Trying to think about this, I'm reminded of a couple of items from Miss Manners. One was in the context of conventional dating, that a man was to understood that a woman was not interested *in him* upon the decline of the third consecutive invitation. Also, that a date invitation should be specific enough that the woman can decline due to some specific conflict. What this does is cut rejection into 3 pieces, which means that the man's motivation for retaliation for any individual rejection is maybe 1/3 of that of the overall rejection.
Another was her point that flirting is always to be ambiguous whether it is serious or not.
These fit the bigger concept that one is never to communicate unambiguously about sexual interest. That seems to apply very broadly across cultures. (OTOH, marriage is often handled in an extremely businesslike way by the relatives.) Given the current attitudes in US colleges, it seems that men are willing to negotiate overtly over sex, reports are that women dislike it intensely. OTOH, most subcultures seem to converge on accepted rituals of steps that a couple must walk through to have sex in an acceptable way, and they seem to provide multiple checkpoints for the woman to say "no" before the man estimates that his chances are high. A man who doesn't go through the checkpoints is considered overly aggressive, whereas a woman who doesn't is considered "fast". Some that I've read about include steps for the woman to "say no but mean yes" in a way that the culture rigidly distinguishes from ways to "say no and mean no".
Most of my life I've lived in subcultures which at least claim to value explicit, honest communication, but I've seen no evidence that humans generally desire that in sexual relationships. I suspect that a careful investigation of the game theory involved would make it clear why, but I've never heard of a really good analysis along those lines.
I think one of the main reasons why women tend to resent consent check-lists is that they are more or less sexually submissive, (as I wrote about here https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/fifty-shades-of-apes). They want to submit to the will of the man, at least to some degree. If the man pinches her ass, takes off her clothes and fingers her pussy, it should be because HE wants, not because SHE wants. On the more cynical note, I also think that women want a man to be so passionate that he is prepared to take some small risks. Women get turned on by the thought that men find them irresistible. If he repeatedly says "Is it okay if I...", he actually says "I'm not passionate enough to just do it". Major turn-off. I think women in general actually like the feeling of giving in.
You are entirely right that flirtation and courtship is always somewhat ambiguous. Probably in order to allow people to decline nicely. I think that for that reason, and since straight communication around sex tends to be a turn-off, at least for women, there needs to be some kind of ritual surrounding sex. Some kind of convention stating the proper way to do it.
I think this is true. Many (most?) women like that a man takes the initiative, and that they can relax into a more submissive role with him in charge (which actually gives them the freedom to be sexy, without being a slut, since "he is the one making them do it"). But an important qualifier here is that this only applies if they are actually feeling attracted to the man.
There is a classic SNL skit about this": "Be Attractive, Don't Be Unattractive"
A price you want to impose on men only. Even a good man wants sex. It being current year odds are the girl is going to have casual sex with someone. By your proposal it'll just be with some other guy. You're asking good men to be martyrs. Pretty unreasonable. At the end of the day, best deal or no deal. Patriarchy is the only solution
Being a man of some experience, I doubt "It being current year odds are the girl is going to have casual sex with someone." Statistically, it's much more likely the average is that she's going to have sex with someone and though the immediate bargain is that it is casual, she's fishing for a relationship just as much as he's fishing to do it again next weekend.
But the concept that good men are asked to be martyrs is true, although it's also true in regard to acquiring other people's unattended valuables. Then again, good men have always supported the police in order to keep bad men in line.
Well, both men and women are paying a price already when people are nervous and afraid for different reasons. I don't think people would have less sex if they were a bit more shy when meeting someone new. Instead I think the market would be more equalized. Now the pushy men take huge market shares. It's no good when sexual pushiness is the only way to express desire.
But you are right that the idea is useless if all or most women expect casual sex. There has to be a change of culture where both sexes know the rules. If women don't know that the patient guys are patient because they are high-quality, then they will just be suspected of not desiring their date. Not good for anyone.
Patriarchy in the sense of the rules you mention that used to exist which have not since liberation, for example. You say there has to be a change of culture yet put all of the onus on men. Even if all of the onus is to be on men to restore patriarchy, if wouldn't be in the manner you describe.
Then I think that voluntary patriarchy super light could be a good idea. And I really don't think it is possible without the participation of both sexes. People of both sexes need to give something up. If women don't agree that it is a good idea to postpone sex for a few weeks, then the suggestion would be completely pointless.
Is this the idea (expressed in the manosphere?) that readily available contraception allows females to costlessly indulge their appetite for sex with high status males?
Or is it an expression of a high female sex skew at some USA university campuses putting males in to the high value/high demand side. ie where the in-demand males can set the terms of the engagement?
I'm actually more curious why (In NZ) fewer young men and women are in relationships or having casual (nonrelationship) sex than say 20 years ago.
I agree that women are generally polite, and it is largely about not wanting to get hurt.
I think there are easier solutions, though.
Normal parents don't let their 13 year old daughters go to older men's houses alone. They understand that men want to have (consensual or not), and that teenage girls who can't even drive themselves home will become victims.
Roman Polansky *knows* that. In his mind, he knows that the only reason parents would send a 13 yr old to his house is *so he can have sex with her.*
They did, and so he did.
She is a child, and children are supposed to be protected by their parents. Her parents did not protect her, either because they were very stupid or because they were trying to skirt close to the edge of pimping out their daughter for Hollywood access and miscalculated.
"Don't use your 13 yr old to sexually titillate men" is a pretty easy rule.
A photographer is supposed to be a sneaky rapist, if he insists mother should not join. But how about a psychologist? A teacher? I can't see that line where it is obvious that a man is after sex although he is saying otherwise.
Samantha's parents trusted Roman Polanski. They were wrong. "Never be wrong" is not a solution, because some will inevitably be.
My idea was that men should help out a bit and demand less trust from women, although most of them deserve to be trusted. If I get you right, your idea is that women should stop being so stupid that they trust men in the first place.
How would decent men changing their behavior help Samantha? Honest men *already* don't have 13 year old girls over alone to their houses. That's not a thing people do. Nor do male teachers or psychologists have teen girls over to their houses. Male teachers generally interact with whole classrooms full of students inside a school full of people. They are rarely alone with the students, and that's on purpose to prevent abuse. I suppose doctors and psychiatrists might see kids alone. Mine have never been alone with a doctor/psychiatrist. Even still, parents would be driving their 13 year olds to their apointments and sitting out there in the waiting room, not trusting the doctor to come pick the kid up.
I know "don't be dumb" is an unsatisfying answer, but scams essentially prey on gullibility and stupidity. Normal parents--even your average dumb ones--would have realized that Polanski's "photo shoot" stank and either cancelled or insisted on accompanying their daughter.
Maybe there actually is a difference between Europeans and Americans, as Samantha Geimer repeatedly suggests in her book. Samantha's family supposed that Europeans were more liberated and Roman Polanski held another set of values because he was European. They thought he held other, but perfectly decent values.
I can recall numerous occasions when I spent time alone with adult men when I was a teenager: I stayed after the lessons with my teachers (most of whom were male) to get further explanations on topics and discuss things further. With some of them, I essentially socialized. I once spent an hour in a room with the education and job-adviser. I spent numerous occasions alone with the school doctor (in Sweden, schools hire nurses and doctors so the parents don't have to drive their kids to a clinic for minor issues). I went alone to see a psychologist. When my daughter got an appointment with the school doctor a few months ago, I didn't think twice: I just trusted her school to arrange that safely. If I had insisted on being there for safety reasons, people would have considered me weirdly paranoid and untrusting.
Being gullible and stupid might be two different things in Europe and in America. Or it might be more local than that. But it certainly seems to differ.
There is definitely a difference between Europeans and Americans--Americans are already doing what you essentially suggest in this post. We don't let young teenage girls hang out alone with unknown, older men. Honest adult men don't try to hang out alone with girls. Male high school teachers here know that they would be opening themselves up to tremendous risk by meeting alone with a student, even if they are completely innocent, because someone could accuse them of assaulting a student and they would have no way to prove otherwise.
We don't let little kids walk to school alone, because they could get hurt/hit by a car/kidnapped/raped/killed. (The schools literally won't allow a young student to walk home alone. Some districts don't allow children to walk at *all*, even with a parent.)
We don't let kids play unsupervised outside because they could get hurt. We don't let teenagers go to parties by themselves because they could get into drugs/sex/alcohol. We don't let them have unsupervised contact with adult men. There have been too many scandals where people whom others trusted took advantage of children--the Boy Scouts scandal, the Catholic priests scandal, teacher scandals in general, etc.
So what you are proposing is *already* what we are doing, at least in the US. Perhaps European men could change their behavior and act more like Americans. That would mean that teachers wouldn't meet with students like you, and doctors wouldn't come to the schools, and kids wouldn't walk to school, and so on. It would all be a bit like Saudi Arabia, where of course women don't meet alone with unrelated men.
(Whether it's a good idea or worth it to try so hard to prevent situations where rape or assault might occur is a separate question.)
It sounds like, from what you just said, that Samantha's parents were aware that this is the norm in the US, but chose to ignore it because Polanski is European and thus more "liberated." This doesn't make much sense, since "liberated" generally means "sexually liberated," I.e., he believes it's moral to have a promiscuous sex with lots of people. That, well, sounds a lot like saying "yes, we figured he wanted to have sex with our daughter." I think they just figured he'd stop at making out/some heavy petting or photographing some material for future masturbation and not actually rape her.
It all sounds like the worst rumors I have heard about America. I wouldn't want to copy it one bit. Especially as Jonathan Haidt et al (probably rightly) are sounding the alarm over kids getting depressed from being overprotected.
I guess I'm making things less clear through using an example of the rape of an underage girl, when I'm mostly talking about ways to decrease sexual coercion of adult women (which is much more common). The reason why I used this example is simply that it is very good and unusually well-written (Samantha Geimer was helped by a professional writer). Good and honest descriptions of non-violent rape are scarce, for obvious reasons.
Statistics say that most rape victims are young adult women. I assume that sexual coercion mostly happens in places where it would be considered legitimate to have sex: Appartments, outdoors clearly out of view of other people. For that reason, my only proposition was that adult men and women who haven't had the time to get to know each other a bit should avoid the very places where people have sex. I think that such a small measure would reduce the amount of sexual coercion rather drastically. My aim was never to eliminate sexual coercion for any age-group: that can't be done.
