This discussion arose in the comments on the post about the dialogue agenda, and I have moved it here to allow it to continue without disrupting the discussion of the agenda.
Here are the comments that were posted so far on the other post:
Metalogic42
I also agree with Renee #8. Once again, in your previous post, I tried to get the “other side” to discuss the issues we disagree on – things like patriarchy, rape culture, etc. No success. Despite what the “other side” might think about me, and the slymepit in general, I do care a lot about social justice issues.
The difference as far as I can tell is that they take a deontological approach (“tell men not to rape, don’t blame the victim”) vs. my consequentialist approach (“what’s the most effective way to actually lower the incidence of rape?”).
Doubtthat
So, in the twenty-first century people weren’t receptive to your nuanced views on rape?
Metalogic42
I don’t have nuanced views on rape. Rape is wrong. I do, however, have nuanced views on rape *prevention*.
John C Welch
Now, at no point is Metalogic saying “yay, RAPE!” Nor is he excusing it. He’s showing an example of the difference in the way he sees Skepchick et al approaching the problem vs. his approach.
Neither approach is inherently good nor bad, they are simply different ways of getting to the same goal: Less Rape.
Dan L
Weird. I said a bunch of stuff about patriarchy, rape culture, etc. on the last thread and you didn’t respond to any of it.
Metalogic42
Dan L
See comments #163, 169, 176, 187, and 202 over on the previous thread.
But, if you want to discuss after all, let’s have Michael Nugent make that other thread he mentioned earlier and discuss it. You can have the first move, and point to your previous comments which I haven’t addressed.
{ 379 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
“While we want rape-prevention-campaigns to be aimed at rapists and succeed, it doesn’t really look like they would succeed. It is the victim, not the perpetrator, who has a real interest in changing behaviour to avoid the crime.”
I’d say social change in general may be more important than either – peer group pressure being a big, if not the biggest, influencing factor on behaviour.
I don’t doubt that “Don’t be that guy” has some sort of positive influence on the discussion as a gestalt, but the point is it doesn’t prove – in and of itself – the notion that advice on prudence does not work and what effect it has is a matter of some interpretation.
I tend to think poster campaigns aimed at partygoers tend to be of fairly low impact, I would rather see the effort aimed at kids on the cusp of adolescence. That said, it certainly sparked conversation and therefore cannot be a bad thing, I’m just astonished that people who think any sort of short-term change in local behaviour means something beyond “more research needed”.
“Now, tell us what advice you are going to give to the 90 year old women and men who are raped, those raped by work colleagues when they are fully dressed, be it in business suit or overalls, to those who are raped as they travel on public transport, to the babies and children who are also raped.”
Well, as we boil down to smaller and smaller demographics the position becomes one of increasingly existential nature. No one avenue of advice is going to work for all victims or perpetrators.
However, just because one notion of advice (“getting paralytic can leave you vulnerable”) doesn’t apply to everyone (“I am a teetotaller”) it does not mean it is useless information. Now you may say “don’t get paralytic” is such a tautological bore it need not be said, that is fine in this sort of conversation where adults are cognizant of all the popular touchstones. However, as part of a discussion on the issues aimed at educating future generations is it worthless?
Dave Allen,
I don’t want to nitpick but apart from being unjust your curfew would work only against stranger rapes committed during the hours of darkness – not enough to make much of a difference to the overall total.
I’m totally with you on education but education is only any use if it is based on facts, not folklore. We facepalm at people in the US who make pronouncements about the workings the human reproductive system based on no facts at all yet I understand – I am not close enough to discuss all this with my relatives in NI – that resistance to good sex education is coming from the churches, which you would have thought had an interest in moral behaviour.
If I had memorised every piece of advice which purported to be about how to prevent rape I would never have been able to earn a living, travel to meetings in the course of that, be a school governor or a Trades Union rep or care for a terminally ill partner. I would also have been bored out of my head.
I’m not going to discuss being raped with you but let me relate two incidents.
1. I’m about 11 and sent by my mother to a neighbour a few doors away with a pair of shoes to be mended. I notice that he is leering at me and before I can back out of his workshop he has grabbed me by the crotch and is trying to wrestle me to the floor. I lashed out and got away. I may well have knocked him to the floor. I’m not clear about that at this distance.
2. A colleague and I are in our 20s, renting a bedsitter in Balham from a landlord who lives on the premises. The landlord pops in to our room as he usually did once a week or so to check that all is well. His friend whom we had seen about the place came into the room and when the landlord left he did not. Instead he sat on my bed and put his hand inside my knickers. Once I got away from him I went to the police, he now has a conviction for indecent assault and the minute I got back from the court the two of us were evicted from our lodgings.
Two incidents which I hope you can see could very well have turned into rapes. Had I been worried about finding the right piece of advice in the Girls’ Big Book of How Not to Get Raped or had I been led to believe that I could be in some way responsible for criminal acts committed against me, I might well have frozen. I would certainly have lost that moment, that split second when I was able to take forceful action to defend myself.
That is why we women, to whom such events happen regularly, have little patience with unevidenced advice on what we should do or should have done. At very most, such advice might displace rape – the serial date rapist might not be able to rape me but the woman in the next booth or in the same bar the next evening would get it instead.
That is no sort of victory. Nor does it do anything to educate either those who rape or those who excuse rape.
“I don’t want to nitpick but apart from being unjust your curfew would work only against stranger rapes committed during the hours of darkness – not enough to make much of a difference to the overall total.”
What works once works.
Now the collateral cost is obviously too much in this case. I would oppose any notion of curfew. However I mustn’t let my moral opposition cloud my recognition of a fact.
Too often in these conversations people have to spend enormous time navigating potential moral quibbles in order to state a fact.
“I’m totally with you on education but education is only any use if it is based on facts, not folklore.”
Agreed.
“We facepalm at people in the US who make pronouncements about the workings the human reproductive system based on no facts at all yet I understand – I am not close enough to discuss all this with my relatives in NI – that resistance to good sex education is coming from the churches, which you would have thought had an interest in moral behaviour.”
Well, no, I wouldn’t think that.
Breaking the power of the church over such issues is a worthy goal.
“If I had memorised every piece of advice which purported to be about how to prevent rape I would never have been able to earn a living, travel to meetings in the course of that, be a school governor or a Trades Union rep or care for a terminally ill partner. I would also have been bored out of my head.”
Two problems with this.
Imagine a potential perpetrator saying the same about advice aimed his (or her) direction. Would “too boring to bother with/I’m too busy for this” strike you as a good excuse for not listening to advice on not to rape.
Secondly – OK, it is an undeniable fact that there is too much info out there. In the context of what we are tending to agree on – school curricula dedicated to the subject – is it not sensible to assume that the most obvious stuff gets highlighted (I advocate the notion that no means no is the best way to flag reluctance and people need to be brave about that, and that yes means yes is the best way to garner consent, and people need to cede that as a sensible standard to begin with).
Now, we can add all manner of baroque exception and mitigating circumstance to this. I suggest a class involving the standard as basics, and then a look at some different perspectives (nothing too controversial) as “food for thought”.
“Two incidents which I hope you can see could very well have turned into rapes. Had I been worried about finding the right piece of advice in the Girls’ Big Book of How Not to Get Raped or had I been led to believe that I could be in some way responsible for criminal acts committed against me, I might well have frozen. I would certainly have lost that moment, that split second when I was able to take forceful action to defend myself.”
Well, I sympathise with your experience and agree we would live in a better world were such things not to happen.
However, I somewhat resent the notion that I advocate for a “Big Book of How not to Get Raped”. I think it’s sensible to tell girls, within the framework of a quick lesson around the age of 13, to do much as you did – whether you did it instinctually or as the result of thinking it through academically. Being firm about denying consent and brave and so on.
Will that always work? No. Will it make things worse? Once in a while, yes. That can be discussed too.
To compare it to advice on common assault. It seems correct to me to let people know that if someone behaves aggressively to them they are more likely to avoid escalation and possible criminal activity if they remain calm and reasonable.
This is not to deny that sometimes remaining calm does not work, it’s just best practice.
“At very most, such advice might displace rape – the serial date rapist might not be able to rape me but the woman in the next booth or in the same bar the next evening would get it instead.”
If she were operating to similar standards? Why? A frustrated attempt is a frustrated attempt.
“That is no sort of victory. Nor does it do anything to educate either those who rape or those who excuse rape.”
Of course not, which is why I wouldn’t advocate such advice as a be all and end all. I do not disagree that the priority should be defining the crime and educating people on the definition. Tackling issues of consent as a bald matter and so on.
However, even if I were to cede that advice on prudence is so low on the priority radar as to be de facto irrelevant – I would still oppose the notion that it does not work.
As I said to a Hermit – yes I get that hectoring victims is unseemly. We can condemn those who do so without hobbling our ability to advise someone.
It strikes me that in regard to the teaching of this stuff at school age a bigger problem than church interference may be the notion that it is best for parents to tackle “the birds and the bees” rather than the state or community.
So if anyone has thoughts on that I would like to hear them.
Dave Allen,
I’m not going to do the work for you – I’m trying to finish the piping on a set of cushion covers – but may I suggest that you inform yourself by
* finding out who does get raped and in what circumstances – by age, socio-economic status, location – and by whom: there’s plenty of info out there
* find out who does the raping and how they justify their behaviour to themselves – a couple of good studies very recently, one with university students, the other with mid-teens, both in the UK
* check out the very best of sex education in the rest of the United Kingdom – yes, it is patchy – where you’ll find it all beginning way before 13 and the older teens role-playing and examining both the ethics and how it would feel to be the person on the other end of that “transaction”
* and, please, think again about lumping the elderly into “smaller and smaller demographics” – I’m 70 and that doesn’t go down too well – besides, the sexual assault of the elderly both in their homes and in long-stay hospitals is a centuries old tradition. Don’t avoid it, address it!
You’ve clearly got a good brain, Dave, but it seems to have its heel caught in some very old tracks.
“* finding out who does get raped and in what circumstances – by age, socio-economic status, location – and by whom: there’s plenty of info out there”
I take it that you assume the same as doubtthat – that I am somehow ignorant of the fact that most rapes happen within an established relationship of some sort.
I am not. The core piece of advice I am keen to see accepted as standard – no means no as a standard of refusal and yes means yes as a standard of a green light – would apply in a lot of such cases. Now you may state extant examples where such things have not been clear. I concede. There are perpetrators who do all sorts of coercion in order to stay within some letter of the law, there are people who may cede consent under all sorts of false impressions and trickery. But on the whole I am talking about what it is acceptable to teach the next generation as standard.
“* find out who does the raping and how they justify their behaviour to themselves – a couple of good studies very recently, one with university students, the other with mid-teens, both in the UK”
So where does my notion of what be taught as standard deviate from this? My issue with self-justification is that sometimes it does rely on existing ambiguities in either the personal or social sphere – I cannot anticipate every possible game played by every possible participant. Seeing as my most prevalent desire is to see a comprehensive education as to what the law says and what to do to keep within it – which is knowing you have refused consent when reluctant and knowing you have gained it when eager.
What is it about that notion – which has been the core of my argument since my first post on this thread – that runs counter to your understanding of the phenomena?
“* check out the very best of sex education in the rest of the United Kingdom – yes, it is patchy – where you’ll find it all beginning way before 13 and the older teens role-playing and examining both the ethics and how it would feel to be the person on the other end of that “transaction””
Any age is ultimately going to be arbitrary. My preference for the onset of adolescence is partly utilitarian (I just don’t think targeting younger kids within the framework of comprehensive schooling will fly with “the public” – that’s a shame but I have to suggest what I think is likely and effective in the knowledge that there isn’t going to be any 100% effective tactic).
Now my hope – which may be a naïve one – would be that if parents became comfortable with issues pertaining to sex and violence being discussed en masse at 13 the age may be brought down. I had peers who engaged in sexual activity at 9 years old – so I know it happens. What I fear is that pressure for sex ed of this nature aimed at 9 year olds would fail due to the anticipated backlash.
“* and, please, think again about lumping the elderly into “smaller and smaller demographics” – I’m 70 and that doesn’t go down too well – besides, the sexual assault of the elderly both in their homes and in long-stay hospitals is a centuries old tradition. Don’t avoid it, address it!”
Again, my priority would be to address adolescents. This is not because I deny the existence of sexual predation amongst/by other demographics. However, asked where I would start in terms of best bang for buck in reducing rape the answer must be schools.
In part this is down to the most likely group to commit or fall victim to sexual offenders. Now I will admit to being largely ignorant of care home abuses, so I concede I know little about how to tackle it in its particulars. If the framework of educating the young didn’t begin to have an effect on the care system by the time those young people began to work there I would certainly cede that it was coming short in some measure.
However, educating the young is not mutually exclusive with other drives to improve the situation. I happen to think in terms for bang for buck it ought to take priority – but I’m not some cold economist and I’d take other notions on board too.
“You’ve clearly got a good brain, Dave, but it seems to have its heel caught in some very old tracks.”
Well, ta, I suppose. This particular back and forth strikes me as fair. I’d welcome more of it from you personally.
Look, I’m busy but let’s try a shorter notion on you.
Can we bring up every woman – from childhood – to be as stroppy, articulate and bloody-minded as I now am? That would stop some rapes.
Mind you, some people would have to make their own sandwiches.
(I’ll talk to you again at some stage, I hope.)
I think it’s worth recalling why this discussion was started. Posters were lamenting the fact that feminists were so intensely dogmatic that they were even casting out well meaning allies over reasonable differences. Recall the original statement:
First, this is an obvious misuse of the terms “deontology” and “consequentialist.” A deontic assessment of morality means judging the ethical nature of an action based on an adherence to the rules, whatever the consequences may be. This was Kant’s position and he famously argued that you should never tell a lie even if it seemed obviously beneficial.
Consequentialists, obviously, determine the moral quality of an action by its effect on the world. A lie to save someone incredible pain could be a good act.
Now, if the poster is criticizing feminists for being deontic with regard to rape, there will probably need to be some explanation of ways in which raping someone will result in an overall benefit to society or lessening of pain.
Notice that having a deontic morality structure is perfectly consistent with developing empirically verifiable solutions. One could think the violation of rape is wrong without reference to the harm caused, and still advocate for evidence-based solutions to rape prevention. But whatever, the poster didn’t understand those words.
But here we are, a couple hundred comments later and (1) the conversation has continued despite a total lack of actual reasoned effort on the part of the critics; it’s just a rambling set of armchair musings combined with the silly excuse that evidence is hard to come by so we should ignore it completely and (2) I have yet to see a position offered that is actually contrary to a generalized understanding of the issues surrounding rape by feminists and anti-sexual assault groups.
The only specific recommendation we’ve received is that women (notice that the critics left men out of the equation on this bit of advice, an important point for the trolls who act as though feminists ignore male victims) should be educated that drinking and being vulnerable isn’t a good idea.
