Dain,

I don’t like being in either the position of being feared, or in the position of being depended on for protection, either.

I don’t mean to suggest that male supremacy is all a bed of roses for men. Patriarchy Hurts Men Too ™, and all that. But the reason I’m willing to endorse Brownmiller’s claim, that the threat of rape redounds to the benefit of men as a class, including (especially) those who don’t actually commit rape, isn’t because playing the role of a “protector” is supposed to be pleasant in itself. Truth be told, it is pleasant for many men, or at least ego-stroking, and a lot of men have historically been quite explicit in expressing how much emotional satisfaction they get from providing for and protecting their wife and children. But that’s not the main point here.

The more important point has to do with ripple effects, and (1) the indirect payoffs that come from assuming the social role that men, as men, assume, as well as (2) the disadvantages that restricted mobility in physical space imposes on women, as women, vis-a-vis men.

Taking (2) first, living with certain spaces or times closed off to you by the threat of physical violence, without being able to safely and comfortably walk through many public spaces in a big city, or in certain male-dominated spaces (certain kinds of workplaces, certain kinds of clubs and bars), or much of anywhere at night has direct effects on what you can and cannot realistically do with your time. The lack of freedom that comes from the realistic fear of rape, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual aggression directly effects women’s ability to participate in civic life, in politics, and in certain kinds of work. It has direct effects on women’s prospects for business, on women’s prospects for work, on where and when and with whom they can socialize, and in any number of other ways on their economic, social, and political participation. It also has indirect ripple effects: the effects of living with constant warnings and a constant feeling of confinement, as well as the effects of having to find, please, and satisfy the Right Man in order to safely navigate everyday situations that most men have no worries about navigating. (It’s worth considering how much of stereotypical American femininity is linked, either directly or indirectly, with the threat of rape and with the need for male “protectors.”) That works to the systematic disadvantage of women, which means that it works to the systematic advantage of certain men who are, or would otherwise be, in competition for jobs, promotions, socio-political status, etc. (The connection between the traditional “protector” role and the traditional “provider” role for the male “head of household” is not accidental.)

As for (1), those indirect payoffs have largely to do with the way in which women are socially expected to defer to men, both in public forums and in interpersonal relationships, and to focus on finding, pleasing and satisfying the Right Man. How women are expected act as sexual “gatekeepers” and not to be assertive about their own sexual desires, and to have a sexual experience more or less on the man’s terms. Also with corresponding, often subconscious entitlement that men have acted on and continue to act on. Expectations used to be very strong, and quite explicit in social norms; in these days — by which I mean the last 40 years or so; the change was very dramatic and quite recent, in the grand scheme of things — we have largely shifted towards unspoken, or covert versions of the same thing. But they are still there. If you see more or less what I’m talking about in your own life and the lives of people you know, then that’s what I’m trying to point out when I endorse Brownmiller’s claim that stranger-rape serves to promote male power and male privileges over women — even, or especially, the power and privileges of men who do not themselves commit rape. If you don’t see it, then I’ll just plead that I don’t have the talent or the space to really get you to see it within the space allowed by a blog post or a comments thread. What I’d want you to take away is an some idea, even if only in rough outline, of the kind of stuff I mean when I say that non-rapist men get concrete privileges out of the violent undesigned order that arises from the violence of male rapists against women. For a fuller and more convincing elaboration of the specifics, I’d just have to point you to extended treatments in the feminist literature, starting with Brownmiller’s book itself–which, after all, only had a few short summary paragraphs quoted and discussed in the course of my post–and with other work that discusses sexism in contemporary language, media, culture, sexuality, etc. My post wasn’t really intended to give you a full panoramic view of Brownmiller’s theory of rape, let alone her whole theory of patriarchy; my aim was just to help point certain of my readers towards the right lens to use when you try to get the view.

I don’t know why this would be any more beneficial for males in general than would the negative actions of some blacks be beneficial to all blacks.

