a relative state.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Yeah too me it’s really simple: closing the book is the safe word.
In an actual BDSM encounter we pretend. Well, sorta. You maybe have to experience it to get it. But the person “abusing” me isn’t really abusing me and I trust him and we both know this.
But I don’t *pretend to pretend*. Nor do I want to read about pretending. I want to read about the hot raw shit, the real fucking awful stuff. That’s what I *play at*, and that’s what I wanna imagine when I read.
I think a lot of women are coming into BDSM now because of 50-shades, and many of them do seem pretty wide-eyed and ill-informed. This will be a field day for abusers, shooting fish in a barrel. Which sucks. We should reach out to these women and explain the real score.
If they meet a “real Christian Grey,” he will rape them and leave a mess behind. But risk-aware kink can get them much of what they want in a reasonably healthy way. They need guidance.
But that has nothing to do with kink literature. The criticisms of 50-shades seems to miss this.
(That said the books look terrible and I don’t plan to read them as a matter of aesthetics.)
LikeLiked by 4 people
“…to me it’s really simple” and god I wish I could edit!
LikeLike
@ninecarpals
I thought that was a very interesting comment. I’m going to nitpick, though, and note that it stills seems to suffer from a bit of typical mind fallacy — not everyone does BDSM-ish things because of a sense that they are transgressive. (Unless I’m the one committing the fallacy and everyone else really does approach it that way, but that seems unlikely.)
LikeLike
@Matthew: Ah, I didn’t mean to imply that everyone does. Sometimes giving/taking pain/power/whatever just feels good on its own. I was specifically addressing complaints that 50 Shades fans are still vanilla, even though they’re tapping into a core part of what makes BDSM so alluring for many participants. (Snobbishness, basically.)
But thank you for the compliment!
LikeLike
I find “BDSM v. vanilla” as a dichotomy problematic. I mean that both in the theoretical sense, and in the sense that it is actually creating a social problem for me. I’m quite dominant — my drives for sex and aggression are tightly intertwined, and I have rape fantasies. But I would not self-identify as kinky. I have no interest in costumes and toys, needles and blood, etc. So I’m stuck finding BDSM-specific spaces off-putting, but am also likely to either creep out women I date from normal spaces, or be left unsatisfied, because of a preference for sex that is much rougher than most vanilla people are going to want, but isn’t particularly kinky.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Matthew
I’ve read some of your prior posts and I really feel you here. What I’m into doesn’t slot well into kinky spaces either, but it unquestionably involves power exchange.
I personally view kink/BDSM/whatever as having three components: the underlying impulses; the cultural trappings; and the community that’s grown around the other two. Power exchange, pain, and transgression would be examples of the first one; whips, chains, leather, needles, etc. belong in the second; and your friendly local kink space would be the third. It sounds like you and I fulfill the first meaning but don’t do so well with the second, which makes the third an even poorer fit.
LikeLike
@Matthew and @ninecarpals I suspect that there are plenty of vanilla women in the same situation as you. They might well like a man to act dominately and aggressively in the bedroom, without in any way wanting to get into BDSM.
Chances are that you may well creep a woman out if she’s only into gentle love-making, but I dare-say there’s a gentle love-making man out there boring the pants off a woman who wants to be roughly swept off her feet.
Finding compatible people is hard.
LikeLike
@Pluviann
That’s not…quite…my issue. See, I’m into some very specific trappings (#2) that just happen to be niche in kink circles – not nonexistent by any means, but niche – and that discourages me from participating in community. Finding enthusiastic partners in vanilla spaces is even more unlikely.
(And not that you had any way of knowing this, but I’m bisexual and a switch, so my tastes aren’t constrained to submissive women. Just about everything I like doing I like having done to me in roughly equal measure.)
It took me a long time and a lot of weird porn for me to grok onto what I enjoy, in large part because the BDSM scene’s emphases have similar root feelings (#1) to what I’m into, but employ different trappings. For years I was torn about whether I was kinky at all, and tried to trick myself into enjoying rope, etc. Then, when I had the opportunity to co-write porn with a friend and could write about whatever I wanted, my desires finally clicked, and I’ve been getting more confident in them ever since, even though I have no partners to act them out with. Maybe one day.
LikeLike
@ninecarpals Oh, I am sorry for making assumptions; I can see how niche trappings can make things more complicated.
For myself, I switch. I flirted around the edges of the BDSM community for a while, but I’ve never really felt kink to be my identity, it’s just something I do occasionally.
I know what you mean about needing lots of time and porn to grok onto what you enjoy. I wasn’t really aware of any of my own dom side for ages, because so much fem-dom porn was so off-putting.
LikeLike
‘The quotes being passed around are nothing compared to some fantasies, and I can’t blame anyone for enjoying them.’
Am a messed-up degenerate with horrible fetishes; can confirm.
LikeLike
@Pluviann
I agree that the matching problem is two-sided, but the two sides of the problem are *not* symmetrical.
A sub woman who opens up to a partner she met outside of BDSM-space about the fact that she’s turned on by a man being rough with her risks the partner thinking that’s kind of weird, wondering if she’s a child abuse survivor, and in an extreme case getting spooked off.
A dom man who opens up to a partner he met outside of BDSM-space about the fact that he is turned on by being extremely rough with women risks her not understanding or caring about the nuances of safewords and consensual nonconsent and such and running off to warn the world that he is an abusive rapist monster.
Deciding when you to trust someone with the details of your preferences is a much riskier decision for the dom man.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@Matthew: In terms of “probability of a very bad outcome,” I think that’s true, but I’m not certain whether it’s true in terms of risk (i.e., the sum of the probability of each bad outcome times the severity of that outcome). After all, the worst-case scenario for the sub woman isn’t that the man gets turned off. It’s that he (or a friend that he talks to, if he gets spooked off) goes “Oh good, a woman I can do anything I want to.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
Outside of actual sex/relationships/kink, men with a sexuality like that are certainly silenced and shamed and not given a safe way to talk about their feelings and desires. Been there.
The worst thing is that if anyone non-male on the SJ side would step in to defend them, she’d be painting a big fat juicy target on her back: defends, aids and abets Literal Monsters And Creeps. The vultures would swoop down on her. I understand totally if a proeminent kink-positive feminist would be too intimidated to go there. I sympathize with the people like Clarissa Thorn, who have sort of broached things in the past.
LikeLike
Sympathy with the radfem devil on this one. Fifty Shades is a gift to redpillers, because you can’t dispute: this is a sexual fantasy, by a woman, enjoyed by women, about a guy engaging in clearly abusive behavior. A manipulative, abusive stalker. Not because of what happens in the bedroom, but outside it. Yet somehow it’s genre is erotic literature and not psychological horror, because he’s rich and powerful. And the real problem: it’s a bestseller, not some weird niche thing.
Redpillers say that’s how the world is, and that’s the only way it can be and the way it should be.
Radfems say that’s not how the world is, and it’s certainly not how the world should be. I absolutely agree on the latter. But the book sells, I’m sure the film will sell, and there really is no way to blame it on men. To get to the world where Fifty Shades isn’t a bestseller – which I think most men would prefer to live in, not being remotely like Christian Grey nor wanting to be – we need to acknowledge that fact. That sometimes women’s gender expectations and fantasies can be out of whack, all on their own, with little help from men.
But what to do about it, besides that, I don’t know. I’m in on the boycott, but that doesn’t say much since I certainly wasn’t planning to see it anyway.
LikeLiked by 6 people
So, reddit tore me a new one today, and I need a second opinion: in what ways was I wrong here: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/2vef2n/a_comment_in_rtil_sometimes_i_think_reddit_views/cogz1kv?context=3 ?
LikeLike
Not exactly responding to what you said, but I can easily imagine scenarios in which false rape accusations are worse than actual rapes, a lot worse even.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Being falsely convicted of raping someone is probably much worse than most rapes. Though I think a rather small percentage of false accusations result in people being jailed.
LikeLiked by 5 people
You identified quite readily as a member of an opposing tribe and therefore to be fought off at any cost. Subredditdrama is very much in the Social Justice sphere of Reddit, and you brought up a talking point from the other side of the Great Internet Slapfight with the Patreon example. You have to couch your arguments in their language if you want to be listened to and not simply written off as evil.
For instance, I’d ask why so many white teenage boys (a more than acceptable target) pretend to be black or women on the internet. For instance, there’s the incentive that pretending to be black lets you get away with using racial slurs. Or ask why people say they’re self-diagnosed with X disorder (as this is again, an acceptable target) to excuse their behavior?
You simply cannot show that you are part of the outgroup when dealing with a highly tribal forum.
LikeLiked by 4 people
You attempted to give a nuanced response to polarized tribes, and so outed yourself as the dreaded moderate. Having no friends and plenty of enemies, things quickly went downhill from there.
LikeLiked by 5 people
This. You presented them an opportunity to gain sick in-group cred by attacking you with no consequences.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Do you make any distinction between “attacking” and “criticizing”? I saw a single comment which seemed rather insulting, but most of the other comments that disagreed with BarryOgg seemed to be criticizing his opinion, not making personal attacks.
LikeLiked by 3 people
By “here,” did you mean with this comment? “To put it in a more abstract way: people tend to follow incentives. And there is a trend in our culture that incentivizes claiming to be oppressed, as it gives you social capital. Sometimes implicitely (“lived experience”), sometimes explicitely.”
Aside from the missspeling 😉 , you were wrong – or at least, you painted an incomplete picture – in that your comment talked about incentives but ignored counter-incentives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Seems to me that it’s fairly accurate if you make explicit a distinction that isn’t present in the original: credibly claiming to be oppressed gives you social capital among those who care about such things, while most of the counterincentives are wrapped up in actually being oppressed.
The two do not necessarily coincide.
LikeLiked by 8 people
@Nornagrest: I made the distinction downstream in the thread.
LikeLike
@Nornagest:
I agree and might go further. Sometimes it’s enough to claim membership in a group that is — on average — oppressed.
Politicians use the trick all the time. “I’m from RegionX. We know what it is to work hard.” Never mind that their family came from generations of wealth.
The motivation seems simple enough. We’re impressed by people who’ve overcome big obstacles. Overcoming obstacles signals competence. And talking about oppression plays to our sense of fairness.
Focusing on outcomes for a carefully-defined group (e.g. “Children from RegionX have only a 10% chance of going to college!”) lets a speaker borrow credibility.
The ‘trick’ is that oppression is hugely heterogeneous.
The politician could be from a high-SES where 90% of kids go to college. That could still be 4-5 points below the average for high-SES kids. That’s still an obstacle. It’s just one that sounds a lot less impressive.
So, we’d expect the rich politician to speak in terms of RegionX solidarity and focus on average differences between regions.
Activists and bloggers seem to do something similar. The more educated the writer the less I expect them to look at differences within their self-defined group.
LikeLiked by 4 people
So, what was your point, exactly? If people keep misunderstanding you, perhaps you’re doing something wrong.
Here’s what I saw in that thread:
SD: LOL, redditors are so self-centered
you: That’s because we’re too nice to marginalized people — it creates perverse incentives!
SD: WTF?!
And then it turns out that your idea of “marginalized people” are fanfiction writers and boyband fans?
1) Why would stereotypical redditors respond to SJ (i.e., outgroup) incentives?
2) “Rational” / economics-like analysis coupled with spelling errors will tempt some people to mock you.
3) You’re criticising an answer to a major problem (actual injustice) for creating a minor problem (teenage girls getting too much sympathy?) without offering a better alternative.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe you know more about his politics than I do, but it seems on first glance like your parsing
as
is a nice encapsulation of the problem.
I try to be nice to my friends. If one of my friends has a complaint that I’m not nice enough to them, I’ll listen. But if the substance of that complaint is that I don’t treat their views as more credible than my own and/or prioritize their being able to speak above my being able to, then I’m going to call them an idiot, and probably stop being friends with them. Niceness and deference are not the same thing.
And then it turns out that your idea of “marginalized people” are fanfiction writers and boyband fans?
He pretty clearly gave those as examples of people claiming to be marginalized in order to increase others’ deference toward them. If they’re poor examples of people who are actually marginalized, that just reinforces his point.
1. Stereotypical redditors are mostly Blue Tribe in origin, and still pretty embedded in Blue spaces out in meatspace, right? It would hardly be surprising if some of them have internalized “oppressed = deference,” even while rejecting SJ norms about who, exactly, is oppressed.
2. True, although none of the mocking comments actually do that.
3. I reject the idea that privileging members of “marginalized” groups is a necessary response to “actual injustice,” or that it doesn’t constitute an actual injustice of its own. I suspect (just based on that reddit thread) that Barryogg does the same. For a better alternative, how about we treat people as individuals, and give their arguments exactly as much credence as their quality merits?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The assumption underlying the “lived experience” and “progressive stack” ideas is that marginalized people are usually not listened to. This seems quite plausible to me. So, under this assumption, if we did try to listen to them either more often or earlier than usual, we wouldn’t be giving undue deference or undeserved “social capital” — we would only correct an imbalance in our discourse.
He did not specify that it would be OK to listen to actually marginalized people in his original comment, nor did he explain who (if anyone) he considers actually marginalized, and on what grounds. Thus, his argument comes across as “these things are bad because they help my tumblr enemies”.
Someone’s lived experience is not an argument, it’s data. And ignoring it is pretty stupid, since we have not yet invented any other way to learn what it’s like to be someone else.
And I hope the order of speaking doesn’t determine the credence you give to speakers’ arguments. That would be a suboptimal epistemic strategy.
LikeLike
The assumption underlying the “lived experience” and “progressive stack” ideas is that marginalized people are usually not listened to. This seems quite plausible to me. So, under this assumption, if we did try to listen to them either more often or earlier than usual, we wouldn’t be giving undue deference or undeserved “social capital” — we would only correct an imbalance in our discourse.
Regarding the progressive stack, that there is a massively better way to do this that does not have horrible failure modes if the people we view as marginalized are actually listened to (in general or, perhaps more plausibly, by us) as much as or more than they should be: Create an explicit and identity-neutral priority-assignment system, and then use it. An obvious candidate is:
1. Collect a list of people who want to speak prior to the start of the meeting, and randomize order within that list using an unbiased (psuedo-)random number generator.
2. When someone asks to be added to the speaker’s list after the start of the meeting, add them at the end, regardless of who they are.
3. If multiple people ask to be added sufficiently close together that you can’t reasonably tell who was first, resort to your (P)RNG again.
He did not specify that it would be OK to listen to actually marginalized people in his original comment, nor did he explain who (if anyone) he considers actually marginalized, and on what grounds. Thus, his argument comes across as “these things are bad because they help my tumblr enemies”.
If we don’t prioritize who to listen to by who is “oppressed,” then these issues never even come up.
Someone’s lived experience is not an argument, it’s data. And ignoring it is pretty stupid, since we have not yet invented any other way to learn what it’s like to be someone else.
Sure. But there are two problems. The first is treating subjective experience as objective reality. The second is that plenty of people who are eager to “listen to the lived experience” of “oppressed people” are equally quick to dismiss the “lived experience” of “oppressors” as “[oppressor category]splaining.”
I have literally been accused of “mansplaining” for telling a feminist woman that her account of “why men do X” (which had no room in it for multiple motivations for the same behavior) was, in my (lived) experience as a man who does X, wrong. On multiple occasions.
And I hope the order of speaking doesn’t determine the credence you give to speakers’ arguments. That would be a suboptimal epistemic strategy.
I certainly try not to. But many other people do, and some of those people have power to influence my life. Moreover, even if one doesn’t determine the credence one gives to speakers’ arguments by the order of speaking, whether one can give any credence to them can easily be determined by that order if, as often happens, the number of people who want to speak exceeds the number who feasibly can.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@ osberend
See, your arguments would be great in a discussion of Occupy Wall Street and the social justice movement. Unfortunately, BarryOgg stepped into a discussion of redditors and the comparative “badness” of rape and false accusations, where the relevance of these ideas is dubious. People have seen their in-group as the victim of injustice since the dawn of humanity.
Perhaps the OWS activists would love your idea of identity-neutral list if they could implement it everywhere. Unfortunately (?) they could control only tiny pockets of discourse, and making those neutral wouldn’t restore balance. And that’s without even considering the effects of historical injustice, or the nature and goals of OWS.
Yes, all human beings tend to do that. The fact that we have no direct access to the “character” and motivations of others doesn’t help.
Well, perhaps if our books, movies and games had more diverse protagonists, we wouldn’t get the illusion that we have practically lived a big chunk of our lives as white men, and are therefore perfectly informed about their experience 🙂
I’m sorry you’ve been mistreated in a conversation with a feminist, though. She was definitely doing it wrong.
LikeLike
>Well, perhaps if our books, movies and games had more diverse protagonists, we wouldn’t get the illusion that we have practically lived a big chunk of our lives as white men, and are therefore perfectly informed about their experience 🙂
Nita, cut that smug shit the fuck out please. You are clearly an intelligent person and you damn well know better than that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ multiheaded & osberend
What’s wrong with what I said? I do sincerely believe this illusion exists, and results in biased conclusions, in the minds of people underrepresented in popular media.
The only snarky bit (and hence the smiley) is the implied suggestion that osberend should personally solve this problem somehow.
LikeLike
On a parallel issue, there is at least some evidence that greater availability of porn reduces rape rates, implying that porn is a substitute rather than a complement. The research looked at the relation between rape rates and internet access by state, on the theory that increased internet access made porn more available. The correlation was negative. No similar pattern was found for murder, which at least suggests that the relation was causal rather than spurious.
I don’t know whether there has been later work either confirming or contradicting it.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m not anti-porn, but correlation is not causation. There are so many confounding variables with “internet access.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
That fails to explain why the correlation occurs for rape but not for murder. Presumably the confounders you have in mind would affect both?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Pornagraphy and sex crimes in the Czech Republic focuses more on the legal status of porn than mere access to the internet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Matthew: It’s actually more than just murder. They checked for 25 different crimes, and found that Internet access decreased two sex-related crimes – rape and prostitution – but no non-sex-related crimes. The effect remained when controlled for fixed-year effects, police force size, poverty, unemployment, per capita income, alcohol consumption, and a host of other confounders. The effect is concentrated in teenagers, who are also the group most likely to watch pornography.
Epidemiological studies are always a little suspect, but this field covers its bases better than most.
LikeLiked by 6 people
@slatestarcodex: I’m assuming you mean that ecological studies are always a little suspect. Plenty of epidemiological studies look at individual-level exposures and outcomes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I actually haven’t read the research, or heard of this study before today; I was just commenting on David F’s description of the study. Knowing that they controlled for a lot of possible cofounders makes me like this study a lot better. Thanks for the info.
From how you describe it, this research is probably solid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do Fake Nice Guys Who Think They’re Entitled To Sex actually exist in significant numbers or are they the male equivalent of the Attention-Seeking Gamer Girl? It’s not hard to find examples of either on the internet, but it seems like most people who get accused of being the former are just not-particularly-entitled guys complaining about rejection. (And obviously most women who play video games don’t fit the latter description.)
LikeLiked by 5 people
I dated one.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’m compelled to believe (in part from testimony of a close female friend) that they do exist in significant numbers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lonely Japanese men are organising! “Revolutionary Alliance of Men That Woman Are Not Attracted To”
“I hope all riyajuus [people who have a life] explode! But we’re still a little jealous!”
(In Japan, women give men gifts on Valentine’s Day, and men give women gifts on White Day. Both traditions were started by chocolate companies.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The group, known as Kakuhidou for short, was started in 2006, when its founder, Katsuhiro Furusawa, returned home one day after being dumped by his girlfriend and began reading the Communist Manifesto. He quickly came to the realization that being unpopular with girls is a class issue.
Evolutionary Psychology recently published an article on how physically attractive men are less egalitarian,
LikeLike
Wow, that has got to be the most literal manifestation of the objectification of women ever.
LikeLike
There seem to be a number of things going on:
envy of people in a relationship — at least they’re self-aware on this point
anger at the “oppressive chocolate capitalists”/”romantic industrial complex” (and not women, note) for exacerbating that envy on certain days
political protesting as an outdoor alternative to feeling like one is missing out
LikeLiked by 4 people
Here’s something that’s been bothering me lately:
Remember Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot? Or, more generally, just the idea that all people are really pretty similar and the smart thing to do is to set aside our differences and work together as a united, peaceable species?
I used to take that idea really, really seriously. It’s easy to apply to conflicts that you don’t have a stake in. Like, I’d always think of the Israelis and Palestineans as just being foolish for not being able to overcome their internal agitators. Of course, I have no stake in either side of that fight.
…But these days, especially after I read John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, I’m pretty close to rejecting the Pale Blue Dot entirely. People just aren’t a united, peaceable species. There are outgroups in the world that I don’t think I’d be willing to closely cooperate with. Even in a Star Trek style utopian future, there would be people that I just would not accept as my brothers. The FLDS church, as described in the book, is the one that really stuck in my head. I tried to reflect on the true one-ness of all mankind, and it didn’t work, and I thought to myself: Fuck that. I think it might be more ethically sound to work against that particular tribe, even at the cost of prolonging a (sometimes violent) conflict.
Someone could argue against me, saying that I’m being intolerant of an outgroup with sexual practices that are, in the big picture, only slightly different than my own. That’s the spirit of the Pale Blue Dot. Fuck that too. I know the difference between a legitimate ethical grounding for sexual norms, and an excuse for old men to sleep with adolescent girls.
Anyway, I guess I’m updating my priors slightly in favor of “yes, tribalism is bad, but there really are outgroups worth fighting sometimes.” I find this shift distasteful and troubling, because it puts me in the same rhetorical camp as a lot of awful bigots and hawks.
Whatever I think, I feel kinda gross.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Standard example of bad tribes: Nazis, ISIS
IMHO, there exist groups that must be fought, but
a) after diplomacy has failed.
b) erring on the side of peace.
c) remembering that the bad guys are the heroes of their own narratives.
LikeLiked by 4 people
We’re still better served, on the whole, when we focus on similarities rather than differences. Society (at every level) depends on almost universal cooperation and fellow-feeling. Vanishingly few forms of injustice approach that scale.
Not that Sagan’s right, mind you. He came from the tradition that believed we’d discover a fundamental balance in nature, that peace was a default and synergy the standard. The more we learn, the more we find that nature is a genocidal free-for-all, ever on the cusp of extinction or overshoot. War, abuse, and distrust are standards of the animal world.
In my mind, that makes dedication to big picture ideals at the expense of lesser concerns all the more important. We are human, we can strive to be better. How high must the crime be before it’s worth throwing somebody away?
“The Cosmos may be densely populated with intelligent beings. But the Darwinian lesson is clear: there will be no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
For what it’s worth, I had quite a lot of posts about the FLDS/Texas controversy, and one comment was from someone who had grown up in a (different) fundamentalist Mormon group. According to him, the pattern of high status older men having multiple young wives occasionally occurred but was disapproved of within the group.
Add to that the fact that the information put out on the conflict by the Texas authorities was routinely dishonest, and I end up pretty skeptical of the popular view of the FLDS. In particular, the authorities made statements about how many of the women in their custody were minors who had had children or were pregnant without explaining that they were rejecting all documentary evidence of age, hence “minor” meant “someone we have decided is a minor.” One such number shrunk from about thirty to about four by the time the case got through the appeals court—which unanimously found that the child protective service had no legal basis for what they had done. It wasn’t until the state Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that verdict that the child protective people finally gave several hundred children they had seized back to their mothers. Both of the “pregnant minors” who were held until they had their children were later admitted to be adults.
If sufficiently curious, you can find a lot of the details on my blog from the time of the controversy. I expect http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=FLDS should find most of the posts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Um, what about the teenage boys they allegedly kick out of their communities under flimsy pretexts, unprepared for life in the outside world?
Also, I’ve read some descriptions of growing up in much less insular, almost “normal” Christian communities, and… well, it’s like dystopian fiction, only real. Beatings that continue until morale improves, teenagers ostensibly “homeschooled” but actually used as free labour, adult women being “disciplined” by their fathers until marriage, and then by their husbands. Things can be horrific even without statutory rape.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Someone could argue against me, saying that I’m being intolerant of an outgroup with sexual practices that are, in the big picture, only slightly different than my own. That’s the spirit of the Pale Blue Dot. Fuck that too. I know the difference between a legitimate ethical grounding for sexual norms, and an excuse for old men to sleep with adolescent girls.”
“But this outgroup has gone too far! They really are monsters, disrespecting all the sacred values!” is what those silly, warring tribes feel like from the inside. You are insufficiently removed from this to take the same outside view that revealed the petty silliness of other conflicts.
That’s not to excuse their behavior; it’s to condemn yours. Your own tribe – our culture – also has many, many messed-up sexual norms, that lead to people being pressured into non-consensual sex, and act as excuses for high-status men to sleep with lots of women without regard to normal ethics.
There’s no point waging eternal war on the Outsiders, only to replace their evils with our own particular brand of oppression if and when we succeed. We need to optimize things from an objective, outside perspective; tribalism is a bias, and a dangerous one. Do not point out the dust-speck in your neighbor’s eye unless you are first prepared to remove the massive block of wood from your own.
LikeLike
Conversely, though: Do not fail to point out the block of wood in your neighbor’s eye, simply because you’re having trouble removing a mote from your own.
