Why women hate rape

Rape is reported on surveys to be one of women's very worst fears. The fear is often a very disturbing facet of most women's experience of life. I believe that for many, the prospect has a kind of horror to it that would not be present from being beaten, even if it resulted in broken bones.

Evolutionary theory includes a distinction between how an organism works and why the organism works that way. For one example, in <this earlierpost> I explained how a desire for sex is explained in evolutionary terms because it resulted in producing offspring, and that evolution has not endowed us with a similarly strong desire to actually produce offspring. This allows widespread use of contraceptives without any sort of turmoil.

Consider non-evolutionary explanations for why rape is so upsetting. It rarely leads to serious physical trauma. Plan B can prevent pregnancy, STI transmission is rare and most STIs are treatable. What makes it uniquely upsetting? Sometimes the problem is explained as physical penetration of the body. Yet if some man put his fingers in a woman's mouth, the penetration aspect is there but the insult would be less. Ingesting food is also a penetration of the body, but we think about it entirely differently. Sometimes it is explained as a reaction to the male's desire to dominate and humiliate. Yet of course such desires could be expressed in many other ways. If women and men perceive it as uniquely humiliating, we are left wondering WHY it is perceived that way.

A man is in uncomfortable territory talking about women's experience as I did above (though it's worth considering that each woman actually knows nothing for sure beyond her own individual experience). In what follows I'm discussing what lies behind conscious experience and is thus not accessible to anyone based on reflection. Men and women are on an equal footing here.

Evolutionary psychology asks whether evolution has "wired" women to hate rape, and it has a good story to tell as to why the answer is "yes". A very naive story might be that since descendants are good, sex is what produces descendants, and rape is a form of sex, women might welcome it. But this ignores how women left successful offspring in the environment we evolved in. Ignoring many complications, humans tend to have long-term pair bonds so that only one man has sex with a woman and he assumes that any children the woman has are his children, and he provides food for those children (mostly meat, in the environment we evolved in). The number of children a woman can bear is primarily a function of time -- every 2, 3, or 4 years, in natural conditions of nursing and a somewhat restricted diet. She invests enormous resources in each child through pregnancy and nursing. She also runs a significant risk of dying in childbirth. She of course requires sperm to conceive those children, but sperm is very easy for her to get. In a typical hunter-gatherer band there were plenty of adult men around, many or most of whom will be happy to inseminate her. In contrast, a large determinant of whether her children will thrive is whether a man will be providing food for them. All else being equal, it is in her interest to only have sex with her assigned mate (call him a "husband") and to do whatever she can to reassure him that he is indeed the father of her children.

If she does not have a husband and gets pregnant, this is terrible for her as there is no male to help her raise the child. If she is married and is raped, there are other dangers. If word gets back to her husband, he may abandon her in search of a new woman where he would be more certain that future children are his. Abandoning a wife after she is raped might seem like a callous thing to do, but evolution has its own imperatives, and providing for children who carry your genes as opposed to some other man's is a big factor in male reproductive success.

So possible consequences of rape for a woman include loss of material support for any child she might bear as a result of that sexual encounter or for one that was conceived in roughly the same time frame, and for her other children if she has children already. This is a huge risk for her. Women also have a strong incentive in the environment we evolved in to not to report rape, to avoid these consequences.

Women of course desire sex under the right circumstances, and need it to leave descendants. But they feel extremely strongly about not wanting it under the wrong circumstances. They are not just being picky or difficult. Evolution has wired them to care a great deal about the circumstances.

In the modern world, morning-after pills can ensure that rape victims do not become pregnant. They can likely trust that if they are partnered, their partner will not abandon them. Yet these conscious considerations cannot simply overcome the tendencies wired into our genes.

I'm not sure if understanding this could lead to more empathy from men, in turn leading to taking the crime of rape more seriously, and to actually deterring rape itself. But if it has any effect it should point in that direction.

Rape is partly about sex

I have covered some controversial ground in my past posts, and here I may be going a step further. But controversial subjects benefit from inquiry to discover truth as much as less controversial ones, and perhaps it is even more important.

In this post I want to look at possible causes. Why would a man rape a woman? The reasons for a civilized person not to are overwhelming. It is violence at the expense of another person. There is no possible excuse, any more than we can justify killing someone just because they made us angry. And yet sometimes men do. What might lie beneath?

Common to all mammals is the strong tendency for males to have sex with any willing female who looks like she might possibly be fertile. This is clearly understood by evolutionary biology. Sperm is cheap, the mating act is short, and the evolutionary advantage to leaving an extra descendant is enormous. Willingness on the part of the female is not a criterion because male mammals are inherently polite, but because most male mammals cannot force a female to have sex if she is not willing. Apparently orangutans can and do. Ducks are not mammals but they do too.

