Comments Elsewhere

Jerry: “Many of us would associate words like ‘conscious’ and ‘systematic’ and ‘socially’ as buttressing either an overt or covert conspiracy.

“Systematic” and “socially” only suggest a conspiracy if you believe that the only ways in which large-scale social coordination can come about is by a process of crafting and consciously following a common plan. But that just is to claim that there are no spontaneous orders. In which case your problem is with Hayek, not with Brownmiller or with me.

“Conscious” only suggests a conspiracy if the word “conscious” is being used to apply to participation in the form of social coordination in question. But Brownmiller doesn’t say that the “conscious process of intimidation” is something that all men participate in (if you think it is, re-read the sentence, paying particular attention to which clause “all men” is the subject of). In a “conscious process of intimidation,” presumably the person who would be either conscious or unconscious is the intimidator, which in this case means the rapist. We know from elsewhere in the book (especially the passages on the Myrmidon theory) that Brownmiller isn’t claiming that all men are rapists (after all, part of what she’s explicitly interested in analyzing is how the actions of men who rape affect the status of women vis-a-vis men who do not rape). So we don’t yet have any reason to believe that Brownmiller is claiming that anyone other than the rapist alone is consciously intending to intimidate women (maybe all women as such; maybe some group of women; maybe the one particular woman he has targeted for attack; Brownmiller doesn’t make it explicit which, and not much turns on it in this discussion). Which is true enough; if he weren’t intending to intimidate, he wouldn’t be a rapist.

So then what’s the function of that clause about “by which all men keep all women in a state of fear”, if not to say that all men are somehow consciously trying to intimidate women? Well, again, looking at the rest of the book, and especially the passages on the Myrmidon theory, one interpretation that suggests itself is that Brownmiller is making a statement in that clause about the political effects of rape — that all women are kept in a state of fear by all mean, as an effect of the conscious process of intimidation carried out by some but not all men—an effect which not all of the men in question, or perhaps even none of the men in question, may have consciously intended.

If Brownmiller doesn’t mean to use the word “conscious” to suggest conscious intent by all men to keep all women in a state of fear, but only to say that rapists consciously intend to intimidate women, then why include the word at all? Can’t it just be taken for granted? Well, no, it can’t be. I’d argue that Brownmiller includes the word “conscious” because it has to do with a distinct claim made in the book, which is not directly discussed in my original post — that rapists are motivated in part by the desire to intimidate and control women, not just by some uncontrollable lust or the lack of consensual sexual “outlets.”

Maybe you disagree with Brownmiller on that point; if so, fine, but that’s a different disagreement, which has to do with what a rapist’s conscious intent in committing rape is, rather than with Brownmiller’s effect of the social effects of rape.

Jerry: “I also like how all wars and social ills are laid out an men’s feet, apparently women had nothing to do with this.”

Who are you arguing with here? I can’t find anything in either the Brownmiller quote or the MacKinnon quote that you single out that would suggest anything of the sort, or anything at all about some kind of universal theory of who’s responsible for all wars and social ills.