Category: Pondering Infinity

A Taste of my mind. Anything from Sociopolitics to Religion to Philosophy in general goes.

Responding to Stefan Molyneux: "Theft of time", NAP, and common sense

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Is “theft of time” an appropriate defense of private property? Is Capitalism an intuitive and natural system for societies?

So, apparently one of my articles has drawn the attention of Stefan Molyneux of the Freedomain radio, I’m guessing after it was crossposted and discussed in this forum thread. You might remember Stefan from the time I tried to call his online station after he asked for input from Anarcho-Communists and I wasn’t particularly impressed back then. This time Stefan made a video responding to my criticism of the Non-Aggression principle which I felt compelled to respond to.

 

After a few introductory words which addressed minor things (Note:  saying that something is “not half bad” is a figure of speech. Not to be taken literally), Stefan presented his first argument basically arguing that “You cannot say that the initiation of force is virtuous. Thus Non-Aggression is virtuous”.

My contention is not whether the initiation of force is virtuous. The contention is on what exactly constitutes intiation of force, or more explicitly – violence or threat of violence. Yes, of course aggression is not virtuous, but this does not mean that the Non-Aggression Principle becomes suddenly useful as a moral guideline. Yes, aggression is bad and not aggressing is good. Murder is also bad. Not murdering is also good. But we do not create a basis for our entire ethical system out of “Thou shalt not murder”. Not only does one need to first define “murder”, but it is just far too limited a guideline to base one’s entire sociopolitical system on.

The reductio ad absurdum that Stefan attempts, might prove that you cannot have Aggression as a moral guideline, but it does not logically follow from that, that Non-Aggression is a useful moral guideline instead.

Further to that, Stefan makes a huge logical leap: From arguing that Aggression cannot be a virtue, to concluding that “Property Rights are the only thing that can work”. This is not at all evident from the arguments put forth and is blatantly begging the question.

Stefan then goes on a tangent, explaining how Self Ownership leads to property rights. I understand that this is what right-libertarians tend to accept, but it is largely irrelevant to the subject at hand, especially given that I reject “Self Onwership” as an internally contradictory concept. Nevertheless, the reason this is brought up, is to show that one is responsible for one’s actions, and therefore that “theft is theft, is because you’re stealing someone’s time”.

This is the main thrust of the argument here I believe, but “Self-Ownership” was not required to make this point, so I’m unsure why it was brought up. Nevertheless, I’ll take the time to address this argument from “theft of time”.

The idea presented is as such: When someone puts forth labour to create something, and someone comes around and takes that thing away, then that person can be assumed to have stolen all the time required for creator to make it, which is similar to slavery.

This argument looks solid at first glance, but unfortunately, when one challenges the premises behind it, it shows that it is on very shaky ground based on assumptions of specific property rights.

The most basic counter-argument I would make against this concept of “theft of time” is: Who says that whatever you put labour into creating, belongs to you automatically? Ownership is a split gradient ((By which I mean that the various types of ownership differ by a degree, but there is a hard split in the middle, between possessive ownership and “sticky” ownership” systems because those two are incompatible)) which can take many forms based around social agreement on what constitutes a valid claim or disposal. It is not a universal law. What happens here, is that the type of ownership that Stefan prefers, is assumed into the argument. But as soon as one challenges the premise of what you can own and how you come about owning it, things become much less solid.

Do you own something you created out of the commons? Stefan would say yes, I would say yes as well, with stipulations. My stipulations of course being that you only own whatever you created as long as you keep using it. As long as you do not, it goes back into the commons for anyone else to use. Stefan would have no such stipulation however. Whatever you create, no matter if it came from the commons or not, belong to you forever.

So if Stefan makes something out of the commons and doesn’t use it anymore, and I come and use it in the meantime, for Stefan that amounts to slavery for I have “stolen his time”. Were that to be enforced however, Stefan would have in effect enclosed the commons. An immediate split forms on what is ethical in this case. I do not recognise Stefan’s right to enclose the commons and he does not recognise my right to steal his time. Who is rights is an argument for another day, but suffice to say that “theft of time” only works if you look at it from a propertarian perspective, which is not something everyone will or should do.

Furthermore, Stefan’s argument ends up with some telling conclusions when in mind of his larger worldview as well. The larger worldview of course being Capitalism which is naturally permeated by wage slavery. In this world, taking someone’s labour is just fine as long as it’s voluntary. A wage slave toils all week but does not get to own the product of his labour at all. Rather, they end up with a price for the creation that is lower than the market value of such a creation. In Stefan’s worldview this is a clear “theft of time”, but it’s OK because as it’s voluntary. That is, as long as the wage slave agreed to be one. This naturally leads us to the conclusion that Slavery is OK as long as it’s voluntary.

I’m sure the argument will be put forth that working for a wage is nothing like being a slave so this is not an apt comparison, to which I will counter that in a similar vein, “theft of time” is nothing like slavery either. You can’t have it both ways and I won’t even bother to argue on whether voluntary slavery is AOK either.

Finally, I’ll just make the most obvious counter to this argument. Stefan says verbatim:  “The reason that theft is theft, is because you’re stealing someone’s time”. But this is just a tautology and doesn’t really tells us anything. Theft is theft because you’re stealing? Yes, of course. Perhaps he meant to say that “Theft is wrong because you’re stealing someone’s time” which only makes marginally more sense as it ends up telling us that “theft is wrong because it’s theft”. Circular reasoning.

