site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29974 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Or on your first day in the job at some point you could raise an eyebrow at the invitation to bathe naked with your new boss, as well.

Gotta say, this isn't a good look from him. It sounds like he didn't do anything illegal but he sure did take advantage of a young, inexperienced woman who was both star-struck from meeting a rich celebrity and also working for him. She had very little sexual experience and he was instantly leading her into some sort of intense sub/dom thing.

This is the sort of thing where I think "me too" actually makes sense. He doesn't deserve any legal repurcussions but I'm OK with trashing his public reputation over this. Especially since it apparently wasn't just this one woman but at least 14 according to his wife (herself a famous feminist celebrity).

you know how the internet likes to take old-fashioned words and re-use them? Words like "lewd" and "grinch" and "ruse?" I wish we could do that with "cad." It's the perfect word for the modern age. A guy who didn't actually do anything illegal but still behaved immorally towards women.

I can't help but disagree here. Lots of 21-year-olds like kinky sex. Not to mention with a celebrity! WhT a bonus! Where's the immorality?

It seems pretty clear from the fact that this is coming up at all that she didn't like it. It is not, at all, difficult to imagine a boss pressuring his 21 year old domestic servant girl into sexual activities she didn't really want to do. This is not an uncommon scenario, and our prior for twenty one year old nannies having sex with their married bosses is that the poor girl probably didn't want to do it.

Look, he's not fucking groupies off IG and then ghosting- that's deplorable behavior, but the girl shouldn't have gone along with it. This is a case where it was simply not a realistic expectation that she could have held out under pressure, and that comes with extra ability to judge him for misbehavior. Like the comment below, he's clearly a cad in that he's not doing anything illegal, or at least not seriously illegal(if he makes a habit of this as it seems like he has been then he's almost certainly given alcohol to a twenty year old) but it's clear that he's doing things that are dickish.

I agree that we should bring back "cad" as a condemnatory term.

This whole case makes me see nothing but bad faith on all sides. Lefties want women to be able to retroactively retract consent for sex that days, months, or years later they decided they didn't like. Righties don't want men to be held responsible ever for wanting to get their dicks wet, not even to the degree that we might say "Tut tut" and socially shun him. Or I guess we can do that but if and only if we also agree that women are property.

( * Not all lefties, not all righties. Just the ones who seem to have very strong feelings about whether it's okay to criticize either Neil Gaiman's life choices or his ex-lovers'.)

Righties don't want men to be held responsible ever for wanting to get their dicks wet, not even to the degree that we might say "Tut tut" and socially shun him. Or I guess we can do that but if and only if we also agree that women are property.

You cannot accuse a man of trespassing upon a public road.

While hilarious, this is wildly inappropriate to say under most any circumstances imaginable. These are people going through the same struggles we all go through.

If it was public, you wouldn't be accused. Tough luck.

People aren't roads, as much as some might wish otherwise. Even the past was rarely as Dread Jim and his fanboys represent it.

It does clarify the conversation when people are willing to express themselves in a straightforward manner.

Righties don't want men to be held responsible ever for wanting to get their dicks wet, not even to the degree that we might say "Tut tut" and socially shun him. Or I guess we can do that but if and only if we also agree that women are property.

"Righties" is doing a lot of work here.

Andrew Tate and Ben Shapiro look similar to their outgroups but have totally different values.

One group wants infinite women to abuse and so don't want to be blamed.

Another group simply thinks you can't fix this shit the way feminists want (blaming men and creating cyclical witch hunts) and so you have to let people face the consequences of their actions and learn the hard way. Given that women are the selective sex, they have to deal with it and be circumspect. They don't really admire or like men like Tate but those men will always exist and are easier to check when women are onboard.

It's not significantly different from their view on say...welfare. No one made you get that kid. You're not foisting the problems unto us.

I mean, Amadan was specifically agreeing with me. Not all righties was kind of implied.

Man, you read my clarification, right? And yet still I use the word and get the inevitable (another cursed word) "Not all righties." I know not all righties.

Of course I know most "righties" don't literally want to make women property. I know there's a large gulf between your first group and your second. I am talking about the first, and for all their verboseness about the dangerous power of female sexuality and how all ancient societies wisely "controlled" it, yes, what they really want is infinite women to abuse without blame. They pretend that the social controls they advocate are about preventing abuse of women, but just as they will be quick to point out that men will always act stupid about sex regardless of social rules, they also pretend that this doesn't apply to women as well, and therefore their rules just create a permanent class of "legal to abuse" women (a class into which any woman can fall if she strays outside the controlling structure).

