argh, i need to block this site!!!
Here goes:

dizmox wrote:

And in my case, the situation has been nothing like that at all. All I remember from growing up about the subject is "rape is bad" and now I live in a country where one's life can be destroyed on hearsay evidence of touching a girl in the wrong place. Other guys in school seemed to be interested in sex but so did the girls, and no one openly expressed interest in assaulting anyone. I don't remember being pressured by other males and I never met anyone who talked about sex in terms of power and status. Maybe I've lead a utopian, sheltered life surrounded by saints, but none of this kind of philosophy fits in with my domain of experiences, to the point that when I read this kind of passage, I can't help but feel it paints an overly negative picture to fit into some preconceived ideology. Certainly I wouldn't say I've lived in a "rape culture". Maybe others have, but that's for them to decide personally, without forcing their world view onto everyone else.  /devil's advocate

Recently I had a similar experience meeting someone from England who described the country as a "racist culture" from which they were glad to get away from (a view which was totally alien to me, despite me being from the same country). I guess everywhere is full of microcosms.

This is absurd. Even supposing this were true, (which i very much doubt) and you've somehow lead a very sheltered existence, i doubt very much that you've never opened a newspaper or turned on the TV. These both shape and mirror the culture you live in.

So, you're telling me you've never seen or heard any victim blaming after a rape, or heard anyone talk about what they were wearing like it was an invitation to be raped. You've never heard the kinds of comments guys make where they talk about women like sexual objects ("i'd do that", etc.) or talk about how long their list of "conquests" has been, or overheard a conversation where a guy talked about dropping girl x and moving onto girl y, who's hotter, as if they are not even people? You've never heard the word slut before, or ever seen anyone use it to describe women. You've never heard the phrase "boys will be boys". You've never turned on the television, looked at a music video or seen advertising that portrays women as sexual objects that are there simply to fulfill male desires, or affirms male dominance power relations.

You grew up in a culture that is so blind to rape that Jimmy Saville could sexually assault and rape over 500 women and children, and nobody ever said a word about it. Everyone knew what he was like, and yet he was allowed to get away with it because somehow it was seen as some kind of perk of the job to be able to rape women and children. So cmon, sorry, i simply don't believe you grew up in the UK and have never come across any element of rape culture.

As for racism, again, i don't care if you live in a microcosm, but there is no way that you could live in Britain and not come up against racism at some point. All right, it's probably better than it was in the 70's, when people would have their houses / shops spraypainted or smashed up. But just open the Daily Mail and you'll see racist comments and reporting any time you like. It's there in every conversation you'll ever have about immigration. There is the everpresent lynching campaign against asylum seekers. Asylum seekers ffs!!! These are people who have left their countries due to fear of torture, or worse. How low can you get? The state condones this by their treatment of them too (keeping them in those awful centres, not processing their applications for up to 7 years!! so they have no access to any state support). There are also strong elements of racism running through the euro debate, and much racism is directed specifically against the eastern europeans who have moved here. And you're telling me you've never heard of the BNP, who even manage to gain council seats in some places?

Your own microcosm being made up of good people isn't any excuse whatsoever for closing your eyes to what's going on in society at a wider level. I don't choose to spend my time around racist bigots or victim blamers if i can help it either, i don't make friends with that type of person (unfortunately i have some in my family, so i can't always avoid it), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or isn't prevalent on the wider social level.

btw, you live in a society where hearsay evidence of touching a woman in the wrong way can ruin your life because the problem of men actually sexually assaulting women is so prevalent. Ask your friends who are girls how many of them have been assaulted in their lifetimes (if you think they'll answer honestly and not get upset), it sounds like you'd be stunned at the answer.