>>I think they just figured he'd stop at making out/some heavy petting or photographing some material for future masturbation and not actually rape her.
They definitely didn't. They were upset that he took topless photos of her. If nothing else, having sex with someone less than 15 years old is forbidden in Europe just like in America. The vast majority of European men respect that law.
Then America is big, and European-style things happen there too. Like the Aaron Knoedel case. Knoedel was acquitted despite proof that he had had very long nightly telephone conversations with a student. He claimed he was just supporting a student with troubles and that doing so was the norm at the school where he worked. Obviously, many people found that explanation plausible.
At my university in the US, there was a trend of “traffic light parties” where the partygoers (both male and female) were indeed supposed to wear a badge which color indicated interest in a potential hook up: green yes, yellow maybe, red off the market.
Unsurprisingly I never saw a women wearing green.
Also, I wanted to say I appreciate your approach in general, with your evolution-informed game theory analyses. Refreshing.
Very interesting! I heard about similar solutions at BDSM parties.
But how many wore yellow? And did any red-wearer ever hook up with anyone, as far as rumors can tell? Did red mean "never, I have a boyfriend" or did it mean "I never have hook-ups"?
Somehow I can relate to why no females wore green. Giving too strong welcome vibes feels unsafe. And probably also is.
There's a famous clip from the comedy series It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia that I think quite concisely sums up the game theoretical problems that lead private interactions between man and woman to unwanted sex for woman. Not sure if you ever watched it, but you might find it interesting. It also shows that there is some awareness of the problem in general culture.
I had never heard of It's always sunny in Philadelphia. But then some actors called Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a football team in Wales and made the reality TV series Welcome to Wrexham out of it. So if nothing else, I have a good reason to improve my understanding of how that Rob McElhenney made all the money he is now using to entertain working class people in Wales.
Edit: Ha ha, that was really good. That guy clearly deserves to own a football team.
I liked this, but was confused by the conclusion. If politeness enables rape, couldn't we just stop enabling it by decreasing politeness? Getting the 'good' guys together to try even harder to shame the bad ones seems orthogonal to this. Of course, there are no real 'solutions' to the problems of our era, so any attempt to discuss this will cause me to ramble a bit. But here are some thoughts.
In my experience, males who use this kind of subtle force are never manly. They're not the frat-bro sportsball stereotypes, they're softbodied and either effeminate or nerdy in some way. Denied of sexual success, they pressure, drug, or otherwise nonviolently-coerce women.
It's a bit like the peaceful vs harmless problem we have in the modern world. I've seen all manner of utterly harmless people who couldn't with a fight with a raccoon or a wild goose talk about the importance of nonviolence. It's laughable, because of course they're pacifists, like the rabbit voting for salad on the menu.
Regarding aggression both re: males ('violence') and re: females ('rape'), I carry myself in public as someone entirely capable of both, and try to keep them as close to the surface as possible. To date I have murdered zero men and raped zero women, and people generally respond to me well in person. The pushy guy who does everything short of physical violence (rubbing against you on the train, performing uninvited foreplay, asking for sex on the street) is, in effect, begging for consent and laying bare his own weakness.
>>If politeness enables rape, couldn't we just stop enabling it by decreasing politeness?
A very relevant question. And I think it is very difficult. Women have been told for ages that they are supposed to drop all civilized behavior and scream and fight like desperate animals if someone oversteps their sexual boundaries. And still, mostly, they don't. So I think that as things are, women can't be as selectively impolite as is asked from them.
What I propose is more or less that men should help women more to both be polite and safer. Saying "it's not that I don't like you, but we don't know each other" should be easier than it is.
>>In my experience, males who use this kind of subtle force are never manly. They're not the , they're softbodied and either effeminate or nerdy in some way. Denied of sexual success, they pressure, drug, or otherwise nonviolently-coerce women.
They say high-status men who get a lot of sex completely consensually are the most common rapists (David Buss says it, among others). It makes sense to me: Men who consider themselves desirable have an easier time telling themselves that an uneasy woman surely wants them after all. Like Roman Polanski (who indeed was never a frat-bro sportsball stereotype, but who nonetheless had great access to willing women). I think high-status rapists rape for convenience. They are used to things being easy, so why not this time?
>>Regarding aggression both re: males ('violence') and re: females ('rape'), I carry myself in public as someone entirely capable of both, and try to keep them as close to the surface as possible.
I instantly find this description symphatetic. It somehow resonates with my suggestion that good guys should distinguish themselves from bad guys. Men are dangerous. The more men that let that show, the safer women are. If a woman gets the impression that "this man could kill me in an instant" the next question will be: "Do I trust him?". That increases safety. More honest flaunting of male strength, less pseudo-civilization, please!
Ah, I was unclear. I meant "decreasing male politeness". I also realize that I'd been subtly glossing the word 'polite' when reading your use of it. I'm not sure what word you're using in your head before translating it into English, but "polite" doesn't really mean anything, anymore. Long ago it meant something cognate with 'polished', but shifted from skill/refinement to class to niceness to something else. When a woman who is afraid is 'polite' in my mind this is a different concept and perhaps a different word than when a man is 'polite' to a social inferior (an employee, child, or perhaps even a woman). A scared "i'm waiting for someone" (as a reason not to get in an elevator with a man) is not essentially similar to "you look great" (in response to the query 'does this dress make me look fat?'). What I was proposing is that men be less 'polite' as a way of making things plainer overall in society.
I think male politeness spares us a lot of duelling. That must be a good thing?
>>I'm not sure what word you're using in your head before translating it into English, but "polite" doesn't really mean anything, anymore.
Ha ha, unfortunately, things are looking no better inside my head. I tend to think in English when I think of abstract things. I can translate the word into Swedish, but it gets no better.
I think the definition of politeness is something like "every attempt to spare feelings and to allow people to save face". Both the man who avoids saying "you look fat" and the woman who avoids saying "you look scary" are doing that. They are both avoiding to reveal the negative perceptions they are holding.
Excellent analysis. I'm old now, but back in the day, I was the good guy you described, and seductive frolicking was the norm. It's how I met my wife at age 23.
I think you might be right about what should be done even though it strikes me as supremely sad to lose that spotenaiety and romance. (this compromise comes straight at me)
On the other hand, I don't think things like this change based on great arguments about how things should be. They unfold and change naturally based on environmental and material conditions with a dash of human agency.
No, as I wrote to Apple Pie further down, don't take me too seriously. These things don't change because someone gets an idea. I just got so tired of the usual ideas around sexual coercion (rape culture and so on) so I wanted to launch another for a change.
I think that in order to reduce the prevalence of rape towards zero, it would be necessary to abolish spontaneity and romance: People would have to discuss every step explicitly. But I also think small changes in attitudes could make a big difference. For example, if not having sex on a first date was a norm, people could get an impression of each other, go home, think their impolite thoughts undisturbed, and then make a decision whether to meet under more intimate circumstances. Not as spontaneous as meeting in a bar and go home together, but more romantic in my point if view.
I agree with you on that, and from what I read, young people are backing off on "hookup culture", which back in the day was just normal behavior.
I don't know how they ramp back to romance in these days of dating apps where the first week's worth of discussions are laid out on a menu. But we can hope.
I've fallen in love three times, and in each case it started slow (even if we did walk off in the woods together on a first date.)
When trying to understand rape and looking for ways to change society to minimize its incidence, it might be worthwhile to look into studies of societies where rape seems to be non-existent or exceedingly rare.
A classic paper on this is '"It's Only a Penis": Rape, Feminism, and Difference' by Christine Helliwell.
Hm, should we think the same ways of other kinds of crime, like robbery and murder?
I started reading that paper and was struck by the similarities between the Indonesian case in the beginning and the Roman/Samantha case. 13-year-old Samantha made the same conclusion: That her rapist was not going to hurt her. Obviously, Western females are entirely capable of thinking that way too. I believe that way of thinking is more or less tabooed in the West. Women are not allowed to say "I didn't want it, but I feel OK", because then they won't get accepted as real rape victims. Feeling awful has been incorporated in the definition of being raped.
> should we think the same ways of other kinds of crime, like robbery and murder?
Should we study cultures where the incidence seem very low and see what we can learn from them? Absolutely ;)
What I took away was not the part that she was not afraid to get hurt, but that she felt empowered to throw him out, solely by the reason that she did not _want_ to have sex with him. So it was not about whether the experience would be pleasant or hurtful, but about her agency to freely choose for herself.
Different cultures have different expectations of politeness, and clearly she felt free to express her displeasure, and the whole village felt free to ridicule him afterwards.
That seems very different from the Roman/Samantha case, where the reasoning is that he is not going to hurt me, therefore I should just be polite and comply.
But it is interesting that they can't even conceive of the idea that sex could be hurtful. In our culture we are so inoculated in the idea that sex is something men do to women, that a position like that is hard to relate to. In their culture they don't differentiate between the sexes in the same way we do, a vulva and a penis is from their cultural viewpoint basically the same, so how could one hurt the other?
There are other cultures that are even more different from ours when it comes to this. In the Cayapa for example, the women are seen as the more aggressive part and sex as something women do to men. Their description of sex is literally the vagina eating the penis.
So culture is hugely influential in how sex is experienced by both sexes.
Thinking about it, I don't find it very strange that people in some small-scale societies have never heard of violent rape. The only reason why I know about the kind of rape based on violence or threats if violence is mass media. Without mass media, I also wouldn't have heard of a man breaking a single hair on the head of a woman in order to obtain sex. From friends and acquaintances and acquaintances to acquaintances I have heard of numerous cases of sexual coercion. But none of those cases built on violence or explicit intimidation.
Fortunately rape by the threat of violence is so rare that it is newsworthy, and I think you are right that a small scale society may not see any incidents at all, and as such not know about violent rape.
It does seem like their society also has strong taboos against coercion. In the paper she addresses this:
> The idea of having sex with someone who does not need you to have sex with them - and so the idea of coercing someone into sex - is thus almost unthinkable to Gerai people.
This seems to align with a lot of hunter-gatherer tribes that are fiercely egalitarian. In egalitarian societies, trying to make others do something they don't want to do, is seen as a big no-no. Something that especially reflects in their approach to child-rearing (I can again recommend "Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods", by Hewlett/Lamb).