Man, you read my clarification, right? And yet still I use the word and get the inevitable (another cursed word) "Not all righties." I know not all righties.

True, sorry. I guess I got triggered and instinctively went into my version of "the Democrats aren't left wing!"

Yes. Put me in group b.

  1. Men should not engage women in mutually enjoyable sexual relationships that the men have reason to believe the women might regret later

  2. Men should not treat women paternalistically

You can consistently pick only one. I am probably less conservative than many in that while I find the old man/young woman thing viscerally wrong, I don't believe my gut determines morality.

Or I guess we can do that but if and only if we also agree that women are property.

Isn't treating women as though they are responsible for their own actions the opposite of saying they're property? This is what's so incoherent about the feminist approach to this issue, it's positively patriarchal, which is the only reason you can get away with telling people "I don't even believe that you don't actually believe Neil Gaiman did anything wrong".

If you think that these women are probably making bad faith accusations about consensual relationships and Neil Gaiman is probably a creep who shouldn't have been messing with them, then we don't really disagree.

Fair enough.

Righties don't want men to be held responsible ever for wanting to get their dicks wet, not even to the degree that we might say "Tut tut" and socially shun him.

I am entirely happy with men being held responsible for wanting to get their dicks wet in pretty much every circumstance. I'm even entirely happy if the social theory used to achieve this end isn't one I believe in, so long as it doesn't impose a bunch of other results I also disagree with. I'd bet ya Hlynka would agree as well. I don't disagree that there's a bunch of people, here and elsewhere, commonly percieved as "righties" who would disagree with us vociferously, but it seems to me that they often disagree vociferously with a lot of my other opinions as well. This is the sort of thing that drives the Hlynka thesis. Obviously the thesis is both fraught and inflammatory, but it's the way these sort of out-of-step moments keep recurring that gives it such endurance.

Precisely this. I'd say that a bunch of people in one vein reject the dominant social theory entirely, in part because of how poorly it even talks about such situations. It's mostly the "righties" who have otherwise accepted many of the underlying premises of the dominant social theory who end up driven to taking the position that men should never be held responsible.

The dominant social theory can marshal a standard set of what I believe to be poor arguments in favor of not holding responsible any particular group of people they would like to indemnify. With those same tools, such folks would like to simply apply the same class of results to men. They've bought the premises, the worldview, and are like folks who argued about how best to apply the principles of Lysenkoism to some particular set of circumstances. That they are said to be "on the right-wing of Lysenkoism" is pretty immaterial. One could view it as them all arguing in bad faith... or one could just believe that they're all just starting from the same completely whack set of premises such that their weird little sectarian scuffle appears utterly bizarre from the outside.

Taking a "both sides wrong" stance here, as usual, supports the side that is actually more wrong. Which is to say the ones accusing Neil Gaiman of misconduct because they regretted the relationship long after the fact. Neil Gaiman need only be "held responsible" if what he did is wrong, and he's only wrong by a conservative view that no one involved held.

Using your pure conflict theory approach, only one side can ever be wrong and the other side must be 0% wrong. Which is both morally and logically wrong.

"Both sides wrong" doesn't mean both sides equally wrong. I have seen no allegations that make me think Neil Gaiman should be arrested, and I'm not in favor of "cancelling." But saying he's a skeevy perv you probably wouldn't want your 21-year-old daughter going to work for as a nanny? Yes, heavens forbid we so much as waggle a disapproving finger in a way that might grant some tiny bit of support to your political enemies.

As soon as you waggle that disapproving finger you are implicitly accepting the justice of anything done to him. Everything else is before the "but".

No, that is not how it works. I don't even believe that you don't actually believe Neil Gaiman did anything wrong. You have just identified his accusers as being your enemies, and fuck your enemies, therefore we must not admit Neil Gaiman might have done something wrong.

More comments

And what will be done to him? I'll wager nothing unjust.

I've been using Whoremonger a lot in conversation to refer to someone like Deshaun Watson. I like that it cuts through the "Is it her fault?" question and gets to the point: regardless of her behavior his is still blameworthy.

he's not doing anything illegal

I suspect it qualifies as workplace sexual harassment - which while not criminal is definitely illegal. The details of sexual harassment law differ by jurisdiction, but convincing your employee that her continued employment depended on saying "yes" qualifies almost everywhere.

