So a blog I subscribed to on (the soon to be late and lamented) Google Reader ages ago – mostly likely because I thought the author wrote something really excellent – recently began a new blog.
Clicking over, I found that the blogger’s newest update is mostly a rebuttal to a 1994 post of mine. It’s a small internet sometimes!
Describing the genre (of which my post is a primary example – indeed, one of only three examples given), Scott writes (emphasis his):
…the very many near-identical articles either telling men that they are scary or telling women that they should be scared of men. A necessary convention of the genre is to note that it’s dangerous and privileged to dismiss this as “just a small number of men”, and in fact that we should view it as something fundamental to men.
“A small number of men” is quoted from my post, but I never wrote that “we should view [men being scary] as something fundamental to men.” I don’t think we should view anything as “fundamental” to men. ((Ten years ago I might have said “the only thing fundamental to being a man is having a penis,” but I’ve learned a lot about trans issues since then.))
In some contexts, women are rational to feel a little scared of a man who approaches them. Rape and attempted rape happen to around one out of four women in the United States; street harassment, which can be incredibly unpleasant and even threatening, happens much more often.
The bright side is, I can easily imagine a society in which rape and street harassment are extraordinarily rare events, like being hit by lightning. So no, it’s not at all fundamental.
Scott concentrates most of his fire on this passage from my post:
Imagine that one out of 25 men have at some point in their lives attacked and tortured an Oregonian. You don’t know which ones had done it – you just know it’s about one in 25. And they had done it simply because they had wanted to, and they consider people from Oregon to be just that worthless.
Now imagine you were born in Oregon.
How safe would you feel in your daily life? What would it do to your feeling of security and safety, knowing that “only” one out of 25 of the men you stand in line with at the bank, the male cashiers you meet at the grocery, the male cops patrolling the streets, the male students you take classes with and the male professors you learn from, and your male co-workers at the office, has attacked someone like you, because they were like you?
Scott’s primary response is a race-and-crime metaphor, accomplished with whatever statistics he could cherry-pick to make Black people look really, really violent.
I sort of hate responding to stuff like this, because it’s a no-win situation for me. If I respond by pointing out the racism implicit in Scott’s arguments, Scott will no doubt take offense and complain I’m name-calling, he was just talking about how violent black people are in order to make his argument work better, he actually intended his argument to be anti-racist, etc etc.
(I’m not saying Scott is a racist – I don’t even know Scott. I think it’s possible he got a little too enthused about his argument and erred by not seeing the quite-possibly-unintentional racist implications, and by being too uncritical about stats that seemed to support his case.)
On the other hand, if I respond by blandly responding as if Scott’s arguments aren’t full of racist assumptions, I’d be sort of “normalizing” the racism, acting as if such arguments are not something to be objected to.
So read this passage, and consider what it assumes about Black people:
America is about 50% men/50% female. Suppose that America were 50% black/50% white. We know that black people commit homicide at a rate 7.5x greater ((The 7.5 reference is to an FBI report from 1992, but more recent reports show that the number hasn’t changed significantly.)) than white people, so in this hypothetical society 88% of murders would be committed by black people.
It seems almost unavoidable that in a 50% Black society, Blacks position in society will have radically changed; we’d see more Black CEOs, more Black Congresspeople, more Blacks in elite universities. Blacks would finally be in the ruling class in significant numbers.
And yet even though Black people’s position in society has radically changed, the correlation of homicide rates and race hasn’t changed. This only works if we assume that Black people are intrinsically much more likely to be murderers, regardless of all other factors.
(In real life, by the way, high-quality research (1 2 3) has shown that homicide rates are a function of poverty and neighborhood characteristics, not of race.)
(The other option is that Scott was imagining an apartheid-like society in which Black people increase from 12% to 50% of the population while still being largely shut out of the ruling class, and the “murders” committed are actually wartime deaths caused by acts of the interracial rebel alliance against the White government. I doubt a society would provide a valid comparison for the purposes of Scott’s argument.)
Scott then goes on to radically misstate a statistic, in a way that paints Black people as scary and violent:
And what percent of black people, in this society, would commit violent crimes? […] We know that about 30% of black people will go to prison sometime in their lives.
Scott’s link is to a Wikipedia page that provides no support for this “30%” statistic. In comments, Scott cites two papers which in turn cite a 2003 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (pdf link). But the BJS report actually says is that “nearly 1 in 3 black males” in the cohort born in 2001 are likely to go to prison at some point if trends continue.
It’s irresponsible, ignorant, and disparaging to extrapolate from a projection of a subset of Black people to “30% of black people will go to prison sometime in their lives.”
There’s much more, but I don’t want to make this post the length of a phone book or a Bill Clinton speech, so let’s skip ahead to Scott’s alleged knock-out punch:
Any argument that “proves” that we are justified in suspecting all men of being rapists, equally proves we should feel justified in suspecting all black people of being violent criminals.
But this is horrible and repulsive. Therefore, we should at least consider the possibility that something is wrong with the original argument about men and rape.
Scott’s analogy is crucially wrong because sex – unlike race – is an actually relevant factor. Even after you account for other factors (race, class, whatever), sex remains important. The same isn’t true of race.
One of the comment-writers at Scott’s blog put it well:
The major reason I think the black/white analogy fails is that being wary of black people trying to rob you is simply not a practical idea. Criminal tendencies are a result of poverty, not race, and looking for signs of poverty, among other things, will probably do you much better than simply looking at race. I don’t think that any black person you run across is more likely to be a criminal than any white person you see once you control for location, dress, mannerisms, age, gender, etc.
E.g. I would be equally unafraid of an elderly black man wearing a suit on a university campus and an elderly white man wearing a suit on a university campus. I would be equally afraid of a young black man on the subway in a misshapen hoodie with a wild look in his eyes and a young white man on the subway in a misshapen hoodie with a wild look in his eyes. But if you are a woman, obviously any man you come across in any context is far, far, far, more likely to rape you than any woman.
Scott also doesn’t understand the differences between violent street crime and rape, and these differences crucially undermine his argument.
Re-quoting the passage from my post, Scott writes:
How safe would you feel in your daily life? What would it do to your feeling of security and safety, knowing that “only” one out of 25 of the men you stand in line with at the bank, the male cashiers you meet at the grocery, the male cops patrolling the streets, the male students you take classes with and the male professors you learn from, and your male co-workers at the office, has attacked someone like you, because they were like you?
This seems to be a claim that women do (or should) feel extremely afraid of every man in their life.
As I said in the paragraph before the passage Scott quoted, “rape is a commonplace enough thing so that at some level most women are to some degree kept in fear of rape, because the possibility is always there.”
I explicitly talked in terms of “at some level” and “to some degree.” It’s dishonest to describe this as me saying that women ought to be “extremely afraid of every man in their life,” or terrified by all men.
It’s sort of like my fear of street crime when I find myself waiting at a bus stop with a bunch of young men ((I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty sure I feel this regardless of the race of the young men.)) who smell of booze and are acting aggressively towards each other. I’m not “terrified,” but I am aware that guys with similar surface characteristics have sometimes gotten hostile, and on one memorable occasion chased me throwing rocks, and part of my mind is remaining cautious. (And yes, a little fearful.)
But it’s hard to talk about that stuff with someone like Scott, because he seems to have no concern at all for being truthful, and I doubt he conceives of me as a human being with feelings, who doesn’t enjoy being lied about. When Scott reads that story, will he nod and say “although I disagree with his conclusions, I understand how Barry can feel that way”? Or will he say “here’s some ammo I can use; I can say that Barry said that it’s a good idea to always be terrified of young men because they’re probably going to throw rocks at you.” Judging by his performance in the post I’m replying to, Scott is more likely to do the latter. But maybe he won’t.
Scott goes on:
I used to work for an African-American guy. […] he was an upper-class businessman. […] You can get a pretty good feel for whether someone is a violent criminal in a couple milliseconds, and he gave off exactly zero of these vibes. Third of all, I was in a busy office with him the whole time. It’s very very hard to get away with violent crimes in a busy office. Fourth of all, we were doing paperwork and stuff, not things like drinking in a bar or gambling or cockfighting or wherever else it is violent crimes tend to occur.
These same factors apply to women worrying about being raped. The chance your male professor is going to rape you in class isn’t 1/25 any more than the chance that my black boss was going to mug me at work was 1/10. Once you go from “average person, at some time in their lives” to “average person you willingly interact with, in the situation you are likely to willingly interact with them”, all these probabilities go down very close to nil.
The thing is, the typical rapist is someone the victim knows, or someone the victim is dating. And the rape might well take place in their own home, or at a party they chose to go to, or in a car they chose to get in, or in a back room of their workplace. The typical sexual harasser at work is a boss or coworker. There are legions of complaints from students about professors who have sexually harassed them in some way, and for that matter it does occasionally happen that a professor is a rapist.
Scott’s entire argument rests on the analogy between street crime and rape – but that analogy doesn’t hold up, and Scott’s attempt to make it, in the passage above, just shows that he doesn’t understand the first thing about rape or about sexual harassment.
Once, in a hotel, I met a journalist I’d known for ages on the internet. We were internet-friends and fellow comics fans, and at some point I suggested – perfectly innocently, albeit thoughtlessly – that we go to my room so I could show her some of my work-in-progress. She responded that she’d love to see it, but could we use the hotel lobby instead?
The point was clear – she didn’t know me well enough to be sure of my trustworthyness or intentions. At some level, she had to consider – was I hitting on her? If I was, would I get hurt, hostile or insulting if she said no? Would I take no for an answer?