Human males too will tend to have sex with any willing female. Throughout history and in all cultures, they too do not always require female willingness. Men can sometimes force sex through a physical struggle (sort of like orangutans), but human intelligence has (unfortunately in this case) opened the method of threats of violence if the woman resists. He can make the threat, she can understand his ability to carry it out and know it is credible, so the threat can be effective.

Affirmative consent is not part of our evolutionary past. Men will pay for sex, men will lie for sex, and some men will sometimes use threats or force to get sex. Rape is an act of violence, there is no doubt about that. But there is an additional feminist assertion that it has nothing to do with sex. I have never heard any evidence for this. (Can one get pregnant from violence alone?) Why is the formulation appealing? I suspect the <"war mentality"> applies, and since sex is sometimes enjoyable and a good thing, rape must be severed from that lest anyone view it as slightly less evil by association.

There are plenty of other ways to be violent and exert control. Why choose one with a sexual form? Evo psych has an answer. Rape has a reasonable chance of creating a descendant, and it seems likely that some tendency for men to consider it an option is part of our biological heritage.

Of course within the bounds of past human societies, rape could be very dangerous to a man. The victim's male kin might make him pay dearly and even kill him. In today's society it also might give rise to legal penalties, though far less often than it should. It is within situations of social chaos such as war that rape is especially likely.

Thornhill and Palmer wrote a book titled "A Natural History of Rape", published in the year 2000. It made the same sort of arguments I made above and was highly controversial, to say the least. I read it and the science seemed solid to me. The few scientific-level criticisms made by others seemed weak. The criticisms I read were overwhelmingly of the form, "I hate the conclusions, so it must be false." The authors were vilified, though in what they wrote and their actions in their outside lives, the two authors are clearly against rape.

If we accept some biological roots to rape, how might it affect male thinking? If some man who's on the fence about raping a woman considers that it might be part of his human heritage and crosses the line, that would be really, really unfortunate. Yet I am unwilling to suppress the truth just because it could be misused. The awareness might also let him distinguish innate urges from his better self and choose the latter to guide his actions.

Here's another example of how it could have a positive effect. Suppose a man has just had a verbal fight with his long-time partner. He knows that she has absolutely no interest in sex, and yet perhaps he feels in himself some desire to have sex with her anyway. Should he be horrified and hate himself? Perhaps it's better to stifle his awareness of all his feelings if they ever include something like that? But losing touch with one's feelings is bad. On the other hand, if he accepts this analysis, he might recognize that such feelings are part of his heritage, and that he can notice them, put them aside, and then do the right thing. He can then notice other feelings like anger, grief, and shame that might have played a part in the argument, and improve his relationship.

Rape is a terrible crime. There is far too much of it. Police often do not take it seriously. I am eager to hear of practical policy initiatives for how we can reduce its prevalence. But it is not totally divorced from human sexuality.

Nuclear power helping with climate change

I arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976, fresh out of college and eager to make the world a better place from a leftist perspective. Opposition to nuclear power was a hot topic, and I joined the Clamshell Alliance, volunteering frequently at the office and on other projects, and culminating with the occupation at Seabrook in 1977. I was arrested. I continued active involvement for another year after that. We had a lot of valid concerns. Biggest was the danger of nuclear accidents, next the hazards of dealing with nuclear waste. We were worried about how the plants were vulnerable to terrorist attack. There were also problems with government subsidies to benefit rich owners, and questions about whether it was economically viable.

With the rise of climate change as an enormous problem, my attitude has changed. None of those problems is very serious compared to the climate catastrophe that is unfolding. Widespread use of nuclear power could significantly reduce carbon emissions. While I've argued that <we will not avert the catastrophe>, making things not as bad as they would otherwise be is a vital goal. And while "not as bad as it would otherwise be" is not a great political rallying cry, the stakes are high. Solar and wind power are promising, but nuclear power complements them, providing a great deal of energy that is available when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

One big problem is that the "green" movement that is the strongest voices for addressing climate change has a fundamentally anti-technology assumption. Opposition to nuclear power has been a staple of this movement for years, and an about-face on the issue would be emotionally difficult, at the least. Their overall proposed solution of radically de-industrializing the world is simply not feasible (or, let's say it's 100 times more politically difficult than any other measures proposed). Much less intrusive measures such as a carbon tax have not gotten sufficient support to be implemented in the US, and the carbon taxes elsewhere are of modest size. Those who are suspicious of technological solutions should look at each one on its own merits instead of rebelling against all of them.

Nuclear power itself is a complicated issue and I'm far from an expert. There are safety concerns, highlighted by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, and there are economic issues, as such plants having a high initial capital cost. In <"Enlightenment Now">, Steven Pinker argues that if the world settled on one of the newer nuclear designs with the best safety features, and built hundreds of the plants, the economies of scale would make it viable and safety issues would be minimized.