The argument only “works” at first glance, because Stefan is basing himself on intuitive assumptions and biases from the audience, which is expected to already believe that theft is bad within a specific framework of ownership rights. As soon as those premises are missing, as soon as the audience does not share Stefan’s conclusions, this conclusion becomes baseless. Theft of time is wrong *why* exactly? This needs to be argued, not simply asserted. And it is in the process of arguing “Why is Theft of Time bad?”, where all the nuances and exceptions and outright mistakes will be pointed out and addressed.

After this brief overview of the “theft of time” argument, Stefan concludes that it’s not arbitrary to not-aggress, or respect private property. This, again, does not follow. Those two are still subjective.  The non-aggression principle remains a moral guideline, all of which are subjective (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but as I explained before it is comparatively useless on its own. The stateless propertarian framework is normative as well as it’s put forth as a superior socioeconomic organization (And there’s nothing wrong with that either). It is not a science like physics as Stefan likes to imagine. Defining “aggression” within the stateless propertarian framework, which not everyone accepts, is what is arbitrary and that is wrong.

Next Stefan addresses the difficulty of figuring out what constitutes initiation of force within a propertarian framework, admitting that shooting trespassers is not acceptable and so on. However he misses my point. He ends up discussing how “degree” (degree of what? violence?) is not as important as morality. I.e. it’s not as important to figure out how to deal with something bad, as it is in defining that something is bad in the first place. And I agree with that. Societies of the future will find their own ways to deal with aggressors. But the reason I pointed out the impossibility of intuitively defending against violation of private property rights is to point out that given differing expectations of ownership, the non-aggression principle coupled with private property ends up excusing actual violence against non-violent people. The degree is not important either. The fact is that if I start working on land you are not using, you will have to aggress against me (likely with literal violence) in order to stop me.

To give you a contrast within a possessive ownership framework, If you started using land I am already using for myself, you can have either of two purposes: Co-operate or Violate. If you co-operate with me, then we can share the fruits of our labour, thus benefiting us both. If you violate my work, then you are being visibly destructive and threatening to my livelihood. You are aggressing against me and thus literal violence is then justified to stop such destruction.

The point thus, is that the “Non-Aggression principle” does not help us understand or resolve the former case in the slightest. The point is that both parties can have differing understanding of what constitutes “aggression”. The problem is in declaring that it’s the owner of the private property that decides what is aggression.

Finally Stefan makes the argument that all these issues on attempting to see how the NAP can be useful in the real world, are inconsequential because people work these things out intuitively and organically. And here’s the funny part, I absolutely agree. The difference is that Stefan assumes that people would work out things in such a way as to allow private property to flourish, and this is not just untrue, it’s ahistoric. The example of “tailgate parties” that he brings up is a perfect example of this. I doubt in any of those parties you see people taking up more space than they can personally use. If anything, the temporary ownership setup in those parties is possessive, i.e. claims based on occupancy and use.

It is precisely because societies naturally organize themselves according to possessive and communal ownership, that capitalism requires a state to support it. Because private property is not common sense and it is not an acceptable arrangement by the dispossessed. A society “working these things out naturally” and ending up with some people owning vast tracts of land and factories, while others own just the clothes on their back and live day to day on subsistence is unrealistic in the extreme. The people on the lower scale would absolutely take the first opportunity to use the unused land, reclaim and re-institute the commons and expropriate their productive means. Or do you think that someone working on subsistence on a mega-farm is going to “work it out” with the landowner who owns it? No, the farmers would expropriate the land the first chance they got, while the landowner would declare aggression and bring in their private state defence company to restore order.

To think that such arrangements will be upheld naturally is wishful thinking. There has never been a single society or community where anything remotely like this wasn’t upheld by force. Not one.

So yes. Aggression is likely to be absent from a free society, but not because people morally adhere to a stale moral guidelines such as the NAP, but rather because people absent oppression tend to work out things via possessive rights, making “aggression” primarily about violence, which is dealt with intuitively.

And if people can work things out intuitively even in a propertarian framework, it seems to me the NAP remains unnecessary. It seems to me, that the only purpose of the NAP is to give an ideological excuse to private defence companies to…”reform” individuals who somehow just can’t seem to work out Capitalism naturally with the capitalists and landowners . Those silly people.

History according to the MRAs

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Women have always been privileged in human history, dontchaknow?

Once again, I have to point out the absurd perspective of MRAs, just because of how unbelievable it is

Read the posts, women are not the victims of sexism and never were. It’s all a propaganda lie. Women are and always have been the most pampered members of this and nearly every society on earth.

oh, that’s not all

Name any society in any period of history where the average man had a better life than the average woman. Quit looking at just the top tier.

All societies serve women above men. Blessed be the womb of reproduction. Might makes right, numbers make might, and women make numbers.

And the funny thing is, that this is not an uncommon sentiment among MRAs. I’ve seen the same thing repeated multiple times.

Obviously these people are pointing out to the ideas of chivalry and how the women were treated as the “protected gender” in history, without really looking one inch deeper than that. They don’t care to understand that women were protected because they were considered far weaker than men, which was also the reason why they were not allowed independence. In most of history, women were literally either slaves (to their family or husband) or outcasts if they didn’t choose this path of life.

