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Two patterns emerge which can be found in many of the stories that one hears about these days.
1. A certain type of man who has developed highly problematic ha
Two patterns emerge which can be found in many of the stories that one hears about these days.
1. A certain type of man who has developed highly problematic habits in regards to repeated, if not very frequent inappropriate (sexual) harassment, and who essentially has been rewarded for this for a long time.
2. A type of person (mostly women, but as far as my observation goes, this general trait is common regardless of gender) who has failed to speak up and push back, often for many many years - who only now that everyone does it, feels "comfortable" enough to speak up.
As a man I am frustrated about group 1) because they are a pain in the ass to women and fuck it up for all other men, and I am frustrated about persons from group 2) who selectively deny their personal ethical/moral responsibility as adults and their ability to use free will ("I was too feared to speak up")- which they of course in all other scenarios would insist in - when it suits them - but still now, that they finally tell their stories, ask for full retribution.
Fear of losing a job/allies/opportunities for not having spoken up over long amounts of time is not a valid excuse, in my eyes. It's more a sign of lack of integrity. And lack of integrity seems to be the big problem here anyway, for everyone involved.
How many of those misbehaving men could have been stopped from doing what they have done over decades if they'd have received clear, unambiguous feedback on the inappropriateness of their actions, instead of "rewards" for their bad actions? Many of these might be better men today (as long as you don't think they are born that way), and there would not be a need to publicly shame all those men (which will probably come at a cost to society in some form of backlash, making everybody worse off).
Julia Galef just did a podcast interview with Timur Kuran about "preference falsification" which touches on this topic . http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-198-timur-kuran-on-private-truths-and-public-lies.html http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-198-timur-kuran...
I know men who have an extremely hard time to speak up when things happen that they disagree with, and I know women who are very good at clearly, ambiguously showing boundaries as soon as someone attempts to overstep them (note: I am writing here about these sexual harassment cases related professional environments, not about physical attempts of rape). So as far as I can tell, the root of this mess is not a gender-related problem, but a general problem of learned social behavior and compulsive conflict aversion.
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2) who selectively deny their personal ethical/moral responsibility as adults and their ability to use free will ("I was too feared to speak up")- which they of course in all other scenarios would insist in - when it suits them - but still now, that they finally tell their stories, ask for full retribution.
Fear of losing a job/allies/opportunities for not having spoken up over long amounts of time is not a valid excuse, in my eyes. It's more a sign of lack of integrity. And lack of integrity seems to be the big problem here anyway, for everyone involved.
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I’m not trying to be controversial, but from my perspective this is the actual definition of victim blaming - do you agree with this assessment? Not in the sense that a victim is responsible for their own attack, but rather the victim is responsible for every subsequent attack. Do you believe initial victims bear some culpability in their aggressors later attacks?
From my perspective you’re suggesting it’s the onus of victims to reorient their lives and potentially suffer in their professional career in order to police the voluntary actions of another person. Is this accurate? Would you agree the victim has that responsibility?
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2) who selectively deny their personal ethical/moral responsibility as adults and their ability to use free will ("I was too feared to speak up")
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Again, not trying to be controversial - but have you ever been the victim of a physical assault? Have you ever put your career on the line to get justice for something? I’m curious because from my perspective you’re treating this issue quite flippantly, and with a very narrow minded viewpoint. I suspect that many men who haven’t been in violent situations have a hard time understanding feelings of physical vulnerability. And they have an even harder time understanding why even seemingly mild cases of verbal inappropriateness can cause the same feelings of physical vulnerability.
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So as far as I can tell, the root of this mess is not a gender-related problem, but a general problem of learned social behavior and compulsive conflict aversion.
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I think your position sounds perfectly reasonable to people who don’t have any experience with it, but breaks down when actually applied in real life. Specifically, I think youre proposing that women just shut down situations they feel unease about, which sounds perfectly logical and may happen most of the time.
But it ignores the other outcome, those which Hollywood is famous for - women that decline the sexual advances of men find themselves labeled as ‘frigid’, ‘uptight’, or ‘difficult to work with’, and watch their professional lives suffer as a result. In my opinion, the conflict aversion is the optimal strategy for when one potential outcome is neutral (the harasser is sorry, and otherwise won’t hinder victims livelihood or career), and the other outcome is highly damaging (the agressor escalates, or the aggressor is sorry but feels the need to harm the victims career to protect their own).