Most of all, the Indonesian woman seems to have thought her intruder was ridiculous. For me, that is a sign that violating a woman's wishes was a less serious crime there compared to in the West. I can explain:
When I was 20 years old I traveled alone to Syria to study Arabic. I stayed there for three months. During that time, I was forced to learn a lot about Arab sexual moral, or, from my perspective, about Arab men's lack of that thing. Men did things I found plain ridiculous: One moved closer and closer to me on a train, with a silly expression on his face. A male friend took off his shirt and started climbing on me, like he was doing some kind of sweet foreplay, but entirely without my consent. He stopped only when I hit him. Then he pretended to be a bit upset.
If a Western man had done anything similar, I wouldn't have hit him. I would have been terrified. In the West, ignoring a woman's interests is tabooed, so only men who are prepared to break social rules do such things. For that reason, I'm afraid of them. My Arab friend, however, wasn't an aggressive rule-breaker. So I found him only annoying and ridiculous.
In general, the Arab men cared very little about consent. But they seemed to adhere to strong taboos against violence. Which made me much more assertive against them compared to Western men who disregard the consent principle. My guess is that there might have been something similar in that Indonesian society: Consent wasn't a biggie, but killing women was.
So maybe reducing it to something stupid and ridiculous also lowers the barriers to reacting against it. Making this kind of clumsy flirting a taboo, does seem to radically heighten the stakes when it then actually does happen.
It seems to have worked for the people in the paper (of course just being one thing in a larger cultural context). They didn't even have a word for rape, and had a hard time conceiving that such a thing was even possible.
>>So maybe reducing it to something stupid and ridiculous also lowers the barriers to reacting against it. Making this kind of clumsy flirting a taboo, does seem to radically heighten the stakes when it then actually does happen.
Basically, yes. For Arab men, trying to have sex with a woman who protested verbally and otherwise showed clear signs of lack of consent wasn't taboo. It was seen as a thing men did (all men didn't, but many enough for it to be normal). So when I pushed away the n:th man of the day, I didn't accuse him of anything worse than being a man. No hard feelings.
If I push away a Western man doing the same thing, I'm not only accusing him of being a man. I'm accusing him of being a molester, a potential rapist. At the very least, I'm accusing him of having made a wrong move. In best case, such accusations make people regretful, insecure or annoyed. In worst case, they make people angry and aggressive.
That being said, I'm not the least jealous of the Arabs. I'm sure there are at least as many anti-social, dangerous molesters among them. Those dangerous men are just being diluted by scores of annoying and ridiculous men. The Western taboo against sexual aggression has allowed me to spend my life focusing on others things than avoiding sexual aggression. I'm immensely grateful for that opportunity.
Rather than easing taboos against sexual aggression, I think there should be more inoffensive excuses for not wanting to have sex with someone. More versions of "it's not that I don't like you but...".
Tove, the visual "not-interested-in-casual-sex" badge wouldn't work at all. The problem is, many (most?) women are interested in both long-term and casual relationships. Let's imagine that the no-casual badge gets popular and everybody knows that's what good girls wear - that would make not wearing it an obvious sign of being a slut (and maybe most men would then be reluctant to raise kids with such non-wearers). As a result, to preserve their reputation, almost all women, except the absolutely most socially uncaring, would wear that badge, while totally ruining its signal value by engaging in casual sex anyway. I suspect this has already happened before, with covering-your-head or being-covered-from-head-to-toe-Victorian-style as visual signals.
Are you sure it wouldn't work? I see women who dress nonsexually all the time right now, and it seems to be pretty effective. There's already spectrum of styles ranging from frumpy "Leave me alone, it's laundry day" to dyed hair, makeup, heels and revealing clothes. Women available for long term rather than short term relationships tend to dress formally and carefully, with restrained makeup and jewelry. So far as I can tell, this is just how it is in America.
Yes, dressing style actually does affect the "reputation" and increases or decreases attention. But still, remember that many women want both long and short-term attention, they will therefore inevitably muddle the signaling environment. As an example, when I was young and unmarried, I tried to dress in a feminine but non-slutty way (so it was a mid-range signal? Looked quite prudent and good-girly) hoping to get as much attention as possible (short or long-term) without ruining my reputation. It didn't get me loads of short-term attention because a) that's not so easy to get in the geographical area where I live (N-E Europe), and b) I was very shy and fended off many suitors because I was terrified of socializing with them. Still, whenever possible, I totally misused the prudent-dressing signal. It wasn't a trustworthy signal.
Hm, I don't know exactly how you looked, but I think I could usually tell the difference between long and short pretty well. I will admit, though, that the short term signal is much *stronger.*
>>I will admit, though, that the short term signal is much *stronger.*
I say like Unirt here below: How do you know it is a short-term signal, really? I can't open a newspaper without seeing a successful man next to a plantinum blonde bombshell with that typically post-plastic surgery nose and half a centimeter of make-up and revealing clothes. Are such wives of high status men really signalling sexual availability? Or are they signalling that they are really, really valuable to the man who gets the privilege to have sex with them?
Women seldom change style abruptly when they enter a relationship and thereby aren't available for the short-term market anymore (I mean, most people actually intend to follow that rule). Instead, I think the style you call long-termist is more of a work-related compromise: Looking like a night-club queen is usually not appreciated in middle-class occupations. I had at least two acquaintances who ran the night-club look until about 30, when they sensed that it didn't make a good impression at work.
> Are such wives of high status men really signalling sexual availability? Or are they signalling that they are really, really valuable to the man who gets the privilege to have sex with them?
I think this can be explained in terms of mate-value matching. In evolutionary terms, we will always aim to mate with someone with a mate-value as close to our own as possible. When the mate-values of a couple gets out of balance, it is often a really bad sign for the relationship.
This is deeply embedded in our psychology. It is part of our language "she's out of your league", "marrying down", "he could do better". Even looking at a couple where there is obvious unbalance in mate-value makes us uncomfortable.
For better or worse, men can improve their mate value by increasing their status (by wealth, fame, etc...), while for women mate-value (in the evolutionary sense) is mostly improved by increasing their sexual desirability. So I can see how women in relationship with high status men can end up overcompensating on looks, as that is their main avenue to ensure they are matching in mate-value.
Yes. But there is more than one way of being a high-value woman. Being sexier than the others is one way, and being special in some other, less visible sense is another. Men who choose super-sexy women as wives do not only show they are high status. They also show they are playing in a league were sexiness is highly valued.
I was personally never interested in short term mating, only long term. And it could just be that when women dressed and acted like that, I immediately looked elsewhere.
Exactly. Night-club queens AND platinum-blonde rich men's wives seemed like a low-brow contingent to me (whether they actually were or not) and I didn't want anyone to accidentally place me into that bucket.
Yeah. I think women, and people in general, use their appearance to show for what they want to be valued. The sex-pot look indicates that a woman prioritizes to be valued as a sexual object. The less sexed appareance indicates the she hopes to be valued for other reasons. It says little about under which circumstances she actually wants to have sex.
How can you make a difference when the person has both short and long term interest? It's impossible. Anyway I'm sure I generally would have looked like "long" to you; this was partly a true signal because I was quite interested in long-term relationships, and partly false as I was also quite interested in short-term.
I'd say my wife successfully signalled long term interest without short term interest: clean, well-groomed, long hair brushed out, no makeup or cleavage, but occasionally bare thighs. Bright-eyed, friendly when approached, conversationally engaged.
OK, but how would this look: long skirts, no low cleavage, no visible makeup, but clothing fitted nicely to the waist, showing a feminine form. Long or short? The correct answer, at least in some cases, would be "both".
I haven't been to America, but according to my experience, in Europe dress is not decisive for the amount of sexual attention. The most important thing is location and time of the day.
I always dressed very casually and I never wore make-up. I still got my fair share of unwanted attention (but not more than that). Especially when traveling alone. At last, I cracked the code: Get into a hostel before 7 PM. Go to bed early. Get up early. That way, very little unwanted attention. Europeans seem to think that evenings are "sexy time", to borrow a phrase from Borat. Avoiding that time and locations where flirtation is normal does the trick.
Yes, all culturally imposed chastity symbols have been corrupted this way. Once I got the idea to buy a black Saudi style protective dress (including a face veil, otherwise I don't pass as real) and walked around in a city with a large Muslim population. My purpose was to see whether people would be racist toward me. One older man gave me an angry look. Otherwise, everyone behaved very correctly. Except for a short, overweight man who said he had come from Iraq six weeks ago, and not had sex during all that time. He was married and had children, he explained, but his wife was in Iraq so now he needed a stand-in for her. He asked if I would take that role. In my normal clothes, I have never got such brave offers while walking through a Swedish city.
The question is: Can't Western societies be more open to choice that traditional societies? For example, people openly say that they are poly. Isn't that quite much like saying "I'm slutty"? And still, it is socially accepted among many people.
Isn't that sign that all men aren't that into female chastity after all? I think that when marital rape became a concept, the value of female chastity decreased. As long as women were more or less obliged to have sex with their husbands, chastity was higher valued. Nowadays, being caught in a marriage with a too chaste woman who doesn't want to have sex at all is a real risk men face. For that reason, I'm not sure women signalling no thanks to casual sex would be the most popular.
I live in semi-rural America in the Deep South. I can assure you that while people don't speak in terms of "polyamory" they behave just like people everywhere do.
That's because they aren't forced to pay one percent of their taxes to a public broadcasting monopoly! A year ago a local friend told me about the hilarious idea that there can be three people instead of two in a relationship. He just saw that on TV, he said.
I think this is the first post of yours that I significantly disagree with.
On the one hand, it technically doesn't concern me as I don't participate in dating. On the other, I might one day, and I would like to do it on my own (and my partner's) terms without being blamed for her decisions.
I like nature. It would be nice to share that with a woman at some point in my life. Are we just not allowed to do that?
Also, men need clarity, especially autistic men; who are also not very good at attending to emotions, through no fault of our own.
>>I like nature. It would be nice to share that with a woman at some point in my life. Are we just not allowed to do that?
But of course you are allowed to do that! I just say that if Western society wants to reduce rates of rape further, I think that something that many people value must go: Sexual spontaneity.