And because  women were treated as objects, as slaves, as inferior, as commodities and so on, they were protected as an object, a slave or a commodity. Protected because they weren’t considered to have enough agency or strength to protect themselves. And that protection only came as long as they accepted this marginalization, for a woman that wasn’t in her place, became the target of violence; from her father, her brothers, her husband or just strangers. And if violence wasn’t enough, she was ostracised at best, or raped/killed at worst.

Remember, slaves were protected as well, because they were a valuable commodity. But this protection only existed inasmuch as it didn’t harm the slaveholder. Were the slaves to think and act for themselves, they would be put in their place quickly and decisively by their owner or society at large. Their protection existed only as long as they were not allowed to protect themselves.

This idea that oppressed people can somehow have a “better life” than their oppressors, is a very common sentiment within reactionary ideologies, especially those who have a purely materialistic or crassly individualistic basis. So for some MRAs, women had “better life” because they were protected from external harm and didn’t have to work for their wealth. Discounting the in-family violence, the fact that they didn’t own the wealth (i.e. if they lost their husband, they were kicked to the curb) and the almost complete absence of freedom. This is similar to the argument that slaves were better than their non-slave brethren (that some slave owners actually used), because they were protected and fed, discounting again the complete loss of freedom. This is in turn very similar to capitalist rhetoric, that workers of today are better off than free farmers and artisans of the past, just because they have more luxuries available, completely discounting the freedom they miss comparatively.

There’s a reason why so many “men’s rights” are also right-libertarians and have quite a bit of intersection with “white rights” people.

In the end, almost everyone in the world can intuitively understand now at what price such protection and “better life” was provided for women and slaves. Everyone but MRAs, for whom personal freedom was apparently not important at all, compared to ephemeral wealth and shallow protection.

Name any society in any period of history where the average man had a better life than the average woman. Quit looking at just the top tier.

All societies serve women above men. Blessed be the womb of reproduction. Might makes right, numbers make might, and women make numbers.

APOC VS Food Not Bombs

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Is Food not Bombs unwittingly harming the POC communities it helps? Some seem to take it a step further than that.

A meal being served by Food Not Bombs

This article just came to my attention, and it’s just…wow ((Note: I realize that this is just one APOC who does not necessarily repressent the feelings of the whole movement. I just needed a title)).

I am not very familiar with the “race” tension in the US (I use “scare quotes” because I can’t really consider skin colour a race) but some of the things the author says don’t make sense to me. White privilege does not equal white supremacy. Someone may be ignorant on how their privilege display and use is harming poc, but that’s a far cry from claiming that they are part of a movement aiming to dominate people of colour. This is without pointing out that FNB does not operate just in black neighborhoods as far as I understand.

The next thing that perplexes me is that the author asks FNB people to give away the food to the communities that need it and go away. But this presumes that there are people in those communities who are up for running a kitchen, or distributing it, or whatever. But if those existed, wouldn’t they have set up their own FNB (or something similar) in the first place, therefore making the existence of a second FNB org moot? And if nobody is there to actually do this, then what? Not do it at all? Not try and help people in your communities with your own time and effort?

The author seems to be unwittingly supporting a kind of class division, in the way that they say: “I flip a finger to all you white college kids and middle-class punks hiding in drop-out culture, get your fucking privilege out of my face.” But aren’t people of all classes supposed to co-operate? Shouldn’t it be expected by better-off anarchists to use their privilege for good rather than evil? Of course it is privilege that these people have the time, money and energy, to setup FNB chapters, but I don’t see how it’s a privilege that reinforces oppression. Rather, I would think that it’s the kind of privilege use, that battles itself, by letting people know that they can  do the same thing, regardless of their skin colour or wealth.

I could be simply ignorant here. There could be specific circumstances in POC neighborhoods that primarily white FNB chapters inflame somehow, but the author does not deem it necessary to go into detail. The best I understand is that FNB dumpster diving might be affecting those who dumpster dive themselves outside of FNB. But that would be a class privilege rather than white privilege and something that I would expect the people actually affected to oppose. Is there any such opposition from people that cannot dumpster dive anymore when FNB comes around?

Unfortunately, the author does something I’ve seen many other times within radical circles, which is, use privilege as an excuse and a cudgel in order to promote something which has nothing to do with it. In this case, the author seems to just want white people out of black neighborhoods, regardless. The argument seems to be basically: FNB is white supremacist because privilege.

But I would expect a bit more explanation than that. I can imagine a few scenarios, such as FNB disturbing the dynamics of poc dumpster divers, or trying to take some kind of white charity role, or being a gentrification front. But without at least some clarification, it’s impossible to know what exactly, and how to avoid doing it in the future, while continuing to be of help to the rest of your community. But simply wishing that white people stop trying to provide mutual aid because they’re white, with no further explanation or nuance whatsoever, seems simply wrong.

Anyway, as I said, this is coming from my own, non US-centric perspective. If any POC are willing to perhaps educate a clueless European like me, or at least provide me with some places I can educate myself, I’d appreciate it.

EDIT: I just noticed that this is an old post, there’s been follow-ups here and here

In which I am told that women in the Dark Ages were not oppressed.