(if he makes a habit of this as it seems like he has been then he's almost certainly given alcohol to a twenty year old)

If this happened in the UK, the drinking age in private homes is 5.

If this happened in the UK, the drinking age in private homes is 5.

I thought that was just if a relative was providing it, not in-general? EG in most US states it's legal to give your own child alcohol, but not someone else's.

The unrestricted drinking age in the UK is in any case 18; the US is unusually uptight about alcohol. (as usual)

lots of 21 year olds like heroin, too, but I would feel, you know, kind of bad if I was a rich guy trading them heroin for sex. Just because someone likes something in the moment doesn't mean it's ok to make an elaborate effort to set up an environment where they feel good temporarily but feel terrible in the long term.

Their long-term feelings are their responsibility, no? The idea that a man should refrain from enjoying a multi-year relationship with a woman, which she also enjoys at the time, because he somehow knows that she'll feel bad after, is rank paternalism.

If you really did somehow know... Then yeah. Build memories with others that they will cherish not memories they will regret. Intentionally exploiting the naive and shortsighted is rotten behavior.

But from everything I've seen in this thread it looks like Neil had every reason to believe he was building positive memories here. It brings to mind traumatic pains I myself have felt- the buyer's remorse of realizing that the things I did to bring other's happiness has brought them pain is just awful.

I'm just projecting here but- empathetically I imagine Gaiman as going through something similar. We have a duty to at least look back in post and imagine whether that pain might have been prevented. Might be preventable in the future.

because he somehow knows that she'll feel bad after, is rank paternalism.

The actual social conservative response to this is yeschad.jpg. The idea that a resource as socially valuable as access to prime-age pussy should be under the absolute control of people as irresponsible as teenage girls is obviously silly if you start from the basic moral perspective of pre-liberal conservatism. Under herder* culture patriarchy, fooling around with a girl in a way which leaves her as damaged goods is treated as a property crime against her father or husband (which might be forgiven if the perp was sufficiently high-status relative to the victim). Under Christian patriarchy, it is treated as spoiliation of a community resource and (in times and places where the system of Church-led community justice worked as intended) the remedy was making the man clear up the mess through some or all of shotgun-marrying the girl, paying her "dowry" to bribe the village herb into marrying her, or acknowledging and supporting the bastards.

Feminists, like tradcons, are clear-eyed that a functioning society needs to stop lotharios manipulating silly girls into relationships which, while good for the lothario, are net-negative for society. They just have to take some extra steps in order to obfuscate the hate-fact that most prime dating-age women are silly girls.

* The mods have asked me not to call it goatfucker patriarchy, so I won't.

* The mods have asked me not to call it goatfucker patriarchy, so I won't.

That's a rather straightforward example of apophasis you've got there.

because he somehow knows that she'll feel bad after, is rank paternalism.

The actual social conservative response to this is yeschad.jpg.

Obviously. But these women and their advocates aren't social conservatives and want it both ways; they don't want to be treated paternalistically, but they want to blame the men who didn't treat them paternalistically for not doing so.

I would be more than happy to slot him in with Joss Whedon as examples for the rule: "The more a male celebrity is feted for his feminism, the more likely he is to have done skeevy things with young women."

Indeed. We're at the point where I genuinely assume that any famous male who boldly adopts the 'feminist' mantle is going to be outed as having a sordid sexual history even if none of it is illegal or nasty to the degree that, say Weinstein's was. Its enough of a pattern that I can't help but update priors.

My favorite recent example being Dan Price who gained accolades as that guy who was a 'conscientious' CEO who tried to prove that paying employees more and executives less was a viable business practice and thus most corporations were exploiting their employees.

I do question how much of this is 'intentional' predatory behavior where they disguise their intent in order to lure young women in by appearing 'safe' to be around and able to offer sexual mentorship, vs. just an incidental outcome of modern social mores contradicting more basic instinctual drives.

I don't think most of them wear the feminism as camouflage strictly speaking.

I would guess its mostly because any male that genuinely followed certain feminist tenets such as "enthusiastic consent," letting the woman dictate all the terms, taking 'no' for an answer and refusing to engage with women who appear 'vulnerable' makes you repellent to women's sexual desires. So those few famous men who actually keep those tenets are probably having fewer encounters with women in general which just means they're less likely to catch an accusation.