Last edited by IceCream (2013 January 17, 5:53 am)

You underestimate the amount of people who allow the media to influence who they are.
It's not saying that rape is good, it's saying that the women as a sexual object mentality encourages people to turn a blind eye when women are raped, as it is solely an extrapolation of the "women are a sexual object" mentality to the average Joe (after all, most rapes are not done by sex-crazed sociopaths, but by average Joes who happened to "seize an opportunity").
In other words, if eyeing a woman is okay, then whistling after her is okay, then giving her a spank is ok, then all sorts of steps until having sex with her is okay. Sure, going from "eyeing a woman" to "raping her" makes it a great difference, but often enough rape is a consequence of this kind of thinking and slow evolution regarding how far one thinks he can go. Most people stop way before they evolve into that, of course. It isn't like taking a peek at someone's cleavage means you secretly want to rape her. It's precisely the fine line between the evolution of this kind of thinking that puts many events in a so-called gray area. Sure, the victim is aware of the wrongness of the matter, but either she herself cannot fully understand it or the people around cannot.

"Why did you wear a short skirt if you didn't want to be treated as a sexual object? (not that men ever wear shorts)", "why did you make out with a guy if you weren't planning on banging him(clearly sex is the only point of female-male interaction)", "why did you go to someone's home, (surely it is your fault for assuming that men are human beings and not predators)", "why did you drink something in public (clearly I never drink anything in public)"et co. are in my opinion types of victim blaming which are directly derived from people being somewhere on this line.

IceCream wrote:

You've never heard the kinds of comments guys make where they talk about women like sexual objects ("i'd do that", etc.)

I'm genuinely confused about how people think this contributes to rape culture.  I'm not even sure that it's a bad thing.  Could you explain a bit more?

(Note that in college I believed that it was a bad thing, but when I had more time to think about the justifications I didn't think they held up well enough.)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 January 17, 7:47 am)

IceCream wrote:

i don't understand the question? How would perceiving women as sex objects not play into rape culture?

If you mean that specific example, i don't think it's particularly important as a thing on it's own. It's all just part of a much wider cultural phenomena, which normalises and legitimises those attitudes, and provides a handy cover for rapists and misogynists. (you think they're just joking or playing up to cultural stereotypes or being ultra postmodern until you realise, shit, this is for real, isn't it? That's ACTUALLY your attitude, and you do actually act that way)

At the most basic level, any time you're perceiving anyone in a way that dehumanises them, you turn off empathy, and therefore often end up acting in ways you wouldn't if you were more self aware. It seems pretty obvious to me that guys who talk about women in those kinds of ways are also often the type who treat them as objects to be used however they feel like it. Have you not come across that kind of guy? I don't mean that everyone who does is like that though... again, it comes down to self awareness.

Well, first off, in some very literal sense women are sex objects, just as men are; both are physical things that sometimes have sex.

It's very natural to view certain characteristics as sexual (all mammals do this), so it seems like it is completely natural for a man to view a woman as sexual who has those characteristics.  So, it certainly isn't a bad thing to see a woman and think, "Wow, she's really attractive!"  Isn't that based on visual physical sexual characteristics, that both men and women naturally are drawn to?

(An aside--isn't it demeaning and offensive to tell a man that he's not allowed to vocalize a sexual feeling he is having?  Certainly a big part of sexism against women has been social taboos about women vocalizing sexual desire.)

So, if you agree that that's okay (say so if you don't--I'm assuming nothing, haha), then somehow the bad part of this situation becomes the man making the comments to his friend?  Isn't the man just vocalizing a real natural feeling he is having--that he's attracted to a woman's sexual characteristics?  Isn't it a normal thing to vocalize a feeling that you have?  It's kind of cathartic (perhaps the man is venting frustration that he's attracted to the woman but almost surely couldn't get her).

And, also, how exactly does this relate to rape?  Saying that you want to have sex with someone seems to have nothing to do with your beliefs about the circumstances when its acceptable to have sex.

Also, you say it dehumanizes them.  Well, when I meet a sexy woman I think, "Hey, I really want to get to know her."  And then I start talking to her. (Note that sometimes I make quips to my friends about girls that it seems from your post you wouldn't agree with: "Oh man check her out," "Damn, look at her," etc.  I'm in the category of guys you're criticizing here).  If my sexual attraction leads me to get to know a girl as a person, how exactly is that dehumanizing them?  If you think that it's a rare way of thinking and that guys never get past only the physical side of this, why do you think that?

And, lastly, have you ever speculated about whether criticizing men for wanting to have sex with attractive women partly or fully resulted from a secularization of Christian views on sex?