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Population advantage clearly proves who holds the power. Which is why the poor have it best of all in life.

Ah MRAs, the group that must be in some of the most startling degrees of denial ever experienced in the human race. I did the mistake of getting into a discussion with such a fine young man, who gladly informed me that women can’t be oppressed because they compose 52% of the population and as such, the numerical superiority proves that it’s impossible for them to have truly been oppressed. When I inquired deeper into the subject of whether women of 500 years ago were not oppressed either (since, after all, they still had similar numbers), I was informed…

Depends on how we want to define “oppression”. Were there gender roles? Oh hell yes. Did both genders have roles? Yes. But if we want to define “oppression” as a relative or comparative term, then no. The average woman had a better life than the average man since… well since recorded history at least.

Right. I have been enlightened.

You hear that females? Ignore such things as not having the right to talk or even participate in discussions or the fact that female abuse (AKA “moderate correction”) was accepted and even enshrined by law. Since you held the majority of the population, clearly that was what women intended to have to improve their life. Not only had we had true equality as far back as the Roman Empire, but things were clearly skewed in your favour.

And now, all this 3rd wave feminist crap has made things even more skewed and the poor ole men need all the help they can get.

Authority from your enemies does not justify Authority coming from you.

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You cannot oppress yourself to freedom. You cannot war yourself to peace.

Predictably, my last piece got the attention of the Angry Marxists who reacted with a focused polemic on myself, trying desperately to paint me as the enemy because I oppose their tactics. Given that they consider their own tactics as the  only means to freedom for the oppressed, naturally they would call me a “liberal counterrevolutionary”.

There’s so much disingenuousness with this piece that it becomes humorous. From calling me the “chief moderator” of /r/anarchism ((Blatantly untrue. I exercise as much, if not less, power than the other mods and I limit it to what mandates I have receive)), to claiming that their group knew “what needed to be done to fix /r/anarchism for the marginalized groups” ((completely ignoring all the other members of marginalized groups that outright and strongly contradicted them in larger numbers)), to claiming that now that they are gone, /r/anarchism has discussions on if marginalized groups are human ((Blatant lie. We have no such arguments in /r/anarchism, nor had we ever. While nobody can prevent an obscure discussion between two people in some deep thread that nobody noticed, this is far from saying that “entrenching the rights of misogynist men, capitalists, homophobes, cissupremacists, and racists there, turning it into a place where the voices of the oppressed are always being overpowered by the same tired arguments about whether or not we are human“. This is just a complete and outright lie, which is unfortunately quite common from this group)), to linking to my own post about questionable tactics and claiming that I “defend the rights of fascists” ((which even a cursory reading would show that is about tactics and means, and not “rights”.))

But I’m not doing to go into so much trouble in deconstructing their usual dishonest interpretations as I do have a salient point to make, which they brought up by saying the following.

“Banning,” so his argument goes, its malignant subtext brought clearly to the foreground, “is authoritarian. Let us ignore the authoritarian violence that oppressed people face every day and the million ways in which they are pushed further out into the cold by the strong arm of privilege.

This is a prime example of everything that is and was wrong with these people and why I was calling them authoritarian when they proclaimed themselves as “anarchists”. They consider that because authoritarian violence is being used against oppressed people every day, this somehow justifies authoritarian violence (or other means) from our side as well but not only does this not follow, but it goes against everything anarchism is about! Just because your opponent using some specific means, does not justify those means! This catastrophic flaw in their reasoning is exemplified with the very next phrase.

Authority is only unacceptable when it is turned against the oppressor

They attribute this as a quote, one assumes to me, which only further proves my point about their egregious dishonesty, given that I’ve never uttered any such thing. It’s obvious that they have completely misunderstood what I’m saying and put their own words into my mouth to prove their point, but in the process they only manage to betray their own ideological mistakes.

Authoritarianism is unacceptable always. Not only when it’s turned against the oppressors, or the oppressed. The fact that I would have to state this clearly to someone who self-identified as an anarchist for 10 years just shows that someone was very confused for a long time.

You will not dismantle authoritarianism with more authoritarianism, any more than you would oppress towards freedom!

I hate to repeat myself but “This is Anarchism 101 people!“. Your tactics colour your end results. If your tactics are authoritarian, then naturally the end result will not be anarchism. It might be state “socialism” that would oppress the whole working class on behalf of a new bureaucratic ruling class, or something else to that extent. If your tactics are all about violence and killing those you deem to be your enemies, then your end result will be a violent society (will it be socialistic? Who knows. Perhaps in name but probably it would end up as simple warlordism).

It is no wonder than a self proclaimed “anarchist” who loved to advocate authoritarianism and unchecked violence as the solution to oppression, would end up having an eventual break with anarchism. No shit. They never understood anarchism to begin with ((Btw, I love how they say that they don’t have a problem with all Anarchists and they have some Anarchist friends. Reminds me of the “I have a black friend” argument in all its cringeworthiness.))! How some can go for 10 years calling themselves anarchist and never understanding (never mind advocating) actual anarchism is beyond me.