And these guys are getting access to women by the truckload due to their status, and if they want to get laid they have to act like a masculine 'alphas' in these interactions, which means pushing boundaries and treating women's stated desires as suggestions rather than ironclad edicts so as to actually arouse her interest. The contrast between their publicly stated values and persona and their private conduct is less hypocrisy and more switching 'roles' to what the women are actually looking for once mutual interest is established.

So famous feminist males are getting access to females in either case, but those who seriously adhere to those rules are less likely to get laid (and less likely to get Me-tooed) than those who know (or figure out) they can discard those rules when a woman finds him attractive.

‘Preaches virtue in public but realises they can get away with vice privately’ is pretty much the classic definition of hypocrisy though.

I do question how much of this is 'intentional' predatory behavior where they disguise their intent in order to lure young women in by appearing 'safe' to be around and able to offer sexual mentorship, vs. just an incidental outcome of modern social mores contradicting more basic instinctual drives.

From an external perspective those are pretty much the same thing. I think you’re right in at least some cases, but that sounds awfully like those men are deluding themselves into believing what’s convenient to believe at any given moment.

If they do it once and are horrified that they fell to temptation, okay. But otherwise they implicitly know that what they say about how men and women interact is a lie, and they are choosing not to think about it too hard, all the while coming down heavily on other men.

I think one can end up constructing a mostly cohesive internal narrative where the context of what they're preaching as social norms and the context of what you're doing in individual interaction can be considered different enough that there's no actual contradiction of words and behavior.

For a very rough example, you can imagine someone who is a staunch anti-gambling advocate, campaigns hard to keep gambling and similar vices out of their town and state, to keep kids from engaging in gambling activities, etc. And yet takes their yearly trip to Vegas and goes on a moderate gambling spree while there, and justifies in on the idea that it's fine to do gambling when you go to Las Vegas but you are still against its spread and consider it, overall, a social ill.

Its worth noting that the reason the problem exists is because women often won't be publicly honest about what they actually find attractive and actually want from males when interacting with them.

Its the collision of female-driven social standards with the female-driven desire to get high status males to give them attention. Hard to satisfy both at once, where attractive males give attention to women but only within the (boring) socially permissible ways.

Okay, that's oversimplifying, but if you frame it like that, a famous man who is preaching the female-preferred social standards AND engaging in the female-preferred behaviors when dealing with a romantic partner is still being consistent as to the female perspective.

because women often won't be publicly honest about what they actually find attractive and actually want from males when interacting with them.

But if that's true, and our hypothetical feminist knows it's true, then he has to choose between being honest vs. being a black-and-white 'if she doesn't say yes, she's saying no' feminist. If you believe that women sometimes want men to be a little pushy, you cannot reasonably call for men to be punished for trying it on with a girl they legitimately think is into them. In practice, these people are hypocrites. They act as if the world is one way in public, they act entirely differently in private, and they profit.

a famous man who is preaching the female-preferred social standards AND engaging in the female-preferred behaviors when dealing with a romantic partner is still being consistent as to the female perspective.

If you're intending this as an explanation for why a woman being pursued by a feminist celebrity doesn't smell a rat, fair enough. You may well be right. But the man is still a lying hypocrite.

I have a different theory for why feminist men often have wild sexual histories.

Feminists by definition progressives. Feminists are generally sex-positive. Feminists, in mainstream feminism, see casual sex as perfectly acceptable and even empowering for women.

This means that, all things considered, if you showed me a variation on that classic question on Linda the bank teller, and asked me whether a specific unknown person who had and approved of casual sex (regardless of gender) was either a feminist or opposed to feminism, I would say they were more likely to be a feminist.

Feminist men, being true believers in feminism, believe the same things about sexuality that feminist women do. They believe casual sex is perfectly acceptable and empowering for women, with there being no reason for anyone to judge a woman for having it or for the woman in question to feel ashamed.

Thus, feminist men believe a lot of things about society, sexuality, and women, that encourage them to engage in casual sex with them. It's not surprising that feminist men are more likely to have casual sex, and therefore more likely to have casual-sex-related scandals!

I don't believe that most male feminists are lying, or using feminism as cover for their misdeeds. I think most are sincere. And their sincerity is actually damaging, because the belief system they're sincere about is false!

I also think this has to do with a lot of male feminists — the ones who are explicitly described that way, not normie dudes who endorse feminism like Chris Evans — being nerds, part of nerd culture.

