[content warning: quotes that minimize rape]
Sometimes I see people, including people I respect, uncritically cite Warren Farrell, one of the founders of the MRA movement. So I thought I’d point out certain of his beliefs that are… not exactly what one would desire in the founder of a movement about men’s rights. (All quotes are from the second edition ebook of Myth of Male Power.
In the Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell writes:
While “date rape” gives words to one of our daughters’ most potent fears, perhaps “date robbery,” “date rejection,” “date shame,” and “date responsibility” give words to some of our sons’ unarticulated fears.
Warren Farrell does acknowledge the existence of male rape survivors elsewhere in the book. However, I must point out that failing to characterize “date rape” as a risk of dating for men erases male rape survivors, even though (if you use an inclusive definition) a quarter of rape survivors are male. If men are not afraid of being raped by women, it is not because they are not at risk; it is because– due to thoughtless erasures like this one– people believe that it is impossible.
I have no beef with someone considering false accusations of rape traumatic. I also have no beef with someone pointing out kinds of sexual violence that men are more likely to be victims of, such as reproductive coercion. One might assume that “date robbery”, “date rejection” and so on are equally traumatic events. And… well. Let’s look at the section headed “date responsibility”.
Just as music is more powerful than lyrics, Kyle felt the power of body language over verbal language. He wondered quietly (“quietly” because he feared being rejected should he say it aloud), “Does Susan’s ‘no’ followed by her continuing to tongue kiss with me, and caress my body with her breasts—actually mean a ‘no,’ or a ‘yes’?” He mused, “even if I were inhuman and able to ignore the tongue kissing and breast caressing, and pay attention only to her verbal ‘no,’ does that verbal ‘no’ mean ‘no’ until the next date; until I spend more time listening to her, or more time opening up about myself? Is it a ‘no’ she says to fulfill her parents’ and church’s moral code and make her and Kyle feel she isn’t too ‘easy’? Is it a ‘no’ until she has time for more wine to relax her, or more coffee to wake her up? Should I turn the lights up, or down? Turn the music up or down—or change to her type of music? And exactly what is her type of music—in this moment, in this mood?
Kyle felt that the date rape seminars focused all the responsibility on him.
To be clear: saying “no” to sex when you mean “yes” is a bad thing to do. People who do that should be punished by no one having sex with them until they learn better. And Farrell’s proposed solution is that women should make it clear that if they’ve said “no” to sex they will initiate if they actually want sex later. This is sensible advice (and also literally the affirmative consent he keeps bashing). So I’m not saying he’s recommending that men rape women who make out with them; he is clearly not doing so.
(Although he does include the statement that women shouldn’t be afraid of rejection when they initiate sex they’d previously said “no” to, because “he had already demonstrated his desire to go that far.” Apparently wanting sex on at least one occasion means it would be ridiculous for a man to not want sex later! Jesus Christ.)
But otherwise, this passage… First, observe the fact that Farrell doesn’t recognize, at any point, that men can want to make out with someone and not want to have sex with them. Neither does he recognize that sex can take some form other than “kissing –> groping –> maybe oral –> PIV,” presumably because if he did the assumption that if you consent to makeouts you’re nonverbally consenting to all other sex acts would be obviously ludicrous. (“But why shouldn’t I have forcefed my boyfriend three cakes and then ground my clit on his belly until I came? He was making out with me!”)
But more importantly: this is a sympathetic portrayal of someone justifying doing sexual acts that someone else said no to, that is, it is a sympathetic portrayal of sexual assault or perhaps rape. We are reassured that Susan felt fine with it. While of course this is in no way a contrived hypothetical needed to make Farrell’s case work, he is still committing sexual assault. If I respond to a bike theft with “eh, he probably needed it”, this does not mean the person did not commit theft. This is not a section about false rape accusations, which are horrible. If someone has sex with someone else who said no to sex, that is, in fact, a true rape accusation.
Apparently it is one of the major difficulties of dating for a man that his victim will fail to take responsibility for being sexually assaulted. I imagine that is an extreme difficulty for the sexual-assault-committing population! Truly I weep for their pain.
But if I were a man I would be fairly resentful of the assumption that I was part of the sexual-assault-committing (or at least sexual-assault-desiring-to-commit) population. In fact, I’m sort of resentful on the part of the men I know.
One girl wanted him to be a gentleman one moment, but let him know how much she had loved reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Since he didn’t know much about Fifty Shades of Grey, he Googled it. He discovered Fifty Shades of Grey was the fastest-selling paperback book in history— and it celebrates BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism). The story line features a girl who is a college student and a virgin. Yes, those mixed messages didn’t quite synch with the seminars challenging “what is there about ‘no’ that you don’t understand”?
Kyle is apparently confused about the concept of “fiction” and I am concerned about how this interferes with his everyday life. If his girlfriend watches Hannibal NBC, will he think she wants him to murder someone and then secretly feed her their remains? Even worse, Kyle’s objection is not “Fifty Shades of Grey’s hero commits sexual violence, stalking, and emotional abuse”, which would at least have the glimmerings of a point, but “Fifty Shades of Grey is about BDSM.” So… it’s confusing when someone likes BDSM and also doesn’t want to be raped? Thanks, dude.
All right, moving on to date robbery:
While from the graduation dinner on, Kurt ‘got’ his expectation to pay, he now started watching for cues as to just what he was expected to pay for. He concluded it would help if he paid for all “Four D’s”: Drinks; Dinners; Driving; and the Date (e.g., tickets, flowers, ski lift, hotel). He smiled a bit sardonically the day he recognized that if he was successful at paying for the first four D’s, he might earn the “privilege” of being the only one expected to pay for a Fifth “D”: a Diamond. (Again, the girl had the option to buy him a diamond, but not the expectation.)
What Kurt was experiencing might be called a sort of “robbery-by-social-custom.” Or “date robbery.”
So. Women’s biggest fear in dating is that they will suffer a form of violence that leads to a higher PTSD rate than combat. Men’s biggest fear in dating is that they will have to pick up the check. You know, I don’t like the phrase “male privilege”, but…
I don’t have a huge amount to say about this, to be honest. Yes, people should split the check. You should probably complain at traditionalists about this, not feminists. This does not make the wage gap matter less (…how much money are you spending on dates, Jesus). If this is so terribly traumatizing I don’t understand why some men get upset when I pick up the check.
Date rejection:
When a boy is in his early teens, he is typically less mature than his female classmates. Yet this less-mature boy—who generally knows little about sex, and virtually nothing about girls—is the one expected to risk sexual rejection with a more-mature girl. Now there’s enough to make him hide behind his computer!
Aren’t girls the ones who often initiate these days? In the past half-century, just as we’ve increasingly given our daughters the option to pay, we’ve also given them the option of taking sexual initiatives. In contrast, our sons still feel the expectation of taking sexual initiatives—that is, the expectation of risking sexual rejection.
I think we can see (e.g. Scott Aaronson) that sexual rejection (and the related fears of hurting people) are legitimately terrifying for many men and causes them a good deal of emotional pain. I don’t object to someone pointing out this fact. And I think it’s great for women to ask men out; I encourage everyone to express interest in people they’re interested in.
However, I do want to point out that the “female” role isn’t exactly all roses either. A lot of people have a tendency to compare the experience of being an undesirable man (getting rejected a lot) and a desirable woman (having lots of people call you). But being desirable is pretty much awesome whether you are in the male or female role. Desirable initiatees don’t have to ask people out, but on the other hand desirable initiators can ask out the person they’re most interested in first, control the pace of the interaction, and sometimes get accepted even if the person is meh on them and then can wow the person on the date. On the other hand, the experience of being an undesirable initiatee is awful. Farrell talks about the pain of an extended rejection, but at least an initiator can end it by making the flirtation explicit: undesirable women are literally being constantly, silently rejected by every man they interact with. Initiators can improve their chances by hitting on more people; initiatees can do nothing.
I am not saying “being an initiatee is better than being an initiator!” I am saying that being desirable rocks, being undesirable sucks, which flavor of undesirable you prefer depends a lot more on your particular preferences than on their objective goodness or badness, and that both people who prefer initiating and people who don’t should be more compassionate to each other.
This section also features more of The Amazing Adventures of Kyle, Worst Person Ever. (Technically this section is before “date responsibility”, but eh.) Kyle is so terrified of rejection that he wants to get Susan drunk so that she will consent to sex she would otherwise not to consent to, which may or may not be rape but is definitely sleazy as hell.
Furthermore, we discover that Kyle is actually being asked out by lots of girls! He just doesn’t like women who ask him out, he likes women who are being chased by other guys. Which, like, first, if you think women are only being hit on by guys they want to fuck, you are in Cloudcuckooland. Kyle’s situation is the same as many women’s. Second, it seems to me that if Kyle hates sexual rejection enough to deliberately have sex with someone that they don’t want, he should at least consider giving one of those girls a chance. Third, it seems to me a reasonable request that Farrell’s poster boy for fear of rejection and why women should initiate more not be someone who is being hit on all the time by women. Is Farrell planning to write a book about how poverty is terrible in which his example is a man who can only afford one Lamborghini?
Fuck you, Kyle.
Finally, we have date shame:
If your gut response was to rank the sex more negatively than the murder mystery, you’re in agreement with virtually every parent in America—and most of the world.
Might your son, though, be unconsciously hearing that “sex is more appalling than murder”? Might this leave him with the feeling that “sex is dirty”?
Again, this is a legitimate issue. I am sympathetic to slut-shaming of people of all genders. Many feminists fail to notice sex-negativity (and its twin compulsory sexuality) directed at men; they should not do that.
On the other hand, if you think that sexual shame is not something that women have to experience, you are a ridiculous person. As many feminist blogs point out, women regularly experience shame about their sexualities. I am legitimately having a hard time explaining that women also experience sexual shame, because it is sort of like explaining that the sky is often blue. At no point does Farrell recognize this extremely Feminism 101 fact.
Now, I’m not against people deriving value from theorists that are objectively awful. Catherine MacKinnon is a condescending, whorephobic doucheface, and I still really enjoyed Toward a Feminist Theory of the State and regularly bitch that it’s not available in ebook format. But sometimes it seems like people aren’t aware of this sort of thing, so I thought I’d share.
Thing of Things 
Kyle is confused about the concept of “fiction”, but aren’t the feminist critics of Fifty Shades equally confused?
The main problem I have with socially motivated pop-culture criticism is that it serves to legitimize Kyle’s excuse. Obviously, “I raped a girl because she liked Fifty Shades and I thought she’d be into it” is no defense at all, but claiming Fifty Shades sends rape-promoting cultural messages is a weird effort at making it one. How about we all agree that fiction is just fiction, and individuals are wholly responsible for their own actions?
My opinion of Farrell can be summed up thusly: Arguing over whether men or women have it worse is the most pointless and stupid debate in the history of the human race.
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I have a pro-Fifty-Shades blogpost coming up, actually.
And to be fair to Farrell, he doesn’t really argue men have it worse; he argues that men and women both have it badly in different ways. Which seems broadly correct to me, except for the part where one of the things that men have badly is that sexual assault victims don’t take responsibility for being sexually assaulted.
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Individuals are wholly responsible for their own actions (except in cases of institutional action where individuals are replaceable/interchangeable components, but that’s beside the point), but fiction is not just fiction — I don’t even need to get into metapolitics or any of that to make the point here; it’s enough to say that 50SOG made a lot of people aware of a certain variety of a certain thing, though I can’t say anything about whether that variety is harmful or what because I haven’t read the books — but we pretend that fiction is just fiction because liberalism and antitotalitarianism and some of that is probably a good thing because, even though liberalism is no longer viable (see: gay marriage) and possibly never was, America is and always has been too diverse to be capable of avoiding the problems it’s designed to solve.
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Why does gay marriage mean liberalism is no longer viable?
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The point of liberalism is (to give an example example) to stop the many different churches in late-18th-century America from fighting over which one would be the state church (and have preferential access to resources, and be able to impose religious qualifications on government officials, etc.) by having there not be a state church.