If we're going to mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to recognize that some of our older assumptions are no longer valid. That includes the assumption that nuclear power is too dangerous. The reluctance to do that is another sign that deep down, people still don't take climate change seriously, and don't understand that its dangers dwarf those of nuclear power.

Sex differences, evo psych and the SSSM alternative

Implicit in my posts on evolution as the organizing principle of life is a belief in evolutionary psychology -- the idea that our minds are shaped in certain important way by our evolutionary past. While we can choose to live differently, those same tendencies will arise anew in each generation.

To be clear, the vast majority of our thoughts and preferences seem to be shaped in all the interesting ways by culture, including the kind of music, art, or literature you like. So are food preferences and no end of social customs. But evo psych says that some interesting ones are innate.

The alternative view, the standard social science model (SSSM), holds that ALL the interesting aspects of our lives are the result of the social constructs of our society. These are arbitrary, and by changing the social constructs we can change and improve ourselves. A crucial implication of this view is that once society is transformed, new generations will naturally absorb these improved habits from those around them and there will be no tendency to regress towards the unjust ways that have dominated the history of our species.

There are few if any pure SSSMers. Most would believe that there is an innate basis for most people having a primary sexual attraction to the opposite sex. Or they might think it innate that there is an urgent desire in men to continue a sexual encounter until orgasm, and far less interest in doing so after that point. The relevance of these preferences to human reproduction is obvious.

Ignoring minor exceptions of that kind, SSSMers will tend to believe that all aspects of our psychology are plastic. Movement feminists seem to be predominantly SSSMers. Among their goals are erasing any psychological differences between men and women. In the ideal society they think we could and should create, boys will play with dolls as often as girls do, and likewise for girls and trucks. Boys will be no more aggressive than girls. Women will want to be soldiers as often as men do, and men will want to work in daycare centers as often as women do.

Evolutionary psychologists have grave doubts that such results could be possible without extreme effort (if they are possible at all), and that the effort would have to be expended anew in each generation.

The enlightened evo psych view would suggest that parents offer both trucks and dolls to both boys and girls, but to respect their preferences. That means not chastising boys for playing with dolls or girls for playing with trucks, but also not making your boy feel guilty if he does not feel like playing with dolls. It also means not berating yourself if your children make gender-typical choices, on the assumption you have been indoctrinating them in the ways of sexism by your unconscious behaviors. It means encouraging women to be soldiers and men to be child care workers, but not being surprised or upset if both end up as small minorities in their professions.

Many feminist SSSMers rejection evo psych explanations with a passion that calls for explanation. My best guess is that they view women versus men (or feminism versus patriarchy) as a war. War justifies many sins, including treating truth as a subsidiary virtue. Anything that could be used by an opponent must be declared to be not just false but evil. If you accept that females will tend to be more interested in spending time with young children than men are, an enemy could go on to argue that women ought to stay home and not work outside the home. That would be a huge mistake in reasoning, and can be vigorously disputed on its own terms. It is an impermissible leap to go from a statistical distribution to inferring the desires of individuals. We don't make tall people play basketball or strong people do manual labor. But if you see it as a war, it's best to attack on every front at once, and to deny that there are any innate differences at all, since some of them could be misused. The long-term effect on thoughtful people, however, is to conclude that feminists will ignore truth in any that suits them. It's surely not limited to feminists -- opponents such as extreme men's rights activists or religious conservatives will do the same thing. Partisans are not trustworthy.

So what of those who value truth above all, wherever it leads? We too would like to create a better world.

I have a suspicion that transforming society to be more just and equitable might profit from understanding that some of our preferences are innate.

For beliefs and preferences that are just unhelpful constructs, it should be a relatively straightforward matter to decide to value different things. We could even feel guilty if we don't get on with the transformation. We see no merit in our outdated, sexist attitudes. They are simply to be discarded and forgotten.

On the other hand, if you see your tendencies that might seem sexist as adaptations that were helpful in the human environment of evolutionary adaptation, you could honor them and respect them as your starting point. They are part of your human endowment. You can then decide to adopt new ways of behaving and new values without needing to deny what came before. If those old tendencies keep popping up into your awareness, you will understand why and feel no need to judge yourself harshly for it. You can focus on transforming your behavior.

For example, older men who find lithe women in their 20s (or even teens) especially attractive can note that fact and not judge themselves for it, but also note that approaching such women is not in line with the values they have chosen. Trying to deny the attraction is not going to work or is going to cause great turmoil.