LikeLike
True. There’s a difference between having not yet completely removed something, and failing to notice it, of course. But certainly, “charity begins at home” is just as tribal as “the white man’s burden”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Has there been any discussion of colonialism as Effective Altruism? Rule by whites might not be perfect but rule by blacks seems to range from mediocre to hellscape, wherever it is tried.
I do remember turning Haiti into some kind of UN protectorate being seriously proposed in at least one mainstream publication at one point after the earthquake because of the sheer incompetence of the government, so it’s not an entirely unprecedented idea in the modern era.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tried to post these links once, not sure if it worked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city#Development_potential
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Two-cheers-for-colonialism-2799327.php
LikeLike
I’m committing a sin here by generalizing, but I’d imagine any such discussions get shut down Very Quickly outside “safe idea spaces” like here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you’ll accept a derivative form of your question, “Good Fences, Bad Neighbors” argues the modern international norm of border fixity was perpetuating failed states. It falls short of arguing against border-fixity, but it was sort of implied that maybe the world would be better if successful nations just conquered their less-stable neighbors.
That said, my intuition is that if net-positive colonialism ever occurred (which I’m not sure is the case), it’s not possible now, since you’d only create a lot of discontent in the colonized territory. Discontent->more riots and bad economies->dissatisfaction in colonial power->withdrawal and probably resulting civil wars. If you wanted to make it work, you might end up with something more like the US’ intervention in Afghanistan only competent and with a rebuilding plan. And there you see another side of the problem – how do you adequately motivate the intervening power?
(For the record, I don’t think white/black is the right line to draw on effective and ineffective governments, but I don’t think it matters for your purposes.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
One problem: Sometimes colonialism gives you fairly nice places, but sometimes it gives you the Congo Free State.
I *do* wish it was easier to find unbiased primary sources from times and places of chartered rule — India to the 1850s, British East Africa, etc. I don’t really trust the conventional wisdom that “COLONIALISM = BAD GANDHI 4 LYFE,” but neither do I want to get all my information from James Mill.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve seen people bring it up on SSC before. Scott actually addressed it in his anti-reactionary FAQ. I find his arguments against colonialism fairly convincing.
It’s worth noting that European colonial governments also tended to make life for the people they governed moderately bad (Egypt, Kenya and India, where the British turned the countries into giant cash crop plantations, causing significant famines and doing lots of damage to local economies, but did build some railroads and other useful shit) to hellscape (the Congo Free State, whose policies killed 5-10 million people during a time period when the whole continent of Africa had only about 90 million people). I think that the combination of autocratic, unaccountable rule+desire to make ruling as profitable as possible produces both combinations of factors.
A more helpful debate might be about “humanitarian intervention as effective altruism.” These are older than you might think (the European great powers did one in Lebanon and Syria in the 1860s), and at least some of them seem quite distinctive from colonialism per se.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” written in response to the U.S. takeover of the Philippines, is arguing for colonialism as altruism, quite explicitly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Unless you read it as ironic. Kipling is arguing that the U.S. needs to take on “the white man’s burden” in order to learn the limits of empire and win the respect of the European powers.
LikeLike
So I was reading about some internet people getting death threats and something occurred to me that didn’t occur to me the last time I read about internet people getting death threats (gamer gate).
I’ve probably gotten hundreds of death threats over the past years… By playing DotA and other similar games. Its a pretty frequent occurrence.
I think its kind of weird that “I’ve received hundreds of death threats from gamers” was not a thought that occurred to me when I first read about these online people getting death threats.
So two questions I guess? Did it not occur to anyone else, during these discussions, that they too have gotten death threats?
Like when I read about these people getting death threats. It seemed like a really foreign experience. Having to leave their home. Cancel public appearances etc… I felt really sorry for them.
Then all of a sudden today, I realized that I’ve been literally told hundreds of times in descriptive language how people want to kill me.
Now, and I feel kind of bad for this, I really can’t take the people complaining about these death threats seriously. If its the same kind of stuff I get when I play Dota… then its not a big de.al, and looking at the twitter threats etc… that appears to be the case
Granted these victims are in the public, so its trivial to track them down. But if its the same internet assholes then that is irrelevant because its not like these guys are actually going to do anything they say.
Which is not to say that death threats aren’t some level of bad, it just seems the outcry over these threats is at a level I would expect if these people were actually in danger.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I don’t know if I would say that the death threats I’ve received in League of Legends are really the same as the ones Sarkeesian et al tend to get. As you point out, the victims are in public. You also have to take into account the number of people who have actually been killed for voicing their political opinions compared to the number of people who have been killed for feeding the enemy mid laner. On top of that, I’ve never had someone continue to make threats after I closed the postgame chat. The people you’re describing tend to have their home phones and personal emails bombarded with messages, which is a hell of a lot scarier.
LikeLiked by 6 people
I recommend that you look up the practise of “SWATting”. And note that, as far as the Google eye can see, the victims are gamers who got on someone’s bad side.
Closing the chat ain’t going to keep the local wannabe stormtroopers at bay.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I do agree there is a definite degree of separation between “video game” death threats and twitter/email death threats. In one I can just mute them in game, and afterwards I don’t have to deal with it.
Have Sarkeesian et al ever got a phone death threat? I would be far more worried about that, as that shows a far larger degree of commitment on the side of the perpetrator.
And yeah, people have killed and gotten death threats due to voicing their opinions. If these death threats were due to radical groups or should any.
But it doesn’t seem like these death threats are the same kind say, the people who have actually died for voicing their political opinions get.
Isn’t the accusation that it is gamers carrying this out? In which case, yes its slightly worse than DotA death threats because you can’t turn them off. But its not leave your home and cancel your public appearance level of bad. It seems like the usual anonymity + audience-> asshole. The motivation and intention seems the same.
And as Leit says, I would rate SWAting far higher than getting death threats over the internet. The first seems far more likely to lead to physical harm, and at least for me would cause more stress than twitter death threats.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Diarz It’s my understanding that almost all the prominent figures involved have received death/rape threats personally both by email and by phone, some of which specify how and when the attack will take place, and make it clear that they know where the person lives and works, and make it clear that the harrasser is following everything that person says online very closely. Harrassers also call the friends and family of the victim, either to threaten them as well, or to tell them how awful that person is. If the victim is employed then calls are made to the employer to try and get them fired. Then on top of that some people also receive mysterious parcels, endless pizza deliveries and attempts to have their utilities disconnected, and finally swatting.
It seems to me that threats to kill/rape someone made in a game are enough to drive some people away from the game, but not really serious (and could legitimately be interpreted as an ingame ‘my character will kill your character’ type of threat). Since there’s almost no way a stranger in a game could find you, and a culture of making threats when enraged that are not considered serious, then you can be fairly sure you’re safe.
If you’re a public person who has been doxxed or who makes public speaking events then even the most unlikely-seeming threat could be followed through – which is why death threats are actually illegal and why its so fucked-up that some people seem to want to make them an accepted part of normal discourse.
LikeLike
@Pluviann
Okay. That is totally different than what I thought, when I tried looking up for what the death threats actually were all I came across were screenshots of twitter statements, how ever with what you say I can see why people would be upset.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have noticed that inside the Rationalist blogosphere, there is a strong sentiment of people going ‘I agree with feminism like 99.999 buuut’ or ‘feminism in general is great but what is going on here is just..’ posts. It happens on SSC to the point that Scott makes self-deprecating jokes about it, and neoreactionaries aside, many people seem to agree with this sentiment.
I realise this may appear trollish and baitlike, but why is this so? For what reason do people feel so strongly about feminism that it gets excused and apologised to so many times?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not posting out of anger or derision. I agree with most feminist-held positions, as long as they do not veer into extremely radical territory. I just thinkthat in western society, most issues feminism tackles aren’t issues that merely hold down women. I swear that every time I read a feminist article, blog post, or what have you, the first thing I think of is ‘fine, but why are you making this about you? Can you not see that this sucks for everybody?’
I am not unsympathetic to the feminist cause, but I certainly am curious and skeptic. If I could get pointed to a compelling case where it is clear that women are penalised inmany cases without any tradeoffs apparent in turn, I’d be grateful, and probably change my position on the matter.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I tried the “yes, but” strategy for years, then ran out of excuses. It’s difficult to give up something that means a lot to you, especially if you’ve been told that giving it up makes you a monster.
LikeLiked by 8 people
Ironically, this is the exact response I was hoping not to see, if that makes sense. It sounds like the exact same situation I’m in. I often wonder whether people writing ‘I’m totes on board guys’ have a saint’s patience compared to me, do have a stronger case against feminism that I’m not aware of, or are just trying not to get outed as being Literally Worse Than Hitler.
LikeLike
I don’t know if it will make you feel better, but it was all three for me. It took a period of years – including formal philosophical study, a false rape accusation against one of my brothers, and the rape of another – for me to finally change my mind.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I think hardly anyone actually calls you a monster or literally worse than Hitler for not identifying yourself as a feminist. I’m sure some people do, but they are extreme outliers.
I do think that people do says things that imply good people are feminists, and people who don’t identify as feminists are against equality and justice and all that good stuff. My suspicion is that you’re just using hyperbole.
But if that’s the case, then by the same measure, I can say that people keep on calling me a monster and Literally Worse Than Hitler because I am a feminist. So you’ll pretty much get called a monster/Hitler either way, it would appear.
Call yourself a feminist if you think feminists are right about most policy issues. If you don’t think they’re right, then don’t. Yes, some feminists are assholes, but some of every group is assholes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
If you’re talking to me, Amperstand, I think there may have been a misunderstanding: I wasn’t afraid of being called a monster; I didn’t want to be a monster. When I grew up Catholic, I wasn’t scared of social shunning when I sinned, or even scared of Hell – I was scared of disappointing God, because God was a force of absolute good. No one outright used the word ‘monster’, but because I’m someone who’s motivated in large part by doing the right thing, choosing not to do it – and having the suffering I would supposedly cause by not doing it shoved in my face daily – was a cosmic terror.
Does that make more sense?
LikeLiked by 7 people
The Global Utility Function, IMHO, contains no ‘Identifies as feminist’ term. Actions speak louder than lables.
Your problem is a symptom of a larger issue that has been discussed by many: identifying as something often gets in the way of useful discussion.
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
LikeLike
I’m not sure how to answer “does that make more sense?”
If you mean, do I understand the words you are saying to form a coherent narrative of your inner mental state, then yes, that makes sense. And I’m sorry, because that sounds like it sucks.
If you mean, do I accept that what you say is a realistic concern that accurately reflects how the world works, then no, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t think it’s true that feminists were, on a daily basis, shoving into your face that you’d be causing people to suffer by no longer calling yourself a feminist. That claim strikes me as extremely at odds with the reality I’ve observed.
(Which in no way invalidates the fact that you seem to be (or at one time have been) in distress about it, and that sucks.)
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re doing any harm by not calling yourself a feminist. Or that you would by calling yourself one. The universe is, I feel pretty sure, reassuringly indifferent to whether or not we call ourselves feminists. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
How is what you’re saying a reply to my question at all?
I’m not judging feminism’s core values(such as they are) by using its population of douchebags as representatives,I’m genuinely asking why feminism in general is held in such high esteem in the rationalist blogosphere and the public in general, and for which reason(s) people seem to value it so much.
Read my OP, then please answer that question. There’s no need to apologise for Tumblr and Jezebel, I’m just trying to find a compelling argument here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Amperstand: I don’t meant to be playing a shifting goalposts game here by being vague, so it’s clear – I’m addressing the questions I’m asked without getting into too much detail because I assume that no one cares about my personal life. I’m happy to answer or clarify, but I want you to know that I’m not trying to catch you off guard.
Yes, it was a daily thing, because the more I doubted, the more I flagellated myself with feminist blogs, forums, and other literature. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the kind of faith I did – or experienced it the same way -, but I actively sought out hatefulness so that I would have a compelling reason to agree with feminism. “See, here’s this person being very loud and angry; if they’re this loud and angry, they must be right, and in the light of their anger I feel ashamed, so I’m good now, too.” It’s not a pleasant or productive impulse, and I don’t blame the feminists involved for my behavior (though I do blame them for being some of the most odious people I have ever encountered), but that’s where the monster feeling came from.
Again: All I am doing is explaining why I, ninecarpals, held certain opinions at a certain point in time. What I am describing is not hyperbole, but it’s also not intended to be representative of anyone’s experiences but my own.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Stefan, it was intended as a response to Ninecarpets, not as a response to you. I messed up where I should have hit “reply” in the comment tree. Sorry about that.
Regarding your original post, the first issue that comes to my mind is the right to an abortion. In much of the US (where I live), pro-lifers have succeeded at making abortion practically unavailable to many women with limited resources – particularly young women and poor women.
Although there are non-feminists in the USA who are pro-choice, virtually everyone who is doing the actual scutwork of keeping abortion legal and available in the US is a feminist. If feminism didn’t exist, it seems very likely that abortion would be pretty quickly banned nationwide. This would lead to less freedom for women in concrete ways, and also – if the experience of other countries is any indication – lead to an increase in deaths caused by botched abortions.
I wouldn’t say abortion is an issue that doesn’t affect men at all, but it’s certainly an issue in which the effects are not even distributed.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Amperstand
“Ninecarpets”
Haha! It’s “ninecarpals,” which refers to the carpal bones in the wrist, of which there are actually eight. But carpets are pretty swell, too.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ninecarpals, thanks for your response. That sounds awful, and I’m sorry you went through that. It also sounds like you’re feeling better these days. I hope that’s the case.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Amperstand
I am for the most part, thank you. I learned a lot about myself and the world from that experience, and I wouldn’t take back what I went through, even if it did lead to a two week breakdown. I’d like to think I’m a kinder person now as a result.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This seems to be related to “I’m not a feminist, but” — the classic polite introduction to a remark about unusually egregious sexism.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The easy answer is that you don’t wanna piss off someone with a giant Death Laser. If you must disagree with them, you do so very, very politely and gingerly.
Why do rationalists care about the giant Death Laser when manospherians or reactionaries don’t? I think part of it is that the median rationalist considers feminists to be part of their ingroup, and while giant Death Lasers are never fun, what *really* hurts is rejection.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Isn’t the simplest explanation that whoever is saying it really does agree with much of feminist thought and doesn’t want to come off as more opposed to it than they really are? You don’t want someone to misinterpret where you’re coming from, especially if that would make them less charitable and more hostile to you. It’s not an excuse or apology by default (though sometimes it is).
LikeLiked by 8 people
“It happens on SSC to the point that Scott makes self-deprecating jokes about it, and neoreactionaries aside, many people seem to agree with this sentiment.”
I’ve often thought this is true about SSC for more than just feminism. Scott keeps rationally finding holes in blue tribe doctrines. He’s too smart not to. But no matter how often he does it, he still identifies himself with the blue tribe.
LikeLike
I became an enthusiastic feminist when I was *twelve.*
I think it’s obviously true if you look around that women are, in many ways, treated poorly on account of their sex. And that historically women have not had equal rights as citizens, and in many places still do not have equal rights. I know from introspection and personal experience that women are people and have inner lives much richer than the ones presented in most media. I know all the words to “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow.”
I have a problem with a lot of tenets and tactics of the contemporary feminist movement as I see it, starting with socialism. But I’m reluctant to consider myself an “anti-feminist”, because sexism — yes, the brutal, stupid, old-fashioned variety — still exists and I am no friend to it.
LikeLiked by 4 people
But I’m reluctant to consider myself an “anti-feminist”,
There is a BIG difference between “not feminist” and “anti-feminist,” although the problematic kind of social justice warrior feminist will atttempt to deny this.
LikeLiked by 5 people
In Western societies? Actually, I think that’s totally not obvious at this point. As a male person with almost exclusively female friends living in central Europe, I haven’t seen anything approaching “many ways of poor treatment on account of their sex”. Minor things, yes, but nothing huge and obvious.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have an ethics/etiquette question that I have been sitting on for a week.
The scene: an exurban Starbucks near my office, about 8 am. Caters to white collar workers, sales types meeting over their laptops, moms in yoga pants with their little girls in tow, students on their way to the local catholic high school, and a student here or there.
As I approach the drink dispensing end of the line, I see the barista – a tall good looking early 20s guy – chatting up one of the customers. She’s a student-ish looking woman, asian, maybe a couple years younger than the barista dude. Ok, chatting up customers is part of the routine at Starbucks, except, as I approach, I hear.
Barista: Smile
Customer: Huh?
Barista: Smile, and you get a drink.
Customer: Huh?
Barista: Smile, and you get a drink.
Customer:
Barista: Hands over the drink.
The question: Should I have intervened? He was kind of flirty, she didn’t seem huge offended, just sort of confused, I’m a white dude their parents’ age and I don’t know anything about them. Is it right to blow it off? Tease him? Jump on the counter and shout “Check your privilege!” I honestly feel kind of bad about the whole thing, but I have no idea what I would prefer myself to have done.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Eh, it could have been worse.
More seriously — I might have gone with, “Do a little dance, and you get your tip jar money.”
LikeLiked by 5 people
Yeah. Although that’s a very dubious advance, if she’s the customer and he’s the employee, there’s no power imbalance in his favour. Would anyone have considered intervening if the genders were switched? Probably not.
LikeLike
According to your story, she already succesfully defended herself and crushed his pride in public with her indifference. No need to intervene.
LikeLike
OMG – I was waiting for the train at the Gare du Nord last week, and having a coffee at the cafe across the road. The waiter was really over familiar, calling me ‘petit chat’ and touching my arm all the time. But he was touching everyone, so I just assumed that he was a very friendly guy. When I paid the bill, he was standing in front of my chair, effectively blocking my exit, and as I stood, he leaned in for a kiss. So I kissed him.
And like, I am not traumatised or hurt or anything, I don’t even really feel harrassed. But I carried a huge ball of anxiety around in my stomach for the rest of the day because I didn’t want to kiss him, but it happened so fast that my auto-politeness reflexes kicked in before the rest of me could act, and I just complied with the social prompt. And then I felt dreadful for the rest of the day for being complicit in something I didn’t want, and for not knowing what else to do. In retrospect, I’m sure he would have laughed it off if I had just given him the side-eye, but at the time I would’ve had to have really psyched myself into it.
I really do think that for every social awkward guy who can’t intiate flirtation, there’s a socially awkward girl who can’t deflect it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Question, for anyone who might know or be able to speculate, and with no ulterior motives: why have there apparently been no feminist (in the broadest sense) protests against Ecuador granting asylum to Julian Assange after the sex crime allegations?
Or did I just not notice?
Closest I could find in a quick Google search was this, which isn’t quite what I was thinking of:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jan/10/oxford-students-to-protest-at-assange-talk
I’d honestly have expected semi-regular protests outside the embassy where he is staying, and perhaps Ecuadorian embassies elsewhere in the world – sort of like anti-abortion protests in the US. What am I overlooking or failing to understand?
(And yes, I’ve been wondering this ever since he’s been there, and never got around to finding a sensible place to ask. My own opinions on Mr. Assange, feminism, and/or Ecuador aren’t in play here, I’m honestly curious.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Because it’s tied in with the rogue intelligence apparatus debate, and his accusers, being by default on the CIA’s side, don’t have a whole hell of a lot of credibility?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Because the law is actually doing what it’s meant to do. A report was made, the Swede’s decided to investigate and went through the proper channels to the Brits, the Brits looked into it in the proper manner and agreed that it should be followed-up.
Since justice seems to be working here, there isn’t much to get enraged about. Rage against Assange personally more properly takes the form of essays and articles.
If he had been convicted of the crimes that are alleged he probably would’ve been out of prison by now, the sentences for minor sexual offences are quite short, I think (I am not a swedist law expert). So you can argue that he has imposed on himself an imprisonment worse than he would’ve received from the justice system – any feminist who vindictively wanted him punished would do well to leave him were he is.
I suppose you could argue that there should be more outrage against Ecuador, but I think it’s pretty clear that this is Ecuador thumbing it’s nose at the US, not Ecuador standing up for all rapists everywhere.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, the hypothetical protests I was expecting would have been aimed at Ecuador.
(It seems to me a strange way to try to annoy the US, who after all have no actual involvement in the case. But I don’t really understand international politics.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is a belief that the US is involved in the case in secret, and I can’t really blame people for thinking that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is it a widespread belief, though, outside of those who are fans of Mr. Assange and/or hate the US as a matter of principle? I wouldn’t really have expected it to have much credence amongst feminists.
LikeLike
I think it depends on what level of involvement you imagine the US has. Some people have said that the the women are CIA stooges and the whole thing was some kind of honeytrap, which is tin-foil hat territory.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem impossible that the US would try to have him extradited once he was in custody. I would have to know alot more about the intentions of the current administration to guess whether that’s likely. Seems to me that a conviction for a squalid sex-crime would do more to discredit him that an extradition, which might earn him sympathy.
LikeLike
… which leads directly to something else I don’t really understand: why, hypothetically speaking, it would be any easier for the US to extradite him (or for the CIA to kidnap him, or whatever) from Sweden than from the UK. Once again, my go-to guess is “because international politics are complicated”. 🙂
LikeLike
Harry Johnston, yes it’s very easy for the US to get an extradition from the UK. Something which many British people are currently very upset about. That’s another reason to believe that the allegations are not due to a complicated trap laid by the United States. It would’ve made a lot more sense to lay the trap in the UK than Sweden.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’ve been observing the back-and-forth in the “Geek Pride & Social Justice” thread, among other places, and I’m coming to the conlusion that people haven’t devoted enough attention to the interplay between the “bravery debate” dynamic and the “tin men are superweapons” dynamic.
Ta-Nahisi Coates memorably said, “The fact that ‘there are only a handful of bad cops’ cuts no ice with me. If ‘only a handful of McDonald’s are spitting in your food,’ you’re not going to McDonald’s.”
People generally don’t handwave the issue of tyrannical or racist police, because police officers have a lot of power to harm other people. If one provided evidence that, say, a small proportion of hobos are genuinely awful to the people around them, the reaction would proabably be rather different.
I notice here and at SSC that there is a recurring argument between people who grudgingly admit that, “Yes, there are some bad feminists who do the things people at SSC complain about,” but don’t consider this a serious problem because that’s #notallfeminists, perhaps not even a majority of feminists (though this is more of a disputed question). Simultaneously, you have people who will grudgingly admit that some elements of the geek-o-sphere, for lack of a better term, behave in genuinely problematic ways regarding women and minorities, but don’t consider this a serious problem because that’s #notallgeeks, perhaps not a majority of geeks (again, possibly disputed).
My sense is that there’s actually less disagreement about the proportions of bad people in any given camp, and more disagreement about who is more like bad cops and who is more like bad hobos. Feminists feel relatively disempowered — the entire patriarchy is (supposedly stacked against them). Geeks feel relatively disempowered as well (part of the confusion here, I think, stems from disagreement about the relative weight of social-misfit-ness to STEM-interests in the definition of “geek”). Power is relative and contextual, though, and when you have direct experience of a subset of an ostensibly disempowered group exercising the power to make your life miserable, you are likely to see it differently.
I suppose all that is rather lengthy lead-up to: Please don’t write comments to to effect of, “Yes there are bad X, but they aren’t very powerful, so let’s talk about something else.” Because from the POV of your interlocutor, you’re probably wrong on the merits.
LikeLiked by 12 people
Thought: “Who has power here” often parses in practice as “Who is most capable of hurting me?” SJ dogma means that SJ feminism, when in power in meatspace, is much more effective at hurting men than (even dissenting) women. Consequently, it is quite possible for a (male) geek to conclude that SJ feminists are far more capable of, say, destroying his career than his fellow geeks, and for a (female) SJ feminist in the same field to conclude that geeks are far more capable of destroying her career than her fellow SJ feminists, and for both to be perfectly correct.
LikeLiked by 3 people
A suggestion for getting a better handle on where inequalities in things like say, career fields come from: blinding applications for things like program placement, journal articles, auditions, etc.
If members of Group X do much better after blinding (real life example: since orchestras started blinding auditions, the number of female horn players in major orchestras skyrocketed), you can conclude that you have problems with discrimination at the level which you’re examining– and you’ve found a tool to counter it effectively as well.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I don’t understand why this is no already universal.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Because if you make it universal, sometimes it’s going to turn out that members of group X don’t do better after blinding, and people complaining about discrimination against group X will then be in the awkward position of having just proven that the imbalance is not the result of discrimination.
(And in practice, they will usually claim that the blinded test is still biased in some way.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
Surely the vast majority of jobs include an interpersonal component (will this person play well on our team) which can’t be assessed blindly?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I certainly don’t think that the method is universally useful for figuring out the problem– I think that it’s just useful for identifying discrimination in some particular selective processes, and perhaps eliminating some hypotheses about where it is if it’s not found.
LikeLike
I want to state one of those “I notice some people take this point of view, I notice some people take that point of view” things that seems sometimes helpful in resolving confusions. I addressed this a little in this comment back on SSC, but I think maybe it’s worth restating.
So, a perspective that some feminists seem to take is: There is society, and there is sexism is society, and it is very strong, and we are going to fight that, and anyone who disagrees is part of the powerful enemy. The enemy says nasty things, so say nasty things, but ultimately we’re not doing anything horrible; we’re just disagreeing. And if people don’t like our spaces, they can go away and discuss things among themselves, so whatever.