If people don't want to sacrifice that, then it is entirely up to them. Some like that part of nature more and some like it less. So for some it is worth the risk
When it comes to sexual coercion, the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Either we can climb higher up the tree or we can say that we don't want to pay the price.
Honestly, I'm fine with both. My preferences are not everyone's preferences.
>>Also, men need clarity, especially autistic men; who are also not very good at attending to emotions, through no fault of our own.
Here we have a tricky issue. Men need clarity. But women need clarity too. Especially austitic women. In Thinking in Pictures, autistic writer Temple Grandin writes that autistic women run a high risk of being raped because they don't get that someone tries to seduce them until too late.
In life in general, people mostly want clarity from other people: We would mostly be better off knowing what others really are thinking of us (for example, people want to know if their guests liked their dinner for real). And people want to be as vague as possible to others, because we often profit from hiding our real feelings. That system mostly works fine. Except when it comes to sex, when real feelings are to decide what people do and don't.
The standard solution is to ask women to just drop that system of hiding their real feelings as soon as anybody do something sexual to them. My point with the post above is that too few people function like that. Some are able to just throw politeness away, but many are not. My guess is that most are not. And I have seen few suggestions how to change that thing.
The challenge is that in the case of sex, most people, especially women, don't really want clarity. They want a bit of ambiguity, excitement, the thrill of seduction. Being totally upfront about your intentions will be a turnoff for most people and get you shut down fast, making the whole process bewildering and hard to navigate for those with autistic tendencies.
This scene from "A Beautiful Mind" comes to mind ;)
That's more than zero, and that's the point. Why wouldn't a given guy want to be *that* guy? Who wants to be a sucker? Without patriarchy, there is only chaos. Freedom ain't free hoss
>>The challenge is that in the case of sex, most people, especially women, don't really want clarity. They want a bit of ambiguity, excitement, the thrill of seduction.
Yup. And that's the reason why things are the way they are: Not only many men, but also many women like it that way.
Still, I think that a not insignificant minority of women have done what I have done, and consciously opted out of hook-ups. Many women have one or two or three hook-ups and then conclude that it wasn't a great concept. Basically, if a big share of women had one hook-up after another and liked it, the average number of sexual partners among heterosexuals would be much more than the 5-10 that studies tend to indicate.
I don't believe those women want to have explicit, autistic-friendly discussions on how to have sex. I just think they are not thrilled by hook-up culture and would like more than a drink or two and some entertaining conversation before they have sex.
I know you balk at deleting posts after they're made, but I would delete this (and maybe also the other) after you've read it.
> Hadn't the Roman/Samantha case involved a celebrity, it would have been a case as common as any.
Should read: "If the Roman/Samantha case hadn't involved a celebrity"
> Roman then told her to dress off and get into a jacuzzi.
Should read: "Roman then told her to undress and get into a jacuzzi."
> But it also gives opportunity to fraud.
Better might be: "But it also creates the opportunity for fraud."
> Probably because she had been raised to keep people comfortable whenever possible. Like all normal people have.
Actually I do have a substantive comment here - I have the impression that Americans aren't as strongly socialized in this direction, while Italians would find this bizarre.
Those kinds of constructions are common in German, and I can only presume they're all over the place in Swedish, too, but Tove's readers are English speakers. Modern English is evolving into an isolating language and (for example) most people I encounter on a daily basis don't even understand the difference between "lay" and "lie," let alone the idea that it's correct to say "Yes, it's I."
On the one hand, my typos and language mistakes are not useful information to my readers. On the other hand, the fact that I appreciate a lot when people point them out is useful information. For that reason, at least in the past I have opted to keep comments of that kind visible so others might feel inspired to comment when they see something linguistically strange. Before I publish things I only have my Swedish speaking family members to rely on. They, just like me, are basically guessing what sounds right.
So after studying this a bit, I suspect you're actually being optimistic when you argue that a better compromise is possible.
Before addressing your specific position, my sense is that tradeoffs in the sociocultural world are usually complex, involving something like three times the variables that are actually visible. This "three times" is only a rule of thumb, but reported rape rates do vary enormously across cultures, and a broad array of social factors such as wealth, individualism, social mobility, contraception, and secularism correlate with national rape rates. So while another compromise is definitely possible, that such a compromise would be broadly regarded as better is hard to establish.
> In the light of history and anthropology, the idea that sex should be entirely up to spontaneous feelings is an extreme opinion.
This may be the case, but *prehistorically* promiscuity seems to been rather common, particularly before the advent of plow agriculture.
Moreover, it isn't really the case that sex being up to feelings is an extreme option *historically* - it's been part of Western society off and on again for centuries. For example, medieval marriage was often little more than a shrug that occurred after consent:
"for the marriage to be valid it did not matter if there were any witnesses or not. Witnesses only made it easier to prove. It did not matter if a priest was present or not. It did not matter if the marriage was blessed, or a mass followed, or not. It did not matter if banns had been posted in advance or not... It was the late medieval Christian church that was telling secular authorities that couples who married in [sic] clandestinely against the wishes of their parents were, nevertheless, validly and bindingly married."
For another historical example, recall the illicit affairs in Montaillou.
> Instead, I think good guys should make life difficult for bad guys by behaving differently. If good guys set an example and always arrange a first and second and third date in a neutral place like a coffee shop, it will be easier for women to think twice before accompanying unknown men into places where men have the upper hand.
Given the way sexuality has been decoupled from familial interests, dowries, household businesses, childbearing, and virtually anything besides pleasure, this is going to be a hard sell. "Hey rather than living a carefree existence with your date, why don't you think carefully about how she might behave after you break up? Thing of the benefits! If you sacrifice some feeling of spontaneity and pleasure now, you could spare your future ex-lover from making foolish mistakes with another guy in the future!" If things like this reduce the chance for a relationship working to begin with, what young man would actually be well advised to do it?
But ultimately, I would probably have shaken my head at anything you suggested, no matter what it was. There are some social problems that still can be solved or improved because the problems are new, or technology has created new possible solutions. But sexuality is an old, old problem, and the space of solutions has been very well explored by now. In a way, you and Aella both seem interested in trying to find solutions to problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. If the two of you find a solution you can agree on, perhaps that might be a genuinely good idea! But frankly I really don't think there is a tradeoff that effectively addresses this problem that doesn't either overturn human nature or the foundational values of Western culture.
I think you are spot on here: Yes, I'm being unrealistic. I actually had a draft called "The insoluble rape question" lying around for a few months. The message was, more or less: rape is inevitable so just deal with it. But I thought it sounded so negative and cynical, so I open for something provocative instead when it came to me.
Still, I think that rather small adjustments in expectations could alter the risk of rape rather significantly. I mean, you say that rates of date rape differ a lot between societies and social groups. Then only small differences in attitudes can have big effects. Not that I can make them happen through social engineering, but if many people for some reason get a certain idea, it can have big effects on risks of sexual coercion.
>>In a way, you and Aella both seem interested in trying to find solutions to problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. If the two of you find a solution you can agree on, perhaps that might be a genuinely good idea.
Yes! If Aella wanted to discuss things with a small fish like me, I think it could result in a really interesting vision. Utopia according to Aella and Tove!
>>But frankly I really don't think there is a tradeoff that effectively addresses this problem that doesn't either overturn human nature or the foundational values of Western culture.
The last one is very interesting. What is the foundational values of Western culture? I think very small adjustments in behavior could have big effects. For example, if there were a norm not to have sex on a first date, I think that could reduce rape rates quite a bit. I don't think that is against either Western culture or human nature (only a little, for some).
Whatever word one uses to describe these values, "Postmaterialism" is the term used by Ronald Inglehart, the sociologist who has been producing those graphs over the last few decades:
It's a good article, and I was going to quote from it, but if you haven't read about it before, I'd recommend just reading it. If not, suffice it to say that the Pursuit of Happiness Shall Not be Infringed (unless you have the wrong politics in which case everything is infringable--sorry urban conservatives and rural liberals).
> Yes! If Aella wanted to discuss things with a small fish like me, I think it could result in a really interesting vision. Utopia according to Aella and Tove!
Well... on second thought I may have some doubt about what the two of you would cook up. But she won't be able to ignore you forever.
> The message was, more or less: rape is inevitable so just deal with it. But I thought it sounded so negative and cynical, so I open for something provocative instead when it came to me.
I never have enough time to say all the Things To Read, but this kind of fatalistic acceptance of reality characterizes most of my experience on Earth. One *can* move mountains, but that requires so much time, understanding, and devotion that for most people it's flatly impossible. For the most dedicated and most unreasonable, one may have a shot - but only one.
I guessed you would have a precise, scientific definition of Western values! (And I read the article, at least it wasn't long).
>>One *can* move mountains, but that requires so much time, understanding, and devotion that for most people it's flatly impossible. For the most dedicated and most unreasonable, one may have a shot - but only one.
The idea that words can change things is the opium of intellectuals. Mostly, I talk about things as changeable only because it heightens the ambience of the discussion.
I read it! When it was new, it got so infamous that even Swedish mass media wrote about it. When I read it many years later, I didn't find it upsetting. But also not very helpful. The question "Why do some men rape?" is as interesting as the question "Why do some men steal?". Living creatures take what they want when they can, that's just nature. I think the much more interesting question is: Why do most people not rape and steal?
Trying to think about this, I'm reminded of a couple of items from Miss Manners. One was in the context of conventional dating, that a man was to understood that a woman was not interested *in him* upon the decline of the third consecutive invitation. Also, that a date invitation should be specific enough that the woman can decline due to some specific conflict. What this does is cut rejection into 3 pieces, which means that the man's motivation for retaliation for any individual rejection is maybe 1/3 of that of the overall rejection.
Another was her point that flirting is always to be ambiguous whether it is serious or not.
These fit the bigger concept that one is never to communicate unambiguously about sexual interest. That seems to apply very broadly across cultures. (OTOH, marriage is often handled in an extremely businesslike way by the relatives.) Given the current attitudes in US colleges, it seems that men are willing to negotiate overtly over sex, reports are that women dislike it intensely. OTOH, most subcultures seem to converge on accepted rituals of steps that a couple must walk through to have sex in an acceptable way, and they seem to provide multiple checkpoints for the woman to say "no" before the man estimates that his chances are high. A man who doesn't go through the checkpoints is considered overly aggressive, whereas a woman who doesn't is considered "fast". Some that I've read about include steps for the woman to "say no but mean yes" in a way that the culture rigidly distinguishes from ways to "say no and mean no".