(That’s what the Establishment Clause was supposed to be about. Everyone knows the word ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’, but how many people know what it means? “Disestablishment” just means “making there not be a state church anymore”. But not many people realize that the word ‘establishment’ refers to a *state church*, so they end up thinking that the First Amendment provides for ‘separation of church and state’ — and sure, that phrase did get brought into case law out of one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters, but that’s emanations-and-penumbras shit and it could’ve gone differently.)
Anyway, you can’t do that when neutrality isn’t possible, which is the case with gay marriage. There is no possibility of compromise: either one side secedes or one wins and one loses. Those are the only two options. And everyone knows at this point that a victory for gay marriage won’t just mean it’ll be possible for gay marriages to happen: it will also mean that opponents of it will be legally forced to provide cakes, flowers, etc. to gay marriages no matter what — and even to perform them. Because nondiscrimination.
(I forget what the relevant case law is, but if the compelling state interest stuff still applies, then it’ll be considered constitutional, because everyone thinks nondiscrimination is a compelling state interest. Seems like a pretty odd thing for it to take interest in, but I guess if you view government as a popular institution designed to solve anything that looks vaguely Moloch-like [and if it turns out not to be Moloch at all, but instead something that arises naturally from local knowledge, well, if it’s not going away that means permanent employment for bureaucrats] instead of the stationary bandits that preserve order by fighting off all the other bandits, well… and yes, I do mean “instead of”. The inner cities have not always been inner cities. And over in Britain, there have been a lot of Rotherhams.)
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Umm. The first amendment doesn’t just prohibit the establishment of a state church. It prohibits any “law respecting an establishment of religion.”
It’s the difference between “you may not build a pillow fort” versus “you may not engage in any construction related to the creation of a pillow fort.”
So no putting up three couch cushions and claiming that it isn’t a fort because one side isn’t enclosed.
The extra verbiage is there explicitly for the purpose of nullifying your argument- you don’t get to kinda sorta halfway do establishment of religion type stuff, then protest that you didn’t technically establish a religion. In other words, “separation of church and state.”
It’s worth remembering that the phrase “separation of church and state” is literally from a letter by Thomas Jefferson on which he is literally explaining his view on what the establishment clause means. Now that doesn’t make it automatically authoritative- Jefferson doesn’t own the Constitution and all that- but given that it is a direct interpretation of the literal grammar of the clause, it does mean that people pushing this “oh, that’s just penumbras and emanations” line can take their ignorance and shove it.
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Robert Bork:
(source)
Now, “some supporters of the amendment wanted…” is no argument by itself, but it at least implies that not everyone saw things the way Thomas Jefferson (who surely had at least as much of his own agenda as Bork did) saw them.
(Of course, applying this stuff to the state level depends on the doctrine of incorporation, which is its own can of worms — either it’s not actually in there, which means something went wrong, or it is, which means something went wrong. If it’s not justified, the Court created something without justification that fundamentally changed the structure of the American government; if it is justified, the Fourteenth Amendment, imposed at gunpoint on conquered territories, fundamentally changed the structure of an American government. Either it’s an empire or it’s an empire — and this country is too damned large to be an empire. But some people think the whole world isn’t too large to be an empire, so.)
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So your conceding that separation of church and state is a plausible reading of the basic grammar of the text, and that your “penumbras” bullshit was in fact bullshit?
That’s all I’m after here. Thank you. I expect you will cease to use this argument in the future.
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And everyone knows at this point that a victory for gay marriage won’t just mean it’ll be possible for gay marriages to happen: it will also mean that opponents of it will be legally forced to provide cakes, flowers, etc. to gay marriages no matter what — and even to perform them. Because nondiscrimination.
And this, as a liberal who knows the meaning of liberty, is one of the many things that makes me incredibly angry about the direction that so-called liberalism has gone in this country and in this age.
I’m for marriage equality, and also for government officials being compelled to provide government services in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Corporations too—they’re the state’s creatures, and therefore rightfully its slaves.
But the fundamental idea at the heart of real liberalism is that a human being is no one’s creature but their own—and possibly God’s (or the gods’, as the case may be), but who can answer for a human soul save its possessor?—and that neither the state nor any church has any right to give orders to a freeborn citizen, as to whom they will or will not buy from, as to whom they will or will not sell to.
Mill is spinning in his grave.
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I’m conceding no such thing. I don’t care what the words mean in 2015, and I don’t care what one radical who wasn’t even in the country when the Constitution was written thought they meant. If you were actually interested in making an argument, you’d be making the case that the phrase “respecting the establishment of religion” means what you want it to mean, rather than “related to the creation of a state church”. (And also the case that it can legitimately be incorporated.)
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Gee, when you start by arguing “X is an implausible read” I say “X is plausible because Y” and you respond “But Z is also plausible,” I dunno, kinda reads like a concession.
I’ve made the point. It’s literally a grammatical read. Current Supreme Court precedent agrees that it is a grammatical read. The first recorded instance of someone concluding that it was a grammatical read comes from a founding father who wasn’t exactly a bumpkin from the hills when it came to drafting constitutional text. Indeed, I do believe he had something to do with it at one point. This may not necessarily be the only possible read of the statute, but the fact that “respecting an establishment” plausibly means “related to establishing” rather than “literally establishing” isn’t legal chicanery, it’s English language literacy.
There is no further case to be made. Whether you accept it is a litmus test for your own credibility on the issue.
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Now you’re just trolling. And “legal chicanery” has everything to do with a legal document. Do you really believe that Thomas Jefferson’s letter is the only piece of evidence for how that part of the Constitution would have been commonly read at the time? I would expect the creation of the Bill of Rights to be a major news event — they had newspapers and columnists back then; they didn’t just bang on logs and chuck spears at mammoths all day.
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I think fiction can impact people without rising to the level of causing them to commit rape. Committing rape is a big bright line that most people understand, but there’s not such a big bright line about engaging in controlling/manipulative/abusive behaviors that pressure a person into having or continuing to have sex with you.
Sort of like how video games don’t increase violence, but they can increase aggression. If you already have a social license to do something, fiction can put you in a frame of mind where you think it’s okay to do that thing more by making it seem normal. Overcoming a mental barrier against a serious crime is something else.
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For all the fuss about 50 Shades, all you really have is perfectly distilled adolescent fantasizing. An author who did things like worldbuild or establish deeper backstories for her characters wouldn’t be tapping that same vein of raw teenaged emotion. And for all the shit the series gets, I haven’t met a mocker who wasn’t into something equally shallow and embarrassing at some point in their lives.
If you want to go on interesting tangents, you can ask why Christian Grey seems to be so archetypal. Or how real people can fulfill their fantasies with other real people instead of grossly unrealistic archetypes. (And how those prospective partners should advertise themselves without becoming deeply unhealthy.) But simple mockery misses the fact that there’s a ton of food for thought here.
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It seems to me that a sort of disturbingly large of number of non feminists are also confused about the fact that Fifty Shades is fiction. Back when it came out, there was a rash of think pieces about how its popularity showed that all women were submissive, or really want to resign their office jobs and attend their husbands dressed only in seran wrap, or whatever. With the advent of the movie, you still occasionally see ads, aimed, presumably, at men, with the tag line “This Valentine’s Day, surprise her with what she really wants!” and, like, a Fifty Shades themed erotic something or other kit. Because if your girlfriend like Fifty Shades, surprise BDSM is totally on the menu! And all of these things were presumably approved by editors and marketers and the like.
I’m sure most people who read Fifty Shades know quite well that it’s fiction. But that doesn’t stop rather a lot of people from acting as if it isn’t. I really don’t think that feminists created this problem.
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I blame the literary critics.
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“I really don’t think that feminists created this problem.”
They didn’t, but they did craft an entire ideology and theoretical structure around ignoring the effect of the audience’s awareness of context when criticizing media. Cultivation theory as applied to genre fiction, objectification as applied to imaginary people rather than real life people, a willingness to argue via flawed cumulative case argument rather than specific argument so that weak examples are propped up by stronger ones, etc. The general effect is to insist that no matter how many prophylactic effects exist between the audience and whatever “problematic message” a work putatively contains, any non-zero effect needs to be acknowledged so we don’t “normalize” something bad. It verges on functional illiteracy, which is frustrating when it comes from actual literary critics.
The NBA didn’t invent basketball either, but we associate them with it for a reason.
I guess you could broaden the blame to the entire socially conscious literary criticism academic movement, but I’m not sure that changes much.
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One nitpick regarding, PTSD, Rape Victims are disproportionately female, and combatants are disproportionately male, and females are more susceptible to PTSD than males. Not sure how would this affect the statistics.
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Addendum, I’m not sure why I capitalized “rape victims”, pay it no mind.
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What do you mean by women being more susceptible to ptsd? What is your evidence for this?
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http://www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/sex-differences-in-trauma-and-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-a-quantitative-review-of-25-years-of-research/r/a1CG0000000GaL2MAK
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@Ann: But then there’s this (from the study you linked): Females were more likely than males to report experience of child sexual abuse or adult sexual assault, but no more likely to exhibit PTSD in response to these events. Males were more likely than females to report experience of accidents, non-sexual assault, witnessing death or injury, disaster or fire, and combat or war, but females exhibited greater PTSD in response to these events.
So, structurally, it’s not that women are disproportionately traumatized by rape, it’s that men are disproportionately untraumatized by awful things that aren’t rape.
I wonder if this is a positive effect of masculine socialization in favor of “toughness” in the face of the sort of threats that men are stereotypically likely to face. Maybe “man up,” for all its flaws, has a real up side?
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*facepalms*
I’d hoped this guy was less well-known than it seems he is. There’s no chance of you calling him fhgwgads, is there?
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Come on. Fhgwgads?
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Everybody: to the limit.
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I propose we use his Rot13 name, “Jneera Sneeryy.”
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@wireheadwannabe: That’s surprisingly pronounceable for a rot13 name (especially if you go French and pronounce the initial “J” as “zh” (i.e. the middle consonant in “pleasure”).
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If I leave a loaf of bread on a table outside and you take it then you’re a thief. If I leave a load of bread on a table outside next to a sign that says “$1.50” I might not want you to take the bread, but if you left a dollar fifty and took it then it would be hard for me to complain too much – no explicit consent to the transaction was given but your actions match established conventions.
As I understand it, Farrell was making an argument about implicit communication. It’s like whenever sexual consent arises everybody acts as if conversation was strictly literal which would be simpler and less confusing for me but frustratingly is not. This makes the point about force feeding cakes somewhat misleading because there is no convention around that kind of sex.
“Theft by social custom” seems like a pretty fair description of what can, for some people, result in a fairly substantial loss of money – if a Persian shopkeeper tells you he can’t accept your money because of his civility customs and you walk out without paying that’s a pretty dickish thing to do there Literalist Lad. The section you quoted at least didn’t seem to be putting that in competition with rape, just pointing out that the incentive structure is all kinds of messed up.
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I realize that it’s just an analogy, but I think your analogy is flawed: the convention of price tags still requires that you go through a sale or checkout process, so that taxes and such can be figured.
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Out in the countryside people will often just leave produce out just off a road with a sign and a jar to put the money in.
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Really sorry if this made anyone feel shitty.
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And in reality, most adults do understand what’s actually being communicated and will adjust accordingly.
The question is how to handle people who misstep, whether that’s due to age, inexperience, or awkwardness. Most of the debate on the subject is about which side to err on, filtered through hardcore partisans as gender issues tend to be.
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…It is appropriate to be much, much more cautious about situations where you might end up raping someone than about situations where you might end up stealing.
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Seems to me he’s just using the “rape as a felt sense” definition.
That is, if a person is “raped” in a way that they would want to happen, by a person who correctly believed that they wanted it to happen, then they were not raped; and if a person “consents” to sex they didn’t want to have that makes them feel awful, with somebody who knows this, then they basically were raped.
This seems to make sense from a purely theoretical perspective, since the literal words “no” and “yes” are just mouth-noises we can use to communicate things to each other, and have no ontologically basic moral status.
Personally, I really don’t think that means it’s ok to “risk it” in the situation described, and I agree with your saying we should punish such people by not having sex with them.