Is there anything else? What are the suggestions being ignored by feminists that (1) have any evidence supporting their efficacy and (2) aren’t already being enacted?
“Can we bring up every woman – from childhood – to be as stroppy, articulate and bloody-minded as I now am? That would stop some rapes.”
I think people’s capacities for confident resistance varies, but that should not stop us from pointing out the benefit of confident resistance.
This does not necessarily imply we let those who are less capable fall between the cracks.
“Mind you, some people would have to make their own sandwiches.”
If only there were some way to get sexist bores to take a home economics course. With more education they too could learn how to place edible substance between two pieces of bread.
@Dave Allen
1) I don’t think anyone has a problem with offering that advice or including it in some generalized sex class.
2) It’s efficacy, however, has not been established, and
3) It’s based on a pernicious rape myth that rapes happen due to misunderstandings. This is certainly what rapists would like people to believe, but it just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. When rapists are asked about their actions avoiding the term “rape,” they’re often quite proud of themselves:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124272157
The Steubenville rapists tried that as well, “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.” This is, of course, bullshit, proven in no small part by the hilarious tweets they and observers sent out as the assault was taking place indicating very clearly that the girl was “so raped.”
So, it seems to me that you’re just offering musings on the topic, most of which aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are based on harmful myths and exactly zero of them are supported by evidence of any kind.
Again, I ask, what do you have to offer that isn’t already being offered? It’s not as though you have to have something, I don’t have anything unique to say, I’m just parroting the work of others, but I’m also not positioning myself as a critic. What is your criticism?
@Dave Allen:
Please give me an example of premises which are not assertions of fact.
What I am trying to impress upon you is that I seem to know more about logic, epistemology, and argumentation than you do so maybe you should stop trying to lawyer your way out of supporting the factual claims you make.
It’s not factual, but you seem to have completely missed the bit where I explained that factual assertions do not have to be factual. “All things have a cause” is an assertion of fact — whether or not it is actually a fact. If it is not an assertion of fact explain to me how it is not.
Again, if you think I was saying premises or factual assertions must be facts then you simply did not read my comment as I argued quite the opposite.
But how do you “winnow away error by trying to falsify tentative propositions”? For that matter, how do you justify the “tentative propositions”? By using logical argumentation exactly as I described!
1. If you do not see why my remarks about natural science mean much it is probably because you are not engaging with my argument but trying to lawyer yourself out of having to admit you are wrong.
2. Justify the assertion that “social sciences are openly deemed quasi-scientific in the main”. I do not believe this is true. I believe this is a fringe position.
3. I have also argued that confounding variables confound in the physical sciences. You don’t think you should have to address that; well, then, why should I have to address any of your arguments about anything?
Wow, how incredibly disingenuous of you.
“1) I don’t think anyone has a problem with offering that advice or including it in some generalized sex class.
2) It’s efficacy, however, has not been established, and…”
Why do you think the West – as a general rule – tends to take this sort of matter more seriously than – as a general rule – the developed world?
I would say the only answer unlikely to generate controversy would be a more public discourse as to what rape entails. I think the best sort of public discourse is a good education.
“3) It’s based on a pernicious rape myth that rapes happen due to misunderstandings. ”
No – that’s not what I base it on.
However, where such a standard to be adopted it would mean that people such as the Steubenville rapists would have no recourse to plausible deniability – even in the absence of the camera footage you mention.
Whilst the trope of “sometimes no means yes” or “but she didn’t say no” exists the danger inherent in genuine or not-genuine-but-claimed-as-genuine misunderstanding is likely to continue, at least as the debate is framed in two important groups.
1) Those who belittle rape as a problem.
2) Those who aren’t alive to the debate (which may be a very large number).
“I’m just parroting the work of others, but I’m also not positioning myself as a critic. What is your criticism?”
My criticisms have been couched to particular stuff some people have said and with the proofing I am willing to give. As I said to Dan, I’m not aware that any requirement of originality exists. As I also said earlier evidence is problematic when discussing a social problem due to the varying ways different perspectives interpret all but the most damning evidence.
Case in point: To you the Steubenville case makes a mockery of the notion that it is useful to teach no means no as clear refusal, and yes means yes as sign that consent is offered. Now as far as I am aware the boys did not obtain a yes, therefore by the metric I support they clearly committed a crime. So it seems this case is evidence for both our positions.
Moreover, were my standard the accepted one, it would leave commentators like Michael Crook under no illusion that his position runs counter to the standard.
Now there are obvious matters where consent is obtained through menace or trickery, so exceptions to the rule will certainly exist. That’s a matter for further debate once it be accepted that the rule is a good one outside of a mitigating circumstance.
“Wow, how incredibly disingenuous of you.”
Can we leave it now Dan? Cheers.
@Dave Allen:
I’m sorry. I’m having a lot of trouble trying to pretend you’re engaging in good faith at this point.
@Dave Allen:
Can you stop crying about how no one wants to discuss your ridiculous, uninformed opinions on rape prevention?
“I’m sorry. I’m having a lot of trouble trying to pretend you’re engaging in good faith at this point.”
Fair enough. For my part it seems Maureen and doubtthat are now involved in the sort of discourse I personally find productive, so there’s no point you and I continuing to engage in a conversation neither or us seem to be getting much out of.
@David Allen:
But Maureen Brian is actually asking you to take a look at the evidence on this stuff — which is exactly what you’ve been telling me is not productive!
How is it a terrible and nonsensical imposition when I say you should and “productive when Maureen Brian says it?
I hope to continue to talk to Maureen about what she thinks of what I said if and when she makes further comment.
One issue are the conclusions we are supposed to gain from the evidence presented. One meme is “tell men not to rape, don’t talk about victims.” However, the evidence suggests that many (not all) rapes are done by people who know it is rape and don’t care. Therefore, telling them not to rape seems like a waste of words. Here, the best strategy seems aimed at women in detecting rapists.
That said, most guys don’t want to consider themselves rapists, so clearly education on rape, consent, and the like would have a positive effect on them.
One issue I have doted on is that we give kids advice on pretty much everything under the sun. However, when it comes to sexual relationships, we mostly let them figure out for themselves, then act shocked and surprised when they come to the conclusions that they do. Talking about sex, joking about sex, thoughts about sex – they are all discouraged in public, then we wonder why men and women have trouble talking about it in private.
That’s not what you intend to base it on, but that is what it’s based on. If you think education about consent will stop a rape, you think that some number rapes occur due to mistake.
I will admit that due to the law of large numbers, this has probably happened, but it isn’t the or even a significant issue with regard to rape prevention.
No, it doesn’t prove that. That isn’t evidence, that’s you imagining a counterfactual. There is no way to determine whether the victim clearly saying “no” at some point in the evening would have made any difference.
In fact, as long as we’re just making shit up, it’s entirely possible she did say “no” earlier in the evening, but the assailants just kept feeding her drinks, waiting for her to consume more alcohol, and timed their assault for a point in which she was unable to give consent.
Under that scenario, or just the scenario where they intentionally waited until she had no idea what was happening (which is what actually happened), your advice would be totally useless.
That isn’t the exception. That’s what rapists do.
But here we are, a couple hundred comments later and (1) the conversation has continued despite a total lack of actual reasoned effort on the part of the critics; it’s just a rambling set of armchair musings combined with the silly excuse that evidence is hard to come by so we should ignore it completely and (2) I have yet to see a position offered that is actually contrary to a generalized understanding of the issues surrounding rape by feminists and anti-sexual assault groups.
This makes no sense at all. Sorry, but you seem to be complaining that people aren’t criticizing feminists groups enough? That’s silly.
Feminists groups, anti-rape groups, etc., have had lots and lots of ideas. Where things have been difficult is getting people to buy into these ideas. One issue is that presenting these issues is difficult without demonizing people. For example, “yes means yes” is certainly an interesting and attractive idea, but it can be marketed as changing how everyone in the world should have sex so we can catch a few more rapists. Then we wonder why people mock it.
That isn’t the exception. That’s what rapists do.
Hence, the conclusion that telling them to stop is unlikely to be effective.
Edward Gemmer:
What evidence suggests this?
“That’s not what you intend to base it on, but that is what it’s based on. If you think education about consent will stop a rape, you think that some number rapes occur due to mistake.
I will admit that due to the law of large numbers, this has probably happened, but it isn’t the or even a significant issue with regard to rape prevention.”
I hope we both agree that there is a certain cultural milieu surrounding the notion that “sometimes a girls says no but she means yes” or “well she didn’t actually say the word no” and so on.
This is probably justification rather than confusion on behalf of many – however where it absolutely explicit as a social standard the justification would diminish as well as the genuine mistakes (which I do not disagree with you on – they are probably in the minority).
“Under that scenario, or just the scenario where they intentionally waited until she had no idea what was happening (which is what actually happened), your advice would be totally useless.”
An aspect of it would, in that she would not have been able to refuse consent. However I also advise that those wanting to engage in sexual activity abide by yes means yes.
“No means no” isn’t a philosophical truism – it’s just what you need to know yourself that you have been clear about refusing consent (as a possible victim) and that you are not engaging in rape (as a possible perpetrator).
But as we both know, and as Steubenville illustrates – you aren’t capable of saying anything at times, which is why obtaining consent is imperative on behalf of those who want sex.
“That isn’t the exception. That’s what rapists do.”
Which is why bog standard clarity as to what does and does not amount to consent is required As A Start. If we cannot agree that no means no yes means yes is a good starting point then hoping to agree on more complex cases is unlikely to be fruitful.
Edward Gemmer@272:
Do you think the people mocking the idea might be motivated by an agenda? Maybe rapists who don’t want to think they’re rapists want to think the idea is ridiculous?
Maybe the best solution to that would be trying to get the idea spread anyway in spite of the best efforts of the rapists?
This complaint is especially strange given how frequently you repeat how we need to start educating kids about sex and relationships. Wouldn’t this constitute “changing how everyone in the world should have sex” as well? And yet you don’t seem to think this criticism applies to your idea. Why not?
Who the fuck disagreed with that?
What evidence suggests this?
The links provided – I know you read them about the research showing that many rapes are done by people repeatedly. As doubtthat says, it isn’t just “misunderstandings,” it’s people who know what they are doing is wrong and don’t care. It is a small minority of men who do this, just like it is a small minority of men who repeatedly commit a lot of crimes. The “telling them to stop” meme relies on the assumption that people care about what others have to say – since they don’t care about words like “stop” and “no,” why would they care about that?
@273 Edward Gemmer
Part of the problem is that (1) people are hypersensitive and immediately defensive of the notion of “rape culture,” so (2) they read “teach men not to rape,” in the most literal, trivial way possible.
Steubenville should forever blow up the notion that there’s no such thing as rape culture. Why, for example, do you think that the rapists believed they could publicize their assault to the world and suffer no consequence? They believed everyone in their peer group would think it was funny and that the adults would defend them.
In that context, teaching men not to rape certainly applies to the rapists, but it also applies to the bystanders and enablers. Would education have stopped those two kids from doing what they did? Maybe, maybe not, but the tropes that state “the victim was dressed provocatively,” “she shouldn’t have gotten drunk,” all promote the notion that she was responsible. Teaching men not to rape is the means of battling that trend.
Given your understanding of the world, why did everyone just stand by as the assault took place or, worse, make jokes about it and publicize the event over social media?
Do you think the people mocking the idea might be motivated by an agenda?
Sure. They don’t want to change the way they have sex to accommodate some other person who they don’t know and don’t care about.
Maybe rapists who don’t want to think they’re rapists want to think the idea is ridiculous?
This would be another example os shaming people into agreeing with you. There is no evidence nor does it even make sense that someone who doesn’t agree with “yes means yes” means they are a rapist. It’s an offensive viewpoint, which is probably one reason “yes means yes” hasn’t really caught on. Instead of framing it in terms of “agree with this or you’re a rapist,” frame it in terms that make people actually like the idea.
Wouldn’t this constitute “changing how everyone in the world should have sex” as well? And yet you don’t seem to think this criticism applies to your idea. Why not?
It definitely applies to my statement. However, instead of immediately demonizing everyone who disagrees and insinuating they are rapists, IMO a better approach would be to listen to the complaints, understand them, and tailor the message in a way that is attractive.
That link indicates that 1 in 16 men voluntarily admitted to raping women. I don’t know how you’re defining “small minority,” but that’s not nearly small enough for my taste.
“Who the fuck disagreed with that?”
Doubtthat seems to based on comments such as:
2) It’s efficacy, however, has not been established, and
3) It’s based on a pernicious rape myth that rapes happen due to misunderstandings.
As Dan said, no one has argued against this position. Here are the points that have been raised about this issue:
1) It is something everyone agrees with and already teaches. The education could be improved, we all agree, but in the context of a thread begun for folks to explain where they think feminists get rape prevention wrong (go read the original post again), it is baffling that you keep repeating something that everyone agrees with – ideas that were developed and promoted by feminists, by the way.
2) The efficacy of such advice is questionable. That doesn’t mean it should be undertaken because it has no downside (save the contribution to the notion that the lack of clarity on the part of the victim is responsible for rapes). So, again, in the context of “feminists have gotten stuff wrong and aren’t reasonable,” such advice would need to be backed up with some serious evidence to support that suggestion.
Now, I understand that you may not be advancing the anti-feminist position that gave rise to this thread, but then you just keep writing about things we agree with as though there is an argument, which makes your position odd, to say the least. Who are you arguing against?
Edward Gemmar@278:
Actually, it doesn’t follow that just because people repeatedly do something that they know it’s wrong and just don’t care. There’s a whole spectrum of other possibilities, most importantly:
1) Some people might not realize that what they’re doing constitute rape and that’s why they keep doing it. “No means yes, yes means anal.” This is what rape culture is all about. It’s why people say things like “I don’t think there’s really any such thing as rape” and it’s why people try to make arguments like “Well it’s not a rape if we’re both really drunk, right”? Telling men what rape is and not to rape might actually have some effect on such people.
2) Some people might realize what they’re doing is wrong but rationalize it to themselves. Human beings are exceptionally good at rationalizing things. People do terrible things and convince themselves they’re totally in the right. Finding examples of this is trivial. However, if you make it very clear what rape is and tell people not to rape such people may very well have a more difficult time rationalizing their behavior and their behavior may very well improve as a consequence.
Can you admit there may be a great many cases where “telling men not to rape” (used as a short-hand, of course) actually would help?
For the reasons mentioned above. Rape culture is real, man, I can testify from first-hand experience. If you’re told over and over again that no doesn’t necessarily mean no, that women like to play hard to get, that saying they’re not playing hard to get is just more playing hard to get…combine that with the already-mentioned human capacity for rationalization and you get bad results.
“Tell men not to rape” is all about making it harder to rationalize this kind of behavior. But if you don’t want to understand anything about human nature I can’t force you to.
