Do 27% of Europeans say rape may be acceptable in some circumstances?

Nov 29th, 2016
by Daran.
1 comment

The Washington Post says they do, referencing a recently published EU survey1. Alex Griswold doesn’t agree:

…much about the story doesn’t pass the smell test. I can buy widespread misogyny in Romania, but 40% of liberal Belgians and Luxembourgers are secret rape supporters?

The survey instrument was delivered to subjects in their native language. Griswold doesn’t analyse foreign language version of the question, and I certainly don’t have the linguistic competence to do so. Nevertheless, I agree with him that the relatively high number for Belgium is suspect, given the high rating that country gets in the gynocentric Gender Equality Index2. It’s notable that only 15% of Dutch people gave an affirmative answer to this question, despite that country having a very similar GEI rating. It seems reasonable to conjecture that issues with foreign-language versions of the question similar to those discussed below, may have affected the result3.

Griswold sees some problems with the English-language version of the question:

First and most importantly, the question wording was downright atrocious:

“Some people believe that having sexual intercourse without consent may be justified in certain situations. Do you think this applies to the following circumstances?”

The “this” in the second sentence is very, very vague. Respondents might have thought that they were being asked to identify the circumstances in which “some people” say non-consensual sex is justified, not the circumstances in which they believe it’s justified.

I agree. The question could reasonably be interpreted as asking “do some people believe that the following circumstance are ones in which non-consensual sex may be justified.” Arguably this is a more natural interpretation than “do you think non-consensual sex may be justified in these circumstance.”

This ambiguity is undoubtedly the worst problem with the question and on its own invalidates the result, at least as far as English speakers are concerned. But there are other issues:

(Also, I suspect that priming the question by saying that “some people” believe that non-consensual sex is okay might induce respondents to agree with statements they ordinarily would not.)

Or at least, may have primed some respondents to agree with statement that they wouldn’t have without the priming. It’s worth pointing out that this was the only question in the survey given a “some people believe” framing.

Griswold continues:

…some of conditions listed [...] are so broad or confusing, that they cover circumstances where legally and ethically, it isn’t difficult to think of cases where the initiator’s actions would be “justified” despite the lack of explicit consent.

  • “Not clearly saying no or physically fighting back”
  • “If the assailant does not realize what they are doing”
  • “Being drunk or using drugs” (This was the most popular response)

The first one is baffling. There are cases of non-consensual sex where the victim’s passivity does not absolve the perpetrator: the rape of an unconscious woman, for example. But 99.9% of the time, sex where one’s partner is “not clearly saying no or physically fighting back” actually is consensual.

Of course, consensual sex where ones partner doesn’t say no or physically fight back is excluded by the question. But I agree that that the non-consensual aspect of the hypothetical was insufficiently emphasised in the question, and may not have been salient in the minds of the respondents. As Griswold puts it:

It isn’t difficult to see how participants could be confused and think they were being asked whether or not sex where the other person isn’t actively saying “no” is rape. Most of the time, it isn’t.

The question would have been better if they had added something like “Remember we are only talking about non-consensual sex.”

There’s another problem here that Griswold doesn’t mention: Nowhere is the word “consent” defined. As endless arguments both on this blog and elsewhere in the gendersphere have shown, different people attach different meanings to the word. A similar problem applies to the word “justified”. Does it mean “morally acceptable”? “Excusable”? Or even “legal”? If we don’t know how respondents interpret these words, we don’t know exactly what propositions they are assenting to.

Griswold goes on:

The last bullet point is the thorniest. Again I would peg it as too vague. For one thing, it doesn’t even say who is supposed to be intoxicated in the hypothetical. WaPo states definitively in its lede that the respondents where talking about when the victim is drunk, but the actual question wording doesn’t say. [...] I’d imagine nearly all sexually active Europeans (and Americans) have had sex where one or both participants were intoxicated, but would chafe at the notion that they raped their partner.

Or that they were raped by their partner.

  1. This and several related documents can be found here.[↩]
  2. Somewhat confusingly a number close to zero in the index as a whole or any of its constituent parts indicates a more gender-equal society by the index’s lights. A number close to one indicates a more unequal society. See the technical note.[↩]
  3. According to Wiki, 55% of Belgians speak Dutch as their first language and 36% speak French. 30% of people in France answered affirmatively suggesting that such issues may not be the entire explanation.[↩]

Posted in: Europe, Rape.

Abandoned baby found dead in a carrier bag. Police are concerned … for the mother’s welfare.

Nov 26th, 2016
by Daran.
5 comments

A naked newborn baby was found dead in a carrier bag which had been left outside a vicarage in near freezing conditions. It is not clear whether the infant had been alive when it was abandoned.