It is precisely because these people have a complete misunderstanding of what fighting against oppression requires that points out the bankruptcy of their ideology. When you have declared that the only possible solution is to kill your opposition, anyone who would check yours tactics is an opponent and needs to be killed (which is incidentally why the Angry Marxists are chock full of violent rhetoric). When you have declared that the only possible solution is to oppress the “reactionaries”, anyone who disagrees with this tactic is a reactionary that needs to be oppressed. It’s a self-perpetuating circle, with those who self-proclaim themselves the most radical at the top, controling the state violence and labeling people as counter-revolutionaty deserving a bad end. In sort, soon enough you’ll be repeating the Soviet Union purges of the early 20th century.

And this is why Anarchism gets so much hatred from the Angry Marxists and other Authoritarians like them. Because even though we agree on the end result and we are struggling to bring about the liberation of all oppressed classes (by the classes themselves), we do not support the same tactics. And not supporting the same tactics for an Angry Marxist is the pinnacle of betrayal. For the Angry Marxist’s tactics have been declared the only liberatory ones, therefore not following those tactics is not liberatory, therefore you are supporting the continued oppression, therefore you are a reactionary, therefore you need to be “shot in the neck and thrown in a ditch”.

It is for this reason that they misunderstand the anarchist call for appropriate tactics as a “constant call to restrain ourselves, to hold back, to wait, to watch our tone, to focus on the ballot, to put aside any thought of revolution.” It is easy to use rhetoric like  this but it is untrue. Nobody wants to police your tone or make you hold back, but people are pointing out that your tactics are flawed. They will not bring about the end of oppression, they will reinforce it. They will not bring about the end of violence, they will perpetuate it. If I say to an anarchist “Don’t kill that politician, it will not bring about a revolution”, it is not the same as telling them to “put aside any thought of revolution”, anyone with a modicum of integrity can see the difference in these two sentences. But for some reason, dogmatic authoritarians seem incapable of making the distinction.

Anarchists do not want to police your tone, or focus on the ballot, or make you wait until after the revolution or any such nonsense (in fact, it is Marxist who have a history of making these requests), but they do ask that you consider using tactics that are compatible with Anarchism to achieve your goals. Authoritarians like the Angry Marxists think that they need to oppress in order not to be oppressed, and naturally they find the anarchists against them. They then use this as proof to claim that they prevented from throwing off their own oppression, when in reality it is just opposition to them oppressing others.

You're not an underdog fighting "political correctness". You're just a bigot.

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Movebob succintly explains why the idea of being “Politically correct” is a tool used by those who want to be bigots.

MovieBob makes a great case against all those who spew oppressive shit and then hide behind free speech by labeling all those calling them out on their bigotry as “politically correct”.

If you’ve ever spent any time arguing identity politics, then you must by now hate the term “politically correct” as much as I do, so this video was a breath of fresh air.

People seem to think that the concept of free speech is a shield that allows them to spew bigotry and hate without repercussions. Any criticism of said hate speech is treated as an assault on free speech itself which is patently absurd since one is using free speech in their criticism. No, calling out bigotry and asking people to be more considerate (i.e. stop being jerks to marginalized classes) is not “censorship” or “fascism”. I simply exercise my own rights to free speech to point out bigots, and call out for others to enforce peer pressure on them to change their bigoted ways.

Free speech does not mean “No consequences for your speech” anymore than Free Religion means that all religions need to be “respected”. If what you say (or believe) is hateful and hurtful, then you will rightly be called out on it and should expect people to take direct action against you. What that action is, depends on how much harm your free speech causes but those people have as much right to take action to hurt you, as you took action to hurt them.

For fuck's sake, No! Being falsely accused of rape is not not NOT as bad as being actually raped!

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And no, false rape accusations are not an epidemic either.

[Trigger warning for rape on all links]

What the fuck is wrong with these people? I keep seeing the same argument again and again and again and again , the idea that being accused of rape is not simply as bad as being raped but often worse. I honestly can’t believe how people can be so fucking dense so as to think this is true.

Note that I am not saying that being falsely accused of rape is not bad and can utterly damage your life, but it just does not even compare to the experience of being raped. Yes, both are subjective damages but the overwhelming anecdotes we have of rape survivors show psychological damage of such extent that it can never be repaired or avoided. Being falsely accused of rape on the other hand is only as bad as being falsely accused of many other very socially unacceptable crimes such as drug dealing and murder. The effect reach only as to the extent of people who know about your crimes and consider them bad enough.

A person falsely accused of rape (and convicted of course) may, at the worst case scenario lose friend and family and have their career ruined, but given time they can find new friends who will believe them and repair their social circle, even while hindered by the state. Many times they even clear their names eventually (otherwise we wouldn’t have such a nice influx of False Rape Accusation news stories for the Men’s Right crowd to cheer around). But apparently for some, even the short term damage of a false rape accusation that a male was eventually cleared from, compares to being actually raped.

Here’s the difference though, a rape victim most likely will never escape the damage of the event. Once the deed has been done, the scar will stay forever, no matter if the perpetrator is punished. You cannot undo the rape. You cannot restore the lost trust. You cannot wipe the memory triggers. Any story from rape victims that I’ve heard is magnitudes worse than most false rape accusation stories. And while a the occasional rape victim might take it better than others and survive with less emotional scars, on average the damage is far more severe.

It truly shames me as a male that I have to even point this out to others of my gender.