That’s pretty uncharitable. I said “rapists dislike it” not “only rapists dislike it.” You want to try again taking my actual wording into account?
Did I actually do any of that? No. That was your perception.
Now consider the possibility that your previous experiences of being “demonized” for just offering “suggestions” is also a result of similar misunderstanding, partially on your part.
“Who are you arguing against?”
Beats me.
The thread is for the general discussion of what can and can’t be done to prevent rape. I accept the context of it’s inception – but I’m neither particularly keen to identify as pro or anti a position I see as multifaceted. Therefore I say what I say free from identification as either a feminist or someone who is opposed to feminism. I see feminism as a collection of articles which impress me to varying degrees. I’m not ideologically driven – I’m more utilitarian, a bit pinko, with green edges.
Therefore I would appreciate it if someone argued with my argument rather than my perceived position on a grander scale.
If I am going to say “I think things need to start with no means no and yes means yes” and you agree – then agree. If you say something like “it’s not clearly efficacious” or “it’s based on pernicious myth” then I am left with the impression you don’t agree.
That something is taught in general does not mean it is taught as I specified, there is presumably an attached notion of what age group might be suitable, what curricula, what to do about people who aren’t in the school system and so on.
Now by all means continue to suspect me of some kind of counterproductive intent if you wish. I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on, fwiw. However it would certainly save a lot of time if I say something you accept that we agree and move on. That I don’t identify as a feminist does not mean I seek to subvert or stake claim to an idea that derives from feminism. Nor are ideas derived from feminism necessarily exclusive to it.
@Dave Allen:
So what is there to discuss?
You have nothing to add to existing discussions and you’re unwilling to do any research to find anything to add. You’re unwilling to concede any credibility to the idea that social science research can be evidence-based.
It seems to me that based on your position it’s totally fair to barge into a discussion on rape prevention with the suggestion:
“I think if all women wore clown shoes it would prevent a lot of rape.”
Now, the idea may seem absurd. But how can we determine it is actually false? Any evidence we could adduce against it is probably subject to interpretation under some anti-clown shoes agenda. Those anti-clown shoes scum, demonizing their opponents and stifling dissent!
Your position, it seems to me, justifies the use of any arbitrary proposition as “rape prevention advice.” “Cook an egg for three minutes. You can’t prove it won’t prevent rape!”
What is there to even discuss from this perspective?
Please. I mean exactly what I said:
1) It’s advice that no one says shouldn’t be taught. In fact, it is taught, but we can always improve.
2) The efficacy has not been proven, so if you want to base your position around this idea, recognize it’s just a nice-seeming notion, not something that has sturdy verification behind it.
3) Recognize that it very much does support a pernicious rape myth, so in teaching it one must be careful to clarify.
It’s not a binary choice: agree with me in total or disagree with me in total.
doubtthat@288:
I feel I have yet to argue with anyone here who understands this.
@Edward Gemmer:
Also, I answered my own questions a while back about what would constitute effective rape prevention measures. My answer focused on paying attention in your own social circles and communities and making sure no one is violating other people’s boundaries over and over again. And do you know what my idea to do was if such a person was identified:
Talk to them. “Tell them not to rape”. Explain to them that it’s not OK to keep violating people’s boundaries.
Can you explain what’s wrong with this idea?
“So what is there to discuss?”
Look, if you don’t want to discuss stuff with me stop discussing stuff with me. I really won’t mind.
I would like to continue talking to Maureen and Doubtthat if they want to go on with the sort of debate we have been having recently, so I am open to more discussion.
But it bemuses me as to why you apparently find me some sort of constant unproductive participant – to whom you then direct all manner of inquiry, even after I’ve suggested we cut our losses and drop it.
So I’ll say it again – we don’t seem to get much from talking to one another – can we stop?
Now by all means continue – I won’t impinge on your freedom – but I probably won’t reply unless your posts start to contain something other than angry impugning.
Oh, actually, that brings to bear the real question on this matter:
Do you guys think rapists are born rapists? That they’re inherently rapists? Or do you think they perhaps become rapists because of their life experiences?
If you think people are born either rapists or not rapists and do not change at all after that then you’re right: “tell people not to rape” makes no sense at all.
But I don’t think that. I think that people can be prevented from becoming rapists if they’re told not to rape. Maybe people who are already rapists cannot be changed back (but I think that’s arguable, see above) but people who are not yet there can very well be influenced by “telling people not to rape”.
Is that not worthwhile?
That wasn’t angry impugning. That was a very critique of your position.
If you cannot accept that your position is untenable then go ahead. Keep “discussing”.
“1) It’s advice that no one says shouldn’t be taught. In fact, it is taught, but we can always improve.”
Taught to what degree of comprehensivity? For example I asked earlier about ideas on how to reach home-schoolers.
“2) The efficacy has not been proven, so if you want to base your position around this idea, recognize it’s just a nice-seeming notion, not something that has sturdy verification behind it.”
Given that there is no control group who has been guarded against the idea in totality this is the sort of thing that is impossible to falsify without some sort of unethical social engineering.
So whilst I can’t disagree with the difficulty in providing evidential support it seems totally ludicrous to me to suggest that it does not help reduce crime to explain what constitutes the crime.
As proofing, rather than hard evidence, we can look at the fact that in India the cultural standards are somewhat more in line with notions that consent is implied in behaviour rather than given or denied verbally.
” 3) Recognize that it very much does support a pernicious rape myth, so in teaching it one must be careful to clarify.”
Well if that’s what you mean we are in agreement.
However, what you did say was “it’s based on a pernicious myth” – to which I still object. If what you mean is that it can form the basis of a myth under fallacious understanding that is fine. However I guard against the fortification of fallacy through suppression of the source material in preference to elucidating the fallacy itself.
Which you probably do too.
I don’t think I explained this well before, and I see how I left open the defeatist position that rapers are gonna rape.
With regard to “teach men not to rape” and Steubenville:
1) I do not think informing the rapists about consent would have made any difference. In fact, I think they understood consent, which is why they took such pains to elude any chance it could be declined.
2) This does not mean, however, that teaching them not to rape would have been completely ineffectual — like telling Gacy that murder isn’t cool.
3) I say this because another feature manifest in the way the Steubenville crime occurred was the total lack of concern for making their actions public. They clearly thought that this drunk girl was property they could treat however they wished, and a good percentage of their peers and adults in the town seem to agree.
4) So, I will modify my prior claim by saying first, that education about alcohol and consent could have made some difference. There is the implication that all they needed to do was get this girl drunk, and anything goes. Of course, that’s just a hypothetical.
5) The real efficacy of “teach men not to rape” comes from attacking directly the culture surrounding the event that made so many people think the crime was so funny.
As an example, you wouldn’t presume to solve the problem of lynchings in the South between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement by teaching the victims to be less black or not antagonize white people. That problem is solved by directly attacking the culture that legitimizes that behavior, “teach the South not to lynch.”
Hello,
Well, I haven’t had the time to follow all of the comments or even reply before now, but I have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind making a few comments here, less specifically on prevention and more on how the feminist worldview is somewhat clouding the issue and is not entirely accurate.
First, I’d like to reference Kes’ comment and links at 40. In the first link, one of the key take-aways is that the percentage of men who actually rape is actually quite low. The article estimates it at 6%, although that might be underreported. And that most of those who did were multiple rapists. What this raises, though, is an issue around us being in a “rape culture” and about the solution of “tell men not to rape”, because it seems that most men, if this study is to be believed, already don’t rape, and since most of those who do are repeat offenders we likely run into a case where they simply don’t care. If the culture was so attached to rape, it would seem that more would rape. And note that the study is done without actually saying “Do you rape?”, but by tracking obvious and clear cases, which should limit at least some of the misreporting. If men still don’t report those actions even if they do them, it seems that they recognize that it is rape and it is wrong, and don’t want to be associated with that. In a “rape culture”, we’d hardly expect that.
The Stubenville case that was brought up recently doesn’t work to refute that, because these guys did think that people would laugh, and while some did a lot of people simply thought them idiots for actually posting that as if it was okay.
Now, the article does point out that a lot of the rapes were intoxication rapes, estimating that 70% of them were that sort. This could indicate that we need more education on that sort of rape. But the presumption that that would be because of some kind of “rape culture” and not because of our culture’s relationship to alcohol is specious. And I think that common feminist arguments contribute to this, because in that article the intoxication cases were pretty much centered on cases where they literally could not consent — passed out or oblivious — while a lot of feminist argument takes it further than that. For example, fairly recently Rebecca Watson argued that the limit would be if someone was stumbling or staggering, which is simply them being intoxicated at all. While some would deny it, most people accept that if someone is unconscious that’s likely rape, but the extended version includes the standard “Got blitzed out of my mind and woke up beside someone and can’t remember what happened”, which generally ISN’T considered such a case. In fact, I recall a song — whose title and singer I can’t remember, other than that it was a woman — with the “It’s the Sunday morning after, and baby who the hell are you?” associated with other lines like getting a tatoo and getting her tongue pierced. We don’t consider this sort of thing “rape”, and it also runs into an issue where two people go out to a party, both get plastered, end up in bed together, and can’t remember how that happened the next day. Who raped whom, there?
This also runs afoul of the new push, at least here, to consider people responsible for their actions even if drunk. If you are too drunk to remember the night before, but get in a car and kill someone, you’re still responsible. And there’s a growing acceptance, at least here, that if someone is drunk and rapes someone they are still guilty. The feminist push for a stronger “drunkenness is not consent” angle runs right into this, and does make people think that feminists want women treated as helpless, unable to give consent if they’ve had a drink. This, then, works against even some of the passed out cases, as the accusation is that she got drunk, had sex, doesn’t remember what happened, regrets doing it, and is now calling it rape … no matter how inaccurate that is.
Not that, at least here, cases where the woman is explicitly drugged seem to have less of this sort of thing than cases with alcohol. It seems to me that cases with the “date rape” drug are generally treated more seriously, as long as it can be proven that a drug was used.
The same thing seems to apply to campaigns that say that an explicit “Yes” is required for consent, because I have seen arguments that claim that women should not be expected to say “No” or make it obvious. The second article talks about this, but asserts that in general we can tell if someone means “No” even if they don’t say it. The problem is that there are a significant number of people who don’t have the social skills — for various reasons — to tell, even in those cases. If the percentage was higher, this wouldn’t be a concern, but with it being so low and the number of one-time offenders being low, this can come up in a surprisingly large number of cases, and putting the onus on the other person to be able to read your reactions no matter what the circumstances works against the notion of personal responsibility. Why shouldn’t you be able to make it clear when you say “No”? So a campaign that encouraged people to be completely up front about their consent and to deny consent explicitly would make fewer cases where it might be ambiguous, and allow more people to think about rape as being an explicit violation.
I also think the “rape is about power, not sex” is problematic. The stats show that the majority of rape victims are in the age range of maximum attractiveness (I think I saw 16 – 40 or something like that). There are a significant number of outliers, but there’s also a significant number of male outliers who find people in those ranges attractive. When there used to be actual stores that sold pornography, you could find magazines dedicated to pictures of older women, so clearly enough men found them attractive enough to make that be a reasonable market. So the evidence is that most rapes probably are about sex, and not about power. Sure, some of them are about power, no question, but most of them seem not to be, and pitching that it is about power causes confusions from the people who say that they didn’t want power but simply wanted sex, the people who wanted a sex doll and didn’t think of the other person as a person at all. If rape is about power, then they aren’t rapists. That’s wrong.
As a thought experiment, if rape is about power then if rape didn’t give men power over women, we would expect rapes to decrease. So imagine that women considered being raped flattery and were disappointed if it didn’t happen to them. Does anyone think that the number of rapes would decrease instead of increase? If you don’t think that the number of rapes would decrease, then you probably don’t think that rape is really about power most of the time.
I apologize for the length of this comment.
Look, this has become such a trivial, semantic argument, that I don’t really care how it works out.
It is my contention that in order to think educating people on consent will prevent rape, you are operating under the assumption that some rapes are committed due to confusion on the part of the rapist. There is very little evidence to suggest that this is the case in a statistically relevant way.
Now, did the advice create the myth, or did the myth create the advice? Chicken-egg; there’s an answer, but I’m not sure it matters all that much.
All that is required is that the advice and the myth are closely related requiring special care that teaching the advice doesn’t exacerbate the myth and the damage it causes.
VS@296:
Please address my arguments at:
284
290
292
and doubtthat’s at:
295
VS:
I’m very willing to discuss this but not if you’re going to dismiss the concept of “rape culture” outright. I’ve experienced it myself so it’s not reasonable to expect me to simply accept that it’s an invalid concept. You have to be willing to accept you might be wrong about some of this stuff.
Dan L.,
I think my comment did cover them off. The key argument is that the total percentage is small from Kes’ stats, so that makes there being a rape culture dubious, at least one worthy of the name. The idea that women play hard to get is a potential problem, but some women seem to or, at least, hold it up as THEIR ideal (see, for example, “The Rules”). To call that “rape culture” ignores that it’s a different and broader cultural artifact, like is the case for alcohol. I addressed them posting it publically by noting that a lot of people thought them idiots for doing so, and it got them convicted. There’s certainly benefit in reworking these problematic notions, but you have to do it outside of the simple focus on rape. For example, reworking the idea that women play hard to get has to include telling women to stop playing hard to get as a strategy. And the comment about them being born really has no relevance to my comment as far as I can see, so you probably should make a specific point if you care about that one.
Note: I’ll have to fade into the woodwork for a while. I’ll try to pick this up later.
This is instructive. Now, at 300 posts, we’re still dealing with nonsense like this. Would it wise to treat VS as a beautiful little snowflake, unique in every way, or should I save myself the pain of 100+ more comments by pointing out that someone making this assertion in 21st century with all the data and access to knowledge we have available could just be ignored?
The number of idiotic myths bundled in that paragraph are just astonishing. The Rules? The fucking Rules? You want to be taken seriously and you’re using that as evidence that women play “hard to get?”
No, not this one. I can tell when effort is going to be wasted.
VS@300:
No, you have failed to address pretty much any of the arguments in question.
No, it doesn’t. You simply do not understand how the term “rape culture” is being used. It is not mutually exclusive to “drinking culture” — there is heavy overlap. It is not mutually exclusive to the “hard to get” meme — that meme is explicitly an aspect of rape culture as the term rape culture is used.
Perhaps you need to define what you mean by “rape culture” to move forward.
Regardless, you have not addressed the following regarding “tell men not to rape”:
1. People who repeatedly rape don’t necessarily know what they’re doing is rape.
2. People who repeatedly rape may rationalize what they’re doing as “not rape”.
3. People are not born rapists; they become rapists through their life experiences. We can “tell men not to rape” before they become rapists.
Address those arguments, clarify what you think “rape culture” means, and we might be able to have a conversation about this.