But he does have a point that many men are legitimately afraid that they might accidentally rape someone, because they don’t know how to do consent properly and feel it would be incredibly low-status and demeaning to demand explicit verbal consent from their partners.
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Or of escalating in the Soviet spy game at all.
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This is why I think consent-as-a-felt-sense is terrible for perpetrator-side ethics. People should not be able to get out of having committed sexual assault via moral luck. (And conversely if you have very bad moral luck– I don’t want to use intoxication analogies, those are complicated, but maybe your partner had a delusion that you would kill him unless he appeared enthusiastic in response to you initiating sex– I don’t think you have any guilt.)
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Unfortunately consent-as-a-felt-sense seems to be the prevailing standard and decades of “no means no” and now “affirmative consent” advocacy seems unlikely to change it. “affirmative consent” might be a great equilibrium but it seems the gradient from “felt sense” to there is too steep, and the territory in between is atrocious. I think a more stable equilibrium, than affirmative consent is double responsibility: If there’s any doubt in anyone’s minds about if an assault took place, then everyone is at fault. Every participant is 100% responsible both for obtaining consent AND for making their own consent or lack thereof explicit.
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Well, you have to remember that it goes
1. Consent as felt sense
2. Alleged perpetrator’s acts and/or knowledge re consent as felt sense
3. With presumption that, in the absence of force or coercion, the alleged victim is capable of expressing his or her views re consent.
So there’s very little moral luck involved in this framework.
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Patrick: That sounds like a basically good framework to me, but I wouldn’t say “you have to remember that it goes” when that is not necessarily what everyone is pushing! If that’s what you want, that’s the sort of thing you’re going to have to say explicitly.
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I’ve registered confusion about this before, but I’ll do it again: is initiator/initiatee really that gendered? That’s the standard interpretation of the social role, but women have all sorts of ways to signal interest, a few of which are actually possible to pick up on — which is something that *even PUAs* agree with, what with their thing about how you should keep an eye out at the bar/club/whatever for women looking at you from across the room — and at least in the culture I’m familiar with, men who act generally desirable will be tall-poppied down to low status.
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In my experience, it’s extremely gendered.
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“undesirable women are literally being constantly, silently rejected by every man they interact with.”
Then they might try losing all that passivity, mightn’t they? “Faint heart never won a fair lady” works the other direction too. I mean, do they think this passivity is feminine somehow? That’s a good example of toxic femininity then.
And by the way, if undesirable women are constantly being rejected, isn’t the same true of men in general, whom women reject constantly simply by conforming to the dating script and traditional gender roles? Well, so what if they do? The men they are “rejecting” are not the center of the universe – if they don’t like those roles, that’s their call, and what they do about is their call too.
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In some circumstances there’s fairly considerable social pressure on women not to initiate, and many women have internalized socialization such that the thought of initiating literally doesn’t occur to them. Other than that, yes, I agree that for many people switching from the initiatee role to the initiator role will help.
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“In some circumstances there’s fairly considerable social pressure on women not to initiate, ”
Absolutely. At one time, in a place far away, there was strong social pressure to bind little girls’ feet. Cultures can change, but that change requires rebellion.
“and many women have internalized socialization such that the thought of initiating literally doesn’t occur to them.”
This is what I am calling toxic femininity. It’s s type of emotional foot bindng.
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Yes, the entire notion that active and passive rejection are somehow equal does not comport with real life. People are being “passively rejected” every second of their lives, while some people agonize for years over the mere prospect of a singular case of active rejection (such as the writer who has volumes written on his laptop but has never submitted anything for publication).
Many people have been actively rejected a few too many times and sadly stop trying altogether. In other words, resigning themselves to being “constantly, silently rejected” by every man/woman they see for the rest of their lives. This doesn’t make sense if the two were actually identical in painfulness.
When people who were passive for an extended period of time get a pep talk that boosts their confidence, and then they try to be active again, we talk of them “steeling” themselves, building themselves up, putting on “armor”. If passive rejection were just as painful, shouldn’t they have had just as much “steel” and “armor” already?
Off the top of my head examples of which I could add several more, but all of which is to say that I think we all know that active rejection is harder to deal with than passive rejection. It’s embedded in our language, and our emotions, and no one has any problem admitting it in other areas of life.
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I mean, my perspective here is shaped by the fact that the initiatee role was soul-destroyingly awful and that when I switched over to the initiator role– even when I got rejected– was tremendously more empowering. Short-term more painful, yes, but then, thank God, it was over.
Perhaps my perspective is uncommon, but I still exist.
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You know, I think when the OP said,
“I am not saying ‘being an initiatee is better than being an initiator!’ I am saying that…”
…ze meant to say it the other way around. Which perhaps should have been obvious from context, but I read the whole post quickly and got the initial flash wrong impression.
I do think what I wrote still applies, but I don’t think I would have compelled to reply on this had I had the proper interpretation the first time around.
Regardless in any case, I think the argument from the men’s end is that selling is harder than buying (a crude analogy, but the best one for our purposes), and that the situation is not quite so symmetrical as the OP presents it. Of course the pain of undesirable people of all stripes is important, though, and we should all be more compassionate and understanding.
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I think it’s also important to recognize that “social pressure on women not to initiate” includes a lot of the nastier rejections that men are worried about receiving (although I think it might vary a bit more with age, at least in some places). Like, as a teenager, my experience was that girls who tried to initiate thing with boys they liked were pretty likely to get insulted or even bullied by other people for asking. Personally, when I was younger, my nerves about asking guys out were much less “Oh, I’m sad he doesn’t notice me” and much more, “I’m afraid that if I’m too direct he’ll insult me and then tell all his friends that I’m gross, possibly after encouraging them to harass me.” And, like, being willing and eager to ask people out, but convinced that the act of asking will make you undesirable…sucks, like, a lot.
At least where I live, though, this does seem to get better for women with age. Guys I ask out now usually express, at most, mild surprise that I’m direct about it…though I’m not sure that that would be true everywhere.
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Cross-posted.
My perspective from my own life is that if you’re desirable it’s better to be an initiator, and if you’re not it’s better to be an initiatee. I think this is true for within the range of the most common experiences; for people whose experiences are at the far left tail, I won’t presume to make any sort of generalization, because at that point it’s like saying, what’s worse, being stabbed in the gut with a knife or being clubbed in the head by a baseball bat; the very question is pretty inane.
The times when I actually had fun initiating was when I was one of the higher-status people. Then you can reap the full benefits of the fact that you can choose who to interact with when you’re the initiator. Plus nothing succeeds like success and there’s the whole giddy thrill of it.
When I was down, both in terms of mood and how the other people in the room saw me as relative to them, I’d much rather have been the initiatee. It’s like a slow motion roller coaster crash trying to be an initiator in this situation.
I just have to heartily laugh in my head when I hear certain people insist that a man’s attractiveness is determined only by his looks; status doesn’t exist, confidence is overrated, women don’t care about personality! (Mostly said out of spite by people who wrongly accept that women’s attractiveness is determined at birth and they don’t want men to have an “out” that women don’t.) I assure you I’m not a shapeshifter and that I looked the same during my full breadth of experiences. The difference in how people react to you sometimes based on such factors is like night and day. It’s something you really can’t believe until you’ve experienced it, and due to the gendering of our society I don’t really think cis, heteronormative women who choose to initiate sometimes can fully grasp it; they have fallbacks we don’t have, their worth as a member of their gender isn’t on the line. The feeling that the difference between life seeming so easy and feeling as down as you ever have are like two barely perceptible rungs on an unseen ladder, once you’ve experienced both sides.
But now I kind of forget where I was even going with this tangent. Anyways, yeah the above are all generalizations based on my experiences and I’m not trying to deny anyone else’s.
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@Bem: That sounds pretty much like what teenage guys fear when expressing interest in a girl too.
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JE- Yeah, that’s kind of my point. I mean, I think it’s likely that there’s some variation (e.g. girls who feel this way tend to be told that they should wait for boys to ask them, boys who feel this way tend to be told that they should speak up), but whenever people are discussing the anxiety guys feel over asking girls out, it sounds…remarkably similar to how I felt at sixteen.
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Flirting is a dance where both parties play an active role.
In fact, there is this one strangely difficult thing that some women face. It goes like this (in this, “you” refers to a woman):
1. You like him.
2. You get to flirting, but he turns super awkward
3. And maybe that means he likes you, right?
4. But maybe not, and *you also are socially awkward*, so you send lousy signals
5. So he gets scared and pulls away, which makes you sad, but at the same time your stress level drops
6. But on the other hand, there is this other guy who is real forward and hits on you hard
7. And you send the same weird, awkward signals to him, but he carries on
8. In fact, he carries on with perfect confidence and a great big smile
So what to do?
The problem is, you are sending really awkward signals, cuz you are a shy, weird girl.
So the only guy you have kinda a chance with is the guy who is either 1) so perfectly socially calibrated that he can distinguish your actually-eager awkwardness from your go-away-creep awkwardness, or else 2) the guy who does not care.
Guy #1 is sadly quite rare and probably dating a girl prettier than you. Guy #2 is a shitty boyfriend most of the time (when he isn’t something much worse).
Anyway, the solution is obvious: be less awkward.
Which is TOTALLY EASY TO DO!
Right?
Farrel says women are more mature, so I guess it all falls to us. Since, you know, nerdy men are super receptive to the “be less awkward” message when they hear it.
*sigh*
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Yeah, that’s a problem. One solution I’ve seen that works (at least on me, but if I look at the last few years of my life I see that the set of people I’ve been attracted to is exactly identical to the set of people who have signaled attraction to me that I could pick up on) is to just go “I hear you like borscht. I am a Soviet spy.” — but there are very few people who can get away with that.
I’m not sure if there’s advice here other than “be less awkward”. I don’t know what percentage of women can get away with dropping guess culture entirely and pulling something along the lines of “I can’t tell what you’re signaling but here’s what I’m intending to signal, and if it’s not reciprocated then that’s okay and I’ll stop, but if there is reciprocation then it would be unfortunate for it to go unacknowledged because of guess-culture difficulties” — solving the Soviet spy problem by trying to lower the stakes to the point where the Soviet spy analogy doesn’t even apply — but at least the obvious reasons why men could never get away with that aren’t present as far as I know.
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On the ask/guess culture thing, I kinda shift between the two. And I’ll flatly, the discourse around these things seems painfully naïve: that ask culture is entirely virtuous and guess culture is the source of all things bad.
Bah to that!
Guess culture is terrific fun. Dancing close and *not being sure* is fun. A few touches on the arm and then the lower back, as you get closer or closer, and then closer, bodies touching, and then you lift her atop the speaker cabinet, no words; you can’t hear anything anyhow over the din, and then you draw close and kisses follow — these things are pretty amazing. You don’t even know her name.
Or that one time I stepped into a single-occupancy restroom at a club, and all of a sudden as I closed the door, bam! The door flies open and someone forces their way into the narrow space and shoves me against the wall and then, with their free arm, slams the door shut behind us. Their weight is against me. They kiss me — yay that was amazing!
Of course, it was MY GIRLFRIEND who did that. She guessed I would like it. She was correct.
Thing is, to play this game you need serious social calibration, cuz the cost of a mistake is high. And I don’t mean only the costs that come from EVEEEEL FEMINISTS and their terrible rules; I mean the harm that made those rules necessary.
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Veronica: So, this seems to basically align exactly with my usual point — that therefore said rules are, in fact, overbroad. Either that, or we have to say “Well, what your girlfriend did worked out, but we have to say that she still shouldn’t have done so.” Both are plausible! Note that I am not making any simplicity claim. Nor am I requiring that one can get by with rules which can be applied without substantial social calibration to distinguish cases. But one should at least be able to make statements that are correct, if only by adding sufficient qualifications.
…more on this later, probably…
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@nydwracu: “I hear you like borscht. I am a Soviet spy.”
Although I’ve never heard of the Soviet spy problem as such (and googling does not seem to help), I think I’ve picked up enough implications to understand what you mean.
That being said, I’m kinda tempted to say “fuck it,” and try using that literal statement as a pickup line. I expect the yield in dates would be low, but the yield in self-amusement would be high. And, of course, any woman who does respond favorably to that line . . .