Women who feel a draw to rich, muscled men in sports cars who treat other people badly can also note that fact, not judge themselves for it, but also ignore the men. Denying the attraction is an obstacle to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is empowering. The party line might be that people should judge others by their character and not their physical appearance, but do ordinary women really believe that at a gut level a short, bald, clumsy guy is just as attractive as a tall, graceful one with a full head of hair?

If we accept that some attitudes and preferences might be held mostly by men and others held mostly by women on an innate basis, we can relax and focus attention on the issues that really matter, which is what people do, not what lurks in their minds.

No Trump Impeachment

There's a major disagreement among Democrats as to whether Donald Trump should be impeached. I say no. Prosecutors make judgments all the time about which cases to prosecute based on whether they think they can get a conviction. It's not just their legal judgement that someone did something illegal that matters, but whether they can convince the jury. In the case of Donald Trump, we know that the jury (the Senate) is not going to convict. The number of votes required to block removal from office is 34. There are 53 Republicans, most of whom are very anxious not to upset the supporters of Donald Trump. And the key fact here is that those supporters have not turned against him in significant numbers. The basic shape of his wrongdoing was apparent when they voted for him. Lying, obstruction of justice, and colluding with a foreign power to the detriment of the US do not seem to worry them -- a fact which worries many of the rest of us a great deal.

In contrast, regarding Richard Nixon, his wrongdoing included things the voters did not know about in 1972 when they re-elected him. He did not command the sort of passionate devotion that Trump does, and Gerald Ford was expected to continue Nixon policies. In polls, 47% favored his removal from office and only 34% were opposed. When it became apparent that the Senate would remove him, Nixon resigned instead of facing trial.

As for Bill Clinton, his lying under oath was not known to voters who re-elected him, but there were grave doubts as to whether lying about an affair was an offense that called for removal from office. Wikipedia says, "57% approved of the Senate's decision to keep him in office and two thirds of those polled said the impeachment was harmful to the country." Republican strategists had figured that the impeachment would result in political gains, but it instead resulted in losses.

Occasionally prosecutors will prosecute cases that are highly charged politically even if they strongly suspect they will not succeed. It passes the burden of the decision off of their shoulders onto someone else's. This is the sort of pressure Democrats face with Trump from some of their supporters. But it is plain to everyone that the jury will not convict, so it should be fairly easy to resist that pressure. It is far from certain that a trial by the Senate that is doomed to fail would be viewed favorably by swing voters.

I freely admit that I have not followed this issue in detail, but have the hunch that the details are not all that important. Perhaps my readers will set me straight.

A somewhat related question is whether Twitter should ban Trump since he has clearly violated their terms of service repeatedly. Much as I would like to muzzle him, I think it would backfire. We might suggest that Twitter has an implicit exception to its terms of service: We will not ban someone who enjoys broad political support among those who knew about his Twitter behavior and voted for him anyway. Fundamentally, I think that's right. The political process is bigger than things like terms of service.

Unusual (gender) people: Polling versus interrupts

Computer programs are often in the position of having to interact with other processes and respond when things happen. There are two basic ways of handling this. One is interrupts, where the other process sends a signal that directly affects the program. The other is polling, where the program frequently goes around to all the processes it needs to monitor and asks the other process if there is anything new it should be aware of. At least that's the way it was explained to me many decades ago.

We also in today's society feel an obligation to attend to the needs and desires of many minorities who are less fortunate. The natural way to deal with an unusual situation is by way of an interrupt. For some of these issues, liberal society is moving towards polling. Sometimes I think it goes too far.

Sometimes people's unusual characteristics interrupt us. If we see an adult who is 7 feet tall or 3 feet tall, we notice. Many physical disabilities are also instantly recognizable on sight. Such unusual-looking people may well tire of being judged instantly on their unusual appearance, but it comes with the territory. The enlightened response to such people is to notice the reaction, set it aside, and then interact with them in the way that the situation calls for.

Other unusual characteristics are not apparent. We don't know if someone is deaf or speaks a foreign language just by looking at them. We don't know if they are gay or suffer some psychological condition such as reacting badly to loud noises. We also automatically classify people we see into male and female. Sometimes a person would like to be considered to have a gender that is not what we would judge by just looking at them.

Homosexuality is an interesting case because it has often engendered strong condemnation and even violence. I think it makes sense to devote some time to it -- some high schools set aside a day to discuss the issue. Whether it's worth a whole day every year is open to question. I would tend to prefer a day that deals with all invisible minority conditions at once, of which it is one example. But I'm open on the subject. There is no consensus on the actual incidence of homosexuality, but it seems at least 5 percent of people sometimes feel a notable attraction to members of the same sex. This is not a small minority.