She was not being unreasonable or insulting. She was protecting herself in a very minor and polite way – and if I had chosen to feel insulted, that would have been on me, not her. I made a mental note to try to avoid putting other women in that situation again, and I went up to my room to grab the art I wanted to show her. It’s not a friggin’ big deal.
* * *
Post-script: A couple of side thoughts.
First of all, I think – when we’re talking about something like “feeling of safety” – street harassment and sexual harassment has to be discussed, along with rape.
In Scott’s comments, Avantika writes “rape frequency isn’t the only relevant statistic for this calculation. There’s a whole range of harassment-behaviors that are less quantified but women actively try to avoid, and are much more common than actual rape.” She’s got a good point. Years ago, when I wrote the post Scott is responding to, I didn’t include that in my thoughts; in this post, written today, I tried to.
Secondly, Scott talks a lot in his post about small, relatively innocuous things that people say that make him feel bad as a white man. I have… mixed feelings about this?
I’m sorry Scott feels bad. I sympathize, and I hope he feels better. Given how thin-skinned he describes himself as being, I wonder if arguing about politics on the internet is really the best choice for him, but of course he’s the only one who can decide that. (For myself, a major reason I’ve slowed down my blogging so much is that I just feel better this way, and am much better able to concentrate on things like writing comic books.)
I can definitely agree that some feminists have said things to me that are just plain anti-male. This is rare, but it has happened, and sometimes it hurt.
At the same time, Scott seems to translate virtually ALL feminist discussion, regardless of what it actually says, into anti-feminist cliches about what feminists say. In my case, he seems to believe that I said totalizing things about men’s “fundamental” scariness, and that I’m calling for all women to be terrified of every man in their life. But I didn’t say those things; I didn’t say anything even remotely like those things.
Scott, in other words, seems to be determined to take offense anytime a feminist or anti-racist says anything at all. For instance, he objects to a Asian women quoting racist things white men say to them on OKCupid. If objecting to being called a “dumb chink whore” is too inconsiderate of Scott’s feelings, then I think the problem there is Scott, not the folks blogging at “creepy white guys.”
I do think there’s a place for being considerate of anyone’s feelings, including the feelings of white straight men. (I’m a white straight man myself). But Scott seems to think it’s anti-male to ever criticize sexism against women, and anti-white to ever criticize racist whites. That’s not a reasonable foundation for dialog, or anything else.
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“But it’s hard to talk about that stuff with someone like Scott, because he seems to have no concern at all for being truthful, and I doubt he conceives of me as a human being with feelings, who doesn’t enjoy being lied about. When Scott reads that story, will he nod and say “although I disagree with his conclusions, I understand how Barry can feel that way”? Or will he say “here’s some ammo I can use; I can say that Barry said that it’s a good idea to always be terrified of young men because they’re probably going to throw rocks at you.” Judging by his performance in the post I’m replying to, Scott is more likely to do the latter. But maybe he won’t.”
Ummmm….I’m sorry? I have no idea where you got the idea that I don’t think you’re a human being who doesn’t like being lied about, but I don’t think that’s true and if there is anything specific you think I should change about my post that will help you, I will edit it out.
I actually don’t think I know you very well and wasn’t intended to make that post about you. I found the post I linked to when I was looking up the statistic one what percent of men were rapists, and found it was another instance of the genre of arguments I was criticizing, so I included it as well. It certainly wasn’t meant as a character assassination of you personally and I’m sorry if it came off that way.
Getting around to your argument:
First of all, I agree that the statistics are imperfect. I used them because they’re the closest statistics I could find to the numbers I needed. Yes, the 30% number is a projection; after a brief search I couldn’t find the current value. I have now mentioned this on the post. The particular site I saw before (which was not the BJS statistics) didn’t mention it was men, but I have now edited this in.
Without meaning to excuse my statistical errors, I hope you agree that the argument still holds just as well with the altered numbers. For example, cutting the 10% statistic in half to account for this only being black men still puts the 5% violent criminal rate greater than your 4.5% rapist rate. And the crux of the argument is less about exact numbers and more about how “this group is disproportionately linked to something scary” should not imply “therefore we can generalize this as a fact about the group”.
Your answer is that black people are only disproportionately involved in crime because of social factors like poverty. This is of course true. You seem to think that makes the metaphor useless. I disagree.
First of all, I don’t agree that scaling up black people to 50% of the population would naturally make them richer unless society maintained an apartheid. It seems common to enforce structures of social dominance even on a relatively large population. The case of men oppressing women despite them being 50% of the population (even after they got the right to vote) seems like the best example here, but I would also point out that states and cities with higher minority population don’t seem to have better outcomes or social statuses for minorities. For example, half of the people in New York City are black or Latino, but this doesn’t seem to raise their social status or wealth above cities with very low minority populations. Overall I don’t know too much about this point and please let me know if you have evidence otherwise, but I hope you agree this isn’t too relevant for our main disagreement.
Suppose instead of using “Blacks are often violent criminals” to we used “Poor people are violent criminals” as a strawman terrible argument to discredit “Men are often rapists”. Would you find this less unfair or discriminatory? To me, this is just as unpleasant, discriminatory, and prejudiced as the original. If it is any more excusable, it is only because poor people are not quite as disadvantaged as black people.
You will probably argue I should have used “poor people” instead of “black people” to avoid promoting racism in the original article if my point applied equally well to both. But I don’t think that it does.
“Poor people commit more crime”, as prejudiced and unfair as it is, has the advantage of immediately bringing up a social explanation. “Black people commit more crime” has the disadvantage of triggering most people to think biologically, to feel like there’s something wrong with their genes or their brains or something.
“Men commit more rape” is much more like “Black people commit more crime” than like “Poor people commit more crime” because people immediately round it off to “Men have evil genes” or “Men have defective brains” rather than “Men were socialized improperly”. I do think it’s more useful in examining this stereotype to compare it to the more shocking “Black people” case than the less shocking “Poor people” case, because one of the reasons people are more instinctively opposed to the “Black people” formulation is precisely because it does suggest a biological mechanism.
I’ve added an explanation to the post that minority crime is a function of minority poverty, which I admit I should have done earlier and apologize for not doing.
That seems to be our main point of disagreement. Let me just respond to a few of the other things.
Regarding the “Creepy White Guys” blog, my complaint was not that people were complaining about the creepy white guys they found, but that the title of the blog was, in fact, “Creepy White Guys”. Use the same metaphor here I suggested in the main post. Suppose there was a blog where people discussed their experiences being assaulted called “Violent Black Men” (or, if you prefer, “Violent Poor People”). While people have every right to discuss how terrible their assaults were, the decision to give that name to the blog would not be a neutral act and could only be described somebody deliberately trying to reinforce stereotypes to sound funny.
“I do think there’s a place for being considerate of anyone’s feelings, including the feelings of white straight men. (I’m a white straight man myself). But Scott seems to think it’s anti-male to ever criticize sexism against women, and anti-white to ever criticize racist whites. That’s not a reasonable foundation for dialog, or anything else.”
No, I’ve never endorsed these positions, I’ve criticized sexism racism myself, and I don’t endorse them at all. I have no idea how you attributed these positions to me and I’m sorry if I ever came across this way.
I was complaining about a single genre of criticism – the one that points out that some men are rapists (or some whites are racists) and then claims that all men are rapists or have something wrong with them, or uses “white person” or “male” as a synonym for “bad person”.
I admit I did a terrible job of this. The blog post was originally about this specific article, but I wanted to point out that it was representative of many similar things, so I grabbed some from the Internet that I thought a lot of people had heard of. I ended up mixing up the bad (that article) with things that did the same thing but more appropriately and with which I had much fewer qualms (your article, and the Schrodinger article) and conflating my criticisms of all of them into a single mass. I’m sorry about that and I understand why you think it was wrong.
Although I continue to disagree with certain very small parts of your original article, especially the decision to emphasize this is not just a small fraction of men, I think everything you have said, both above and on the original article, is completely reasonable and decent and I apologize for anything I said or did that made you model me as hating you.
“I’m a white straight man myself”
Well that’s going to make our gay marriage a little awkward.
“Relying on an unsourced Wikipedia quote” is pretty much the end of the discussion right there.
I was complaining about a single genre of criticism – the one that points out that some men are rapists (or some whites are racists) and then claims that all men are rapists or have something wrong with them, or uses “white person” or “male” as a synonym for “bad person”.
Except that what you are criticizing is not really in that ‘genre’. The Schroedinger’s Rapist analogy does not say all men are rapists or having something wrong with them, or male = bad. It says that since women cannot automagically detect rapists, and the consequences of guessing “nice guy” incorrectly are so dire, women are more apt to interpret certain cues as “potential creep” rather than “inadvertent/clueless error”.
However, I do give Scott major kudos for a straight-up apology, which is neither easy nor fun to do.
@Scott: So, you wouldn’t want people to quote that passage while using it as an example of the racist “genre”, certainly not without engaging your argument or at least admitting what your post as a whole says?
With the possible exception of the OKCupid script (which I still don’t understand), you have yet to admit what any of your examples actually tried to say. Admittedly, I don’t think the one you just mentioned deserves a full engagement. But the author explicitly says:
Great post, Barry.
Thank you for this, Barry!
Women all over are being taught to ignore their intuition when it tells them a man might pose a danger to them. The “support” a lot of us offer to women when they express doubts about a man’s behavior is to tell them “he probably meant nothing by it.” It’s inexcusable, though articles such as Scott’s here seem to try to make excuses for it.