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 January 17, 8:45 am)

IceCream wrote:

can you not distinguish between "hey, she's really pretty" and "i'd do that"?

You think those two are different?  I lived in a shitty poor town when I was a kid.  My dad was in Vietnam (against his will) and then was a prison guard at a fairly dangerous maximum security prison for forty years (in other words, he lived a shitty life), which is where most of the dads who wanted to support their kids in my neighborhood lived.  But I was pretty smart and went to a high class rich university on scholarship.  My conclusion based on that experience: The difference between "Hey, she's really pretty" and "I'd do that" is simply class; they mean the same thing. 

In my town people would have said, "I'd do that," but it didn't have anything to do with how well they treated women or to what extent they dehumanized women.  People who say "Hey, she's really pretty" can act way more disrespectful in more meaningful ways than people who say "I'd do that."

(Incidentally, I don't want the focus of debate to change to this, so if you addressed some other things I said along with this I would be happy)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 January 17, 8:59 am)

I don't really want to turn this into a class issue, cos it's not, although i think you might also want to think about how class affects perceptions of men and women, and the way they end up acting towards each other. I definitely think the least progressive attitudes and behaviours are indeed stronger among people who consume the type of media that portrays those attitudes (i.e. those aimed at the lower classes). It's not the same attitude dressed up in different words, it really is a different attitude.

That's not to say some of the people who use that language don't have progressive attitudes, or that people who use polite language can't be misogynist underneath it, they obviously can.

I don't really know what else i can respond to, because i've never criticised men for being attracted to women? You can be attracted to women and still treat them respectfully?

I'm also bowing out again at this point. I promise! hahah

EDIT: btw, i used to argue almost completely the opposite of this, so it's not like i can't see the position. Just, if you start really looking at just how important culture is in allowing or disallowing certain behaviours, how ideology affects your perceptions of the world, yourself, and the way you act in it, things like neurolinguistic programming, advertising, and how much influence you can have by inputting certain suggestions to people, it's just, really, hard to deny that it's important. How to respond to that is another matter entirely though...

Last edited by IceCream (2013 January 17, 9:49 am)

I am not sure what argument I can bring forth as convincing, to be honest.
If it's the personal experience of being the constant target of these views, then it's easily disregarded as subjective and "thinking too much of it", and there is only so much empathy you can bring to the table when the other speaker has not spent their life being a target of such an experience.
If it's concrete links between it, then that is again hard to explain as it is hard to get concrete link between general thoughts and concrete actions, especially since people who use a sort of thinking are usually unlikely to realize it, and it's not like there are legitimate surveys done to people along the lines of "do you consider that your view on women might affect your reaction when one is saying no/and or tells you about having been raped?".
And I did do my best to explain the creeping normalcy from "mundane things" to "rape culture", but I see that it was not good enough.
I guess it is also hard to grasp the subject that a common-place thought which personally reflects on you as an occasional impulse and/or neglectable use of language can mean more than that and is capable of shaping the crowd subconscious. It is hard to think about such things when you are in the target audience yet not entirely affected by it (though imho it is not the kind of thinking that only affects men; after all, many women just accept it as the truth and behave accordingly; when people expect you to be an object you behave as such and act hostile towards those who do not. Other women can be the harshest judges since you don't see it coming as much*).

So I really don't know what to say to this.

ok, so, i want to answer a few things more clearly today.

I definitely think you shouldn't feel in any way bad about being attracted to women, or feel like viewing women in a sexual way is in any way wrong or bad.

Everyone has sexual thoughts and feelings... this isn't the thought police or anything. Earlier, you asked if it was just a problem of vocalising it... well, yeah, in a way it is. It's the manner in which you vocalise it, and the effects that might have on others.

As for should / shouldn't, i get that this is difficult, because it's not like you personally are causing anything bad to happen, you do act respectfully, etc. Can you be sure that everyone you're talking to also does? Can you be sure that, by acting in a stereotypically male way, you're not putting pressure on them to conform to stereotypical behaviours? I don't know the answer to the should / shouldn't thing, but i think that at least these are things to be aware of in your social interactions.

Maybe if i give some examples, it'll be easier to think about the ways in which culture affects these things... these aren't rape examples, but less bad things.