This is really a separate issue. The reason that white stereotyping of black people as violent or criminal — and the fear that results — is harmful to black people is that that fear is projected onto all black people, and then used by politically and socially well-connected white people to justify individual practices and large-scale policies that hurt black people (e.g. economically deserting certain neighborhoods, or the racist War on Drug Users, or increasingly violent policing and punitive imprisonment). There’s no real equivalent in the situation between men and women as depicted by Brownmiller. Firstly because the fear is not universally projected onto all men, or at least not equally onto all men. (The key move in her theory has to do with men who are seen primarily as protectors, rather than as rapists.) Secondly, because the fear of rape is not usually used to justify increased violence against men as such. (After all, it’s men, not women, who have the advantage in terms of access to economic and political resources; so women’s response, by necessity, is to depend more upon the “good” men as a defense against the bad, rather than to push through policies and practices that punish the “good” men along with the bad.)

Hope this helps.

GT 2008-05-10: Rapists in Uniform #3: Six women have come forward in the past four months about being subjected to unnecessary and humiliating strip searches at the hands of the Stark County, Ohio sheriff’s department. The most recent, Elizabeth was coerced into removing her clothes even though she never said she was suicidal, and left locked in her cell, naked, for eight hours. She’s now afraid to give her last name or show her face in press interviews, because she’s afraid of retaliation against herself or her family for speaking out.

Sheriff Tim Swanson says it was all done By The Book, which is apparently supposed to mean that it was O.K. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Stark County sheriff’s deputies are repeatedly using strip searches as a form of retaliation, to control and punish women they find uppity, unruly, or otherwise troublesome, under color of the law, and then, to crown all, to insult their victims by saying they did it all For Her Own Good.

For example, if some have much more wealth than others, the socioeconomic creationist believes that this is the product of government policies specifically designed to transfer wealth from the many to the few, rather than the natural result of market transactions between people of disparate abilities and preferences.

Well. Isn’t it empirically true that there are specific government policies which, either through design or through unintended consequences, tend to profit the rich, hinder and impoverish the poor, or do both at the same time? If you doubt it, I can name some examples.

Can you think of any actual examples of people who fall back on the claim that poverty is substantially caused by government policies, rather than by voluntary market forces, who do so because they’re simply unable to understand how spontaneous orders work? Every proponent of such a claim that I can think of (Kevin Carson, Roderick Long, Brad Spangler, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Gabriel Kolko…) is relatively clear on the notion of spontaneous order; they get to the conclusion that government policies cause poverty not by explanatory default, but rather because they can point to a bunch of concrete examples of government policies that really do this.

In my experience, most of the real “socioeconomic creationists” with regard to wealth, tend to attribute poverty to tightly coordinated conspiracies (“international bankers” and the like), or else to the personal greed and vices of individual business people, not to structural factors like government policy.

If the average man makes more than the average woman, the socioeconomic creationist concludes that this must be due to the misogynistic oppression of women, rather than the natural outcome of men and women having different preferences, opportunity costs, and/or abilities.

You seem to be presupposing that “misogynistic oppression of women” and “spontaneous order” are two mutually exclusive explanations of the situation. But why make that claim? There’s nothing in the concept of a spontaneous order that requires that all spontaneous orders be benign. It may be that if certain kinds of ignorance, folly, or vice are widely distributed throughout the population, then lots of little individual acts of stupidity or evil will, without the design of the participants, add up to a large-scale, malign spontaneous order that goes beyond the intentions of the participants.

“Preferences, opportunity costs, and/or abilities” aren’t the only factors that can contribute to the individual decisions from which a spontaneous order emerges. And not all “preferences, opportunity costs, and/or abilities” are independent of prevalent prejudices and traditions, either.

In other words, “right but I want to quibble”.

“Right” about what? It’s true that Micha was using the term “naturalistic fallacy” in a sense other than the sense in which Moore used it. (Specifically, he used it to refer to arguments that infer something about the moral status of something from its naturalness.) But I don’t have any basic problem with that kind of loose usage as long as it doesn’t interfere with accurately understanding what Moore meant by the term when he used it. The “quibble,” such as it is, is aimed to clarify how Moore himself used the term. Which is not an issue that Micha raised, or one that’s particularly important to assessing his argument; it’s an issue that you raised in the course of a reply to him.

It’s certainly true that the issue of what Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to mean is tangential to this conversation. But misrepresentations of his view, especially those that are very common and very misleading, are worth correcting anyway, in the interest of accuracy.

I read him right without the benefit of seeing his later explanation

Well, no; what he said is that by “natural” he means those things which arise from a “spontaneous order.” But that explanation is itself ambiguous, depending on whether he means strictly a “voluntary order” (which may very well be designed), or instead an “undesigned order” (which may very well be involuntary), or both. Libertarian writers have often used the term “spontaneous order” to refer to either, or both, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings from one use to the next.