I think that’s very unfair to Scott. Let’s compare and contrast your view with the standard work on the topic:
Brownmiller: “I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”
Ampersand: “rape is a commonplace enough thing so that at some level most women are to some degree kept in fear of rape, because the possibility is always there.”
It’s clear you reject the orthodox view – but it’s not fair to portray it as a cliche or minor strand of thought. Brownmiller is much more influential than you are. If you’re going to use very similar language but substantially tone down a viewpoint, and at the same time not explicitly criticise or try and distinguish your view from the orthodox one, its easy enough to see how Scott could get confused.
@alex
I don’t think the Brownmiller quote is at odds with what Ampersand’s said. I only speak for myself though.
In not speaking out against rape, and often in not tolerating honest discussion of the prevalence and the effects of rape, I believe a lot of men want to preserve the right to use rape as they see fit.
The stubborn insistence to distort and not support the arguments made by feminists has led me to believe that the vocal “I would never rape” kind of men are nonetheless very conscious of women’s subordinate status and feel truly comfortable only when women conform to it, to the point of insisting that women do not step out of line. Right there, rape and the implicit threat of rape fit into the picture very well as tools of intimidation the utility of which these men must be conscious of.
Arguments like Scott’s are much more about the denial of women’s reality than the assertion of a respectful, different kind of masculinity. Barry’s response was of the latter kind. At some point one has to stop believing the “I’m just a confused male, I don’t see/understand my entitlement” trope. I think that point is, at the very least, when men come publicly forward against what is basically true feminist analysis of masculinity and sexual violence.
alex:
(Poor Scott. So confused.)
alex, please note the most important difference between the Brownmiller quote and the Ampersand quote, the very difference which many men (including a close and trusted friend of mine) rush to point out: the difference between “all men” (Brownmiller) and … “rape is a commonplace enough thing”.
In other words, Ampersand is blaming rape, and therefore rapists, but NOT identifying all men as rapists. Which is what Phaedra Starling did in her essay, with the catchy-but-deceptively-tricky title of “Schrödinger’s Rapist”, which essay Scott referred to in his essay.
Almost all people will readily concede that not all men are potential rapists. Probably most people who have read Lisak et al will even concede that most men are not potential rapists. They are ethical, caring men, safe to be around.
Where the rubber meets the road is where potential rape victims try to distinguish between rapists and non-rapists. All you non-raping people? I’m so sorry, but the rapists lie and imitate you. They deliberately blur the lines, and they are cunning about it. That means potential targets (women and men, both) try to tell the rapists from the non-rapists, and in order to do that with any chance of success, you can’t give out free passes to special groups of people, like Random Men Who Assure You That They Are Good Guys. Because once you start giving out Free Trust Passes, actual rapists work to get into the trusted groups. Priests. Camp counselors. Teachers. Random people who approach you with no apparent evil intent.
My “sorry” here is not sarcastic, not crocodile tears. It genuinely sucks for everyone involved (except rapists themselves) that people can’t tell rapists from non-rapists at a glance. But that’s the world we live in, and the result is that good people get viewed with suspicion. It sucks for the suspected non-raping people.
It sucks even more for the raped, of course.
But yeah, it sucks for the suspected non-raping people. You suspected non-raping people? Come up with an effective, proven way to tell rapists from non-rapists and you’ll be all set. Because then potential rapist targets will be able to give you the unconditional trust-at-first-sight which you crave.
Until then, no one gets a free pass. And that sucks for everyone.
(Except rapists. Playtime for them.)
Grace
I am amused at alex’s insistence that Brownmiller is “the orthodox view”, but that aside, he’s misreading the quote. Brownmiller is not positing that every male gets a memo on participating in the Great Rape Conspiracy; she’s pointing out that the threat of rape creates an environment where all women must always be in a state of fear because any man could turn out to be a rapist – and because the threat of rape is a tool available to men at any time.
Obviously there are a lot of things to discuss and unpack about that thesis.
Sure. Amp and Starling are welcome to take a moderate view. But when the most influential work written on rape doesn’t, they can’t claim that genre doesn’t exist, or it’s an anti-feminist cliche, or rare, or minor…
For all the crazy stuff in her book Brownmiller got a lot right had a huge amount of influence and did an awful lot of good. It seem weird to me to be having a conversation where the opinions of – no offense – two very minor bloggers are taken as the norm and the views of someone like Brownmiller are thought to be rare and not representative of feminist thinking.
Grace wrote:
Personally, I don’t find that it sucks to be viewed with suspicion. Masculinity is something I need to construct and reconstruct every day, so I’m happy for the opportunities to construct it into something I like to see. If that means accommodating suspicions or proving myself to be against rape, that’s fine and sometimes it can be the thing that gives me a deep sense of pride in being myself that day.
The most likely reason why men find that it sucks to be called to prove themselves is because that challenges some entitlements of theirs they rather like, like the expectation that men should be able to enjoy relationships with women without doing the work to make them safe for women. But I guess it’s not “moderate” of me to say that.
Alex,
You could correctly call William F. Buckley one of the most influential and popular Republicans writers ever, but that doesn’t mean that his policy views in 1975 are representative of what policies Republicans support in 2013.
Obviously you’re right to say Against Our Will is an important book (although I wouldn’t call it “the most influential work written on rape”) that did a lot of good and advanced the national dialog on rape. But I don’t see any reason to assume that a short clobber quote you’ve pulled out of a four-hundred-page book represents what many feminists today think about rape.
It’s been 37 years since Against Our Will was published. Brownmiller began writing the book in 1971, so some of the research
and incidentsshe drew on is now over a half-century old. Even at the time Brownmiller – although undeniably popular – was seen as having more radical views than the typical feminist. (From a 1976 review, which strongly criticized Brownmiller’s treatment of race: “Most white women who join the women’s movement start with at least some of the premises set forth by Susan Brownmiller. While they may not go so far as to call rape the origin of women’s oppression, they consider male domination to be the perpetuating force of women’s inequality. “)Against Our Will represented a form of radical feminism that peaked in the 1970s and 1980s but has been fading ever since; in particular, sex-positive feminism, the popularity of intersectionality within feminism, and the growing importance of the trans rights movement have all been very bad for radical feminism. There have been real and significant changes in feminism over the last quarter-century, and to acknowledge that views have changed since then is simply acknowledging reality.
Incidentally, I think the most important thing about AOW is not that one clobber quote that gets used so much, but the enormous scope of the research she pulled together, and the undeniable case she made that rape was a widespread problem and an integral part of the oppression of women.
* * *
Mark:
I understand you were just speaking for yourself. Just for the record, though, I don’t agree with you on this one point; I think the Brownmiller quote is at odds with my quote, and also with my beliefs about rape.
Mythago:
I don’t think this fully deals with Brownmiller calling it a “conscious process” among “all men.”
At the heart of these arguments is the conviction that freedom means the absence of responsibility, that happiness and pleasure come from not having to be responsible, that responsibility comes at the expense of pleasure and happiness. It does dovetail nicely with violent masculinity, consumerism and capitalism.
I just don’t see where’s the “pain” and “bother” in trying to become myself every day. Not that I have to create new, trusting relationships with women every day, because I don’t create new relationships every day, even though I do get to reinforce the old ones. It’s a lie that adults have to work against their nature to act like adults, that it’s no fun being a responsible adult. I think opinions like those expressed here by Scott and alex actually do men a disservice and argue against themselves by making it seem like it’s not natural for men to stand firmly and vocally against rape and other male abuses.
Scott,
Thanks very much for your comment, and your apology, which is accepted. In retrospect, if I could rewrite my piece, I would use less strong language. I don’t think you were personally attacking me or that you hate me. I do think that, in your eagerness to rope my post in with your general critique, you attributed some views to me that I don’t actually hold.
I still think you’re bending over to find anti-male and anti-white sentiments where none exist. As you’ve now admitted, the things you objected to in the “Current Conscience” article (which I’m not commenting on either way, because I’m in a hurry and can’t give it a careful reading right now) aren’t present in my post or in Schrodinger’s Rapist; yet you roped us all in together. You wanted to “point out that it was representative of many similar things,” but in the end that wasn’t a sustainable argument.
I don’t find your parallel between “Creepy White Men” and “Violent Black Men” at all convincing. There is a real and damaging stereotype about black men being violent, and that stereotype has a much-documented history going back a couple of centuries. I think it makes sense to avoid contributing to that stereotype.
There is NO stereotype that all white men are creepy. The creators of that blog aren’t saying that all white men are creepy; they are saying that the particular white men highlighted on the blog, the ones with an asian fetish who seek out asian women to write creepy racist notes to, are creepy. There is no parallel there at all, and implying the purpose “could only be described [as] somebody deliberately trying to reinforce stereotypes to sound funny” is totally unfair.
You seem to frequently use this mode of criticism: You compare legitimate criticism of sexism or racism to racism against Black people, and then pretend it’s the same thing, as if being a white male in our society is substantially alike with being a black victim of racism. You also say that you’re not drawing that equivalence – but then the specifics of your arguments rely on drawing that equivalence, again and again. I don’t think this is a good argument for you to use, and would encourage you to forswear it from now on.
On the whole, I think that you’re trying to make a case that anti-male and anti-white comments are constant and all around you. But to make that case, you have to rope in a lot of things that simply can’t be fairly categorized as anti-male or anti-white, such as my blog post and the Creepy White Men blog. That you have to do that should suggest to you that perhaps anti-male and anti-white comments aren’t actually as commonplace as you seem to think they are.