Whereas a pretty different perspective seems to be assumed by feminist self-flagellants and former self-flagellants (like me). It goes more like: There’s us, the civilized people (Blue Tribe, Brahmin, G-class), and there’s the enemy, the barbarians (Red Tribe, Vaisya/Optimates, L/E-class). The Blue Tribe is the relevant society; the Red Tribe isn’t our society, it’s just the enemy, or at best a bunch of nobodies. Sure, a bunch of them might have lots of money — but the currency of the Blue Tribe isn’t money, it’s a combination of interestingness and moral high ground; and sexism is thoroughly discredited, both evil and uninteresting. And they might influence lots of people — but those are just more barbarians, more nobodies.
And in the latter perspective, if you disagree at all with feminism-at-large, it’s very scary. If feminists don’t take you seriously and call you a sexist when you disagree, they’re not just disagreeing with you, they’re calling you a barbarian, a Red Triber. And that is the worst thing to be (and to be seen as). Like, both you were secretly a monster all along, how will you ever live with that; and now everyone will know you’re a barbarian, nobody will ever take you seriously. Feminists saying nasty things, meanwhile, is not equivalent, to the enemy saying nasty things; because the enemy is a bunch of nobodies, so who cares what they say? Whereas the feminists are the “goodguys”, they’re respected, everybody cares what they say (where “everybody” is implicitly “everybody worth caring about”). They have a responsibility to be better. And if you are a Blue Triber who disagrees with the feminists, there is nowhere to go (at least until recently). You can’t go over to the Red Tribe, they’re way worse; they’re barbarians, you have nothing in common with them, you’d much rather bite your tongue and stay on the feminists’ side. But if you try to disagree anywhere within the Blue Tribe, you’ll be marked as a barbarian and kicked out. This is what people are afraid of, not merely being “disagreed with”!
And, you know, when you put it that way, parts of the latter viewpoint seem pretty unjustifiable — to write off whole masses of people like that. (Live in the geographical area and the barbarians aren’t “nobodies”, they’re e.g. why you can’t find anyone willing to perform an abortion.) But, firstly, people do do this; so A. it doesn’t seem unreasonable for people to be afraid of being so written off, and B. it doesn’t exactly seem very nice to blame the self-flagellants who are afraid of being a monster because of how many other people they’re writing off in the process. And, secondly, there are parts that are rescuable. Like, assuming the Blue-Red split is something real, we can make something of an external-vs.-domestic split in terms of what feminism is doing. Or if you like, proselytization vs. perfection: on the one hand, the conversion of sexists (barbarians) to feminism, on the other hand, the perfection of what we’re converting them to.
And when you look at it that way, the problem is, well, still the same as above; if instead of just “lots of factions fighting” you see “barbarians vs. civilization”, then you have to side with civilization. And then you find that civilization’s governing mechanisms are broken, because feminism-at-large won’t allow — within civilization — any disagreement; your only option seems to be backing feminism as it exists, without any improvements, against the barbarians. Rather than, say, spreading feminism to the barbarians while also correcting its errors from inside.
So this seems to be a source of persistent misunderstanding. Some of the feminists who take the former point of view seem to be basically permanently on a war footing, and sees anyone who says they shouldn’t as denying the barbarian’s existence. But as I’ve said elsewhere… I’m not saying the barbarians don’t exist; I’m saying disband your armies before entering Italy. But the feminists who take the former point of view seem to be saying essentially that there is no Italy. (Man, that is goign to sound really weird out of context.)
So, I don’t know — maybe my native Blue Tribe vs. the barbarians point of view is actually entirely wrong, with nothing rescuable in it; but I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen any of the feminists who don’t subscribe to it actually argue against, because it seems they more just fail to understand it in the first place. (The neoreactionaries understand and disagree with it, but…)
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. It’s just very frustrating how a bunch of feminists don’t realize that to a lot of people, they’re not just another faction, they’re the good guys.
LikeLiked by 9 people
That last paragraph. Yes. Reading That Comment By Scott and seeing the outrage afterward was surreal. Is it really that hard to grasp that he didn’t want to be a bad person, and that you (general ‘you’) may have played a teeny tiny part in convincing him that he was?
LikeLiked by 5 people
A somewhat distinct, but still strongly related point of view:
As someone who is strongly Blue Tribe–identified, but anti–Social Justice Movement, the ascendency of SJ feminists within my spaces makes me angry, because it’s a betrayal.
Because I see the Blue Tribe as being, yeah, the civilized folk, the people who are (at their best) against prejudice based on immutable factors and for assessing individuals as individuals, based on their choices, their beliefs, and their relevant capabilities. And the SJM takes those principles and shits all over them, all while claiming to be the heir to that noble tradition. And then when you try to strike a blow against double standards, they accuse you of reinforcing double standards. When you speak out in favor of liberty, they call you an oppressor. When you stand up for what the Blue Tribe is supposed to be about, they call you Red.
And people around you, people you thought were smart and reasonable, listen. Not all the time, but enough. And it hurts. (And it can be a real threat to one’s career, if the wrong people believe the wrong accusations.)
I know where I stand. Like Julian, I am for Rome, but against what she has become. But . . . I am not an emperor. From where I sit, the barbarians are far away, and there are so many voices rising up from around me to condemn them that to add my own would make little difference. But there are far too few voices being raised against this new cult that has turned the civilized world upside down, and so I raise mine.
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
LikeLiked by 6 people
That’s grandiose and all, and I *always* appreciate a reference to esteemed Julian, but, to say it lightly, it’s not so much “the barbarians are far away” for some of us. Let me tell you a halfassed, I’m in a rush story about it.
It’s like we’re in the future. An evil sci-fi cult takes children, brainwashes them, then wipes their memory of the brainwashing. The brainwashing encourages different groups of people to hurt each other.
The brainwashing is such that everything seems stubbornly, relentlessly fine. Most everyone thinks the brainwashing is the way things are– the way of things. The Natural Order.
But those of us who have ~discovered the truth~ resist it. We’re comrades in this resistance, but residual brainwashing exist. So, having discovered the truth and a hope for a better future, we band together.
Only *knowing* you’re brainwashed doesn’t cure you of it, and sometimes people continue to behave in a brainwashed manner, under layers of rationalization. Sometimes willfully, sometimes unconsciously.
Meanwhile, the people that tend to be most hurt become even more hurt when the people that are supposed to be with them, the Resistance, continue to act brainwashed, even though (sometimes) it’s not entirely their fault; they were brainwashed for Christsakes. And because this makes them paranoid, these groups of people sometimes lash out at the first sign of brainwashed behavior.
This is a very extended way of telling you to check your privilege. 🙂
LikeLike
@childe-caro:
Yeah, I often object to the SJW precisely because they epitomize everything bad about the Red Tribe, except that now it’s in the Blue Tribe, and it threatens to turn what glimmers of Resistance there were into just another group of brainwashed cultists. They’re either Manchurian Candidates, or traitors.
… and you meant that that’s how the SJWs see moderates, didn’t you.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yep. SJWism is an elaborate and sometimes very harsh form of trying to stamp out the brainwash. Whether that methodology could be improved is another matter; I think it can be.
I see where you’re coming from, but anyone who says “the barbarians are far away” is operating under very different conditions than I do, and their conception of the battles at hand are not going to be very relevant to me. Things are much better than they used to be, but threats are often close at hand.
LikeLike
It’s hard to feel like the good guys when people are constantly shitting on us. Reading SSC, for instance, Scott consistently displays a level of hatred and rage for feminists and anti-racists that is FAR greater than what he displays about any other group.
Another example: Prominent liberal writer Jon Chait seems to be far more furious with the progressive left, and mainly with feminists and anti-racists, than he ever gets with anyone to his right. If we so much as use a mocking hashtag about an article saying feminism is over, then we’re obviously anti-free-speech, in his view.
“And in the latter perspective, if you disagree at all with feminism-at-large, it’s very scary. If feminists don’t take you seriously and call you a sexist when you disagree, they’re not just disagreeing with you, they’re calling you a barbarian, a Red Triber. And that is the worst thing to be (and to be seen as). Like, both you were secretly a monster all along, how will you ever live with that; and now everyone will know you’re a barbarian, nobody will ever take you seriously.”
This sounds to me like it might be related to imposter syndrome. This is the feeling – nearly universal among artists who have begun to experience some success, but also found in other contexts – that one is a fake, and as soon as others realize what a fake one is, one is going to be laughed out of one’s career.
The great cartoonist Dave Sim once told a story about talking to Jules Fieffer (also a great cartoonist, but one from two generations earlier than Sim). I’m paraphrasing, but as I recall, Sim was talking to Fieffer about sometimes feeling he (Sim) was a fake, and sooner or later everyone would realize it.
Fieffer responded, “that’s because you haven’t experienced any great failures yet. Once that happens to you, and you get through it, that feeling goes away.”
There was a point, years ago, where I experienced a HUGE amount of rejection from the feminist blogosphere. This sort of event was called a “blogstorm” back then. Lots and lots and lots of negative comments and emails, obviously. Lots of posts on feminist blogs criticizing me and my character. Lots of people just writing me off. Feminists who had guest-posted on my blog asking for their posts to be taken down. I couldn’t post comments on other people’s blogs without people posting to say “why are you letting HIM post here?” Copies of my books vandalized in a bookstore. That sort of thing.
There are still people who hold that years-old stuff against me – although nowadays the people who bring it up are usually anti-feminists with long memories, not feminists.
But I’ve also paradoxically felt more secure in my feminism since that happened. And maybe it’s what Jules Fieffer said – getting through a great failure helps make you feel more secure. Because the blogstorm passed, and my real friends – even my most radical feminist friends – remained my friends. And I didn’t stop being a feminist, And lots of people, feminists included, still take me seriously. And it was also a helpful reminder that the world of feminism is a hell of a lot larger than the world of online feminism.
So anyway, that’s my anecdote.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Barry, I think that you’re missing Sniffnoy’s point somewhat– liberal critics like Scott* or Chait are harsher and angrier with other progressives because 1) In the spheres which they live in, vicious progressives are much more likely to actively hurt and ostracize them than vicious conservatives are, 2) They have higher expectations for people on their own side, and 3) For progressives, the left represents hope for the progress of civilization, so if it becomes toxic and awful, hope itself dwindles. Meanwhile, conservatives being awful and stupid just makes it easier to ignore, deride, or fight them. You’re only the target of this kind of anger because people once believed that you were the good guys, and still believe that you should be good. I try to stay aware of the wider world and try to ground my arguments in that, but I have to admit that as a pretty extreme leftist living in a blue bubble and somebody who tends to identify more with others on meta-level issues than object-level issues, I still find stupid progressives who use bad reasoning or epistemology viscerally much more distressing and anger-provoking than stupid conservatives.
*I don’t think that your characterization of Scott is quite fair, by the way. He generally doesn’t direct significant vitriol towards anti-racists (unless you count general critiques of SJ rhetorical excess or making an effort to evaluate the rigor of various studies about police violence as vitriol towards anti-racists). On feminism, I think that he is actually pretty ragey and far less charitable than he should be, but I don’t think he’s ever genuinely hateful to feminists– and he consistently writes very kindly and compassionately about you personally.
Re: Your discussion of the blogstorm: Isn’t the fact that the blogstorm happened in the first place significant evidence that harmful things can happen, though? And isn’t it also significant evidence of toxicity within the online feminist community?
LikeLiked by 9 people
@Henry: For progressives, the left represents hope for the progress of civilization, so if it becomes toxic and awful, hope itself dwindles.
To take this a bit further: Over time, society moves left. This movement is not uniform, or even monotonic—sometimes society surges left transiently and later retreats (perhaps to revisit the same territory later, and perhaps not), and sometimes it transiently surges right—but the trend line is clear. So awfulness on the right is, on a long enough time scale, a transient problem. Awfulness on the left is, potentially, a dire omen of things to come.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@Osbrend: It’s true that society moves left, but in a sort of tautological– for most of the time since the French Revolution (when “Left” and “Right” came into use), people who get labeled as leftists are usually whatever major political faction significantly want to change stuff. The leftists of the late 18th century wanted to marketize more social relations, while the leftists of the 19th wanted to de-marketize them. We should be careful to recognize that what “Left” and “Right” meant at specific times in the past was historically specific.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Henry:
” liberal critics like Scott* or Chait are harsher and angrier with other progressives because 1) In the spheres which they live in, vicious progressives are much more likely to actively hurt and ostracize them than vicious conservatives are, 2) They have higher expectations for people on their own side, and 3) For progressives, the left represents hope for the progress of civilization, so if it becomes toxic and awful, hope itself dwindles.”
There seems to be a strong double-standard here, in which the people who are asking feminists to stop being “toxic and awful,” are being excused or even cheered on when they are toxic and awful towards feminists and SJWs.
I actually agree that feminists, like all people, could benefit by being kinder and more forgiving (and many are). But I’m not willing to sign on to a standard that says that we should be kinder to everyone but feminists (or but feminists and SJWs, or whatever), who should be treated like shit.
“On feminism, I think that he is actually pretty ragey and far less charitable than he should be, but I don’t think he’s ever genuinely hateful to feminists– and he consistently writes very kindly and compassionately about you personally.”
It’s easier to say that something isn’t “genuinely hateful” when you are not in the targeted group. It feels pretty hateful to me. I certainly think it’s fair to say that Scott’s approach is far more likely to encourage non-feminists to treat feminists-in-general as a despised out-group, than it is to encourage feminists-in-general to enter a dialog.
And I agree, Scott’s been very kind talking about me personally. And I appreciate that (although I also thought “Radicalizing the Romanceless” distorted my story in order to shoehorn it into Scott’s worldview – I might someday post about that). But I think you’re being unreasonable if you think this means I should take his attacks on feminism any less to heart. To make an analogy, if someone who I knew respected me and had publicly said nice things about me, starting posting long rants attacking fat activists, or progressives, in ways that were mean and unfair, I wouldn’t be wrong to feel affronted and attacked by that.
(And for the record, I have a lot of respect for Scott, and if we could meet and have lunch I suspect I’d like him a lot.)
“Isn’t the fact that the blogstorm happened in the first place significant evidence that harmful things can happen, though? And isn’t it also significant evidence of toxicity within the online feminist community?”
Yes and no. As I said, the anger at me was somewhat justified.
I think there are significant portions of feminism, both online and offline, that are “toxic” in some situations, by which I mean that things are dealt with in unnecessarily harsh ways. And I worry that this is creating less good discussions than we’d have otherwise.
But I don’t think this is something at all unique to feminism; I think that US political culture right now is filled with toxic rage and dehumanization of outgroups. So singling out feminists seems unfair.
I also think “blogstorms” were an early symptom of a problem that has since become more obvious, which is that social media can have a magnifying effect, so that even reasonable and justified criticism feels overwhelming and disproportionate once it’s been multiplied by dozens or hundreds of critics.
But again, this isn’t a problem unique to feminism, so singling out feminists seems unfair.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Ampersand: There seems to be a strong double-standard here, in which the people who are asking feminists to stop being “toxic and awful,” are being excused or even cheered on when they are toxic and awful towards feminists and SJWs.
What has Scott Alexander written against feminism that even comes close to Amanda Marcotte’s attack on Scott Aaronson, which wasn’t even the worst of that particular ragefest, let alone of feminist attacks on nerds generally?
LikeLiked by 5 people
I don’t think that most critics of SJW excesses who people here or in other rationalist environments approve of (Scott, Ozy, Freddie DeBoer, and Multiheaded are who I have in mind here) are in fact particularly toxic or awful. Chait is another story (I think that he makes some major mistakes, conflates actual censorious violence with bad behaviors that hurt discourse, and some really virtuous things like trigger warmings), but I don’t think that even he’s nearly as bad as the most vicious people he criticizes. And I haven’t been trying to argue that we should in fact have double standards– more just pointing out why some people have stronger feelings in specific situations, and why it might be valid to focus one’s energy on a particular sort of internal critique rather than waging war on outgroups. My apologies if I didn’t make that sufficiently clear.
Re hatefulness: I can understand why this might surprise you a bit, but I’m actually a very committed feminist, and in some ways a very SJ-ish one (I’m familiar with a lot of the academic writing and I care a lot about intersectionaliy.) So, I am actually in the group that Scott targeted. I reacted very differently to his arguments than you did, though. It seemed quite clear to me that his anger was reserved for certain strains of argument and blindnesses within feminism, and his hate was reserved for a few feminists who he considered awful people (ie: Amanda Marcotte). There might be something a little Tin Man-ish about Scott’s argument, but internet rationalist-land is a really tiny corner of the discursive landscape which doesn’t really have strong effects on the lives of anybody except say, people who work at CFAR or MIRI.
I brought up Scott being nice to you personally not to suggest that you should take his “attacks on feminism” less to heart, and more to suggest that it’s significant evidence that he does not, in fact, hate all feminists, and that you might be at least somewhat mindkilled about the issue.
Re Singling out feminists on toxicity: Here’s an analogy to think about. Say that you’re Martin Luther. You see all kinds of practices in your church which you find lamentable, corrupt, and incompatible with Christianity. You want to fix it. Of course, there are lots of people outside of Christendom who are far less Christian even than the corrupted leaders of your church. Is it irrational for you to focus on fixing your own church first rather than preaching Christianity-as-it-existed-then to Muslims or New World people? I don’t think that’s irrational at all– if you don’t fix Christianity, everything that spreads will be corrupt, and you’ll have no firm foundation to bring real salvation to the rest of the world. Critiquing Christendom aggressively from within now may weaken it against its enemies in the short term (the Protestant reformation and the subsequent wars of religion gave the Ottoman Empire a nice window of opportunity to conquer Hungary and besiege Vienna), but it’s the only way to save it.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Henry:
1. I’d say that Freddie DeBoer is a good example of someone who piously says “you people should be kinder” while treating those he disagrees with, especially feminists, with not-very-hidden contempt.
I agree with almost all of Ozy’s critiques of SJ and feminist excesses, however.
2. I don’t believe I’ve said, anywhere in this thread, that Scott does “in fact, hate all feminists.” I certainly don’t believe that to be the case. If I did say that, then I mis-spoke (mis-wrote?), but I think you may be making a strawman argument.
You might be operating under the mistaken belief that if one is kindly disposed towards some individual members of [outgroup], then one cannot be generally hateful towards [outgroup]. If this is your belief (and I doubt it is, but I’m bringing it up just to cover all bases) then you are mistaken; history is full of examples of people who genuinely loved individual members of groups they hated in a general fashion.
(Or you might be referring to something I wrote in anger on Scott’s thread? If so, I’ll retract that.)
3. Actually, now that I stop and think about it, I’m not at all surprised that you identify as a feminist. (Based on some other comments of yours I’ve read.) I apologize for implying otherwise.
4. Amanda Marcotte is someone I’ve met in real life and corresponded with occasionally over the years. She is very nice in person, and was probably the single most prominent blog-feminist to not write me off during the aforementioned blogstorm. I wouldn’t defend her post to Scott Aaronson, at all; but I think everyone is more than their worse moments, and Amanda is not even remotely the monster that so many people say she is.
5. Re your Martin Luthor analogy:
As I already said, I don’t think Scott’s attacks on feminism are actually at all useful; rather, I think they increase divisiveness and hatred.
I also think that this same Martin Luthor rationalization of unkindness could, with total sincerity, be used by the feminists you’re criticizing.
If the goal is to get rid of corruption in the church, then it makes sense for noncorrupt reformers to start a movement to kick the corrupt officials out. However, if the idea is to get the left to be more human and kind in how we treat each other, then I don’t think withering contempt from some members of the left towards others is a sensible approach for reformers to take.
LikeLike
1: Again, I don’t get that from DeBoer at all– when he is contemptuous, it’s for people who use social justice-y rhetoric as a cover for deep class prejudice– which I think are an understandable group of people to actually hate, if not a productive one. Is there something from his material that I’m missing, perhaps? I’m on the same page as you re: Ozy, obviously.
2: I get the impression that the nature of Scott’s general aversion to feminists is more along the lines of wariness than actual hatred. And, while it’s true that lots of people actually hated some other group while liking its members, they usually haven’t historically done so while constantly disclaiming the fact that they don’t hate the group as a whole, frequently arguing for that group’s most important positions (see: anti-reactionary FAQ), publicly taking a very open member of that group as a romantic partner, and asserting a common cultural background with them. If Scott actually does hate feminism, he’s clearly kind of terrible at hating it.
My first response to you, where I first brought up his kind treatment of you, was informed in part by the response to Scott that you mentioned. I’ll take your change of mind into account and update accordingly.
3: No offense taken! Ideological misidentifications happen all the time on the internet! Thank you for being really gracious and polite about it.
4: I don’t actually think that Marcotte is a monster– I just think that Scott at least sort of does, and views her as being exceptionally awful rather than a general representative of feminists as a group. Even in that famous post, he highlights her non-centrality, albeit in a way that I think is uncharitable. (“Obvious Vogon excepted.”– I don’t think that anyone should be immune to critique, and while I prefer Scott to most writers, I think that this was a poor and violating-his-own-values choice on his part.)
5: I’m using the Martin Luther analogy to argue for critique, not abuse. (You mentioned upthread earlier today that disagreeing somebody and attacking them are different things– I assume that you still think that it still holds.) I should probably have clarified the analogy a bit better, since it relies more heavily on specific knowledge of the early Reformation than it should have. Luther was an irritable person with a fondness for scatalogical language, but he was deeply committed to the spread of Protestantism through persuasion rather than coercion (in one very German quote, after recommending against the use of force, he said “Why, while we have sat hear drinking our beer, the word of God has shaken Princes and Emperors.”) He also argued that it was important to allow disagreement on a bunch of issues (like religious imagery– he argued that having images wasn’t actively virtuous, but it wasn’t bad either, so it was wrong to go and smash up other people’s churches). He ultimately only endorsed violence in self-defense, because the Church wouldn’t tolerate his disagreements with them and threatened to kill him and his followers. So, when I made that analogy, I was arguing for a civil but assertive internal critique.
I suspect that you and I might just disagree somewhat about where the boundaries of that lie. Even though I disagree with significant parts of some of Scott’s critiques of feminism, I found them helpful for understanding aspects of the movement which could be problematic or hurtful– ie: I could steelman his critique into something I found really useful. This seems to be driven by a difference in attitudes about tone and communication rather than a difference in object-level beliefs, but I’m not quite sure if I know exactly where the gap between us is, or how to bridge it. My only immediate hypothesis is something like a core identity difference– before I am anything else, I am a rationalist, or at least, a truth-seeker. My goal in arguments isn’t to win, but to bring my opponent, and more importantly myself, closer to understanding the world. This supersedes my political views and probably even most of my ethical commitments. I don’t think that everybody could or should be like that– I’m just trying to describe myself. I suspect that your prioritization of your core values might be different from mine.
Do you have any insights about why we might be disagreeing about this?
LikeLiked by 2 people
1. Let’s skip over discussing Freddie. Sorry, my time is limited.
2. Scott is someone who is generally incredibly even-tempered and nice, except when it comes to feminism, when he becomes a fountain of…. well, let’s just say he stops being so even-tempered and nice. I think Scott himself has alluded to this, so it’s not just my impression.
” I get the impression that the nature of Scott’s general aversion to feminists is more along the lines of wariness than actual hatred.”
Here’s a source of our disagreement: I don’t care about what Scott feels inside. Well, that’s not true – I hope Scott feels happy, hopeful, healthy, and all those other good “H” words – but when I say that Scott treats feminists hatefully, I’m referring to what he writes, not claiming any knowledge of what he’s feeling inside.
And what he writes, when he writes about feminism, are vicious, dehumanizing lies.
I’m going to cite a few examples from the anti-feminist post of his I’ve read most recently, “Untitled.” These are by no means the only examples I could cite, but I don’t want to spend hours and hours going through every line of the post, let alone going through his past posts.
Another source of our disagreement, I think, is that you’re a fan of Scott’s writing and tend to “Steelman” him – that is, replace what he actually wrote with things that are different and more defensible. For example:
You: “I don’t actually think that Marcotte is a monster– I just think that Scott at least sort of does, and views her as being exceptionally awful rather than a general representative of feminists as a group…”
Contrast that with Scott, who explicitly describes Amanda’s post as “a representative sample”: “The feminist blogosphere, as always, responded completely proportionally. Amanda Marcotte, want to give us a representative sample?”
You give Scott credit for saying the exact opposite of what he actually wrote. There are many, many more examples in which Scott is clearly making broad generalizations about feminists, including some of the examples I quote below, but in the mind of his fans this is always steelmanned into just talking about certain feminists. It’s okay to steelman, but when you want me to believe that Scott actually wrote the Steelman version while ignoring what Scott actually wrote, that seems unreasonable.
More Scott:
I live in a world where feminists throwing weaponized shame at nerds is an obvious and inescapable part of daily life. Whether we’re “mouth-breathers”, “pimpled”, “scrawny”, “blubbery”, “sperglord”, “neckbeard”, “virgins”, “living in our parents’ basements”, “man-children” or whatever the insult du jour is, it’s always, always, ALWAYS a self-identified feminist saying it
This is obviously a lie – these are mostly very commonplace stereotypes about nerds. Listen to any Fox news host talking about a blogger they dislike, for instance, and at least half of these stereotypes are likely to come up. A bunch of these are common stereotypes made fun of for years on “Big Bang Theory,” a show that is NOT written by feminists, to say the least.
Okay, so that’s one lie. Not a big deal. The problem is, it’s not one lie, it’s lots of insulting lies, one after another, all of which paint feminists as the scum of the earth.
