Thursday, October 16, 2014

Feminism vs. Responsibility

I’ve noticed a common, underlying theme of many feminist ideas and publications, and it’s a theme that I wasn’t convinced existed, despite the assurance of a few anti-feminists here and there. However, after spending more time in the midst of feminists (both online and in real life), this theme has become more and more pronounced, and I see it very clearly now.

This theme within many feminist ideas and publications is an appeal to pity in order to reject women’s personal responsibility…. which means what, exactly?

An appeal to pity is a type of logical fallacy in which the arguer attempts to convince you that her conclusion is correct by appealing to your sense of pity (for her, for the people in question, etc.), and in the case of feminists’ use of this fallacy, the conclusion they want you to accept is that women are powerless to fix whatever is causing their suffering: women don’t need to do anything, rather, men (or the society they control (patriarchy)) need to make the change, and we are supposed to just agree with the women who make this argument because they are suffering (appeal to pity). The story basically goes, “If women are suffering, then it's not their fault at all, and thus, there’s nothing they can do to fix their situation. Instead, other people (men) are the ones who need to do something about it.”

To illustrate how appeal to pity is used to reject personal responsibility in a general case, here is an analogous situation. Imagine I get into a car crash, and as a result, I become paralyzed from the neck down. As I'm lying in the hospital, I tell you that the car crash wasn’t my fault, and I beg you to believe me because I’ve been horribly maimed. Are you really going to look at me, as I lie in a hospital bed with tubes down my throat, and tell me that this is my fault? Of course not! But does that mean it wasn't my fault? Of course not!

While you may be extremely sympathetic to my current situation, your feelings of pity are irrelevant as to whether or not the car crash was my fault. However, it is very tempting to succumb to your feelings of pity and to simply agree with me.



"Broken collar bone? Awesome! Now it's not my fault!"

You can also see how this fallacy arises in a formal argument structure.

1. I was involved in a car crash.
2. The car crash left me permanently disabled.
3. Therefore, the car crash was not my fault. 

As you can see, P1 and P2 have nothing to do with the conclusion, except that P2 makes you feel pity, which kind of does make you want to agree with the arguer’s conclusion. Hence, the fallacy is called “appeal to pity”.

Many feminists do the same thing in order to remove women’s personal responsibility when talking about the following topics, and they often place the responsibility on men instead. Their justification? Women are victims, therefore, there's nothing they can/should do about it.




BODY IMAGE 

This is one of the most popular talking points of many feminists right now: the pressure girls feel to conform to the standard of beauty, the criticism girls get for how they look, etc. Now, why does this happen? Well, anyone who’s been through school, or been alive (or actually studied this occurrence) will tell you that the primary perpetrators of slut-shaming and of criticizing women based on how they look and act are, in fact, other women. 

If a girl puts on different makeup, wears new shoes, and gets her hair done, it’s other girls who notice and critique her, not men. In fact, boyfriends (stereo)typically get scolded for exactly that: not noticing that their girlfriends altered their appearance in some subtle way. But guess who gets blamed for making girls feel bad about their appearances? Men; men get blamed for what women do to each other.

And of course there are all those fashion magazines that tell women to lose weight and make them feel inferior by putting photoshopped women on the cover. But who writes these magazines? Not men, women. And who are these magazines written for? Not men, women. 



Men hate women's bodies, but is it men, or women?

Open this image in a new tab to see it more clearly.

“But you don’t understand: women are the victims! Are you really going to tell me that women are victims because of other women?”

Yes, yes I am. Maybe these feminists could organize a workshop on “healthy femininity” to work out what’s wrong with women, rather than telling men to rethink their masculinity, or shaming them for something they are not guilty of doing.

Now I'm not saying that these issues of body image are not problems "because it's just in-fighting among women", I'm just saying that you cannot reasonably blame men for these issues. 



DRUNKEN HOOKUPS

I’ve heard enough feminists talk about this that I’ve decided to talk about it here. This is the idea that if two people have sex, even when they are equally drunk, then the woman is a rape victim, and the man is a rapist, and it usually goes like this:


Not, "too drunk to consent," just, "drunk".
It’s funny how, when two equally drunk people have sex, these feminists declare the woman to be free from responsibility for it, saying that the man should have known she was too drunk. However, if someone decided to drive drunk after her equally drunk friends told her to, everyone would say (as our courts do) that the driver is at fault, despite the presence of her equally drunk friends "who should have known that she was too drunk to consent drive." It is understood that when you are drunk, and you choose to do something, even at the pressure of your drunk peers, you are responsible for you.