Thanks very much for your thoughtful comment, I appreciate it.
Amp, that was what I was getting at with my last sentence, I think.
If Brownmiller’s ideas are passe, anyone care to recommend a statement of modern feminist theory?
Because feminism is a large and diverse community that encompasses many schools of thought, there’s not really one answer to that. Sex-positive Feminists and Radical Feminists disagree on a lot of stuff still.
That having been said, check out Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, for the basics, and understand that lots of people who consider themselves feminists will disagree with some of the specifics they lay out.
—Myca
You appreciate I’m left kinda stuck if the response I’m getting is feminists certainly don’t agree with Brownmiller anymore, and they don’t agree about much, and it’s hard to pin down what they do agree on.
It’s not a clobber quote BTW. It’s the thesis of the book – not supporting material or a digression. I think Brownmiller’s still hugely influential, the idea of rape culture dominates feminist discussion and can be traced right back to AOW. The only different material that jumps to mind is the Lisak work, which is really a throwback to pre-feminist deviance theories.
Not at all. I’ve linked you to a ‘feminism 101’ blog specifically designed to answer these questions.
The reason you are confused is because you’re asking a question roughly analogous to ‘what do conservatives believe’ and citing something Edmund Burke said as evidence, ignoring the communitarian/individualist divide in modern conservatism.
It’s not that feminists ‘don’t agree about much,’ it’s that, though there are broad areas of agreement, so there are some areas of disagreement, and taking what one person says as gospel for what another person believes is a kind of error I wanted to caution you against.
Just because Edmund Burke (Or Bill Buckley) said it doesn’t mean that Robert & RonF believe it.
Just because Brownmiller said it doesn’t mean that Ampersand or I believe it.
That doesn’t mean that conservatism or feminism aren’t coherent bodies of thought, just that within coherent bodies of thought there are areas of disagreement.
It’s clear that you’re pretty ignorant about feminism. That’s cool. Everyone has to start somewhere. But since you’re starting, you would be well served by not trying to explain to us who is and isn’t influential in modern feminist thought.
Some links that might be helpful to you:
Rape Culture 101
Why do you feminists hate men?
And, since you seem to misunderstand: Why are there so many fights between feminists?
—Myca
The definition of rape culture used in that Rape Culture 101 link is in itself an example of rape culture. Which is ironic, though very unfunny.
Alex, thank you; thanks to this discussion, I’ve taken an evening to reread sections of Against Our Will, which I haven’t read for many years. I think I now have a more accurate idea of what’s in Against Our Will than I had earlier in this discussion, when I had only reread the introduction.
I wouldn’t (and didn’t) say “Brownmiller’s ideas are passe.” A lot of what’s in Against Our Will has aged very well, but not 100% of it has. Specifically, the one clobber quote that you mistakenly believe is the thesis of Against Our Will is dated, even at the time was deliberately provocative, and doesn’t represent what many feminists today believe.
I think it’s reasonable to call it a “clobber quote,” since it is a favorite quote of people who 1) dislike feminists and feminism, 2) have never actually read Against Our Will, and 3) the quote is not representative of the content of Against Our Will.
As you may know, the quote comes from the introduction, which takes a generally essentialist view of men and rape.
But the essentialism of the introduction is contradicted by a lot of what’s in the book itself; Brownmiller clearly believes and argues that the propensity towards rape is a social construction, not something inherent or inevitable about being male. She clearly believes that we (men included) can build a society with less rape.
The most frequent reading of that “conscious process” and “all men” quote – that is, that all men consciously use the threat of rape as a means of intimidating all women – is simply not supported by reading the book itself.
There are more nuanced and less obvious readings of that quote which could be more justified by the text, but just pulling that one rather incendiary quote out of context guarantees that it won’t be read with nuance by most readers.
As for the rest – what Myca said.
Having discussed similar issues with a variety of folks, I think that the objection isn’t necessarily objecting to the concept that “men are, relative to women, in a high-risk class and therefore should be treated with caution.” I think it’s more that it generally runs against the grain of the generic “prejudices are evil” line of thought.
I’ll use a racism example which (unlike crime) is a fairly simple one: If Joe happens to be a POC and has an encounter with Random Rob, the chances that Random Rob will treat Joe badly as a result of Joe’s race appear to be statistically greater if Random Rob is white. We can probably all agree on that.
It’s easy to then conclude that Joe may be fully justified in having some sort of distrust of Random Rob depending on his race. And in fact, that view’s been discussed on this blog in the past.
But it only seems acceptable because Joe is the underdog. “Joe doesn’t trust Rob because Rob’s white and therefore more likely to treat him badly” fits within our comfort zone since it’s a less powerful group who holds prejudice against a more powerful group. The same is true with “women are advised to distrust men because men may be rapists.”
But by making those claims at all, we’re then forced to acknowledge that some prejudices are at a minimum defensible and arguably advisable--and that doesn’t seem to be a normal agreement in the liberal sphere. If you start suggesting that it is A-OK to treat large groups differently as a result of their statistical issues, it seems you’re going to end up in a very bad place, very fast. Or you’re going to end up in knots as you contort and try to make continuing exceptions to make all the outcomes match your goals. Neither of those works well.
Actually, I’m not sure I do agree on this – this is an example of where using the term “POC,” because POC is so general, leads to ambiguity. Suppose Joe is Asian. Is Joe statistically more likely to encounter anti-Asian prejudice from a cop if the cop who pulls him over is white, versus if the cop who pulls him over is Black?
I honestly have no idea.
Anyway, I do agree with your larger point – saying that it’s okay for women to be suspicious of men because they are men, in certain contexts, does instinctively go against the “what sex someone is should be entirely irrelevant” ideal. For myself, I square that circle by remembering that we do not live in an ideal world.
I have more trouble with that than you do. It’s my nature to view exceptionalism as generally suspect.
Sometimes I feel like we need a special term for the third category of prejudices:
1) Prejudice which is wrong, and therefore logically unjustified, e.g. “blondes are dumb.”
2) Prejudice which is correct and therefore logically justified, i.e. “men are more likely to be a danger to women, and women are less likely to be a danger to other women”
3) Prejudice which is correct and therefore logically justified, but which is not morally or socially acceptable and which is therefore not allowed (insert your preferred socially awkward example here.)
I think that a lot of the trouble comes from not being up front about the distinctions between #1 and #3. And I think that this is often because the discussions around #3 are a hell of a lot harder.
Is it OK for women to generally distrust men, and to treat them differently based on their sex? Well, just to stick with that example and use a deliberately ridiculous counterexample: do the 95% of men who are NOT rapists get to say “well, half the population is inclined to treat me fairly, and the other half is inclined to blame me for things I don’t do. I think I’ll selectively hire and promote the first half?”
Now, you can make a good MORAL argument against that, just as you can make a good MORAL argument that you shouldn’t treat certain classes of people differently even if they have different statistical chances of being unpleasant to you.
But that’s a moral argument, not a practical one. And I think that liberals fail when they try to conflate #1 and #3. Folks aren’t stupid: why trade a good moral argument and replace it with a bad practical one?
If something is (reasonably, presumptively) correct and logically justified, then it is not immoral to accept it as data. To use a very strong example, but hopefully skirt Godwin, I am prejudiced against Nazis because they want to exterminate people who I am rather fond of. I therefore think that I am allowed, should I meet a Nazi, to shoot them in the head before inquiring whether they, personally, are REALLY REALLY SERIOUS about the whole kill-the-Jews thing. It is presumptively correct that bona-fide Nazis want to exterminate the Jews, and therefore as a friend of the Jews, I can kill them first. The edict that we examine each person individually, as a special snowflake, has limitations on its scope.
Whether social pressure should be yielded to, or resisted, strikes me as being an empirical decision that has to be evaluated case by case. Which is more important in the circumstance, social cohesion (yielding to social pressure for the sake of unity) or the truth in the balance? It depends. If my community insists that Nazis be given a fair shake, allowed to exterminate a FEW Jews before we decide that they are naughty….nah, screw the social cohesion. Do what’s right. If my community insists that anybody disavowing Jew-murder be allowed to verbalize that disavowal before summary execution can proceed…well, OK. I’ll honor the community mandate, up to but not including the point where it starts to endanger people.
I don’t find your parallel between “Creepy White Men” and “Violent Black Men” at all convincing. There is a real and damaging stereotype about black men being violent, and that stereotype has a much-documented history going back a couple of centuries. I think it makes sense to avoid contributing to that stereotype. There is NO stereotype that all white men are creepy.
I don’t know if the stereotype in question is that “all blacks are violent”. My guess is that even confirmed, proud racists wouldn’t endorse that statement. I don’t even think racists and non-racists would disagree on the percent of minorities who are violent – they probably both believe the official statistics.
I think what racists and nonracists would disagree with mental associations – for them, the category “black” always associates with violence, whether or not any black person is being violent at the time (I’ve been blogging about the IAT recently, which might color my views here). They could hear twenty things about twenty wonderful black people, ignore them, and then when they hear a story about a black person doing something wrong, think “Yup, it’s because they’re black”.
Although there are lots of white men in our culture who are not considered negative or stereotyped at all, if you hear the term “white male”, to me at least this immediately brings up connotations of “clueless”, “conservative”, “rich”, “awkward”, “wants to keep everyone else down”, “privileged”, “opposes feminism on instinct”, “racist”, “sexist”. I am not saying that just seeing some random white guy (let’s say Joe Biden) makes people think all of these things, but that if for some reason his white male-ness is made salient – if someone points him out as “Joe Biden is such a typical white guy” – these connotations do come through. In fact, during the election, there were people who thought they could describe everything wrong with Mitt Romney as “he’s so white”, as if all white people were just aspiring Mitt Romneys who hadn’t quite made it yet. I even remember a few people using “white men” and “Romney voters” interchangeably, even though of course that’s false on both sides.