Some of those specific things i said yesterday came from a conversation i was listening to on a train journey the other day. There were 4 late teenage / early twenties guys, sitting and chatting. One of them was a complete cock, for sure. They were very much chatting in that aggressively male kind of way, yknow, the kind of "yeah man, i'd do that" "i'd **** that in a second", comparing who's hotter, talking about who they've dropped and who they're into, with no reference to the girl's personalities whatsoever, only what they look like. The guy who was a cock was talking about one specific girl he'd dropped recently, saying she was ******* crazy, and yeah she's hot, but **** that. I mean, i'm sure everyone has heard this kind of conversation. Two of the other guys were laughing along, then the final guy just said quietly, like, nah, she's not crazy, you really hurt her by what you did. The cock guy just dismissed him, saying, nah, she's crazy man, **** that. I'd do her again though.

Obviously, in this case the attitude that guy is showing through his language actually reflects his attitudes, and also his behaviour towards people. And i really think this is the case quite a lot of the time. Firstly, it's hard to distinguish between the type of people who simply use the language but do act respectfully, and those that are actually misogynists. But also, by those others talking in that same way about women, it kind of legitimises this guy's actual behaviour. I mean, you're not supposed to treat women with empathy, they're just something to ****, not people. What about the 2 guys that were laughing along? I'd say that in that friendship group, they would definitely be under pressure to at least talk the talk. Perhaps, if they've been brought up to respect women, they will only talk the talk. Perhaps, if they weren't brought up like that, they just won't really consider it, and think that's how you should treat women, since everyone else seems to. Obviously the guy who spoke up seemed pretty strong and decent, so he's different.

***
Another example: i went out with some old friends from home over Christmas, and found out that all the girls weren't speaking to one of the guys. When i asked why, i found out that he'd managed to pull a girl the other night, she'd stayed at his. When she was asleep, he got his phone, rolled back the bed covers and took pictures of her naked. Then showed his friends in the morning. I mean, that's so scummy it's unbelievable. Then i started thinking about it, like, why would he do something stupid like that? He's not a horrible person, or disrespectful in general. In fact, he's a bit like a loveable airhead puppydog. Then i thought about how the group interacts with each other. They don't talk about girls with no empathy the way the group on the train did, but there is a definite kind of male teasing that goes on. Of the group, this guy is treated like a bit of a joke. He's not particularly popular with women. His masculinity is often called into question. He's kind of assumed the position of group loser, and plays into that, i guess. He's been in that position for as long as i remember, but i think it could easily be different in another group of friends; there's nothing actually wrong with him, it's just how his social position's ended up. Anyway, i'd take any bet that his thought process went something like "those guys are never going to believe that this has actually happened, they're just gonna laugh at me, so i'd better take some evidence to prove it". Obviously, the other guys in the group aren't responsible for this guy's actions, and they would never cross that line and do something like that, though they might laugh about it if they saw it on TV or something. But i do think the way they treat him leaves the door open for that kind of behaviour, because he feels under pressure to prove his masculinity, and that he is not really a loser.

***
Think about the culture of, say, college fraternities in America, where rapes happen way too often... what elements of that culture do you think might play into creating a situation under which rape and gang rape becomes acceptable? I don't know enough about it, but i can imagine the kind of language these guys use to talk about women, the element of competitive masculinity, perhaps they watch gang rape porn on tv at night, they have friends in other frats who are doing the same thing, and they can get hold of the drugs or use alcohol, and suddenly it just seems normal, it's what everyone's doing. It's not like using the language on it's own means anything, it's just part of the overall culture it goes into, which is one in which there is no respect for the girl or her wishes whatsoever.

