I suspect that it’s worth mentioning sexuality as a special case specifically because our society treats sexual abuse as a separate and somewhat magical magisterium; you’re correct to note that the dynamic matters much more broadly than just with sex in particular, but if there is a problem here in the way the OP theorizes, it seems to me that it’s especially virulent in the domain of sexual assault.
Another way to say this is that not singling out sexual assault in particular makes this almost a … bait and switch? Like, you’d in practice be doing something like trapping people in a way that feels a little disingenuous, by first getting them to admit to a general conclusion and then springing it on them that it applies in this highly-charged, poor-epistemic-hygiene domain as well, ha ha!!
Or something. It feels like burying the lede, or failing to put your thesis up front, even though the argument is more elegant the way you want to make it. Something something the pragmatics of people’s actual attitudes toward/behaviors around sex in particular.
If we first figure out how things work in general, and then check whether the conclusion also applies to sex, we can find out how much is the same and how much is different. Maybe it is different a lot! But if we start with sex, then the conclusion “sex is different” is kinda already assumed.
I suspect that the real answer will include a lot of “people are different” and “it depends”. If one victim is traumatized, it does not necessarily mean that all must be. If one victim says is was no big deal for them, it does not necessarily mean everyone else would also be okay except for having been programmed by the society to react strongly. -- I felt the need to react, because it seemed to me that this debate had a vibe of “one victim said it was actually no big deal, therefore everyone who complains is… oversensitive; hey I am not blaming them, of course, I am only blaming the society that made them so sensitive!”
Context probably matters a lot; whether it was “it happened in a special situation, but I am no longer in that special situation so now I am safe” or “it happened out of the blue, it could happen anytime again” (or “it happened in a special situation, and I am still in that special situation”). Did it happen once or repeatedly? Was everything else okay, or was this just one bad experience among many? Was the environment supportive to me or to the aggressor? The important things may actually be subjective, such as “I feel responsible for what happened to me” or “it was clearly someone else’s fault”; where sometimes two people could interpret the same situation differently.
And I think the topic is worth exploring in general. I mean, life sucks (the first Buddhist noble truth), and we experience all kinds of not-optimal-experiences, some of them smaller, some larger, of different kinds. For some of those experiences, the attitude of the society is “for fuck’s sake, grow up and stop whining”, for others, it is “this is a horrible thing that should have never happened to you”. What is the exact rule that separates the unwanted experiences into these two heaps? Is there already a research on this?
(As an interesting example of this more general case, some rationalists disagree with the society in general on the topic of death—is it something that wise people need to accept and preferably find some way to see as a good thing; or is it a definitely bad thing that is merely too difficult to fix, but once we become able to do something about it, we definitely should? In the meanwhile, is it an infohazard to tell people that death is bad?)
For some of those experiences, the attitude of the society is “for fuck’s sake, grow up and stop whining”, for others, it is “this is a horrible thing that should have never happened to you”.
Let’s not forget that, to a normally socialized man, the latter carries an implicit “and you alone are at fault for not having been strong enough to stop your assailant in their tracks. You should be ashamed forever and have no business being alive”. Therefore, it may be more damning than the former.
The reason why sexual harm is (correctly) considered a serious case of harm distinct from other harms might be evolutionary—in ancestral environment, being physically injured or hurt some other way might’ve been much less of a predictor of that person’s future than being raped (and possibly also a predictor of a much less seriously bad future).
I suspect that it’s worth mentioning sexuality as a special case specifically because our society treats sexual abuse as a separate and somewhat magical magisterium; you’re correct to note that the dynamic matters much more broadly than just with sex in particular, but if there is a problem here in the way the OP theorizes, it seems to me that it’s especially virulent in the domain of sexual assault.
Another way to say this is that not singling out sexual assault in particular makes this almost a … bait and switch? Like, you’d in practice be doing something like trapping people in a way that feels a little disingenuous, by first getting them to admit to a general conclusion and then springing it on them that it applies in this highly-charged, poor-epistemic-hygiene domain as well, ha ha!!
Or something. It feels like burying the lede, or failing to put your thesis up front, even though the argument is more elegant the way you want to make it. Something something the pragmatics of people’s actual attitudes toward/behaviors around sex in particular.
If we first figure out how things work in general, and then check whether the conclusion also applies to sex, we can find out how much is the same and how much is different. Maybe it is different a lot! But if we start with sex, then the conclusion “sex is different” is kinda already assumed.
I suspect that the real answer will include a lot of “people are different” and “it depends”. If one victim is traumatized, it does not necessarily mean that all must be. If one victim says is was no big deal for them, it does not necessarily mean everyone else would also be okay except for having been programmed by the society to react strongly. -- I felt the need to react, because it seemed to me that this debate had a vibe of “one victim said it was actually no big deal, therefore everyone who complains is… oversensitive; hey I am not blaming them, of course, I am only blaming the society that made them so sensitive!”
Context probably matters a lot; whether it was “it happened in a special situation, but I am no longer in that special situation so now I am safe” or “it happened out of the blue, it could happen anytime again” (or “it happened in a special situation, and I am still in that special situation”). Did it happen once or repeatedly? Was everything else okay, or was this just one bad experience among many? Was the environment supportive to me or to the aggressor? The important things may actually be subjective, such as “I feel responsible for what happened to me” or “it was clearly someone else’s fault”; where sometimes two people could interpret the same situation differently.
And I think the topic is worth exploring in general. I mean, life sucks (the first Buddhist noble truth), and we experience all kinds of not-optimal-experiences, some of them smaller, some larger, of different kinds. For some of those experiences, the attitude of the society is “for fuck’s sake, grow up and stop whining”, for others, it is “this is a horrible thing that should have never happened to you”. What is the exact rule that separates the unwanted experiences into these two heaps? Is there already a research on this?
(As an interesting example of this more general case, some rationalists disagree with the society in general on the topic of death—is it something that wise people need to accept and preferably find some way to see as a good thing; or is it a definitely bad thing that is merely too difficult to fix, but once we become able to do something about it, we definitely should? In the meanwhile, is it an infohazard to tell people that death is bad?)
Let’s not forget that, to a normally socialized man, the latter carries an implicit “and you alone are at fault for not having been strong enough to stop your assailant in their tracks. You should be ashamed forever and have no business being alive”. Therefore, it may be more damning than the former.
The reason why sexual harm is (correctly) considered a serious case of harm distinct from other harms might be evolutionary—in ancestral environment, being physically injured or hurt some other way might’ve been much less of a predictor of that person’s future than being raped (and possibly also a predictor of a much less seriously bad future).