Scott again:
“When Aaronson talks about his suffering on his own blog, he gets Amanda Marcotte. He gets half the internet telling him he is now the worst person in the world.
This was my experience as well. When I complained that I felt miserable and alone, it was like throwing blood in the water. A feeding frenzy of feminists showed up to tell me I was a terrible person and deserved to die.”
Scott’s technique here is identical, in every way, to the dishonest technique used by right-wing Christians who claim that LGBT organizations target Christian organizations for “bullying,” when the truth is that gay organizations are responding to only those Christian organizations that have made anti-gay statements. By reporting only part of the story, while deliberately leaving the actual cause of the conflict out, they paint a false picture of sadistic LGBTs attacking surprised Christians for no reason at all.
Scott doesn’t link to the “feeding frenzy” (note the dehumanizing language), except to link to the post about my experiences – and I’ve never experienced anything even remotely like what Scott describes. And Scott is radically dishonest in discussing what happened with Aaronson.
Aaronson wasn’t criticized for suffering; the only reason any feminists commented on his post (er, comment) is because Aaronson criticized feminism and the concept of male privilege. Aaronson has every right to do that, of course, but it’s unfair to edit events to suggest that feminists responded to Aaronson’s suffering because we’re sadistic evil monsters, when the truth is we were responding to criticism.
Scott again:
“In my experience and the experience of everyone I’ve ever talked to, we’re bitter about all the [feminists] who told us we were disgusting rapists when we opened up about our near-suicidal depression.
And when that happens, again and again and again…”
Again, Scott is being very explicit. This isn’t something that happens only once; it has happened to everyone he’s ever talked to (does Scott’s “everyone” include “women,” I wonder? Every woman he has ever talked to has had this experience?), again and again and again.
That’s not at all a credible claim. It could only be true if feminists are evil monsters driven only by sadism, and that’s just not the case.
(I altered Scott’s quote a bit. In what he actually wrote, Scott used the word “women,” not “feminists.” But since that would make Scott’s statement incredibly misogynistic, which would be very unlike Scott, I believe he intended to say “feminists” and accidentally typed “women.” Apologies if I got this wrong.)
Then there’s the hundreds and hundreds of words likening feminists to the worst anti-Semites. As others have pointed out, Scott himself has called this technique the worst argument in the world.
If feminists are the people Scott describes, then we are scum who frankly deserve to die, because we are pure evil. If the typical feminist response to someone saying “I’m so depressed I’m thinking of suicide” is to say “you’re a disgusting rapist!,” as Scott claims happens to everyone he knows all the time, then feminism can only be an ideology of pure evil.
But I don’t think what Scott is saying is true. And whatever his motivation is, what he did was post a whole bunch of vicious lies about feminists which paint us as unbelievably evil, awful, cruel sadists.
And I don’t know why you seemingly can’t read his words, and I don’t know why you feel compelled to make excuses for his behavior.
Let me ask you, honestly – suppose Amanda Marcotte wrote that every time a woman talked about feeling suicidally depressed, a feeding frenzy of nerds (not “some nerds,” but “nerds”) showed up to tell her she deserved to die, and this has happened over and over and over to everyone she’s ever talked to.
Would I really have to explain to you, or anyone, why this statement is a lie? That the effect of the lie is to paint nerds as disgusting, horrible sadists with no basic human decency? Or would you see that without me having to explain it?
Suppose Amanda wrote that Scott Aaronson should dump his current beliefs and join Amanda’s camp because “we’ve got basic human decency!”
Here’s what I predict would happen: Everyone here, including Scott, and even including me, would condemn that language, and Amanda’s implication that the camp that Aaronson is currently in lacks basic human decency.
No one would say that it’s okay for her to talk about nerds that way because she likes to use hyperbole (even though she does); no one would say it’s okay because it could be “steelmanned” into a different and better argument; no one would say that it’s unreasonable for Aaronson to take insult at such a statement; no one would say that it’s okay for Amanda to write that because Amanda had good intentions and is comparable to Martin Luthor.
That is, of course, exactly how Scott ends “Radicalizing the Romanceless,” by telling me I should switch to the side that has “basic human decency.”
(Cue all the people scrambling to make excuses for Scott’s statement that they would never, ever make were the same words written by a feminist.)
Scott is a decent person, who does good things. I think he’s likable, I think he means well. I’m sure he’s nice to the feminists in his life he knows and loves. I think he, like all humans, has a TON more to him than his worse moments. I don’t think he’s a hateful person.
All of that is true. But it’s also true that his writings about feminists include many, many hateful and dehumanizing attacks, and I don’t have to apologize for taking insult where insult was offered, again and again and again.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I hope you understand that Scott feels the same way when he reads feminists writing about nerds.
LikeLiked by 14 people
I suspect much of the issue here is that people use overarching group identifiers to attack bad behaviors committed only by a fringe of said group but are still accepted at part of the group as a whole. If Alice and Bob are in a group of 100 people and Bob says some terrible things about the group’s enemies but is then backed up by the group when attacked because of them, it doesn’t matter if the group as a whole doesn’t believe in those terrible things. The issue is that the group isn’t willing to call out and disown its own bad behavior, which means that Alice and the other 98 people are (somewhat fairly) tarred by association.
I’m not sure how it is for you, but in the SJ circles I run in there’s a split between those who think that call out culture should be blind; an “ally” doing something poor to an “enemy” requires just as much call out as an “enemy” doing something poor to an “ally.” Then there are those who think that we need to present a united front; ally to ally call outs should be handled in private because the cost of showing cracks in the line are greater than the possible gain.
Personally I fall quite heavily on the former’s side and really hate the idea of “it’s okay when we do it (to them).” But that’s because I think people want to be honest at heart and I have a commitment to the truth. I don’t think this is a fight where we’re better off sacrificing our integrity at the alter of the demon god of rhetoric. But at the same time, I do understand that there are some people who feel that this is a life or death struggle, and it’s better to win in the muck than die on our moral high ground.
In effect, I end up agreeing with Scott that there’s a lunatic fringe which mainstream feminists need to call out. What I disagree with is that I think he’s actively utilizing a superweapon by going with “feminists” and attacking the whole movement. If you want to say “this is a problem” than say “the feminist movement needs to apply call out principles to itself” and then bring forth good examples (of which there are many). Don’t smear everyone; you just end up with collateral damage and radicalized populaces. It’s part of why I loathe the whole M&M bowl or #notallX; it’s flag waving fear mongering which ends up hurting everyone in the long run.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think I’m harsher in my criticism of progressives because I see leftism as a failure mode of liberalism — an upsetting reminder that even my cherished liberal values of tolerance and equality can be co-opted into the service of agendas I find deeply sinister.
LikeLiked by 6 people
I just wanted to say that “the great cartoonist Dave Sim” is not a phrase I ever expected to see in a long post defending feminism, and I have revised my estimate of your mindkilledness significantly downward. Or, at least, there exist people way more mindkilled.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Haishan:
Er… thanks, I guess?
I suspect that my heart is simply more devoted to good cartooning than it is to social justice. :-p
LikeLiked by 2 people
Confession: I have never heard of Dave Sim before… except once, when our gracious host briefly referred to him in a really deviant and freaky porn fantasy context. With the implication being that Dave Sim is a person who really *really* hates women.
LikeLike
Dave Sim is one of the few (semi-) public figures that I’d feel comfortable applying the exact phrase “hates women” to: his (seminal, yes) comic series Cerebus the Aardvark degenerates over its run from tongue-in-cheek sword and sorcery to an extended screed. Kind of like the Sword of Truth books, except (a) technically better, and (b) aimed against women in general and feminists in particular rather than for weird mutant Objectivism.
Though in Sim’s case I’m pretty sure it points to mental health issues rather than any moral failings on his part.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Nornagest: Are the two completely mutually exclusive? It seems to me entirely plausible that he has mental health issues that drove him to formulate Grand Theory of What’s Wrong With Society, and moral failings that drove him to make Women are Voids the centerpiece of that theory.
LikeLike
Honestly, I think there are tons of much worst misogynists in comics than Dave Sim. Sim has some really extreme and weird misogynist theories about men, women, and feminism, but I’ve never heard anything about him using his position to take advantage of fans or young female creators, the way that some much better-liked people in comics have done.
In other words, it is morally better to be someone who has terrible theories but is decent in his actions, to the reverse.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Barry,
My apologies for not replying earlier– I wanted to think fairly carefully about your response before replying myself.
Thinking things over a bit, I’ve updated to agree with you that “Untitled” isn’t just uncharitable, but often dishonest and actively counterproductive. I certainly could quibble with you about some specific points about it, but I don’t think that discussion would actually take us anywhere useful, and unless somebody really wants me to exposit them, I won’t bother.
As to your question of why I feel obligated to defend Scott here– it’s mostly because I read “Untitled” in the broader context of his life and body of work, which for the most part is thoughtful, nuanced, and intellectually rich. I would say that in fact, it’s pretty obviously noncentral even in the context of his critique of social justice movements. (Things like “In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization,” “Living by the Sword,” and “A Response to Apophemi” all seem to be closer to what he actually believes). It also was a product of understandable rage– because a person he admired opened up about his horrible life experiences, and a bunch of feminists did attack him– and not just to critique his denial of male privilege (although some, like Laurie Penny, did laudably just focus on this aspect– and we should note that SSC Scott addresses her with disagreement but not anger), but to call him entitled and a rape apologist. This hit a trigger for him and caused him to snap. It’s worth noting that unlike a lot of the people he calls out, Scott went back and revised the post when people pointed out serious logical issues with it and later apologized for it and seems to regard it with some shame, directing readers away from it. “Untitled” is a brief lapse within a fairly charitable, nuanced critique of aspects of the SJ movement. We understand that people waging other struggles sometimes get angry and break their own rules, but I think that most sane people would be willing to forgive them for that.
I don’t think that I can offer the same sort of defense for a lot of the people who Scott most aggressively critiques, for example. I’m sure that Amanda Marcotte is a perfectly lovely person in real life, but looking over her recent run of articles on Slate, it’s clear that at leat a third to half of her output is fairly empty or intellectually dishonest blue-tribe tribal signalling stuff, and I’ve never seen her retract or apologize for her most intellectually dishonest or vicious writing against people in her outgroups, even in cases like the Duke lacrosse rape hoax where she was deeply in the wrong from any reasonable perspective. And as you can reasonably point out, she’s hardly the worst-behaving person in the feminist camp.
So while I agree with you that “Untitled” was productive and works against the project of making social justice better, I believe that the longer line of critique about the SJ movement’s methods and epistemologies that Scott has laid out in his posts on politics is necessary and reasonable, and that comparing him to the people he criticizes is a false equivalence.
LikeLiked by 6 people
I’m pleased to see someone noting Ampersand’s points. Even very reasonable, levelheaded rationalists have their biases, and, in my opinion, Scott’s is nerds and nerd culture, who shouldn’t be criticized because “we need them.”
Which is, ironically, the rationale behind why SJs won’t call each other out on (for instance) having some empathy.
I think this sort of group coverup is kind of similar, actually. Feminists know that men will watch their “catfights” with popcorn. Men have literally dropped those popcorn gifs on threads where I’ve disagreed with another feminist. And nerds have somewhat similar “nerdfight” tropes — cue Dexter and Mandark.
What he doesn’t seem to understand is that there really are unique sexism problems in nerd culture, and that the reason it keeps coming up is because those of us who are female and affiliated with it have experienced them.
LikeLike
Gah, meant to say “Untitled was unproductive…” There really should be an edit button.
@childe-caro: When you say “unique sexism problems in nerd culture,” do you mean that nerd culture is significantly more sexist than say, Western society at large, or that there are forms of sexism that are particular to nerd culture? I think that you could make a sensible case for either one, but you’ll probably be able to have more productive conversations about it with everyone here if you make your position clearer.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Henry,
I meant more that there are nerd-specific manifestations of sexism. On the whole, I’d say *some* forms of nerd– I’m specifically thinking the academic type*, the type Scott seems most interested in defending– are significantly less likely to be sexist, and, crucially, more open to having their opinions changed if they’ve embittered themselves about women due to creative interpretations of history/evopsych/sociology and lack of social skills.
This is all anecdotal of course, but so it must go if we’re going to talk about nerd culture at all! There’s not much sociology that I’m aware of to reference.
The thing is it’s a little like what some commentators are saying here. To female nerds– many of whom are vocal feminists online– when male nerds ARE sexist, it hurts more because they’re supposed to be the Good Guys. And while feminists were much, much harder on Scott Aaronson than was warranted, his post, under layers of “I hated myself because Second Wave feminism is hard to read” and “I really hated myself for my sexuality” and “I didn’t know how to approach women,” WAS a whiff of that male sense of resentment/entitlement that’s gotten so much airtime– and while he didn’t, necessarily, betray overtones of “I deserved this,” that is how the narrative usually goes, and how many people will read his account.
We say it’s there because it’s there. Nerds often feel entitled to women. They have a specific sort of bitterness about it, evidenced by Aaronson going on about how “the Neanderthals” got some and he wondered why. Maybe he didn’t mean much by that, but the word choice was very telling.
I had many male nerd friends in college, and about seven of them stalked me, made vague threats, or demanded I have a relationship with them. I’m not really a nerd myself — I’m too literary, too much of a philosophy geek– but I was incredibly cerebral, and ex-homeschooled (hence super awkward), and didn’t know how to recognize flirting, and was very approachable and nice, and actually interested in far, far more women than men, but not open about that yet. This was a perfect storm of collegiate nerd romantic tragedy. I was pretty uniquely vulnerable to that attitude of entitlement. As much as both Scotts seem to see being the pursued sex as a boon, and as much sympathy as I have for men who have difficulties with the ridiculous expectations on masculinity– my personal experiences with it are quite fraught, actually, and I’m not alone in that.
So yeah. I know about nerd entitlement. What’s the common response to pointing that out? “You don’t appreciate how much better we are than most men!” So, yay, I didn’t get date-raped? Hurrah.
Anyway, this is one of those cases where I can see both sides — the feminists are going “you guys pride yourself on being openminded, shape the fuck up because we don’t feel safe around you and we should” and the nerds going “stop accusing things of people who are actually willing to listen to you when they don’t feel bullied.” It’s just one of those depressing dynamics.
* I would characterize groups like gamers differently.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Since apparently I need to defend myself here…
I have a lot of regrets about posting Untitled. I was really really angry at the time, it’s not my best writing, and my only excuse is that they went after Scott Aaronson, who is right up there with Ozy in terms of people who need to be protected at all costs.
I thought about limiting my anger to Amanda Marcotte, but if it hadn’t been Amanda Marcotte, it would have been Shanley Kane, or Suey Park, or Jezebel, or MsScribe, or one of a thousand other people cut from the same mold. There is a really big problem here, it’s systemic rather than individual, and I don’t know a good way to point to the problem without using words like “feminism” or “social justice” or “Tumblr feminism”, none of which seem obviously better than each other.
I talk about this dynamic in my post Weak Men Are Superweapons, where I say that there’s a balance between the risk of criticizing an entire group for the actions of an unrepresentative minority, and the risk of not being able to complain about a hurtful group if even one member of that group is an okay person. This is the logic behind #NotAllMen, and though I dislike the particular way it’s used I’ve never claimed not to be able to understand it.
I did err too far towards universal condemnation in Untitled, though not as much as Barry is accusing me of. The statements like “every nerd I have talked to agree that feminists are the problem” are, as far as I can tell, pretty accurate, although I probably only talk about these problems with a very limited subset of people. Others, like calling Marcotte’s post “representative”, were exaggerations, but borne out of despair with the fact that every time something like this happens people will say “Oh well, one bad apple, who cares,” and the problems with the movement in general will never be admitted or examined. Balancing this is hard, and it’s even harder when you’re enraged.
Scott Aaronson is one of the nicest and most decent people in the world, who does nothing but try to expand human knowledge and support and mentor other people working on the same in a bunch of incredible ways. After a lot of prompting he exposed his deepest personal insecurities, something I as a psychiatrist have to really respect. Amanda Marcotte tried to use that to make mincemeat of him, casually, as if destroying him was barely worth her time. She did it on a site where she gets more pageviews than he ever will, among people who don’t know him, and probably stained his reputation among nonphysicists permanently. I know I have weird moral intuitions, but this is about as close to pure evil punching pure good in the face just because it can as I’ve ever seen in my life. It made me physically ill, and I mentioned the comments of the post that I lost a couple pounds pacing back and forth and shaking and not sleeping after I read it. That was the place I was writing from. And it was part of what seemed to me to be an obvious trend, and although “feminists vs. nerds” is a really crude way of framing it, I couldn’t think of a better one in that mental state and I couldn’t let it pass.
I admit it went wrong, I’ve thought about deleting the post, I worried that would Streisand Effect it and/or cause people who are out to get me (like Barry) to accuse me of trying to cover up how evil I was, so instead I just closed the comments and asked people not to link to it. I am happy to discuss the parts I do and don’t think were bad and what I would change for future discussions of this topic.
But not with Barry. I used to have a lot of respect for him, but ever since that post he has been engaged in a campaign of spreading lies about me. He’s said I think feminists are “scum who frankly deserve to die, because we are pure evil”, “demon nonhuman nazi scum who deserve to die under a bus”. He really likes that “deserve to die” phrase, which of course I have never said anything like.
His examples from my posts are extremely cherry picked. So if you want the other side, here are some other phrases from Untitled he forgot to include:
“Yes, many feminists have been on both sides of these issues, and there have been good feminists tirelessly working against the bad feminists.”
“There are feminists on both sides of a lot of issues, including the important ones.”
“Laurie Penny is an extremely decent person.”
“I see a vision here of everybody, nerdy men, nerdy women, feminists, the media, whoever – cooperating to solve our mutual problems and treat each other with respect.”
Barry says that my “technique is identical, in every way, to the dishonest technique used by right-wing Christians who claim that LGBT organizations target Christian organizations for bullying, when the truth is that gay organizations are responding to only those Christian organizations that have made anti-gay statements.”
I think Barry is describing his own technique, not mine. After several months trying to stay out of gender issues, I only got back in because Amanda Marcotte launched a savage unprovoked attack on Scott Aaronson for bringing up personal things in his past. But since that made me upset and I tried to fight back in his name, suddenly I’m the bad guy.
Likewise, the last time I wrote about feminism, it was in response to a post Barry himself wrote out of the blue saying that the difficulty with being single was that “anti-feminists have ruined it”.
The time before THAT I wrote about this issue, it was because someone wrote a letter to me saying the rationalist community was excluding women.
I have NEVER written about this except when provoked, sometimes pretty savagely, and sometimes by Barry himself. Barry himself, on the other hand, constantly makes blog posts and comics out of the blue talking about how terrible everyone who isn’t a feminist is. For example, he published a comic saying that the reason some people don’t like affirmative consent laws is that they are rapists who are worried they won’t get to rape as much.
Barry says I “geniunely loathe people like him” and think he’s “the scum of the Earth”. The only time I’ve ever talked about him on my blog, what I actually said was:
“Barry is a neat guy. He draws amazing comics and he runs one of the most popular, most intellectual, and longest-standing feminist blogs on the Internet. I have debated him several times, and although he can be enragingly persistent he has always been reasonable and never once called me a neckbeard or a dudebro or a piece of scum or anything. He cares deeply about a lot of things, works hard for those things, and has supported my friends when they have most needed support.”
But since I disagree with feminism, he is character assassinating me throughout the blogosphere and telling people I hate him and think he deserves to die.
Luckily he is STILL too nice to do a very good job of character assassinating me. Hopefully Amanda Marcotte will stay away from computer scientists for a while, I won’t have to write any more enraged braindumps, he’ll get bored with me and spend the time he saves writing more blog posts, which I still mostly appreciate, and I won’t have to deal with more people like him.
LikeLiked by 11 people
Scott, you don’t “have to” publish vitriolic rants about feminists any more than Barry “has to” publish offensive caricatures of his opponents.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think anyone would be well-served by a detailed back-and-forth on this. My final words on the subject:
* I think Scott is a good man and a hell of a talented writer. I wish him well.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@Ampersand:
I offer myself as a counterexample. I identified strongly as a feminist in high school, and for awhile in college. And then I started reading a lot of feminist blogs and livejournal communities and things like that because it was what I was interested in. This is usually the part where somebody says that they got targeted by an internet pile-on and everything gets derailed into arguing over whether they deserved it or not but actually, I had terrible social anxiety and I never said a word. Partly some of the things I read but much more the way I saw people treat each other online over a few years had a huge impact on me. I spent like five years being one of those girls who’s like “I raise money for Planned Parenthood but I am *definitely not a feminist* [because I am terrified of them]” I discovered SSC about a year ago and I think it’s a big part of why I feel good about saying I’m a feminist again. Because someone else sees these problems and names them, and apparently I really, really needed that in order to separate it out and be ok with things again. So in my case, quite the opposite of divisive, and honestly nothing at all like actual anti-feminist stuff I have read.
A lot of people on the internet (and off) are bullies. Some bullies are also feminists. . I’ve met a number of people over the years who’ve been really messed up by encountering them. I think part of *why* people get so messed up is that they get stuck in the false dichotomy of thinking they have to either accept that they deserve what’s happening or else reject their beliefs – it’s actually a lot like some religious situations – and it takes time and maybe help to get out of that to like, “I reject you as an authority, if you are using feminism (or any other philosophy obviously) as a tool to abuse people then *I* think that *you* are the one who is doing something wrong. Even if [it feels like] there are a *lot* of you.”
And just because someone is a target of harassment from a feminist doesn’t mean that their original statement was not worthy of criticism! And no matter how worthy of criticism the statement, it doesn’t make being a jerk to them somehow noble. And just because a feminist has been targeted with harassment doesn’t mean their original statement was not worthy of criticism. And no matter how worthy of criticism, any harassment is still wrong. And when it’s written out like that, I think those statements aren’t very controversial but I observe that people often really *act* like they don’t believe all of those things, at least not all of the time…
…And of course, I will post this anonymously, because I remain fairly terrified of people, political/philosophical affiliations notwithstanding!
LikeLiked by 10 people
@Anonymous
That’s about where I was for a while, and I think it’s a pretty healthy way to look at the world. I did stop calling myself a feminist later on, but that wasn’t because of the bullying.
If you don’t mind me asking, which LJ communities were you a part of? I lived through the heyday of ontd_political and ontd_feminism.
LikeLike
@Anonymous, I think you’re getting at something very important here. I think a lot of people are afraid of disagreement among the people who are supposed to be the Good and the Ethical. Someone up there said something similar: there’s a group of feminists that don’t see disagreement as a big deal, and a group of other people whose worlds are severely shaken by the fact that, well, feminists, like women, are people.
Feminists are used to disagreeing with each other. Without going into specifics, I have certain views that will, in certain corners of tumblr, get me “called out.” Not only called out, but downright hated by the crazier factions. *Every feminist* does. This as happened to me with respect to race as well, and gender/sexuality. It’s jarring and horrible, but I’m very, very used to it.
The stakes are very high for some of us. People are going to disagree, and they are going to freak out because the stakes are very high. We need to make disagreement okay while acknowledging those high stakes, and the inevitability of some conflict. Part of that is reducing the harassment and bullying, and part of it is not expecting people who are deeply impacted by casual sexism/racism/etc to act like they’re in a polite salon all the time. Basically, the Internet needs a huge etiquette sitdown.
LikeLike
Did Barry try to spread any of the “deserve to die” stuff outside of the comments he wrote under “Untitled”?
If not, can’t we all (both Barry and Scott included) just agree that his comments about Scott thinking feminists like him “deserve to die” were written out of his immediate emotional reaction to “Untitled”, were unreasonable, and don’t reflect his views since then? I mean, Barry himself has implied as much, and seems to have offered to retract those comments upthread.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Ampersand – I am glad to hear that your friends – including A. M. stood by you during your blogstorm and so you think its all a relatively minor thing to have to deal with. But as someone who has watched a social group I cared about get torn apart by fights over social justice purity and saw multiple sj types not only cut off friends they were close to for years over ideological differences but also push to have their friends cut them off as well I am going to see the relative scariness of the sj camp vs. Scott very differently. I saw many of those sj advocates behave in pretty nasty ways – like badgering people to engage in conversations even when they didn’t want to because otherwise “you are just hiding behind your privilege” and they showed regularly the very sort of contempt for their opponents that both you and Scott worry about the other side having. Therefore it matters to me less whether Scott or A.M. are more vitriolic in their writing online (though I admit to some skepticism about the claim that Scott has reached A.M’s level even if I do understand where some of your concerns are coming from.) and more that in my experience it has been the SJ side that has brought that level of rhetoric into their in person social interactions.
LikeLiked by 5 people
@Umber, I didn’t mean to say it was a “relatively minor thing.” It was a big deal. But I eventually got through it, and what was on the other side was good.
It sounds like your social group was really nasty and had toxic elements. I’m sorry that happened. I think there are SJ groups that practice “call out culture” in a really nasty and dehumanizing way, and that’s horrible and I’d like to get rid of it.
But I don’t think what Scott is doing is actually helping. And he’s painting with a broad brush and criticizing many people who have NEVER done anything like the actions you experienced.. I’m glad that Scott isn’t hurtful to you, but that doesn’t make it okay for him to lie about and be hurtful to other people.
LikeLike
@ampersand I’m genuinely glad that you value your personal relationship with A.M. or other like-minded bloggers. Those personal connections are very important, and are more important than online fights in the twittersphere or whatever.