These are obviously not as bad as the stereotypes for other races/genders, and they may not exist at all if you’re not in a group of people very interested in social justice issues. But there definitely are a few people who have discovered it as a useful way to marginalize any white guy trying to express an opinion on a topic women and minorities also have strong opinions, and although there are cases where it’s meaningful (less likely to understand what oppressed groups have to go through) there are other cases where it’s pretty annoying to have people pigeonholing my opinions because of my skin color and gender.
That’s the context in which I find the use of terms like “Creepy White Guys” unhelpful. I’m certainly not denying their right to use it if they want, I just think it doesn’t help the dialogue.
Scott, first of all, obviously you’re not denying their right to use it. I’m not questioning you there, and sorry if I seemed to be.
Second of all, I can see what you’re saying regarding the phrase “typical white guy,” which is a stereotype among some groups of lefties. However, I don’t think the phrase “creepy white guys” works the same way, because the stereotypes about typical white guys – that we are clueless, that we are insensitive to racism and sexism, that we are complacent, etc – does not include “creepy.”
(For example: “How many white men does it take to change a light bulb?” “Just one, but good luck finding a white man who wants anything changed.” — The stereotype is about complacently, not creepiness.)
As before, in other words, I don’t think what you’re saying is always untrue, but I do think you’re casting your net too wide and roping in examples that don’t fit.
@22 (Tamen)
Huh?
I went and (re-)read the article (I remember reading it when it first came out), and I fail to see how it’s “an example of rape culture.”
Can you explain why you think so?
AMM:
Since you asked:
That’s the definition used in that 101 article.
Male victims (of both female and male rapists) and female rapists (of both male and female victims) are totally absent from that definition.
Erasing rape is a part of rape culture.
Try it in the hypothetical:
1) If there were a group of people who, based on records and statistics, had a higher-than-average proportion of doing something that makes you nervous or unsafe or uncomfortable, would you think it makes sense to avoid that group and/or talk about their dangerousness and/or take protective measures against them?
[after you’ve committed to a stance on #1]
2) Do you think that other people should be able to tell YOU how to respond, or to adjust your behavior w/r/t your perception of risk and reward and prevention?
[after you’ve committed to a stance on #2]
3) What are those groups and who is in them?
4) Does it matter WHY someone is in the “danger” group or the “dislike” group? Do you shirk from including someone in the list if their behavior is due to poverty, racism, bad socialization; poor upbringing; social influence; culture; and/or governmental mistreatment?
I think this is a useful tactic because it’s easier to convince people that they should be the subjects of bias if you’re also willing to accept their own right to be biased.
The problem comes when folks try to tell people that they should accept other folks’ biases while also maintaining that their OWN biases are unsupported or unwarranted. And that is pretty much SOP.
Seriously: Imagine that you’re talking to an average white male. If you’re a social justice/feminist type, the chances are extremely high that you subscribe to at least one political theory which defines most of their biases as unacceptable and which defines most biases against them as acceptable.
Think of the collective statements of feminism and social justice:
Men who take action that selectively benefits men are sexist; women who take action that selectively benefits women are either not sexist or, ironically, anti-sexist. Whites who fail to selectively assist POC are racist (status quo maintenance is racist, right?); POC who do the reverse are non-racist or, with often, anti-racist. Generally pushing for the rights of defendants is good–unless they’re men accused of rape, in which case considering their rights contributes to rape culture and racism, and may quite possibly get you accused of supporting rape. People are not responsible for their actions when drunk, and can’t consent, and should be ignored even if they initiate sex. But asking the “um, what if both people are drunk?” followup is, again, contributing to rape culture. And so on.
Perhaps folks should take the “anti-BS challenge:” if you’re promoting acceptable bias against a class-let’s say “white men” for the hell of it–can you identify an acceptable bias that they can have? Because otherwise, it seems like you’re talking out your ass, and you’ll almost definitely be unsuccessful unless you manage to BEGIN by convincing them that their own views are less valuable than yours. Which is, unsurprisingly, pretty hard to do.
Actually, that part is a non-hypothetical question. Can you list one?
Tamen,
That is not a definition of “rape”, it is a definition of “rape culture”, which is specifically about male dominance. The fact that rape culture is specifically about male dominance is why female on male rape is so often unrecognized. The author goes on to cite concrete examples of what rape culture results in, including:
Sorry. I’m not buying it. Whatever it is, it isn’t a minor and peripheral quote just seized on by critics.
Equally, bang the quote into Google scholar. What is the one quote used by feminists who have read AOW, and want to sumarise its thesis? What is the one quote Brownmiller has on the frontpage of her blog?
I appreciate you don’t like a quote you disagree with being used against a movement you support. But you can’t dismiss it because of that.
Myca – I thought you were mocking me. I ask what’s the mainstream modern feminist view on rape – I get a link to a blog screed by Melissa McEwan. Is that serious? I figured it was like citing Roissy as the voice of moderate conservatism.
kate:
Which is why I wrote: “The definition of rape culture used in that Rape Culture 101 link is in itself an example of rape culture”.
But you could’ve fooled me, I though “rape culture” was specifically about rape. Perhaps it should’ve been called “male dominance culture” then?
Until then I’ll keep on assuming that “rape culture” is specifically about rape and how our culture contributes to rape.
You wrote:
Which pretty much sums up my argument. Defining rape culture in such a manner contributes to and strengthen the narrative that rape is something that men do, mostly to women, but also to other men. Which leaves female rapist unrecognized.
One thing is that female on male rape is often unrecognized, another one is why does it happen? What contributes to female on male rape? Which attitudes, norms and practices normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone female on male rape?
Do women who rape men do so solely because of male dominance? Does the victim dominate his rapist to rape him?
Are female rapists not a product of rape culture?
The lack of recognition of female-on-male rape is in itself a part of rape culture. It strengthens the belief that men can’t be raped by women and that in itself increases the likelyhood that women rape men.
One way of contributing to female-on-male rape not being recognized is not calling it rape. It wasn’t rape, it wasn’t real rape, rape-rape, legitimate rape, honest rape to mention a few statements of male-on-female rape which have been identified as rape apologies and experienced quite the well-deserved pushback from blogs and media.
So when Mary P Koss in her paper: Detecting the Scope of Rape – a review of prevalence research methods states:
and when CDC apply those methods recommended by Koss (she has served as an advisor for CDC on several occasions) and doesn’t call the largest subset of female-on-male rape for rape (they called it being made to penetrate) they push out statistics saying that 1 in 5 women are victims of rape or attempted rape while only 1 in 71 men are victim of rape or attempted rape. When the real finding is that 1 in 4 rape victims alive is a man (exclusive most prison rapes) and that 1 in 5 rape victims alive is a man raped by a woman. And if you look at the last 12 months isolated every second rape victim was a man.
I asked Tamen why (@22)
His answer (@32) boils down to: because it isn’t.
(*sigh*)
I’d kind of hoped that someone (Tamen, in this case) might have actually seen something I’d missed. But, no, all he has are stale MRA talking points with a healthy dose of proof by non sequitur. No point in arguing with it because there’s no content to argue with.
Sadly, this is pretty much true for every anti-feminist argument I’ve seen. I’ve watched this women’s movement vs. Patriarchy thing for something like 45 years, and I have yet to see DOTPs (Defenders Of The Patriarchy) come up with an argument that had any solider foundation than this. The only explanation I’ve been able to come up with for it is that power (and privilege) do, indeed, make stupid.
Hahahahaha no.
I won’t place any bets on “most” (for either clause), but I’ll take a flyer on “many” and put a big stack of chips on “some”. (“Some” seems like a no-brainer; you can’t define an interesting political theory that doesn’t step on somebody’s prerogatives somewhere.)
I’ll also concede that one of the aspects of privilege is that even slight affronts are perceived (and reacted to) as though they are huge impositions and attacks…but at the same time, hyperprivileged people who go ballistic when someone breathes on them wrong, also sometimes get mugged, and their reaction to that (while still usually privileged in its context and framing) is a lot more in line with reality.
I have the rather dubious distinction of being one of the more recent college graduates here, I suspect, (2003-2004 timeframe, and in a pretty conservative state) and, while anybody pushing a “white males = satan” theoretical construct was pushing it up a very steep hill, less absolutist but still fairly polemically strong constructs certainly seemed to have a certain cachet.
I’m pretty sure, Elusis, that you honestly think it’s laughable that (say) your own social-justicey/feministy viewpoint could be biased against us white guys…but what do the white guys in your life think? Perhaps more informatively, what do the white guys who are in your life but who don’t have any particular relationship to you think? Would you get a different answer from them if they had a secret ballot? (Not saying they would, or meaning to accuse you in any way…just, it’s easy to think more kindly of oneself than the outside world does. Happens to me all the time.)
Are you so very sure? I’d don’t think you are and I’ll happily discuss why, though I am intending to discuss a hypothetical “Elly” and not the real Elusis, to avoid making it personal.
Assume Elly is a social justice feminist.
Let’s start with a few questions to lay a general framework:
1) What biases, or different treatments of defined groups, does Elly consider acceptable if it’s a white man doing them?
2) Does Elly consider these examples bad (speaks out against them,) acceptable (doesn’t promote them, but thinks that they’re up to the individual to determine), or good (promotes them?)