I have heard of no political movement suggesting that we always consider that a person we meet might be deaf and not speak to them without first ascertaining that they can hear. Similarly, I haven't heard that we need to inquire if someone speaks English (at least in most circumstances in America). These rare situations are handled by interrupts. We speak, and do not hear an appropriate answer in English, so we know that we need to adjust our behavior to communicate with them. It is the lot of many invisible minorities to have others constantly making incorrect assumptions about them and needing to set them straight. It comes with the territory. They have the option of wearing a tag announcing their condition, "I am deaf", or "I only speak Italian", though they understandably may not like that option.

Non-standard gender identification has surged to prominence in the last several years. This is the main current issue that calls forth my polling versus interrupt analysis.

The truth is that all but a tiny fraction of humans have clearly identifiable male or female genitalia, think of themselves as the associated gender, dress to mark that gender, and expect others will assume that is what they are. But a tiny proportion do not -- a larger proportion of today's young people in liberal circles, which might be the subject of another post.

There are options available to people who don't want to be considered the gender people will assume based on looking at them. They could wear a tag announcing their gender identity. But they have more subtle options too. Those with bodies that appear male can wear their hair long, use make-up, and wear women's clothing. Those with female bodies can similarly have a man's hair style and wear men's clothing. These things trigger an interrupt in sensitive people, suggesting that assumptions about gender should be suspended. One of the immediate issues that arises with gender is what pronouns to use. You can usually substitute "this person" for whatever pronoun you would otherwise use if your interaction is going to be brief, and if your interaction gets longer, you can ask them.

Where I believe it goes too far is when such individuals get huffy if people who are not familiar with this new reality make the wrong assumptions, or when everyone at a gathering is instructed to put their pronouns on their name tag, even though 99% will put the same thing that looking at them would suggest. This is moving from interrupts to polling. These responses make the issue occupy too large a place in our mental space. The idea of <addressing everyone as 'they'> goes way, way, way too far.

We've come a long way from Eleanor Roosevelt's, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." <Dignity cultures are better than victimcultures>. According to victim culture, it's OK or perhaps even noble to be offended, and it's fitting to applaud those who get offended on behalf of other people. One result is a great deal of mental energy devoted to polling all the various ways someone could be a minority or be offended before saying anything.

I strongly support accepting and respecting non-standard gender people, but suggest a moderate push-back on the extent of our accommodation. Of course any sort of put-downs, discrimination, or disrespect of gender-nonconforming people is unacceptable. Compassion for the difficulties they face in society and perhaps in their own minds is important. A good faith effort to use feminine or masculine pronouns as they request is mandatory. But you can expect occasional slip-ups, and long pauses as a speaker with some effort retrieves the correct pronoun. Meeting someone's desire to be addressed as "they" is optional, in my view. It is not part of the English language.

Consideration of non-standard gender should be a matter of interrupts, not polling, to limit the space it occupies in our minds. What triggers an interrupt is someone whose appearance and dress and presentation are not clearly male or female. Another trigger is of course their telling you this. When a non-standard gender person comes to our attention, we should relate to them with respect and compassion, but the 99% of the time one is not present, we don't need to think about it any more than we think about deafness.

There is some role for a minority getting disproportionate attention when an issue is new to most of society, which is true of non-standard gender identities. Once we accept that they exist and call for sensitive treatment, we can stop thinking about it until such a person comes into our life. But we would should expect societal attention to the issue to die down once most people have been exposed to the possibility.

<This earlier post ofmine> is in the same spirit. Sympathy for a cause does not require doing everything that the activists request or demand. Each proposal should be considered on its own merits, and rejecting the more extreme ones does not make a person a bigot.

A Society Designed for the Benefit of Men?

One definition of patriarchy is that men rule women. I've <argued> that women being the majority of the electorate means this isn't true of the US. There are no laws oppressing women. Whatever power men have is as a result of informal arrangements -- which admittedly can be very compelling.

Another definition is that the society is designed to benefit men at the expense of women. This allows for the fact that many women might support this society -- they have power but choose a society that benefits men disproportionately, objectively speaking. This post analyzes this possibility.

A short, simple observation: When nations have engaged in major wars, the young men who are forced to serve in the military, suffer extreme hardship and often die have not felt like the world was designed for their benefit.

Next, let's drop into the world of "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, published in 1963. She described the genuine distress of many American housewives, who were expected to limit their horizons to being wives and mothers. It's certainly true that women's options were limited in that time, but so were men's options. Men were under great pressure to get promotions and raises. Those who were shunted to the sidelines and especially those who were fired suffered a great deal. Those who would have preferred to stay home, doing housework and raising children, did not have the option to do so. (Recall that one source of fierce criticism of Friedan came from women who felt very happy being wives and mothers -- this life path was satisfying to many women, so why would it not be to many men?) Yet I don't recall any books from such men complaining of their limited options. One possibility is that there were very few of them, but I propose another explanation. Women who wanted professional engagement and couldn't get it had the drive, intelligence, and articulateness to write books like Friedan's, to read them, to organize, and to change society. Men who would prefer the non-competitive world of children and housework would tend on the whole to have much less drive, organization and articulateness. Their suffering was largely silent. It's great to want to loosen gender roles so that people can choose the life they want regardless of gender -- I'm all in favor. But as long as both men and women are constrained in their choices, it's not evidence of a society designed to benefit men.