Most of my life I've lived in subcultures which at least claim to value explicit, honest communication, but I've seen no evidence that humans generally desire that in sexual relationships. I suspect that a careful investigation of the game theory involved would make it clear why, but I've never heard of a really good analysis along those lines.
I think one of the main reasons why women tend to resent consent check-lists is that they are more or less sexually submissive, (as I wrote about here https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/fifty-shades-of-apes). They want to submit to the will of the man, at least to some degree. If the man pinches her ass, takes off her clothes and fingers her pussy, it should be because HE wants, not because SHE wants. On the more cynical note, I also think that women want a man to be so passionate that he is prepared to take some small risks. Women get turned on by the thought that men find them irresistible. If he repeatedly says "Is it okay if I...", he actually says "I'm not passionate enough to just do it". Major turn-off. I think women in general actually like the feeling of giving in.
You are entirely right that flirtation and courtship is always somewhat ambiguous. Probably in order to allow people to decline nicely. I think that for that reason, and since straight communication around sex tends to be a turn-off, at least for women, there needs to be some kind of ritual surrounding sex. Some kind of convention stating the proper way to do it.
I think this is true. Many (most?) women like that a man takes the initiative, and that they can relax into a more submissive role with him in charge (which actually gives them the freedom to be sexy, without being a slut, since "he is the one making them do it"). But an important qualifier here is that this only applies if they are actually feeling attracted to the man.
There is a classic SNL skit about this": "Be Attractive, Don't Be Unattractive"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8
So no chance of just respecting so-called sluts, removing their need to worry about being considered one?
A price you want to impose on men only. Even a good man wants sex. It being current year odds are the girl is going to have casual sex with someone. By your proposal it'll just be with some other guy. You're asking good men to be martyrs. Pretty unreasonable. At the end of the day, best deal or no deal. Patriarchy is the only solution
Being a man of some experience, I doubt "It being current year odds are the girl is going to have casual sex with someone." Statistically, it's much more likely the average is that she's going to have sex with someone and though the immediate bargain is that it is casual, she's fishing for a relationship just as much as he's fishing to do it again next weekend.
But the concept that good men are asked to be martyrs is true, although it's also true in regard to acquiring other people's unattended valuables. Then again, good men have always supported the police in order to keep bad men in line.
Even if she's fishing for something else, she still gave it up without receiving the thing.
Well, both men and women are paying a price already when people are nervous and afraid for different reasons. I don't think people would have less sex if they were a bit more shy when meeting someone new. Instead I think the market would be more equalized. Now the pushy men take huge market shares. It's no good when sexual pushiness is the only way to express desire.
But you are right that the idea is useless if all or most women expect casual sex. There has to be a change of culture where both sexes know the rules. If women don't know that the patient guys are patient because they are high-quality, then they will just be suspected of not desiring their date. Not good for anyone.
What is patriarchy in this context?
Patriarchy in the sense of the rules you mention that used to exist which have not since liberation, for example. You say there has to be a change of culture yet put all of the onus on men. Even if all of the onus is to be on men to restore patriarchy, if wouldn't be in the manner you describe.
Then I think that voluntary patriarchy super light could be a good idea. And I really don't think it is possible without the participation of both sexes. People of both sexes need to give something up. If women don't agree that it is a good idea to postpone sex for a few weeks, then the suggestion would be completely pointless.
What else can men (the bulk of men, not the few men all the women would prefer if they had their druthers) give up?
Difficult question. You mean in general? Then I say computer games. That was high on my wish list for a partner at least.
"all or most women expect casual sex"
Is this the idea (expressed in the manosphere?) that readily available contraception allows females to costlessly indulge their appetite for sex with high status males?
Or is it an expression of a high female sex skew at some USA university campuses putting males in to the high value/high demand side. ie where the in-demand males can set the terms of the engagement?
I'm actually more curious why (In NZ) fewer young men and women are in relationships or having casual (nonrelationship) sex than say 20 years ago.
I agree that women are generally polite, and it is largely about not wanting to get hurt.
I think there are easier solutions, though.
Normal parents don't let their 13 year old daughters go to older men's houses alone. They understand that men want to have (consensual or not), and that teenage girls who can't even drive themselves home will become victims.
Roman Polansky *knows* that. In his mind, he knows that the only reason parents would send a 13 yr old to his house is *so he can have sex with her.*
They did, and so he did.
She is a child, and children are supposed to be protected by their parents. Her parents did not protect her, either because they were very stupid or because they were trying to skirt close to the edge of pimping out their daughter for Hollywood access and miscalculated.
"Don't use your 13 yr old to sexually titillate men" is a pretty easy rule.
A photographer is supposed to be a sneaky rapist, if he insists mother should not join. But how about a psychologist? A teacher? I can't see that line where it is obvious that a man is after sex although he is saying otherwise.
Samantha's parents trusted Roman Polanski. They were wrong. "Never be wrong" is not a solution, because some will inevitably be.
My idea was that men should help out a bit and demand less trust from women, although most of them deserve to be trusted. If I get you right, your idea is that women should stop being so stupid that they trust men in the first place.
How would decent men changing their behavior help Samantha? Honest men *already* don't have 13 year old girls over alone to their houses. That's not a thing people do. Nor do male teachers or psychologists have teen girls over to their houses. Male teachers generally interact with whole classrooms full of students inside a school full of people. They are rarely alone with the students, and that's on purpose to prevent abuse. I suppose doctors and psychiatrists might see kids alone. Mine have never been alone with a doctor/psychiatrist. Even still, parents would be driving their 13 year olds to their apointments and sitting out there in the waiting room, not trusting the doctor to come pick the kid up.
I know "don't be dumb" is an unsatisfying answer, but scams essentially prey on gullibility and stupidity. Normal parents--even your average dumb ones--would have realized that Polanski's "photo shoot" stank and either cancelled or insisted on accompanying their daughter.
Maybe there actually is a difference between Europeans and Americans, as Samantha Geimer repeatedly suggests in her book. Samantha's family supposed that Europeans were more liberated and Roman Polanski held another set of values because he was European. They thought he held other, but perfectly decent values.
I can recall numerous occasions when I spent time alone with adult men when I was a teenager: I stayed after the lessons with my teachers (most of whom were male) to get further explanations on topics and discuss things further. With some of them, I essentially socialized. I once spent an hour in a room with the education and job-adviser. I spent numerous occasions alone with the school doctor (in Sweden, schools hire nurses and doctors so the parents don't have to drive their kids to a clinic for minor issues). I went alone to see a psychologist. When my daughter got an appointment with the school doctor a few months ago, I didn't think twice: I just trusted her school to arrange that safely. If I had insisted on being there for safety reasons, people would have considered me weirdly paranoid and untrusting.
Being gullible and stupid might be two different things in Europe and in America. Or it might be more local than that. But it certainly seems to differ.
There is definitely a difference between Europeans and Americans--Americans are already doing what you essentially suggest in this post. We don't let young teenage girls hang out alone with unknown, older men. Honest adult men don't try to hang out alone with girls. Male high school teachers here know that they would be opening themselves up to tremendous risk by meeting alone with a student, even if they are completely innocent, because someone could accuse them of assaulting a student and they would have no way to prove otherwise.
We don't let little kids walk to school alone, because they could get hurt/hit by a car/kidnapped/raped/killed. (The schools literally won't allow a young student to walk home alone. Some districts don't allow children to walk at *all*, even with a parent.)
We don't let kids play unsupervised outside because they could get hurt. We don't let teenagers go to parties by themselves because they could get into drugs/sex/alcohol. We don't let them have unsupervised contact with adult men. There have been too many scandals where people whom others trusted took advantage of children--the Boy Scouts scandal, the Catholic priests scandal, teacher scandals in general, etc.
So what you are proposing is *already* what we are doing, at least in the US. Perhaps European men could change their behavior and act more like Americans. That would mean that teachers wouldn't meet with students like you, and doctors wouldn't come to the schools, and kids wouldn't walk to school, and so on. It would all be a bit like Saudi Arabia, where of course women don't meet alone with unrelated men.
(Whether it's a good idea or worth it to try so hard to prevent situations where rape or assault might occur is a separate question.)
It sounds like, from what you just said, that Samantha's parents were aware that this is the norm in the US, but chose to ignore it because Polanski is European and thus more "liberated." This doesn't make much sense, since "liberated" generally means "sexually liberated," I.e., he believes it's moral to have a promiscuous sex with lots of people. That, well, sounds a lot like saying "yes, we figured he wanted to have sex with our daughter." I think they just figured he'd stop at making out/some heavy petting or photographing some material for future masturbation and not actually rape her.
It all sounds like the worst rumors I have heard about America. I wouldn't want to copy it one bit. Especially as Jonathan Haidt et al (probably rightly) are sounding the alarm over kids getting depressed from being overprotected.
I guess I'm making things less clear through using an example of the rape of an underage girl, when I'm mostly talking about ways to decrease sexual coercion of adult women (which is much more common). The reason why I used this example is simply that it is very good and unusually well-written (Samantha Geimer was helped by a professional writer). Good and honest descriptions of non-violent rape are scarce, for obvious reasons.
Statistics say that most rape victims are young adult women. I assume that sexual coercion mostly happens in places where it would be considered legitimate to have sex: Appartments, outdoors clearly out of view of other people. For that reason, my only proposition was that adult men and women who haven't had the time to get to know each other a bit should avoid the very places where people have sex. I think that such a small measure would reduce the amount of sexual coercion rather drastically. My aim was never to eliminate sexual coercion for any age-group: that can't be done.
>>I think they just figured he'd stop at making out/some heavy petting or photographing some material for future masturbation and not actually rape her.
They definitely didn't. They were upset that he took topless photos of her. If nothing else, having sex with someone less than 15 years old is forbidden in Europe just like in America. The vast majority of European men respect that law.
Then America is big, and European-style things happen there too. Like the Aaron Knoedel case. Knoedel was acquitted despite proof that he had had very long nightly telephone conversations with a student. He claimed he was just supporting a student with troubles and that doing so was the norm at the school where he worked. Obviously, many people found that explanation plausible.