***
How does stereotypical male language and behaviours affect women? It depends, again, on how involved the women are in that culture, whether they can see outside it, etc. The time i've been around the most misogynistic attitudes is when i was playing poker a lot. The image of women in poker is very much that of the beautiful girl wearing only poker chips as a bra, draped over a car that is spewing cash from it's bonnet, like she's gonna be part of the prize when you win the tournament. And although there were definitely many men who were entirely respectful of women around, there were also quite a proportion who weren't so respectful. To begin with, it was just a bit like, "well, this is awkward, but they're not really hurting anyone, so...". But as i stayed in that culture longer, i started to perceive men, and myself, in a different way than i had originally. Things that i once would have viewed as unacceptable behaviour, like men slapping the waitress on the behind, or leering at them, cheating on their girlfriends anytime the opportunity arose, going out to strip clubs every night, after a few years, they just seemed normal to me. I just figured, this is what men do, it's just how they behave. And consequently, my standards for how they should treat me also became lower. Maybe i shouldn't care that the guy i like is blanking me when i try and speak to him, or being distant after sex, or off sleeping with prostitutes in Vegas, it's just how men are. I shouldn't bother him by texting him, i'll just wait until he contacts me. I shouldn't mind that these guys make weird jokes about preteen girls, and about how young i look. I shouldn't mind that this grim old guy is coming onto me in a really grim way, or those guys over there are openly having a conversation about whether i'm pretty or not. I mean, it's really ridiculous, i feel so silly looking back. You know, in one way i still remained cynical about how they acted, and the excesses and stuff, i wasn't a complete idiot. But in another i became part of that culture without realising it. I really remember being absolutely shocked when i met up with some of my really nice university friends, and they acted respectfully towards women, because i just wasn't used to that kind of behaviour any more. I really do think that the culture you're in is too invisible to you until you can get outside it and really see it. And i definitely think that some attitudes and bahaviours are more permissable under some cultures than others, and we do have the responsibility to think about how our own behaviour and language allow for that.

Last edited by IceCream (2013 January 18, 6:10 am)

Zgarbas: Don't worry about it, I see how my original post can be read the wrong way.

dizmox: The big problem is the definition of what rape is. Men tend to think of a women being raped as some guy jumping out of bushes or an alley.  This isn't as much of a problem, although you still get the "she shouldn't have been walking there" victim blaming.

Rape culture does not mean people are literally saying "Rape is OK."  It's more about a host of societal factors contributing to an environment that encourages rape.  I was never taught that rape was OK, although I don't remember being taught anything about rape until college.  I was, however, taught (usually implicitly) that manhood is (at least partially) related to sexual accomplishment.

It's about a confluence of factors.  On the one hand you have the idea that men must have sex to be men.  Then you have the idea that women who dress a certain way are sluts.  Then you have the idea that women have to be seduced and that there are tricks or ways to get them to have sex.  Then you have the concept of playing "hard to get".  Then you have the misconception that lots of women use rape accusations when they regret consensual sex.  And so on.  None of these alone equals "Rape is OK!"  Even putting them all together you still don't arrive at "Rape is OK!"  And clearly not all men who accept these things rape women.  But it's not hard to see how this sort of thinking leads to a higher incidence of rape, and a higher incidence of victim-blaming/shaming after the fact.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2013 January 18, 7:54 am)

Okay, I’ve been trying to think about this but I guess my thoughts are all over the place.

First, I was trying to think about what irks me a bit about the concept of “sexual objectification.”  I guess the two biggest reasons are the two I already mentioned: 1) I’m worried that it demonizes men for appreciating the attractiveness of females, which has its roots partly in biology;  2) I’m worried that it sends the message, to both male and females, that sex is a bad thing (I mentioned that this might have its roots in Christian thinking).  The more subtle concept “Males, you shouldn’t think of women as objects for your sexual desire—and women, you shouldn’t want men to think of you as sexual objects” breaks down to “Males, there is something bad about thinking of women sexually—and females, there is something bad about wanting to be looked at sexually.”

(Take the following with a grain of salt:)  In general, I really wonder what role biology plays in human sexuality.  Perhaps men really are biologically more likely to separate sex from the-relationship/emotions than women are.  You could speculate that because men and women devote considerably different amounts of resources to childbirth (the male very little, the female a LOT), you would expect them to have different reproductive strategies and reproductive goals.  Of course, it’s very hard to know to what extent that might be true, and of course we shouldn’t shape our society based only on biology (for example, we can’t forgive rape even if it might originally have a biological role as a reproductive strategy).