I see your concerns about Scott and share some of them. There are some notable similarities, and I think we can leave it at that.
What really scares me is ideologues who are willing, or even eager to renounce personal connections (family, friends, teachers, coworkers) over ideological deviations. That is one of the big tipping points of an ideology, where it all starts going downhill. So you can see why A.M.’s ability to not succumb to that is important to me (while not mitigating the impact of her published words, of course.)
At this moment, there are many more feminists and SJ-liberals who endorse severing your personal connections over ideology, than there are rationalists or libertarians who do so. Whether a follower succumbs to those suggestions is up to their individual conscience, of course, but for people who have some disagreements with the philosophy, it is really scary.
As for @Umber’s social group, well, every social group has bad people. This comment on Metafilter moved me to tears http://www.metafilter.com/146524/The-Dream-of-the-90s-Jon-Chait-on-PC-20#5912883 , and many replies said the same thing you did.
But the one ideology is being used frequently to exaggerate the worst tendencies in social groups, and that naturally is going to earn a lot of bitterness from the people who have to deal with the fall out.
LikeLike
I disagree. His criticisms of social justice serve as a refuge for people harassed and demoralized by call-out culture. His writings are significantly more empathetic and respectful of social justice views than the majority of social-justice-critical works. He explicitly promotes many of the ideals of social justice, resulting in his community being much more aligned with your values than if they had instead settled on some part of the Manosphere.
LikeLiked by 10 people
It is nice to have a community of anti-SJers who are universally behind trigger warnings, preferred pronouns, and the existence of asexuals.
LikeLiked by 6 people
In my case they’re even more than “the good guys”. They include pretty much all of my closest friends, the people whose concrete, real-life behavioral tendencies make me feel the most comfortable to be around.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Second top-level comment. This is related to what osberend was saying here.
What are we supposed to assume when people complain about imbalanced gender ratios in some area? (Or the analogue with race.)
That is to say, I can think of 3 distinct things someone might be saying about when they point out imbalanced gender ratios:
A. Imbalanced gender ratios is bad in and of itself, as some sort of terminal goal. (Naturally this is a position I wholly reject. Actually I’m not sure I’ve ever actually take this position regarding sex/gender, but I have seen people state analogues regarding race, or apparently state such, so I expect somebody’s taken it.)
B. Imbalanced gender ratios isn’t in itself bad, but it’s an indicator that discrimination is occurring (somewhere up the pipeline, anyway), which must be fixed.
C. Imbalanced gender ratios have bad effects (which might be in the form of causing further discrimination — e.g., if there’s few women in an area, it’ll cause women in that area to be uncomfortable).
I used to assume it was all about B. But lots of people state C, and like I said, I assume somebody’s taken position A.
The problem is that so many people will talk about this without ever clarifying which of these is going on (obviously it might be multiple). And the differences are pretty important! B is very different from A and C in that it calls for an entirely different set of solutions, because means that the imbalance is an indicator, a proxy, and addressing the indicator and addressing the problem may have nothing to do with each other. (Similarly, C differs slightly from A in that it allows the possibility of downstream solutions.) And A is importantly different from B and C because, well, a lot of people (like me) would consider it to have no moral validity.
So I just don’t know what to do when I see someone making an argument based on this without ever clarifying what they mean by it (and asking isn’t a possibility). Saying “This person hasn’t bothered to state their position clearly so I’ll ignore them” doesn’t seem like the right solution.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Huh. When I encounter these sorts of arguments, the complainer usually cites the imbalance (implicitly or explicitly) as a bad thing and prima facia evidence that the imbalance is caused by B (top down invidious discrimination), C (bad effects/”unwelcoming”/”insufficient mentors/role models”/etc.) or a combination thereof. I don’t see the more compartmentalized versions (A or B or C) nearly as frequently in the wild.
LikeLike
Over at metaleater Liana Kerzner is 2/5 parts through a mammoth article about feminism in video games.
Part one is about the culture surrounding social justice activists in gaming spaces. Part two is a critical feminist analysis of way Anita Sarkeesian analyses media.
Here’s a link to part one: http://metaleater.com/video-games/feature/why-feminist-frequency-almost-made-me-quit-writing-about-video-games-part-1
If you prefer listening over reading, scroll to the bottom and there’s a youtube vid embedded.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Alas, I can only like your post but once.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I would have found this essay much more useful if it had included more close reading. Kerzner summarises Sarkeesian’s position or actions in a few places without reference, and it isn’t clear to me that this is Sarkeesian’s actual position, rather than Kerzner’s opinion of her position. One example: ‘Feminist Frequency frequently addresses the depictions of sexualized violence against women in video games. It doesn’t compare and contrast them with the instances in the very same games where men are victims of abuse as well.’
If she could have quoted some examples of games where FF examined the sexualised violence of women but ignored the sexualised violence of men in a game it would make her point stronger.
I almost quit at the start when she said: ‘I came across numerous associations and non-gaming-related statements by Anita Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh that are potential cause for concern. However, I decided not to include them in this piece because my issue with Feminist Frequency is an intellectual and professional one, not a personal one’. This is unworthy. Either put it in, or don’t mention it. She might as well have opened with, ‘I know Anita is a bad person because reasons’.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Fair criticisms, I think Kerzner is writing under the assumption that her audience is familiar with Feminist Frequency.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There’s more “meat” in the second part, for example about Dishonored. This is going to be in 5 parts, after all. Mostly I don’t like the tribal signaling and feel it is too verbose and light on the facts.
This passage, however, is rather interesting:
“But the idea that video games can cultivate a predictable change in the opinions of a player is central to Feminist Frequency’s critique. There’s no reason to show clip reels of a given trope unless the underlying concept is that the sheer volume of that content passes the threshold for long-term, cumulative exposure required for a cultivation effect, even though we don’t know that video games influence shared values the way television does.
It would be much more productive for Feminist Frequency to advocate moderating the amount of time spent playing video games, and encourage players to sample many different kinds of games. Those two factors would significantly reduce any potential harmful cultivated opinions. Instead, Feminist Frequency issues the “it’s okay to still like these games with problematic content” platitude, which is as unscientific as it is condescending. Either something is harmful or it’s not.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Part 3 is out, more precise examples. Biig plus IMO, she talks about the objectification of Geralt of Rivia (Witcher series, pet issue for me, feel free to ignore). She is one “Jaheira was awesome” paragraph away from me beginning to disregard the tribal signaling issues (not entirely serious, but she can probably write it better than I could).
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for linking the next parts, I will read them.
With regard to your interesting passage:
Kerzner: ‘the idea that video games can cultivate a predictable change in the opinions of a player is central to Feminist Frequency’s critique’.
Sarkeesian’s work is really basic literary criticism. It’s barely even undergrad: find the tropes; list the tropes. The idea that the stories we tell ourselves can change us, not just our opinions, but our feelings and how we interact with other people, is a premise for almost all criticism (certainly for much of the literary criticism that I am familiar with). Kerzner’s argument here is not with FF specifically, but with the entire field of criticism (and, I suspect, with many people who have that special book, film or game that touched their heart and changed their life). It would be interesting to have more data on whether games can change people’s opinions and feelings the way that books can – but Sarkeesian never claimed she was going to do original research, so it seems unfair to criticise her for not doing so.
Kerzner: ‘Feminist Frequency issues the “it’s okay to still like these games with problematic content” platitude, which is as unscientific as it is condescending’
I don’t understand why this is condescending. It is ok to like things that are niether perfect nor politically correct. It’s ok to want things to be better while still likely them as they are. I also don’t understand why she says it’s unscientific. Whether or not you like something problematic is a matter of personal taste and morality; it’s not a question of science.
This is the kind of verbiage that I find most offputting. It’s negative without really meaning anything. What kind of scientific experiment would determine whether it’s okay to like these games?
Kerzner: ‘Either something is harmful or it’s not’. This is obviously false. Many things are harmful or beneficial depending on dose. It’s an especially silly comment in this context. The way that our culture, our stories and our games effect us is incredibly complex and philosophers have been debating the value of fiction for millenia. Why should Sarkeesian know the answer?
TL;DR: If Kerzner has just said: ‘Criticism is mostly negative and unhelpful. FF is not deep. What we need here is a lot more study of psychological and sociological impact of games then I would 100% agree with her.’ Instead she snipes at FF for not being something different.
I am looking forward to Part 3 though, because I’m interested in any opinions on the Witcher. Please share yours if you’d like to. Are you against the objectification of Geralt?
LikeLiked by 1 person
You missed one vital word on Kerzner’s article, and that word was “predictable”. If Anita wanted to say rescuing Princess Peach can affect us emotionally and perhaps even change how we interact with people – well that’s almost self evident.
But Anita wants to say it affects people in a specific way. And on that, Kerzner is absolutely correct. Anita does absolutely nothing to demonstrate that the effect of Peach’s kidnapping is predictable – and she’s right to criticise Anita for saying that without backing it up.
Here’s the reason I find that condescending.
To me it’s pretty clear that when Sarkeesian (perhaps I should say feminist frequency as an organisation) calls a trope harmful they’re saying it shouldn’t be used.
By saying it’s ok to like harmful things she/they’re essentially trying to have it both ways. To advocate for a trope’s removal while denying ownership of that advocacy when it’s criticised.
I find that duplicity condescending.
I think this criticism is just unfair.
Everything is harmful in sufficient dosage. Even water will kill you if you drink enough of it (and I don’t mean through droning).
Saying something is harmful as a shorthand for something like “is harmful in typical doses” is perfectly acceptable English.
You misread that.
Kerzner is saying that whether a game is ‘harmful’ can be answered by science. She’s not saying whether or not it’s ok to like a game can be answered by science.
That’s why the next paragraph opens by saying “if something is harmful”.
Nope.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@Pluviann:
This is what Kerzner criticizes
FF’s video present the tropes as being actively harmful by promoting and instilling sexism and violence against women*. The details of what she says about the way those stories change us are not supported by current scientific consensus**. The conclusion “still okay” is a fig leaf in this context, completely inconsistent with the dark consequences she presents (“the player cannot help but do X” where X is heinous and not required, and variations on that theme).
This understanding of FF’s message is not incorrect. People drawing parallels with Thompson are not completely delusional.
I agree with you on the “undergrad level” of the criticism, but that does not make it tame or honest. Popehat thinks it is not a problem because she is not to be taken seriously, but I strongly disagree.
*misquoting or distorting research to fit her narrative.
** but Kerzner does not point to the research either. Thunderf00t may do so, but it would be buried under so much snark and cheap digs it would be painful to locate.
About Geralt of Rivia: I am certainly not against. I got the first game without knowing about the potential for “naughty shenanigans”. Funnily, I can also dismiss almost everything positive I could say by “childish fulfillment’.
Two aspects are net negatives for me in the Witcher: the collectible aspect of the cards in the first game (absolutely, horribly bad, will prime most feminist critics to ignore all the rest), and the sex cutscenes in the second game (seriously guys, you have great in-universe stuff, why are you doing this so badly? okay, that may be a matter of taste).
On the positive side, the seductions are not one-sided. Women are presented as having an active, positive role in the research of a tryst, or more than a tryst in the case of the potential love interests (and people complaining that Triss needs to be saved should look at how often Triss saves Geralt). This is rare. There is in-universe an almost universal condemnation of sexual slavery, and makes allusions to spousal abuse (not in a hero-save-victim context). Again this is rare.
Geralt is also looked for, partly because his sterility makes him ‘safe’ (and it should make one a bit uncomfortable about sexual dynamics in general imo). Lots is written about that. There is an insistence on his body in cutscenes reminiscent of what you could see in FFVIII for pretty boy characters. Except he does not register as a pretty boy, with his his scars and his eyes. Yet he is seen, and often treated, as a disposable sex object by many of the female NPCs. And that was interesting, humbling at times, ham-fisted at other moments.
To end with a comment at the common cry against the Witcher series:
if “Geralt is a misogynist, he sees women as disposable pleasure and doesn’t think twice about having sex with somebody and never even talking to them again“, what does that say about the women in this universe who are pursuing him and explicitly say that this is what they see in him?
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Forlorn Hopes Thanks for going into detail. I find it very useful for understanding how our interpretations differ.
I don’t see Anita implying ‘predictable’, certainly not to the level of being able to say that each instance of a certain trope will reliably make a player have a certain response. I see her pointing out larger trends, which are notoriously hard to pin down exact causes for.
Regarding why the ‘you-can-like-problematic-things’ comment is condescending:
If I’ve understood you correctly, you (and Kerzner) see Anita calling any utilisation of a certain trope as harmful, with the implication that they should be stopped (because harmful things should be stopped). At this point ‘you-can-like-it’ is hypocritical, because Anita surely doesn’t believe that should like harmful things.
I saw Anita saying ‘certain ideas and beliefs have been shown to be harmful, like ‘women are never fighters, only victims’, and those ideas are over-represented in games via various tropes’. I don’t see her saying every individual manifestation of the trope is harmful: I see her saying that it’s lazy and bad art, it’s boring and insulting, and it would be better if these tropes had less prominence in our games and in our beliefs. From this perspective, ‘you-can-still-like-it’ is consistent with her main argument: there’s nothing wrong with occasionally resucing a princess or killing a hooker (in a game): it would just be better if there was more diversity.
Now, my interpretation may be entirely wrong. I am probably giving Anita the benefit of the doubt and interpreting her statements in a more favorable light. I think if I were to convince you at this point I would have to do what I criticised Kerzner for not doing in Part 1: go to a transpcript and pick out the quotes that support my argument. *adds another bullet point the long list of blog posts I will write one day*.
Yes, I am nit-picking, but I do feel that Kerzner is being unreasonable. This is a conversation about cultural values, and the consequences, benefits and drawbacks of large trends like tropes and the beliefs that inspire them. Nobody who talks on these topics would be comfortable saying something like: ‘More than 2 hours exposure to the idea that men don’t cry is harmful for boys, but under half-an-hour is good for promoting stoicism. Dosage should vary depending on the sensitivity of the child’. We just can quantify values like that (yet), nor is Anita trying to. She is describing large trends.
No, I didn’t. In that sentence the sub-clause ‘which is as unscientific as it is condescending’ clearly refers to the noun phrase ‘the “it’s okay to still like these games with problematic content” platitude’. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I think I agree on what she meant to say; but I still find myself aggravated by her sloppiness.
@thirqual I see you and Forlorn Hopes as united in your interpretation of Sarkeesian, so I hope I’ve responded to your comment in the text above. Parallels with Thompsom are understandable if the interpretation is that she is calling for censorship, but make no sense when the interpretation is that she is calling for diversity. Thank you both for bringing me to the point where I can see the censorship interpretation, and the Thompson parallels as not entirely tinfoil-hat.
I think I am between Popehat and you, I don’t think that she shouldn’t be taken seriously, nor do I think she’s any threat to the existing culture of gaming. I think FF is a useful beginning point for someone interested in a general overview of negative depictions of women. Anyone seriously interested in the subject should look further for more rigorous analysis.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you say a trope is harmful then you are, to an extent, saying it’s predictable. That is, you can predict that exposure to this trope will cause harm. E.G. By making the player more violent.
And yes, Anita does say that. Here’s a link http://youtu.be/gAyncf3DBUQ?t=7m53s
Quoth Anita “it actually works to potentially, reinforce some pretty harmful messages about women.” So yes, she’s saying it’s predictable – she predicts that the effect a trope will have on the player is to reinforce an unspecified but harmful message about woman.
(I consider the word potentially just be verbal hedging. I do stuff like that all the time as an unconscious habit. In addition I consider it very telling that when asked “what do you say to people who say ‘lighten up it’s just fantasy'” she responds by talking about harm instead of a desire for better fantasy).
That’s correct for me, I think Kerzner has a slightly more naunced view: “Anita says overuse of a certain trope is harmful; and Anita also says these tropes are overused”.
I would also add that I think that Anita is intentionally trying to present herself as only saying it’s lazy and bad art because she knows it’s a less controversial message. So quote mining is going to turn up a lot of nuggets to support that message.
But then when someone asks her how she responds to “but it’s just fantasy” she immediately goes to real world harm as a justification.
(I don’t have anything to say in response to your interpretation. It’s a nice interpretation, I just think it’s wrong).
You may say that Anita is not trying to argue that “more than 2 hours…”; but Kerzner thinks otherwise.
That’s the purpose of the section entitled Cultivation Theory. Cultivation theory is namedropped again, immediately preceding the sentence “Either something is harmful or it’s not.”
Now you have every right to argue that Kerzner is wrong, and Anita is not trying to reference cultivation theory.
But I don’t think you can say that she pulled it out of thin air. She made a lengthy argument for why she thinks Anita references cultivation theory.
You have to take into account the context of the whole paragraph. I’d say it reads something like this:
“But when people ask Anita to accept the implications of calling a trope harmful she responds with the platitude ‘it’s ok to like problematic media’. Using this platitude to dodge the issue is unscientific and condensing”.
It’s not unscientific and condensing because there’s anything wrong with saying ‘it’s ok to like problematic media’. It’s unscientific and condensing to use that platitude as a response when asked about what should be done about allegedly harmful things.
You might be surprised to hear this, I don’t think she’s a threat either. The most dangerous thing she’d going to do is misinform people on how literacy criticism, feminist theory, or specific games work.
Now what is a threat to gaming culture is the fact she’s been put on a pedestal to the point she’s utterly above criticism.
As Kerzner points out. She’s a very poor critic who gets feminist theory and media theories wrong. She also justifiably pastern matches to the cultural arch-enemy – the censor. There’s a lot of legitimate criticisms that can be made, and when the people with privileged access to direct the conversation (mostly journalists) suppress and insult people for voicing those criticism it creates tension. That tension is one of the reasons we now have Gamergate.
Besides, as a feminist. Do you really want an incompetent critic who pattern matches to the censor as the primary feminist representative to gamers? Games are outselling both film and music at the moment, and the gamer community remains sympathetic to feminist issues even as it’s drifting further away from the feminist movement.
That’s kind of a missed opportunity there.
LikeLiked by 3 people
From my point of view, the main cause of this problem is the huge wave of insults she received from some gamers very early on, which many people saw as evidence that there is indeed something horribly wrong with gaming culture.
I understand that it’s a frustrating development for gamers who haven’t done anything like that and can’t control others. But it’s not obvious to me that
1) threats and insults are a morally neutral cultural tradition, and
2) the general public should be understanding when they spill over into Youtube, Twitter and email.
LikeLike
Yeah, Nita’s got that bit right. Sarkeesian wouldn’t be Humanist of the Year if all she did were videos on gaming. She’s Humanist of the Year because her enemies define her.
As for it being frustrating for gamers who haven’t done anything like that and can’t control others… yeah, that’s true. But let’s not set too low a bar here for moral asylum. “I’ve never doxxed anyone or threatened to murder or rape them” isn’t a mark of high moral character. There are loads of gamergaters out there who haven’t done those things but who still deserve a whole lot of blame for unacceptable reddit drama, piling on, kicking people while they’re down, intentionally providing aid and comfort to people who were doing worse, believing and spreading stupid lies that anyone with even the slightest common sense would realize were stupid lies, etc, etc.
Every one of them that giggled at a “five guys” joke then turned around and got into high dudgeon about gamers being “under attack” needs to take a serious look at their lives.
I’ve been a gamer longer than a lot of these guys have been alive, and I’m enough of a literary critic to know that Sarkeesian sucks at it. But gamergate, man, there’s just no excuse.
LikeLike
By that standard of evidence it’s sufficient for me to look at the worst of tumblr and decide that there’s something very wrong with feminism.
Lazily judging entire cultures never helps anything.
Again, I could apply all your criticisms to feminism.
“Everyone who giggled at a ‘manchild’ joke then turned around and got into high dudgeon about a ‘war on women’ ” (or gets into high dudgeon about comment 171)
“intentionally providing aid and comfort to people who were doing worse” – didn’t Ozy write an entire post about the fact feminists were providing aid and comfort to Zoe Quinn instead of calling her out for being an abuser. Domestic abuse is worse than threatening hate mail.
(For the record, I’m not sure feminists were wrong to do that. Saying that the internet should support people against trolls and leave issues of abuse to the police isn’t an unreasonable position. I don’t know. But it certainly is an example that fits).
=====================
Enough drawing parallels. We could spend months dredging the internet for what the other side did wrong and it wouldn’t do anything productive.
If you don’t like gamergate than the only way to end it is to deal with the underlying issues; I don’t know if you’ve noticed but attacking gamergate only makes it larger.
For the last several years Anita has portrayed slut shaming as a feminist ideal and the gaming journalism community has viciously defended that. If the feminist movement did something about that (meaning fix the fact that games journalism was a clique that can do something so stupid) years ago we wouldn’t have gamergate today.
But while some individual feminists have made thoughtful and intelligent criticisms, they were individual voices and were, sadly, ignored. The feminist movement failed to give a voice to the female (or otherwise) gamers upset with Anita and games journalism. Gamergate stepped in to give them a voice.
And so long as Gamergate is the only thing giving female gamers a voice against slut shaming by games journalism (among many, many, other issues) I’m going to stand with it. You fix that, then talk to me about changing flags.
LikeLiked by 3 people
@Forlorn Hopes
You say:
Sarkeesian says:
Your quote does not support your argument. Sarkeesian is not making claims about how the behaviour of players will change; she is making claims about how our prejudices and assumptions are influenced by the media we consume.
Under the principle of charity, I am going to believe, until proven otherwise, that Sarkeesian means what she says and when she says ‘potentially’ it is because she is aware that the topic is complex and she is careful not to overstate her case.
I am sorry for not making my case more clearly. I don’t believe that she’s saying only that the tropes are bad art, but that tropes are bad art, lazy, insulting and are both harmful (e.g. specifically, the idea that ‘killing hookers is trivial and hilarious’ is harmful, not that every player is going to go out and kill a hooker in real life) and overly prevalent.
Gamergate, as a whole, would be an excellent case-study for rationalists to use for demonstrating just about every bias in the book. Notice how quickly this conversation has descended from: ‘Has Kerzner written a convincing essay?’ to ‘what is Sarkeesian really saying?’ to ‘something is rotten in the state of gaming’ to ‘gamergate is the worst – no tumblr is the worst’ to ‘the only way to fix this is to agree with my side entirely’.
The thing about pattern-matching is that as rationalists we try not to do it. When you pattern-match you hear your own cached version of a similar previous argument, not what the person is actually saying. If gamers pattern-match criticism as censorship then it doesn’t matter who represents feminism – they’re always going to hear criticism as censorship.
I don’t get to choose who is the representative of feminism to gamers. Nobody chose, or maybe, feminists and gamers chose together. Scott Alexander described it really well in The Toxoplasma of Rage. Why do middling critics like Sarkeesian become The Representative? Her work is simple enough to be understood by everyone, wrong enough to provide plenty of material for her critics, right enough to be worth defending by her allies. Death and rape threats from gamers mean that feminists will now defend her forever as ‘one of the in-group’. Strong feminist defense mean that gamers will never stop until she is brought down. Everybody takes sides and all our arguments are soldiers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your post is the laziest piece of moral reasoning I’ve ever seen in my life.
In short.
1. I’m not a feminist. I completely agree that feminism is screwed up. Everything Sarkeesian gets wrong is wrong because she’s articulating common feminist viewpoints that are also wrong. Everything Sarkeesian is slimy about is slimy because she’s articulating common feminist attitudes that are slimy.
2. Even if you could find something I care about and do the whole ,”Oooh, I could say the same thing about YOU!” maneuver, that would mean literally nothing. Maybe you’d be right! It wouldn’t make gamergate less a collection of trash.
3. I’m glad you went with the uniform metaphor. Because here’s the thing about voluntarily selected uniforms- the whole point of them is to volunteer to be judged as a collective group. So enjoy.
I don’t know why people have such a problem with this. Maybe it’s the misfiring of liberal norms about prejudice? It doesn’t matter though. If your understanding of politics is so impoverished that you don’t have a framework for understanding an “I’m Catholic and I vote!” bumper sticker, activism is not for you.
And your first sentence is a failure of reading comprehension. Earlier you argued that the enshrining of Sarkeesian, with her wrong ideas about gaming and sexism, constituted a threat to gaming. Nita pointed out that the enshrining of Sarkeesian, in her view, is probably the fault of gamers. That’s the “this problem” in her post, the direct object of her sentence.
I think Nita is completely right about this. Sarkeesian would not be an international figure if she wasn’t spending all day dealing with abusive behavior on the internet. Arguing with her would be tough no matter what because of course she’s going to claim that people who disagree with her are covering for misogyny- that’s what feminism does. But whether that *matters* and whether anyone *cares*? That’s on gamergate at this point. They made her a celebrity far further than she ever could have walked on her own.
LikeLike
I feel that you completely changed the meaning of that paragraph when you removed the “E.G.” – I used violence as an example because it’s my post Jack Thompson default example; but my sentence (using your structure) works just as well like this:
If you say a trope is harmful then you are [saying that] you can predict that exposure to this trope will cause harm [by] making the player believe certain prejudices.
Lets say idea that ‘killing hookers is trivial and hilarious’ is harmful, that’s an uncontroversial statement that I think everyone here agrees with.
That doesn’t automatically mean that a trope about killing hookers for fun is harmful. The only way you can say the trope is harmful, if you also say that exposure to the trope will strengthen the idea that ‘killing hookers is trivial and hilarious’.