To clarify how the term “rape culture” is used:
I don’t think anyone would find it the least bit controversial to talk about “sports culture”. One could object, if one were a pedantic asshole, that sports are really a part of the broader culture, not a culture unto itself. Ah, but that is ridiculous hair-splitting. The usage of the term “culture” here is quite clear from context. Cultures have subcultures, and subcultures have subcultures, but those subcultures are all in some sense cultures unto themselves. I can talk about “European culture” and I can talk about “Spanish culture” and even though Spanish culture is a subset of European culture I don’t think too many people would have trouble with these concepts.
Somehow when you highlight a particular set of cultural assumptions and norms that provide cover for rapists and call that “rape culture” that’s unacceptable, though. I don’t understand why.
VS, there is so much wrong with your comment (296) that I agree with doubtthat that it is not a very good starting point for a conversation about this. You need to be willing to accept that you’re not an expert on this despite the five minutes you spent researching it online.
Oh, this is really too much.
I was quite explicit. You teach people not to rape before they become rapists and then (it seems to me) there’s a decent chance they won’t become rapists. It seems to me that this would be a great reason to “tell people not to rape”.
You are arguing that “tell people not to rape” is not an effective strategy. I am pointing out a situation in which it seems to me it could very plausibly be an effective strategy. How is that not relevant to your comment?
Doubtthat
“It is my contention that in order to think educating people on consent will prevent rape, you are operating under the assumption that some rapes are committed due to confusion on the part of the rapist. There is very little evidence to suggest that this is the case in a statistically relevant way.”
We risk going in circles somewhat. I assert that there isn’t a controversy in regards that the issue of consent lies at the heart of rape and that illustrating a standard is therefore useful.
This does not imply that it be denied that technical breaching of the standard not constitute a crime too.
Now you are engaged in an argument with a man who thinks it’s an issue as to whether or not a girl plays hard to get.
An issue that would not be such a sticky wicket if it was made clear that – as a legal categorical imperative – one takes a no for what it is, and a yes for what it is.
I do not deny that only a minority of rapists operate under conditions of genuine confusion – I agreed with this earlier – why not rule them out as a consequence if something like this would help?
Moreover it just clears up a big grey area.
But by all means continue to argue with me as to whether or not clear consent matters whilst also arguing with VS about what a man should do in the face of hard to get.
Because what I think a man should do in the case of hard to get is say “OK, I’ll take no for an answer then”. And if the girl was only teasing she can clarify.
No, actually the evidence suggests just the opposite of that. Which you’d know if you’d bother to research the matter instead of spewing your uninformed opinion.
@Dave Allen
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as intent on finding disagreement as you.
I will assume that I wasn’t clear in my post: I personally see the advice on consent being the result of a wide-spread myth, but I don’t care. I don’t think the causal story is all that important.
If we agree that care needs to be taken to not indulge that myth while teaching about consent, I could really care less about how we got there. I’m not disagreeing with you, unless you really think it’s important to decide which came first, the myth or the prevention advice.
“If we agree that care needs to be taken to not indulge that myth while teaching about consent, I could really care less about how we got there. I’m not disagreeing with you, unless you really think it’s important to decide which came first, the myth or the prevention advice.”
As far as I see it mythology is irrelevant insofar as teaching people about the technicalities of the crime unless it’s brought up as part of the discussion. The teachers involved could be advised to know that someone might go:
“But Teach, I once heard of a boy who met a girl and she was like ‘no’ but then he later learned she woudda wanted him to go forward and would have given out if he’d just persisted a bit, so its like he missed his chance innit?”
And the teacher could go:
“Yeah, but by sticking with this standard the boy in question knew he wasn’t engaging in crime and merely missed the opportunity to get his rocks off as opposed to hassling another girl who actually meant ‘no’ to the point of harassment or rape and making himself a criminal pariah.”
And another student could go:
“I once knew this girl, right, and she was kissing this boy she liked, right, and he said ‘djerwanna’? And she was like ‘mmmm’ and he went ahead and she ended up really upset and hurt cause she didn’t really wanna. But he was all like ‘I fort you said yeah, right’?
And the teacher could go:
“Well that’s terrible, obviously he should have made sure she was properly willing by getting clear consent, but had she been unambiguous in refusal he may not have pressed on and even if he did she would be better placed in any subsequent legal proceedings.”
There’s no reason to be coy about. Teach about consent, teach about the rape myth, explain why it’s wrong, explain how the two can be conflated.
I’m not sure why we need stealth education measures.
“Teach about consent, teach about the rape myth, explain why it’s wrong, explain how the two can be conflated.”
Fair enough, by all means make the debunking of common excuses and fallacies curricular. I don’t object to that.
doubtthat,
Before you get so dismissive, you should probably try to figure out what the argument actually is. See, the argument is that a non-insignificant number of women do see “play hard to get” as a valid or even the best strategy for attracting men. “The Rules” was, by all accounts, a popular book. I don’t know the specific sales figures, but it spawned a number of books and has its defenders. Sure, you can argue that feminists decried it, but the fact is that some women, at least, think it describes a good strategy. And I can add in all of the various romantic novels and movies that follow the tried-and-true idea of the man overcoming initial resistance, which are aimed primarily at women. I am not saying that this is GOOD; quite the opposite, in fact. But I am saying that this is a fact, and that therefore in reaction to a push to not act as if a woman is playing hard to get that you might get a reasonable answer of “But at least some women do”. So you’d need the push on both sides. And that’s all I’m saying.
Dan L.,
Because if you look at terms like “sports culture” and “European culture” and “Spanish culture” and the like, they seem to be a unified whole, something that isn’t just a bunch of other cultural attitudes that happen to impact, say, how people in sports act or how Spanish people act, which is often quite explicit. In other words, it tends to build towards an identity, or some kind of explicit grouping. I don’t think that’s the case at all for what is called the “rape culture”, which is why I’m skeptical that we actually have one. Now, to be clear, I do think that we have cultural attitudes that contribute to rapes, and I think that we might even have a number of cultural attitudes that are directly aimed at issues around rapes, but that we don’t have any kind of unified culture that can be called a “rape culture”. And I also think it quite important to identify which of the cultural attitudes are aimed explicitly at rape and which are not, as I argue the alcohol case is the latter, not the former; it’s not an attitude that we hold because of its relation to rape, but that it has an impact on attitudes towards rape because it happens to relate to one aspect of it but is aimed at something else, which is overall responsibility when you’re intoxicated and also the importance of alcohol and drunkenness to “having fun”.
But if you’re willing to actually make an argument, I’m willing to listen and see if I might be wrong.
No, I’m actually saying that it seems that, for the most part, we pretty much already do that, using the stats from Kes’ article — and the one you then cited — that estimated that it is 6% of the men interviewed that would actually commit rape. Most men seem to know not to rape even when you don’t call it rape, if those stats are to be trusted. And they are not mine, made up to defend my point, but are the ones of people who are, ostensibly, trying to support your position.
From your own source, which I was talking about in my first paragraph:
So, it’s 6%, which is a small number, and might be an underreport, but seems not to be, which was my first point. The point you’re replying to here is my commenting that even if it was an underreport, that suggests that these men know very well what rape is even when you don’t call it rape and are deliberately avoiding being associated with anything that looks like rape. This would suggest that men, in general, don’t think rape a good or acceptable thing, which is what I was after there. Perhaps you should try to read more of my arguments before leaping to telling me to do research. That would let you avoid giving me references that I talked about (although I admit I didn’t link it, which could give rise to some confusions).
“So you’d need the push on both sides.”
Well, not necessarily.
Now I don’t mean to suggest that you are wrong in regards to what is fair or productive, but if the message got through to those who want sex that “yes means yes” then people who play games along the lines of those you mention would have to stop. Were those who played hard to get games or “I like to be forced” games met with insouciant “OK then, bye” type responses in general then they would have to either stop the games or do without the sort of interaction they presumably wish for.
Now would this work in practice? I doubt it. However as the general basic standard of how not to rape yes means yes works without considering ambiguous game playing.
Even if you sympathise with people who pursue a likely game of hard to get – presumably you cede that they fail to cover themselves against a plausible accusation of impropriety should they fail to gain clear consent, and at worst they may be making an excuse for an opportunistic act of sexual predation.
As a correction, “I doubt it” is too pessimistic. I think there will always be ambiguous territory. You can eat into it by being explicit about what it takes to be explicit, IMO.
The problem is that if you set out as an advertising or intellectual/moral message that you should only take “yes means yes”, but people notice that being persistent will in fact actually get sex — and, generally, with partners who are happy with the persistence — then your message will be dismissed as not reflecting reality. This sort of argument is what fuels PUAs, especially in groups or on board with people who are shy and aren’t successful at getting sex; they stand on saying that how society says you should act is not, in fact, the way that actually works.
But if you make it so that men should accept that women don’t play hard to get and so that most women DON’T play hard to get, then you sidestep all of that.
@VS:
Last reply unless you can try to help me find some common ground. I really dislike your style of argumentation. You never seem willing to concede anything even if it’s fairly reasonable. It gives me the impression that you just want to be right instead of discuss the issues.
By the way, I asked you to define how you’re using the term “rape culture” and you didn’t. Poor form. If you’re going to tell me my usage is wrong without even understanding what my usage is then it’s incumbent upon you to explain on what basis you’re doing that.
1. That is simply not true. “Sports culture” is in no way a unified whole. Some people just watch the games; some people like watching analysis on espn. Some people like football and baseball, some people just like one or the other. Some people wear sports jerseys and others don’t. Some people tailgate and others don’t. There is no one way such “people act”. Some sports fans are nebbishy stats nerds and some are beer-swilling good ol’ boys. People in sports have very diverse views. In the last few months some NFL players have written editorials supporting gay marriage, others have written against it.
Cultures are never unified wholes. Let’s consider Spanish culture. Are the cultures of Madrid and Barcelona identical? Or do the cities have distinct cultural elements? Maybe this is simpler with “American culture.” Boston and New York are both American cities but with very different cultures.
2. Even if this wasn’t true this would not prevent me from using the term “rape culture” to designate something real and worth discussing. You might argue that this is misleading compared to other uses of the word “culture” — I don’t agree, given my argument in (1) — but ultimately if I’m willing to clarify what I mean I don’t see why this should be a huge problem. Philosophers do this all the time. Scientists do this all the time.
Again, I have personally witnessed such a culture so “I’m skeptical that we actually have one” is fucking meaningless to me. It does build towards an identity: a very specific interpretation of masculinity. Apparently you did not realize this. That is a good reason to stop, take a step back, and let the person who thinks the term actually has a valid meaning to explain instead of expressing your baseless “skepticism” about it. That’s how real, honest, discussion works. You don’t tell me my ideas are invalid before you know what they are. You find out what they are first.
And again, this is only because you are disposed towards lecturing instead of listening. And again, cultures aren’t “unified” in the first place. There is “punk rock culture” — but some punk rockers are some of the most ardent social justice advocates there are, other punk rockers are political nihilists, and still other punk rockers are virulent racists. These groups of punk rockers are not unified but they share a great deal of culture between them and that shared culture may safely be called “punk rock culture” without any confusion.
Again, an issue only because you want to tell me how it is rather than understand my perspective on it. First of all, I’d like to point out that just as in all my other examples in which I’ve demonstrated that cultures are rarely “unified wholes”, drinking culture is not a unified whole. Some people like to get cocktails at nice bars that don’t let you in if you’re wearing jeans. Some people like to slam PBR at Irish pubs. Some people like to drink to relax with friends after work, some people like to drink while they go out and dance and try to get laid.
So there’s a particular aspect of drinking culture that’s sometimes called “hookup culture” and it’s particularly prominent on college campuses. This is an aspect of drinking culture that is also an aspect of rape culture.
By the way, the fact of overlap between cultures also puts the lie to the “cultures are unified whole” claim you keep making but not justifying. Red Sox hats are simultaneously part of sports culture, Red Sox culture, and Boston city culture.
Can you accept that you seem to have a monumentally poor understanding of what the word “culture” means and the general ontological structure of “cultures”? Or, if your ego won’t let you do that, can you at least admit that I can use the term “rape culture” to refer to a particular concept as long as I qualify it properly (even if you don’t accept that it’s analogous to other “culture” terms)?
If not I will probably not want to discuss this issue with you any further.
You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding my argument.
Once again, you have argued that “tell people not to rape” is not a good strategy. Your reasoning:
1. Only a very small percentage of men rape.
2. Rapists don’t seem to care if people don’t tell them to rape.
This reasoning is flawed because it doesn’t take into account how people become part of the six percent. We know that in other cultures the percentage is not six percent: there is not something in human nature which makes six percent of all men intrinsically rapists. Culture seems to influence the rate at which men become rapists.
The idea here is that by “telling people not to rape” we change the culture and change the percentage of men who become rapists in the first place. If it’s already a small percentage, great! No reason not to make it smaller though, right? (For the record, I don’t think one out of every twenty men is a small percentage.) Most men don’t need to be told? Great! Is it going to hurt them to hear it again anyway?
But the key point here is that if we tell more people not to rape it’s quite possible that fewer people will become rapists in the first place — hence preventing rape! So you see, my argument makes sense. Please stop deliberately misunderstanding it and address it directly.
No, you have (rather predictably) missed my point.
As the article mentions, previous self-report studies on rape got very low report rates relative to this one. Apparently even people who rape don’t want to admit to being rapists.
In this study, they did not use the term “rape” and got a much higher report rate.
What this suggests to me as a matter of elementary logic is that more men are willing to admit to actions that constitute rape than are willing to admit to rape itself. This suggests to me that these men rape but do not like to think of themselves as rapists. That would seem to be the complete opposite of the conclusion you drew; I don’t understand how you can overlook this factor, though.
“The problem is that if you set out as an advertising or intellectual/moral message that you should only take “yes means yes”, but people notice that being persistent will in fact actually get sex — and, generally, with partners who are happy with the persistence — then your message will be dismissed as not reflecting reality.”
Only because people quibble over the nature of what the argument is. It is no a philosophical truism, it’s not a matter of legal definition as far as I understand the law as it currently operates.
It is advice.
Now if you’re going to say that people enter grey areas because it is rewarding and exciting to take risks I am not going to disagree, the point is that if you stay safe you stay safe. If a potential sexual partner is pursued to the point where you lack the plausible deniability that you have engaged in criminal activity then you are vulnerable to the charge.
“This sort of argument is what fuels PUAs, especially in groups or on board with people who are shy and aren’t successful at getting sex; they stand on saying that how society says you should act is not, in fact, the way that actually works.”
Their obsession for notches in bedposts should not trump a default notion of what it is to remain explicitly inside the law. It is not counter to reality to point out that to play with ambiguity is to leave yourself open to a plausible accusation or a genuine charge of an act of sexual aggression – even if you were being well meaning and “getting all the right signals” according to some suave lothario’s guidebook?