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Osberend: “Soviet spy game” comes from Scott’s 4th meditation.
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You have every right to criticize Warren Farrell for his failings (and he certainly has his failings). But I don’t think it’s fair to reduce him to his worst either. And I don’t think it’s entirely fair to criticize the men’s rights movement for not spending enough time talking about women’s issues. Isn’t talking about women’s issues what feminism is for?
Couple nit-picks:
Did Warren Farrell actually write or say that? I get a broad sense from him that he intends his works to read alongside feminist ones, not in place of them. Mostly because he seems in favor of feminism and feminist initiatives when asked about them.
I don’t think this is a pragmatic solution, as you’re trying to fight Azathoth head-on by asking people to avoid sex they want, and sex drive is the kind of thing that Azathoth would encode pretty strongly. Given that failure of this strategy results in sexual assault and/or rape, I’d suspect it easier and safer to bootstrap affirmative consent from the other side: start with getting people say what they mean and mean what they say, and then get everyone switch over to more stringent consent requirements.
The intermediate state seems similarly beneficial too: getting 10% of people to stop sending mixed messages seems about as effective as getting 10% of people to stop responding to mixed messages. Insofar as it will reduce, approximately, 10% of instances of mixed-messages-leading-to-sexual-assault.
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I have trouble seeing the example Farrell gives as being a mixed message, though. On a certain level, sure, there are probably people who say they don’t want to have sex when they do, but “I don’t want to have sex but I do want to keep kissing you” seems like a completely coherent thing to want, from my point of view.
Farrell, though, a) acts as if this is somehow terribly confusing, and no one could ever really mean this, and b) seems to frame the reasons he that Susan might say no (she wants to get to know Kyle better, she’s afraid he’ll judge her if they have sex on the first date, she’s religious, etc) in a way that suggests she’s somehow being deceptive and really does want to have sex, but is making Kyle jump through hoops to get there. Whereas to me they all seem like…well, reasons a person might actually want to not have sex.
So, sure, encourage people to say what they mean. But sometimes what people mean really is “I’m attracted to you, but I don’t want to have sex yet.”
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Intimate physical contact is, as far as I know, a non-verbal form of consent. If you want to kiss but not consent to more (which is perfectly reasonable), you should explicitly state that to avoid confusion.
From what I recall about those passages, he cites studies showing that a non-trivial percentage of women say no when they mean yes. It’s not exactly fair to assert that the example he gives is unambiguous non-consent in light of such evidence.
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“Intimate physical contact is, as far as I know, a non-verbal form of consent.”
Okay, this is a really broad statement. It is possible to give non-verbal consent, but kissing, last time I checked, does not imply consent to sex, minus other forms of expressed consent. And while Ozy hasn’t quoted the passage with Susan’s refusal and I don’t have a copy of the book, pausing kissing, saying, “FYI I don’t want to have sex tonight,” and then continuing to kiss seems to communicate your preferences pretty clearly!
And yeah, as I think I said above, there are probably some people who say no when they mean yes. But there are also people who say no when they mean, “Not yet,” (and thus “no”), and I really dislike Farrell’s assumption that someone who says no but still acts like they’re into you must not “really” mean it.
I also, looking back at your original post, think that you’re rather discounting the desire of the people who say no when they mean yes to get laid. If I understand your argument, you’re saying that the initiators can’t reasonably be expected to refuse sex with people who say no but act like they’re into them (a category which includes plenty of people who are totally serious about that “no”), and so we need to get people to say what they mean first. But, a) doing that isn’t going to eliminate people who really do just want to kiss, and b) how, exactly? Because taking the no at face value seems to motivate the people who won’t say what they mean to start doing so if they want to get laid. And I’m really unsure what other incentive you’re imagining would replace this.
Back when I was in high school, I remember in sex ed all the girls got told that if they were kissing a boy and they didn’t want to have sex, they needed to not just say no, but get up and leave, because anything else was sending mixed messages. I think that this is a bad way to handle consent.
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The passage I quoted is all the information we have about Susan’s refusal of consent, along with a later statement that Kyle thought his behavior was okay until he went to a campus date rape meeting. This implies to me that she’s refusing consent verbally.
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In other words, focusing solely on getting people to say what they mean, without also enforcing affirmative consent standards, seems to make it really easy for the people who say no but don’t mean to go on doing exactly that and still get laid, while making life significantly harder for the people who are, actually, saying what they want.
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Well, about nonverbal consent and all that, here’s the issue.
It’s not about nonrecognition; it’s about social scripts. The social script says that’s how sex works, and the social script says that’s how the lead-up to sex works — but not quite, since the way it actually works is that both people escalate, and one person can stop escalation by just not escalating — but not quite, since the woman may not want to signal [being the sort of person to take the initiative sexually / having a high sex drive and acting accordingly / etc.], and she’s completely justified in this if she’s looking to keep the man around for a long-term relationship or if she’s in a culture where that sort of thing would be ~dishonorable to her — and you can’t get around that by saying those cultures shouldn’t exist, because the facts on the ground are that they do.
And you can’t just “encourage people to say what they mean” except in the local subculture, because if that were at all a workable solution, cultural scripts where people don’t just say what they mean wouldn’t have arisen in the first place — and those are the norm.
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You’re going to make life difficult for a bunch of people no matter what you choose. If you default ambiguous messages to no, anyone who sends mixed signals but means yes gets left out. If you default to yes on mixed signals, anyone who sends mixed signals but means no suffers. And people can already go on doing what they want, by just ignoring affirmative consent in general.
By focusing on the male side*, you’re asking men to avoid opportunities for sex they want to have because their partner is too ambiguous. Focusing on the female side, I don’t see how getting women to unambiguously consent to sex they want is going to result in them having more sex than they want; nor do I see how unambiguously denying consent when they don’t want sex is going to result in them having less than they want. The intermediate state is more palatable to the participants.
And somehow, I don’t feel that people who will ignore clear refusal of consent under the current norms are going to behave any better under an affirmative consent standard.
*Due to the kyriarchy, the dating scripts are heavily gendered, so I’m naming these by the gender lines in the standard model. Strictly speaking all this holds true regardless of gender of either participant (in either role): mixed messages are bad, and it’s easier to fight the consequences by getting people to speak clearly than by getting them to avoid sex.
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More from the text:
” had learned to wait until marriage for sex, but in reality both had two sexual partners….(Susan initially admitted to only one; the other one she had been sexual with “too quickly” and the “relationship” quickly evaporated.)”
Further on:
“With the guy in high school. Susan had seen that he made a commitment only when he felt that the value of intimacy with her exceeded the value of sex with a variety of beautiful women…. that also created Susan’s dilemma. The guy she had sex with “too quickly” never got to really appreciate her depth. She feared that if she and Kyle were sexual too quickly… he might just continue pursuing his primary fantasy of a variety of attractive women. She felt it was her job to slow things down so he could discover that she could in fact fulfill his primary need for intimacy.
While Susan intuited this, Kyle and her second date had been great, and after a few drinks, and she got into the heat of kissing Kyle, her resolve weakened.”
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@ InferentialDistance
Yes, because the worst-case outcome here is rape, which seems significantly worse than even two people not getting laid.
Also, it makes more sense to “punish” the people who say what they don’t mean with sexual rejection, than to “punish” those who do say what they mean with rape. Reinforce correct behaviour and punish incorrect behavior, not vice versa!
I’d like to know what exactly you mean by “clear refusal”, because apparently “No” isn’t clear enough. (In my experience, trying to gouge their eyes out works, but that’s not really my idea of good communication.)
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Except you don’t have a magical button to make people obey affirmative consent standards. If you’re advocating behavior that people refuse to adopt because it’s unpleaseant (i.e. getting laid less), then you’re failing at your goal. My point is that the other side of the equation suffers less for adopting the affirmative consent standard, and thus is more likely to do so. And once they have adopted it, the first side finds it significantly less unpleasant to also adopt it.
The obsession with punishment is exactly the problem. The goal is to get people acting in accord with affirmative consent norms. The first step is advocating that behavior, in college campus orientation sessions for example. People are significantly more likely to adopt advocated behavior that has smaller costs for them.
But if your goal is to just punish men for doing what society tells them, sure we can focus on punishment.
An emphatic “no” in the absence of conflicting messages (or immediate termination of conflicting messages).
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@ InferentialDistance
Exactly. And similarly, there is no way to make literally everyone say what they mean and mean what they say 100% percent of the time.
Thus, when you say, “start with getting people say what they mean and mean what they say, and then get everyone switch over to more stringent consent requirements” (emphasis mine), I hear that we should postpone teaching people to respect non-consent until the end of time.
Of course we should teach everyone to communicate consent clearly. People who spring dubious consent play on their partners without prior negotiation are wrong. They should stop. But — those who are already communicating clearly should not pay for someone else’s bad behaviour. Disrespecting their boundaries helps no one in the long run.
Ozy and I are just saying that there is something each of us can do right now, before everyone is properly educated. As individuals, you and I can choose who to have sex with, and what to do when we hear a “no”. And and we can use that choice to change the world a little in the direction we want.
Sure, in the aggregate, Azathoth blah blah blah. But individually, as a person, I have a choice.
Or, look at it from another angle: every time you (without prior negotiation) interpret “no” as something else, you are teaching the other person that their expressed preferences don’t matter. You are reinforcing the idea that their goal should be finding The One whose every sexual desire magically coincides with theirs, because communication is useless anyway.
Well, apparently what counts as “conflicting messages” is controversial.
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Inferential Distance:
“My point is that the other side of the equation suffers less for adopting the affirmative consent standard, and thus is more likely to do so.”
Well, no. In your projection, the people who have already adopted affirmative consent standards (“I want to kiss you, but not to have sex”) suffer, while the people who haven’t (“I won’t say that I want to have sex even though I do”) have no incentive to change their behavior.
In an earlier comment, you say that if someone who only wants to kiss can express that by being extra clear, but you haven’t actually left them any way to do this if the only way to signal a “true” no is “an emphatic “no” in the absence of conflicting messages (or immediate termination of conflicting messages).” So, basically, from what I understand of your argument, “No, no, no, and also I’m leaving now.”
This doesn’t actually encourage people to be clear about what they mean. It encourages people who are even slightly unsure about whether they want to have sex to end all sexual activity immediately, lest their partners mistake their uncertainty for consent and rape them.
I mean, you act as if Nita is unfairly punishing people, but you scenario also punishes people, however hard you try to describe it in value-neutral terms! And it punishes the people who are doing what you supposedly want them to do, by forcing them to either risk rape, which they will apparently be held responsible for, or not engage in sexual activity at all. Why on earth do you think this is desirable?
In reality, push for affirmative consent has to come at the problem from both sides to have any effect on the problem. But emphasizing the initiator side at least has the effect of also putting social pressure on the initiatee to be clear about their desires, while emphasizing that the initiated must be clear while also saying that it’s acceptable for the initiator not to take the initiate’s stated desires at face value actually encourages people not to say what they want.
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@Nita
And my point still remains: people saying what they mean is less costly, so more people are likely to comply. Asking Susan to speak clearly is more likely get Susan to speak clearly than asking Kyle to turn down physical intimacy when Susan is sending conflicting messages is to get Kyle to actually turn down physical intimacy when Susan is sending conflicting messages.
And, you know, it’s interesting that your solution to Susan behaving poorly is for Kyle to pick up the slack. What was it Farrell said? “Kyle felt that the date rape seminars focused all the responsibility on him.”
Nah. What I mean is that we start by advocating for better communication and better responses to ambiguous communication, but don’t ratify laws (or college policies) punishing failure to adhere to the advocated behavior for a few years (5-10). I don’t like how Yes Means Yes goes straight for punishment, and I don’t like how that punishment is focused on only half of the equation.
The passage in question (thanks roe):
So, I don’t know, “that’s enough [kissing] for this evening” followed by more kissing seems pretty conflicted to me. You know what “clear refusal” would be to me in that situation? “That’s enough for this evening” followed by no more kissing for the rest of the evening.