Many use the excuse that because the aftereffects are subjective, no comparison can be done. Well I disagree vehemently. Due to empathy we can easily grasp the relevant magnitude of each event, much like we can easily see the difference in suffering between having your face slapped, having your tooth pulled out and having acid thrown in your face. These are not all equally bad just because the suffering they cause is subjective. But somehow this comparison fails when it comes to rape doesn’t it?

Much of it I believe comes from lack of empathy. For males, especially those active in the “Men’s Rights” movement which repeats stories of false rape accusations and child custody gone wrong stories, find it far easier to empathize with the male who has been falsely accused. As a male, this is an actual fear they face, even if they wildly blow it out of proportion. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the fear of being falsely accused in the closest thing some males will come to understanding what kind of fear our rape culture creates for females. It’s easy to intuitively empathize with the kind of emotional pain that losing your friends and family can have.  It is not as easy to empathize with rape because most men do not fear it at all. There is no common experience, no horror stories told among friends and family, no victim blaming seen on mainstream media, to even give them an idea that comes even close to how damaging rape can be and on top of that, they have a wealth of rape jokes told by other males which will further trivialize any such empathy they may develop. Naturally then they feel that False Rape Accusations are far worse than actual rape. They just empathize more strongly with the former.

Doesn’t make it correct though.

The even more frustrating things is that the fear of false rape accusations is being used to perpetuate the rape culture. The idea is promoted that a false rape accusation is bad enough even if it falls through in a court of law, due to the psychological “lynching” by friends and family. The implicit idea then is that people should treat rape accusers with distrust because otherwise you unjustly harm the accused who might be innocent after all. This of course reinforces the culture of victim blaming where the search for justice for rape victims is itself so emotionally taxing and with such a high chance of failure, that most of them do not even bother to even try.

Then the Blackstone formulation will be conveniently trotted out to show that it’s better for 15 rapists to go free than for 1 innocent  to be convicted which is so frustrating because it looks at the issue in isolation. A more accurate formulation would be to ask: Is it better for 1 in 200 males to be falsely convicted of rape ((About 8% of rape accusations are dismissed. This does not mean that 1 in 15 males is falsely accused, but from all the males that are accused, 8% are cleared. Iirc, the number in the full male population comes down to around 0.5%)) or for 1 in 6 females to be raped? Of course this is also flawed since those two statistics don’t have to be in competition ((It’s a sad fact of the flawed justice system we use that they are but challenging the adversarial justice system itself is even more unthinkable for most)). Unfortunately those who bring up the false rape accusations and paint them as an epidemic of some sort, will simply push for more stricter investigations completely ignoring what effects this has on women trying to report rape and find justice.

Fact of the matter is that compared to the frequency of actual rape, the number of false rape accusations is a drop in a bucket. To put weight into tackling those few false rape accusations without first tackling the actual epidemic of rape is a travesty, which becomes even worse when one considers that the way some males want to tackle the false rape accusations would actually reinforce the rape culture.

That does not mean I am opposed to reducing the false rape accusations while we’re at it but for crying out loud, get your priorities straight first and only then, look for ways to address it that don’t make the raped women even more marginalized. Unfortunately I think that the current court system and laws are inherently flawed and it’s a sad fact that the heavy handed statist response to the rape epidemic can’t address it without causing some harm elsewhere. One would hope this would make people rethink their premises, but unfortunately this doesn’t happen.

Finally, let me suggest an idea to make males who dismiss the idea of the rape culture while simulataneously railing against false rape accusations. It might give them an idea of how it feels to be a woman in a rape culture. Ask them, if 0.5% of males being falsely accused is a horribly large amount, how they would feel if the percentage was 18%. Would this scare them of having relationships? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted without any court proceedings. Would this terrify them? Ask them how they would feel if they could be instantly falsely convicted of rape without court proceedings by their wife, their friends, or their aunts, while walking their dog, while sleeping over at a friend’s party, while drinking at a bar. Would this isolate them in horror? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted of rape by many females who acted in coordination and backed up each other’s story. Ask them how they would feel if the state, their family, their friends all told them that the only way to avoid being falsely convicted of rape without a trial was to constantly use a voice recorder or a camera to record everything that happens around them. Would they think this is a sensible solution? Ask them to imagine that all of these were true at the same time and imagine how it would feel to live their whole life in such an environment.

And then remind them that this is how all women feel currently, only with worse psychological damage to boot.

PS: Bonus link (big big big rape trigger warning). Show them this gut-wrenching story and then remind them that this counts as part of the false rape accusations statistic.

Feminists don't think all men are rapists. Rapists do.

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A brilliant quote succintly explaining why rape jokes are harmful.

Via chickwithmonkey I have discovered this excellent comment from Time Machine explaining just how rape jokes are harmful. Quoted here in it’s entirety, for truth, justice and the ‘murican way FUCK YEAH and because the original thread is 1000+ comments deep and takes ages to load.

[Note: Many people on Reddit have expressed the sentiment that while they agree with the substance, they have a problem with the condescending tone. This is because the comment I’m reposting was on a blog post and was made in response to a guy who was actually arguing that it’s okay for him to make rape jokes with his friends. While it starts by addressing all men, it’s coloured by the reaction to that particular guy.]

To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.

I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?

So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-

6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.

This is a perfect example of how social norms are insidiously perpetuating acts you might not expect. Just from a seemingly harmless activity like laughing as a rape joke, a sexist joke, a racist joke and so on.

