It may also be that the speaker is themselves uncertain. That is, I might have convincing and emotionally salient evidence of the former and less-convincing but still emotionally salient evidence of the latter, and therefore have high confidence in the former and lower confidence in the latter (and similarly low confidence in the negation of the latter). In that case, communicating more clearly won’t necessarily help you be sure which version I have in my mind… I have them both in my mind, to varying degrees.
Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?
Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?
There are thousands of ambiguities in natural language, but most of them don’t have a connotation that I am a criminal in disguise. If it becomes accepted uncritically, some day it could have negative consequences for me.
How would e.g. a black person feel about a habit of inserting sentences like “this criminal was a normal black person” whenever a crime done by a black person is dicussed?
But also women have a selfish reason to care. Imagine that as a heterosexual woman you want to have a partner, and you want to minimize the risk of being abused. Changing the society and the legal system helps, but that is a very slow process. You also want to reduce the chance that you specifically will choose an abusive partner. So here is a specific man, and he looks attractive.. how can you estimate the probability of future abuse? Is there any evidence available?
Believing that “all men are abusers (when given a chance)” suggests that no evidence exists; there are no red flags you could detect to reduce your chance of future abuse.
I believe that this is false; a fallacy of grey. While there is no 100% algorithm to find a man who won’t ever abuse you, there do exist some red flags, and by using them you can reduce the chance. An obvious example would be seeing the man behaving aggressively towards other people. (Some women ignore even this red flag.) I suspect that alcoholism may be another red flag; there are possibly more such red flags known. Discovering these red flags using statistics could be helpful.
Another thing I can do if I want to reduce the uncritical acceptance of the second version is to consistently use the first version myself, including when I interpret others (principle of charity, as you suggested), and make this explicit when it seems appropriate.
The set of situations in which I consider modeling my preferred use of language appropriate is much greater than the set of situations in which I consider it appropriate or useful to insist that other people change their language use to conform to it. But on reflection, I’m not sure where that judgment of appropriateness comes from or whether I endorse it.
That aside, I certainly agree that “all men are abusers (when given a chance)” is false for any interpretation of “abuser” and “chance” that doesn’t also make “all humans are abusers (when given a chance)” equally true.
Sure, you want to avoid ahead of time getting involved with an abuser.
But virtually all abuse stories I hear involve the woman ignoring early red flags, ignoring early pre- or mildly abusive behavior.
So a tremendous amount of abuse could be avoided without needing to predict the future. STOP relationships with people who are starting to abuse you, starting down that path.
I am not saying this to justify the abuser or abusive behavior. Rather to point out that in the puzzle of understanding abuse, understanding the abused’s staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle.
understanding the abused’s staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle
Could believing that “all men are abusers” contribute to staying with the one specific abuser? Such model provides only the choice between an abusive man or no man… where a different model would also provide an option of finding a non-abusive man.
(A data point about a slightly different situation: I knew a woman who believed that all men are alcoholics; the only difference is that some are honest about it and get drunk in public, the remaining ones are in denial and get drunk at home; and from these only two options, the former ones are more honest and more social. No surprise that all her partners were alcoholics. She complained about that, but instead about her bad choices, she complained about the bad male nature. Attempts by other women to convince her otherwise only led to responses like: “You are so naive to believe that. Just wait until you know your darling better and you will find out that he is an alcoholic too.”)
Could believing that “all men are abusers” contribute to staying with the one specific abuser?
Sorta, yes, no. Cart before the horse. I think some women who stay with abusers may rationalize it by believing that all men are abusers. Mostly rationality is used for “understanding” what is happening, not generally to prompt fundamental changes. When I was drinking I had a very warped idea of how much other people drank, I thought I was drinking a little more than them. When I stopped drinking, and especially when I stopped feeling driven to drink, I realized that a tremendous fraction of my world was barely drinking at all, and that even among drinkers, most of them were sober enough to read the bill at the end of the night (which I generally wasn’t on Fridays).
The evidence about other people’s drinking was always there, I discounted gigantically its difference from what I was doing. In most of modern life, the evidence for other men treating other women differently is there, the question is why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?
why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?
I’d start by looking at the conditions the two women grew up in.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard that there aren’t really good predictors of who will end up in an abusive relationship, but people from healthy backgrounds get out faster. Unfortunately, I don’t have a source.
I would hazard that many red flags—”obvious indicators of danger” are much more clearly seen in hindsight or out of context—these red flags might not have been quite so obvious to these women in abusive relationships. Using words like “ignoring” implies active agency on their part.
This type of statement strikes me as being a very likely reason “normal male” was used as a descriptor. If she allowed herself to be put on the stand for “failing” to see the warning signs, then, in a potential critic’s mind, she might be implicitly bearing partial blame, and thus her message might be safely ignored (not that I agree with that—I’m merely stating that this is a common attitude that could easily be expected. “She didn’t get out so she’s partly to blame for being abused.”) To avoid this, she hastened to point out that there was no way in which he did differentiate himself from other men, no “red flags” she’d missed.
More simply, a strong aversion to a common trend of blaming the victim and a desire to skip past that part of the critique.
I am making no statements about you in particular—merely that that’s an easy interpretation of your comment.
I would hazard that many red flags—”obvious indicators of danger” are much more clearly seen in hindsight or out of context—these red flags might not have been quite so obvious to these women in abusive relationships. Using words like “ignoring” implies active agency on their part.
I’m guessing the thing you would hazard is a guess? You would hazard a guess?
Personally, I am going by experience. The two women I know who were abused were abused REPEATEDLY before they left the abusive relationship. Now I don’t know what your relationships are like but I have never “accidentally” hit or even shoved a woman I was in a relationship with. But these women I know who were in abusive relationships overlooked being hit. They overlooked being hit again. I couldn’t tell you how many times they overlooked being hit, I have the impression it was a fair number, before the abuse that finally rose to the level of scaring the shit out of them, that made them realize they were risking their lives, happened, and they finally left the relationships.
So I am not hazarding a guess. I may be generalizing from a small data set, but it is not a guess. Of the two women who have been abused that I personally know, 100% of them overlooked at least two instances of violence against them by their significant other before finally leaving. And both of them were pretty frightened for their lives before they finally left, rather deliberately overlooking mere bruising and hitting.
I guess that in certain situations it can be hard to rebuff someone who’s maintained plausible deniability without feeling like an asshole.
This suggests that any woman is pretty much like any other woman, and it is the differing circumstance of the relationship that makes it hard for some women to leave abusive relationships.
I think it is extraordinarily more likely that some women get stuck in abusive relationships that other women would be out of there probably before abuse even started, let alone hanging around for the 3rd trip to the hospital.
This suggests that any woman is pretty much like any other woman, and it is the differing circumstance of the relationship that makes it hard for some women to leave abusive relationships.
That’s not what I meant; I meant that I suspect that in certain cases leaving a relationship is psychologically harder than it may look from the outside, especially if the abuse was turned up slowly boiling frog-style. I didn’t mean to say anything about the variances of distributions.
Because anybody speaking out against discrimination against themselves is automatically demanding it take the top priority, and men should just shut up and put up until it’s their turn.
and similarly low confidence in the negation of the latter [“Deep in their hearts, all men desire to torture women. Some of them are just too afraid of legal consequences.”]
On the off chance that you’re speaking personally rather than hypothetically (I hope not)… What??? FWIW, I am a man and, while I can’t see arbitrarily deep into my heart, I have no desire to torture women (or anyone else, actually) so far as I can see, and I seldom think about possible legal consequences of my actions. Now I might be lying about that (so you have to take my word for it), or maybe I do have such a desire but it’s so deep in my heart that I can’t see it (but how would you make that belief pay rent?), but still… I’d find it appalling that anyone would give a non-negligible probability that “Deep in their hearts, all men [emphasis as in the original] desire to torture women”, for any value of deep that wouldn’t make that statement useless-whether-true-or-false. (BTW, Gandhi was also a man, wasn’t he?)
That said, I also recommend that if you are going to spend very much time around women who have been severely traumatized by their experiences with abusive men, you prepare yourself to be appalled.
It may also be that the speaker is themselves uncertain. That is, I might have convincing and emotionally salient evidence of the former and less-convincing but still emotionally salient evidence of the latter, and therefore have high confidence in the former and lower confidence in the latter (and similarly low confidence in the negation of the latter). In that case, communicating more clearly won’t necessarily help you be sure which version I have in my mind… I have them both in my mind, to varying degrees.
Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?
There are thousands of ambiguities in natural language, but most of them don’t have a connotation that I am a criminal in disguise. If it becomes accepted uncritically, some day it could have negative consequences for me.
How would e.g. a black person feel about a habit of inserting sentences like “this criminal was a normal black person” whenever a crime done by a black person is dicussed?
But also women have a selfish reason to care. Imagine that as a heterosexual woman you want to have a partner, and you want to minimize the risk of being abused. Changing the society and the legal system helps, but that is a very slow process. You also want to reduce the chance that you specifically will choose an abusive partner. So here is a specific man, and he looks attractive.. how can you estimate the probability of future abuse? Is there any evidence available?
Believing that “all men are abusers (when given a chance)” suggests that no evidence exists; there are no red flags you could detect to reduce your chance of future abuse.
I believe that this is false; a fallacy of grey. While there is no 100% algorithm to find a man who won’t ever abuse you, there do exist some red flags, and by using them you can reduce the chance. An obvious example would be seeing the man behaving aggressively towards other people. (Some women ignore even this red flag.) I suspect that alcoholism may be another red flag; there are possibly more such red flags known. Discovering these red flags using statistics could be helpful.
True enough.
Another thing I can do if I want to reduce the uncritical acceptance of the second version is to consistently use the first version myself, including when I interpret others (principle of charity, as you suggested), and make this explicit when it seems appropriate.
The set of situations in which I consider modeling my preferred use of language appropriate is much greater than the set of situations in which I consider it appropriate or useful to insist that other people change their language use to conform to it. But on reflection, I’m not sure where that judgment of appropriateness comes from or whether I endorse it.
That aside, I certainly agree that “all men are abusers (when given a chance)” is false for any interpretation of “abuser” and “chance” that doesn’t also make “all humans are abusers (when given a chance)” equally true.
Sure, you want to avoid ahead of time getting involved with an abuser.
But virtually all abuse stories I hear involve the woman ignoring early red flags, ignoring early pre- or mildly abusive behavior.
So a tremendous amount of abuse could be avoided without needing to predict the future. STOP relationships with people who are starting to abuse you, starting down that path.
I am not saying this to justify the abuser or abusive behavior. Rather to point out that in the puzzle of understanding abuse, understanding the abused’s staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle.
Could believing that “all men are abusers” contribute to staying with the one specific abuser? Such model provides only the choice between an abusive man or no man… where a different model would also provide an option of finding a non-abusive man.
(A data point about a slightly different situation: I knew a woman who believed that all men are alcoholics; the only difference is that some are honest about it and get drunk in public, the remaining ones are in denial and get drunk at home; and from these only two options, the former ones are more honest and more social. No surprise that all her partners were alcoholics. She complained about that, but instead about her bad choices, she complained about the bad male nature. Attempts by other women to convince her otherwise only led to responses like: “You are so naive to believe that. Just wait until you know your darling better and you will find out that he is an alcoholic too.”)
Sorta, yes, no. Cart before the horse. I think some women who stay with abusers may rationalize it by believing that all men are abusers. Mostly rationality is used for “understanding” what is happening, not generally to prompt fundamental changes. When I was drinking I had a very warped idea of how much other people drank, I thought I was drinking a little more than them. When I stopped drinking, and especially when I stopped feeling driven to drink, I realized that a tremendous fraction of my world was barely drinking at all, and that even among drinkers, most of them were sober enough to read the bill at the end of the night (which I generally wasn’t on Fridays).
The evidence about other people’s drinking was always there, I discounted gigantically its difference from what I was doing. In most of modern life, the evidence for other men treating other women differently is there, the question is why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?
I’d start by looking at the conditions the two women grew up in.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard that there aren’t really good predictors of who will end up in an abusive relationship, but people from healthy backgrounds get out faster. Unfortunately, I don’t have a source.
Related TED talk: Leslie Morgan Steiner: Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave
I would hazard that many red flags—”obvious indicators of danger” are much more clearly seen in hindsight or out of context—these red flags might not have been quite so obvious to these women in abusive relationships. Using words like “ignoring” implies active agency on their part.
This type of statement strikes me as being a very likely reason “normal male” was used as a descriptor. If she allowed herself to be put on the stand for “failing” to see the warning signs, then, in a potential critic’s mind, she might be implicitly bearing partial blame, and thus her message might be safely ignored (not that I agree with that—I’m merely stating that this is a common attitude that could easily be expected. “She didn’t get out so she’s partly to blame for being abused.”) To avoid this, she hastened to point out that there was no way in which he did differentiate himself from other men, no “red flags” she’d missed.
More simply, a strong aversion to a common trend of blaming the victim and a desire to skip past that part of the critique.
I am making no statements about you in particular—merely that that’s an easy interpretation of your comment.
I’m guessing the thing you would hazard is a guess? You would hazard a guess?
Personally, I am going by experience. The two women I know who were abused were abused REPEATEDLY before they left the abusive relationship. Now I don’t know what your relationships are like but I have never “accidentally” hit or even shoved a woman I was in a relationship with. But these women I know who were in abusive relationships overlooked being hit. They overlooked being hit again. I couldn’t tell you how many times they overlooked being hit, I have the impression it was a fair number, before the abuse that finally rose to the level of scaring the shit out of them, that made them realize they were risking their lives, happened, and they finally left the relationships.
So I am not hazarding a guess. I may be generalizing from a small data set, but it is not a guess. Of the two women who have been abused that I personally know, 100% of them overlooked at least two instances of violence against them by their significant other before finally leaving. And both of them were pretty frightened for their lives before they finally left, rather deliberately overlooking mere bruising and hitting.
I guess that in certain situations it can be hard to rebuff someone who’s maintained plausible deniability without feeling like an asshole.
“I hear Russian borscht is the best. Have you ever had any?” “You must be a commie! Go away!”
EDIT: Or, for a less ridiculous example, see the paragraph starting with “Last of all” in the first post of that series.
This suggests that any woman is pretty much like any other woman, and it is the differing circumstance of the relationship that makes it hard for some women to leave abusive relationships.
I think it is extraordinarily more likely that some women get stuck in abusive relationships that other women would be out of there probably before abuse even started, let alone hanging around for the 3rd trip to the hospital.
That’s not what I meant; I meant that I suspect that in certain cases leaving a relationship is psychologically harder than it may look from the outside, especially if the abuse was turned up slowly boiling frog-style. I didn’t mean to say anything about the variances of distributions.
“This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me!”
Because anybody speaking out against discrimination against themselves is automatically demanding it take the top priority, and men should just shut up and put up until it’s their turn.
Totally.
On the off chance that you’re speaking personally rather than hypothetically (I hope not)… What??? FWIW, I am a man and, while I can’t see arbitrarily deep into my heart, I have no desire to torture women (or anyone else, actually) so far as I can see, and I seldom think about possible legal consequences of my actions. Now I might be lying about that (so you have to take my word for it), or maybe I do have such a desire but it’s so deep in my heart that I can’t see it (but how would you make that belief pay rent?), but still… I’d find it appalling that anyone would give a non-negligible probability that “Deep in their hearts, all men [emphasis as in the original] desire to torture women”, for any value of deep that wouldn’t make that statement useless-whether-true-or-false. (BTW, Gandhi was also a man, wasn’t he?)
Gandhi might not be the best example of non-misogyny.
Your hope has been realized! Hooray!
That said, I also recommend that if you are going to spend very much time around women who have been severely traumatized by their experiences with abusive men, you prepare yourself to be appalled.