I mean, it seems a little strange that Susan saying “no more kissing” but then kissing Kyle makes Kyle guilty of sexual assault. I recall something about the affirmative consent movement not being against non-verbal consent, but if Susan actively participating in the act isn’t non-verbal consent to the act, what the hell is? Sign-language?
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It’s like rejecting an unfair offer in an ultimatum game — you don’t get the money / fun you could have had, but you get to teach the other person a lesson about fairness / communication. I don’t think this strategy is ethically mandatory, but it does have the nice bonus feature of preventing rape-by-misunderstanding.
OK, that’s reasonable. But in this conversation, it seems that even No Means No is being questioned, and that’s a pretty old idea, right?
I guess I would say, “Hey, I thought you said you’ve had enough?” — in a playful tone, to make it less like a rebuke. Generally, asking for clarification usually helps when I’m confused. What makes this approach unacceptable in a sexual situation?
Sure, I count actively kissing someone as consent to being kissed by them. I just thought you were saying that kissing is consent to sex, because I understood Kyle’s musings in Ozy’s second quote as thoughts about the penis-in-vagina part of sex, not about kissing.
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@InferentialDistance: Intimate physical contact is, as far as I know, a non-verbal form of consent.
Sure, to that contact. And possibly to the direct extension of that contact, e.g. if you’re actively guiding a dude’s penis directly toward one of your orifices and didn’t actually state that you just want to dry hump, it’s pretty reasonable for him to take that as consent to penetration of the orifice in question. But that’s a very different matter from taking passionate kissing as implied consent to intercourse.
@bem: Back when I was in high school, I remember in sex ed all the girls got told that if they were kissing a boy and they didn’t want to have sex, they needed to not just say no, but get up and leave, because anything else was sending mixed messages. I think that this is a bad way to handle consent.
*thumbs up*
@nydwracu: but not quite, since the woman may not want to signal [being the sort of person to take the initiative sexually / having a high sex drive and acting accordingly / etc.], and she’s completely justified in this if she’s looking to keep the man around for a long-term relationship or if she’s in a culture where that sort of thing would be ~dishonorable to her — and you can’t get around that by saying those cultures shouldn’t exist, because the facts on the ground are that they do.
But you can say “fuck it, this culture is bullshit, and I’m not gonna play along.” Or, as Louis C.K. put it, “What’re you, out of your fucking mind!? You think I’m just gonna rape you on the off chance that hopefully you’re into that shit!?”
The honorable answer to a dictatorless dystopia is simple, albeit risky: Just put down the cattle prod[1].
In the concrete case in question, not only does this avoid the risk of committing rape, it also avoids lowering oneself by indulging in bullshit. If I have the choice to get laid at the cost of having to play along with a head game or not get laid, then I’m not gonna get laid, especially if it means the woman trying to run a head game on me doesn’t get laid either. It’s been a while, and I miss it, but honor is more important.
If you default ambiguous messages to no, anyone who sends mixed signals but means yes gets left out. If you default to yes on mixed signals, anyone who sends mixed signals but means no suffers.
Except that in practice, “ambiguous messages,” when it comes to actual sexual intercourse (as opposed to e.g. social interaction) almost invariably means a verbal no coupled with alleged behavioral signals of yes. Although some maximalists will argue that a verbal yes is invalidated by non-verbal signals of discomfort, that’s not the matter under contention here. Communication by the clearest, most unambiguous, hardest to motivatedly misinterpret, and most legally relevant channel rules the day. If she says “no” to X, don’t go for it unless and until she freely switches to saying “yes” to it.
@Nita: Yes, because the worst-case outcome here is rape, which seems significantly worse than even two people not getting laid.
Also, it makes more sense to “punish” the people who say what they don’t mean with sexual rejection, than to “punish” those who do say what they mean with rape. Reinforce correct behaviour and punish incorrect behavior, not vice versa!
I second this.
(In my experience, trying to gouge their eyes out works, but that’s not really my idea of good communication.)
Agreed. It is, however, an excellent backup plan for dealing with an aggressor who is unwilling to be communicated to.
Ozy and I are just saying that there is something each of us can do right now, before everyone is properly educated. As individuals, you and I can choose who to have sex with, and what to do when we hear a “no”. And and we can use that choice to change the world a little in the direction we want.
Sure, in the aggregate, Azathoth blah blah blah. But individually, as a person, I have a choice. [emphasis added]
I second this.
@bem: I mean, you act as if Nita is unfairly punishing people, but you scenario also punishes people, however hard you try to describe it in value-neutral terms! And it punishes the people who are doing what you supposedly want them to do, by forcing them to either risk rape, which they will apparently be held responsible for, or not engage in sexual activity at all. Why on earth do you think this is desirable?
I second this.
@InferentialDistance: And my point still remains: people saying what they mean is less costly, so more people are likely to comply.
I do actually agree with this part, at least to some extent. And certainly, I think that the fairly ubiquitous feminist taboo against “victim-blaming”—defined as any attempt, no matter how it is framed, to discourage behaviors that put people (especially but not exclusively women) at greater risk of being victimized—is appalling.
Nah. What I mean is that we start by advocating for better communication and better responses to ambiguous communication, but don’t ratify laws (or college policies) punishing failure to adhere to the advocated behavior for a few years (5-10).
I disagree. The “advocated behavior” (as regards what combination of signals constitutes consent, setting aside other policies that YMY advocates sometimes try to bundle in) is obligatory in order to avoiding risking rights-violations right now, and should be treated as such.
I don’t like how Yes Means Yes goes straight for punishment, and I don’t like how that punishment is focused on only half of the equation.
Because half of the equation is engaged in potentially rights-violating action, and the other half is, outside of a few edge cases, not.
Now, when it comes to false reports, including both informal ones (slander!) and ones where the mutually accepted facts plainly do not constitute rape (e.g. the bank window oral case), there I think that vigorous punishment is entirely appropriate. But again, that’s a very different matter from the one under consideration here.
I think you’re a very reasonable individual generally, and I greatly appreciate your (very on point) defense of me in the “Why I’m Not a Reasonable Feminist” thread. But I think that on this particular issue—unless I am misreading you greatly—you are very, very wrong.
[1] And, ideally, take up arms to defend yourself against those who are unwilling to do so. But that’s not really applicable on the initiator side of this particular issue, unless you run with such a rough crowd that failure to get up laid will result in a beating. In which case, you might want to consider taking up arms and with another crowd.
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Oh goddamit, seriously? What did WordPress do!? I have a history of botching my html in inventive ways, but I know that I did not link to that google search, because I didn’t make that google search; I found the video I was trying to link to by searching on Youtube.
Anyway, sorry about that. You can still select text from the stupid overly-long link (that isn’t even to the right thing) for copy-and-paste; you just have to start the click-and-drag a bit to the right or left of it. Meanwhile, the intended link (which should only have covered “as Louis C.K. put it”) is this.
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So, I’m reading this and I’m wondering if there is some miscalibration here. (Not in the sense of “social calibration”, in the sense of “calibrating words against reality”.) Like I get the impression both sides are worried about pretty different things.
Like I get the impression that a bunch of people on the feminist side (this is not the only place I’ve seen this) are worried about a police-like scenario where one person does something that gets misread as a go-ahead and the other person thinks “Aha, consent!” and takes this as a license to use force, or to otherwise begin strongarming the person and disregarding any of the other person’s attempts to indicate that no, they don’t want to do this. And there seems to be a lot of energy put into saying “Don’t do this!” — in a manner that, to anyone not calibrated in that same way, sounds like it’s saying something way more restrictive.
And to me it’s just like… what reasonable, well-meaning person is making that mistake in the first place? I mean, yes, evidently there are people doing that, but I don’t think those are the reasonable, well-meaning people, I think those are the rapists looking for a plausible excuse they can use.
I mean — let’s take something way lower-stakes. Most people do not, I think, believe in explicit consent for hugs (though certainly some do, and with good reasons; and making this work for everyone is a hard problem, but it’s one I’m going to ignore for now). Imagine you hug someone (having perceived “implicit consent”) and they pretty quickly move to break it. You are, presumably, going to let them go; I mean, it’s barely even a question. If instead you continue to hold them while they move to leave… that’s pretty fucked up. Who does that? Why would you do that?
So, I mean, without that possibility, the worst we have to deal with is people wrongly initiating things; and problems caused by that can often be handled by backing off and, if appropriate, apologizing. Now, there are some exceptions here, where things really can go worse, and explicitly ask consent becomes something you should really do[1][2]. But I think there’s maybe less of a problem here than people think. And yes, this requires at least some basic ability to read other people’s positive/negative responses, and this might not suffice for those who can’t; but, oh well, one problem at a time.
And, like — I’m not going to deny the existence of the temptation to initiate something when you know you shouldn’t, or to look for excuses there. But it’s one degree of badness to try something and hope the other person is into it, even when you know you shouldn’t; it’s a whole nother thing to use force and override their negative response. (Or other means of coercion, or guilting or badgering or other forms of strongarming.) The latter is just not something I think most people are going to think of doing in the first place, because, again, what the fuck. And since it’s not a possibility in their mind, uncalibrated admonitions against it sound like they’re ruling out, well, whatever that person does think of as a possibility.
I mean, all the people out there saying not to do this — it’s an important message, if only so that rapists don’t have an excuse to hide behind. But I think a lot of this is just yet another instance of people thinking they disagree more than they actually do, because nobody has bothered to calibrate words against examples.
[1]For instance, well, uh, the obvious example.
[2]Potential disaster number two: Trying to initiate something with someone without first asking, after an earlier “ambiguous no”; this could convey that you don’t care what they say, and you may now have accidentally caused them to feel badgered.[3] I mean, it’s kind of obvious that you shouldn’t do that anyway, but I feel like it’s the sort of thing a not-completely-terrible person might be tempted to do regardless, so it’s worth an explicit warning. And yes that does demonstrate there are potentially disastrous failure modes here that even a not-completely-terrible person could encounter; but my point is that they require considerably more specific situations than a lot of this discussion would suggest.
[3]Although, seriously, timescale can be confusing. A lot of feminist discussion that I’ve seen of this sort of thing seems to assume that it’s always obvious what timescale things apply on, and that isn’t always the case.
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@ Sniffnoy
I agree that there’s been some talking past each other in this thread, including exactly what you describe. Actually, on both sides — “are you saying it’s OK to rape someone if their refusal sounds half-hearted?!”, “are you saying we should send boys to jail for being kissed?!”.
But I don’t think that humanity can be neatly divided into “reasonable, well-meaning people” who will handle any confusion gracefully, and “rapists” who are hopeless anyway.
For instance, let’s take Farrell’s character, Kyle. From the way his thoughts are described, this boy seems profoundly confused about consent. He seems to believe that:
1) only someone “inhuman” could pull away from a kiss
2) if your partner seems conflicted about sex, you should change the music
3) BDSM is incompatible with consent
4) this is somehow exacerbated by college and virginity?
But OK, Kyle is imaginary, and maybe I’m misinterpreting Farrell’s writing. But I have seen actual people on reddit say that once sex has already started, it’s unreasonable to change one’s mind and expect one’s partner to stop immediately.
I don’t think everyone who thinks that way is a “rapist”. I think these people can be persuaded. And sometimes I might mistake someone here for one of them, especially when we’re discussing characters like Kyle.
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@Nita – Another perspective on this: What Farrell is trying to get across with the character “Kyle” is that the totality of the observed evidence – in his personal life, in fiction – of sexual dynamics seems to be incongruent with standards of behaviour being taught viz. consent.
“Kyle” was brought up in a Christian household – he can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing the intricacies of BDSM theory. One of the big disconnects here is Kyle and Susan are totally “average” – they haven’t grown up with progressive ideals about sexuality.
(In an ealier passage, Kyle’s mom criticizes the girls who call him – she says they’re “easy”)
In a sense, Kyle & Susan’s story forms a locus of how two individuals deal with conflicting messages from parents back home (social conservatives) and their new environment – the college institution (progressive).
Right now, my own local gov’t is making consent part of the sex-ed curriculum. We’ll see how that works out.
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roe: “The intricacies of BDSM theory” sounds like you’re talking about, IDK, shibari bondage. “It is not okay to rape people” is not an abtruse, complicated concept that only people in the ingroup can understand.