While there is some truth to your comment it is both unfortunately phrased in part "pain in the ass to women, fuck it up for all other men" and focuses too much on what (alleged) victims could do.
For instance, you question the ethical and moral responsibility of (alleged) victims who did not speak up at that time. I can easily imagine being one of those people, and I think that most of the time in other situations which are not sexual we see that most people keep their mouths shut and try to make the best of a bad deal: it's why there have been fewer violent revolutions. People with strong, clear ethos who make the choice to "speak truth to power" are rare, everywhere, in every time.
I would ask you also to consider that there were probably more non-victims who were passive observers, privy to at least some of the bad behavior who also did not speak up. Perhaps they should be the main thrust of your comment, rather than people who may already be so psychologically weakened that a brave act is the last thing that is likely?
All, that said, I find the #metoo hashtagging irritating. I do not know why, but something grates about it.
“I think that most of the time in other situations which are not sexual we see that most people keep their mouths shut and try to make the best of a bad deal: it's why there have been fewer violent revolutions. People with strong, clear ethos who make the choice to "speak truth to power" are rare, everywhere, in every time.”
I fully agree with you. I tried to account for that by pointing out that this is a pattern that can be observed irespective of gender, but I guess my striving for brevity meant that this point didn’t come across clearly enough.
I don't think the problem lies with feedback. I think it lies with willful ignorance of it.
I believe that most people in group 1, are in fact aware of the problem of their behaviour and are willingly ignorant of it. This is because if they made any unwanted advances against women, even if the women didn't tell them to stop or publicly humiliate them, they surely ignored or tried to get away from the situation. At the very least the victim did not enjoy it and that is feedback enough.
Now the question boils down to whether a perpetrator considers the victim to be a human with a standing equal to his/her own. So as far as I can tell, it is the general problem of dehumanizing victims. The blame does not lie with Type 2 people who did not feel "comfortable" enough to publicly speak up.
Take any crime which doesn't take in public view, let's say child abuse. Is it the responsibility of the victim to give feedback to the perpetrator, or is it the responsibility of the perpetrator to view the child as a human being?
PS - I made a very similar comment down the thread to another commenter as well.
The other commentor was me too :)
I also like to use analogies. But this one really is misleading.
We are not speaking about juridical crimes here and not about children but adults. It’s one if the main differences between children and adults that society expects the latter to communicate, to express their thoughts, and to take responsibility for their actions or lack of action.
But nowadays in debates like these I see the emergence of a devaluation of these features that until now clearly differentiated children from adults. The individual of age is described like a helpless, voiceless child.
I find this seriously worrying (which is why I spent hours this Saturday in this comment debate, which I rarely do).
As far as analogies go, I'll rescind my analogy based on the difference you have stated. However, it does not negate the point I was trying to make, that the problem lies not with feedback but with willful ignorance of it.
Since, I didn't realize you were the same person, here's my response for the other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15942520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15942520) you made. I think I understand what you mean by saying that what appears unwanted to one party might appear playful and wanted to another party based on their mindset. But then what guarantee is there that if the victim escalates the issue, that the escalation isn't considered playful either. Note that escalations can come in increasingly severe degrees and can also have equally "playful" connotations from the perpetrators perspective. If a victim tells her close girlfriends about the sexual assault, to the perpetrator it can sound as "I made such love that she couldn't stop talking about it". If a perpetrator has violated many victims, who have tried to warn their female colleagues, it can sound as "I'm so good that, some women want me for themselves and are spreading rumors about me to prevent others from getting close to me". I feel vile coming up with legitimate sounding sentences such as these, but I believe putting the onus on victims to give feedback need not make the perpetrators realize that boundaries have been crossed.
In my opinion there is an objective measure of whether a person is welcome or unwelcome. Now perpetrators might have a different viewpoint about it in which case no matter what the victims do to escalate the issue, it need not necessarily mean feedback for the perpetrator. On the other hand from the victim's perspective there is a cost to be paid in terms of engaging with the perpetrator apart from other costs which you already mentioned.
Finally, a few perpetrators might have such a removed world view that nothing below public shaming opens their eyes to the harassment, which is the only time we come to know about it. We might assume that no feedback was given by victims, but it might just be that the feedback wasn't nearly enough.
To summarize, the victims do not have nearly enough incentive to give feedback and perhaps many did and the harassment didn't stop until public shaming. It is definitely not the case of victims not having enough integrity to overcome costs to of giving feedback.