PS: Protip (for chickwithmonkey). You can find a permalink to a Disqus comment under the date of the comment (Where it says something like “1 day ago”.) Same with Intense Debate that I’m using here.

This is what rape culture and male privilege looks like

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Should rape victims deserve to be accused of lying? Should males be praised for not dumping their girlfriends after they were raped? You tell me.

A woman made an IAmA/AMA ((For those not in the know yet, IAmA/AMA stands for “I Am A [insert trait, description, experience here], Ask Me Anything)) about her experience with being raped, keeping the child and her current boyfriend staying with her and marrying her eventually. The story of how it happened was quite interesting to read since for a change it does not come from a “Western Nation” but rather from a “Developing Country” which has still quite backward social norms. And one of those that immediately jumped out at me was the crass rape culture that exists.

The 5th day, I finally called the police. I live in an asian country. You have to understand that the culture is different here and that when a woman accuses a man, the police always assume that the woman was lying. Except in my case, I wasn’t. They came, I told them what happened and the police was less than helpful.

This whole part of the story is in fact quite interesting in a horrifying sort of way in giving us a glimpse into the post-rape mindframe of a rape victim. How she was feeling so guilty and unsure that it took her 5 days just to report it and by then, much of the evidence is gone and the rapist has enough time to secure an alibi. And then, the police will immediately assume you’re lying. This isn’t just “too much” for the victim of a type of assault that completely destroys you emotionally, It is overwhelming. Is it any wonder why so many rapes go unreported? If it takes a week, or even a month to get emotionally stable enough to even speak about the event, who wants the first reaction to it to be an accusation of lying and victim blaming?

As a privileged person (male and have not been raped), I can’t even begin to feel what it must be like but even the thought of having to deal with such a traumatizing event and then have the whole world distrust me because of it, downright horrifies me.

This is what a rape culture looks like and the immediate distrust of rape survivors coupled with victim blaming is why rape is still so widespread. And this particular point, the fostering of distrust of the experiences of victims of rape is why I especially despise those who align themselves with the “Men’s Rights” movement which continuously agitates on the platform that false rape accusations are frequent and that being  falsely accused is just as bad as being the victim of rape (Yes, this was an actual position someone stood by).

The Men’s Rights crowd will of course claim that they only want the “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine be used, but in practice this boils down to treating anything the victim claims as lies until conclusive evidence is presented in court. When someone points out that treating rape survivors as liars at worst or dishonest at best is not exactly the best way to foster an attitude where rape victims can come forward, they strawman your argument as you are pushing for a “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine. A ridiculous strawman setup just to shut down any discussion by enraging their opponent and then derailing due to that.

That’s the first point, the second point I wanted to talk about can be seen by looking at the comments of the reddit post. Go look at them and tell me if you can see it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. Did you see anything troubling?

Well, let me put it out clearly: Of the 15 best comments in the post ((“best comments” being the default sorting algorithm that reddit uses)), 10 are praising the male. Of the best 3 comments, all 3 are about praising the husband. To put this into context:

In a post about the personal story of a rape victim who ended up getting pregnant because of it and her husband decided to stay with her, 2/3rds of the responses are all about praising the male.

Does it seem just a bit odd to you that in a story about the rape of a woman who opens her heart and allows for some Q&A, a male who is not even there would be getting praises in large amounts, just for being a decent human being?

This is what male privilege looks like. The fact that so little is required of you due to your gender, that even basic human decency is grounds enough for gushing adulation. It’s the sheer mentality of “I could act like a dick if I wanted to, but if I don’t, then goddamnit you’d better recognise it and give me the appropriate praise“. And this permeates everything. Woman doing the housework all week? No big deal. Man cleaning the toilet over the weekend without being asked to explicitly? OMGWTFBBQ Best. Husband. Ev4r!

In this case it just really really irked me the wrong way. Here we have a woman who had one of the most traumatic experiences a human can go through and ended up in a life changing situation (being pregnant). She nevertheless had the courage to report it, even though she knew she would be treated with distrust by those who were tasked with “protecting her”. She went through hell and came out alive and the boyfriend deserves all the praise for not dumping her on top of it?! I’m sorry, I just can’t wrap my head around this mentality. The sheer fucking absurdity of it…

It could be in part due to how much the woman herself is promoting her husband as deserving the lion’s share of the praise for sticking with her during these bad time, but for fuck’s sake people, this is the time to point out that most of the credit belongs to her. For being courageous enough to report it. For managing to overcome crippling psychological damage enough. For not taking her own life! She is the strong , wonderful person in the story here and she doesn’t seem to know it, given on how she attributes her whole recovery on her husband. You shouldn’t be reinforcing this. You should be pointing out that she is putting herself down far too much.

Argh!

Related articles

Incentives and how the environment affect human behaviour

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Can we radically change the attitude of a whole community by simply giving an incentive which rewards it?