Others have pointed out that Friedan's critique was specific to middle class white American housewives. It was economic boom times, when good jobs that paid well were available to middle class white men, and many women would have liked to be doing those jobs. But let's shift to lower socioeconomic classes. I suspect that most of us would prefer to stay home with children than to work in slaughterhouses. I'm not sure coal mining, factory work, construction, lumbering, farming or fishing were so rewarding either. I doubt the men whose employment prospects were limited to such jobs would all feel that society was designed to benefit them at the expense of their wives. Nor would their wives.

So far I've been assuming the traditional model of a married heterosexual couple functioning as a single economic unit to raise children.

Let's turn to US urban poor communities as they developed in the decades after 1963. Few men could get jobs that paid well enough to support a family. Well-intentioned government policies provided financial support for single women with children, but not married women. If the government payment was more than the men could (or did) bring in, this created an incentive to dismantle the family unit, and that's what happened. Unemployed, unmarried men have lots of time on their hands and lots of life options (as long as they do not require money), but does anyone think this led them to be happy, or that the society is designed for their benefit? With the availability of contraception and abortion, women could choose that same lifestyle if they wished. But they also had the option of becoming mothers and raising children. Parenthood is a lot of hard work and drudgery, but there are also rewards. Poor urban people love their mothers above all. Father figures who came and went, not so much. Now, single motherhood in poverty may often be extremely stressful, but recall that such mothers had another option -- to remain childless. There are plenty of precedents for people who elected not to have children if they didn't feel they could support them well enough. Single fatherhood was not a realistic option for men.

Turning to today's workplace, there certainly are careers where women face discrimination. Yet, in comparison to Friedan's day, women have made their way into just about every profession in large numbers. Once again, the driven, intelligent, articulate women can tell us about the obstacles they face. What about men who would actually prefer a pink-collar job? Or a job in child care? They face serious discrimination. They tend to be less driven, articulate and intelligent, so we hear from them a lot less.

Even in today's world where both partners tend to work, there still are a large number of women whose husbands earn decent incomes who are happy choosing not to work and staying home, with or without children. They face no stigma. A man who wishes to live that life may have much more trouble finding a woman who wishes to support him, and he will face social stigma if he does.

Something of an aside: As I said, Friedan's housewives faced serious constraints on their life choices, and some were genuinely unhappy. I am reminded of the English gentry as portrayed in such TV series as "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Downtown Abbey". They had plenty of money, their social roles prohibited them from working, and many suffered from a lack of purpose. America in 1963 had emerged from the Great Depression, middle class people were confident about the economic future, women did not have the challenge of running a frugal household, and labor-saving devices meant they really had lots of free time. Does that not parallel the situation of the British gentry to some extent?

I am still waiting to hear of the important respects in which US society is designed for the benefit of men at the expense of women. I like to think I'm always open to learning new things, but I have a hunch that in this case I will be informed of things I simply hadn't considered.

The Untested Rape Kits and Serial Rapists

Rape is a terrible crime. The fact that police and law enforcement don't take it seriously enough has been known for a long time. I have always been sympathetic, but also recognized some problems. There are false allegations, and the criminal justice system's "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard means it's not so easy to get a conviction. For any crime, our system rightly allows many guilty people to go free to prevent one innocent person from being wrongfully convicted.

But in a recent <article in theAtlantic> there was new information that presented a completely clear opportunity. The article noted that with DNA testing, it was now possible to find matches in multiple rape kits to find serial rapists. There is reasonable doubt as to whether any particular sexual encounter was consensual, but if four unrelated women all report rape by the same individual, as revealed by DNA tests, reasonable doubt vanishes.

In 2015, the Obama administration provided funding to go through the backlog of untested kids. The good news is that hundreds of serial rapists have been convicted. The bad news is that that is a tiny fraction of serial rapists, and that 82% of them have been in just two cities, Cleveland and Detroit.

Other jurisdictions have simply been reluctant to take the funds and do the work. Part is the longstanding problem that police and other relevant parties don't think that rape is all that serious. But what about the many who believe passionately that rape is very serious? They may have rightly perceived that they are part of a system that will not produce convictions. A zealous police department that religiously tests all its rape kits won't produce results if prosecutors won't prosecute. Zealous prosecutors may have no effect if juries (as instructed by judges) won't convict.