“But if you make it so that men should accept that women don’t play hard to get and so that most women DON’T play hard to get, then you sidestep all of that.”
That isn’t my position. I am aware that some people may play with ambiguity for all manner of reasons. Yes, to deny that would be a matter of denying reality, but to state that it somehow need be priority info somehow running counter to the suggested baseline of YesMeansYesNoMeansNo only works if you regard YMYNMN as some sort of truism pertaining to more than good advice. Best practice.
@VS:
I’m sorry about all the accusations of bad faith. I was cranky and I’m calmer now.
Here’s what I mean by “rape culture”: I already mentioned that I think it encourages people to identify with a particular interpretation of masculinity. That is much too simple.* As I’ve explained, I think cultures are really complex, man! I really don’t think you can dismiss the idea entirely just by saying arguing that cultures are unified wholes and make people act the same way. I don’t think that does the concept any justice at all. Here’s the Merriam-Webster’s definition of “culture” I think is relevant:
Note that these sub-definitions aren’t mutually exclusive. Red Sox fandom definitely falls into (a), (b) and (d) simultaneously. “Rape culture” is meant mostly in the sense of (d) but it involves elements of all three of the other definitions (in my opinion of course).
Here’s what I mean by “tell people not to rape”: If I’m at a party and I see that someone has been violating people’s boundaries I would feel it incumbent upon me to do something about it. If it was someone I knew I would talk to them about it. I would ask what was up with that. I would tell them it’s not cool. And if I didn’t know the person I would try to find someone who did to do the same.
Often this is very hard to do. It can be very hard to tell friends especially that they’re acting terribly, especially if they’re particularly charismatic or influential people. I can think of examples in my own life. People deny it, people defend it, people are non-confrontational and don’t want to rock the boat. Incidentally this is where rape culture comes in. “Bros before hos” — have you heard that one? Loyalty to friends before women.
But friends listen to friends. I believe that people tend to adopt the cultural values of their immediate milieu — not all at once and not always, obviously. But if friends make it clear to friends that certain behaviors are not acceptable then just maybe some of those friends will listen. “Tell people not to rape.”
Dan can be the one that is nice to you.
Let’s say you were the sort of person that bothered to research a subject before flinging shit against the wall and you could actually prove (1) what the fuck “playing hard to get” means and (2) how often it actually occurs, you would still be in the position of trying to explain why women resisting the advances of men contributes to rape and sexual assault.
I’ll give it you, that’s a novel approach. It’s a perverse sort of creativity. Now a woman is not only responsible for her rape if she looks to good, drinks too much, and is too flirty (asking for it), but now she has to be concerned that denying the advances of men will invite rape, because…something in VC’s brain seems to thing that makes sense.
If you are a man, how do you distinguish between a woman playing “hard to get” and a woman who honestly just doesn’t want to deal with you? You can’t, so this entire bullshit notion is washed away with the simple point that “no means no.”
“Well, she did say ‘no,’ but there was a stupid book that was sort of popular several decades ago, so I’m just going to go ahead and pull out my dingus to see what happens.”
I thought the previous folks were bad (they were), but holy motherfucking Jesus balls, that’s the silliest thing I’ve read in a while.
Dave Allen,
Advice has to work in order for it to be taken as advice, which means it has to reflect how things work.
Let me summarize the situation from my perspective to demonstrate where I think the problem comes in:
Let’s say that you tell someone to always take “No means no” and not be persistent at all because it reduces their risk of being charged with rape. So, they do this and don’t have success getting sex. They then notice someone who is successful, and that person says that they don’t take “No means no” as an answer and can be very persistent, and that women seem to like it and that they’ve never had anyone charge them with rape at all doing that. At this point, the advice starts to look like it doesn’t reflect reality, even if the law does say that “No means no”. So, then, further imagine that they go out and try to be more persistent, and happen to hit a woman who does mean that who charges them with rape. Then, to their mind, it looks like it’s arbitrary; women will accept persistence from men they like and charge men they don’t like with rape. And then they get bitter over that and end up hating women.
If this sounds familiar, it should; I’ve seen a similar progression in a ton of shy men reacting to incredibly bad advice about how they should act in order to attract people, and seen the PUAs, as I said, make that exact same argument that what women SAY they want is not, in fact, what they want. All that’s missing from those cases is, in general, the rape charge.
So, then, as you say if you can teach men not to be persistent, women who play hard to get should lose. But that only works as long as there aren’t men who try to be persistent. We need it to be the case that not only do women who try to play hard to get fail, but men who try to play on the idea that women who play hard to get also fail. If not, then you run right into the situation I’m talking about, where it looks like ignoring your advice is successful and likely more successful than following it, at which point no one will follow it.
Note that this also depends on who is following what advice. If the most desirable men and women follow the “play hard to get” advice, then over time most people will follow that advice as well, and the culture and the law will be totally out of sync.
doubtthat,
The biggest problem with not being nice is when you end up aggressively attacking someone for points and arguments they didn’t actually make and don’t support. Your comment pretty much does that in spades.
Now, I didn’t actually talk about “playing hard to get” in my initial post. I did talk about this link from Kes’ comment:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/
Just to point out that with the very small number of men who do engage in that obvious rape behaviour from the first link there is a number of men who have a harder time seeing those vague rejections as rejections. I’m one of them; if a woman, for example, tells me that she’s too busy to go out with me right now but might later, I tend to actually believe that she’s telling the truth. Go figure. This is, in fact, a trait of certain conditions based around social anxiety and a lack of social skills (and I think would include autism). However, I strongly support clear but polite rejections. The best rejection I ever had was a woman who said “No … but thanks, though!”. So, I strongly support “No means no”, but insist that this has two sides: women have to clearly say “No”, men have to take a clear “No” as an answer, and we can wrangle over how clear is a clear “No”.
So, if I didn’t talk about playing hard to get in my original post, where did it come from? Well, from Dan L. telling me to read certain comments, and this part from 284:
To which my reply was, essentially, that for a not insignificant number of women, no doesn’t necessariily mean no, and women do play hard to get. And I used actually evidence from the culture to indicate that, yeah, this happens. Your simple dismissals of it in no way constitute evidence that my rather weak claim is false, and don’t even defend against a stronger claim that this is a cultural norm. And I never argued that there aren’t women who don’t play hard to get, so it doesn’t even work against that.
So, I agree that “No should mean no”, but as I said in a comment that is now in moderation but will likely pop up soon, if for a lot of women it doesn’t then men who want to have success with women will ignore it to have success with those women. Thus, you need to both teach women to stop playing hard to get and men to stop thinking that women play hard to get as a strategy.
As a clarifying aside, here’s how I’d tell women to stop playing hard to get (we already have many ideas for telling men to respect “No means no”):
If you play hard to get, you are basically saying that you prefer the man who ignores you telling them that you aren’t interested to the man who accepts and respects your wishes. Don’t you think it rather stupid to prefer a man who doesn’t care about what you want over the man who does? Shouldn’t the latter be the man you really want to date?
It kinda relates to the old trick some women pulled of trying to discourage men from hitting on them by wearing a wedding ring, who would then wonder why they ended up meeting jerks. The answer is that the only men who would hit on them were men who were jerks and didn’t care that she was married, while all the legitimate nice guys would see the ring and think “Oh, I’d better not”. Surely it’s the latter sort of man that women should WANT hitting on them, no?
Do you not see, Verbose Stoic, that thinking such as yours puts women in an invidious position?
Apart from the fact that many of us are brought up to find ways of saying no which do not hurt anyone’s feelings there are instances where the fear of worse if they say “no” loud and clear is not unreasonable. Here’s an example – http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/rape-and-violence-against-women-crisis?page=2 – quoted on Ophelia Benson’s blog just yesterday.
So, yes, women have to get better at saying clearly what they want and don’t want. Just look what that did for Adria Richards, by the way!
But men have to put in some real work at recognising an autonomous human being when they meet one and developing their social skills beyond those of a hormone-addled 13 year old.
Those who have genuine difficulties with empathy and reading social signals should ask for help. It would be given gladly. The ones who simply can’t be arsed, though, should give up on the cowardly trick of hiding behind the genuine problems of those on the autism spectrum.
I agree completely, and in fact never argued otherwise. In reference to the article, there will indeed be men who will take even a polite “No” really, really badly and will react with anger and possibly violence. I like to call these men by the very technical name of “Jerks”. I don’t support that and think that if you take a polite rejection with anger — as opposed to mere disappointment — that you’re wrong and should work on that. Reacting with violence is simply so much worse than that; I can’t see any possible case where that would be justified.
So, I’m not sure what your point is. I suppose you can argue that because they don’t know what men are going to react violently that it puts them in a position of having to choose between having sex when they don’t want it or risking a violent reaction, but I think we can agree that the only solution to that is to teach men to indeed stop doing that. I’m on board … as long as we also teach women to reject clearly and politely, because I don’t want to see expressing rejection clearly used as an excuse to abuse and belittle the person asking.
I’ve seen the help given. It’s usually utter crap. This is not due to the people not wanting to help, but due to the fact that people don’t, in fact, learn empathy or to read social signals. They pick it up naturally. Trying to teach something that comes naturally to you to someone to whom it doesn’t doesn’t work very well, and usually ends up with you teaching rules that sound good on paper but don’t map to how anyone actually acts in the world. One of my biggest complaints about some of the harassment policies is that someone who is weak in social skills is likely to try to follow them as written … and discover that no one actually acts that way. That doesn’t help anything.
Thus, you can get people who are really trying to get help and follow it who still screw up, so it’s not as easy to tell who can and can’t be arsed. That’s why I want to move away from the more vague and intuitive notions that not everyone can grasp intuitively and towards ones that are abundantly clear.
Dan L.,
I don’t think we’re that far apart on culture. For the most part, my big gripe with the “rape culture” term is that it’s always talked about as something that is negative and that we should oppose. So, then, I wouldn’t list it as just a set of cultural artifacts that relate to rape itself, whether directly or indirectly, because that would include all of the ones that make us think that rape is a serious thing, which would belie it being seen as a negative. But if you take it as something stronger, then you have to list it either as some sort of cohesive subculture itself — like punk rock culture — or argue that our entire culture is aimed at minimizing rape, at least. And that is what I’m skeptical about. Do we have cultural artifacts that can lead to rape being minimized? Absolutely. Do we have cultural artifacts that are aimed at minimzing rape? I’m open to argument about that; there likely are some, at least in some subcultures. Do we have some kind of cohesive culture that minimizes rape? That I’m skeptical about.
Although, really, that’s not really an important point. It’s mostly an aside for me, because whether we want to talk about “rape culture” or not doesn’t matter as long as we identify where the cultural artifact comes from so that we can deal with it. And that was my main point about alcohol, and my main point to you about “playing hard to get”. We have cultural attitudes towards alcohol, which basically suggest that going out and getting drunk and doing stupid things — even if you can’t remember them the next morning — is perfectly reasonable. And it might even be fun. So when someone says that a woman got drunk and sex happened — which could be rape or not, just to be clear — and then charged him with rape there is an immediate push-back that the main reason for that is that she regretted consenting, not that she couldn’t consent, whether it’s true or not. That weakens the case. Add in, as I said, that the feminist line has been to push it back from “Is unconscious or clearly has no idea what’s going on” to “Is drunk”, and you run into a big clash between that idea and the common ideas about alcohol, that going out, getting drunk, and doing wild things — including sex — is fun and good party behaviour. Add to that that particularly with drunk driving we are changing in many cultures to saying that you are completely responsible for what you do while drunk, it’s only natural that that applies to giving consent to sex.
That’s why I compared it to the “date rape” drug. In those cases, it seems to me that we accept that it was rape a lot more than we accept it in the drunk cases, even if it was the case that the woman had passed out (although that can be argued). And, to me, it seems to be the case that that is indeed because of our cultural attitudes towards alcohol, and not our cultural attitudes towards rape. At which point, I find it odd to lump that in with “rape culture”; it strikes me as being the same as saying that applauding a goal instead of whistling is part of “sports culture” when the way to express appreciation in the general culture is to applaud, or that concerts are part of punk rock culture. Yeah, you probably can try to technically argue it, but doing so probably isn’t going to help you much if you’re trying to change that behaviour; you need to understand, at least, the real root and breadth of the behaviour or else you’ll keep running into the brick wall of what the overall culture — that is really the culture that is causing the behaviour — thinks.
Now, I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong, but I need to be convinced that I’m wrong. So, well, convince me [grin].
And another clarifying point:
I think that having sex with someone who is too drunk to know what is going on is clearly rape and clearly wrong. And yet in the “Meet the Predators” article 70% of the instances were those sorts of cases. So it’s reasonable to think that there’s some work that needs to be done there. My main point there was that the typical feminist analysis of the issue wasn’t helping the problem, and might have been hurting it, for many reasons not the least of which being that it didn’t seem that they were in touch with the cultural attitudes towards alcohol that would contribute to this.
VS
Right, so you anticipate this by asking people if they want to risk perpetrating a serious crime in order to get a few extra notches on their bedpost.
Now when someone says “yes” the conversation is obviously going to have to change into a more subjective examination of what that individual’s priorities in life are.
However, seeing as most people ‘get it’ to some degree it seems nonsensical to quibble about it being a level of basic understanding suitable to telling people how best to avoid the crime.
The fact that exceptions exist means little as to the wisdom of the advice as a suitable standard.
I don’t think anyone’s going to deny that a girl has never said no whilst intending to consent at some point down the line. That is not the issue. The fact is that if you take no for an answer you know you have done nothing wrong.
So it’s not, from my PoV, a truism or legal definition. It is simply how to know you are explicitly in the clear.
“Those who have genuine difficulties with empathy and reading social signals should ask for help. It would be given gladly. The ones who simply can’t be arsed, though, should give up on the cowardly trick of hiding behind the genuine problems of those on the autism spectrum.”
But seeing as autism is a spectrum we can expect most people to be somewhat autistic in regards to some trait or other. This is especially so in the case of men who are more likely to exhibit an autistic trait than women. Moreover we can expect some who avoid the logic on offer to be somewhat psychopathic, and therefore good (on average) at reading social skills but poor (on average) at empathy.
So whilst I disagree with VS that lecturing on the eschewal of game playing necessarily be part of the equation, and I certainly think yes means yes no means no be understood first as a matter of priority, patterns of mental behaviour do need to be understood.
So I don’t think there’s any point denying that equivocating on consent is part of the problem – clearly it is and people would benefit from making their intentions explicit when it comes down to the crunch. The issue I have with VS isn’t that he is lying about the phenomena, but that he thinks it provides a counter to a common sense maxim (YMYNMN).
Dave,
Just because it’s a spectrum doesn’t mean everyone has to be on it! There is also a debate on – which I’m not qualified to join – about whether autism is really so much more common in boys or whether it’s different social expectations that mean women are diagnosed less often or later in life.