In short you have to say that the effects of exposure to the trope is predictable: You can predict that it will strengthen the idea in the mind of the viewer/player.
So basically; I was saying that I do feel Anita is arguing that the effects of certain tropes is predictable. I don’t feel your response refuted that.
Your distinction between behaviours and ideas is interesting, it just dosn’t have much to do with the question of is Anita saying the effects of certain tropes is predictable.
I think you could say that about every single large activism movement with two sides.
But I don’t deny that it would make a great case study.
I don’t really consider the first shift to be a descent. If we’re debating whether Kerzner is correct to criticise Anita for X; the question of whether Anita actually did X is relevant and on topic.
I also reject that last one. When I said that if you want to stop Gamergate you should deal with the issues. I originally got that idea from David Auerbach – who’s very much against Gamergate. Here’s the article: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.html
I mean, what I suggested to Patrick as a solution to gamergate was:
1) Promote an ideological diversity of female voices on the topic of sexism in gaming.
2) Promote discussion and debate on the topic of sexism in gaming over one directional preaching.
I don’t think those two points amount to “you must agree with my side completely”. Heck, written out like that they look flat out feminist.
Actually; while I’m at it I didn’t say tumblr was the worst either. I use tumblr to show why I felt the evidence presented is insufficient to argue that either side is the worst.
Also, we have now descended into arguing about arguing. I blame you for that one ;p
Gamers aren’t pattern matching criticism to censorship. They’re pattern matching.
“Games cause real world harm” to “games cause real world harm, and thus we should censor them”.
I think that’s a completely reasonable example of pattern matching – maybe so reasonable that pattern matching is the wrong word. Even if Anita doesn’t think games should be censored, it the logical implication of something causing real world harm is that people should work to reduce it.
Now I don’t think rage is a productive response; but as I’ve been saying I think that journalists didn’t suppress and insult everyone who made reasonable criticisms while talking at length about the unreasonable criticism; then we’d have a lot less rage and the effort to improve female characterisation in gaming would be years ahead of where it currently is.
No you don’t, but that’s not what I asked is it 😉 The toxiplasma of rage is a great post, but to me it’s key message is that activists should try and oppose the toxiplasma because it prevents progress.
However Anita became The Representative, so long as she occupies that spot gamers are going to continue to be presented with weak and unconvincing feminist arguments. If you want to sell gamers on feminism then surely getting a competent representative is good move.
If I was a feminist activist what I’d be doing is trying to deflect criticisms of Anita onto better critics. Say something like “Anita explains that badly, here’s Ozy’s post on that subject”.
Obviously it’s not easy, but if activism was easy feminism would have declared victory a few decades ago.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’m not going to try and prove a negative, through that way lies madness. The ”Oooh, I could say the same thing about YOU!” maneuver shows that the evidence you’ve presented is not sufficient to tell a good group from a bad group, it is not an attempt to prove that gamergate is good, or not bad – merely that your evidence for saying it is bad is insufficient.
I don’t have a problem with being judged collectively, it’s an informed deal. I accept the group’s reputation and in turn the group’s collective power can be heard when a lone voice cannot.
That doesn’t mean I won’t defend the group against criticism I think is unfair and/or poorly argued.
I was responding to the line
“which many people saw as evidence that there is indeed something horribly wrong with gaming culture.”
And saying I do not consider it sufficient evidence. Nothing more than that.
It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is, it’s still a terrible idea.
Given that there are many figures on the internet, even many feminists in gaming, who spend all day on the internet dealing with abuse, but whom are not international figures.
It’s clear that abuse is not the whole story. There’s something else, something that sets Anita apart from the other feminists in gaming who got online abuse which shows why she was the one who became an internationally recognised figure.
I have no idea what it is.
LikeLiked by 3 people
@ Forlorn Hopes I am very sorry for misunderstanding and misquoting you. I had not intended to change the meaning of your words, only to condense them. Could you clarify for me?
You said:
and
In you initial statement did you mean to say that Anita says that harmful tropes make players more violent? I thought you had included it as example because it was an example of something that Anita had said, in your opinion.
LikeLike
Apology graciously accepted 🙂
And of course I’d be happy to clarify.
No, I did not.
In my initial statement I intended to say that Anita is saying the effects of the tropes she criticises upon the viewer/gamer is predictable.
Specifically that she says she predicts exposure to those tropes will “reinforce some pretty harmful messages about women”
LikeLike
” The ”Oooh, I could say the same thing about YOU!” maneuver shows that the evidence you’ve presented is not sufficient to tell a good group from a bad group, it is not an attempt to prove that gamergate is good, or not bad – merely that your evidence for saying it is bad is insufficient.”
No, it means that both parties suck, and one is trying to get out of it via tu quoque. Guess what! Doesn’t work that way. Feminists suck. Gamergaters suck about 40% more. Even if you come up with a really cutting way to argue that I suck too, you and yours will still suck! Every bad thing they’ve done, or you’ve done, or you’ve endorsed by claiming their banner as your own, will still have happened. The nature of the movement will continue to be a vile one no matter how vile it’s enemies. You can’t wriggle out of this by throwing shade.
LikeLike
Sure I can.
I’m in feminist space. So long as I’m here I’ll treat it as axiomatic that feminism does not suck; thus so long as I can show that your complaints fail to demonstrate that gamergate is worse than feminism then you’ve also failed to demonstrate that gamergate sucks.
I know you disagree with that axiom. I’m using it anyway.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for the clarification. I think I’ve realised where we’re talking passed each other on ‘predictable’. The original Kerzner quote:
and you say:
Kerzner and you both refer to ‘a player’ and ‘the player’. I don’t think Sarkeesian is saying that exposure to the trope will have a predictable effect on an individual level. She’s saying that prevalence of harmful beliefs (exemplified by the trope) will increase prevalence of that belief in general. In the Sarkessian quote that you provide she says: ‘the trope reinforces the harmful message’ – she says nothing about being able to predict what an individual would believe based on their comsumption. Again, she’s making a broad statement about larger trends in games and opinions. Again, this is a basic premise of lit crit. If you disagree that the media we comsume effects what we think then your disagreement is with all of lit crit, not just Sarkeesian.
Are we talking passed each other? Would you agree that: ‘each individual who is exposed to a trope will react in a predictable way’ is unsupportable; but ‘the prevalence of tropes (based on harmful beliefs) in our media reinforces the prevalence of those harmful beliefs in the general population’ is uncontroversial?
I don’t see any evidence that Sarkeesian believes that ‘games cause real harm’ any more than she believes that ‘books cause real harm’ or ‘films cause real harm’. She’s saying that harmful beliefs cause real harm, and as such we shouldn’t casually replicate them in our games, books and films.
If gamers hear Anita saying ‘games are harmful’ then they are incorrectly imagining her saying that because they are pattern-matching to earlier arguments in favour of censorship. Arguments which Anita is not making.
I’m not sure we are making much headway on this point. You say that the argument for censorship is logically implied in Anita’s work and her claims to the contrary are a figleaf. I do not see that the argument for censorship is implied in her work, and I think the fact that she explicitly states the opposite is a fairly compelling sign that this is not her argument. You are reading against the text.
When I said: ‘I don’t get to choose who represents feminism’ I was responding to ‘Do you really want an incompetent critic who pattern matches to the censor as the primary feminist representative to gamers?’ (And I would dispute that she’s censorious or incompetent).
I would never be so cruel as to draw the attention of gamergate onto someone I respected. The criticism of Anita is not limited to useful criticism of her work, but also includes death threats, rape threats, harrassment and porn parodies. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, and certainly not on Ozy. At the moment, the toxoplasma is too strong.
I accept full responsibility – it seems to me that arguing about arguing may yet be useful, while arguing about gamergate is futile.
LikeLike
Yes, literary criticism has nasty habit of making empirical claims in the total absence of evidence. It makes evolutionary psychology look downright rigorous by comparison.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Lit crit works with some basic premises — “stories are reflections of culture” being one — and makes its observations accordingly. None of its claims have the weight of an “empirical” claim (though I hate that word; it’s a sloppy appropriation of philosophy), This allows it greater nimbleness and nuance. Nothing it says is even remotely as overreaching or broad as evolutionary psychology.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ok, lets go with that.
I’ll just adjust my wording. Instead of referring to an individual player I’ll say “a statistically significant proportion of players given a large audience”.
It’s still a claim that the effects of a trope can be predicted.
I don’t disagree that the media we consumes effects the way we think.
I do disagree that we can say that a trope, e.g., damsels in distress is harmful. That would require us saying it has a specific effect on the player/a statistically significant proportion of players given a large audience.
We just don’t have any way of knowing what the effect of a piece of media on people is; the relationship is just too complex.
I would not agree.
I would say that the idea that the prevalence of tropes reinforces those harmful beliefs still needs to be demonstrated. For all I know the prevalence of these tropes might decrease harmful beliefs.
While I’m at it I’d also say that Anita still needs to demonstrate that those trope are pervalant. Anita has lists of examples, not actual statistics about how common a trope is; let alone statistics which take nuance into account (A game with a male hero rescuing a female damsel vs a game with mixed heroes rescuing mixed damsels for example – you can’t just lump both of those together).
What’s the difference between ‘reinforcing harmful beliefs’ and ‘casing real harm’?
Strengthening harmful beliefs is a real harm in of itself.
She says these tropes cause real harm (see my previous paragraph). She says developers should be ashamed just for useing these tropes (see the tweet I linked to much earlier in this thread).
What am I supposed to think other than she wants these tropes to go away?
If these tropes really do cause harm/harmful beliefs why doesn’t she ever discuss what should be done to prevent that harm? Spinning of a platitude is not sufficient to address real harm.
If it really is ok to enjoy problematic tropes why should developers be ashamed for including them?
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Forlorn Hopes: If it really is ok to enjoy problematic tropes why should developers be ashamed for including them?
While I’m a lot closer to you on this than I am to Pluviann (let alone Sarkeesian herself), I don’t actually think there’s a contradiction here, if you believe (as Sarkeesian quite likely does, at least for certain tropes) two things about “problematic” tropes:
1. Exposure to these tropes will cause some portion of viewers who are not aware of the implicit ideology behind them and/or at least partially accept that ideology to adopt views and/or take actions that are wicked.
2. Exposure to these tropes will not cause viewers who both are aware of the implicit ideology and strongly reject it to adopt views and/or take actions that are wicked.
Let’s take a stronger example, to clarify the point: Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. One can simultaneously believe that it’s fine for an aware viewer who wholeheartedly rejects Naziism to enjoy the film for its aesthetic and entertainment value, and believe that it was wicked of Riefenstahl to make it, and that she should be** ashamed, because not all viewers will be people who are aware and who wholeheartedly reject Naziism—indeed, from the point of view of the NSDAP, that was the entire point.
*Or gamers, listeners, readers, etc.
**Technically, should have been, at this point
LikeLiked by 1 person
@osberend
Arguments are soldiers and you’re shooting your own in the back, you filthy filthy traitor :p
Nah I’m kidding. You make a fair point. I should limit her platitude about it being ok to liking problematic tropes to comments made in the context of players, not developers. While still pointing out that:
1) Its’ incongruous to say that certain tropes are harmful but then say it’s ok to like problematic content instead of directly discussing the implications of the existence of harmful media.
2) I consider it very telling that when asked, essentially, why is her work important she talked about real world effects and not her desire for better media.
3) The idea that developers should be ashamed for using a trope alone is makes me very uncomfortable.
I should probably stop here before we drift further away from Kerzner’s article.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t know, “reinforce some pretty harmful messages about women” looks like a claim about observable reality to me. I don’t value nimbleness and nuance when it’s the flexibility to be wrong. I wish to be rigidly constrained by the truth.
And if literary criticism doesn’t make statements about observable reality, why should I care what the field has to say? Sounds like literary criticism isn’t paying rent in anticipated experience…
LikeLiked by 1 person
The issue here is you think lit crit isn’t about observable reality. I assume this is because you think empirical, i.e. ‘scientific,’ claims are the only dependable way to comment on observable reality.
Lit crit IS talking about observable reality, but in a different manner and with different methodology and with different stakes. If lit crit says something, it doesn’t have the same weight, or even the same purpose, as a scientific claim. When you talk about how Moby-Dick works in an English classroom, it’s fascinating because Moby-Dick *is* a cultural artifact and *was* created with the intent of having people think about how it applies to the broader world — but most explicit statements to that effect don’t bear the moral weight of, “are you going to stand by this ’empirical’ claim or not.”
The problem with evopsych is not that it presents theories and ties them together. The problem is that it overreaches like a mofo. It makes claims about every single human person. Otherwise, it might be a mildly insightful addition to our understanding of how our psychology came to be what it is. As it stands, it bears the weight of being ~oh so empirical~ and sciencey-sounding without having any of the rigor to back it up. Lit crit does not do that.
To put it oversimply, lit crit is a phenomenological enterprise. It’s experiential and intersubjective.
“I don’t know, ‘reinforce some pretty harmful messages about women’ looks like a claim about observable reality to me.”
This is Saarkesian, and more correctly Media Studies. There is actually an awful lot of scientific evidence in Media Studies to show that Media does have an impact on us — if one that is hard to account for, at moments. Saarkesian links some of the studies that form the foundation of her premises on her site.
Some people on this thread objected to that evidence; this being a pet interest of mine, I’ve investigated it and I agree. So at this point in the conversation, people can either go into that or they can just agree to disagree and talk about lit crit some more.
“I don’t value nimbleness and nuance when it’s the flexibility to be wrong. I wish to be rigidly constrained by the truth.”
Welp, I can’t help you there, and neither can science, really, since as many safeguards as it has, an awful lot of things are going to be overtoppled. Not to mention that everyone makes phenomenological, intersubjective judgments all day every day– they might as well learn how to do it artfully and well. 🙂
Less facetiously, “flexibility to be wrong” is not what I was referring to. Lit crit presents you with truths that are smaller, subtler, and often quite a bit more applicable to daily life than most broadsweeping empirical claims. Most of its insights are not in the form of true/false at all, but rather here is how this cultural artifact works and what it might mean. Take those insights and apply them more broadly if you want to. In a sense, it’s quite humble– and I will point out that you ABSOLUTELY need evidence to back up what you say within the classroom. We aren’t ruminating on life, we’re talking about an observable object, i.e., a book.
Truth does not sequester itself behind a paywall. Science’s purity and reliability *depends on* its ability to appropriately scale its ambitions, i.e., create observations for limited contexts with the right tools. That takes time, interested people, and money.
Media Studies takes some of those observations and extends them further, because while we’re waiting for the Scientific Word on any given topic, life continues, and some of us want to talk about shit that we’re living through. (And those conclusions still need to be interpreted to be applicable, when they are reached.)
Like most of the developers that agree with her, I’m not with Saarkesian on every point. But I think her work is a useful means by which to encourage developers to transcend quite pervasive cliche, and find many of her smaller insights useful and accurate. It is, actually, a huge relief to have spoken many of the things I’ve thought while playing games. There is neither the money nor interest to conduct a study on the scale of Feminist Frequency and the sexism problem is pervasive enough to those of us that see it.
The stakes are low and the insights are worth sharing.
LikeLike
So Anita starts with the premise that frequent exposure to negative stereotypes of women will increase the acceptance of those stereotypes in general.
You say that we can’t know that – it might actually decrease the stereotype.
Everyone agrees that it’s not possible to predict who is going to be effected or how, on an individual level (although Osbered makes the excellent point above about who is likely to be effected).
Sarkeesian did not say that she was going to do sociology. She didn’t say that she was going to do psychology. She didn’t say that she was going to recommend changes. She said she was going to describe a range of negative tropes, and she framed that action within the assumption that negative tropes are axiomatically a bad thing. She’s finding enough material for hours of videos, mostly from very popular games. So I think it’s safe to say the tropes are prevalent (although we can’t say how much).
I think it is unreasonable to criticise her for not doing something that she never said she was going to do. It’s pretty standard in lit crit not to prove your framework before you write your essay (eg. if you’re describing libertarian themes in games, you don’t have to prove liberatarianism is a viable ideology first).
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that Anita is doing fairly standard undergrad level literary criticism, and you don’t find it particularly useful because literary criticism is not quantative. I would also say that I thinks it’s a perfectly reasonable criticism to say that she sometimes picks bad examples because she has a tin ear for naunce.
I said:
I don’t see any evidence that Sarkeesian believes that ‘games cause real harm’
You said:
Believing that that harmful beliefs cause real harm is not the same thing as believing that games cause real harm. You can believe that games are strongly net beneficial, despite some games promoting some harmful beliefs.
Wanting tropes to go away is not the same thing as wanting tropes to be censored. More than one game developer have said that they’ve found Tropes vs. Women to be a useful starting point for thinking about the depiction of women, and they have kept it in mind when planning future games. I suspect this is the best outcome for everyone. Those who don’t care can go on as before; those who do care can make changes. Diversity increases to everyone’s benefit.
Apologies for being dense. I cannot find that tweet at all, not by searching or by scrolling through.
LikeLike
I think this is the crux of our disagreement. I think it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Her entire series depends entirely on the axiom that those tropes are harmful – she should be willing to demonstrate that this axiom is actually true, because clearly a lot of people think it isn’t.
Now I don’t expect to convince you that it’s acceptable to criticise her for something she never set out to do.
But I do expect you to accept that even if the criticism isn’t specifically targeted at Anita – it is valid to challenge her axiom. I would call that moving the debate forward. And, well, Anita should move forward too or she’ll be left behind.
So that’s what I think about Kerzner challenging Anita for describing certain tropes as harmful. Even if Kerzner was wrong to say Anita’s analysis is flawed because it uses “reinforces harmful ideas about women” as an axiom – she’s still mounting a legitimate challenge against that Axiom and moving the debate forward.
Ok, I misread you. mia culpa.
But um. How did we even move from “what Sarkesian thinks about tropes” to “what Sarkesian thinks about games”?
I can’t argue that – it is however a mark of a low quality critic, since a good critic would know what tropes are tools and think that trying to get rid of tropes is a ridiculous idea.
That said. Combined with supplemental evidence I do think she is actually pro censorship. Her co-producer’s tweets explicitly supporting private censorship for example.
But I must stress again. Even if she does explicitly want censorship, I don’t think she’ll be able to achieve it. If game developers want to follow her advice and it makes games worse, I’ll respect their right to make the games they want. I don’t think Anita is a threat or a problem, just a very poor critic.
If people came to the table to debate her ideas and the ideas that derive from them (e.g. Do they actually reinforce harmful ideas? Is saying they reinforce harmful ideas in the real world a call for censorship by implication) – then that wouldn’t have been any problem at all. The only real issue is that the people with the power to promote a debate opposed it instead.
Search for @femfreq and you’ll find it 🙂
P.S. I started a new subthread asking what people think about Kerzner’s accusation that anita engages in slut shaming and body shaming. I’d be interested in your views on that. You can find it by searching for (sic)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Agreed. Anita’s doing broad overview, introductory stuff. It would be great to see the next stage of the debate drilling down into quantative data.
I am strongly in favour of Anita being left behind. Partly because the anti-Anita, pro-Anita factions are tribal and so the arguments around her work often have more heat than light. But mostly because I think it’s worth-while to have something at the introductory level. Feminist Frequency has been useful to game devs who are thinking about how female characters fit into their story structures, a lit-crit approach may be more useful that a social study.
I think it started in this comment where I said:
and then you said:
It ties into the other crux of our disagreement, which is how much Sarkeesian is advocating censorship. I think not at all.
Yes, agreed. I don’t think Sarkeesian is trying to get rid of all tropes ever. I think she’s asking developers to kindly consider before re-using an old trope that re-inforces negative messages about women in our culture. I suspect I will not convince you on this one. However, we can agree that Sarkeesian does not have the power or the influence to bring about the censorship of games, and so she is largely unthreatening.
I think she’s a middling critic. She’s a solid B-student. Her videos are reasonably well structured and the production values are good enough. She puts forward her themes and provides relevant examples. She makes an effort not to overstate her case.
On the other hand, some of her examples are poorly chosen. She’s not particularly gripping, never funny, a bit bland.
Respectfully decline to get involved in that debate. Let’s stick to Sarkeesian and Kerzner, where we can at at least refer to the text.
I feel like I’m being incredibly stupid. All I get when I search @femfreq is your comment directly above this one.
I will be there presently (probably tomorrow). So far I am enjoying Kerzner. I strongly agree with some things she says, strongly disagree on others. I am finding the bad-faith jibes a bit trying, but she has my sympathy since she’s clearly writing in anger and that’s not necessarily a bad stylistic choice. I wish she’d had a proper editor. There are whole paragraphs that add nothing to her argument, and some sloppiness.
LikeLike
In that case it looks like it’s my fault. Just pretend I said “trope” instead of “game”
Actually I meant trying to get rid of any trope is a stupid idea.
Well, maybe there’s some extreme edge cases, but Damsels in Distress wouldn’t be on that list.
However once you’ve said a trope re-inforces negative messages it stands to reason that the trope should be removed, reduced, or some other strategy should be implemented to reduce the harm created by the trope.
Kerzner is right to criticise Anita for neither owning the implications of what she’s saying, or proposing alternative strategies instead of removal/reduction; but offering a platitude instead.
But I’ve already said all this 🙂
How weird, it works fine for me. Lets try this again, rather than posting a direct link (which wordpress modifies) I’ll post the second half. Paste it into your browser after twitter.com
femfreq/status/561761720834592768
The full text of the tweet is “Dying Light has a Damsel in Distress storyline. Dear game developers, it’s 2015 aren’t you embarrassed by this yet?! ” followed by a picture of John Oliver tearing up paper in a rage.
To me that sounds pretty clear that Anita is saying that Damsels in Distress shouldn’t be used anymore.
I’ll look forward to it.
LikeLike
Righto, apologies for my embarrassing luddism. I have finally seen it.
I don’t think this tweet is the smoking gun that you’re looking for. I mean, I think Anita’s been pretty clear that she thinks these tropes are bad and overused and she’d like to see less of them. So it makes sense that she’d be frustrated and express that frustration in humorous gif form. Being frustrated at the amount of shitty stuff in the world doesn’t mean that you want to have that shitty stuff censored.
Likewise,
Yeah, judging from Anita’s work, I’d say she probaly wants the negative tropes to be reduced: the strategy she’s hoping will work is to raise awareness of negative tropes, so that game developers can avoid them where possible. She is however aware that it’s a free world and she’s not the boss of anyone, so she re-iterates that it’s ok to continue enjoying the things you enjoy.
And I think we can agree that it’s unhelpful that her work takes it as axiomatic that these tropes are negative, and doesn’t do anything to demonstrate real world consequences.
Making youtube videos in the hope of informing and persuading people is well within the bounds of free-speech and doesn’t imply censorious intentions.
Yes, I suspect this may be an unresolvable difference in our interpretations.
LikeLike
Only one point of several, but her points about Dragon Age are ridiculous and trivial. Cole is a male because of gender stereotyping? Buhh? What could possibly make you think that? His portrayal is beautiful and sensitive, his writing (by a male) and his voice actor was phenomenal. He could have been female, but what on earth is the actual difference? He’s a good character, and a unique one. This isn’t so much a stretch as a gallop into absurdity…
Also, there are TONS of female villains and antiheroes in Inquisition and the other Dragon Age games: Branka, Meredith, the Grey Warden commander, etc. Inquisition sees a huge cast of women, some of which act in stupid or heroic or evil ways, without it being about their gender *at all*. This is so, so refreshing compared to gaming’s typical tactic of tokenizing or stereotyping.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Part 4 is up:
Personally I think this was the best part: http://metaleater.com/video-games/feature/why-feminist-frequency-almost-made-me-quit-writing-about-video-games-part-4
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have male heroes and antiheroes, noble paladins, gritty tough guys and wise old men, brilliant villains and crazy villains, loyal brothers-in-arms and dangerous rivals, simple down-to-earth guys and brooding intellectuals, rulers, strategists, effective lieutenants and obedient minions… The popular male character archetypes are not as diverse as real people, but we’re getting there. And, very importantly, we can often see a lot of this diversity in one story.
So, it would be nice to see more female characters who aren’t some combination of slutty seductress, designated love interest, crazy bitch and helpless victim.
For instance, earlier she complained that there was only one type of female villain in a game, and they were removed thanks to the evil feminists. Um, perhaps it would have been nice to have more items on our list of female villain types?
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Nita: one of the problems is over-fitting to the existing model.
See the recent remark about Dying Light for an example:
– Damsel in Distress trope! boo!
(actual quote by Forlorn Hopes above showing that it’s not just counting tropes but saying tropes are bad)
– TotalBiscuit setting the record straight: character in question actually saves the hero, and plenty of men and women need saving because, well, zombie apocalypse setting.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@ thirqual
Well, I think the actual Damsel in Distress trope, as described in the videos (woman doesn’t make any attempt to escape, her skills and initiative evaporate, we’re not expected to relate to her, she basically turns into a MacGuffin), is bad in itself, not just overused. Someone needing help while remaining a person is OK, although overused as lazy motivation for entire stories.
[Dying Light SPOILERS]
To have a slightly more informed opinion, I just watched the “saves hero, gets killed by hero” scene (I couldn’t find the other relevant bits, like the kidnapping / bad guy’s gloating?).
It didn’t seem very damsel-y to me (unless she spent, like, a half of the game in captivity), and I even won’t object to the hero strangling her and then snapping her neck — this is a zombie game and he’s disarmed, after all.