In a section about how women should take responsibility for giving “mixed signals”, it is reasonable to interpret the example character going “she likes BDSM but doesn’t want to have sex” as a mixed signal. The fact that this is not a mixed signal is relevant. If Farrell didn’t want to convey that message, he should have either explicitly said “people can be into BDSM and not want to have sex when they said they didn’t want to have sex” or not included that example.
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@osberend
My statement about kissing is poorly phrased. To elaborate, I mean that active participation in intimate physical contact is consent to slightly more intimate physical contact, and continuous active participation across increasingly intimate physical contact that starts at consensual kissing induces to consensual sex (given that the initiator escalates intimacy).
To further elaborate, I also believe that non-verbal consent can revoke previous nonconsent. If a person says “no more kissing”, but then actively participates in kissing, they have revoked the previous verbal statement. Consent or nonconsent is determined by the most temporally local act of consent/nonconsent prior to the act in question.
To even further elaborate, the implicit consent of non-verbal physical intimacy for slightly more intimate physical contact can be overridden/removed, but it has to be done so explicitly beforehand. People cannot read minds, and if you want your partner to act on non-standard meanings (which is fine) you have to give them to your partner. Or you could change society so that they’re the new standard, but that seems a lot harder, a lot slower, and highly likely to kill the mood.
I agree that Kyle interpreting poorly is a problem, and that the solution is to get Kyle to interpret better. My disagreement is with the assertion that the correct solution to Susan communicating poorly is to get Kyle interpreting better (which was the part of Ozy’s post I was responding to). I disagree because I don’t like displacing Susan’s responsibility onto Kyle, and that I expect, per unit resource, you are less likely to get Kyle to change his ways than Susan to change hers.
While having the denotational content of verbal communication trump everything else (including connotational content of verbal communication; people can motivatedly misinterpret a “no” as sarcastic if you let connotation in) is a possible interpretation scheme, I’m not persuaded it is the correct one. More importantly, I am near certain it is not the one in use by society at large, and holding initiators to it as a standard is unjust so long as that is the case (unless we really do need lawyers in the bedroom to translate English into legalese). Which is why I advocate changing the social norms first and the laws second, rather than the other way around.
In a less convenient possible world, where punishing the potentially rights-violating actions reduces acts of rights-violation by 20%, and teaching people to communicate clearer reduces acts of rights-violation by 40%, and you only have the resources to pursue one course of action, which do you choose?
I suspect you’d choose the former, because you seem like a fiat justitia ruat caelum kind of person. But not everyone here is, and my arguments here are aimed at those who’d choose the latter.
You have every right to disagree with me, and I don’t hold it against you. The other thing is that my defense of the validity of your arguments is not necessarily agreement on the truthfulness of your premises.
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Nita: OK, now I think we’re getting somewhere interesting! 😀
(3) and (4) I will ignore as being out of my scope, if you don’t mind. My opinions are uninformed enough as it is without trying to bring BDSM into it. 😛
(1) is probably the important one. To me (1) sounds pretty unreasonable, but it is possible that that’s only because of years of feminists beating it into my head that consent can be withdrawn at any time. In which case, well, good for them! And if not, good for them anyway! As much as I complain about them not noticing the actual implications of their overbroad rules, I truly can’t see anything wrong with that one. It’s a message worth spreading, precisely because of the reason you say.
And indeed I think this raises the question of if that’s even enough to deal with (1), because ideally we want to get to “Why would I try to continue kissing this person if they’re pulling away?”[0], not to just “Oh, well I guess you’re within your rights to do that, grumble grumble.” But then I guess that’s a lot of what the notion of “affirmative consent” (in the reasonable sense, not the terrible sense 😛 ) is about! So yeah it’s very possible that I was just demonstrating there how much I’d internalized that, and that there’s way more still to do than I implied.
But while substantially less important, (2) is the interesting one! Because it’s hardly something I’d condemn as evil (absent other considerations), but it certainly seems sleazy and disrespectful. (Not to mention unlikely to work.) Sounds like what Veronica would call the “puzzle box attitude”.
But why is it sleazy? This is where I suspect we might disagree. 🙂 It’s not really a “consent violation” — he’s not trying to override her refusal. Rather he’s trying to change her mind by altering the situation. And we can’t demand that people not attempt to influence each other. And yet something is still wrong with this.
And to my mind what’s wrong with this is that it is disrespecting a decision. Yes, influence below a certain level is within bounds — but only before a decision is made. No, people aren’t actually coherent agents, we’re susceptible to influence and act on whims — but we like to pretend that we are, and part of maintaining that fiction is respecting each other’s decisions, even if they’re based on transient whims rather than fixed desires[1]. You don’t know what the other person’s decision is based on, it might well be based on fixed desires, and to try to influence it after the fact is disrespectful.
(Although I guess even really without that, you’d want a norm of respecting decisions, simply because people don’t have infinitely long to think about things; you need a way of cutting off deliberation at some point.)
Now if he were open about it and said “If I were to change the music, would that change your mind?” it’d be a different story. But as it is it’s disrespectful and sleazy. But where I part ways with the account I’ve typically seen feminists give is that to my mind it’s about respecting people’s decisions, not because people actually have fixed, uninfluenceable desires.
[0]Although, y’know, this distinction is worth keeping in mind.
[1]Although, again, timescale is a problem.
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@Ozy – Sure, but someone outside or unfamiliar with BDSM culture may not know about traditional consent safe-guards in that culture. Someone may naively think BDSM people don’t care about consent that much or enjoy transgressing it or whatever. The whole point of safewords is that the sub can say “no” as often as he likes, right? If someone sees a BDSM “scene” and doesn’t know about safewords…
It may have been desirable for Farrell to explain this, but beside his point – which is that Kyle was confused by mixed messages both on a personal and a cultural level about sexuality and consent (he recruits consent-blurring in Gone With the Wind & Sweet, Savage Love to emphasize the point).
He resolves this issue as follows: “Kyle didn’t envision that the purpose of a real dialogue would be to justify ignoring women’s “noes.” In fact, a real dialogue would clarify for him that fantasy is different from reality. But a real dialogue would also create a safe space for the guys to say that when verbal “noes” conflict with non-verbal “yeses” (tongues still touching), that the man should not be put in jail for choosing the “yes” over the “no.” He might just be trying to become what she fantasizes about.”
Or – put another way – men should be given the same latitude as women to make mistakes and not quite know what they’re doing when it comes to sex – and not immediately assume bad intent.
(I said in another thread that I thought MoMP was a flawed book and I meant it – I do think that Farrell doesn’t take seriously enough the need for verbal consent as a social standard/tradition for sexual encounters where rapport or closeness hasn’t been established to avoid mistakes)
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Sort of edit: Rethinking, I think the distinction I made in my last post is still probably not quite right. But I am not going to attempt to fix it now. In any case, I would claim that it’s considerably closer to a correct account than what I’m used to hearing as the “standard feminist account”.
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Except “I want to kiss you, but not to have sex” was never, at any point, actually said. People who want that but refuse to say so suffer. My view is that people who say “kissing only” should only get kissed, but that people who think “kissing only” but don’t say anything are fucking up and should say something so that they can join the former group and only get kissed.
Asking the initiator to interpret foreplay as not leading to anything unless the initiate has explicitly said it would lead to more sounds like a flat rejection of non-verbal consent, which affirmative consent advocates keep reassuring me is not what affirmative consent is about.
An “emphatic no” means not playful, not half-hearted, and pointed at exactly the behavior you don’t want to occur (i.e. a plain “no” does not distinguish between “no sex” and “no kissing”). “In the absence of conflicting messages (or immediate termination of conflicting messages)” means you don’t start engaging in the behavior you just said no to.
Even if everyone is a right and proper affirmative consent follower, people who are even slightly unsure about whether they want to have sex should clearly state that their engagement in foreplay is not intended to lead to anything more.
People are going to suffer regardless. My goal is to minimize total suffering, and I think allocating more resources to better communication gets the job done faster (and thus eliminates suffering quicker) than allocating more resources to punishing people.
I have not said “it’s acceptable for the initiator not to take the initiate’s stated desires at face value”. Be careful what you read into my words. I have said that it is easier to reduce rape caused by ambiguity by reducing ambiguity than by resisting sex drive.
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Thought experiment:
I’m kissing a nice Christian teenager. He seems to enjoy it, but when I reach to unbutton his shirt, he pulls away and says, “Uh, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this…”
Should I:
a) reassure him that we don’t have to do anything he doesn’t feel ready for, or
b) say, “that sounds kinda half-hearted, I’m gonna fuck you anyway”, and proceed to do so?
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“a”, of course. Continuing on, if he starts unbuttoning his own shirt after having resisted before, should he:
a) mention that he now feels ready, or
b) say nothing?
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Thanks. I’m glad we agree 🙂
Whether he says something or not, I should check in at some point before genital stimulation (e.g., “So, are you sure you want to do this right now?”).
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“Asking the initiator to interpret foreplay as not leading to anything unless the initiate has explicitly said it would lead to more sounds like a flat rejection of non-verbal consent, which affirmative consent advocates keep reassuring me is not what affirmative consent is about.”
Yeah, I never said this. What I said was that we should ask the initiator to interpret foreplay as not leading to sex when the initiated has, you know, explicitly said that they don’t want to have sex. There, problem solved! Non-verbal consent is still a thing!
“I have not said “it’s acceptable for the initiator not to take the initiate’s stated desires at face value”. Be careful what you read into my words. I have said that it is easier to reduce rape caused by ambiguity by reducing ambiguity than by resisting sex drive.”
Except that, two paragraphs up, you wrote this:
“An “emphatic no” means not playful, not half-hearted, and pointed at exactly the behavior you don’t want to occur (i.e. a plain “no” does not distinguish between “no sex” and “no kissing”). “In the absence of conflicting messages (or immediate termination of conflicting messages)” means you don’t start engaging in the behavior you just said no to.”
You’ve clarified your position slightly to Nita, but I am having trouble reading this passage in any way that does not suggest that a “no” that the initiator interprets as any one of “playful,” “half-hearted,” or not pointed at a sufficiently specific behavior can be safely ignored.
Now, for Farrell’s particular example we have Susan, and Susan is an amalgamation of behaviors designed to prove that affirmative consent is silly. (I agree that kissing someone after you have said you don’t want to kiss does not make the other person guilty of sexual assault, for the record, in case that needs stating). But let me just point out that even Susan, based on roe’s description, isn’t deliberately misleading Kyle: at the beginning of the date, she doesn’t intend to have sex with Kyle, but somewhere in the middle of making out, she changes her mind. Would their sex be ruined if, sometime after Susan escalated the kissing, Kyle had said, “Hey, are you still sure that you don’t want to have sex?” Somehow, I think not. This also doesn’t seem like a huge burden on Kyle–it’s certainly not as if anyone’s asking him to walk Susan to the door and show her out the moment she says she doesn’t want sex, even if she goes on kissing him.
This system also has the benefit of insuring that, if Kyle is with someone who is a little bit more articulate about their desires than Susan, and who says something like, “Hey I just want to kiss tonight,” and really means it, and continues meaning it, he’s not in any danger of committing rape, because he will have checked in with his partner.
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I hear a lot about the claim that men compare the experience of an unattractive man (themself) with an attractive woman (who gets hit on enough that her default reaction to people expressing sexual interest in her is annoyance).
And plenty of people (especially on fucking Reddit) definitely do this.
But others don’t. I think that sometimes the comparison is between a man who is bad at making advances he wants to make, versus whether the woman is good or bad at accepting advances she wants to accept.
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Don’t studies show that women tend to consider the average man less attractive than average?
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There was the OkCupid thing — but then obvious selection bias is obvious.
But anyway, they showed that women were *more critical* of appearance than men were. But they also showed that women were more willing to settle for the 2s and 3s than men were. Which is to say, men rated women with a balanced curve, but then gave all their attention to the 4s and 5s — and proportionally *tons* to the 5s — whereas women gave out a lot of 2s and 3s, but then were willing to respond to those guys. Which is kinda interesting, actually.
Sucks to be a 1.
Anyway, it is here.