If you listen to people who are very definitely autistic they will tell you that they had to learn to read social clues and facial expressions and that sometimes it took different people and different methods, sometimes over years, until something “clicked.”
I had to manage a man with very severe autism for a couple of years – no prior warning, no training, my boss took Simon on as a favour to
his parents and I just had to manage him. There was the odd hitch but he learned how to fit in most of the time, I learned which odd behaviours to ignore and when it was the right moment to take him aside and to say very calmly but with no possible ambiguity, “You will not do that here.”
Do you know what he found hardest? Travelling home on the bus – I was sometimes on the same one – when it was busy and people were talking up and down the length of the bus, no-one was talking to him to keep his attention focused and, sometimes, the signal overload was just too much.
There is no comparison between someone like that, struggling to make sense of the world and get things right, and someone making back-of-the-envelope calculations as to what he might get away with this time.
It is an abuse even to suggest that there is.
“Just because it’s a spectrum doesn’t mean everyone has to be on it!”
Yes, it does. That’s what a spectrum means. You measure from 0-100.
Now as to where most people are – they will hardly measure or measure to a degree we could effectively dismiss as trivial, but everyone will have a score, even if the mean, median and mode scores will be small.
Now just because you measure on the scale it doesn’t mean you’d be well described as autistic. It just means you exhibit some degree of behaviour associated with the condition – a bit shy perhaps, or a bit obsessive. Now as to where the line is – that is a matter of some debate.
“There is also a debate on – which I’m not qualified to join – about whether autism is really so much more common in boys or whether it’s different social expectations that mean women are diagnosed less often or later in life.”
The current medical consensus is that it is about four times as prevalent in males than females, this is thought to be down to a number of the polygenic factors influencing autistic traits being found on the X-chromosome. I cite “Autism in the 21st Century” by Ilone Roth, which is the recommended text in UK universities on the subject: ‘Autistic conditions are at least four times as common in males than females. The ratio for Asperger syndrome is even higher at 10:1.’
“If you listen to people who are very definitely autistic they will tell you that they had to learn to read social clues and facial expressions and that sometimes it took different people and different methods, sometimes over years, until something “clicked.””
Some of them will, some of them won’t be able to tell me anything at all, some of them won’t have this particular issue.
“There is no comparison between someone like that, struggling to make sense of the world and get things right, and someone making back-of-the-envelope calculations as to what he might get away with this time.
It is an abuse even to suggest that there is.”
I don’t see sympathy for the afflicted being universal to, or exclusive from – a in-depth discussion on sexual impropriety.
Bit clumsy there, not 0-100, but from nothing to full, if you see what I mean.
I’m not sure why the onus is on me to convince you. I don’t think you’ve made a very convincing case against the use of the term “rape culture” yet and as I’ve already pointed out — even if you have that still doesn’t prevent the use of the term “rape culture” for the sake of argument even if it’s inconsistent with other “culture” terms. I have already said all this explicitly.
Furthermore, I have already demonstrated that the term “rape culture” is consistent with other uses of the terms “culture”. You have not showed that I am wrong about this.
Here is your attempt, but it is weak, vague, and hand-wavy and most importantly does not connect with any of my arguments so far. You do not address the definition of culture I brought into the argument to support my position. If you do not do that then I do not see how you’ve made any kind of argument that I am wrong about this.
But I have never claimed that “rape culture” is “just a set of cultural artifacts that relate to rape itself.” I have claimed something rather different.
Why do I have to do that? “Punk rock culture”, as I have already argued, is not a cohesive subculture — where is your argument that it is? (For the record, I’ve been part of punk rock culture since high school so I’m really eager to hear you deconstruct this for me. I think it will be hilarious.)
But even if you could show that punk rock culture is cohesive you would still have to deal with examples from my definition such as “print culture” — is “print culture” a unified whole? How about “tech culture”? “Scientific culture”? “Geek culture”? These are all commonly used and comprehensible terms. I don’t see how my use of “rape culture” is significantly different from these. If you don’t agree you’re going to have to make a much better argument as to why.
“Cohesive culture” is really a problem here. I don’t think cultures necessarily have to be “cohesive” to be described as “cultures” — you evidently think they do but I have provided myriad counterexamples and you have not directly addressed any of them. You have not made any serious arguments for your claims here. You just keep telling me how “skeptical” you are. Great, that’s not an argument.
From my perspective, some cultures are diffuse and some cultures are cohesive. Amish culture is particularly cohesive; geek culture is particularly diffuse. (Even Amish culture isn’t entirely cohesive though, see the recent troubles of some Amish cutting off the beards of others.) “Rape culture” is a rather diffuse culture but I don’t think any more so than “tech culture” or “geek culture”.
The note that some cultures are more and some less cohesive is an important one for you to deal with. If you think what I’m describing as “rape culture” is too diffuse to be described as a “culture” then you need to establish how we can determine the “lower bound for cohesion” for a phenomenon to constitute as “culture.”
This seems absurd to me. You could just accept for the sake of argument that there is something that I mean by “rape culture” and work from there — you can ask questions if you need clarification about what I mean. I haven’t gone into specifics yet because I get the sense that if I try to you’ll either dismiss it entirely or nitpick it line by line instead of reading it in the whole to try to get a sense of what I’m trying to say.
But whatever, if you insist that “rape culture” is not a reasonable term then it is incumbent upon you to make a real argument as to why since I have done all the hard work of establishing the meaning of “culture” in this thread and you have done nothing to establish that “rape culture” does not qualify. (Except to express your skepticism that it does.)
@Dave Allen:
This is very silly, Dave. One might be able to mount a highly contestable argument that everyone is on the autism spectrum. I don’t think that’s a useful way to think of it but if you insist on doing so I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily invalid (just not useful in any way).
But it’s pretty clear that the category of “smells” do not belong to the “electromagnetic spectrum”, right? Just because you have a spectrum does not mean that everything in the universe is on that spectrum.
Dan L.,
Please address this part of my comment:
And the stuff that follows. Your comment here is going on and on and on about things that I’ve already said aren’t important and aren’t what my main focus is or has ever been.
This confuses me by the way. I argued that punk rock culture is not cohesive and then you used “punk rock culture is cohesive” as a premise of one of your “arguments” which makes me believe we’re actually still pretty far on culture.
It also makes me wonder if you read my argument for comprehension.
Dan L.,
Oh, and on re-reading my comment, let me just say how I was using “rape culture” in my initial comment: The idea that Western culture, for example, overall promotes a culture that thinks rape is acceptable and tries to protect or apologize for rape. My arguments, you will note, point out that if it was the case more men would rape and would feel less uncomfortable about associating themselves with the term or behaviours or rape. I have already made the appropriate disclaimers. Discuss, if you wish.
“But it’s pretty clear that the category of “smells” do not belong to the “electromagnetic spectrum”, right?”
The neurotypical is not delineated from the autistic as smell is delineated from electromagnetism.
Sure. I don’t see how your arguments establish this at all.
How have you determined that the current level of rape in our society is inconsistent with the premise that our culture apologizes for rape? You seem to be arguing that the rate at which rape occurs in our culture is inconsistent with the premise that our culture apologizes for rape but you have not established this.
Bear in mind that here I believe some cultures more effectively apologize for rape than others. I think the rate is higher in other cultures because those cultures more effectively apologize for rape than does ours. That does not mean that our culture does not apologize for rape at all, just that it does so less than some other cultures.
I think if our culture was less focused on and effective at apologizing for rape it would occur at an even lower rate in our culture than it otherwise does. You’ve noted the 6% — you keep dismissing this as a “low percentage” but note that this is approximately one out of every eighteen men. This means that statistically it’s fairly likely that on a day that you bump into 100 different American males that five or six of them might well have been rapists. That, to me, is not a low percentage in context.
So if you’re going to stick to this point please establish how this 6% number is too low to be consistent with the premise that our culture apologizes for rape. This premise does not imply that all men should rape — obviously! — and does not seem to suggest any particular percentage so I simply do not understand how you have established this.
@Dave Allen:
Never claimed it was, just pointed out that spectra by definition are not necessarily usefully inclusive. One may usefully talk about an autism spectrum where all human beings are on it and one may usefully talk about an autism spectrum which includes only people with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders. This seems to me merely a semantic point with nothing important at stake.
Another way to look at it: are all humans on the penis size spectrum? I can see an argument where they are.
@VS:
Here is a sense in which our culture apologizes for rape: much of the news coverage of Steubenville focused on how difficult this conviction will make life for the perpetrators. This seems to me to implicitly suggest that the young lady “ruined their lives” by reporting them and that she should not have done so.
Here is another example. Take special note of how the school officials treated the young woman’s story when she first approached them.
I can bring plenty more examples to bear if you’d like to keep denying that our culture apologizes for rape.
VS
Goddamn. No, I’m going to continue to be mean as long as you continue to say stupid things like:
Get from there to rape. Try it, leave a bread crumb trail so we can waltz down this twisted path of incoherent nonsense after you.
You brought up the Rules. You brought up “playing hard to get,” which, by the way, doesn’t mean saying “no” in intimate moments hoping that the man will just blow through the lack of consent.
But look, you’re just an example of a larger trend that’s going on in this thread: you’re just fucking babbling and making shit up as you go. Can you provide data that even a single rape or assault occurred because a woman played “hard to get?”
This is unbelievable nonsense. First, that’s not at all what “playing hard to get,” means. The notion is that by not appearing “easy,” a woman stands a better chance of finding a mate who will respect her. The entire point is to separate the men likely to have a quick physical relationship and then ignore them from someone who will stick around.
So your understanding of the stupid idea is wrong, then you have the notion that you’re in a position to tell women what’s good for them.
You are exhibiting all the classical “Nice Guy Traits.”
Yeah, it’s not like we didn’t just a case like that a couple of weeks ago.
You are pig ignorant and content to continually spew nonsense without doing any actual work to educate yourself on the subject. I do not consider your attitude one of serious skepticism on this topic.
VS
To which my reply was, essentially, that for a not insignificant number of women, no doesn’t necessariily mean no, and women do play hard to get. And I used actually evidence from the culture to indicate that, yeah, this happens.
As a technical point, no, you didn’t. That isn’t evidence of anything, but the issue is not whether playing “hard to get” exists, it’s whether (1) that phrase has much of any meaning with regard to sexual consent and (2) whether it has any effect at all on rape.
Rapists use the notion of “women playing hard to get” as an excuse for their rape: “How was I supposed to know she was serious? You know those women, always saying no when they mean yes.”
Is this a statistically relevant point? Is this something worth considering? It’s once again based on the ridiculous rape myth that sexual assaults are accidental. You’ve now been give several actual studies – that’s evidence, not – there was a semi-popular book that existed several decades ago – that show that idea to be incorrect, yet you keep rolling.
Find me some evidence that rapes occur because of mistakes or acknowledge that you’re just talking out of your ass.
@VS:
You aren’t really in a position to make demands like this. First of all, you don’t think “what I’m going on about” is important, but I do. How do we resolve that difficulty? Second of all, I’ve offered plenty of arguments that you’ve completely ignored and I don’t understand why, if you’re going to dismiss my arguments on no basis whatsoever, I should be obligated to deal with every detail of yours.
Nonetheless, in the spirit of good-faith discussion I will address the points in question.
This bit is self-contradictory. You’re arguing that “rape culture” does not have certain qualities, is not a certain way whereas I’m arguing it has those qualities and is that way. Therefore it seems to me that if we’re trying to identify the source of relevant cultural artifacts that the two of us are going to have very different views on this. This seems important to me.
Furthermore, I do see the utility of delineating a certain pattern of social organization called “rape culture” just for the sake of talking about it. I don’t agree that it doesn’t matter as long as we can still talk about the source of particular cultural artifacts because I think we also need to talk about how those artifacts interact within rape culture itself. I don’t think talking about the cultural artifacts in isolation provides a complete picture.
Do you really think these two facts are completely independent of each other? The fact that binge drinking is encouraged in youth culture (there’s another non-cohesive but coherent “culture term” for you) and the fact that it creates ambiguities about consent? I think they are not independent of each other and that is exactly why it’s important to be able to talk about “rape culture” as a unifying concept.
First of all I’m not entirely sure of the relevance of this to your overall argument. Feminist ideas run contrary to the culture? That is the whole point of feminist ideas: they’re intended to challenge the prevailing culture! I don’t buy the second sentence; was there any point in history in which a drunken murderer would be excused from culpability on the basis that he or she was drunk at the time? I don’t think this is an important point but I do think you’re wrong about it.
And I am arguing that these attitudes cannot be discretely separated into “attitudes towards alcohol” and “attitudes towards rape”. I don’t think that’s how attitudes work and I don’t think that’s how culture works.
In fact, I have already made that argument and although you use the term “technically” to downplay the importance of it I think it is nonetheless important. As I’ve already pointed out many times cultures overlap. There is no contradiction to saying applauding a goal is part of sports culture and to saying applauding a great feat is part of the wider culture — because sports culture is a subset of the broader culture. The fact that applauding a great feat is not exclusive to sports culture is not, in fact, a counterargument to the fact that there is such a thing as sports culture so I do not see how it applies as a counterargument to rape culture.
And once again, there is no brick wall because those of us using the term “rape culture” realize 100% that rape culture is part of the overall culture, and that neither one is “really causing the behavior”. This is completely consistent with the many other usages of the term “culture” I have already highlighted as undermining your position.
I admire your patience, Dan.
@doubtthat:
I highly recommend you do not get into an argument with VS about “playing hard to get”. I think you’ll just end up frustrated by trying to engage with him on this issue. I don’t really want to state my reasons for thinking so but don’t think it will be productive.
doubtthat@346:
I admire yours as well. I understand that you may have lost it a few times in the last few days but I have as well, especially on this thread dealing with Edward Gemmer, Dave Allen, and initially Verbose Stoic. (In recognition of this fact, sorry Edward Gemmer and Dave Allen — I already apologized to VS.) But I think you’ve done a really great job of sticking with it under some really frustrating conditions.
Fair enough.
I think, if anything, it’s fair to conclude that the notion of feminism as anti-skepticism has not remotely been proven, despite many, many words attempting to show such.
I feel satisfied with the outcome and am impressed with how you’ve broken down a wide range of meandering…statements (“arguments” seemed too generous).
I quite agree with this. While VS certainly seems to have a lot to say very little of it seems concerned with actually establishing any foundation of credibility for anything he says. Very low content to word ratio. Unless you count “I’m skeptical” and “That’s not important” as arguments.
I’m wordy but I like to think I’m wordy in service of supporting my assertions.
“Never claimed it was, just pointed out that spectra by definition are not necessarily usefully inclusive. One may usefully talk about an autism spectrum where all human beings are on it and one may usefully talk about an autism spectrum which includes only people with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders. This seems to me merely a semantic point with nothing important at stake.
Another way to look at it: are all humans on the penis size spectrum? I can see an argument where they are.”