If he means the former, you read him right; but then the claim is unresponsive to what it was supposed to respond to. And, since that interpretation is unresponsive, it made sense for Micha to suggest, out of motives of charity, a more responsive reading.

If he means the latter, you read him wrongly, and the claim is somewhat more responsive to Francois; but then it is underargued and almost surely false.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that your reading of him is “off the wall;” I’m not even claiming that it’s wrong. My point is that whether you read his claim rightly or read it wrongly, the claim doesn’t get Arthur very far either way vis-a-vis his interlocutors.

Constant:

So, is my preference for a female secretary (assuming I have one) sexist,

Probably, but as I said, I don’t know. What’s the reason for your preference? I can imagine sexist, anti-sexist, and sexism-neutral reasons for preferring hiring a woman (as such) rather than a man. Without knowing which one is hypothetically yours, I can’t answer the question.

and if it is, is that immoral?

Yes, if it is, it is (therefore) immoral.

Constant:

Is it sexist for a man to lust after women?

Depends on what you mean, I guess. If you’re asking whether it’s sexist when the particular people you’re sexually attracted to all turn out to be women, then no, I’m not claiming that. If you’re asking whether it’s sexist to lust, more or less indiscriminately, after “women,” due to some kind of attitude towards femininity in general, then that may well be sexist. In any case it’s immoderate and objectifying.

More to the point, while being male and heterosexual is not, as such, sexist, there are a lot of things commonly associated with heterosexual male “lust” for women, as it is actually felt and expressed in the society we live in, that are sexist. For example, preferring to surround yourself with women in subordinate positions to you so that you can ogle them or sexually harass them is fairly sexist, and, as I said, fairly sleazy.

If one’s preference for associating with women rather than with men in a particular context is based on different reasons, then who knows? It may well be neither sexist nor sleazy.

Left-anarchists can not realistically change the hierarchy in male / female relationships without some heavy social engineering requiring heavy coercion.

I don’t think that the empirical evidence points very strongly toward the conclusion that anti-sexism would require a continuous process of “heavy social engineering.” (It would take heavy social engineering to get from where we are to an anti-sexist society, but as I see it, that’s because it took heavy social engineering to get to where we are, not because there is some perennial in-born basis for structuring social relationships in terms of sex-class.)

But suppose you’re right. Suppose there is some in-born, perennial basis that will keep asserting itself in favor of hierarchical relationships structured by sex.

Does it follow that any attempt to combat that through “heavy social engineering” will require “heavy coercion?” Only if all forms of social engineering are coercive. But they’re not. For example, mass literacy is only possible through heavy and continuous “social engineering” aimed at teaching children how to do something quite difficult over a period of years. But does mass literacy require coercion? Not as far as I can see.

Does it follow that any attempt to combat that through “heavy social engineering” is necessarily foolish or wrong? Only if all forms of social engineering are foolish or wrong. But they’re not. Lots of forms of deliberate “social engineering” are extremely beneficial (for example, teaching children how to read), and become harmful only when they are accompanied by coercion. If there are independent reasons for thinking that sexual equality is a valuable goal, then even if it is true that social engineering would be required to achieve it, that provides a reason for practicing the social engineering, not a reason for abandoning sexual equality as a goal. If there is some independent reason for rejecting sexual equality as a valuable goal, or for concluding that the costs of the social engineering processes outweigh the benefit to be gained from it, then certainly that’s a reason either to reject anti-sexism in principle or to reject efforts to implement it on a structural level in contemporary life. But you first have to produce those independent reasons; just pointing to some discovery about what human beings may or may not be naturally inclined to do won’t cut the ice you’re trying to cut.

Constant,

I agree with you that any value other than non-aggression could, when combined with the notion that it is O.K. to use the State to enforce values other than non-aggression, lead to aggressive actions or policies. Anti-racism included.

You also don’t have to convince me that government-imposed antidiscrimination policies are harmful. I think everything unjust is (therefore) harmful, and that they’re harmful in other ways besides the fact that they’re unjust. (Although we might disagree on the exact details as to why, I don’t think we’d disagree in a way that matters for this discussion.)