Once again, these feminists reject women’s personal responsibility. 


RAPE PREVENTION

Even the simplest and most brain-dead obvious ways of reducing your risk of being sexually assaulted are decried by many feminists. There’s nothing more offensive than telling a woman not to walk through the bad part of town alone at night to reduce her risk of being raped… buuuut if you tell her not to wear a solid red t-shirt in the bad parts of LA, well, that’s just obvious and you should just know that. Idiot. 

Now, as I explained in a past blog post, I understand that most rapes happen between people who know each other, and the perpetrators are normally people who you should be able to trust. Furthermore, most of the time it is not the “dark alley”, “stranger in the bushes” scenario, and thus, in most cases of rape, there really is nothing the rape victim did that was as obviously dangerous; it is usually not comparable to wearing a solid red t-shirt in LA.

However, even in those few cases where the victim did do something stupid (like go to a party at a well-known rape frat), many feminists still insist that the victim had absolutely no power to reduce her chances of being raped, and advising women (or rather, everyone) to avoid bad neighborhoods is offensive…. even though this advice would actually reduce the number of rape victims.

This creates an interesting paradox: these feminists claim they want to see fewer women raped, but it sounds like they’re actually willing to see MORE women raped, just so long as those women don’t get blamed for it at all. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to not be raped. Please don’t force women to become rape martyrs in exchange for freedom from any responsibility.

STREET HARASSMENT

This follows a similar vein as the previous topic, and although the sentiment expressed below is less common in feminist circles than those presented above, the level of blatant disregard for women’s agency in this instance was too astounding for me to ignore.

Now, the underlying idea is one that I can appreciate and agree with: you should be free to dress yourself how you want. However, these women then go on to pretend that we already live in this ideal world, and they act shocked that dressing provocatively... well, provokes people. 



“I know the way I dress is kind of provocative, 
but it doesn't mean I should have to deal with it.”

In a perfect world, appearances wouldn't matter, but failing to acknowledge even a basic level of self-awareness in the real world is simply childish and it ignores your own agency. A comparable situation might be if a man went into a business interview wearing a polo shirt and slacks, and then complained about being seen as "unprofessional". Ideally, it wouldn't matter what you wear, but quite frankly, you're an idiot if you ignore the reality that it does matter to at least a basic extent. 

Once again, we have a case of, "I'm a victim, therefore, it's not my fault."

CONCLUSION

Women are adults. Adults have agency, and adults have responsibility. But many feminists are trying to take away women’s agency and turn them into victim objects with no power at all. Women: you are stronger and smarter than these feminists think you are. You can improve your situation, you can think for yourself, and you can do it without blaming the men around you or asking them to be strong and independent for you.

In the old days, it was believed that women couldn't make rational choices without the guidance of men. Nowadays, it is believed that women can't make rational choices without the guidance of feminists. I maintain that women are rational, they can make their own choices, they can deal with real-world problems in a rational way, and they can empower themselves. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Problems with Affirmative Consent Laws

California recently passed a bill (SB 967) that requires colleges to adopt an “affirmative consent” model for addressing sexual assaults on campus in order to receive state funding. In this bill, affirmative consent is defined as:

“...affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.”


Now this sounds like a great idea, and as far as individual people goes, it is a good idea: it's a good idea to know what your partner wants or doesn't want in a sexual encounter. However, affirmative consent is not something that should be written into law for the reasons listed below.


1. ACLs remove innocent until proven guilty.

“When bill co-author Assembly member Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) was asked how an innocent person is to prove he or she indeed received consent, Lowenthal said, “Your guess is as good as mine. I think it’s a legal issue. Like any legal issue, that goes to court.””

Translation:
“How can an innocent person prove their innocence?” (Which is a horrible question to have to ask in the first place)
I have no idea; let’s experiment with peoples’ futures.”

Under the affirmative consent model, falsely accused people will become falsely convicted people, unless they happened to videotape the encounter.

However, I am not only concerned for the college students who will be wrongly punished; I am also concerned that this may become the stepping stone for our legal system to adopt this model as well, which would be a tremendous violation of human rights: the complete reversal of innocent until proven guilty.