At my university in the US, there was a trend of “traffic light parties” where the partygoers (both male and female) were indeed supposed to wear a badge which color indicated interest in a potential hook up: green yes, yellow maybe, red off the market.
Unsurprisingly I never saw a women wearing green.
Also, I wanted to say I appreciate your approach in general, with your evolution-informed game theory analyses. Refreshing.
There's an old joke that if a woman says "no" she means "maybe", if she says "maybe" she means "yes" ... and if she says "yes" she means "no".
Very interesting! I heard about similar solutions at BDSM parties.
But how many wore yellow? And did any red-wearer ever hook up with anyone, as far as rumors can tell? Did red mean "never, I have a boyfriend" or did it mean "I never have hook-ups"?
Somehow I can relate to why no females wore green. Giving too strong welcome vibes feels unsafe. And probably also is.
There's a famous clip from the comedy series It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia that I think quite concisely sums up the game theoretical problems that lead private interactions between man and woman to unwanted sex for woman. Not sure if you ever watched it, but you might find it interesting. It also shows that there is some awareness of the problem in general culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE
I had never heard of It's always sunny in Philadelphia. But then some actors called Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a football team in Wales and made the reality TV series Welcome to Wrexham out of it. So if nothing else, I have a good reason to improve my understanding of how that Rob McElhenney made all the money he is now using to entertain working class people in Wales.
Edit: Ha ha, that was really good. That guy clearly deserves to own a football team.
I liked this, but was confused by the conclusion. If politeness enables rape, couldn't we just stop enabling it by decreasing politeness? Getting the 'good' guys together to try even harder to shame the bad ones seems orthogonal to this. Of course, there are no real 'solutions' to the problems of our era, so any attempt to discuss this will cause me to ramble a bit. But here are some thoughts.
In my experience, males who use this kind of subtle force are never manly. They're not the frat-bro sportsball stereotypes, they're softbodied and either effeminate or nerdy in some way. Denied of sexual success, they pressure, drug, or otherwise nonviolently-coerce women.
It's a bit like the peaceful vs harmless problem we have in the modern world. I've seen all manner of utterly harmless people who couldn't with a fight with a raccoon or a wild goose talk about the importance of nonviolence. It's laughable, because of course they're pacifists, like the rabbit voting for salad on the menu.
Regarding aggression both re: males ('violence') and re: females ('rape'), I carry myself in public as someone entirely capable of both, and try to keep them as close to the surface as possible. To date I have murdered zero men and raped zero women, and people generally respond to me well in person. The pushy guy who does everything short of physical violence (rubbing against you on the train, performing uninvited foreplay, asking for sex on the street) is, in effect, begging for consent and laying bare his own weakness.
>>If politeness enables rape, couldn't we just stop enabling it by decreasing politeness?
A very relevant question. And I think it is very difficult. Women have been told for ages that they are supposed to drop all civilized behavior and scream and fight like desperate animals if someone oversteps their sexual boundaries. And still, mostly, they don't. So I think that as things are, women can't be as selectively impolite as is asked from them.
What I propose is more or less that men should help women more to both be polite and safer. Saying "it's not that I don't like you, but we don't know each other" should be easier than it is.
>>In my experience, males who use this kind of subtle force are never manly. They're not the , they're softbodied and either effeminate or nerdy in some way. Denied of sexual success, they pressure, drug, or otherwise nonviolently-coerce women.
They say high-status men who get a lot of sex completely consensually are the most common rapists (David Buss says it, among others). It makes sense to me: Men who consider themselves desirable have an easier time telling themselves that an uneasy woman surely wants them after all. Like Roman Polanski (who indeed was never a frat-bro sportsball stereotype, but who nonetheless had great access to willing women). I think high-status rapists rape for convenience. They are used to things being easy, so why not this time?
>>Regarding aggression both re: males ('violence') and re: females ('rape'), I carry myself in public as someone entirely capable of both, and try to keep them as close to the surface as possible.
I instantly find this description symphatetic. It somehow resonates with my suggestion that good guys should distinguish themselves from bad guys. Men are dangerous. The more men that let that show, the safer women are. If a woman gets the impression that "this man could kill me in an instant" the next question will be: "Do I trust him?". That increases safety. More honest flaunting of male strength, less pseudo-civilization, please!
Ah, I was unclear. I meant "decreasing male politeness". I also realize that I'd been subtly glossing the word 'polite' when reading your use of it. I'm not sure what word you're using in your head before translating it into English, but "polite" doesn't really mean anything, anymore. Long ago it meant something cognate with 'polished', but shifted from skill/refinement to class to niceness to something else. When a woman who is afraid is 'polite' in my mind this is a different concept and perhaps a different word than when a man is 'polite' to a social inferior (an employee, child, or perhaps even a woman). A scared "i'm waiting for someone" (as a reason not to get in an elevator with a man) is not essentially similar to "you look great" (in response to the query 'does this dress make me look fat?'). What I was proposing is that men be less 'polite' as a way of making things plainer overall in society.
I think male politeness spares us a lot of duelling. That must be a good thing?
>>I'm not sure what word you're using in your head before translating it into English, but "polite" doesn't really mean anything, anymore.
Ha ha, unfortunately, things are looking no better inside my head. I tend to think in English when I think of abstract things. I can translate the word into Swedish, but it gets no better.
I think the definition of politeness is something like "every attempt to spare feelings and to allow people to save face". Both the man who avoids saying "you look fat" and the woman who avoids saying "you look scary" are doing that. They are both avoiding to reveal the negative perceptions they are holding.
Excellent analysis. I'm old now, but back in the day, I was the good guy you described, and seductive frolicking was the norm. It's how I met my wife at age 23.
I think you might be right about what should be done even though it strikes me as supremely sad to lose that spotenaiety and romance. (this compromise comes straight at me)
On the other hand, I don't think things like this change based on great arguments about how things should be. They unfold and change naturally based on environmental and material conditions with a dash of human agency.
Nevertheless, thanks for this essay.
No, as I wrote to Apple Pie further down, don't take me too seriously. These things don't change because someone gets an idea. I just got so tired of the usual ideas around sexual coercion (rape culture and so on) so I wanted to launch another for a change.
I think that in order to reduce the prevalence of rape towards zero, it would be necessary to abolish spontaneity and romance: People would have to discuss every step explicitly. But I also think small changes in attitudes could make a big difference. For example, if not having sex on a first date was a norm, people could get an impression of each other, go home, think their impolite thoughts undisturbed, and then make a decision whether to meet under more intimate circumstances. Not as spontaneous as meeting in a bar and go home together, but more romantic in my point if view.
I agree with you on that, and from what I read, young people are backing off on "hookup culture", which back in the day was just normal behavior.
I don't know how they ramp back to romance in these days of dating apps where the first week's worth of discussions are laid out on a menu. But we can hope.
I've fallen in love three times, and in each case it started slow (even if we did walk off in the woods together on a first date.)
When trying to understand rape and looking for ways to change society to minimize its incidence, it might be worthwhile to look into studies of societies where rape seems to be non-existent or exceedingly rare.
A classic paper on this is '"It's Only a Penis": Rape, Feminism, and Difference' by Christine Helliwell.
https://dunedinfreeuniversity.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/3175417.pdf
Hm, should we think the same ways of other kinds of crime, like robbery and murder?
I started reading that paper and was struck by the similarities between the Indonesian case in the beginning and the Roman/Samantha case. 13-year-old Samantha made the same conclusion: That her rapist was not going to hurt her. Obviously, Western females are entirely capable of thinking that way too. I believe that way of thinking is more or less tabooed in the West. Women are not allowed to say "I didn't want it, but I feel OK", because then they won't get accepted as real rape victims. Feeling awful has been incorporated in the definition of being raped.
> should we think the same ways of other kinds of crime, like robbery and murder?
Should we study cultures where the incidence seem very low and see what we can learn from them? Absolutely ;)
What I took away was not the part that she was not afraid to get hurt, but that she felt empowered to throw him out, solely by the reason that she did not _want_ to have sex with him. So it was not about whether the experience would be pleasant or hurtful, but about her agency to freely choose for herself.
Different cultures have different expectations of politeness, and clearly she felt free to express her displeasure, and the whole village felt free to ridicule him afterwards.
That seems very different from the Roman/Samantha case, where the reasoning is that he is not going to hurt me, therefore I should just be polite and comply.
But it is interesting that they can't even conceive of the idea that sex could be hurtful. In our culture we are so inoculated in the idea that sex is something men do to women, that a position like that is hard to relate to. In their culture they don't differentiate between the sexes in the same way we do, a vulva and a penis is from their cultural viewpoint basically the same, so how could one hurt the other?
There are other cultures that are even more different from ours when it comes to this. In the Cayapa for example, the women are seen as the more aggressive part and sex as something women do to men. Their description of sex is literally the vagina eating the penis.
So culture is hugely influential in how sex is experienced by both sexes.
Thinking about it, I don't find it very strange that people in some small-scale societies have never heard of violent rape. The only reason why I know about the kind of rape based on violence or threats if violence is mass media. Without mass media, I also wouldn't have heard of a man breaking a single hair on the head of a woman in order to obtain sex. From friends and acquaintances and acquaintances to acquaintances I have heard of numerous cases of sexual coercion. But none of those cases built on violence or explicit intimidation.
Fortunately rape by the threat of violence is so rare that it is newsworthy, and I think you are right that a small scale society may not see any incidents at all, and as such not know about violent rape.
It does seem like their society also has strong taboos against coercion. In the paper she addresses this:
> The idea of having sex with someone who does not need you to have sex with them - and so the idea of coercing someone into sex - is thus almost unthinkable to Gerai people.
This seems to align with a lot of hunter-gatherer tribes that are fiercely egalitarian. In egalitarian societies, trying to make others do something they don't want to do, is seen as a big no-no. Something that especially reflects in their approach to child-rearing (I can again recommend "Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods", by Hewlett/Lamb).