The money shot:
I’m not sure if that conclusion follows from the data. In fact, it kinda sounds to me like what happens all the time when men try to interpret the behavior of women. Since, you know, another possibility presents itself: a lot of guys are just kinda dumpy and not super hot, but women are less picky.
Seems a plausible theory. I mean, have you seen how the average dude dresses himself? Yeesh!
Anyway, it’s data and data is good.
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Possibly, but not really that relevant here.
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“Warren Farrell does acknowledge the existence of male rape survivors elsewhere in the book. However, I must point out that failing to characterize “date rape” as a risk of dating for men erases male rape survivors, even though (if you use an inclusive definition) a quarter of rape survivors are male.”
You have the wrong tense here. The Myth of Male Power or anything Farrell says in it should not be referred in the present tense.
““On the other hand, if you think that sexual shame is not something that women have to experience, you are a ridiculous person.””
“Have to” experience? Excuse me – I have experienced a lot of homophobia, quite a bit of it internalized, and a lot of it I could have pushed back on and shut down, but I didn’t – because I failed to do it, chose not to do it, whatever.
Sexual shame is a cultural dysfunction. It can be fought like any other deviancy in the culture. And by the way, when we talk about culture let’s remember that not all parts of this culture instill sexual shame.
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I have to ask: Did you only comment to randomly criticize the grammar of the post? That seems needlessly pedantic. I don’t know if I’m missing something that could be a hilarious joke.
Second question: Isn’t “The author does [XXX] later in the book” a perfectly valid sentence? The author does something something, the author did something something. They both reference the same book and the act of reading it and the notion of something becoming clearer later on after more reading. I can’t think of any reason why that wouldn’t be a valid sentence. Warren Farrell isn’t dead either so that can’t be it, and the although originally published in 1993(ish?) The Myth of[…] was recently re-published as an e-book and apparently updated so present references work fine temporally.
So everything is as far as I understand communication between individuals using English actually just fine and valid. Is it just the Myth of Male Power or does the same thing apply if I want to reference what he says in Why Men Are The Way They Are or Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say? So if you are commenting to correct the grammar of the original post, the grammar correction you’re proposing is flawed. That’s double-obnoxious. I’m not even going to comment on the frankly bizarre reading of “not something… have to experience”. That’s just odd, since the meaning is perfectly valid in English again, although if you’re feeling combative I get that you can also read it like it’s a Cosmic Mandate that women experience sexual shame. But then I have to ask; why do you want to read it like that?
I’m confused and it derailed me from my original point.
—-
My original point is that Warren Farrell terrifies me. He’s like some sort of abstract horrifying spectre of accidental malice that just kind of lurks at the edges of discussions about men’s problems. That’s some incredibly hyperbolic language, so let me back it up a little – someone told me to read The Myth of Male Power some years ago and because I’m cursed with a susceptiblity to referenced sources I did, the original from 1993… something. Then, utterly confused by a book that has something objectionable on every single page, I read every other book Warren Farrell had published up until 2014 because I couldn’t bloody well believe this was what several intelligent, delightful people were telling me was good stuff about men’s perspective on feminism and life. While I did consider the fact I might have been transported to the Twillight Zone and was undergoing some kind of devious cosmic joke, I also figured maybe people were referencing the recently re-released and updated ebook and me getting all confused by a version of something written more than 20 years ago was probably uncharitable.
The updated and re-released version is also utterly inane. The quoted sections above are a decent example. I can’t really do anything about the experience of reading it justice though and I recommend anyone curious read it themselves. It’s… odd.
Farrell’s point, for instance, isn’t actually that men are the people that lose out in social rituals that cost them prohibitively larger shares of economic resources and that this is a problem for men we should talk about, deal with its grounding in odd historical practices and economic situations and how being open about all this can improve everyone’s experience. No no. That’s the easy conclusion, the one only suckers reach.
His argument is, and I do try to be as charitable in the reading as I can, that because men have to use resources to show women that they’re worth spending time with, this incurs a cost to their lives, and women are to blame. Women become Sex Objects because men want beautiful stuff, but the poor men become Success Objects because women desire “Successful” people, and so while trying to become a CEO / Quarterback Star / Famous Rich Generic Thing, men sustain terrible injuries and this makes women evil because of course men have to be succesful to get beautiful women, weren’t you listening? You might very well say: “You kind of circled around there and it doesn’t help us make anyone’s lives easier” but Dr. Farrell is already another four short paragraphs in and going on about date rejection, so your argument is lost.
Rejection to a man isn’t “like” rape in some metaphorical, abstract sense of incuring a massive harm to an individual, it is the male equivalent in every sense of the word. Women risk getting raped and men risk having their assets stolen and these two things are just as bad and, really, what does women expect when they sometimes kiss you twice anyway? It’s frankly impossible to tell and all my life I’ve been told something else anyhow so sure! Dammit, now you’ve gone and ruined Kyle’s life just because he got you drunk and pressured you into doing things you wouldn’t otherwise do and you dare call this “rape”.
There’s the odd section about miniskirt power (it means the secretary is really the one charge of the corporation), the curious argument about protection and abuse (If powerful people abuse you, you kind of asked for it by giving them power in the first place, so it’s your own fault, really), the usual gripes with sexual harassment policies (literally anything a woman wants it to be is sexual harassment! It’s impossible to tell! Who can know? Poor men!) and the entire chapter on rape is a singular reading experience that any words I have cannot possibly do justice and I still hope I can kill the memories if I just drink enough tequila.
I want to think that Warren Farrell is actually just trying to share knowledge about how systems interact and cause problems for men too, but reading his works it’s pretty clear that his entire shtick really is going: “Look at situation X. Women are often saying this is unfavorable to them. But it’s really about the men!! Women are to blame because they shape society into making men servile! Esthar Villar was RIGHT ALL ALONG!””
( Oh and the constant, constant, constant underlying assumption that all hetereo guys want sex at all times at any cost is fucking disgusting in its myriad implications and I write that as a hetereo guy, so bah, Dr. Farrell, bah)
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woah, I’m so sorry, that got way longer than I thought it would.
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That was beautiful. Post more.
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“I have to ask: Did you only comment to randomly criticize the grammar of the post? That seems needlessly pedantic. I don’t know if I’m missing something that could be a hilarious joke. ”
Apparently you don’t understand the function of grammar. Its purpose is to pass information, and in the instance I am citing, that information is that Ozy’s characterization is current. How current is a quotation of a position that is almost 30 years old?
Yes of course it is standard to use the present tense in referring to a book but not to present that as current.
“His argument is, and I do try to be as charitable in the reading as I can, that because men have to use resources to show women that they’re worth spending time with, this incurs a cost to their lives, and women are to blame.”
A couple of things:
First, he is simply pointing out that the standard heterosexual model is prostitutional. And it simply is, on the facts.
I can see how this might terrify you. He is out to break straight women’s rice bowl. And not a century too soon.
The second thing is that it is basically misogynistic denial of women’s agency to get the vapors any time women are blamed for anything.
Women exercise sexual selectiveness, and in doing so they have their share in shaping the gender system. Is that so radical to say?
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Apologies, I think I lost my intended point somewhere in the minor hyperbole.
First, as others have said, the e-book referenced is an, err, e-book. Difficult to come by in 1993, those. Re-released and updated substantially in 2014 by the same author. So fairly recent actually. So my question about tenses apply and I think my understanding of grammar and its intended function of conveying meaning and beauty is also fine; even being the reason why I ask given my understanding of the grammar involved.
I do grant that I might not be very good at conveying meaning, though, so if you feel like nettling me more for no real reason (was I aggressive or something? Sorry), you could probably sneak in a: “you’re an incoherent babbling mess” or something like that. It’s a lot better than wasting time pre-supposing I don’t know what grammar is because its an insult I agree with, it’s true, and it doesn’t make you look half as an aggressive. Again, did I insult you? Sorry! I was just confused about the conventions of temporal references in book material and also about the necessity of doing minor grammatical quibbles when they’re sort of irrelevant to the point being made. I don’t comment a lot here, I just read the articles and the comments on them. I haven’t seen a lot of “You misspelled that”; so I was wondering if that’s the actual atmosphere and I should up my internal standards of editing if I write any comments.
Secondly, that’s not his argument.
The notion that men buy beauty with acquired goods, and more, that “Beautiful women” is a reward that men get for acquiring goods and power is basically a prostitutional transaction, yeah. Insert your own Scarface quotation about what you acquire first, second and third here. It’s embedded in a lot of narratives. And sure, from a certain reading, that actually places men at the pedestal of beautiful women they must buy (which means acquiring the means to do so) which means beautiful women always have access to rice and bowls on account of the stuff men throw at them. Sure. I accept that. it doesn’t terrify me. I said Dr. Farrell does that. If I was mean-spirited, I’d include a: “Are you sure you understand grammar and conveying meaning here?” but let’s just agree that we’re about even on the ability to toss random insults at strangers on the internet and stop? If I insulted you by asking about something that struck out at me, Gingko, then I apologize and I won’t do it again.
But the thing is, Farrell doesn’t stop *there*, he always adds a little caveat to that by way of: “… of course worse for men”
For instance – I fully agree that women can do bad things. I’ve met terrible people in my life. Some of them where women. So I don’t know why me pointing out that Farrell’s points are slightly more insidious than trying to enlighten us as to a basic model of hetereosexual exchange is somehow getting the vapours. I mean, ffs, same book, Myth of Male Power:
That’s not a quotation that makes us all sit and think about the standard models of implied exchange makes fools of us all, it’s a model that posits that women directly lead to, contribute to and are responsible for the mutilation of young men. Blood diamonds is apparently both economic and literally when it’s the fifth D, because no woman ever works and all financial risk is all men’s, forever.
Are you, uh, accusing Fibs of secretly being a straight woman? How exactly is this argument supposed to work?
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It is pretty normal to refer to the content of books using the historical present. Anyway, the Kindle edition was substantially revised in 2014 (hence 50 Shades). If he has suddenly turned less rape apologist in the last year, my apologies.
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…oh my.
Um, there is at least one part I think can be rescued here, though:
(Although he does include the statement that women shouldn’t be afraid of rejection when they initiate sex they’d previously said “no” to, because “he had already demonstrated his desire to go that far.” Apparently wanting sex on at least one occasion means it would be ridiculous for a man to not want sex later! Jesus Christ.)
So, if by “rejection” we just mean a no, then this has exactly the problem you say. But if we say on the other hand that a no is fine, and it’s the possibility of a “how dare you” that’s scary, and implicitly use “rejection” to mean that, then it makes sense; having expressed interest in sex on one occasion means he is seriously unlikely to shame you for asking later.
I’m guessing this probably isn’t what he meant, but I think it’s worth pointing out.
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Ah Scott’s famous article.
I wasn’t around back then to comment, but something about that article bugs the shit out of me.
First, I think his broad point is largely true. I mean, I can quibble, but that’s not my point.
My point is his example is painfully stupid. Look, the worst thing than can happen to a man is fucking *elevatorgate*!!!!!!!????
What the…. I can’t even.
Near as I can tell, in elevatorgate, NOTHING HAPPENED TO THE MAN. CUZ SHE QUITE RIGHTLY NEVER SAID WHO HE WAS!
I mean, that matters a lot. In elevatorgate, a metric fuckton of shit landed on Watson — I mean tons and tons and tons and tons and it created an enormous shitstorm of awful.
But nothing happened to the man.
Does anyone even know who he was, besides he and Watson?
And no, DON’T SAY HIS NAME, even if you do know. The point is we don’t need to know, cuz almost no one wants to dump on him. He was just some hapless guy in an elevator who trampled on boundaries and Watson wanted to share her thoughts.
So I find saying, “well the worst that can happen is the woman speak up and then an army of raving Internet misogynists try to ruin her life.” —
Well, that seems kinda silly. It sucks, but it seems like the woman pays the price. Not a great example of how bad the guys got it.
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“My point is his example is painfully stupid. Look, the worst thing than can happen to a man is fucking *elevatorgate*!!!!!!!????”
I think Elevatorgate is an anaphor in this discussion. I think Scott’s point is really about Schroedinger’s rapist.