But, I do think it is relevant if it is true—if it’s true that for women sex and the-relationship/emotions are tied closer together on average, a concept like ‘sexual objectification’, which emphasizes the importance of having an emotional relationship beyond sex, is favoring female sexuality (don't get me wrong, surely most males also favor relationships that are both emotional and sexual--just, perhaps they're more willing to sometimes have relationships that are only sexual).  Granted, that could be true and it could still be fair to have that concept in society—men have usually been able to establish how society views sex in their favor simply because they are physically stronger than women.  So it seems fair that women can use society to pull things more in their favor.  But it kind of gives me an impression of an armed conflict, where when one side gains another side looses, and they both have their own goals.

Anyway, I don’t know enough about what I said in the last two paragraphs to take even my speculations seriously, but perhaps someone who knows more about it could enlighten me.

Anyway, there IS something wrong going on in the real-life examples that you gave IceCream.  And it’s hard to pinpoint what it is.  Maybe what was wrong in those situations cannot be boiled down to a single concept that would be useful in any way.  It certainly does seem that in some of those situations ‘sexual objectification’ is a useful concept—especially your own example about the poker lifestyle.  It seems like there was a culture of objectification that had a real effect on you.

Some of it was just douchiness.  For example, I guess calling someone ‘hot but crazy’ strictly speaking is not objectification.  After all, that’s judging someone by both their personality and their physical attractiveness, which doesn’t meet the definition (In fact, in a sense it’s the opposite—it’s saying ‘this person is not of any value despite her attractiveness, because her personality is shitty.’  Although, this is obviously him just hiding the fact that he’s been hurt by her in tougher language)

Well, my thoughts are pretty disorganized, so it’s obvious I need to think about this a bit more.  But, I think that in essence this is all about empathy, right?  You should try your best not to hurt people--that’s the most important idea. In some situations it might be okay (or inevitable?) to think of a woman in only a sexual way.  But that could be okay only under the right conditions: as long as she is okay with that (for example, with a woman who wants just a physical relationship too from time to time--individuals vary greatly on this type of thing), and as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else (maybe by blabbing about it in a douchey way).

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 January 21, 2:48 am)

Tzadeck wrote:

Okay, I’ve been trying to think about this but I guess my thoughts are all over the place.

First, I was trying to think about what irks me a bit about the concept of “sexual objectification.”  I guess the two biggest reasons are the two I already mentioned: 1) I’m worried that it demonizes men for appreciating the attractiveness of females, which has its roots partly in biology;  2) I’m worried that it sends the message, to both male and females, that sex is a bad thing (I mentioned that this might have its roots in Christian thinking).  The more subtle concept “Males, you shouldn’t think of women as objects for your sexual desire—and women, you shouldn’t want men to think of you as sexual objects” breaks down to “Males, there is something bad about thinking of women sexually—and females, there is something bad about wanting to be looked at sexually.”

I dunno, i really think this is the wrong distinction... i think you are considering sexual objectification in the wrong way. I really don't think it's about looking at someone and thinking "they're hot", or thinking about them in a sexual way. This is something everyone does. Sexual objectification does something more than that; it allows someone to approach someone else as if they weren't even human... and it results in the ability to turn empathy off because of that. It can be difficult to distinguish between the two in certain cases, but i think there definitely is a difference.

Tzadeck wrote:

(Take the following with a grain of salt:)  In general, I really wonder what role biology plays in human sexuality.  Perhaps men really are biologically more likely to separate sex from the-relationship/emotions than women are.  You could speculate that because men and women devote considerably different amounts of resources to childbirth (the male very little, the female a LOT), you would expect them to have different reproductive strategies and reproductive goals.  Of course, it’s very hard to know to what extent that might be true, and of course we shouldn’t shape our society based only on biology (for example, we can’t forgive rape even if it might originally have a biological role as a reproductive strategy).