Most of all, the Indonesian woman seems to have thought her intruder was ridiculous. For me, that is a sign that violating a woman's wishes was a less serious crime there compared to in the West. I can explain:
When I was 20 years old I traveled alone to Syria to study Arabic. I stayed there for three months. During that time, I was forced to learn a lot about Arab sexual moral, or, from my perspective, about Arab men's lack of that thing. Men did things I found plain ridiculous: One moved closer and closer to me on a train, with a silly expression on his face. A male friend took off his shirt and started climbing on me, like he was doing some kind of sweet foreplay, but entirely without my consent. He stopped only when I hit him. Then he pretended to be a bit upset.
If a Western man had done anything similar, I wouldn't have hit him. I would have been terrified. In the West, ignoring a woman's interests is tabooed, so only men who are prepared to break social rules do such things. For that reason, I'm afraid of them. My Arab friend, however, wasn't an aggressive rule-breaker. So I found him only annoying and ridiculous.
In general, the Arab men cared very little about consent. But they seemed to adhere to strong taboos against violence. Which made me much more assertive against them compared to Western men who disregard the consent principle. My guess is that there might have been something similar in that Indonesian society: Consent wasn't a biggie, but killing women was.
So maybe reducing it to something stupid and ridiculous also lowers the barriers to reacting against it. Making this kind of clumsy flirting a taboo, does seem to radically heighten the stakes when it then actually does happen.
It seems to have worked for the people in the paper (of course just being one thing in a larger cultural context). They didn't even have a word for rape, and had a hard time conceiving that such a thing was even possible.
>>So maybe reducing it to something stupid and ridiculous also lowers the barriers to reacting against it. Making this kind of clumsy flirting a taboo, does seem to radically heighten the stakes when it then actually does happen.
Basically, yes. For Arab men, trying to have sex with a woman who protested verbally and otherwise showed clear signs of lack of consent wasn't taboo. It was seen as a thing men did (all men didn't, but many enough for it to be normal). So when I pushed away the n:th man of the day, I didn't accuse him of anything worse than being a man. No hard feelings.
If I push away a Western man doing the same thing, I'm not only accusing him of being a man. I'm accusing him of being a molester, a potential rapist. At the very least, I'm accusing him of having made a wrong move. In best case, such accusations make people regretful, insecure or annoyed. In worst case, they make people angry and aggressive.
That being said, I'm not the least jealous of the Arabs. I'm sure there are at least as many anti-social, dangerous molesters among them. Those dangerous men are just being diluted by scores of annoying and ridiculous men. The Western taboo against sexual aggression has allowed me to spend my life focusing on others things than avoiding sexual aggression. I'm immensely grateful for that opportunity.
Rather than easing taboos against sexual aggression, I think there should be more inoffensive excuses for not wanting to have sex with someone. More versions of "it's not that I don't like you but...".
Tove, the visual "not-interested-in-casual-sex" badge wouldn't work at all. The problem is, many (most?) women are interested in both long-term and casual relationships. Let's imagine that the no-casual badge gets popular and everybody knows that's what good girls wear - that would make not wearing it an obvious sign of being a slut (and maybe most men would then be reluctant to raise kids with such non-wearers). As a result, to preserve their reputation, almost all women, except the absolutely most socially uncaring, would wear that badge, while totally ruining its signal value by engaging in casual sex anyway. I suspect this has already happened before, with covering-your-head or being-covered-from-head-to-toe-Victorian-style as visual signals.
Are you sure it wouldn't work? I see women who dress nonsexually all the time right now, and it seems to be pretty effective. There's already spectrum of styles ranging from frumpy "Leave me alone, it's laundry day" to dyed hair, makeup, heels and revealing clothes. Women available for long term rather than short term relationships tend to dress formally and carefully, with restrained makeup and jewelry. So far as I can tell, this is just how it is in America.
Yes, dressing style actually does affect the "reputation" and increases or decreases attention. But still, remember that many women want both long and short-term attention, they will therefore inevitably muddle the signaling environment. As an example, when I was young and unmarried, I tried to dress in a feminine but non-slutty way (so it was a mid-range signal? Looked quite prudent and good-girly) hoping to get as much attention as possible (short or long-term) without ruining my reputation. It didn't get me loads of short-term attention because a) that's not so easy to get in the geographical area where I live (N-E Europe), and b) I was very shy and fended off many suitors because I was terrified of socializing with them. Still, whenever possible, I totally misused the prudent-dressing signal. It wasn't a trustworthy signal.
Hm, I don't know exactly how you looked, but I think I could usually tell the difference between long and short pretty well. I will admit, though, that the short term signal is much *stronger.*
>>I will admit, though, that the short term signal is much *stronger.*
I say like Unirt here below: How do you know it is a short-term signal, really? I can't open a newspaper without seeing a successful man next to a plantinum blonde bombshell with that typically post-plastic surgery nose and half a centimeter of make-up and revealing clothes. Are such wives of high status men really signalling sexual availability? Or are they signalling that they are really, really valuable to the man who gets the privilege to have sex with them?
Women seldom change style abruptly when they enter a relationship and thereby aren't available for the short-term market anymore (I mean, most people actually intend to follow that rule). Instead, I think the style you call long-termist is more of a work-related compromise: Looking like a night-club queen is usually not appreciated in middle-class occupations. I had at least two acquaintances who ran the night-club look until about 30, when they sensed that it didn't make a good impression at work.
> Are such wives of high status men really signalling sexual availability? Or are they signalling that they are really, really valuable to the man who gets the privilege to have sex with them?
I think this can be explained in terms of mate-value matching. In evolutionary terms, we will always aim to mate with someone with a mate-value as close to our own as possible. When the mate-values of a couple gets out of balance, it is often a really bad sign for the relationship.
This is deeply embedded in our psychology. It is part of our language "she's out of your league", "marrying down", "he could do better". Even looking at a couple where there is obvious unbalance in mate-value makes us uncomfortable.
For better or worse, men can improve their mate value by increasing their status (by wealth, fame, etc...), while for women mate-value (in the evolutionary sense) is mostly improved by increasing their sexual desirability. So I can see how women in relationship with high status men can end up overcompensating on looks, as that is their main avenue to ensure they are matching in mate-value.
Yes. But there is more than one way of being a high-value woman. Being sexier than the others is one way, and being special in some other, less visible sense is another. Men who choose super-sexy women as wives do not only show they are high status. They also show they are playing in a league were sexiness is highly valued.
I was personally never interested in short term mating, only long term. And it could just be that when women dressed and acted like that, I immediately looked elsewhere.
Exactly. Night-club queens AND platinum-blonde rich men's wives seemed like a low-brow contingent to me (whether they actually were or not) and I didn't want anyone to accidentally place me into that bucket.
Yeah. I think women, and people in general, use their appearance to show for what they want to be valued. The sex-pot look indicates that a woman prioritizes to be valued as a sexual object. The less sexed appareance indicates the she hopes to be valued for other reasons. It says little about under which circumstances she actually wants to have sex.
How can you make a difference when the person has both short and long term interest? It's impossible. Anyway I'm sure I generally would have looked like "long" to you; this was partly a true signal because I was quite interested in long-term relationships, and partly false as I was also quite interested in short-term.
I'd say my wife successfully signalled long term interest without short term interest: clean, well-groomed, long hair brushed out, no makeup or cleavage, but occasionally bare thighs. Bright-eyed, friendly when approached, conversationally engaged.
OK, but how would this look: long skirts, no low cleavage, no visible makeup, but clothing fitted nicely to the waist, showing a feminine form. Long or short? The correct answer, at least in some cases, would be "both".
I haven't been to America, but according to my experience, in Europe dress is not decisive for the amount of sexual attention. The most important thing is location and time of the day.
I always dressed very casually and I never wore make-up. I still got my fair share of unwanted attention (but not more than that). Especially when traveling alone. At last, I cracked the code: Get into a hostel before 7 PM. Go to bed early. Get up early. That way, very little unwanted attention. Europeans seem to think that evenings are "sexy time", to borrow a phrase from Borat. Avoiding that time and locations where flirtation is normal does the trick.
Granted.
Yes, all culturally imposed chastity symbols have been corrupted this way. Once I got the idea to buy a black Saudi style protective dress (including a face veil, otherwise I don't pass as real) and walked around in a city with a large Muslim population. My purpose was to see whether people would be racist toward me. One older man gave me an angry look. Otherwise, everyone behaved very correctly. Except for a short, overweight man who said he had come from Iraq six weeks ago, and not had sex during all that time. He was married and had children, he explained, but his wife was in Iraq so now he needed a stand-in for her. He asked if I would take that role. In my normal clothes, I have never got such brave offers while walking through a Swedish city.
The question is: Can't Western societies be more open to choice that traditional societies? For example, people openly say that they are poly. Isn't that quite much like saying "I'm slutty"? And still, it is socially accepted among many people.
Isn't that sign that all men aren't that into female chastity after all? I think that when marital rape became a concept, the value of female chastity decreased. As long as women were more or less obliged to have sex with their husbands, chastity was higher valued. Nowadays, being caught in a marriage with a too chaste woman who doesn't want to have sex at all is a real risk men face. For that reason, I'm not sure women signalling no thanks to casual sex would be the most popular.
Nobody openly declares a polyamorous preference in rural America. (Bless their hearts, no one knows what the word even means in rural America.)
I live in semi-rural America in the Deep South. I can assure you that while people don't speak in terms of "polyamory" they behave just like people everywhere do.
Well... maybe not everywhere: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-east-asian-package
That's because they aren't forced to pay one percent of their taxes to a public broadcasting monopoly! A year ago a local friend told me about the hilarious idea that there can be three people instead of two in a relationship. He just saw that on TV, he said.
I think this is the first post of yours that I significantly disagree with.
On the one hand, it technically doesn't concern me as I don't participate in dating. On the other, I might one day, and I would like to do it on my own (and my partner's) terms without being blamed for her decisions.
I like nature. It would be nice to share that with a woman at some point in my life. Are we just not allowed to do that?
Also, men need clarity, especially autistic men; who are also not very good at attending to emotions, through no fault of our own.
>>I like nature. It would be nice to share that with a woman at some point in my life. Are we just not allowed to do that?
But of course you are allowed to do that! I just say that if Western society wants to reduce rates of rape further, I think that something that many people value must go: Sexual spontaneity.
If people don't want to sacrifice that, then it is entirely up to them. Some like that part of nature more and some like it less. So for some it is worth the risk
When it comes to sexual coercion, the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Either we can climb higher up the tree or we can say that we don't want to pay the price.