Indeed, several feminist writers have argued for this exact kind of shift: always believe the victim in a legal setting and reverse the burden of proof, including:

Jessica Valenti 

"Swedish rape laws ... go much further than U.S. laws do, and we should look to them as a potential model for our own legislation. In fact, some activists and legal experts in Sweden want to change the law there so that the burden of proof is on the accused; the alleged rapist would have to show that he got consent, instead of the victim having to prove that she didn't give it."

Linda Brookover - "Defining Rape", page 178

Brookover argues that the accused should have the burden of proving his innocence.

Susan Caringella - "Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice"

"It is high time to give victims a fair shake, to dismantle the zealous over-protections for men accused of this crime, which have been buoyed up by the myths about false accusations, ulterior motives, and so on, commonly embraced when rape charges are levied."

The writer of "Another Feminist Blog"
"The bottom line is that nobody bears the burden of convincing you their rape “really happened.” It is beyond noxious to think that as second or third parties we could sit back and judge the veracity of those claims, or that we should. When someone speaks about their experiences we listen. Period."

These are just some top-picks; if you go to Google and search for words like "feminism" "burden of proof" "innocent until proven guilty", you'll find a large population of feminists who want to reverse innocent until proven guilty. 



2. ACLs demand an unreasonably low standard of evidence for colleges

SB 967 requires that colleges adopt a low standard of evidence for determining if a sexual misconduct claim is true; it’s the same standard of evidence that the courts use in civil cases (which deal with things as heinous and life-changing as contract disputes).

“In evaluating sexual misconduct claims, SB 967 calls for schools to apply a “preponderance of evidence” standard, similar to Title IX. It’s a lower standard of proof, used in civil cases, instead of the “beyond a reasonable doubt” bar used in criminal trials.”

While colleges are not courts and cannot send “convicted” students to jail, expulsion as a sex offender can essentially bar them from higher education because other colleges won’t take them. This deserves a higher standard of evidence than what is used to settle contract disputes.


3. People give ambiguous signals, and what actually happened is often unclear.

At “The Amazing Meeting” or TAM in 2014, Doctor Carol Tavris gave a talk called, “Who’s Lying, Who’s Self-Justifying?” in which she talks about awkward sexual encounters in college, which are often claimed to be instances of rape. In her talk, she explains how these situations arise, and in doing so, she explains why the affirmative consent model is absolutely horrible, even going so far as to specifically call out the state of California for proposing it.

Her talk is linked here, and the key time intervals are recorded below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SpVVsOUsLo



24:42 - 25:36 -- People say “no” to mean many different things, even to indicate consent.
29:10 - 30:18 -- People do a “dance of ambiguity” to spare each other’s feelings.
30:18 - 31:20 -- A common signal of consent, AND of non-consent, is not doing anything.
33:41 - 33:55 -- Some women drink alcohol to create plausible deniability about their consent in case someone accuses them of being a slut; they intentionally blur the line.
34:35 - 37:05 -- Cognitive dissonance can create false memories about sexual encounters.
38:37 - 40:17 -- Dr. Tavris specifically denounces affirmative consent laws for the above reasons.

On a related note: some people have recently been claiming that the song “Blurred Lines” promotes rape culture by saying that it’s okay to assume a woman wants sex. However, I would say that if that song means anything, it is explaining Tavris’s exact thoughts on the subject of sex: it’s saying, “Look, it’s okay that you want sex. Drop this ‘good girl’ routine, stop saying ‘no’ when you actually want to say ‘yes’, and stop creating all these gray areas (or blurred lines) for me to interpret (or misinterpret), and just do what you want to instead of beating around the bush.” Just a side thought. 

More recently, a woman wrote an article explaining how she found herself in this kind of awkward sexual encounter, which fits with Tavris’s general description, and which is hardly comparable to rape; it's just what happens to young people who are unsure of exactly what they want or what they are getting into. http://totalsororitymove.com/is-it-possible-that-there-is-something-in-between-consensual-sex-and-rape-and-that-it-happens-to-almost-every-girl-out-there/



Conclusion

Based on Tavris’s analysis, and the story linked above, it appears that the cause of the awkward  college hookups that affirmative consent laws are meant to eliminate (which many feminists insist are rapes)
 is peoples’ lack of awareness of how their minds work and what they desire in these situations, not a lack of legal structure or rules or "toxic masculinity".


Just like any other human heuristic, the solution for dealing with these awkward, quasi-consensual hookups to become aware of the things Tavris noted that we naturally want to do (such as spare others' feelings or create plausible deniability for ourselves), not to legally require people to act differently. Just because an action is a good idea for individuals to perform, that doesn't mean it is a good action to require by law. The same could be said of cheating on your spouse, or seeing through the diffusion of responsibility: don't punish people for being human, educate them. 