However, I think that there is good reason to say that a belief in natural orders of superior and inferior social rank, based on race, are more conducive to aggression than a belief in social equality among people of different races. It could quite easily be argued that it takes a bigger inferential step to get from “Racism is a social evil” to “The government should make specific policies to force people not to promote that evil” than it takes to get from “White people are naturally superior to black people and should be in a socially dominant position to them; black people who are not submissive are vicious and dangerous” to “The government should make specific policies to enforce white dominance.” I don’t think that in either case the premise logically necessitates the conclusion (without auxiliary principles), but an independent belief in the propriety of the State as a means of social change has more of a leading role to play in the first case than it does in the second case.

For what it’s worth, I also think that there are other reasons why racism is vicious and not merely foolish. The precise reasons why generally depend on what we’re discussing (prejudiced attitudes or beliefs? exclusionary actions? antagonistic actions? etc. etc. etc.). Part of the issue here is that I think there are things that are naturally classed as examples of racism, and not easily divorced from the fact of the perpetrator’s racism (for example, racist harassment, slurs and insults) which I regard as vicious, and which are very widely regarded as vicious. I don’t know whether Arthur means to deny that acts like these are vicious (if not, why not?), or whether he means to say that they are vicious, but should not be classified as a part of racism. So I’m asking him to clarify what he means to say about cases like those.

I might prefer to have a female secretary. If this is not as legitimate as preferring to marry a woman, why not?

I don’t know what you mean by “legitimate.” Are you asking me whether or not this is within your rights, or are you asking me whether or not it’s morally licit for you to do?

If the former, then certainly it’s within your rights. You have a right to prefer all kinds of things. If the latter, well, reasonable criteria for a good romantic partner for you are presumably different from reasonable criteria for a good secretary for you, and I suspect that the former allows a lot more leeway for unargued idiosyncratic preferences than the latter does. While nobody has a right to force you to go along with somebody else’s judgement about what criteria are the reasonable ones, it may very well be the case that they have good reason to suggest that your own understanding of the matter is mistaken, ignorant, foolish, or even vicious. (After all, you might have reason to change your own mind at some point; and if you can have good reasons for differing with your past opinion, then other people could have had those good reasons, too.)

As for whether such a preference really is mistaken, ignorant, foolish, or even vicious, I suppose it depends on what your reasons for having that preference are. Most of the historical reasons that men had during the 20th century for preferring women (as such) over men (as such) as secretaries have been fairly sleazy. But any serious discussion of a preference like that will require more details than just its existence.

For what it’s worth, while sexist hiring practices are a serious concern for those who are concerned with gender equality, there are a lot more issues involved than just that, many of which go well beyond exclusiveness in terms of who you want to associate with at your job or on your own property.

And anyway, G. E. Moore invented the term “naturalist fallacy” to label philosophers who disagreed with him about morality.

No, he didn’t.

Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to describe a particular kind of move in ethical argument, which Moore believed to be fallacious. (Specifically, an attempt to establish a substantial ethical conclusion by equivocating between a statement of the form “Everything that is X, Y, and Z is good” and a definition of the form “‘Good’ means being X, Y, and Z.”) His issue with the naturalistic fallacy is meta-ethical, not normative; it’s not that he disapproves of the conclusions drawn from it, but rather that he disagrees with the way they are drawn. (He argues that this kind of maneuver tries to resolve substantive ethical disagreements on the cheap, by changing the subject from ethics to semantics, which fails to offer an ethically serious inquiry, i.e. one which might possibly result in reasons for action.) He did not accuse all philosophers who disagreed with his own ethical views of committing the naturalistic fallacy. In particular, he specifically argues that Henry Sidgwick did not commit the naturalistic fallacy in his ethical arguments, although Moore disagrees with, and spends half a chapter arguing against, Sidgwick’s hedonistic view.

Thus, while I don’t know what Arthur meant (and I see he has replied but I’ll take a gamble and submit this without reading his reply), as I understand him what he writes is not only true but trivially true. If something is natural in the sense of natural law, i.e., if it occurs in the absence of a state, then it is trivially true that in order for it to stop occurring, a state is necessary.