Nerd culture, if you’re at all familiar with it, is filled with horny sex freaks. It’s also filled with a lot of awkward introverted weirdos who don’t communicate well. And many of these people are the same people. This is a good recipe for misunderstandings and miscommunications around sex. As well as crazy, out of the norm sex choices that people end up regretting.

Edit: It occurs to me that I wasn't clear enough in what I said here. My point is not that we should be conducting shame festivals against promiscuous women or strapping scarlet letters on people, that's not what I'm talking about. My point is that there are real and enduring sex differences in how the sexes experience, desire, and remember casual sexual encounters. I believe casual sex is destructive for men as well as women. But it's clear to me that women desire it much less, enjoy it much less, and often recall it with intense negative emotion, even if they don't believe they were taken advantage of. They don't like it as well as men. They see its destructive power in a way men tend not to. The big lie, the false belief of feminism that I'm criticizing here, is the idea that it's empowering for women and the only reason why people don't think so is patriarchal social customs that can be destroyed through ideology. That's simply not true. This stuff is dug deep down in the sex differences between men and women.

Aye. I think "weird nerds aren't real people" is the most important lesson I picked up from the 2010s.

When you only interact with a group online, you (or I) default to listening to them. All that feminism etc drama gave me enough exposure to notice what kind of people it all was.

Wasted a lot of time trying to make sense of nearly subhuman creeps...

Less of the booing, please.

Some people just aren't worth the attention. Calling a beard a beard was another important lesson.

I can see why you blocked me.

  • -20

Dude. You've been told and told. Against my better judgment, this comment just seems too petty to permaban you over it, but I'm giving you a 1-day ban because there was absolutely no point in posting this. If @urquan blocked you then he can't read it, so all you're doing is letting everyone else know "I really want to fight this guy but he won't let me."

The contrast between their publicly stated values and persona and their private conduct is less hypocrisy and more switching 'roles' to what the women are actually looking for once mutual interest is established.

Male feminist code-switching :skull_emoji:

Yeah, there is some selection bias. We hear less about famous male feminists who privately treat women as equals in agency and accountability getting #MeToo’d, because they get laid less—if at all—in the first place.

In fairness, we do occasionally hear stories about evangelical(I'm using this as a general term for socially conservative American Christians because that's basically what it means in practice) men treating their women well. Some of these are kissy-face stories about a sportsball player's loving marriage and the lengths he goes to to reassure his wife he's not cheating like all his teammates, some of these are about Mike Pence, but it doesn't seem like there's any equivalent among male feminists.

This is the sort of thing where I think "me too" actually makes sense.

It would make sense if we had any semblance of coherence in the rules governing the relations between the sexes, but you can't do this "all bets are off, only consent counts" free-for-all, bash people for "taking advantage of" inexperienced women, as you're declaring anyone claiming there are differences between men and women to be sexist.

who is "you?" me? I didn't make the rules. No one does, it's a massive freewheeling anarchy. Let's just look on the bright side and be happy that it has some positive benefits, even if overall I hate feminism and anything related to it.

Besides the reporter who gets a pelt, who is this benefiting? Who gains in the long run?

Many high status men will continue to sleep with young women regardless , many aren't as public-facing and woke as Gaiman so have less to fear from this particular form of reactive punishment. (Andrew Huberman just had a recent case of "hell hath no fury" journalism and he just...ignored it) Many women like this will probably continue playing these games, come to regret it and they'll never get even that brief moment of vindication when stories like this going viral before having to go back to their anonymous lives.

It certainly makes no difference to the great mass of humanity if a rockstar discovers that 19 y/o groupie isn't as easy a target as they assumed.

This is akin to saying that there're "positive benefits" if you burn someone's mother-in-law as a witch and she turned out to be absolutely awful at PTA meetings. It's not a benefit, it's a coincidence. If it was a benefit, it wouldn't be anarchy.

Hopefully the positive benefit would be that one fewer young woman suffers emotional distress from getting pumped and dumped by an older celebrity. It's hard to measure that benefit, because it's hard to see "could have been a victim, but wasn't, thanks to a well-functional society" but it's still there.

Alternatively, fuck it, let's just give all our young women to the upper class in a giant harem, like the ottoman empire of old. The rest of us can be eunuchs or die in foreign wars. That sounds like a great society!