Honestly, I'm fine with both. My preferences are not everyone's preferences.
>>Also, men need clarity, especially autistic men; who are also not very good at attending to emotions, through no fault of our own.
Here we have a tricky issue. Men need clarity. But women need clarity too. Especially austitic women. In Thinking in Pictures, autistic writer Temple Grandin writes that autistic women run a high risk of being raped because they don't get that someone tries to seduce them until too late.
In life in general, people mostly want clarity from other people: We would mostly be better off knowing what others really are thinking of us (for example, people want to know if their guests liked their dinner for real). And people want to be as vague as possible to others, because we often profit from hiding our real feelings. That system mostly works fine. Except when it comes to sex, when real feelings are to decide what people do and don't.
The standard solution is to ask women to just drop that system of hiding their real feelings as soon as anybody do something sexual to them. My point with the post above is that too few people function like that. Some are able to just throw politeness away, but many are not. My guess is that most are not. And I have seen few suggestions how to change that thing.
The challenge is that in the case of sex, most people, especially women, don't really want clarity. They want a bit of ambiguity, excitement, the thrill of seduction. Being totally upfront about your intentions will be a turnoff for most people and get you shut down fast, making the whole process bewildering and hard to navigate for those with autistic tendencies.
This scene from "A Beautiful Mind" comes to mind ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tC1FZQlJyM
>one or two or three
That's more than zero, and that's the point. Why wouldn't a given guy want to be *that* guy? Who wants to be a sucker? Without patriarchy, there is only chaos. Freedom ain't free hoss
>>The challenge is that in the case of sex, most people, especially women, don't really want clarity. They want a bit of ambiguity, excitement, the thrill of seduction.
Yup. And that's the reason why things are the way they are: Not only many men, but also many women like it that way.
Still, I think that a not insignificant minority of women have done what I have done, and consciously opted out of hook-ups. Many women have one or two or three hook-ups and then conclude that it wasn't a great concept. Basically, if a big share of women had one hook-up after another and liked it, the average number of sexual partners among heterosexuals would be much more than the 5-10 that studies tend to indicate.
I don't believe those women want to have explicit, autistic-friendly discussions on how to have sex. I just think they are not thrilled by hook-up culture and would like more than a drink or two and some entertaining conversation before they have sex.
I sound very angry and defensive in that post, but it's 3 in the morning, so I'm not going to redraft it right now.
No problem. Women need clarity : )
I know you balk at deleting posts after they're made, but I would delete this (and maybe also the other) after you've read it.
> Hadn't the Roman/Samantha case involved a celebrity, it would have been a case as common as any.
Should read: "If the Roman/Samantha case hadn't involved a celebrity"
> Roman then told her to dress off and get into a jacuzzi.
Should read: "Roman then told her to undress and get into a jacuzzi."
> But it also gives opportunity to fraud.
Better might be: "But it also creates the opportunity for fraud."
> Probably because she had been raised to keep people comfortable whenever possible. Like all normal people have.
Actually I do have a substantive comment here - I have the impression that Americans aren't as strongly socialized in this direction, while Italians would find this bizarre.
>> Hadn't the Roman/Samantha case involved a celebrity, it would have been a case as common as any.
> Should read: "If the Roman/Samantha case hadn't involved a celebrity"
What’s wrong with inversion in condition clauses (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_conditional_sentences#Inversion_in_condition_clauses>)?
Those kinds of constructions are common in German, and I can only presume they're all over the place in Swedish, too, but Tove's readers are English speakers. Modern English is evolving into an isolating language and (for example) most people I encounter on a daily basis don't even understand the difference between "lay" and "lie," let alone the idea that it's correct to say "Yes, it's I."
Wow, I really misread the start of this post as telling Tove to delete everything she wrote. I guess I've learned to expect hostility from Twitter.
I see why you'd think that! I guess I should have said she should delete my comment, not my "post."
Ha ha, yes, I misread I too at first.
On the one hand, my typos and language mistakes are not useful information to my readers. On the other hand, the fact that I appreciate a lot when people point them out is useful information. For that reason, at least in the past I have opted to keep comments of that kind visible so others might feel inspired to comment when they see something linguistically strange. Before I publish things I only have my Swedish speaking family members to rely on. They, just like me, are basically guessing what sounds right.
WOOOOO--
Wait it's another post on Wood from Eden, but it's about rape. Like I was excited at first... but then.
Also if I like this post, doesn't that sortof get interpreted as liking rape? What am I supposed to do here, Tove?
*...actually reads the post*
Ah, people are too emotional about rape! I'm trying to be coldly rational here.
So after studying this a bit, I suspect you're actually being optimistic when you argue that a better compromise is possible.
Before addressing your specific position, my sense is that tradeoffs in the sociocultural world are usually complex, involving something like three times the variables that are actually visible. This "three times" is only a rule of thumb, but reported rape rates do vary enormously across cultures, and a broad array of social factors such as wealth, individualism, social mobility, contraception, and secularism correlate with national rape rates. So while another compromise is definitely possible, that such a compromise would be broadly regarded as better is hard to establish.
> In the light of history and anthropology, the idea that sex should be entirely up to spontaneous feelings is an extreme opinion.
This may be the case, but *prehistorically* promiscuity seems to been rather common, particularly before the advent of plow agriculture.
Moreover, it isn't really the case that sex being up to feelings is an extreme option *historically* - it's been part of Western society off and on again for centuries. For example, medieval marriage was often little more than a shrug that occurred after consent:
http://medievalscotland.org/history/handfasting.shtml
"for the marriage to be valid it did not matter if there were any witnesses or not. Witnesses only made it easier to prove. It did not matter if a priest was present or not. It did not matter if the marriage was blessed, or a mass followed, or not. It did not matter if banns had been posted in advance or not... It was the late medieval Christian church that was telling secular authorities that couples who married in [sic] clandestinely against the wishes of their parents were, nevertheless, validly and bindingly married."
For another historical example, recall the illicit affairs in Montaillou.
> Instead, I think good guys should make life difficult for bad guys by behaving differently. If good guys set an example and always arrange a first and second and third date in a neutral place like a coffee shop, it will be easier for women to think twice before accompanying unknown men into places where men have the upper hand.
Given the way sexuality has been decoupled from familial interests, dowries, household businesses, childbearing, and virtually anything besides pleasure, this is going to be a hard sell. "Hey rather than living a carefree existence with your date, why don't you think carefully about how she might behave after you break up? Thing of the benefits! If you sacrifice some feeling of spontaneity and pleasure now, you could spare your future ex-lover from making foolish mistakes with another guy in the future!" If things like this reduce the chance for a relationship working to begin with, what young man would actually be well advised to do it?
But ultimately, I would probably have shaken my head at anything you suggested, no matter what it was. There are some social problems that still can be solved or improved because the problems are new, or technology has created new possible solutions. But sexuality is an old, old problem, and the space of solutions has been very well explored by now. In a way, you and Aella both seem interested in trying to find solutions to problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. If the two of you find a solution you can agree on, perhaps that might be a genuinely good idea! But frankly I really don't think there is a tradeoff that effectively addresses this problem that doesn't either overturn human nature or the foundational values of Western culture.
I think you are spot on here: Yes, I'm being unrealistic. I actually had a draft called "The insoluble rape question" lying around for a few months. The message was, more or less: rape is inevitable so just deal with it. But I thought it sounded so negative and cynical, so I open for something provocative instead when it came to me.
Still, I think that rather small adjustments in expectations could alter the risk of rape rather significantly. I mean, you say that rates of date rape differ a lot between societies and social groups. Then only small differences in attitudes can have big effects. Not that I can make them happen through social engineering, but if many people for some reason get a certain idea, it can have big effects on risks of sexual coercion.
>>In a way, you and Aella both seem interested in trying to find solutions to problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. If the two of you find a solution you can agree on, perhaps that might be a genuinely good idea.
Yes! If Aella wanted to discuss things with a small fish like me, I think it could result in a really interesting vision. Utopia according to Aella and Tove!
>>But frankly I really don't think there is a tradeoff that effectively addresses this problem that doesn't either overturn human nature or the foundational values of Western culture.
The last one is very interesting. What is the foundational values of Western culture? I think very small adjustments in behavior could have big effects. For example, if there were a norm not to have sex on a first date, I think that could reduce rape rates quite a bit. I don't think that is against either Western culture or human nature (only a little, for some).
The foundational values of Western culture are found on the right-hand side of this graph:
https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/photos/EV000190.JPG
Whatever word one uses to describe these values, "Postmaterialism" is the term used by Ronald Inglehart, the sociologist who has been producing those graphs over the last few decades:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmaterialism
It's a good article, and I was going to quote from it, but if you haven't read about it before, I'd recommend just reading it. If not, suffice it to say that the Pursuit of Happiness Shall Not be Infringed (unless you have the wrong politics in which case everything is infringable--sorry urban conservatives and rural liberals).
> Yes! If Aella wanted to discuss things with a small fish like me, I think it could result in a really interesting vision. Utopia according to Aella and Tove!
Well... on second thought I may have some doubt about what the two of you would cook up. But she won't be able to ignore you forever.
> The message was, more or less: rape is inevitable so just deal with it. But I thought it sounded so negative and cynical, so I open for something provocative instead when it came to me.
I never have enough time to say all the Things To Read, but this kind of fatalistic acceptance of reality characterizes most of my experience on Earth. One *can* move mountains, but that requires so much time, understanding, and devotion that for most people it's flatly impossible. For the most dedicated and most unreasonable, one may have a shot - but only one.
I guessed you would have a precise, scientific definition of Western values! (And I read the article, at least it wasn't long).
>>One *can* move mountains, but that requires so much time, understanding, and devotion that for most people it's flatly impossible. For the most dedicated and most unreasonable, one may have a shot - but only one.
The idea that words can change things is the opium of intellectuals. Mostly, I talk about things as changeable only because it heightens the ambience of the discussion.
I read it! When it was new, it got so infamous that even Swedish mass media wrote about it. When I read it many years later, I didn't find it upsetting. But also not very helpful. The question "Why do some men rape?" is as interesting as the question "Why do some men steal?". Living creatures take what they want when they can, that's just nature. I think the much more interesting question is: Why do most people not rape and steal?