OK, clearly there is little use thinking in terms of continuum in regards to certain phenomena. I tend to view mental disparity in rather Laingian terms. This does boil down to semantic quibbling yes.
So I would rephrase my objection to Maureen’s point as more along these lines: Seeing as VS is talking about autistic traits (shyness and so on) rather than autism as it is understood as a pathology the potential catchment size of the population under discussion is large.
Correction: Seeing as VS is talking about autistic traits (shyness and so on) rather than just autism as it is understood as a pathology the potential catchment size of the population under discussion is large.
Dave Allen@352:
Ah, I see. Expressed that way I think you have a good point. I haven’t read VS’s arguments in this regard because I’ve been focused on his replies to me but if you’re representing him fairly I think what he’s doing is actually hugely problematic and I think that Maureen is absolutely right to argue against it.
There is someone I’ve known well all my life who is enrolled in a graduate program in clinical psychology. I mentioned to this person one day that I thought I might be on the autism spectrum. He made an incredulous face and said something to the effect of: “No, I mean I know that you’re introverted but you respond to people with completely normal emotional affect. There’s nothing about you that would put you on the spectrum as far as I’m concerned.” And went on to give me examples of behaviors that would cause him to do so.
I’m an introvert and I’ve been shy for most of my life — less so now because it’s something I’ve worked on. So I think I’m within the set of people you claim VS is talking about. But from the opinion of at least one trained clinician I am not on the spectrum. I think phrasings that suggest these behaviors are inherently tied to autism spectrum disorders simplify and mislead.
So I like your current phrasing but I do think it’s important not to conflate all sorts of shyness and social awkwardness with cognitive disorders.
Dan L.,
My comment is more that there are a number of ways for someone to get in a state where they have poor social skills such that they won’t recognize the implicit rejections as stated in the second article in Kes’ comment. Autism is one. Shyness/introversion might be another, in at least some cases. I never conflated the two.
VS@354:
I see. I apologize for saying so, then, but I do think it’s always good to emphasize that behaviors can have many causes and not to pathologize the behavior itself. “In at least some cases” troubles me a little because it seems like you might be downplaying the fact that the vast majority of shy, socially awkward behaviors are not the result of (probably) congenital disorders such as autism. Everyone is shy or socially awkward in some situations. Some more or less so than others. A small minority have ASDs.
Dan
That isn’t what he did. He mentioned it as the other way around, that mental disorders exist as part of sets:
“Just to point out that with the very small number of men who do engage in that obvious rape behaviour from the first link there is a number of men who have a harder time seeing those vague rejections as rejections. I’m one of them; if a woman, for example, tells me that she’s too busy to go out with me right now but might later, I tend to actually believe that she’s telling the truth. Go figure. This is, in fact, a trait of certain conditions based around social anxiety and a lack of social skills (and I think would include autism). However, I strongly support clear but polite rejections. The best rejection I ever had was a woman who said “No … but thanks, though!”. So, I strongly support “No means no”, but insist that this has two sides: women have to clearly say “No”, men have to take a clear “No” as an answer, and we can wrangle over how clear is a clear “No”.”
It is undeniable that the general category of those possessing lack of social skills includes many who would be deemed autistic. His phraseology here does not imply that all those lacking social skills necessarily be deemed such, or even partly so.
It is not – on the face of it – a bad argument. In fact it stresses the same thing we all seem to agree on, that explicit refusal is good advice.
Now I realise in other places VS’ justifications have been debateable, but I don’t see this as in and of itself.
I personally introduced the quibbles about autism as a continuum and so on. Not VS afaict. He seems more to be talking about complicating factors surrounding social ineptitude with autism as an example – not the totality – of such.
Ah well, I’m clearly late to the party.
Dan L.,
I attached that phrase specifically to “shyness/introversion”, as a way of saying that in some cases shyness and introversion can lead to impaired social skills. I wasn’t linking the two there, and was in fact treating them as separate cases.
As a separate note, I am exceptionally busy at the moment, which is why I want to focus more on the specific points I was trying to make. I see some potential for discussions over that in what you’ve said, but don’t want to get caught up in the details of rape culture when, to be honest, if it’s a rape culture as you define it — and I’m actually quite unclear about that, BTW, but didn’t want to turn this into a discussion over that — or not is something that I don’t want to argue for (or argue you out of) but just don’t accept at the moment. Would you be averse to my focusing, even through restating, on the things I was meaning to highlight in my first long comment with the caveat that if you think that the “rape culture” notion is important to that you can bring that back in in reference to specific points and how it impacts them?
Honestly, seeing how this thread developed if I had to do it all over again I would never have used the term “rape culture”; specifics over that aren’t really relevant to my arguments for what feminism argues wrt rape and how it might be inaccurate and problematic.
By way of contrast 1 in 88 children have been identified with ASDs. That’s slightly more than 1% as opposed to the 6% of men who are rapists. It’s incredibly important to note that this is not to suggest that there’s any significant overlap. I’m unaware of any evidence either way on this matter but I actually highly doubt that there is a lot of overlap — I’d actually be willing to wager that fewer than 6% of those with ASDs are rapists.
Dan L.,
My specific point there was not about that, but was essentially about the article claiming that because in general people can tell rejections from comments that are not direct rejections or explicit “Nos” that we didn’t need to push for explicit “Nos”. Or, at least that was my interpretation of it. That led to the discussions around if we need to have explicit “Nos”, and my discussion with Dave Allen over whether we need to eliminate women playing hard to get if we push for men only taking explicit “Yeses” as an answer. I say we do, because since a not insignificant number of people have problems not due to malice but due to their level of social skills interpreting vague rejections, we should strongly encourage explicit “Nos”. For my part, I would want it to be two-way: men always take “No” for an answer, women always say “No” when they mean no. But that’s something that we can debate, if you disagree.
@VS:
1. I have already explained that I have been unclear about what I mean by “rape culture” because I’ve been concerned that you would simply dismiss the concept or nitpick my explanation line by line without trying to understand what I was saying in the aggregate.
2. I actually believe that if you can’t accept the concept of rape culture at least for the sake of discussion it will be difficult to find common ground on which to build a discussion.
Would you mind (succinctly) stating the things you were trying to highlight? I can’t necessarily read your mind as to what you were “meaning” and as I’ve already said I thought that comment was so problematic so as not to serve as any kind of starting point for discussion. Also, I believe I have already brought into play some examples of how rape culture is relevant to your points. One example was the fact that I don’t think the fact that youth culture encourages binge drinking and the fact that inebriation confounds consent are independent of each other. Binge drinking is part of rape culture (which doesn’t mean it isn’t also part of drinking culture; as I’ve shown in many examples cultural traits aren’t exclusive like this).
I’ve tried to explain several times that rape culture is absolutely relevant to your “arguments for what feminism argues wrt rape and how it might be inaccurate and problematic.” For example, my comment at 320 gives what I think is a perfectly lucid and defensible use of the term “tell people not to rape” that you have completely ignored. Also, my example above concerning binge drinking and ambiguity around consent. Furthermore, I have been trying to build common ground for discussion by explaining to you how I am using terms. You have been the one bogging the discussion down by dismiss the concept of “rape culture” using an entirely semantic argument which, as I’ve already pointed out, is not even reasonable in the case that you’re right that it’s inconsistent with the definition of “culture” I have brought into the discussion. However, you so far have not even justified your semantic objections to the term “rape culture”.
Please, by all means, list your specific grievances with feminist thought. But if my answers involve the use of the concept of rape culture please don’t dismiss them out of hand. If I believe the concept is important to discussion of the concept then I think you should at least hear me out as to how.
VS@360:
“Eliminate women playing hard to get” is a really creepy way to phrase this, VS, and although I think you make a good point that kind of thing can really get people’s emotions up. Please be more careful about how you phrase stuff like this. How about “discourage women from playing hard to get”? Is that reasonable?
I don’t disagree at all. I think that “playing hard to get” and “the thrill of the hunt” are aspects of rape culture and I think that a lot of people in feminism and a lot of people who identify as feminist as well as myself think it would be a great idea to either discourage these cultural themes or at the very least interpret them in healthier ways.
Dan L.,
My intention was to do a more succint highlight comment. I have no idea when I’ll do that. And the rephrasing is fine. I do want to comment on this:
I want to eliminate both as well. So we agree on that, at least, and that’s what’s important to me. The only issue for debate here would likely be that I think we’d need to focus on cultural attitudes towards dating and that if we change that then the issues specifically with rape and consent should change as well.
@VS:
I’m not sure I want to “eliminate” both. This is a really weird word to use for me because I am very anti-authoritarian. One sense in which the word “eliminate” is used is in the sense of “terminate” or “execute” which brings in what I consider to be a really sinister connotation. That’s not such a big deal but when you talk about eliminating a certain behavior that smacks to me of authoritarian control of people’s behavior. I don’t think it’s realistic to talk about “eliminating” voluntarily and widespread cultural behaviors unless you’re talking about authoritarian control. I want to discourage it or reinterpret it. I want people to voluntarily change their behaviors to be better and more fair to each other. I don’t want to “eliminate” anything.
I don’t mean to drag the discussion into the weeds here but I think a big part of the problem between the ‘pit and FtB is actually rhetorical stuff like this — you can really get someone’s emotions up by using a phrase that might be interpreted in a way you don’t exactly mean. If you’re a stoic I would think you’d want to take care with your rhetoric.
Well, all of my arguments about the nature of culture have been in service to the argument that rape culture is not just about dating but that it partly is. (Although I’m not entirely sure how you’re using “dating” here. I suspect you don’t have much experience with subcultures in which there is a lot of polyamory, group sex, and kink.) So I’ve already debated extensively against the idea that it’s enough to change cultural towards dating. However, I do agree that changing cultural attitudes towards dating is desirable so there’s not much to debate in that respect.
One example of how dating attitudes isn’t enough is the fact that the idea that wives should sexually oblige their husbands on demand is still very widespread. Yes, spousal rape is now illegal, but that has happened quite recently and in no small part because of activism and lobbying — it doesn’t mean that this aspect of rape culture has been eliminated.
I also want to point out that I’ve given specific examples of how our culture encourages rape to contest your assertion otherwise. I also mounted what I think was a pretty good support of my belief that you have not actually justified that assertion otherwise in the first place. You have not addressed this but it does seem relevant to your overall argument, no?
I must add on pain of hypocrisy that it probably cannot be eliminated but that we can discourage it and encourage healthier interpretations of the duties that spouses owe to each other.
I think that “playing hard to get” and “the thrill of the hunt” are aspects of rape culture
I don’t know about all that. You might as well say men having penises is an aspect of rape culture.
Edward Gemmer@366:
I disagree; I think you’re not considering the variety of possible male attitudes towards sexuality. Consider the fact that some percentage of men are sexually submissive. Obviously, having a penis is not identical to being into “the thrill of the hunt”.
However, I do see where you’re coming from and that’s why I allowed for “reinterpret” as well as “discourage”. I think we can think of terms like “hunt” and “conquest” in healthier ways even if we find the metaphors appealing in some way. A lot of men think a “conquest” is a degrading sex act with an inebriated partner. I’d like to find better ways to think about “conquest”. Maybe it doesn’t have to be explicitly sexual at all — the original ideal of romantic love was purely chaste after all.
You might have missed it so here it is again: sorry for losing my temper with you the other day.
@VS,
I’ve saved you the effort of culling your points from your original post. As you’ll see, your claim that I haven’t addressed any of them is patently false.
Do you see how these statements seem to contradict each other? If not, pay attention to number (2) below.
You’ve claimed that I have not addressed the points you wished to discuss in your initial email. Here are your points as I read them:
1. “Tell men not to rape” is not good advice because of statistics on the low incidence of rapists in the male population and because, you assert rapists don’t care if you tell them not to rape.
My response: I provided an interpretation of the phrase “tell men not to rape” and you never bothered to address it at all. Furthermore, I argued:
a) the incidence of rapists in the male population is not actually low
b) that the evidence at hand actually suggests that men who do rape do not like to call it rape — implying that calling it rape (“tell people not to rape”) might actually have an effect on how they view their behavior
c) that rapists are not inherently rapists but become rapists through life experiences — implying that to “tell people not to rape” might be the sort of life experience that prevents people from becoming rapists in at least some circumstances
You have not addressed any of this.
2.
My response: So, despite your more recent insistences here you were indeed trying to argue that “the feminist worldview” (as if there were exactly one feminist worldview) is wrong because “rape culture” is “specious”. Therefore your claims that my arguments are “not important” to your initial arguments is clearly false. Everything I’ve written that you’ve dismissed as irrelevant was in fact responding to one of your initial points.
3.
My response: I don’t think this is true. How is this a “new push”? I acknowledge that there may be isolated cases in which people are absolved of deaths by drunk driving because they were drunk — but do you think that’s just? Again, I don’t think there’s ever been a point in history at which a person who gets drunk and kills someone was not held culpable for the murder.
4.
My response: I don’t see why they have to be mutually exclusive in the first place. “No” should be taken as “no” but I don’t see any reason not to encourage people not to seek a “yes”. No, “social awkwardness” is not a reason to do that. Social awkwardness is actually a bigger reason to look for “yes”. I say this as a formerly social awkward person who has become significantly less socially awkward as a result of considering the very ideas you’re rejecting on a completely spurious basis. Although a polite and firm “no” is obviously very nice you are not owed a polite and firm “no” and you should at least try to get better at understanding of human interaction. You’re also not taking into account conflicting messages women receive on this subject from the broader culture, which is another element of rape culture. But the bottom-line: “no means no” campaigns are not mutually exclusive to “yes means yes” campaigns so why not both?
5.
My response: The second sentence does not actually demonstrate that rape is about sex and not power; it constitutes weak evidence that rape is about sex and not power. There could very well be a reason why rapists prefer to overpower attractive women compared to unattractive women. However, this is something of a straw man. As already reviewed in this thread, the claim is more like “Usually rape is about power, not sex” and it’s based on research. It is a defensible statement. Until you actually rebut the evidence for the statement your argument isn’t worth very much. But this also isn’t exactly “feminist dogma” so I don’t think it’s very important to your case. It’s just not a big part of the “feminist worldview” as you put it. (Perhaps the worldview of some feminists but that’s not the same thing.) Your thought experiment is stupid and insulting to women. I realize it’s not so intentionally but if you’re going to challenge an evidence-based claim use evidence and not thought experiments and try not to use thought experiments that are reminiscent of misogynistic cultural attitudes like “all women really want to be raped”.
I think we can think of terms like “hunt” and “conquest” in healthier ways even if we find the metaphors appealing in some way.
I agree. In general, a more open and honest atmosphere about sexual relationships would be helpful. Most boys and men can be pretty clueless, and experience is really the only method to get better at dating and sex. However, besides cursory information about how babies are made, our education on things like sex, dating, and booze is pretty limited. Given that it is one of the more challenging parts of life, and nearly everyone experiences these things, this seems like a good place to start.