So what we have here is a case of suspicious death. In another case it was established that the child had died from neglect after birth. Even when the baby survives, it’s a clear case of reckless endangerment. Yet in every case, the immediate police response is the same – to express concern for the welfare of the mother. I cannot think of any other type of crime – still less one as serious as those under discussion – that routinely elicits such a compassionate response.

I want to be clear that I am not arguing for a more punitive, less compassionate approach. The perpetrators of these crimes are presume to be – and every often are – desperate and vulnerable young women. My point is that many male criminals are also young, desperate, and vulnerable, yet we never see this compassionate response to them.

Posted in: Content-lite, Double Standards.

noelplum99 Weighs In On The Wage “Gap”

Nov 12th, 2016
by ballgame.
3 comments

Earlier this year I was pointed towards YouTuber noelplum99 by a fellow redditor, and I’ve been following him ever since. I really like his straightforward, analytical breakdown of some of the myths and confabulations that contaminate too much of social justice discourse, and that he approaches his topics in a fairly progressive way that avoids the strident vilification you find in too many of the videos by ‘anti-SJWs’.

This is apparently his first direct take on “the wage gap” (though he has referred to it in other videos), and it’s worth watching.

Posted in: Employment, Equality, Fact-Checking, Fallacies, Feminist Critics 101, Great Britain, The Wage Gap.

A Thought From The ‘Multiverse’ Perspective

Nov 8th, 2016
by ballgame.
No comments yet

All in all, I think people in the universes where the Cubs and Trump both lost are going to be a lot happier.

Posted in: Current Events, Fear And Loathing, Open Thread, Personal Ramblings, Politics, United States.

Let’s Elect Our First Female President

Nov 7th, 2016
by ballgame.
40 comments

I really wish that our — and of course I’m writing for feller Muricans here — first female president was going to be Senator Elizabeth Warren.

That, unfortunately, isn’t going to happen (at least not this time). Nor is a Jill Stein presidency a viable option.

So that leaves Hillary Clinton, a hawkish, centrist Democrat in the “Scoop” Jackson mold, AFAICT. That is not a good thing. Hillary is likely to be particularly poor in the arena of issues of interest to (past and present) readers of this blog. She will likely remain blind to the inequalities facing men, and I suspect she will continue to amplify the political tension between gender egalitarians and mainstream feminists. She will also very likely continue the buildup of the national security state, and her opposition to the democracy-threatening free trade deals is unreliable at best.

However, I do expect her to support the fundamentals of the New Deal, and to appoint reasonably intelligent and capable judges to federal posts and the Supreme Court. I expect her defense of a woman’s right to choose will be staunch.
Continue reading →

Posted in: Current Events, Politics, United States.

Bernie Sanders For President

Apr 26th, 2016
by ballgame.
16 comments

I know I haven’t posted here about gender in a bit, but I would be greatly remiss if I failed to give Bernie a boost while he still has a (very) slim chance at representing us. The above YouTube focuses on one of the key issues confronting the country that none of the other candidates are likely to do a damn thing about, because to a greater or lesser degree they are bought and paid for by the 1%.

I’m saddened that ostensibly progressive bloggers like Melissa McEwan have embraced what I think of as ‘fauxgressive feminism’ and gone out of their way to snipe at and tear down Bernie Sanders in favor of a thoroughly establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton. Hillary has said she wants to protect the New Deal, but I believe she will almost certainly betray her Democratic constituents by signing some democracy-destroying variant of the TPP “free trade” treaty.

Bernie deserves the country’s support.

ETA: I dashed this off quickly, and I just wanted to clarify that I use the phrase ‘fauxgressive feminism’ to refer to a specific kind of feminism and not to feminism as a whole. There are plenty of feminists who have been enthusiastically supporting Bernie over Hillary, like Nicole Sandler and Deborah Newell.

Also, as good as the YouTube wealth video above is, it does contain a glaring mischaracterization of socialists, who do not seek to make everyone have equal wealth or incomes. (2016/4/26)

Posted in: Current Events, Melissa McEwan, Politics, United States.

A comment on fannie’s room

Apr 7th, 2016
by Daran.
7 comments

Update: See bottom of post.

Special moderation rules apply to this post. First it is NoH and will be moderated very strictly in respect of non-feminist guests, and relatively loosely in respect of feminist guests, should any turn up. If you think that’s unfair, we will refund the entrance fee no questions asked. Second it is an auto-moderated thread. All comments will need to be approved. Third, if any feminist guest does show up, I will probably stop approving most or all comments by non-feminist guests1 even if they would ordinarily be acceptable. My intention here is to avoid diluting my own replies. (ballgame and Tamen, as usual, are free to approve their own comments.) The above is rescinded. Normal NoH rules apply.

fannie

Cue Daran going to his “Feminist Critics” blog to whine about feminist intolerance.