If that’s what Arthur means (I think it’s still not especially clear from his response), then he is either walloping a strawman or asserting a strong claim without evidence. If the argument started out about whether gender roles are or are “socially constructed” or “natural,” then the latter presumably refers to those things which aren’t derived from social construction (which may be a coercive process, a non-coercive process, or an admixture of both), rather than to those things which emerge spontaneously in the absence of coercion. If his claim is the trivial claim you attribute to him (that things that emerge spontaneously in the absence of coercion will emerge spontaneously unless coercion is applied), then he’s not successfully responding to Francois’s expressed concern. If, on the other hand, his claim is the substantive claim that things that aren’t socially constructed cannot be limited or eliminated without the use of coercion, then what he’s saying is responsive, but it’s also not as yet supported by argument. (And in fact is pretty obviously wrong, if it’s intended as a universal claim.)

Arthur B.:

Racism is at best stupid not immoral.

So you say. But why do you say this? I can think of lots of examples where racism has led people to do incredibly violent things, which I think that you would clearly agree to be vicious. I can also think of lots of examples where racism has led people to do things that, while not violent, were extremely cruel. Do you mean to claim that that’s not immoral? Or to claim that the cruelty is immoral but not the racism which produced and justified it? Or something else again?

The only reason there are historical problems with racism in the US is because of forced integration through slavery (forced for the slaves that is) and then forced integration through the end of segregation (for the rest).

Your account of the history of racism and the law in the United States has an interesting lacuna. Specifically, the period from roughly 1865 – 1965.

For a hundred years of U.S. history black people and white people were forcibly segregated, partly through the use of contractual exclusions made on the market, but mostly as the result of government segregation laws. The connection between the existence of those laws and the prevalence of white supremacism among white people, especially among politically powerful and well-connected white people, was probably not entirely accidental.

However, I might also note that, as an account of “racism” in general, your explanation is somewhat lacking. There are more races of people in the U.S. who have been subject to racism, in its various forms (especially white supremacism) than just black people. The history of white prejudice and oppression against black people is a very important part of the story about American racism, but people of American Indian, Irish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Filipin@, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican, Central American, Arab, etc. etc. etc. descent have all suffered from racist prejudices, racist exclusion, and at times racist violence, whether at the hands of mobs or at the hands of state, local, or federal government agencies. But it’s very rarely the case that any of these histories involved “forced integration” of any kind prior to the mid-1960s. Therefore, I conclude that American racism and the “historical problems” associated with it probably have at least some explanatory conditions other than what you call “forced integration.”

No I don’t understand why women might want to be treated “equally” with men. Women and men are not “equal”, in fact they are not even commensurate, the whole concept of equality is meaningless here. The closest thing to what you describe would be : treated without regard for the gender… I don’t see why.

Semantically speaking, “equality” is not just used to refer to position within a quantitative range (as in “equal portions”). It’s also often also used to refer to the lack of a particular difference or distinction (as in “treat me like an equal,” or “equal opportunity,” neither of which makes any claim about comparative quantities of treatment or opportunity). So if a woman or a group of women demand equal treatment to men, then what they’re likely talking about, in perfectly good English, is treatment which doesn’t make a distinction based solely on her or their sex.

As for why a woman or a group of women would want that, well, honestly, who cares whether you “see why” or not? Presumably those who are making it have their own reasons, which many of them have explained at length in conversation, in articles, in films, in music, in books, etc. If you have some specific case against those reasons as they have been presented, it would help to explain what you’re taking issue with and why, by engaging with those arguments rather than just playing dumb. If you acknowledge those positions, but have some specific reason to go on insisting on making sex-based distinctions in how you treat other people, whether or not they want you not to make those distinctions, then it would help to explain what are your own reasons for insisting on making those distinctions nevertheless.

David J. Heinrich:

Same sex relations may have a higher burden of proof, even if the teenager or near-teenager claims to be gay.

Um. Why?

Rob:

While Western cultures have made it the norm to prohibit sex between adults and anyone under 16 or 18, from my understanding of history, the majority of cultures throughout time (and even a lot of cultures today) have left the responsibility to decide with the parents of the child ….

It seems to me that somebody’s consent is getting lost in this discussion of “responsibility.” Can you guess whose?

Rob:

Concerning girls – if parents today were actually paying attention and protecting their daughters there would not be a need for government involvement in the issue of age of consent.

It’s interesting that, in a discussion of age-of-consent clauses in existing rape statutes — which usually do not say anything about gender — you’d spend your entire reply talking about “parents … protecting their daughters” and about the supposed sexual behavior of adolescent girls. I hear that adolescent boys sometimes have sex, too.