You might have missed it so here it is again: sorry for losing my temper with you the other day.
Hey, I appreciate it. We all get frustrated. I think some of these “problems” in the online community are rooted in the fact that people get frustrated, and then it is extremely easy to either walk away or exclude the other person or just think up new insults. So kudos to you for being patient even when dealing with wordy lawyers like me. I represent criminals for a living, so making crazy arguments loosely based in reality is pretty much the norm for me
EG@369:
I very much agree with both your points. As far as “loosely based in reality goes,” upon reflection I think you probably had a point somewhere in the fact that definitions of “victim” can be pretty vague and it would make sense to clarify it. I think I just got frustrated by the fact that your example was so far out of the context that we were clearly discussing. However I understand that reductio arguments can be useful so I do think I overreacted.
In addition to the fact that I think you’re exactly right that people get frustrated and then start hurling insults or walk away instead of sorting things out I’d like to call attention to something else I’ve tried to point out in VS’s replies a few times because I do think it’s a big part of the wider problem.
Specifically, I’d like to use the example of VS’s “thought experiment” about “women who want to be raped”. I understand what he was trying to argue with this thought experiment but at the same time the way he constructed it could very easily be taken to be very insulting to women and reminiscent of misogynistic stereotypes about women. Another example was his strange use of the word “eliminate”.
These sorts of uses of language can get people very emotional even when they’re intended completely innocently and if you’re trying to convince someone of something I think it makes a lot of sense to worry about the potential emotional impact of what you’re saying. Strong emotions like anger and frustration can make it very difficult for people to step back and really examine arguments.
This plays into something being discussed a lot at Pharyngula the last few days: playing devil’s advocate. I love arguing and I love playing devil’s advocate but doing so can be incredibly hurtful to other people if what you’re arguing the flip-side of upsets people in the venue. I get the feeling much of the ‘pit likes to play devil’s advocate as well but I also feel not all of them appreciate that there are more and less appropriate times and places for it.
I think this is why a lot of you guys have been (unfairly) accused of misogyny and sexism — you use language that seems fine to you but gets interpreted differently than how you’re expecting, or you play devil’s advocate to people who don’t want to play that game. They get frustrated and upset and start hurling insults. Then everything goes to shit.
So consider giving FtB people room to disagree with you and room to discuss their own ideas amongst each other without having to include yourself in every discussion about something you disagree with. (“You” here isn’t supposed to be you specifically, Edward.) Encourage them to debate their ideas with you but don’t force debate on them. That would be one step I think the ‘pit side could take to defuse some of the hostility in both directions because I think a lot of the name-calling would stop as well in that case.
Well, at the risk of turning a conversation that was about the attitudes of the two online communities (such as they are) which was turned into a conversation about rape back into the conversation about two online communities…
Similarly to YMYNMN are we not quibbling over two attitudes or sets of advice that are often seen as dichotomous when they are not, in other words:
One is always best off avoiding language for the sake of injury when trying to communicate with people, especially on a topic that is likely to raise tensions by its nature anyhow. Escalation is a likely consequence.
Contrasted with….
Someone’s rudeness getting to you? Ignore them. Let it go. Life is too short.
Now of course we can cite exception, complication and ambiguity. Sometimes a little rudery can help drive a point home. Sometimes it can cross a line into the criminal.
Dan L.,
I think I’ll still have to qualify some of my positions, but we can start again with this. Note, however, that I DID want to point out some cases where feminist … let’s say philosophy … is, to my mind, informing the argument more than the facts and is problematic, because that’s what people were asking for that I thought wasn’t provided. I also want to note that from the beginning I did not mean to imply that I had absolute proof, and you will note that I said repeatedly that points and things were debatable.
My point was not that it was not good advice, but that that line implies that, in general, society isn’t doing a good job of that. If 94% of men don’t engage in that behaviour, then it seems like we’re doing a pretty GOOD job of that, in general. To use an analogy, if you examined the school system of a country and found that 94% of the students learned the material well enough to pass, you surely wouldn’t say that they were doing a poor job of educating students, but that they were doing a good job. On the second point, it is quite reasonable that out of that 6% there are a significant number of men who know that it’s rape and still do it, which is also supported by previous studies that showed that some men admitted to raping even when it was called rape, and so the number of men who don’t get from our society that these things are rape and they are bad is likely to be even lower. As an example, I find it hard to believe that the 30% of respondents who say they explicitly use force don’t think that’s rape, or at least that the majority of them don’t know that, which led to the point about the OTHER 70%. Anyway, you can posit reasons why some of the men who don’t do those behaviours don’t know that it’s rape and so abstain for other reasons, but even if we go up to, say, 20% of men being ill-informed that would still be a pretty good rate of education.
So, onto your specific objections:
On a), to return to my analogy we would also comment that the fact that 1 in 18 students don’t learn the material is a bad thing, and try to fix it. But we still wouldn’t call it a general failing of the school system, and we’d have to accept the possibility that some of them simply can never grasp it, and that we have to deal with that. By the same token, we accept that for all other crimes no matter how much we educate people some people will do it anyway, and tell people how to reduce their risk of being a victim, which is what a lot of people have been railing against when the “Tell men not to rape” line is brought up. That being said, a decent argument is that we are telling women the wrong things to do to reduce their risk.
b) is irrelevant, because I was using the study that didn’t, in fact, call it rape explicitly, and noted that in my comments.
c) is irrelevant because my comment is not that it’s useless, but that it seems like we already do that, judging by how 94% of men already seem to get that. You can argue that we might have to do it in different ways for those men, and I won’t argue that, but that’s generally not what “Tell men not to rape” implies.
BTW, it is a bit unfair to call me out for not addressing this, as this was one of the points I was going to address but didn’t want to get into a debate with you asking I answer the “rape culture” questions again, as happened in other comments.
On 2), the contradiction you note is not one, because you are using comments made before I said and realized that, basically, at least in talking to you mentioning rape culture only confused the main issues. I still DO have issues with the term, but as I said it’s not the main thrust of purpose of my points.
In Canada, at least, there has been a shift from it being the case where driving drunk and killing someone was a mitigating circumstance and could lead to a reduced sentence — ie you were only charge with drunk driving and not any kind of vehicular homicide — to it being the case that if it is proven that you were intoxicated iti s AUTOMATICALLY vehicular homicide. That’s a radical shift. Note that neither of us is presenting evidence for murder, but then I don’t think I ever argued that case (my main examples were drunk driving and rape).
We are in agreement here. My point here is that the feminist arguments have been to say that you cannot or should not expect women to give a clear “No”, for various reasons (including intimidation). I disagree with that. Where you and I would disagree is that I think that the legal standard should rely on either a) a clear “No” or b) a clear threat so that the victim could be reasonably expected to think that saying “No” wouldn’t do anything. Going for an explicit “Yes”, to me, is a good social attitude but should not form the basis of the law, at least in part because of mistaken articles like the one I cited that argued that the vague “Nos” are clear to everyone. They aren’t.
If your only response is “There might be a reason that we haven’t thought about for this admittedly puzzling conclusion”, certainly sticking to an idea that rape is even usually primarily about power would count as a bit dogmatic, no? And there are all sorts of other things we can look at to cast some doubt on the conclusion. For example, is it the case that women who have power are raped more than women who don’t have power? If someone is trying to get power, and particularly power over someone where they can’t get power over them any other way, it seems to me that you’d see more women in power being raped, but as far as I know there’s no correlation there at all, or if there is it’s the other way: vulnerable ie powerless women are raped more often. I don’t have the numbers, so this is debatable, but it is something to think about. And you’d also expect men who have power to rape less, but again there’s no correlation there, or if there is it’s the other way as powerful men use their power to get sex and rape women and get away with it. Note also that one common counter argument is that women of all ages get raped, to which my reply was that if you look at what men find attractive you will find that it spans all ages for at least some men, and so that argument is perfectly consistent with “rape is usually primarily about sex”. All of these are reasons to look a bit askew at that statement, and are based on empirical observations, or things we can observe and look at.
As people in this thread have pointed out, there is research that suggests the opposite as well, weakening the argument, and if you followed the thread you would have seen, for example, the discussion of the other theories. I can indeed point out that the research may not be reliable as it relies on the testimony of people who are not necessarily reliable witnesses, but we’d need to start looking at specific cases, which presumably you could provide me. But the problem here is that you are treating it like me claiming to be able to prove that the claim is wrong absolutely. I’m trying to cast doubt on it, and sticking to it as an absolute even when it can be doubted is, I’m afraid, dogmatic.
At which point, you feel perfectly comfortable ignoring the point that it was aiming to make, which was that if the “rape is usually about power” line was true, then that would indeed be one way to reduce dramatically the number of rapes, but anyone who thinks about it for 5 seconds realizes that not only would it not do so, it would greatly increase them. If you do think that, then, the question should be “Why, then, would I think it would increase?” One reason is that it’s not primarily about power, but about sex. There may be others.
And note that it seems to me that one of the main reasons for the popularity of that statement is that it fits neatly into patriarchal theory of men oppressing women and the common radical feminist argument that rape is one way for men to keep their power over women. If rape turns out to be more “disinterested”, more men simply not thinking of women as people at all when they rape and caring not one whit about their feelings, that doesn’t fit as well into that line (but does fit into an “objectification” line).
I think I just got frustrated by the fact that your example was so far out of the context that we were clearly discussing.
It was, but I do try and stand up for criminals. Not only is it my job, but also, it is something that interests me as a liberal. People go on about that wheel o privilege, but in any society, the least privileged people are the ones in prison. This is a group completely ignored by the atheist community, especially the social justice atheist community, so I try to speak up for them. But I understand it’s not going to be popular.
So consider giving FtB people room to disagree with you and room to discuss their own ideas amongst each other without having to include yourself in every discussion about something you disagree with.
I can kind of agree. However, my disappointment with Pharyngula is you can’t get any debate going. So many insults and talk about offense and privilege and other stuff that anything of value quickly gets in the weeds. One constant theme is that when person X says something, people jump in and talk not about what he/she said, but about all these other things that he could have meant and also what those things mean about Person’s X character. This isn’t debate, this is just people defending themselves for being a person with an opinion.
So, one proposed value, that I feel we learned from the civil rights movement – “don’t make bullshit assumptions about people.” Critique?
doubtthat,
343
It was a response to this article that was listed in Kes’ comment:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/
The article argued this, quoted from a study showing how people interpret refusals:
It also used these specific examples:
These are precisely the sort of examples that I say, in general, I don’t or at least didn’t get as being rejections, and that I know a fair number of people will poor social skills don’t get. Therefore, using this as evidence that people would or should understand the rejections without having to say “No” explicitly isn’t that strong an argument. Yes, some will take advantage of this, so I don’t deny that it happens, but to go from there to an idea that because women don’t like to say “No” they shouldn’t have to is far too far.
Now, if you want to challenge the blog “YesmeansYes”‘s interpretation of this relating to rape, or that article, feel free … but you won’t be arguing with ME if you do, because the claims are not mine: I am in fact accepting their claims and analyzing them as if the studies and evidence are true, and as if the relevance to rape is accepted and proven.
I brought up “The Rules”, as evidence that some women, at least, did play hard to get. I did NOT bring up “playing hard to get”, as I have already pointed out to you. Dan L. did. It is not mentioned in my initial comment, and is only mentioned in a reply to Dan L. after he told me to review other comments, one of which mentioned it.
Interestingly, you seem to question the relevance of talking about “playing hard to get” here, and yet in the next comment prove its relevance:
If this is based on a misunderstanding of what playing hard to get is, then one way to remove that excuse is to clarify that. Another is to remove the notion of women playing hard to get by women, in fact, not playing hard to get. And, again, it was not me that tied it into this discussion in the first place.
And how is that done? By doing things that demonstrate a lack of interest in the hopes that the man will persist. To my mind, there is a continuum here, and while not wanting to look “easy” is part of it there is another spectrum that tries to use this to generate interest by seeming unattainable and tying into the whole “You want what you can’t easily have” idea in people. We can, of course, debate what “playing hard to get” really means, but you’d have to do more than merely assert it while calling me stupid.
Since I’m talking about overall numbers and not asserting that no men do, citing one specific case in no way impacts my argument.
So, you don’t think that men using this as an excuse for rape that people might believe because they point out that women sometimes do say “No” when they mean “Yes” DOESN’T impact how we view rape? I never claimed that people really raped because of this, but claimed that it impacted how we viewed it, and how that’s an impediment to getting people to accept as a maxim — or even piece of good advice — to always take “No” as a “No”. You seem to be attacking an argument that I never made. Now, if something I said could be best interpreted as that, point it out and I’ll apologize for not being clear.
You don’t find it odd that you are using basically the same words to accuse me of thinking that rapes occur because of mistakes that Dan L. used to accuse me of claiming that all rapes were cases where the men involved knew that they were committing rape and didn’t care?
Show me where I claim that rapes occur because of mistakes and we can talk about it, because I never claimed that.
One thing I noticed that keeps happening is people lying about extremely low (2-3%) rape conviction rates. If there truly was a 2-3% conviction rate I wouldn’t be reporting either. Hmm. I wonder how many victims read that, were afraid of facing all that and stressing for nothing, and did not report the abuse.
Counter the spread of conviction myths… they hurt rape victims, and the people spreading these myths could only care about making society look like a super dystopia – they don’t care that when people read that they’re just upping the number of unreported rapes. Or maybe that’s their goal. Some people are like that, who knows.
Anyway, yes, that’s another thing to add to the list – make sure people are responsible with their bullshit statistics.
And if you’re the one doing this type of crap, you don’t belong in a discussion about rape prevention.
One thing I noticed that keeps happening is people spreading myths such as extremely low (2-3%) rape conviction rates. If there truly was a 2-3% conviction rate I wouldn’t be reporting either. Hmm. I wonder how many victims read that, were afraid of facing all that and stressing for nothing, and did not report the abuse.
Counter the spread of conviction myths… they hurt rape victims, and the people spreading these myths could only care about making society look like a super dystopia – they don’t care that when people read that they’re just upping the number of unreported rapes. Or maybe that’s their goal. Some people are like that, who knows.
Anyway, yes, that’s another thing to add to the list – make sure people are responsible with their bullshit statistics.
And if you’re the one doing this type of crap, you don’t belong in a discussion about rape prevention. You belong in some group on how to psychologically terrorize people more efficiently. A planner like Helter Skelter (of course, that was for racism and murder though, but it’s still manipulative – pulling the strings from the shadows)
Wow, this article is fastidious, my sister is analyzing these kinds of things, thus
I am going to convey her.
I’m excited to discover this website. I need to to thank you for ones time just for this wonderful read!! I definitely savored every bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new things in your blog.
Genuinely when someone doesn’t understand then its up to other viewers that they will help, so here it happens.
← Previous Comments