Let’s review, shall we? I post one comment to fannie’s blog, the only comment I have posted there in the past three and a half years, to the best of my recollection. fannie and her guests post nine replies so far, the last five of which are character attacks on me which have nothing whatsoever to do with the comment I posted And this, according to them, is my fault. Instead of taking responsibility for their own comments, they blame me.

My options at this point are

  1. reply in the thread, continuing the derailment, for which I will blamed even if only one in ten posts are mine2,
  2. post here, allowing fannie to crow that her prophesy above was fulfilled,
  3. fall completely silent, allowing their smears, misrepresentions, and bogus blame to remain unrebutted.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a “gotcha”3

I decline to fall silent. I also decline to give any substance whatsoever to their accusation that I’m derailing their thread. I don’t expect this to stop them.

fannie and her guests now have the following options:

  1. continue to derail their own thread,
  2. stop talking about me,
  3. redirect discussion to a more appropriate thread, (i.e., one in which it’s not a derailment) perhaps one set up by fannie for the purpose, or some other appropriate space,
  4. respond in the comments below.

This is not a gotcha, because options 3 and 4 both allow them to reply to my criticism of them without being faulted merely for doing so. Option 3 in particular allows them to do so in a space favorable to them.

* * * * *

fannie, commenting about a person called “Rod Dreher”:

Ugh, I’m sorry to hear he banned you. But, it aligns with my experience with how capable he is of handling dissent. He’ll post the most outrageously bigoted pieces and then outright say he’s not “letting comments through” that call him a bigot.

Me:

While not banning me in so many words (I you had, I wouldn’t be posting this comment) you made it very clear last time I commented (several years ago) that I wasn’t welcome.

Out of the more-than-a-decade I’ve been following Alas a Blog, I have spent more years banned than I have been allowed to post, despite always behaving myself, always looking for and complying with any comments policy, (I read yours before posting this) and always following instructions from moderators to the best of my ability. The terms of my current ban (the pretext for which were comments on my own blog, not anything I did on Alas) forclose me from applying the strange “even if you’re banned, you may still try to post” rule in its Comments Policy. It also forecloses me from contacting Ampersand to ask that the ban be lifted, though I suspect he would now be willing to do so.

Intolerance for effective dissent is hardly limited to opponents of feminism.

My point, of course, is that the pot is calling the kettle black. On reflection, I regret introducing my experiences on Alas a Blog. My intention was to broaden the “pot” to “some feminists” rather than just “fannie”. However by doing so I opened myself up to some of the attacks that followed.

Aeryl:

If you keep getting banned from places, perhaps you should come to the realization that the problem isn’t the blog admins.

I don’t keep getting banned from places, Alas is the only place I have ever been banned from, to my recollection4, not counting places from which I am pre-banned, i.e, whose comment policies state outright that they do not accept dissenting views (or just those view from men.) I never post dissent to such places.

JarredH:

If you really think Fannie told you that you were no longer welcome here merely for “dissent,”

I didn’t say that she told me that I was no longer welcome here merely for dissent. All I said I said she had made it clear that I was no longer welcome. She did not say that this was merely for dissent. Dissent was, however, the only thing I had done in the thread which lead to me being unwelcomed.

In a later comment, fannie linked to the post with the comments at issue. Her exact wording was:

I’m not interested in dialoguing with you at this particular juncture in time.

I think “she made it clear that I was no longer welcome” is a fair characterisation from memory of a remark made over three years ago.

then you either have a terrible memory or need to engage in some serious self-examination/take a more critical look at what you say and do.

Granted, I’m not ruling out the possibility that you actually know that your claimed reason that you were asked to stop posting here is outright mendacious bullshit, either.

I was not asked to stop posting here. I chose to do so.

There’s no indication that JarredH knew which thread I was talking about at the time he posted his comment, (fannie posted the link five hours later), yet he immediately leaps to judgement. Clearly I am not going to get a fair hearing from him.

He contines:

Also, this thread is not about you and where you are unwelcome. Don’t try to make it about you and where you are unwelcome. (Gee maybe the fact that you do things like this contribute to the reasons you are unwelcome in some spaces, hrm?)

It’s true that I’m not feeling the love. However I am not banned on fannie’s blog. I broke no rule in making the comment I did (and I checked before I posted it), nor have I ever failed to comply with any instruction given by anyone in authority there, which, to my knowledge, is fannie and nobody else.