(a) People who are biased against men, or who treat men differently as a result of their gender, i.e. “treat all men as potential rapists,”
(b) People who are biased against whites, or who treat whites differently than non-whites;
(c) People who are biased against rich or otherwise-privileged-in-their-view folks, or who treat such folks worse based on their wealth or perceived privilege.
Alex, did you notice that in my comment #23, I made a whole bunch of arguments that you didn’t address at all?
It’s true that it’s not a “minor and peripheral quote” – it’s the closing line of the introduction. It was doubtless intended by Brownmiller to be incendiary and attention-grabbing.
But, as I argued, it really doesn’t fit well with the book, and the most obvious interpretation of the quote – that all men consciously choose to use rape as a deliberate system of keeping women in fear – gets zero support from the content of the book itself. Can you point me to an actual feminist (i.e., not someone like Wendy McElroy) who has read the book and concluded that something like all men consciously choose to use rape as a deliberate system of keeping women in fear is the theme of the book?
Please answer this question, Alex: Have you read “Against Our Will”? Because it doesn’t sound like you have.
So if you search for the quote on Google scholar, 100% of your search results include that quote. I don’t think that tells us anything.
That said, yes, if a writer includes a spectacular and incendiary quote right at the top of her book, of course it’ll be quoted a lot. It is, without a doubt, the most famous sentence Brownmiller has ever written. But all my arguments about how the quote fails to be supported or upheld by the book itself remain true.
So what do feminists who have read the book say about “Against Our Will?”
Allison Edwards’ “Rape, Racism, And The White Women’s Movement: An Answer to Susan Brownmiller” (which I linked to earlier) remains one of the most-read critiques of “Against Our Will,” and never mentions the quote. Higher-profile black feminists, like bell hooks and Angela Davis, famously made similar critiques.
If you look at how Alison Jaggar (a radical feminist scholar whose books are standard fare in women’s studies classes) discusses Brownmiller in a survey, she does include the quote as part of a longer quote from the introduction. But Jaggar (correctly) takes the thesis of the introduction as being, not that all men consciously think of rape as a deliberate system of keeping women in fear, but as biological determinism. And Jaggar points out that in the book itself, Brownmiller doesn’t think high rates of rape are inevitable; instead, Brownmiller suggests that in a more equal society (one in which women co-run the justice system) rape can be kept in check.
Maia’s review on this blog doesn’t mention the quote at all.
Stevi Jackson, in the feminist journal Trouble and Strife, defended the book from critics. She mentions the “all men” quote, but she doesn’t describe the central message of the book as a matter of conscious choice by all men:
She also points out the contradiction between Brownmiller’s essentialist introduction (where “her argument is at its shakiest”) and the actual content of the book:
AMM: It’s duly noted that the issue of male rape and what contributes to male rape (rape culture) is considered MRA talking points. I now remembered where I recognized your username from. Please, do not address me again.
I thought this blog post from earlier this week was really good. It doesn’t speak for all of feminism, but it comes very close to being my view:
Intro To Rape Culture, Or, Ozy Fangirls David Lisak – Ozy Frantz’s Blog
Ozy Frantz is an exceptionally articulate and relatable writer.
I have read the book. I ignored lots of the stuff in 23 as I didn’t see it (particularly the evil plot by men interpretation and biological vs cultural arguments) as relevant to anything I’d said. FWIW The evil plot interpretation is ludicrous and my reading is that Brownmiller argues rape is founded in biology but mediated by culture, hence the drift of the book.
The importance of Brownmillers quote is the idea of a class analysis. That wouldn’t apply to many crimes. Pyrophobes are harmed by firebugs, but no-one would suggest class oppression. Women are victimized by DV; but people do argue whether men and women are violent for much the same reasons and greater harm to women is just coincidental due to men being bigger, or if DV is an instrument of deliberate oppression. Similarly, we can view rape (1) as something unfortunate committed by some deviants, which just happens to scare some women. Or (2) something which all women are consciously afraid of, and which is culturally supported because men as a class benefit from women as a class being in a state of fear.
I’ve been trying to figure out why that’s such an odious statement. I think it’s because we can just replace “rape” with “pogroms” and “women” with “Jews” and “men” with “Gentiles” to get a good translation on just how callous this is. Sure, we can view rape as option 1. But just because we can doesn’t make us decent human beings.
“… just happens…” indeed.
Why on earth is it odious to NOT KNOW? He’s a man; if he’s like me, then he knows that he is not in any real fear of rape on an ordinary, daily basis, but lacks direct first-hand knowledge of what women fear. It’s not as though you can just ask a thousand random women to place their level of fear and concern on a unified utility scale and come up with an objective measure; some women are scared as hell (I know some of them and it grieves me that society has so failed to mitigate the wrong and to assuage the fear). Other women of my acquaintance spit in the eye of fear and would make Teddy Roosevelt feel inadequately manly because his bear-murder quotient for the day isn’t high enough; my maternal grandmother (95 and blazing along like an atomic-powered freight train; Heaven can’t contain her and Hell can’t withstand her, so her eventual passing is going to be of COSMOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE, people) would kick you in the teeth and beat you senseless if you hinted at the suggestion that possibly she was ever afraid of any man. (Actually she is a very sweet lady and she would get you a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun. But on some level you would be aware that you had skirted death.)
Average those two values and tell me which binary choice to select to avoid moral odiosity.
It seems to me that if people ARE scared, then to the extent the fear is rational you try to mitigate the cause, and to the extent that the fear is irrational you try to equip the individual with coping tools. Rape seems like a pretty damn reasonable thing to be scared of, though. Maybe given the submerged but apparently real prevalence of rape against men, we ought to be more trembly, but that’s not the way I incline. That doesn’t make women wrong to have a different view, if they do have a different view. How about we just respect anyone’s view that doesn’t actively hurtle shit at us, and go from there?
It’s not odious to not know, Robert. It’s odious to dismiss a horrific act of violence as, “… something that just happens to scare some women…”
Misformatted, drat. can a mod replace the above post with this one? (just moved a paragraph to its proper place) [Done! –Amp]
Yes, it is odious to dismiss a horrific act of violence as “… something that just happens to scare some women…”
Is that what we’re discussing?
In the Internet non-legal context, sexual assault and rape are (depending on the author) defined as including a vast spectrum of behavior ranging from horrific acts of violent rape to things such as being “pressured” to have sexual contact, experiencing harassment of a sexual nature, or, at the most extreme low end, failing to get prior affirmative consent even if the other person was not opposed to the sexual activity.
Nothing in that category is “non-bad.” But some things are way more bad than others.
And rape culture has an far, far, broader definition at the low end–it includes comments, laws, magazine ads, other issues which aren’t specifically related to sex like “respect for autonomy,” generalized sexism, and the like. (It’s a pyramid: the most frequent things are generally low in horribleness, while the most horrible things make up a very small percentage of the whole.)
We can use broad definitions or narrow ones, as you prefer. But it’s not reasonable to apply conclusions reached using narrow definitions to statements made about another set of definitions. In the context of this discussion it’s not at all clear which definition of “rape” or “rape culture” we’re using.
The Mongols killed millions of people to the west of their ancestral homelands, because that just happened to be the direction in which nomads on horseback could find lots of loot and easy conquests. “Just happen[ed]” describes simple contingency, as distinct from a non-contingent, systematic explanation. I am not being meaning to be derisive of the concept of “rape culture” when I say that, had there been a “west is the only proper direction for conquest and looting culture”, we could with perfect fairness epitomize the distinction as being a choice between “west-expanding culture” and “west just happened to be the easy way to go”, and we would not be dismissing the suffering of proto-Poland or proto-Hungary in the slightest.
It seems – maybe I’m wrong – but it seems like you’re taking “just” in its diminutive meaning (“oh those whining Poles, it was just a little genocidal massacre and conquest!”)…but I see no textual support for inferring that meaning in Alex’s statement.
I can’t speak for your grandmother, Robert. I can, frankly, however, have my doubts about whether she was so blithely unconcerned about being raped as you seem to believe.
Until I was eleven I was as tough as my brothers. I roamed the world like they did. I thought I could go anywhere, like they did. Then — when I was eleven, as skinny as my brothers, my chest as flat as theirs, my hips as narrow as theirs — I got my first rape threat. (Not my last.) Three men cornered me in a mall parking lot and threatened to rape me to death to teach me a lesson.
Was I terrorized? Yeah. I was.
They didn’t rape me — they were just having a little fun, after all. Just a joke. (They were about 19, I think.)
Am I still wary, every time I leave the house, even though that was 40 years ago?
You bet your narrow ass I am.
But what does it matter? These things just happen to scare a few women, right?
Robert, may I inquire as to why you only care about the suffering of Poles and Hungarians, but not about the countries and cultures that were destroyed by the Mongols? Poland stood (or rather, was saved by the bell) but Kievan Rus, Novgorod, Volga Bulgaria were obliterated, or at least suppressed for centuries.
Are the Russkies not Western enough for you? Shame, shame :-)
Just kidding. I spend too much time with people who just love discussing wars that happened a millennium ago, if only because discussing wars that happened centuries ago may get them at each other throats if they are drunk enough.
Delagar, I don’t know whether she was blithely unconcerned; I know she wasn’t afraid.
I don’t appreciate you putting words (which are the exact opposite of what I just finished carefully expressing) in my mouth, by the way, so kindly knock that the fuck off. Thanks.