A "Kudos" candy box.
Image via Wikipedia

I’ve recently gotten back into Heroes of Newerth (AKA HoN) and as it always happens when my interest is focused on something particular, I’m getting a lot of ideas for improvements. And one of the things that seriously needs improvement in HoN is the community behaviour. You see, at the moment HoN has rightly conquered the top of the food chain of games with the most shitty community, even bypassing the champions like Halo and Call of Duty with just how much abuse you get to hear in every game from your own team. To give you an idea of how bad it looks, there’s practically no thread in reddit’s /r/gaming (a community of 300k people) about HoN, which doesn’t have at least 1/3 of the people mentioning how bad the community is and how one should keep away from it for this reason. In the official fora, you get “the community is bad” posts almost daily. I was posting about this stuff 2 years ago and things are just as bad now as they were then.

The reason why the community is so bad is practically because of the rules of the game and the kind of mentality it breeds. As one of the community managers explained:

Fact of the matter is, every game in HoN is fought tooth and nail, and most of the time it is simply economically efficient to just try and carry a bad team yourself than it is to try and coach them while playing. HoN is a very fast paced game and ‘playing two heroes at once’ is no easy feat, especially when most of the time when you coach people in-game they wont improve anyways, and will sometimes even get mad at you for trying to help them.

Which is fairly accurate even though I could mention a lot of other stuff that adds to the problem (such as stat tracking). This is fact is a prime example of how the environment of a situation, breeds a certain kind of behaviour from the people in it. In this case, unfortunately it’s complete intolerance of even the slightest failing and rampart elitism. It’s pretty bad in-game but it also heavily spills out in other areas such as the fora or in reddit, making the whole experience require a very thick skin to say the least.

However recently with the 2.0 update, a new exciting feature has been added and that is a form of currency called “goblin coins” and a store where you can redeem those for some aesthetic purchases (new skins, models, avatars, that sort of thing). Now this is the first form of actual incentive the game has that is not directly tied to winning games or achieving some particular task within the game. The fact that the goblin coins are abstracted from gameplay (even though they’re normally awarded because of it) means that they can also be awarded for other reasons, and as the person who pushed for them notes, it allows the HoN devs to use them as an incentive for so much more.

Given correct implementation, goblin coins have the capacity to finally provide an incentive for people in the HoN community to stop being dickwads in or outside the game. It will once again modify the environment so as to mold the human behaviour within it.It is a good first step, but it could be so much more.

Talking with the community manager today, the idea came to me that while goblin coins can be used as an incentive to improve the community attitudes, they are still primarily tied either to winning games (therefore still giving an incentive to be an asshole in-game, if it [appears to] provide a competitive advantage at winning games) , or with IRL currency. These two dilute the effectiveness of using goblin coins as an incentive for any other purpose since it fairly easy for someone to continue being a dick as they can make up for it by simply winning more games, or by just being richer than others in real life.

In fact, this little fact of market economies IRL is one of the main reasons why rich people can afford to be bigger assholes than everyone else since it all comes down to money and we have tied so much of human accomplishment and wellbeing to how wealthy one is. Of course this is not the whole picture but I digress anyway.

This means that it would be far more effective if there was a particular incentive for good behaviour which could not be bypassed by other means and the idea came to me of just how much more effective a secondary currency would be that not only was not tied to the skills of one in-game, or the money they have IRL, but that the only possible way to receive it was by good behaviour in game. Lets call this new currency “Kudos” as a tribute to the Algebraist 🙂

So how could this Kudos economy affect the community? Lets take a theoretical setup. We assume that one can only receive Kudos from other people, you can give Kudos to someone after a match by clicking on their name, or you could give Kudos to someone in the fora for making a good and thoughtful post. There is no other way to receive Kudos. In other words, one cannot buy them with real life money as this would defeat part of the purpose, allowing trolls and dickwads to achieve rewards for good behaviour while not having any.

Now lets also assume that Kudos can only be used in a special shop which sells distinct rewards from the Goblin shop. At the moment, HoN’s goblin shop sells alternative skills and models, avatars and icons and even different announcers voices. Now imagine that the Kudos shop sold stuff that not only you could not find in the Goblin shop, but that complemented any purchases you did from the Goblin shop. For example, while one could buy new models via Goblin coins, you could only buy new skins or accessories via the Kudos shop, so someone who wants to completely “pimp out” their favourite hero, needs not only to be a good player, but also a good player. This can be expanded further with one selling custom avatars, while the other sold custom titles. Stuff like that.

The end result would be a distinct incentive that pushes people to try and be well liked by other players enough to receive Kudos which they can then exchange for something only such people can have. It is not the best incentive one can have since it’s still all based on some sort of an “e-peen contest” in the end, but we are in an imperfect system so we have to do the best we can within it. What this system would achieve is that people would still be trying to fulfil their ego with shiny digital toys, but the actions they use to do that would have a positive effect rather than a negative. This would then create a cascading effect of making the community more welcome to new player and therefore more successful, subconsciously conditioning players to use and expect good behaviour and ultimately for them to abhor and punish bad behaviour.

All this, by simply modifying the environment slightly so that the incentives push for a different behaviour. This is a similar idea as expressed by Human iteration, with the difference is that this is actually feasible in the very short term and we can then actually empirically observe the results in the microcosm of a gaming community. I believe that from an memetic perspective this makes a lot of sense and will be a very exciting experiment to see.

Unfortunately, I doubt S2 (the publishers of HoN) would go through the effort of implementing anything so drastic but one never knows. There is certainly a lot of pressure on them to improve the community behaviour and perhaps the constant and loud outcry on this subject will make them bold enough to try.