Well, i have a problem with this kind of evolutionary explanation, and with evolutionary explanation in general. It just seems that "anything goes" really, as an evolutionary explanation. We're trying to argue from the justification to the fact, without ever proving the "fact" to begin with, and then end up ignoring other equally valid explanations, and other equally valid implications of that explanation. For instance, you could also argue based on what you said that women should not get emotionally attached to men because they need to devote their emotional resources to bringing up a child, and a man is unlikely to stick around anyway. Or that women should not get emotionally attached until they actually have a child. Or that a good strategy for both of them would be for the male to raise the child because the female has already devoted significant resources to growing the child in the womb and giving birth, so the male has more resources left to give. I mean, there is just no way of telling what a "good" evolutionary explanation should look like, especially if you haven't got any actual facts to base it on to begin with.

There's another thing to think about too... if the "resources" thing were true, you should expect to see the same pattern repeated across males and females of all species who's resources are used in the same way as humans. Except you don't... almost every possible sexual strategy is seen among animals, both as species, and at least for some of the apes, within species too.

There ARE certain things that can tell you about a species' strategy as a whole (though not necessarily the individual members), such as testis size. It's been found to have a direct correlation with how much sperm competition there is. Where there is low sperm competition, the testes are smaller, and where there is high sperm competition, testes are larger. Human males have smaller testes than chimpanzees, but larger than gorillas, signalling that females are rather more monogamous than chimpanzee females, but rather less monogomous than female gorillas (where usually the alpha male has access to a group of females, and all other males lose out). However, there's nothing as far as i know that provides any evidence about emotional attachment.

In fact, there's no real reason to believe that the emotional attachment thing is not cultural. With our generation, more than our parents, it's become fairly socially acceptable for girls to have casual sexual relationships without emotional attachment too. And with this happening, you tend to see a much wider range of relationship styles and strategies than you did before. (or at least, they are more visible, anyway). In other societies (i can't remember which, but i think it was Chinese), women get to pick which men they sleep with each night, they let them in through a window, and they don't have to remain monogomous, but can switch and choose. It very much depends on the person, but it seems to me that culture does influence this a lot too.

The key word in genetics study at the moment is epigenetics. And i also think this is where things get interesting. It's all about how the environment influences genes. So, people are born with a set of genes, but there are environmental triggers which sort of flip a switch on those genes, allowing someone to adapt to their environment as they grow up. These genes remain switched on after the switch. In the physical sense, it's how identical twins can end up looking completely different from one another as they go further through life. It's also very important for behaviour, allowing different people to adapt different strategies depending on their environments. One really sad example of this is in child abuse... when a child is physically, emotionally, or sexually abused, areas of their brains adapt and grow in a different way from children who are not abused. For example, where a child is emotionally abused, their auditory cortex ends up atrophied compared to normal children. Child abuse also affects the development of empathy, for understandable reasons. And you see epigenetics at work in mental illness too, where someone can be "at risk" genetically, but never develop an illness because of the environment they were brought up in, vs. those in a different kind of environment who do.

Sorry, i'm blabbering on a bit. But i think epigenetics is important for understanding how culture (environment) can affect how people behave, and what they then take to be "true" about the way they act.

Now, it's clear that we don't know enough to really speculate on lots of aspects of this. But one of the ways we could ask about rape in different cultures is by looking across cultures and asking how common rape is in different societies. Maybe we get a baseline figure which represents rape as a purely biological strategy. And maybe there's significant differences in the statistics between different cultures which represent the cultural and epigenetic factors. In fact, there do seem to be significant differences in rape statistics between cultures (both within one society, and between societies). So the next question to look at is what factors might be influencing those differences in rape statistics. And it turns out that there do seem to be patterns, concerning "interpersonal violence, male dominance, and sexual separation". http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 … x/abstract (This is social research that is based off anthropological studies, so take with a pinch of salt, but it's still interesting to think about.)

Which leads us to this:

Tzadeck wrote:

Well, my thoughts are pretty disorganized, so it’s obvious I need to think about this a bit more.  But, I think that in essence this is all about empathy, right?  You should try your best not to hurt people--that’s the most important idea. In some situations it might be okay (or inevitable?) to think of a woman in only a sexual way.  But that could be okay only under the right conditions: as long as she is okay with that (for example, with a woman who wants just a physical relationship too from time to time--individuals vary greatly on this type of thing), and as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else (maybe by blabbing about it in a douchey way).