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Here are Scott’s words:
It seems to be he is saying that elevatorgate is the worst that can happen. Like, those were his words. But as I said, the weight was born heavily by Watson and (near as I can tell) not at all by the man. In fact, this seems not so much an example of what can go wrong if a man asks a woman out. Instead, it seems more the result of what happens when a woman speaks up.
Which, to be fair, I imagine it was not super pleasant for elevator-dude. He probably did have some anxiety as the controversy brewed. But still, in the end his name never came out. Anything he suffered was over fears of what might happen, not what did happen.
Actually, I sorta hope he looked at the mess and became better for it, chose to be more careful about how he asked women out, became convinced of the rightness of feminism and the horror of the forces that try to silence women through threats and verbal abuse, became increasingly convinced that misogyny is widespread and we need to work against it.
We can hope, right?
Anyhow, somehow Scott missed that message as he pined for all the sad, lonely men. Strange.
#####
Which does not mean he is wrong to care about these men, nor to argue on their behalf. These men experience real pain and someone needs to speak up for them. Just, *that example* seems singularly misguided.
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I never understood why she didn’t say who he was. He’s accountable for his behaviour. Naming him doesn’t seem disproportionate.
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Because she wants to convey that hitting on someone in an enclosed space can be disconcerting while also not wanting to ruin the life of the person who made that mistake?
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OMG naming him would have been terrible.
Which in the years since we’ve lost site of this, on every side of this debate and we are *all* the worse for it.
Look, he didn’t do something fathomlessly horrible. Instead, he showed poor judgement. He creeped out a woman. Which for her was rather unpleasant and she is well within bounds to speak out about it, and the ensuing meltdown proved beyond a doubt what many feminists say. But still, *that guy* was a not a villain. Not even a little. He was *slightly out-of-bounds*.
Getting asked out on an elevator (or subway car or whatever) unpleasant and I wish men were more sensitive to this. We can and will speak out about it. But the men who make this ever-so-minor error do not deserve a world of Internet-rage-bullshit.
OMG I am so fucking glad she never said his name. It’s unthinkable.
I wonder if he’s reading this?
Hey elevator guy, you fucked up. But in a small way. Do better next time.
See, that’s all that ever needed to be said.
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Huzzah for that woman for not naming him!
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I don’t blame Watson at all, but it must still suck to be elevator guy . Like, if I think about social faux pas I’ve made, and some cashier wrote a blog post “I said ‘thank you’ to a customer and she reflexively said ‘you’re welcome’. That’s not etiquette ” and then it snowballed into a whole thing about the evils of capitalism and the lack of respect that exists for the working class, I’d feel pretty shit even if no one suspected yourewelcomegate was my doing.
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“I said ‘thank you’ to a customer and she reflexively said ‘you’re welcome’. That’s not etiquette”
Man, it took me a long time to figure out what etiquette was in that situation. My parents never taught me that!
(Off-topic, I know.)
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Wait, that’s not what you’re supposed to say?
oops
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Pretty sure “thank you” is a better response. I’d also say this applies more generally when making a trade, unless it’s lopsided in a clear (intentional?) manner.
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Veronica, it seems that your entire argument that elevator gate isn’t the worst thing hinges on the fact Rebecca didn’t name him (did she even know his name?)
Rather than that rebutting Scott’s point, doesn’t it just shift it ever so slightly to the hypothetical elevatorgate where he was named?
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@ Forlorn Hopes
To me, the difference between being harassed by an internet mob and learning that something you did made someone uncomfortable does not seem ever-so-slight. In fact, it seems pretty enormous, even life-changing.
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@Nita
You misunderstand. I’m saying the difference between a blog post which names and a blog post which does not name is slight. A few extra words.
The difference on the other end is of course, and as you say, absolutely enormous.
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Actually reading Veronica’s post again. She specifically says she agrees with the broader point but thinks the example was a poor choice. So it looks like we agree with each other anyway.
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On the “thank you” thing, it’s actually pretty weird that “you’re welcome” is not a good response. Since after all, what is wrong with being *welcome*? I love feeling welcome.
You all are welcome here on Ozy’s glorious blog!
See, doesn’t that sound nice?
Anyway, yeah, this is puzzling. But indeed I *feel* the wrongness of it. I can see what you do not say that, even if I cannot explain.
I have a few theories. One is this: saying “you’re welcome” can be used in a really smug way, like when you do a not-really-a-favor for someone and then, without their thanks, add an “and you’re welcome” on the end. I see that used from time to time. It seems to communicate “yeah you should be thankful.” It seems like a pretty coarse status attack.
And I think indeed this is subtle status play. “You welcome” sorta implies that the store clerk *should* be thankful. Which look, if they are the business owner and times are tight and you made a special effort to use their store rather than another store — well sure. But for you’re average dude as the convenience store on a busy Saturday night? Blah! You’re just another face in the crowd.
So “thanks” or “back at’cha” or “likewise” all seem better. They equalize the relationship, which is a fine thing to do for the person working late night serving you hot dogs.
I like “The pleasure is mine.” That sees like pretty much the bestest thing to say. ’Specially when you mean it.
######
Which, I’m on a roll here. Skip the rest if you don’t want a veronica d class in advanced social skills.
Anyway, it goes like this: when someone compliments you, or something you’ve done, do not turn away the compliment. Don’t say, “Oh it was nothing,” or “I thought I could do better.”
These things seem humble, but they actually kinda insult the person complimenting you.
Look at it this way: status is not a zero sum game, at least not between two people. It is possible to *link status*, and thus it goes up or down together.
When someone compliments your thing, they are saying you are awesome. This raises your status. But it raises their status also, as *they are the one who recognized your greatness*. They are tying their status to yours, their perception and taste to your talent and achievement.
So when you turn away their compliment, you are keeping your own status comfortably low — this is impostor syndrome; don’t stick up your head! — but you are also blocking their status rise. In fact, they’ve already set their status just beneath yours. You could bring them down.
Instead take the compliment. They are giving you *shine*. Take it. Then give it back.
Say, “OMG thank you for noticing,” or “That’s great to hear. Oh and thanks for mentioning Chapter Two. Like, I had to rewrite that darn thing three times and still I wasn’t quite sure if it works. I’m so glad you liked it.”
It helps a lot if you believe it yourself.
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@Fornlorn Hopes —
I agree with Scott in this sense: It clearly is *very hard* for some men to ask women out, so advice like, “Just go do it! It’s easy!” is not very helpful.
Although, once you get into the right place mentally, it actually is easy.
So that’s the big mystery. I don’t have easy answers. I think Mark Manson is, broadly speaking, on the right track.
Also I’m at least *a little bit* sympathetic to the “how dare you!” thing. Yeah, that sounds really shitty and it surely makes an already hard thing super-extra-terribly hard.
Got it.
Okay, so here’s the part you won’t like. I remain a feminist and insofar as there are competing interests between men and women, I’m on the women’s side.
And I think there *are* competing interests, and I dislike when people on either side pretend there are not. For example, the feminists who gives smug dating advice, the “just be yourself” stuff.
Heh. As if!
Or A LOT OF YOU GUYS HERE who act like women can just sense your nerdy goodness and communicate in just the ways you want and then everything is fine.
Nope. Not that simple. As we’ve laid out again and again.
Anyway, there is much to balance here. But I’ll say this: when we are balancing the interests of people who want to avoid unwanted attraction and creepy come-ons, versus people working to attract others, I want the balance on the side of LEFT ALONE.
Cuz lacking something you want is hella painful, but thrusting your desires past someone’s boundaries is worse.
Before you respond: this is NOT ABOUT YOU GUYS.
Well, not you guys in particular. And well, maybe some of you sometimes. I hope not. But that’s not the point. You are not the only men. There are other men, for example these guys.
Which, yuck! I see them on the subway and in the park, creepy old dudes trying to come on to girls barely out of middle school. Asian girls seem a frequent target.
I mean, I kinda doubt these guys expect to go home with those girls — at least I hope not! But they do want to get close and it *feels creepy as heck* and the girls play along, cuz they lack tools to deal with these men. I can sense their confusion and discomfort, but the guys play up to the edge and there’s no good way to outmaneuver them.
Not that I’ve found. Nor do I experiment; the men are scary.
And yeah, these guys are pretty rare, but it only takes one.
For me it’s the weird tranny-chasers at the bars. It’s just — the way they look at me. It’s not okay. The things they say — they really think every trans girl is walking around hoping to be sexually degraded by them, and nope!
And again, most of the men at the bars are not like this and there is nothing wrong with liking trans women, but there is always *that one guy*.
And in one sense these guys are social misfits, but in other ways they know how to play their little game, and those who’ve been doing it a while have picked up the tricks.
Yeah, dealing with these creeps means kicking over the chessboard. Or something. Playing by the rules they expect sure doesn’t work.
Direct communication? Ha!
Thing is, most women have experienced this stuff to some degree. We each have our “type of guy.” For me it’s the tranny chaser. For some pretty geek girl, like Ami Angelwings, it’s the PUA nerd wannabes who won’t give her a break. And this is why we have each other’s backs on this stuff. Cuz we’ve all at some point had to deal with it alone and that’s scary. There is strength in numbers.
#####
So anyway, that’s the big hard shit. The real solution is for we gals to *be accurate*, which is to say, we should correctly distinguish the actual creeps from the hapless but kind-hearted nerds.
Which, obviously. If we could that, then good-faith women would protect themselves while causing no harm. Yay, sounds wonderful.
Of course, we cannot so distinguish. And if we grant license to hapless nerds to blow past our boundaries, and if this becomes common, then the actual creeps will just pretend to be hapless nerds. In fact, I think this is kinda happening now in techspace. There are trends. It’s in the water.
You know what an arms race is, yes?
Good luck.
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Yeah, Warren Farrell was… an important figure for a lot of us masculists, but he said some pretty messed up things that we can’t really defend.
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Quote Ozy: “But more importantly: this is a sympathetic portrayal of someone justifying doing sexual acts that someone else said no to, that is, it is a sympathetic portrayal of sexual assault or perhaps rape.”
Here is the specific passage in which Farrell describes what happened:
“Susan found herself saying “no” with her verbal language and “yes” with her body language. After pulling back and saying “that’s enough for this evening,” she continued to tongue kiss and caress his body with hers. When she did withdraw from kissing, she wanted to show her interest, so ran her finger over his lips. After some time and some wine, they were making out more intensely than before she had said “that’s enough.”
None of this bothered either of them until they attended some required college presentations about “date rape.”
I am very confused about the distribution of agency here. Does it seem like Kyle sexually assaulted Susan?
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Hell and damnation.
Listen, mate:
(a) The reason men pay for dates is that traditionally men have had more fucking money (and I realise that is an unintentional pun there), including net disposable income, than women. Quote pulled at random from here, because the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of women being able to engage in what is now considered paid work outside the home, you know, just like men!:
“(a) The reason men pay for dates is that traditionally men have had more fucking money (and I realise that is an unintentional pun there), including net disposable income, than women.”
Not quite. The reason that men pay for dates was that until recently dating was explicitly a form of prostitution, namely maintaining a mistress or dallying with a courtesan. so of course the john paid.
Of course these days the custom has gone completely mainstream, but that does mean all the protocols have been updated to bring them into line with economic realities.
“Quote pulled at random from here, because the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of women being able to engage in what is now considered paid work outside the home, you know, just like men!:”
What you are missing is that the Industrial Revolution was also the beginning for men to engage in paid work. Before that most had been starving tenant farmers.
In any case, this is simply another case of a protocol not being updated. The Industrial Revolution has come and gone and single women tend to make slightly more than single men, but are still not paying their way.
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Uh, citation needed, or something.
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@Veronica: Gingko’s about half right. Kathy Peiss covers the American case of the origins of dating in “Cheap Amusements,” a history about what working-class New York women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did for fun. The practice was called “treating”– working class girls, who tended to have relatively little disposable income relative to single guys in the same age brackets, would often agree to spend time with strange guys and sometimes provide them with sexual favors in exchange for meals, booze, and getting taken out for fun stuff. It was kind of like Enjo Kosai in present-day Japan.
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