Sebastian, obviously, the Slavs DESERVED to be mass-murdered, while the Poles etc. were good people. I mean, DUH.
g&w,
That was some seriously bizarre and irrelevant excuse making, with a side order of strawmen, and an extra helping of your old psuedonym’s hobby horses. Thanks.
Robert,
That was some bizarre gibbering in which you claimed that social science surveys were an unimaginable concept, all for the purpose of some incoherent rape minimization. Please don’t get on your high horse about how delagar put words in your mouth (she didn’t) merely because she treated your gibberish with a small bit of the contempt it deserved.
Sebastian,
Your chummy joviality isn’t really all that bad by itself, but it joined with Robert, g&w, and alex to help make this thread an open sewer of odiousness. Thanks.
alex,
If I have to choose between your trivialization of rape and argument that it is just some stuff that happens, with nothing cultural that encourages or discourages rape, and your restatement of Brownmiller’s claim, I much prefer Brownmiller as accurately describing a significant aspect of the problem. Of course, your dichotomy ignores the much larger space in between those two choices.
It is worth noting that a system of intimidation does not need to make everyone afraid in order to be effective. I’m sure someone’s grandmother didn’t fear the KKK and someone else’s grandmother didn’t fear the Stazi, but that hardly amounts to an argument.
alex:
I think that’s a very fair interpretation of Against Our Will as a whole, but not an interpretation that readers who aren’t familiar with the larger work are likely to get out of the quote “Rape… is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”
I think that for most readers who don’t know the book, that quote in isolation seems to be describing rape as conspiracy, or as something very akin to conspiracy. And it is frequently quoted in isolation, especially by anti-feminists.
A lot of people on this thread seem to be interpreting this as if you were advocating (1) as correct. I’m not sure that’s true. Could you clarify?
In any case, it seems self-evident that these are not, in fact, the only two possible beliefs to hold.
G&W, I find your questions impossible to answer, because you want me to answer “yes” or “no” to questions which, in reality, are almost always answered “it depends.” And you also make a lot of generalizations which seem to me to be generally untrue.
I can’t possibly answer this. Avoid them in what context? If a group of young men on a dark street is approaching you, yes, I think it’s totally acceptable to avoid that group (duck into a doorway, cross the street, whatever). Avoiding that group might not be acceptable in a different context, if you’re a human resources manager and you decide never to let young men interview for any position.
For all the facets of your question (talking, protective measures, etc), the correct answer is always: It depends.
So feminists say men who join “Big Brothers” are sexist? Feminists say men who open abused men’s shelters are sexist? Nonsense.
Again, it would depend on the action. I can certainly think of actions women could take to selectively benefit women that would be sexist in my eyes and, I’m confident, in the eyes of most ordinary feminists. For instance, if the judge of a co-ed competition decided that regardless of performance, she’s only going to let female competitors win. Or a rule that women, and women only, will be accepted into child care positions. Etc, etc.
Umn, what?
Yes, on the large scale, status quo maintenance is racist. But the leap from that to the idea that any individual White who fails to selectively assist POC is racist is staggering. And unfair. And dishonest.
I’m not going to go point- by-point through the rest of your comment, although I certainly could. All of it is the same nonsense.
These are not “the collective statements of feminism and social justice.” They are ridiculous and crude caricatures of feminist and social justice statements, which have almost no relationship to what actual feminists say.
Perhaps you should take an anti-BS challenge; instead of quoting alleged “collective statements,” try instead quoting actual statements made by the actual feminists who are posting on this thread. If you can’t find a direct quote of someone actually saying it, then it’s BS for you to attribute that belief or sentiment to feminists in general, and then criticize it. There’s even a name for this sort of BS: It’s called “arguing against a strawman.’
Of course, you’ve already failed that anti-BS challenge several times over in this thread.
To answer your BS challenge, I think it’s fine for a class – let’s say “women” – to feel unsafe around “men” in certain situations. To use the example I used earlier in this thread, I think it was fine for my female friend to choose not to be alone in a hotel room with me.
If I, a man, felt unsafe around women in certain situations, it would also be fine for me to choose not to be alone in a hotel room with a woman.
I will concede that Robert knows his grandmother better than anyone else here, and that she is an exceptional woman who has always been puzzled when others speak of this “fear” thing.
That characteristic, of course, makes her completely unsuitable as an example in this discussion, which is concerned with actual mortals.
I have had some opportunity to observe the behavior of people who later turned out to have been afraid. Not a few of them seemed, to outside observers, to be very confident at the time that they were afraid. Some of them even showed signs of bravado. This was adaptive, learned behavior which either helped them act despite their fear, or helped them convey fearlessness so that they were less likely targets, or both.
Grace
On the use of “just happens”, and the negative reaction of Jake and delagar, and Robert’s effort to use extreme analogies at the endpoints to explain things elsewhere on the curve, I am reminded of a favorite quote:
The exchange is amusing precisely because Humpty Dumpty’s assertion is so baldly ridiculous.
Alex’s proposed false dichotomy is risible. The use of “just happens” between the cause of the fear and the people experiencing the fear minimizes the cause and effect, and suggests that the fear of the women is a matter of chance, and certainly not anything we could predict or grapple with. It is an odious phrasing, Robert’s protestations of textual lack of evidence notwithstanding. If Alex wants to get a different reaction from his readers, perhaps he can clarify what he’s trying to say by re-phrasing, since his words don’t appear to mean, to the readers, what he chose them to mean.
Grace
What Grace has said in the final paragraph of #58 is what I struggled to convey in an awfully worded response that I didn’t post.
Thank you for clearly communicating my thoughts about “just happens” and the chasm between the first & second clauses. It’s a relief to know I’m not the only one who noticed that.
You’re welcome, Jake! I’m glad that I was able to help. It took me awhile to work out why that phrase struck me so negatively. I’m not sure what to make of that, but it interests me.
Grace
Grace @ 57 – I completely agree. That’s the thing; emotional reactions are hard to quantify in an objective way. Charles’ apparent theory that I disbelieve in the existence of social science to the contrary, we can gather a lot of information about people’s stated level of fear, or their empirical reactions to scenarios, or what have you, but it is very hard for us to say “X% of American women are afraid of rape at a level Y, objectively defined in such-and-such a fashion.” Your fear is my steely resolve is Ampersand’s stoned indifference; it’s just about possible to get a solid idea of what someone we’re close to feels and how that relates to our own emotional responses, doing it for strangers is well-nigh impossible. We can gather crap-tons of subjective reports, but making it into an objective measure is very hard.
That in turn makes it hard to definitively prove the extent (I wouldn’t say the existence) of rape culture, and makes (in my view) Alex’s dichotomization a reasonable inquiry. As I explicitly said (though apparently in Sanskrit runes), a lot of women say they ARE afraid and their fear does not seem unreasonable from my perspective – but the possibility that the fear is overstated in their mind (however uncomfortable to discuss) is not automatically crazy. (You seem to think, for example, that my grandma is fooling herself or me and really is/was afraid.)
People get shit wrong all the time; I am apparently wrong to not be even a little bit afraid of being raped, and other men who I think feel the same way are apparently also misguided. If the fear is grossly overstated, then the “rape culture” theory has to adjust to explain why (in my view that explanation would likely make the theory even stronger – “rape culture even trains women to have an exaggerated fear of rape given actual prevalence of this crime, so that the male advantage deriving from the fear is magnified”, or something along those lines); if the fear is right on target or should “logically” be higher, then the existing “rape culture” theory is buttressed by that data.
In conclusion, perhaps I’m wrong about “just happens” and Alex’s intended meaning. It has been known to occur. Maybe there is a predispositional question in play; if you strongly identify with the victims of this crime then any discussion using language that could imply dismissal is going to stand out like a sore thumb, if you are more abstracted from the question then you don’t go there and it seems odd that others would. Alex is probably the person who can best clarify what his statement meant, and if it turns out that I was way off base, mea culpa.
You can answer in general if you think it’s appropriate. I am not attempting to provide an exception-proof all-inclusive definition, of an extremely complex and weighty subject, in a single blog post. I don’t think you’re expected to, either.
OK, then. They seem true to me. So either I’m factually wrong, you’re factually wrong, or one/both of us is subjectively interpreting things differently.
The context that we’re discussing, which would be, say the context of things equivalent to “avoiding men because they are more likely to rape you,” (which you appear to support,) “avoiding black men in a certain age group because they are more likely to kill you” (which you appear not to support,) or some sort of equivalent context.
OK. So we have some agreement here. What, then, is the distinction between doing that (which both of us seem to think is OK) and avoiding a group of young black men because you believe the higher crime rates to be accurate (which you seem to think is not acceptable, unless I’m misreading you?) Is it that “young” does not bother you as a class but “black” does, or is it a factual issue of risk?
Well, sure. We can always define NON-acceptable things. But that is not meaningful. Neither of dispute that there are limits on both of our worldviews: even if I’m biased towards more neutral processes (the “justice” model) and you’re biased towards more neutral outcomes (the “fairness” model) it’s still obvious that there are plenty of things where I accept that an unequal process is needed, and where you accept that an unequal outcome is acceptable. The question is the definition of the boundaries, not of the things that are really outside the boundaries.
Of course not. (Well, sort of…. depending on the reasons that people are promoting shelters for men, and/or depending on how they’re competing for government funds, it can turn into a debate about worth. And over the years I’ve certainly seen more than a few posts–not here–in which the competition for limited resources on behalf of men was called sexist, in a “men are usually the perps and should not detract from women, who are the primary victims; doing so is sexist” way.)