EDIT (10/22/2014)

I would like to make one additional point, which was originally made by the YouTube user "JohnTheOther".

Part of the law reads as follows:

"Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time."

Affirmative consent must be ongoing? What if a man asks if he can now put his penis into the woman's vagina, she says yes, and so they begin intercourse, and five minutes of intercourse pass without any exchange of words because that's how they like it? In this situation, the man didn't ask the woman if she consented during those five minutes; she was silent and compliant, which does not indicate consent. Is that rape? According to the affirmative consent model, it is. So unless you happen to enjoy loud sex, you are a rapist.

Affirmative consent laws effectively outlaw certain types of sex that thousands of people routinely enjoy. 

Friday, October 3, 2014

Feminism is Not the Only Perspective

Today, I would like to draw attention to, and challenge, the idea that feminist theories, and a feminist perspective, are the only way to frame gender issues. Many of you have probably heard phrases like the one shown below. Something along the lines of, "I need feminism because [insert problem here]."



However, the argument being made in statements like these is a poor one, and it creates what you could call a “false mono-chotomy”: it only gives you one choice (feminism) when that is not actually the only choice.

To see this fallacy more clearly, we can simply take the form of the argument in a different context:

“I need supply-side economics because the economy is doing poorly!”

In response to this argument, an observant person would probably say, “but what about demand-side economics?”

My point is that, in general, you can’t just declare that there is only one way to solve a problem, or that your way is the best way: you need to justify that claim. When feminists say “I need feminism because (gender issue exists)”, they are doing the same thing as the hypothetical supply-side economist: they are just declaring that it’s my way or the highway. They are not making an argument for feminism, they are simply declaring that their perspective is the right one.

To see this fallacious argument explained in a more rigorous manner, continue reading.

First, let’s look at a bad argument for supply-side economics as the solution to fixing the economy.

Argument E1
P1. The economy is doing poorly, and we need to improve it.
P2. Therefore, we should adopt the theories of supply-side economics.

This argument is not a valid argument: it does not explain how the conclusion follows from the premises. In order for this to be a valid argument, we would need to add a premise, creating Argument E2.

Argument E2
P1. The economy is doing poorly, and we need to improve it.
P2. Adopting the theories of supply-side economics is the best way to improve the economy.
P3. Therefore, we should adopt the theories of supply-side economics.

This is now a valid argument: the conclusion follows from the premises. However, in order to make this argument sound, the arguer must now justify the premise (P2) which states that supply-side economics is the solution; or, in more specific terms, that the theories of supply-side economics are the only model of the world that will allow us to determine the best course of action to fix the problem. It is in this premise (P2) that the debates about economic theories take place among politicians and economists: which model is the most accurate to the real world and will give us the best solution? In this discussion, we acknowledge that there are multiple economic theories that purport to model the world correctly, and which, by that token, will provide the best solutions to economic problems.

Now let’s talk about feminism instead of economics. An argument similar to E1 is often made for feminism, and this argument is written below as F1.

Argument F1
P1. There is an inequality between men and women which we need to fix.
P2. Therefore, we should adopt the theories of feminism.

Once again, there is a hidden premise, whose absence makes the argument invalid. A valid form of this argument we will call F2. However, the argument usually given by feminists is F1, when it should at least be F2.

Argument F2
P1. There is an inequality between men and women which we need to fix.
P2. Adopting the theories of feminism is the best way to fix that inequality.
P3. Therefore, we should adopt the theories of feminism.

And once again, we find ourselves requiring some justification for P2 in order to make the argument sound. However, when it comes to feminism, the discussion of P2 is slightly different from that of P2 in economics. When it comes to feminism, many people find it hard to believe that P2 could be false. Indeed, many feminists flatly deny that there are other ways to frame issues of gender, and they insist that if you don’t adopt feminist theories, then not only will you never solve the problem, but you probably don’t even care about the problem at all.

“You’re not a feminist? Don't you care about women?!”
“You’re not a supply-side economist? Don't you care about the economy?!”


Using economic issues as an analogous situation, we can see how ridiculous it is to insist that feminist theories are the answer to gender issues. In the blog posts to come, I will explain some of the ways in which I view gender issues such that there is a solution for current inequalities, or I will simply present a more accurate analysis of these problems that differs from feminist theories.