I have not made the thread about me. My comment was about fannie’s and other feminist’s intolerance for dissent. I gave examples from my own experience, not to make the thread about me, but because those examples are more available to me, and because my own behaviour in the threads were above legitimate reproach. Then, as now, it was dissent, not misbehaviour on my part that was regarded by feminists as objectionable.

It is true that the thread was made made about me by multiple commenters, including JarredH and fannie herself. They’ve done this by posting comments about me, the majority of which have no connection to anything I said in the single comment I posted.

fannie:

For starters, nowhere did I say “opponents of feminism” are the only ones who do not tolerate dissent. But thanks for enlightening us with that little koan.

It’s true that she didn’t say that (and I never said she did). The purpose of my comment wasn’t to rebut something she had said, but to point out that the pot was calling the kettle black.

Two, I had to go refresh my memory regarding your previous contributions here, and I ah yes, now I remember – straw arguments and lots of attempted “gotchas.”

I have no interest in relitigating in detail years-old threads. Suffice it to say that straw arguments happen on both sides and, when made by me, are always the result of an honest misunderstanding of the other’s position. I don’t doubt that fannie feels that I’ve “gotcha” when I make an argument that she can’t rebut because facts and logic are against her. I call it “effective dissent”. What I have never done, is set up a dynamic where the mere act of rebutting another person’s point (not to mention slurs and missrepresentions directed at myself) is somehow regarded as abusive. Still less have I gone on to disparage a person’s choice to reply on their own blog, when put in this unfair position on another’s. This has, however been done to me by feminists on more than one occasion.

In the few years since we’ve interacted I’ve literally run out of fucks whether anti-feminists think I or other feminists are “tolerant” or not. The truth is, lots of anti-feminist men just get really pissy when conversations aren’t about them and they aren’t allowed to barge into them whenever they want.

I’ve seen plenty of anti-feminist men behave appallingly in feminist spaces. I’ve also seen (and been on the receiving end of) plenty of appalling behaviour by feminists directed at dissenters who were behaving perfectly reasonably. Believe me when I say that this incident barely moves the needle on the abuse-o-meter compared to the pile-ons I’ve suffered in the past.

Given the propensity for feminists to make their threads “all about” any dissenter who turns up, then blame him (and it usually is him) for their decision to do so, I give little credence to complaints about men making everything about themselves.

I fail to see how any conversation in which the phrase “male privilege”, is uttered is a conversation which “isn’t about” men. I have (occasionally) seen people “barge into” conversations where they are not permitted in the first place, and (more often) defy instructions, reasonable or otherwise, issued by those in authority where those conversations take place, I have never done any of these things and I fail to see what this has to do with me.

Oh, and before you accuse me of being part of a feminist hivemind, I go out of my way to read non-feminist, anti-feminist, and really conservative blogs pretty much on a daily basis precisely because I want to understand other people’s points of view (know your enemy and all that). So, spare me the argument that it’s necessary for you or any other rando anti-feminist man to come here with lots of devils advocacy to expand my mind. But thanks!

Now who’s strawmanning?

Finally, if you have been interacting on Internet for more than a decade it really should be no surprise that you can cite, hyperlink, and pedantically nitpick people’s comment policies all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s their space, that they manage, and that they put work into.

If, for any reason, they don’t want you there monopolizing the conversation (or even just lobbing a comment or two) – you have no entitlement to comment there. That goes for Alas, that goes for Rod Dreher, that goes for Fannie’s Room, that goes for any blog.

I have no entitlement to comment in another person’s space whether or not they want me there. I either have permission to do so, or I don’t. An open comment box implies permission to do so, subject to any restrictions on the home page, clearly linked “about” page or comments policy, or similar, or any instructions given in the post I’m replying to, or in comments by authorised people which I have read or can be reasonably expected to have read.

Rod Dreher is within his rights in his own space to not tolerate dissent. fannie is within hers in her own space to not tolerate dissent while hypocritically criticising him for doing the same in his. I’m within my rights on my blog to criticise her. I was also within my permissions (but not my rights, because I had none) to criticise her on her own blog. Despite all the suggestions and insinuations from her and her guests that I have behaved improperly, I have not done so.

There is nothing improper about citing or hyperlinking a document which I am referring to, and it is good practice to do so. I did not nitpick Alas’ comments policy. I wanted to make the point to anyone familiar with it (or who read it in response to my post) that when I say I’m banned, I really am banned in the ordinary sense of the word, as in, not permitted to comment there at all, despite what the comment policy says generally about banned people. Ampersand’s email injunction overrides the comment policy.

fannie continues

PS – Cue Daran going to his “Feminist Critics” blog to whine about feminist intolerance. (More history, here)

I don’t dispute that I have previously retreated to my own blog when banned, where as here, I would be blamed for “derailing” and “making it about” myself, if I continued to post in the feminist space (even though I would have been within my permissions to do so) or where the outright abuse has reached a level at which it was no longer psychologically safe for me to do so. There is, of course, nothing improper in me so retreating.