With DNA testing, suddenly the landscape is very different. A former Cleveland prosecutor says, "I don’t think there will ever be another time in history when so many criminals can be arrested so easily, so quickly, so inexpensively, and with such certainty". We need political pressure on all the relevant parties in the criminal justice system to recognize this, test the kits, and get serial rapists off the streets. Hopefully it will also have a deterrent effect on potential future serial rapists.

The article also contains the quote, "How many rapes could have been prevented if police had believed the first victim? How many women would have been spared a brutal assault?" That line of thinking muddies the waters in addressing the old problem, not the new opportunity. We shouldn't automatically believe anyone or disbelieve anyone, but look carefully at the evidence to decide whether they are right or not. The "reasonable doubt" standard doesn't work on just believing every victim's allegation. I have no doubt that more single-rape cases should be prosecuted and more men convicted. But there are no new facts bearing on this old problem.

The new fact is the ease of matching the DNA from multiple rape kits. You don't have to believe any one victim. The serial rapists waiting to be discovered by DNA testing are low-hanging fruit just waiting to be plucked.

Sympathy for Moderate Men's Rights Groups

Before I watched <The Red Pill>, I had a negative view of men's rights. My impression was that they accepted with relish the framework of "men versus women", highlighted the various ways that men suffer (many not particularly serious), ignored and downplayed all of the ways that women suffer, and argued that men were the oppressed sex, not women.

I watched that 120-minute movie a year ago, and more recently watched a 15-minute <Ted-X> talk by the filmmaker Cassie Jaye.

She set out to do a documentary exposing how horrible the men's rights activists (MRAs) were, but as she listened she found that their positions were reasonable and that despite her initial skepticism she ended up agreeing with them. She portrayed them as not dismissing women's concerns, but just arguing that men had legitimate concerns too and that both should be considered. That I can readily agree with.

I can still wonder if she talked with only moderate elements and ignored more radical ones. The disturbing Incel movement seems to overlap and is associated with many <acts of violence> . But most reasonable causes have moderate factions and also extreme ones that give the moderates a bad name. Surely many feminists would prefer to dissociate themselves from the radical opinion that all heterosexual intercourse is inherently a form of violence against women.

At 8:39 of the TedX talk, Jaye gives a thought-provoking list of men's issues:

paternity fraud

Selective Service draft

workplace deaths

war deaths

suicide

sentencing disparities

life expectancy

child custody

child support

false rape allegations

criminal court bias

misandry

failure launched (?)

boys falling behind in schooling

homelessness

veterans issues

infant genital male mutilation

lack of parental choice once a child is conceived

lack of resources for male victims of domestic violence

It's a longer list than I used in arguing that <there is no patriarchy in the US>. It's hard to identify any of these and say that they are the result of some policy that unjustly benefits women at the expense of men. Even fewer could be easily remedied by legislation (drafting women for the military would be one exception). But then that's also true of the complaints that women have in the US.

We have a feminist movement that portrays women as victims and men as the enemy -- despite the fine print, "men suck" is the underlying emotional message. As long as we do, it is appropriate to have a moderate men's rights movement to counter it. But I would much rather dispense with both movements and focus on problems faced by people, and reduce the suffering of people, whatever their sex or gender.

One example is medical research. Before the 20th century, women's expected lifespan was shorter than men's, since so many died in pregnancy or childbirth. Medicine was able to reduce that dramatically, and now women live longer than men. I don't believe thinking of it as women's rights had anything significant to do with it. Today, if you imagine you had only enough money to perfect some treatment for breast cancer or prostate cancer but not both, the decision ought to be based on the chances of success and the overall human suffering to be eased, not the sex of the people whose lives would be improved.

Sometimes the end result would just be more compassion. Consider "lack of parental choice once a child is conceived" above. I think almost everyone would agree that if anyone gets a choice in the matter (pro-lifers would argue no one should get a choice) the ultimate decision about what to do about a pregnancy is rightly the woman's. If she wants to keep it and the father does not, she can keep it. If she wants to end it but the father does not, she can end it. You can agree with that but still recognize that these situations can cause pain for men. If a potential father extrapolates from a fetus to the child it could become, he can grieve if a woman decides to kill it. If on the other hand he does not want a child, he can be upset if he will have to become a father when there was the alternative of abortion. No alternative policy would be better. But we can and should still have compassion for men whose opinion about the future of a pregnancy will be overruled. That doesn't prevent us from also having compassion for the competing pressures that a woman in that situation may face. There is no need to have a competition about who deserves more compassion. It is not a scarce resource.

Rational Suicide

Suicide is a controversial subject. In Eastern traditions it seems to be acceptable and in some cases a noble thing to do. In the Catholic Church it is a very serious sin.