But his lines are pretty odd. “Don’t make me do this”? Dude, who are you trying to persuade? If the woman you’re talking to was in control of that body, presumably she would stop on her own initiative. There is no Dana, only Zuul.
Our hero also kills a young male friend in a similar way. So, it’s not exactly a beacon of innovative storytelling, but I don’t think it’s sexist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Nita: yes, as I was saying, a good example of overfitting to the model.
About the “don’t make me do this”, it’s also a trope, and not always bearing this exact dynamic. First example that comes to mind, there is one of those funny gory Japanese movie about zombies/vampires/infected where there is a movement for the protection of zombies, with placards and slogans similar to animal rights (and hilarious consequences, as anyone would expect). Come to think of it, the hesitation to kill off the infected companion is a core trope of zombie movies.
LikeLike
@ thirqual
Hesitation, of course, is 100% appropriate. Calling the companion’s name in a futile effort to “wake them up”, cursing, crying, going “NOOOOO!” — all of those would be met with my complete approval.
But “don’t make me do this”? What’s next — “look what you made me do”? In this situation, it’s just weird.
LikeLike
Kerzner says:
And she links to one tweet by FemFreq on the subject.
I don’t understand. Is Kerzner actually refuting something that Anita hasn’t said yet? All the way through the essay Kerzner says: ‘Anita says…’ ‘Anita believes…’ but she doesn’t include direct quotes. Where is Anita making the argument that Kerzner is refuting?
LikeLike
Gah, it opens with a page-sized image! Why?
LikeLiked by 1 person
More broadly, why does media in general have so much unnecessary imagery. I feel quite comfortable stating that a solid 99% of stock images, and at least 80% of story-specific images, add absolutely nothing to the information conveyed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A new second level post. There’s been quite a lot of discussion here but no one’s actually disagreed with Kerzner’s point that Anita’s Fighting F**k Toy(sic) trope is slut shaming and body shaming – from part 4.
Is that because no one disagreed or because it just got overlooked – it’s a very long article, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
LikeLike
I don’t think there’s anything to say about that, because Anita hasn’t made that video yet. So Kerzner is literally arguing with the imaginary Anita in her mind.
If we look at Kerzner’s argument alone as a stand-alone then she makes some really interesting points. It’s too long to cover them all, so just a few:
I agree with her very strongly about Lara Croft because I had the same experience. Lara Croft is not defined or limited by her breasts. It’s so great to see someone with huge breasts who isn’t presented as a joke or a bimbo.
Kerzner worries:
And I think she’s half-right but the crux of the matter is the telling interesting stories part. Because large-breasted women are not under-represented in games. They’re under-represented in nteresting stories. You can find thousands of rubbishy fantasy games, filled with half-naked, enormous-breasted women. Games (and advertising for games) are filled with large-breasted women if they’re using sex to sell. But if they’re trying to sell an interesting story then large-breasts become inappropriate.
So I guess my ideal solution to this dilemma would be synthesis of the hypothetical-Anita and Kerzner approaches: fewer large-breasted women as default sexy, more diversity in ‘serious’ female character design: ideally female characters would have the same range of body types as male ones: from grizzled-old soldiers, to massive hulks, to pretty boys, to standard everyman; more large-breasted women depicted as having a life and personality beyond their breasts.
I think the strongman version of the Sarkeesian position is that it’s fine for some characters to be sexy. But there are way more female than male characters whose sexiness is a defining or prominent feature. This goes double when you move from ingame artwork to marketing.
It would be good if there were more female characters who weren’t posed, dressed and animated in deliberately provocative ways. Lara Croft isn’t a great example: apart from large boobs her body shape is pretty normal, she has great body language and posture; but why she’s wearing short-shorts to go tomb-raiding?
I’m not an expert in the field. But if you type ‘women self esteem images’ into google scholar, there seem to be a lot of papers discussing how self-esteem is damaged by exposure to idealised body-types. So I would say there is at least some evidence to support it.
I strongly disagree. I’ve done it myself, and I’ve heard plenty of guys say they prefer to play female characters so that they can watch their ass when running.
I really feel like Kerzner is trying to have her cake and eat it. She argues passionately, on one hand, that it matters to her as a voluptuous woman to see characters like her represented in games and stories. She’s also making the argument that how people treat her in real life is effected by how large-breasted women are depicted in the media.
But then in the quote before this one she’s arguing that it doesn’t even matter because games move too fast for you to look at the characters.
LikeLike
Lizzy F closing statement on GG. She was one the moderates, until she was doxed (presumably by a third party) and decided to stop being involved.
With at least one comment insightful on socialization issues (but I fear hopelessly polarized otherwise).
LikeLiked by 3 people
I have been reading some of her posts since that first post was really powerful. I am not going to criticize how she wants to be treated. But I do think her personal attitude is a little unusual and advocating it is not going to work. For example she writes that because of her daughter:
“I have PERSONALLY stopped using the word retarded. It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t expect it to make you uncomfortable. I have never asked anyone not to use the word around me, because it’s my discomfort, and my problem, not theirs.”
She didn’t even ask her friends and family not to use the word? I mean she can feel however she wants about her dicomfort. But some people are goign to generalize this and say “its their discomfort, and their problem, not mine.” This is not really an attitude I would encourage.
I can see not trying to “force” (including through social pressure) people to not say words that bother you. But whats the issue with asking? Your friends might WANT to know if words bother you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Leigh Alexander is a very shitty person and, let’s face it, has basically the attitude that nerd culture warriors (unfairly) attribute to all feminists.
I have forgotten at how terrible and threatening the article linked in the linked article is. I play games, but “gamer” is really a minor part of my identity. But this fucking despicable person is really really gleeful at the opportunity to talk shit about ALL unpopular/socially inept/”nerd”-coded people. She is scary and awful.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LONELY BASEMENT KIDS
God, I hope Leigh walks head first into a telephone pole.
LikeLiked by 1 person
P.S.: I’m not being hypocritical here. E.g. I try to never use the word “bitch” (as a noun, not re: canines, etc) in public, because I buy that it’s a misogynist slur that hurts women. But Leigh Alexander does not CARE about hurting the ~lonely basement kids~. She literally DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also, any subculture that Leigh doesn’t like is “not even culture.” Because reasons.
LikeLike
Hi, first time commenter here, not a native speaker, so please be forgiving about my spelling and grammar mistakes. Since this is an open thread, I’d love to ask few questions – usually when I discuss with feminists, it ends with them calling me ignorant slut, rage, unfriending and sometimes I do not even know why. So here is my question:
Quite recently there was a discussion about catcalling, and one of participants wrote that this is about power, just like rape. I wrote back that “rape is not about power, it is about sex”. A shitstorm followed. I am really dumbfounded to this day way. I expressed an opinion about the motivation of the rapists. This motivation is clearly not relevant to the question whether rape is heinous crime it is; this is an empiracal question which can be proven or disproven and which should be discussed, as by understanding rapists motives we can better fight rapes. But no discussion followed at all – i had “wacky as hell” views of rape, I was told, i was “ignorant slut” and I do not understand why.
As here the audience seems to be heavily pro-SJW and pro-feminist, and yet seems to be of more rational kind, could you explain me why I have received this kind of reaction?
LikeLiked by 5 people
Did you say anything else beyond “rape is about sex”?
LikeLike
Assuming that that’s all you said, here are a couple possibilities:
1. Out-group signalling/rejection of in-group memes. “Rape is about power, not sex” is something of an anti-rape activist shibboleth, so denying its accuracy signals not being an (orthodox) anti-rape activist. From there, it’s a short step to being lumped in with the enemy.
2. Aggressive pattern-matching. There are some really horrible people, particularly in the “incel” community (the worst probably being Marjan Siklic/Governments Get Girlfriends/coconut/caamib/[whatever else he may be calling himself these days]) who argue that rape is about sex, and sex is just as much of a biological as food, so an incel who rapes a woman is a blameless as a starving man who steals bread. Someone who has clashed with some of these people (or their less extreme kin) may see “rape is about sex” and fill in the rest automatically.
3. Desire to make rapists seem as evil as possible. Some people have a weird difficulty with the idea that doing something can still be very evil even if one has an understandable motive for doing it. To such a person, saying “rapists are motivated by a desire for sex [which is a perfectly understandable thing to desire” sounds like “rape isn’t really that bad.” No, it doesn’t make any sense.
4. Commitment to defending in-group orthodoxy at all costs. Some orthodox anti-rape activists may believe that allowing the public to believe that anti-rape orthodoxy is wrong about anything is dangerously close to letting the public believe that anti-rape orthodoxy is wrong about whether rape is okay. Consequently, denying the accuracy of one of their shibboleths means you have to be destroyed, period.
LikeLiked by 2 people
These are plausible, but 4 is somewhat off the mark. I have a few insights.
– “Rape is about power” goes back very, very far in the feminist canon.
– Feminist analysis of sex can be very grim. It’s quite grim for very justifiable reasons, but there’s an inherent conflict, there, between feminists being human and wanting to be sexual without drowning in the fucked-upness of the cultural conditions surrounding sex. Quarantining sex from rape is a method of self-assurance.
As someone who DOES think rape CAN be about sex, I see that and sympathize with it because it’s quite sobering to consider.
– Rape IS often about power, and the idea that it’s about sex obfuscates that for the reasons you mentioned, i.e., people think it’s about a biological urge and dismiss whatever else is going on, or justify the actions on some level.
The fact of the matter is, rapists usually don’t rape out of sexual desperation (even if they get sexual gratification out of it), usually rape their acquaintances or intimates, and wield it as a threat against people they’re (ostensibly) not attracted to — talk to any fat feminist activist about the threats she receives, and they often alternate between “you’re too ugly to rape” and “I’m going to rape you you ugly cunt.”
Think about the way rape is used in media tropes: essentially, it is THE threat to level at female characters, it’s a very common traumatic backstory for women, etc.
I think women are able to see the way the threat of rape is used against them and when men don’t and go on about alphas and fertility, they understandably see it as dismissive. “Rape is about power” is a way of pre-empting victim-blaming and turning the conversation to more fruitful avenues — because really, where do you go with “some men rape based on sexual motive.” You can’t go anywhere with it.
This is not to say they were right to dogpile you, but you did unknowingly wander into an area of hot feminist contention.
LikeLike
Ah, and now I finally understand. Care should be taken to distinguish the threat, which as an act is almost certainly about power, with rape itself, which I suspect is often, though not exclusively, about sex. People like sex. A lot. People will go to great extremes to get things they want. Including crimes. Including hurting people.
You find ways to help these people meet their sexual urges without committing rape.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Like… distributing free masturbation aids?
Having sex with someone who would consider rape a valid option for relieving sexual urges seems pretty dangerous.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Some studies have found that greater access to pornography reduces the frequency of rape. So liberalization of both laws and societal attitudes regarding pornography would seem like an obvious start.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’d be a good start.
If having sex with someone eliminates the probability of them committing rape, that would also eliminate the danger, no? Beware the fundamental attribution error, as it handicaps your ability to find solutions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think that the intended implication is that someone who is vicious enough to resort to rape in order to relieve their sexual urges is also vicious enough to hurt those close to them in other ways.
LikeLike
My point is that assuming viciousness handicaps you in all cases where viciousness is not the cause. Humans have bad habit of over-attributing people’s behaviors to internal characteristics (like viciousness), and underestimating the impact of environmental factors (like sexual frustration). This mistake is so common in people’s attempts to explain human behavior that psychologists coined it the fundamental attribution error.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sexual frustration provides the motive, certainly. The role of vice is in turning “I want to have sex with that girl, independent of whether she wants to have sex with me” into “I am going to have sex with that girl, regardless of whether she wants to have sex with me.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Even if rape were caused by sexual frustration, it would still have to include an element of viciousness, because it’s traumatic and painful for the victim. The rapist could not avoid the obvious evidence of the harm that they’re inflicting on their victim. Surely any person with even the most basic human decency would masturbate rather than commit rape, no matter how sexually frustrated they were?
LikeLike
I agree with you what a decent person would do. However . . .
The rapist could not avoid the obvious evidence of the harm that they’re inflicting on their victim.
I’m not convinced that this is universally true. Quite often, certainly, and for many rapists, it’s part (or all) of the appeal. But a lot of rapes aren’t all that dramatic. If the victim is unconscious, dissociating, or just frozen, it may be possible for a rapist to convince himself that the cost to her is negligible. People are pretty good at deluding themselves, especially when they have a strong incentive to do so and/or are drunk.
*Substitute other gender configurations as desired. I’m explicitly not asserting that all rape is male-on-female here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
OK, suppose you’re having sex with this unfairly maligned individual. Suddenly, you experience a medical emergency and need the sex to stop. You say, “No wait, stop! Something’s wrong, ow…” But, since he’s still sexually frustrated, our situational subject will hold you down by force and continue thrusting into your body, for as long as it takes to fully satisfy his sexual urge. Thus, you might end up being raped despite your best intentions.
Being horny is actually a fairly common situation. That’s why being unable to deal with it without hurting others is a fairly major flaw.
I get quite irritable when I’m hungry. If I hit my boyfriend to relieve the frustration, that would be situational behaviour. But the best course of action for him would be getting away from me and finding someone less prone to abuse in common situations.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Or making you a sandwich.
LikeLike
In the short run, yes. But not as a long-term strategy.
LikeLike
@osberend You are both convincing and depressing.
I wish there could be a strong public campaign for ‘Don’t Drink and Fuck’ analgous to the ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ thing, which was really very effective in the UK. It wouldn’t weed out those who were purely deluding themselves, but I think it could be beneficial to a lot of potential perpetrators and victims.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Frankly, I think “use your fucking words, and don’t do it unless the other person explicitly says it’s alright” would be a pretty solid alternative. Not the stupid nanny-state version that some colleges have ended up backing that forbids advance consent, a single consent to multiple acts, etc. But just a basic “do I have an explicit verbal consent that explicitly covers what I’m about to do.”
Because I don’t think that the alcohol is the problem, not really. On other threads, I’ve actually defended a far more libertarian approach to alcohol and sex than most other people seem comfortable with. What alcohol unquestionably does, though, is take any form of already-broken norms around consent and/or communication and make them way, way worse.
LikeLike
@InferentialDistance In this example being hungry stands in for being horny so getting food stands in for getting laid. To say that her boyfriend should feed her when she’s hungry in order to avoid violence, is the same as saying that to avoid rape she should fuck him. You must see that ‘let me fuck you or I’ll rape you’ is no real choice at all. Any sex that hapened as a consequence would be rape, since she wasn’t given any opportunity to refuse.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Ah, and now I finally understand. Care should be taken to distinguish the threat, which as an act is almost certainly about power, with rape itself, which I suspect is often, though not exclusively, about sex. People like sex. A lot. People will go to great extremes to get things they want. Including crimes. Including hurting people.”
No; that’s not what I said. It’s not any revelation that threats are exercises in power. What I said was that rape is often about power, and used the particular phrasing of rape threats to explain how that is conceptualized.
“You find ways to help these people meet their sexual urges without committing rape.”
Pornography, despite what another commentator said, is commonplace and widely available, and people are honestly quite blaise about it on the whole. A few studios in LA are churning it out at a massive rate to sate the appetites of the world. Hell, there’s even artsier porn now, and queer porn, and “realistic” porn if you have ethical issues with that. Sex toys for men are increasingly popular, and the Fleshlight simulates a vagina in the most literal sense. Prostitutes can be rated online like restaurants at Yelp.
Outlets are available everywhere you look, and normal people utilize them.
The question that’s salient, the question you’re missing, is “why would someone chose rape over these other options.”
LikeLike
(note: partly based on examples from fiction, relevance to real situations obviously not optimal)
Ozy gave the example of a woman had sex with dubious (at best) consent with a friend who was high in a previous blog post. No viciousness here. In fiction, the movie Super contains a female-on-male rape scene, I find it hard to assume viciousness (rater than uncaring, obliviousness, or believing they are acting in the victim’s best interests). Staying in fiction, but with a male aggressor, Spike/Buffy or Jaime/Cersei also seems inconsistent with mandatory viciousness.
We also had/have discussions on the problem of feeling safe enough to say no to unwanted sex, and on the complications around consent (On Consent as a Felt Sense to stay on Ozy’s blog). If sexual frustration is a factor in rape rates, it is also probably one for rape-adjacent sex. I’m not convinced of the mitigation solutions proposed here (and I assume people more knowledgeable would have others), but it’s useful to know.
LikeLike
@thirqual: No viciousness here.
I’m not sure if you’re replying to me or Pluviann, but for my part:
“Vicious” means “pertaining to or characterized by vice” as well as “highly cruel.” When I use it, it’s generally in the former (and original) sense.
I find most of the Consent as a Felt Sense–related discussion to be . . . alien, for lack of a better term, since I don’t really get what’s so bad about sex that isn’t forcible, but that one doesn’t want. I mean . . . I’ve had that. And it was a bit annoying in the same way that any other expenditure of effort and/or enduring of physical discomfort that one doesn’t really want to engage in is a bit annoying. And being emotionally pressured for it was kinda bullshit in the same way that being emotionally pressured for anything else that difficult and/or physically uncomfortable is kinda bullshit. And that’s all. No trauma, no “feel[ing] gross and cry[ing] afterward.” Just a bit of physical discomfort and a bit of annoyance with my partner.
And maybe the stronger reaction that many others seem to have is just some sort of cognitive primitive that there is no way to actually understand, but . . . I just don’t get it.
LikeLike
@osberend Hmm, I see your point. But ‘use your fucking words’ is not useful if people have reached a point where alochol prevents them using their fucking minds. If alcohol takes enough people to the point where they either:
a) don’t really care about other people’s consent or feelings anymore (eg. the rapist in your comment above who deludes themself because they’re drunk); or
b) aren’t capable of properly understanding whether someone else is consenting
then it seems like as a social rule it should be prudent to avoid alochol altogether. The person who drinks and fucks is as irresponsible as the person who drinks and drives (I realise that if you are a of a libertarian bent then you may be in favour of drink-driving).
LikeLike
I am against allowing drunk driving generally, but in favor of allowing (if it can shown through suitable tests) “my tolerance is such that I can still drive safely at that BAC” to be an affirmative defense.
So if you have (a) when you’re drunk, then absolutely, you are in the wrong to get drunk in company (saying “don’t drink and fuck” doesn’t actually help here, since presumably you no longer care about that either). There was a very good blog post (in many ways) I read by a survivor who stated that her rapist “was someone else then” and “never would have done this sober,” but also denied that that exculpated her, and added “As far as I’m concerned, her crime began that night with her first drink.”
But as for (b) . . . if the standard we’re using is explicit verbal consent, is it possible to not be capable of understanding whether you have that, while still being capable of processing language at all? Because if you can’t process language, “don’t drink and fuck” is going to be just as useless as any other slogan.
LikeLike
I’m not sure a) is as binary as that. A person doesn’t have to be evil to be stupid, impulsive and self-centered when drunk. I mean, lack of self-control and lack of clear-thinking and volatile emotions are totally expected consequences of drinking, especially amongst young people who haven’t found their limits yet.
The point of having a clear rule of ‘don’t drink and fuck’ would be to give that person’s brain an easy rule to follow when thinking is hard. To continue with the drink driving metaphor: many is the time that a person has said to themselves when drunk, ‘I could totally drive home now. I’m fine. I’m on top of the world’ and then didn’t because it’s not done, and then woke up in the morning and thought: ‘Thank god I didn’t drive home, I was wasted, I would’ve killed someone.’
In the case of b) you make a good point. If we can be confident that every uses explicit verbal consent then we’re good to go. Creating a culture of ‘you need explicit verbal consent’ may be easier than creating a culture of ‘don’t drink and fuck’. I’m not sure, but I’m surprised by the number of people who seem to think that explicit consent is ‘not sexy’.
LikeLike
@Pluviann: I’m not sure what to do about those people. I think some of it may be a lack of understanding of what “explicit” means in practice, e.g., that getting explicit consent to perform cunnilingus doesn’t have to mean saying “I wish to lick your vulva now; do you consent to that?”
Of course, school codes-of-conduct and sexual misconduct seminars that practically do require that don’t exactly help matters.
On (a), I may just be typical-minding, since my response to “X just isn’t done” is far more likely to be angry defiance than compliance.
LikeLike
@osberend
Idunno, I think you can just keep making sandwiches. Maybe some soup for variety.
@Pluviann
I never said should. He has no moral obligation to make sandwiches, but it solves the hunger problem, which eliminates the resultant violence problem. It may be the optimal decision, based on how much he values not making sandwiches, how much he values the relationship, and how much he values not worrying about potential hunger-violence, and how much hunger-violence occurs despite sandwich-making.
As a pragmatic solution to an endemic hunger-violence problem in the populace, a society could encourage better eating habits. Snack bars on every floor of every building. Blood sugar monitors. A robust industry serving people’s eating needs. Not stigmatizing eating outside of meals. Etc… If you know hunger causes violence, and you can reduce hunger without losing other things you value, and you value less violence, you should take action to reduce hunger even if you don’t care about the hunger for its own sake. And that’s not the “morally obligated” should, that’s the “optimal method for achieving your goals in reality” should.
@childe-caro
And sex crime has diminished as a result! Isn’t that great?
LikeLiked by 1 person
So let’s move on then. When there are so many outlets to be had, why does rape happen?
(Let’s also consider that many rapist, by self-report, have a reasonable chance of finding a woman to consensually have sex with. The reddit rapist thread is illuminating in that respect.)
LikeLike
Because those outlets don’t completely eliminate sexual frustration, because access to those outlets isn’t total, because there is still significant social stigma attached tot he use of those outlets. Because sexual frustration isn’t the only environmental factor that can lead to rape. And because some people are evil bastards.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re overexaggerating both the lack of access to those outlets (malware from free porn youtube knockoffs aside) and the social stigma on those outlets.
But the point is, for all it has been framed in terms of desperate men throughout our culture’s history, rape is about much more than frustrated sexuality. Rapists have described a myriad of motives, a number of which fall squarely into the “exerting power over women” category: the reddit rape thread had a serial rapist who (despite having access to other women) just got off on exerting dominance over shy girls, lesbians are raped to correct their “defective” sexuality (which is an affront to men by virtue of disinterest), and cases of abuse and molestation quite frequently possess an element of needing to *control* the victim, not just use them for sexual release.
And it’s true: all too commonly, men simply don’t pay attention when a woman says no.
These are all correctable problems. Rape rates vary cross-culturally. People can be encouraged to prioritize reciprocation in sex. People can be told that they must prioritize their willpower to control themselves. People can be taught societal scripts that make consent more explicit.
Your focus on “solutions” seems to be “make porn/etc more socially acceptable,” but this is honestly uninteresting from a feminist standpoint. For one thing, it’s already quite widespread; I don’t see the stigma holding much power compared to rates of consumption. For another thing, it addresses the problem superficially without touching on this deeper and more insidious problems. That’s the reason why “sex is about power,” while factually incorrect as an absolute, is effective as a rhetorical statement. It forces you to focus on what people squirm about discussing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Access to outlets isn’t a problem – although until there’s universal decriminalisation of sex work, there’s the threat of being tossed in a cage mitigating access to the more effective outlets.
There are a few things bound up in this, but the biggest issue that I see around outlets is shame. And I expect anyone ending up on this blog to know exactly what a powerful – and dangerous – motivator shame can be.
People can – and do – consume porn and still feel shame about it. People are undoubtedly still shamed for consumption of porn. It’s still considered a weakness. Most people still won’t admit to masturbation, and female masturbation and sex toy use is fetishised while male masturbation is a “loser” marker and male sex toy use is considered creepy at best and deviant at worst.
The western weirdness around “paying for it” gets even worse, with a politically powerful faction of feminists and most governments decrying it as abuse and exploitation and, basically, equivalent to rape anyway.
I don’t believe that you can simply say “there are outlets” without considering that those outlets – particularly the most effective – don’t come without heavy costs to self-image and social status of their own.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Wait, so these hypothetical people feel more ashamed about watching porn than about raping someone?
In some religious communities, or if it takes up multiple hours per day? Yes. But generally? I don’t think so.
Huh? The idea that all men masturbate is a pervasive cultural trope. “99% do it, 1% are liars.” There’s even that story of researchers who wouldn’t find a control group.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Nita
– Watching porn, while more effective than nothing, isn’t a terminal solution. And their self-image may be less damaged by rape than by watching porn. The type of rape I’m talking about generally isn’t the dramatic, violent street-rape that unfortunately occupies people’s minds, but actually isn’t all that common; it’s the “we met at a party, it’s no big deal”, “girls say no because they don’t want to look slutty/guys always want it”, “they just wanted me to be more assertive”, “they fuck other people all the time” type of mundane evil that can be justified by the rapist as “not *really* rape”.
– Your experience apparently doesn’t match mine. The “loser gawking at porn” trope is still, in my experience, the dominant view. High-status people still universally distance themselves from any mention of porn. And then there’s the endless labyrinth of genres, each with their own negative stereotypes – pity if they’re into anything other than vanilla.
– Yes, everyone knows that everyone sometimes engages in a bit of five-finger petit mort. Doesn’t mean people won’t try and dismiss it, avoid the topic, etc. when it comes to *them*. Wanker, jerkoff, tosser (okay, I don’t know if that one’s used in the US) – these are pejoratives. Joking about a person’s possible masturbatory habits is a cheap and easy way to ridicule them. So yeah, widespread – but most people are loath to *own* it.