That said, fannie links to her own blog, not mine, so it is not clear what specific history she is referring to.

It’s also worth pointing out that this comment by fannie is nothing to do with the comment I made nor does it have anything to do with anything else that has been said in that thread. It is also the point where the conversation stops being about fannie’s intolerance of dissent, and starts being about me and nothing but me. The next four comments are just fannie and deirdre talking about me, and blaming me for their own decision to do so. No more specific response from me is warranted.

Update (13 April 2016)

Since I posted the above, I contributed a second comment to that post, unrelated to the issues discussed here. In it, I asked for fannie’s opinion as a lawyer on a subject which was on-topic to the thread, and expressing my own view on the matter. I wasn’t faulted for doing so, nor did I expect to be. That comment is the only on-topic addition to the thread, unless you count fannie’s threadbare acknowledgement of it. Either after a week of silence on my part over there I’m still stopping them talking about what they want to talk about using my magical remote derailing abilities, or the conversation I allegedly derailed had already ended.

There has been one other addition to the thread. In an edit to the comment quoted at the top of this post, fannie continues make the thread about me5:

[ETA: And yep. *singing* Somebody wants attention! Somebody wants attention! *end singing

No I don't want that. What I want is for her and her guests to shut up about me, which at least her guests have had the good grace to do. Failing that, I'd like to be able to rebut her smears and misrepresentations in the place she makes them, without being faulted merely for doing so. But that's not going to happen.

What a pathetic attempt at baiting me into a pointless discussion.

Nope. I'd rather she'd shut up. I give her and her guests the opportunity to respond to criticism in the place I criticise them because that's the decent thing to do. Doesn't mean I want them to do so.

Dude, we've been down this road. I'm not interested in talking with you.

No, just about me, in a place where I can't reply.

Doesn't mean I'm scared of your stellar wit and intellect. *thumbs up sign*]

Unlike fannie, I try to avoid making claims about other people’s thoughts at all. Still less do I do so without giving them the opportunity to respond. But while I demur on the subject of her thoughts, I will say that her actions have been spectacularly cowardly.

  1. In exceptional circumstances, such as when a non-feminist guest wishes to reply to comments by a feminist guest specifically about a previously approved comment by that non-feminist guest, then I may approve a version of their comment redacted to limit it to just their “right” to reply. “Right” in scare quotes because guests have no rights here, only permissions which may be withdrawn at our discretion. If I redact a comment, I will make it clear that I did so.[↩]
  2. Of course, I will be blamed, no matter how small the proportion of comments are mine[↩]
  3. Any resemblance to the thread deconstructed here is purely systemic.[↩]
  4. I’m sure there have been others, but it’s certainly not been a frequent occurrence.[↩]
  5. To paraphrase one her guests: “But Mommmmmmm! He’s making us talk about him!”[↩]

Posted in: Bias, fannie, Fannie's Room, Special Rules.

Consent Thread February 2016

Feb 14th, 2016
by ballgame.
12 comments

Long time readers of Feminist Critics: You know the drill, you can skip reading this.

For those of you who are somewhat new, however: The issues of rape and sexual consent are a very important part of discussions about gender. However, they are so important that discussions about other topics can be (and often are) derailed by a casual mention of rape. I’ve seen it happen here repeatedly.
Continue reading →

Posted in: Open Thread, Rape.

A Cold Open Thread January 2016

Jan 20th, 2016
by ballgame.
42 comments

Here’s a fresh open thread to discuss things other than issues related to sexual consent. (All NoH rules apply.)

Posted in: Open Thread.

Goodbye, David Bowie

Jan 11th, 2016
by ballgame.
5 comments

David Bowie has died.

I don’t have time at the moment to do justice to this sad news, but I didn’t want to let the event pass unmarked here at FC. The brilliant, occasionally-androgynous, occasionally-bisexual superstar had an enormous impact on society’s perception of gender. He certainly had a big impact on mine, and I suspect many readers here will feel the same.

(I am just now noticing that our “Obituaries” tag is misspelled — we’ve only used it once before, a long time ago — but it seems a particularly fitting tag for Major Tom. ETA: Daran has now fixed it, but it had been “Orbituaries.”)

Posted in: Current Events, Obituaries, Queer Issues.

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