But of course, GENERALLY promoting men’s interests in the manner that feminists generally promote women’s interests (and in which social justice folks generally promote the interests of other groups) would almost certainly be called sexist. MRA groups are sexist. Opening a men’s studies department; starting scholarships for men; opposing feminist groups which selectively advance the interests of non-men over those of men; taking political positions which consider gender and which favor men; forming political groups based on maleness; arguing for changes of laws (such as divorce and rape) that would favor the side that is mostly male….
Surely you can’t debate that those things are generally (albeit appropriately, in my view) referred to as “sexist,” right? And surely you don’t debate that the equivalent actions are not?
Sure. But that’s not what this thread has been talking about.
People who talk about broad social issues tend to try to avoid protests by using the “it’s not about you” or the “of course it’s not individual” comments, sure. But people who oppose those broad social issues are generally referring to the individual in the end.
Look at some of the basic arguments of social justice re racism. These aren’t straw men (if you think they are, please tell me which ones.)
-racism has created an imbalance in favor of whites and against POC.
-correcting racism requires selectively transferring benefits to POC which need to primarily come from whites;
-if whites as a class don’t support or permit or enable selective benefits to POC that is racist;
-if individual whites don’t support the necessity and moral correctness or the transfer of benefit that is racist;
Do you suggest that you can hold all of those above view and ALSOmaintain
-if individual whites don’t participate in the group goals; or believe that they individually should not take any action; or that they individually should not be personally affected by the general transfer of benefit, then that is perfectly OK.
I don’t think so. So either I’m misreading you or I’m wondering if you’re reading the same things I’m reading. because that last part after the “but” sure as heck doesn’t seem to be in the social justice model.
besides, in a logical sense it seems not realistically severable and I have not seen it. Asserting that you should not be held responsible or that you are not bound by someone else’s collective guilt is definitely tagged as racist. Disputing an label of racism is (if you’re white and the label is applied by a POC) generally, racist. Hell, even taking the wrong position on the intricate balance between the competing goals of “treat everyone equally” and “make everyone equal through biased processes” w/r/t things like AA or set-asides is often called racist.
How can you suggest that collective action is necessary and also excuse an individual failure to join the collective for any reason, and/or an individual decision to oppose the collective?
Oh, I can certainly concede that surreptitiously failing to take any positive action isn’t a target, but “hiding” isn’t really relevant. But asserting that you have no personal obligation to do so? Worse yet, asserting that the class of people to which you belong has no personal obligation to do so? Racist, for sure.
Well, sure, except it’s not.
Since when are we talking about the people posting on this thread? But that said, sure.
OK, here’s 10 minutes of research, which is all I have time to do right now.
However, I’ll point out that your response is primarily aimed at telling me why my questions are stupid or pointless or ignorant, as opposed to answering them in any sort of good faith attempt. Which–dude, we’re both highly intelligent and educated people, albeit with very different political beliefs. You seem to often respond to foundational criticism by calling it ignorant. And that (deliberately?) makes it almost impossible to have a discussion about the assumptions or concepts that are underneath your beliefs, since it seems that I’d have to first accept them (even though I don’t!) in order to talk about them with you.
So, in no particular order, a quick research tour of some random assertions from my posts:
Re the wide variety of things which are or should be viewed as rape, a search for “Sex without affirmative consent is rape” might lead you places like yes means yes or, on this blog, a post where you wrote
I’m not sure if you’re seriously debating the general concept that “disempowered groups argue that they can define things on behalf of majority groups but not the reverse,” which is a core part of my point. Do you really think that’s a straw man? There’s plenty of that in social justice and feminism–for an easy example, Google “women don’t lie about rape” or And there’s plenty of that on this blog, tool, such as this post’s “You, a white man, do not get to decide for women or people of color where sexism and racism happen or where they happen together. Not your experience and not your call.” (This is a basic example of the concept.)
Or, for a different example, that men cannot participate in defining what constitutes rape, but should “shut up and listen.”
See above. Those are VERY restricted Google searches, since I primarily pulled things with a “site:” restriction to this blog and since I didn’t spend much time on it. There is a lot more out there.
If you think there’s a particular straw man, please list it.
I’ve said some things before on this blog which are similar to what I’m saying now, and have been roundly condemned for it by some posters. But still, here goes.
As it happens I am in a suburb of Amsterdam for a few weeks, staying with family. For some reason not known to me Amsterdam and its suburbs, which are such lovely places in so many ways, are also sort of a world mecca of pickpockets.
So yesterday we took the kids, ages 12 and 9, in to Zaandaam to buy new sneakers for them, to pump up my cell phone, and other such errands. Zaandaam is a pretty sizable place, much bigger than the town where my daughter and her family live. Not as big as Amsterdam, which is a genuinely big city. Anyway I rather carelessly had an envelope of euros, cash only, in my pocket (credit cards do not work here), and when we got home it wasn’t there any more.
I unhesitatingly – now more than ever, believe me! – condemn pickpockets! They are vile and detestable people, a blight on the landscape, who make life in these cities a constant harassment. They should all be locked up if not worse.
But I was careless too. OK I “shouldn’t have to” keep my money in a more secure location. But I do have to do that, and I didn’t.
I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m blaming the victim of a crime here, especially since the victim in this particular case is me. But it’s a dangerous world out here people. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but it is. Take care.
While we women are crusading to put the blame for rape where it belongs (on the rapist, duh, it’s not rocket science) unless we’d all like to be victims of rape (or theft) in the meantime, as the case may be, let me urge us all to be careful. Prudent. I mean, don’t make it easy for them, right? Of course I have the moral and legal right to carry my cash wherever I want, right?? Totally! Pinned to my nose if I like!! That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, at least not in Zaandaam.
Don’t get drunk with strangers and go to secluded places with them and so on. Get to know men before you trust them, which means, more than one evening’s conversation. Certainly you have the right to do whatever you want! But it may not be a good idea. Stay out of situations where the baddies have a free hand, and put your cash securely deep deep in your rucksack and zip up the pocket while you’re at it. Nothing is perfect, you can still be raped by someone you rightly trust, and money is never safe anywhere. But try to tilt the odds in your favor.
And if some guy is offended when you don’t trust him and refuse to be put into a situation where he could do something he shouldn’t? (Or I clutch my purse close to my side in a crowd?) (Hey can you dig it I’m one of the good guys!) Too bad. welcome to the non-optimal world the rest of us live in.
You’re not wrong about the raw facts of the matter, Susan. (Although some of your advice, like ‘get to know the guy before you trust him’, is a bit useless for the large number of assaults that come from people who were trusted.)
But I’ve rather come around to the view that “put your head down and defend against the immediate threats” (while totally understandable when adopted as a personal survival mechanism – people have to be free to make that call for their own lives themselves) is not a good counsel for society. Leaving aside the arguable tacit endorsement or acceptance that such strategies give the ongoing prevalence of the crime, I think maybe that the societal message ought to be, “if at all possible, spit in their eye”. Sometimes – by no means always, but sometimes – the appropriate reaction to a threat is not harm minimization, but full-bore Leroy Jenkins jingoistic asshole fury. Because, though potentially perilous to the people doing it, it’s also perilous to the bad actors and maybe they need to feel some peril now and again, to encourage them to knock it off.
Again – not putting the onus on women who are afraid to act radically counter to that feeling…but also thinking that the people who do the opposite might be making a huge contribution to improving the overall situation. You mentioned the pickpockets. I am reminded of my former father-in-law’s visit to Italy, where he was pickpocketed on a plaza in a little hill town and (miracle of miracles) felt the motion and perceived the threat. He whirled around, sprinted – at age 67 – towards the very surprised and very alarmed Italian yute, and then tackled him down a flight of stairs. Both men ended up in the hospital, nothing too serious. The police chastised him; his wife was livid. But when they went back to that plaza, people swarmed them to pat him on the arm and gave him admiring nicknames. The locals were sick of the pickpocket being the dominant force in the ecosystem, and gloried in seeing someone try to beat the crap out of one. My mother-in-law warmed up to the response too, social butterfly that she is.
Not everybody should be expected to do pickpocket beating duty, but perhaps the occasional volunteer ought to be valorized a bit.
@Robert
First, my head is not “down.” I don’t think that exercising ordinary caution is putting my head “down.” I live in California, where pedestrians pretty much have the right of way regardless; however, I am not putting my head down when I look around before I cross the street, even in a crosswalk on the green light, where I am indisputably in the right. I still look. I’m being prudent. (Notice that I’m not advocating staying indoors at all times. Just looking around me.) In a perfect world I could walk around blindfolded, but we do not live in a perfect world. I even have the right to walk around blindfolded if I wish to.
However, I don’t think that getting run over is going to improve society. And even if it would, really, I’d rather not.
If I look around me when I walk might I get run over anyway? Certainly. Also if I put my wallet in a safer place than my pocket I might get robbed; if I exercise discretion over which men I trust under what circumstances I might get raped anyway, as you point out. Being careful just tilts the odds in my favor; it is not a get-home-free card. Reckless drivers and thieves and rapists are bad people who should assuredly be corralled and punished.
We teach our little children to “look both ways” before they cross the street. I think that’s good advice. It is not bad for society to teach them this. We can actually do both: exercise prudence, and punish the bad guys. It is not a crime to be imprudent. I have the right to be imprudent. However it is…imprudent.
(The trouble with pickpockets, as opposed to reckless drivers and rapists, is that you very seldom even know who they are, or discover the crime until much later. But congrats to your father-in-law, who was luckier, and who did the right thing about it!)