LikeLiked by 3 people
@ Leit
Careful, you might convince someone that “rape culture” and “toxic masculinity” are actually necessary and useful concepts.
High-status people do not discuss any elements of their sex life — be they solo, one-on-one, group or imaginary.
I’m into non-vanilla and I don’t feel particularly oppressed. I’ve heard they’re planning some anti-BDSM-porn law in the UK? Anyway, that’s a problem of weird people being misunderstood, not of men in general.
Yeah, how about “cocksucker”? How about “we’re fucked” and “this sucks”? Clearly, being a non-lesbian woman or a non-straight man is considered shameful, therefore unethical behaviour by members of these groups is understandable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Nita
– I’m… actually confused by this. It’s not a put-down or a rhetorical device – I’m literally uncertain of the point you’re making. It sounds like you’re intersecting another argument with this one, but I don’t think I was involved in that argument.
– Are you talking about high status as in actors and politicians? Because they try their best not to talk about anything even vaguely personal. Bring it down to the real world, though, and – depending on the context – high-status people will be only too happy to talk about the great sex they’re having or even the truly epic bowel movements they’ve experienced lately, but they’re not going to go near any talk of the bedside cabinet or that box of tissues in the drawer under the keyboard.
– That law’s supposed to be “anti-exploitative”, but it’s basically a catch-all for anything that might be a bit squicky. The puritan attitude behind it is unfortunately widespread, and not just in the UK. And I never said anything about it being a male problem – a) we’re talking about rape, and do woment/trans suddenly not feature because we’re talking about perpetrators of Bad Things? and b) porn-watching women get to deal with the same bothersome dichotomy of fetishization/shame that I talked about above regarding masturbation and sex toys.
Regardless, there doesn’t have to be a law about it for there to be negative attitudes. Let’s go for an example where the effect’s particularly visible – hentai is a genre of porn that’s legal pretty much everywhere, but people who are into it are still stereotyped as freaky fangirls/creepy otaku with a fixation on tentacle rape.
– Straight guys and lesbians can’t be fucked? You’re working off a different definition of fucking than I am. And yeah, ridiculous attitudes to sex have existed for a long time, and do still exist, so implying the sucking of cock – especially for a guy – is an insult. And yes, bad behaviour may well be understandable – but, as with the rapists we’re talking about, it’s still not even vaguely *excusable*.
LikeLiked by 3 people
@ Leit
I’m saying, if someone’s self-image “may be less damaged by rape than by watching porn”, then something is terribly, terribly wrong — either with that person or with the cultural ideas they have internalised.
Eh, actors and politicians are probably the only high-status people we have in common, off the internet. The people I know who freely talk about sex and pooping don’t shy away from masturbation either. On the other hand, sex and pooping are more like (un)fortunate events that happen to you, while the quality of masturbatory experience is 100% under your control. I don’t hear a lot of people brag about an awesome cup of tea they’ve brewed for breakfast, either.
You said that porn can’t solve the problem completely because men’s masturbation and porn use is stigmatised, so I thought we’re discussing men’s issues now.
But a lot of hentai is quite freaky and/or creepy! Many people are squicked out by common hentai themes, whether they’re in porn or in someone’s head, and YKINMKBYKIOK is not a mainstream meme yet. It’s a new idea. Give it time.
We’re talking about cultural stereotypes, remember?
Wait. So, you’re not, in fact, trying to persuade me that rape is a natural consequence of feminists criticising porn and refusing to personally relieve everyone’s sexual frustration?
LikeLike
@Nita
– Unsurprisingly, I agree with you on your first point – largely that there are a lot of toxic cultural “values” out there.
– There are entire sites dedicated to people bragging about their awesome cup of tea. 😀
– I said nothing about men’s porn use specifically, and I addressed both men’s and women’s masturbation. Everywhere possible I’ve tried to be gender-neutral or inclusive. I’d suggest – without rancour – that you’re shadow-boxing a little here.
– Fair enough, I’ll accept that stereotype. It’s still is a damn shame, because as a straight guy, being fucked good and hard is *awesome* and anything that tells women that they shouldn’t be doing that is a dead loss.
– No, I’m talking about how certain politically aligned feminists with an anti-sex agenda seem to have the same endgame as the bad old fashioned anti-sex conservatives, and together they present barriers to things like porn and sex work, and to people not feeling like failed human beings for using masturbatory aids and porn. There are cultural and legal barriers preventing real good from being done, just because of ideology, and that’s genuinely sad and awful.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@osberend Yes, I feel like the way to make ‘X isn’t done’ is not to make it forbidden but to make it low status.
Back to drunk-driving: most of my generation find drunk driving to be incredibly stupid, not only dangerous but recklessly careless with other people’s lives. For my parents it’s just the last option for how to get home.
LikeLike
@childe-caro
Are you claiming that sexual frustration doesn’t exist in our society? Or that we have reached minimum sexual frustration achievable without sacrificing things we value more? Because I disagree on both those points.
Prostitution is still illegal in many places. Even when legal, there is still significant social shame in using their services. Sex-negative left-wingers will decry johns as vile objectifiers hurting women; puritan right-wingers will deride them as horrible sinners corrupting family values; college frats and PUAs will mock them as pathetic losers with no game.
Sex-negative views are still common. Porn is decried by the right for destroying family values, and by the left for being objectifying. People are taught to feel shame wanting sex, shame for pursuing sex, shame for consuming sexual media. This is not a solved problem.
And women to men who say no. And men to men who say no. And women to women who say no. And so on. Lack of self control, and lack of empathy, are indeed variables that cause rape.
The thing is, self-control and empathy can be manipulated by environmental factors. The Stanford prison experiment and Milgram Experiment are particularly salient examples of how environment can turn otherwise decent people into monsters. By putting them in the wrong room.
I want there to be fewer wrong rooms in the world for people to accidentally wander into. Consistently manufacturing high empathy, high willpower, environmentally resistant people would be wonderful. No one knows how to do that, as far as I know. If you think feminism has the secret, I’d love to see your data. ‘Cause it sure looks like feminism has just as much as a problem as everyone else.
Good ideas. I just find it insufficient, and in some cases short-sighted. For example, telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce rape sounds about as effective as telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce theft which sounds about as effective as telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce obesity. Akrasia is an obstacle that is notoriously resistant to education. “Prioritize willpower” is not a primitive action people can take, but I agree that we’d have a better world if people had more willpower.
I have not done a thorough exploration of the issue, but off the top of my head:
– Freakonomics suggests that legalized abortion lead to a general reduction of crime decades later because fewer people were born into crime-risk environments. If this is correct, and if it holds for sex crime too, more/better access to safe abortions may reduce the frequency of rape (though with a several decade delay).
– There is some evidence that victims of child molestation are found to be a much higher percentage of rapists than in the general population, which suggests that reducing the frequency of child molestation may reduce the frequency of rape in general (again with a several decade delay).
– There is some evidence that increased temperature increases the frequency of criminal acts. If this is true, and if it holds for sex crime, more/cheaper/better air conditioners and cheaper electricity to run them may reduce the frequency of rape during summer.
– There is some evidence that social exclusion/ostracization reduces people’s ability empathize with others. This suggests that making the culture more inclusive may reduce the frequency of rape.
– There is some evidence that being shamed reduces people’s ability to empathize with others. This suggests that making the culture less shame-oriented may reduce the frequency of rape.
– There is some evidence that rape occurs at a higher frequency among people inebriated with alcohol, or in contexts where alcohol is highly available. This suggests that making the culture value/desire alcohol less may reduce the frequency of rape.
Quite frankly, I don’t care about what’s interesting from a feminist standpoint. I care about what reduces the frequency of rape, and how much it costs.
LikeLiked by 4 people
@InferentialDistance: Although I agree with a large portion of your comment, a couple caveats:
The Stanford Prison Experiment was bullshit. Zimbardo asked an ex-con about dehumanizing features of American prisons, implemented them in his “experiment,” and then portrayed the results of encouraging people to participate in aggressive dehumanization (which do include some people taking that dehumanization further than they’re required to) as the results of giving people structural power over others.
The Milgram experiment, IMO, doesn’t indicate that decent people can do terrible things so much as it indicates that a rather terrifyingly low fraction of people are actually decent.
Freakonomics is full of bullshit, including on abortion. The first wave of children born in Romania after the ban actually had better average outcomes than those born immediately prior to the ban, because women with better access to resources had been more able to procure abortions prior to the ban. If you controlled for mother’s status, then adjusted outcomes were worse, but while doing so is appropriate for analyzing causality, it’s completely inappropriate for trying to predict net effects of actual abortion policies, unless you build it into a far more complex model. Which they didn’t. In the absence of such a model, the crude effect is a more reasonable estimator, and is, again, opposite to what they asserted.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Sexual frustration provides the motive, certainly. The role of vice is in turning “I want to have sex with that girl, independent of whether she wants to have sex with me” into “I am going to have sex with that girl, regardless of whether she wants to have sex with me.”
I hope if you don’t mind if I hijack this a bit for one of my usual hobbyhorses, but — there seems to be a bunch of scary-feminism out there that doesn’t distinguish between the two, or rather, takes the first as the second. That interprets any attempt to state “I want to do X with person Y, they don’t want to do X with me, so I wish they did, because I still want to” as “I want to do X with person Y even over their objection.” (Maybe they wouldn’t get mixed up if you stated it *that* explicitly, but you shoudn’t have to.) Like there seem to be a bunch of things with this undercurrent of “If someone not being interested in you doesn’t make your desire for them immediately vanish, you are a bad person.” Which is the sort of thing that if you find yourself implying, you should conclude that you made a wrong turn somewhere.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“Are you claiming that sexual frustration doesn’t exist in our society? Or that we have reached minimum sexual frustration achievable without sacrificing things we value more?”
No. Sexual frustration is going to exist no matter what outlets are available; people will get erotically fixated, some people are more into real sex than porn and vice-versa, etc. My point is that masturbation aids are all around us and that the problem of rape is beyond them.
“Prostitution is still illegal in many places. Even when legal, there is still significant social shame in using their services.”
I am pro-legalization, but this is a much more complicated issue than has been portrayed by the sex-positive, since the voices of poor sex workers are buried under accounts of “I found being a dominatrix empowering.” Unfortunately, the charge of “sex-negative” accompanies any critique that amounts to stuff like “hey, let’s support better and less objectifying porn” and “hey, let’s think about how the dynamics here reinforce an unhealthy view of sex that limits self-expression to damaging sex roles.” Some critique does not equal “shaming.”
Being sex-positive is almost compulsory in left circles. The only seriously anti-porn feminists I am aware of are on tumblr. The rest of whom are seriously concerned with the sex issue are making alt porn in San Francisco or something. I’ve gotten into trouble for saying, “Hey, I like porn, but I think some of it is kind of shitty sometimes. I was exposed to it formatively and it was awful. It made me think heterosexual sex was inherently degrading for years and I formed a fetish surrounding sexualized violence towards men because I couldn’t get off without wanting to turn the tables. Let’s provide better alternatives!” Saying, this is tantamount to CENSORSHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and KINK-SHAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the left.
All that aside, I’ll echo Nita’s point: wait, we’re defending people who find it less shameful to rape than to go to one of numerous, numerous sites where they can find ranked paid services for an escort? Jesus Christ.
I’m all for figuring out the prostitution problem. In the meantime, that’s a much more serious one– more serious considering it’s going to impact how we actually make prostitution safe at all.
“And women to men who say no. And men to men who say no. And women to women who say no. And so on. Lack of self control, and lack of empathy, are indeed variables that cause rape.”
Please don’t try to water this down. I am absolutely, 100% concerned with male rape, but I’m just not going to pretend cultural influences don’t impact the way rape plays out. Particularly when the rest of this conversation was clearly concerned with *male* sexual frustration. Male rape is worth talking about anytime; however, those dynamics work a bit differently.
But as an aside and to address your point of “what is feminism doing about this,” I know a number of male rape victims who have explicitly said that feminist work concerning making consent explicit and pointing out that cases where one party didn’t resist can be rape helped them come to terms with what happened to them, particularly when paired with feminist analysis of stereotypes about male sexuality. Progress here really has a net gain for everybody and I see it happening in many directions. “Enthusiastic consent” is a useful, positive, empathic concept that deserves to become a cultural norm, and in certain places that’s what’s happening.
“The thing is, self-control and empathy can be manipulated by environmental factors. The Stanford prison experiment and Milgram Experiment are particularly salient examples of how environment can turn otherwise decent people into monsters. By putting them in the wrong room.”
Absolutely, critiques of the Stanford Prison Experiment aside. The difference here seems to be that I do find that there are fewer rooms. But the rooms that remain, to dilute the metaphor, seem to have a more potent effect by virtue of their decreasing real estate.
I also think that the reverse is true: put someone in the right room, and they will rise to the occasion. There’s evidence to support that, too.
“For example, telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce rape sounds about as effective as telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce theft which sounds about as effective as telling people to prioritize willpower in order to reduce obesity.”
People are prioritizing willpower to reduce theft; crime rates are lower than ever. I’ll grant you it’s tricky, but not impossible, particularly when we use cultural scripts like “enthusiastic consent” to make it harder to have “ambiguous” rapes. Remove a scapegoat, and cultural values will slowly follow suit.
Your “solutions” are all somewhat interesting and worth pursuing– but I think that once again, you’re showing the utility of “rape is about power” by not really addressing the salient point of why someone would think rape was an acceptable outlet but other, easily accessible outlets were out of the question. The answer is very easy to access with the help of feminism, and worth talking about.
You’re treating symptoms, and that can be helpful– but not causes.
LikeLike
@childe-caro
I mostly agree with your post, sans the following:
You seem hung up by ” think rape was an acceptable outlet”. That is not what I mean. These people are not making the conscious decision to rape despite the harm it causes. These people are pursing sex and causing harm because they’re too thoughtless to think of the consequences of their actions. Few of them react to “rape is about power” rhetoric by stopping their harmful behavior; most either agree with the rhetoric, but excuse their behavior because they don’t explicitly want to harm women (so it’s not rape, right?[/nonesense]) or disagree with the definition and stop listening entirely. The “rape is about sex” rhetoric allows for the existence of unintentional rape, making it somewhat harder for people to lie to themselves about their own actions, while also making it harder to deny on empirical grounds.
For the people whom sex is, in fact, about power, the rhetoric is entirely useless because they have no empathy and so will continue to cause harm regardless of how you talk about rape. I may be missing something, but “rape is about power” doesn’t seem to give any key insights into solving low-empathy people, so I don’t see what’s so important about it.
I’m also in favor of enthusiastic consent, because it destigmatizes the desire for and pursual of sex.
Finally, I categorically deny that my solutions treat the symptoms and not the cause. That which, by being changed, can change the frequency of rape, is by definition a cause of rape. Rhetoric is a tool to enact change, not an end of itself, and if you lose sight of the goal you risk uselessness (or worse). And if you insist that my “causes” aren’t root enough for you, I will fight you all the way back to the boundary conditions of the universe.
LikeLike
Person A: Rape is about power.
Person B: Rape is about sex.
That’s not a discussion. If you believe that this is an empirical question, then expressing your opinion will not help us find the right answer to it.
You should probably read the arguments on both sides, and then look for some relevant empirical studies.
LikeLike
Person C: this is dumb, stuff can be about more than one thing at a time.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Person D: Different people can do the same thing for different reasons.
Person E: The same person can do the same thing at different times for multiple reasons.
Person F: What does ‘is about’ really mean, anyway? What is being asserted here? What would be otherwise if rape weren’t about that?
LikeLiked by 2 people
The motivation of rapists is very much relevant to whether rape is a heinous crime. This is why so many people are so very touchy about it. For many people to say ‘rape is about sex not power’ is to say that rape is about men who couldn’t control their sexual urges This obivously mitigates the blame on the man: you would not blame a starving man for eating if he saw food, you would not blame a thirsty man for drinking if he saw water, you would not blame a frustrated man for raping if he saw a woman*. People who express the belief that rape is about sex very often believe that because of this we should not punish men too harshly for giving in to sadly deplorable lapse in self-control. It could happen to anyone and it doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy.
If men are driven to rape by the desire for sex, then the next logical belief is that women should make an effort to cover up and not be sexy. After all, he can’t control his urges but she can easily control her dress. The next step after that is to believe that a woman who doens’t cover up appropriately must be responsible for the sexual encounter. After all, she was the one who was in control. In fact, because she was in control then it can’t have been rape at all.
I don’t mean to say that you believe any of these things, but they are the opinions that are commonly expressed after an opening of ‘rape is about sex’ so many people will pattern-match and immediately assume that you are going to make that argument.
It’s also the case that many people firmly believe that this logic is sound even if they dont’ agree with the premise, so they fear the premise.
*Some might modify this to ‘slutty woman’.
LikeLiked by 2 people
One of these things is not like the others. I would blame a starving man for cutting off one of my arms to eat it. I would blame a thirsty man for opening one of my arteries to drink from it. And I would blame a person who causes harm to alleviate sexual frustration.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I agree with you, but I’ve heard this argument made by people before, so it’s clearly convincing to some people.
Just to be clear: when you say ‘I would blame a person who causes harm to alleviate sexual frustration’ do you include ‘rape’ in ‘harm’, so that you would blame a person who rapes to alleviate sexual fustration?
LikeLike
Yes, people do unfortunately hold that belief.
Yes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, everyone who committed their time to answer my question. I could go and write several answers here, but I feel this would produce too much noise.
A) I do not think “rape is about sex” means males are not to blame. On the contrary, I – being a conservative, prudish guy, think that if someone cannot control his urges, then he should be condemned. I don’t care about the motives. I care about outcomes and violating the rules. In fact I do not get a difference between “rape is about power” (a lack of control to fulfill the urge to be in power) and “rape is about sex” (a lack of control to fulfill the urge to have sex).
B) While later in the dicusssion with my former friends (because I lost two friends in that discussion – well, one friend and one acquaintance) I stated different things, most of the shitstorm happened directly after I stated those two sentences “rape is not about power. It is about sex.”
C) About this being an empirical problem, I mean you can do certain predictions based on what you think about rapists motivations. For example, you can predit that taking medications reducing sexual urge or actual castration should reduce the reoffending rate for rapists, while if you think it is about power, then it’s hard to explain why reoffending rate would be lower.
All in all, I was just interested not about discussion about what the rape is about, but rather about what was about what I said which enfuriated my liberal friends so much. I think I understand this now better, thank you very much for the answers once again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@szopeno: If the people you were talking to are aware of your conservatism, that’s probably an enhancing factor in the “pattern-matches to the enemy” explanation.
LikeLike
i’ve run into a certain idea both irl* and online which seems to be picking up steam. most recently it came up in the comments of ‘black people are less likely’ over at ssc and as usual it completely baffles and disgusts me.
basically the idea is that if you are unwilling to enter a romantic relationship with someone who is of a particular race/the same gender/transgendered/obese/above or below a certain age/has a particular physical or mental disability/etc then you are racist/homophobic/transphobic/fatphobic/ageist/ableist/etc and must seriously reflect on your prejudices so that you no longer ‘discriminate’ in your sexual / romantic partners.
this kind of standard seems completely insane to me. doubly so because it comes from the same group which is constantly banging on about how we have to respect people’s declared sexual preferences and never use shame to control people’s sexual behavior.
why has it become acceptable to demand people have sex indiscriminately?
LikeLiked by 5 people
Well, romantic preferences can be affected by prejudice, so reflecting on the beliefs surrounding them seems like a good idea.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right, but the converse of an implication does not necessarily follow. Which means the people making accusations of prejudice merely on the grounds of romantic preference are jumping the gun.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@thirqual I thought I’d bring the discussion of Geralt, objectification and Kerzner down here, because the Kerzner thread is turning into the Gamergate thread.
I think we’re largely in agreement over Geralt. Collecting cards for seducing characters is obviously sexist; and the sex-cut-scenes focus way more on the naked bodies of the women than on Geralt. Also, Kerzner’s Picture Editor is obviously working against her. Kerzner’s trying to argue that Geralt is just as objectified as the women in the game and then they illustrate it with a fully-dressed headshot of Geralt and a picture of Triss in a cheesecake nude?
Kerzner raises a really interesting point (although I’m not sure if she realises she’s doing it) about whether a character is objectified in the game by other characters, or by the game for the benefit of the viewer.
Geralt is objectified by the other characters, who often view him as a sexual being foremost (‘hide your daughters’) and project some stigma onto him for that. But the sexual encounters themselves seem to be mutually desirable, and Geralt initiates most of them. So I’m hesitant to say that he’s being objectified by women when they sleep with him.
However, the game presents the women in a sexual way for the benefit of the viewer. They are the ones shown fully naked in cut-scenes or posed in trading cards.
So I would say the storyline presents a strongly egalitarian viewpoint where men and women both act with agency, but are also objectified. Meanwhile, the artistic and cinematic choices are strongly influenced by the male gaze and disporportionately objectify the women.
Overall, Kerzner seems to be arguing that if any female character is shown to enjoy sex, then sexual-objectification of those characters in the artwork and cinematic choices doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I agree. How the characters interact is a separate matter from how the characters are designed and displayed, and they both matter.
You say:
I would have to play it again to be sure, but I don’t remember Geralt’s body being focused on too much in the cutscences? I may be remembering it wrong, or perhaps its easier to view him as a sexual being in the cut scenes because there’s so much emphasis on him being sexually desirable in the storyline?
Kerzner says:
I don’t remember any of the women being punished for sleeping with Geralt? Maybe there were some that I missed? I’m also not sure that any of the characters count as ‘degraded’ by sex, which seems a bit strong to me.
I agree with you that the feminist blog you linked is a very poor piece of criticism. And it’s definitely a failure mode of feminist critcism to decide that something like ‘sexual objectification of women’ is wrong and then to apply that condemnation over-broadly without context (when all you have is a hammer…)
I’ve already made this comment way too long, and touched on only a small part of the essay. Overall the essay was frustrating for me: a few good and interesting points; many parts where Kerzner’s misunderstood basic feminism or Anita’s point; badly in need of editing; too much unnecessary snark. Kerzner was strongest on the discussion of whether sex-plots that are meant to be horrifying or disturbing should also be considered titillating.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One thing that really stood out to me, because it was a viewpoint I would never have considered on my own (and I’m not sure I agree with) is the idea that because the sex scenes show naked women but not Geralt then Geralt is objectified, not the woman.
He’s literally absent from the scene – he only matters because he’s the source of her pleasure.
Now I’m not sure I agree with it. An equally convincing explanation is that the artistic team thought “our customers are heterosexual men, they like to see naked women but not naked dudes”.
But it was still an interesting point of view.
LikeLike
I wish games would sexually objectify women more often by making a woman the protagonist of the whole game, but then leaving her out of view in all the sex scenes and focusing on the attractive, naked men instead.
LikeLike
I’ve always found it funny when (some) feminists try to argue that heterosexual pornography objectifies women but not men, given that it’s the man, not the woman, who can be replaced by a literal object while still retaining a substantial fraction of the original target audience.
Similarly, a fairly common trope in porn credits is to refer to female and male performers as, respectively, “chicks” and “dicks.” Granted, neither is terribly humanizing, but if you had to pick one . . .
LikeLike
Osberend, that’s interesting. I think it might be accurate to say that women are sexually objectified by porn i.e. they are presented as an object for the sexual gratification of the viewer; while the men are just objectified.
Porn has many great qualities, but nuanced exploration of the subjective experience of the characters is not often among them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Honestly… I’m not sure the card thing is sexist. It would be sexist if you did it to actual people, because it would treat sexual access to them as a trophy to be collected and counted and horded and gloated over.
But they’re not people. They’re imaginary characters in a game designed to, among other things, titillate. They are literally toys.
If collecting naked pictures of them is sexist, then presumably saving naked pictures of actual women to your hard-drive is much, much worse.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s a very good point. I hadn’t considered that it was you ‘the player’ collecting the cards rather than you ‘the charcter that you’re playing’, but of course Geralt can’t be collecting the cards because it would be a bit weird for the women of pseudo-medieval Europe to be carrying around playing cards of themselves.
That being said, I still think that giving you little trophies like ‘knotches on your bedpost’ is a pretty skeevy way to treat sexual intercourse, even in a fictional setting.
I suppose it comes down to whether a real person has to be victimise for it to be sexism, or whether it’s sexism to reproduce sexist attitudes towards intercourse.
LikeLike
Rereading my own post, I see that I didn’t fully explain myself.
The fact that these aren’t real people being victimized is important. But there are no fictional people being victimized either. The distance between the imaginary world of the game and real life is greater than that.
The totality of what I was trying to get at was that the cards aren’t part of how the game “treat[s] sexual intercourse… …in a fictional setting.” The cards are part of how the game treats erotica in real life.
If you set aside Geralt entirely and simply view matters in terms of player playing an erotic game, and being rewarded with erotica for completing portions of erotic content in an erotic fashion, it’s hard to see any problem unless the real objection is to the existence of erotica.
LikeLike
@Pluviann: I don’t think that a real person necessarily has to be harmed for an attitude to be sexist, but I still don’t see how “sex is an accomplishment that gives me bedpost notches” is an intrinsically sexist attitude. Certainly, it can easily combine with certain sexist attitudes, but so can virtually any other approach to sex.
LikeLike
Pingback: Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » How can we fight online shaming campaigns?