It's hard to measure that benefit, because it's hard to see "could have been a victim, but wasn't, thanks to a well-functional society" but it's still there.

Where is this "well-functioning society"? I thought we were talking about anarchy?

I think you're thinking of this as sexual Bukelism: we shoot all the gangsters and, yes, sadly some innocents will be caught in the crossfire but then kids can go back to playing in the yards. No, it's more like gangs killing people for wearing the wrong colors, or the wrong brand. It's disorganized, capricious and ultimately meaningless to most people.

None of the problems with sexual inequity will be solved by a woman trying to cancel a high status man who didn't treat her the way she wanted. The game will continue, with adjustments. In a sense, it's a reinforcement of the status quo; the "eunuchs" are already non-characters in this great drama.

What are you actually arguing in favor of, at this point? rich celebrity dudes should get a harem while the birth rate plummets? Or we all just kill ourselves in random gang warfare?

Alternatively, fuck it, let's just give all our young women to the upper class in a giant harem, like the ottoman empire of old. The rest of us can be eunuchs or die in foreign wars. That sounds like a great society!

Ukrainian men are close to living the dream you describe. Giving away their young women to thot around in night clubs and on Tinder abroad, and themselves potentially dying in a domestic war. Three cheers for male privilege!

right. i was being sarcastic, in case that wasn't clear. Ukraine sounds terrible to live in. For anyone, but especially for men right now.

who is "you?" me? I didn't make the rules. No one does, it's a massive freewheeling anarchy.

I don't think this is true. There are people who make the rules, though I accept you're not one of them. But you do seem to be supporting the rules, so I am addressing you.

Let's just look on the bright side and be happy that it has some positive benefits

It doesn't. The incoherence of the rules is causing massive damage to society, and I haven't seen any upside to it.

I don't know, what are "the rules" of society here? I don't even know anymore.

In the specific case of Neil Gaiman, "don't fuck the nanny" is both a well-known social rule, and the law of the land (as workplace sexual harassment). It isn't a difficult case.

I've dated in these sort of fanfiction-enthused circles, and whilst I agree it's something a lot of the girls with somewhat grow out of there's a lot of.. uh... tangled desires towards the Fifty Shades of Grey stuff that comes with limited romantic experience, exposure to older men and especially with people in some sort of fandom roles.

I agree he was cringe and should have known better, but I also feel that this is clearly a matter of retroactively revoked consent a decade later. I wouldn't want my daughter hanging out with him, but this is standard horny nerd stuff to me.

Also he and his wife had an open relationship and there's texts of them communicating about their various affairs.

a matter of retroactively revoked consent a decade later.

She was his employee. I have a policy of not reading salacious details beyond what is necessary to form judgement, but my wife tells me that the specific sex acts involved were such that the prior on "my boss made me do it" is higher than "I thought it was a good idea at the time". I don't think the sex was euvoluntary in the first place.

She was his employee.

There's a solid argument to be made that "my boss made me do it" is embezzlement, because it's personal gain for one of the employees on the company dime that should be buying the best person for the company, not the best ass for individual managers to benefit from (and judged for something far outside meritocratic performance, too).

Actually, I think that's the best lens under which to judge sex pests in the workplace outside of pound-me-too since it doesn't come off as pure selfishness by women-as-population (as this is an instance of a woman trying to create a crime out of thin air ex post facto) that way.

I'm not convinced that same concept applies to this kind of sole proprietorship (under which she was employed).

There's "if I refuse I will be black balled from acting forever" my boss made me do it. There is "I have to pay rent or get evicted tomorrow and my boss offers pay in advance exclusively for sex" my boss made me do it. Finally, there is "if I refuse I might have to apply to one of 100s other employers" my boss made me do it, and I really do believe an adult woman should and does have the agency to refuse that last kind of ultimatum.

I really do believe an adult woman should and does have the agency to refuse that last kind of ultimatum.

Empirically, they don't. I employ nannies, and I have had young women working in my house who would not have been able to say no to a well-executed "question expecting the answer yes". As well as the threat to employment (and housing for a live-in nanny) and the possibility of a bad reference (references are essential for childcare employment for obvious reasons), it is easy to add a plausibly-deniable implicit threat of violence. Plus 19-year-old girls just don't have as much agency as adult men.