Yes, i think empathy is the most important thing in our personal interactions with others. And i think that empathy is connected with moral responsibility. But one of the things i'm concerned about is perhaps social responsibility is actually wider than that. Maybe i should have responsibility for the kind of culture i am contributing to, even if my own actions aren't harming anyone in an obvious way. For example, i think the stereotypically male attitudes and behaviours harms males as often as it harms females, because it doesn't allow people to develop fully in their own way as human beings when they are trying to play into a stereotype. So if i then play into a submissive role, what am i doing? What am i saying by doing that? I'm saying that i think a culture in which males are dominant and females are submissive is a good one. And i know that these kind of societies are ones in which rape is most prevalent.

Or, to take a perhaps clearer example, when i was playing poker, i used to worry about the social effects of it. There were very clearly people who were addicted to gambling, and had some pretty severe problems with it. So it's natural to wonder about whether any of the responsibility for the effects on their lives lies with me if i participate, and win money from them. Now, on one hand, it seems pretty clear to me that everyone should be able to make their own decisions about this, and ultimately that responsibility lies with them. I wouldn't have wanted someone else to try and force me not to play, even if i had been in a position where i had a gambling problem. On the other hand, i can't really assent to the proposition that i think poker's a social good. And i don't really think it has anything valuable enough about it to make it worth it. So i think although the moral responsibility lies with each individual, some of the social responsibility does fall on me, because by participating i'm saying that that is how i want society to be.

I think there's times when maybe other things, such as aesthetics can overrule social responsibility (but not moral responsibility). For instance, i know someone who really hates the light given off by energy saving lightbulbs. They only like the old sort of lightbulb. But even though it's clearly socially irresponsible, i think that's overridden by aesthetics. Maybe because aesthetics doesn't have to be universalised. If only the people who truly prefer the light of old lightbulbs uses them, then we can get along alright with that until someone invents an energy saving lightbulb with nice light. The problem lies more with those who don't make the choice at all, or do it in a dishonest way.

I dunno, i feel like my thoughts on social responsibility are also quite disorganised. It's something i'd like to have a firmer position on, but the relations between it and other things are quite complex.

Tzadeck wrote:

Some of it was just douchiness.  For example, I guess calling someone ‘hot but crazy’ strictly speaking is not objectification.  After all, that’s judging someone by both their personality and their physical attractiveness, which doesn’t meet the definition (In fact, in a sense it’s the opposite—it’s saying ‘this person is not of any value despite her attractiveness, because her personality is shitty.’  Although, this is obviously him just hiding the fact that he’s been hurt by her in tougher language)

In Britain at least, "she's crazy" is a very common way of dismissing someone as a person. Because you don't have to consider the fact that you've actually hurt someone if they're crazy; crazy people don't deserve empathy, they're unpredictable, they get overemotional, and it's not justified emotion. I've seen and heard it tons of times. This guy had clearly hurt the girl he was talking about, and didn't care in the slightest. It's just another way of keeping someone at arms length, and dehumanising them.

Last edited by IceCream (2013 January 21, 7:22 am)

Yeah, i'm sure all those girls are totally crazy. It has absolutely nothing to do with the way someone else has treated them.

Because in my experience, most of the time guys say someone is crazy, they've hurt the person and are simply refusing to take responsibility for that. If you hurt someone, they're going to be upset. It's pretty simple really. That doesn't make them crazy.

Yes, breaking up with someone is painful, but there are some people who do it respectfully, with empathy for the other person, and with understanding and kindness if the person acts a little badly because they're upset, and some people who don't, and simply go around calling all their exes crazy manipulative psycho bitches, no matter how badly they also treated them. It's both ridiculous and hurtful to talk about someone like that. A relationship is a relationship, if you end up reacting to each other in those kinds of ways (on both sides), without kindness or love or decency, it just means the relationship's gone wrong. It doesn't mean the other person is somehow evil.

I'd never trust a guy who spoke about any of their exes that way.

EDIT: In fact, i know one guy who actually did have a girlfriend that really could have fit that description, and he still didn't talk about her in that way because she clearly actually did have psychological problems that influenced the way she acted, that she couldn't help or have control over. That's called being respectful.

Last edited by IceCream (2013 January 21, 10:50 am)