On the other hand, a topic that appears in a popular song is less taboo (less exotic) than a topic no one speaks about. The more people sing about it, the less unexpected is if someone does it. The evidence goes both ways, and this direction honestly seems stronger to me.
I think it is good to be sensitive about other people, societal norms etc., but too much of it makes a bias. Just like one does not become wise by reversing stupidity, one does not become fair by reversing unfairness. Trying to signal sensitivity may lead to finding the most offensive interpretation of everything people do. (An unrelated example: Recently in my country a political party was medially accused of racism because their pre-election billboard had a white background.) Then anyone who is not perfectly self-thought-policed, or just not signalling hard enough becomes one of the bad guys.
Back to the PUA example: I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment. So now that this norm was successfully defeated, I would say that it is rational to approach women with expectation that there is a non-zero probability that they would consent to sex without commitment. How high is the probability, that is hard to guess, it depends on many variables. I would guess that “being in a bar, accepting drinks from strangers” is an evidence in favor of this hypothesis. And I think most PUAs don’t believe that every woman will offer them sex without commitment. It is a long time since I read their websites, but I remember estimates like 1 in 10. The idea was to use the law of large numbers, and approach 10 women in one evening.
So, how not to strengthen the norms? Let’s say there is a norm saying “every X is Y”, and an older norm saying “no X is Y”. I believe that “some X are Y (and some X are not Y)”, and I am looking for someone who is “X and Y”. How exactly should I act so that my behavior cannot be interpreted as strenghtening either of the norms? Bonus points if the behavior will seem natural, because creepy behavior scares people away.
I think that some of the inferential distance we have is based on different concepts of what a norm is. You seem to think they are lists of rules that each person consciously examines to decide what to do. I agree that many norms work that way. By I also think there are norms that are not explicitly examined at the moment of decision-making, that essentially at the level of cognitive bias. The distinction between TimS-norms and cognitive bias is that bias are universal across all humans, while TimS-norms are culturally dependent and sometimes change over time. I think a significant amount of the differences between our conclusions on how to cause social change is based on this difference in our conceptions of norms.
I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment.
Feminists have taken different positions on this issue. The feminists of the 1870s didn’t reject that the social purpose of women was childrearing. They simply opposed involuntary motherhood (i.e. advocated for the accessibility of contraceptives for women). That was the first wave of feminism.
Nowadays, most active feminists are either second wave or third wave. Third wave feminism is more sympathetic to “sex positive feminism,” which endorses the position that female enactment of sexuality could benefit female autonomy. By contrast, second wave feminism generally endorses anti-pornography positions. I suspect that some of the differences in approaches coincides with the discussion we are having about whether norm transgression can (or does in this instance) reinforce a norm. Regarding PUA, sex positivity seems like it would have a lot fewer problems with it than Dworkin or I might.
On the other hand, a topic that appears in a popular song is less taboo (less exotic) than a topic no one speaks about. The more people sing about it, the less unexpected is if someone does it. The evidence goes both ways, and this direction honestly seems stronger to me.
I think it is good to be sensitive about other people, societal norms etc., but too much of it makes a bias. Just like one does not become wise by reversing stupidity, one does not become fair by reversing unfairness. Trying to signal sensitivity may lead to finding the most offensive interpretation of everything people do. (An unrelated example: Recently in my country a political party was medially accused of racism because their pre-election billboard had a white background.) Then anyone who is not perfectly self-thought-policed, or just not signalling hard enough becomes one of the bad guys.
Back to the PUA example: I thought feminists were previously opposing the norm that women should be having sex only with commitment. So now that this norm was successfully defeated, I would say that it is rational to approach women with expectation that there is a non-zero probability that they would consent to sex without commitment. How high is the probability, that is hard to guess, it depends on many variables. I would guess that “being in a bar, accepting drinks from strangers” is an evidence in favor of this hypothesis. And I think most PUAs don’t believe that every woman will offer them sex without commitment. It is a long time since I read their websites, but I remember estimates like 1 in 10. The idea was to use the law of large numbers, and approach 10 women in one evening.
So, how not to strengthen the norms? Let’s say there is a norm saying “every X is Y”, and an older norm saying “no X is Y”. I believe that “some X are Y (and some X are not Y)”, and I am looking for someone who is “X and Y”. How exactly should I act so that my behavior cannot be interpreted as strenghtening either of the norms? Bonus points if the behavior will seem natural, because creepy behavior scares people away.
I think that some of the inferential distance we have is based on different concepts of what a norm is. You seem to think they are lists of rules that each person consciously examines to decide what to do. I agree that many norms work that way. By I also think there are norms that are not explicitly examined at the moment of decision-making, that essentially at the level of cognitive bias. The distinction between TimS-norms and cognitive bias is that bias are universal across all humans, while TimS-norms are culturally dependent and sometimes change over time. I think a significant amount of the differences between our conclusions on how to cause social change is based on this difference in our conceptions of norms.
Feminists have taken different positions on this issue. The feminists of the 1870s didn’t reject that the social purpose of women was childrearing. They simply opposed involuntary motherhood (i.e. advocated for the accessibility of contraceptives for women). That was the first wave of feminism.
Nowadays, most active feminists are either second wave or third wave. Third wave feminism is more sympathetic to “sex positive feminism,” which endorses the position that female enactment of sexuality could benefit female autonomy. By contrast, second wave feminism generally endorses anti-pornography positions. I suspect that some of the differences in approaches coincides with the discussion we are having about whether norm transgression can (or does in this instance) reinforce a norm. Regarding PUA, sex positivity seems like it would have a lot fewer problems with it than Dworkin or I might.