Even if she did have the agency to say no, having to do so would be expensive in financial and reputational terms - particularly for a nanny who relocated to take a live-in role (as Gaiman's did, and so did some of mine). In general, managing the risk of shitty behaviour by a counterparty sometimes requires people to avoid trades that would be mutually beneficial. (This is why high-trust societies are richer than low-trust ones).

If it was common for men in my position to engage in quid-pro-quo sexual harassment of nannies, I wouldn't be able to hire nannies, and my wife would have to give up her freelance business, with a knock-on impact her clients' businesses. (She is one of <10 skilled technical writers in a niche subspecialism). Empirically, where quid-pro-quo sexual harassment is tolerated, it is common. So, with the greatest possible respect, Gaiman should FOAD. If the events happened as described, regardless of whether it was formally consensual, I would cheerfully hang him myself.

FYI your comment was presented to me for janitor duty, and as I read it I marked it as Good, until I got to your last two sentences calling for Gaiman's murder. That made me change my rating to Bad. You have great points and I think it's a shame you've ruined a good post with that ending.

I'm sorry - I wasn't intending to call for Gaiman's murder - I was trying to say that I favoured, in full knowledge of what it meant, a society where quid-pro-quo sexual harassment of employees was treated as a serious crime on a similar level to rape.

I suspect I have fallen foul of a difference between the cultural significance of hanging and nooses in American and British society - in the UK a noose is a symbol of excessively harsh laws, not vigilantism.

You should have said "hang him while wearing a silly wig", then it would be legal and morally in the clear.

I suspect I have fallen foul of a difference between the cultural significance of hanging and nooses in American and British society - in the UK a noose is a symbol of excessively harsh laws, not vigilantism.

Americans will absolutely use hanging or nooses in the same way('put him up against the wall' or for a very old southerner 'should go before the monitor'), it's just not politically correct because of neuroticism over potential references to lynching.

More comments

I might be in the minority perspective here, given Amadan's response, so please don't take my feedback as anything more than one person's opinion. Thanks for being receptive to it!

Ironically enough, it appeared for janitor evaluation because it got an AAQC (I think Zorba should fix the system so that AAQCs don't get flagged the same as "Reported").

Also fwiw, while we do frown on implicit threats or wishes for violence, context and tone matters. So I agree he could probably have omitted that last comment, but as a mod, I would not read it as "Calling for Gaiman's murder."

(I think Zorba should fix the system so that AAQCs don't get flagged the same as "Reported").

The potential Quality Contributions are the best part of janitor duty.

AAQC (I think Zorba should fix the system so that AAQCs don't get flagged the same as "Reported").

I kinda disagree, the blinding improves impartiality.

Appreciate the perspective.

Finally, there is "if I refuse I might have to apply to one of 100s other employers" my boss made me do it, and I really do believe an adult woman should and does have the agency to refuse that last kind of ultimatum.

Even from a libertarian point of view, that should be unacceptable under real world conditions. The "boss" probably isn't the CEO and if he fires someone for not having sex with him, that's a principal/agent problem; the boss's boss doesn't want him to fire people for this reason.

You'd need a situation where either 1) the boss runs the whole company and doesn't answer to anyone or 2) the people who the boss does answer to approve of the boss firing people for refusing to have sex with him. Furthermore, to avoid bait and switch (which is a form of fraud), having sex would have to be part of the job description. And the boss would not be permitted to claim that he fired the person for some reason other than refusal to have sex (though he could stay silent if he wished). This will never happen.

Even from a libertarian point of view, that should be unacceptable under real world conditions. The "boss" probably isn't the CEO and if he fires someone for not having sex with him, that's a principal/agent problem; the boss's boss doesn't want him to fire people for this reason.

That's a financial matter for the company, not a social or legal problem.

If the boss was pocketing some of the employee's paycheck under threat of firing, there would be no question that it's a legal problem. Using his position to take sex instead of cash is just a slight variation. It is not actually legal to rob your employees.

This is all fair. I'm talking more about the power imbalance part of the issue, not the libertarianism argument.

It sounds like you more-or-less agree with me? Except I'd go beyond "cringe" and say he was an asshole. Also I'm not concerned about his wife, but I do care about the string of women who consent and then end up badly emotionally hurt.

I agree, but like on the other hand I feel like 'weird dom-sub stuff with angsty older male artiste' is the female equivalent of falling in love with a stripper and nobody's cancelling strippers for taking advantage of impressionable young men.

"Stripper" is almost as low-status a title as it's possible to have, there's nothing left to cancel.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats