I took the survey.
Rubix
Karma: 915
> And if maybe this is key to why (...) feeling sexually safe at a job has been such a royal pain these last many years
...reads like a mistake a feminist would not have made.(Implicit assumption: “postmodernism” was coined in 1980 and “postmodern feminism” the mid-90s, and most people who talk about gender ideology date it to the last 10-20 years, so I’m assuming that’s the time period you’re referring to by “last many years”.)
Men feel a little less sexually safe at work than they did sixty years ago, and women feel vastly more sexually safe. My grandmother, and the other women her age I’ve been close with, have stories about their bosses making explicit crude comments about them, groping them at work, and the like. In the story I remember most clearly, the boss didn’t try to hide his behavior, because everyone agreed this was a normal liberty to take with your female employee. If she had complained, she would have been not only punished and likely fired, but also criticized by her coworkers for being precious about the situation.I think separating the sexes into distinct classes (“kitchen staff are one sex and serving staff are another”) wouldn’t output a separate-but-equal situation; it would instead output a society that subjugates women overtly (again).
Took it. I think the example of 0.5 being interpreted as 0.5% and not as 50% anchored me a bit, but don’t see a way to circumvent it.
“In any man who dies, there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die, but worlds die in them.”
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
I upvoted it because I wish I could give Eliezer a hug that actually helps make things better, and no such hug exists but the upvote button is right there.
As well as a much-loved pastime.
Source on those statistics, please? I find the claims dubious: in particular, the 25% figure seems to come from this “information packet”, which is unsourced and uncited, suggesting that it may not exist. The two Jensens, Cory Jewell and Steve, seem to build a career around inflating the numbers associated with child sexual assault. I can’t find sources for either of the other figures.
My stake in the game: I strongly distrust statistics given about child sexual assault unless they are highly specific about what is being discussed, for two reasons.
One is that the definition is incredibly vague: some sources mean “an adult engaging in intercourse with a minor under 13”, others mean “touch intended to be sexually gratifying, of a minor under 18, by another party of any age”, and definitions run the gamut. Another example: under this website’s definition of child sexual abuse, “any sexual activity between adults and minors or between two minors when one forces it on the other (...) like exhibitionism, exposure to pornography”, I was sexually abused at 11 when a chatroom troll sent me a link that turned out to be Two Girls, One Cup.
My second reason for reservation around these statistics is that they rarely take into consideration the preferences of the minor. When I was a minor, I had healthy and fulfilling sexual relationships; under many existing definitions, I was sexually assaulted by my loving sixteen-year-old boyfriend when I was sixteen, and under many more I was sexually assaulted by him when he turned eighteen and I was still seventeen. This seems ridiculous and objectionable to me.
A last note: I agree that it is impossible to tell from a few hours of interaction whether someone will abuse your child. Many people can’t tell even after years of loving marriage whether their spouse will abuse their children, so “demonstrating acceptable qualities” is not a very good intervention. The absolute best defense against one’s children having unwanted/traumatic interactions is to tell them how to set boundaries, tell them to yell if they’re touched in a way they don’t want, tell them that their body is their own and that nobody gets to touch it without their permission. This has the virtue of defending against all manner of abuse and mistreatment, at the hands of parents, extended family, family friends and acquaintances alike.
Perhaps lukeprog’s assistant should make a separate account to post these through, to avoid getting this complaint every time they make such a post.
On the one hand, emphatically yes—when talking about How To Interact with people of X gender, people tend to make a lot of generalizations.
On the other, feminist scripts seem to be against didactically learning social rules to an extreme extent—instead of pointing out “Hey, this thing works on maybe three out of four women, referring to that subset as ‘women’ makes you believe less in the other one-quarter,” they go the entirely opposite direction and say that learning any rule, ever, is wrong and misleading and Evil. I dislike this, and while your comment is clearly not being this, it can easily be read as it by someone with experience interacting with those scripts.
If it helps: I’m another trans person, approximately agree with that line, and think one expression of it is that in those indigenous cultures, trans people were held to the norms of their target gender as stringently as everyone else. I don’t know of historic cultures that do mixed-gender role mixing the way we do. AFAIK transition, in cultures that had it, was uncommon and a way for someone to move from one tightly-maintained box to another tightly-maintained box.
In other words, I don’t think “physical sex” is just one thing—for example, it seems “postmodern” and “bizarre” to me that both some pro-trans and some anti-trans people claim that taking estrogen doesn’t make a trans woman more female than she was before—but I think it’s more real and relevant than current culture admits for. (I think this came about as an enforcement mechanism for women’s rights, so on net I bet it’s a good thing.)
The contrast on the side-by-side options is way too low (clicking a dark blue text bubble turns it a slightly darker blue).
Surveiled!
As it turns out, you’re right on this count; I do have an ‘Ugh field’ surrounding the exchange-of-favors take on relationships. Clearly, this isn’t even a step up from “You like being hit? Ew!”
I think a Less Wrong dating service would be really, really awesome, for reasons which probably don’t need enumeration. On the other hand, unless there are very clear rules about what two people meeting for a date would look like, it could be dangerous. Someone experiencing the halo effect (e.g. “This person is a rationalist like me, I can trust them more than I could trust most people!”) might employ less judgement in deciding whether or not to go to someone’s house. Expanded dating opportunities are great. Sexual assault is not. Thus, why “Just put your tastes under ‘compensation’” is worrying to me.
If it sounds like I’m just rationalizing my “Ewww, relationships are magical and emergent, not practical arrangements!” silliness, please say so.
Moreover, when a low-status person creeps on me, I feel like I have more freedom to express nicely to them that I was creeped out and offer to explain why. When a high-status person creeps on me, I feel like they have too much power to want to stop or listen to me, and nobody else will listen to me either, because this person has social command.
See also: The Missing Stair. Source has a history of overusing feminist memes with the result of obfuscating their point, but I think this piece was particularly well-written.
Example of the kind of thinking which necessitates “individual of good character” references.
I don’t suggest that such relationships couldn’t emerge from a couch-surfing network, but, um… “Compensation?” Ew.
I am doing this, because it was pointed out to me by MBlume and Alicorn.
I’m Elizabeth.
I am currently in the process of reading: The Once and Future King, The God Delusion, The Book of Numbers, The Lady Tasting Tea, GEB (I’ve been reading this for three months,) the Feynman lectures (on volume two,) three Python textbooks, Satan, Cantor and Infinity, Commentaries on Living: Series 3, and Diaspora. I’m told that’s kind of a lot.
I was in high school for a year and a half before giving up on public education and acquiring a GED. Autodidact ever since, although I have vague and higher hopes for tertiary education. I’ve been studying through Khan Academy and MIT’s Open Courseware classes, both of which are really awesome resources—I am very very pleased to live in the 21st century.
When I was five, I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (“Kind of like autism, but different!”) and hyperlexia. The former diagnosis was modified to Asperger syndrome a few months ago. What this means in terms of anticipated experiences is that I’m literal to a fault, have bad auditory processing, get overstimulated easily and am pretty anxious about conversations with people. I have a typing speed of 70wpm and a reading speed of 1,000wpm, and have never actually trained either.
I keep carnivorous plants, and enjoy singing, kung fu and cuddles. I am bisexual and polyamorous, and unreasonably pleased with that arrangement. I’m teaching myself computer programming, but I am NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. I have six friends and several dozen acquaintances, and ten rabbits.
EDIT for link formatting fails.
Quirrell scans, to me, as more awesome along the “probably knows far more Secret Eldrich Lore than you” and “stereotype of a winner” axes, until I remember that Hermione is, canonically, also both of those things. (Eldrich Lore is something one can know, so she knows it. And she’s more academically successful than anyone I’ve ever known in real life.)
So when I look more closely, the thing my brain is valuing is a script it follows where Hermione is both obviously unskillful about standard human things (feminism, kissing boys, Science Monogamy) and obviously cares about morality, to a degree that my brain thinks counts as weakness. When I pay attention, Quirrell is unskillful about tons of things as well, but he doesn’t visibly acknowledge that he is/has been unskillful. He also may or may not care about ethics to a degree, but his Questionably Moral Snazzy Bad Guy archetype doesn’t let him show this.
It does come around to Quirrell being more my stereotype of a winner, in a sense. Quirrell is more high-status than Hermione—when he does things that are cruel, wrong or stupid he hides it or recontextualizes it into something snazzy—but Hermione is more honorable than Quirrell. She confronts her mistakes and failings publicly, messily and head-on and grows as a person because of that. I think that’s really awesome.
If it happens that you don’t know how to perform all of these magical tricks, using your words is a good first approximation. The likelihood of a good outcome is often improved if you ask e.g. “Can I hug you?” as opposed to just bounding up and hugging the person, and your blameworthiness is significantly lowered.
Note please that physically imposing folks who appear to be men and are not charismatic (like social status, but interpreted on an individual basis—the individual one considers highest-charisma is likely to be thought of as creepy by a lot of other people, because it’s about walking the fine line between creepiness and friendliness) are most likely to benefit from this. This does stand to be noticed. Cute perky energetic young women can get away with hugging practically anyone without asking. This does not necessarily mean that they should.
I wasn’t put off by it. Actually, my reaction was “Wow, I wish I were looking for an apartment” and then “Wait, that’s really silly. I actually mean that these guys sound fun to hang out with.” :)
Survey surveilled!