I've argued in past posts that there is no objective morality, but that view is completely consistent with arguing about right and wrong and hoping that my readers share my basic beliefs and values.

I have struggled with depression for my entire adult life. Sometimes it has been very severe. I have never planned a suicide or attempted it, but I certainly have considered it a great deal at different times. I have been on some antidepressant medication regimen for nearly 30 years, and I benefit from antidepressants a great deal. I have sometimes told myself, "Life is for me misery that will never get better", which makes suicide sound appealing. I have always stayed in touch with reality sufficiently to tell myself, "Every previous time you've felt this way, it has eventually passed and you have felt better again," however totally inconceivable it feels at the time. Other people don't always keep that perspective.

With this in mind, I support society in telling people who are feeling suicidal to not act impulsively. I support suicide hotlines. I support hospitalization for brief periods after a suicide attempt to try to stabilize the person. Monitoring a person over a longer period to keep them away from suicide may also be sensible. But I also feel clear that some suicides are motivated not by the feelings of the moment but by rational calculation over a period of time and they need to be considered on their merits.

I find utterly unconvincing the statement that suicide is a bad idea because just about everyone who survives a suicide attempt is glad they didn't succeed. Most who are not glad probably repeated their attempts until they succeeded. That is a literal instance of <survivorship bias>.

From <a paper> chosen more or less at random, we have, "Suicide is a major public health problem with advancing age being one of the factors associated with increased risk." The paper saw no need to defend the idea that old people choosing to end their lives is a major public health problem. I think it needs defense.

So, what cases might be considered rational suicide?

At one extreme, if someone is a parent to young children, the circumstances that would justify a suicide are very rare. If you chose to bring children into the world, you should expect to endure a great deal of suffering instead of abandoning them. Having a track record of repeatedly hurting the children badly and seeing no way to interrupt that pattern might make suicide a defensible choice.

At the other end, to start with an easy case, if a person is facing certain death within a few weeks and is suffering from intractable pain, I cannot see any objection to suicide.

People with degenerative diseases can rationally choose to end their lives. Robin Williams had <such a condition>. Sometimes life might not be so bad at the moment, but the person realizes that they will lose the ability to carry out a suicide later, and that makes it a sympathetic choice. This is an argument in favor of legalizing assisted suicide, so a person does not feel pressured to kill themselves before they lose the ability to do so. I could see that Alzheimer's that has progressed to a certain point would be a justification for suicide.

What I'm most interested in addressing is the argument against suicide that it will be emotionally devastating to a person's friends and family. This may be true today, but if so I believe it is based on a widespread misunderstanding. Clearing up this misunderstanding may take time, but it is a vital goal.

My gut sense is that the horror at suicide is intimately tied up with denial of death. Too many people view death as a terrible thing that will happen at some point in the distant future and a thing that is not to be contemplated in advance. When someone kills themselves, it means they rejected that formulation, and that calls on the survivor to question a view they do not want to question. I think there is a frantic depth to this kind of negative reaction that can be distinguished from more mundane concerns of abandonment. In contrast to the denier of death, the suicide understood that death is inevitable and that the choice was not between choosing to live forever and choosing to die now. It was a choice between dying now as opposed to living some future period of time (no longer than a few decades) and then dying. The "dying" part was constant to the two, as was the certainty of remaining dead and missing out on the millenia that begin after the end of their lifespan.

You could feel angry at someone for killing themselves if they knew that you valued their life and presence. But if you are not completely self-centered, you must assume they calculated how much you will suffer from their being gone as to opposed to how much they expected to suffer if they kept on living. It is arrogant to assume that you knew their suffering wasn't so bad. Those who suffer from long-term intractable depression can suffer a great deal. Feeling low self-worth, they are also susceptible to underestimating how much other people may value them.

Keep in mind that a measure of psychological health is distinguishing one's own happiness from other people's. Every adult is ultimately responsible for their own happiness, and a pattern of feeling that making other people happy is more important than making yourself happy is a sign of an unhealthy psychology. Suicides should deserve the same consideration. All else being equal, reducing your own pain is more important than reducing other people's pain. Parents of young children are an exception and in some cases need to put the welfare of their children above their own. However, when the children reach adulthood this obligation ceases.

You might say that if the person contemplating suicide knows or suspects that their friends and relatives will suffer a great deal, that gives them an obligation not to kill themselves. But it is much less clear if you believe their suffering is due to false beliefs. For comparison, suppose a black person knows that if they attend some party that is otherwise all white people, several of them will be unhappy and uncomfortable. Should they therefore not attend? Most of us will say they should feel free to attend, because while we recognize the reality of those white people's reactions, we also realize they are unjust. People of good will can explain to those unhappy guests why their reaction is unjust and one they should seek to overcome. We look forward to a world where fewer and fewer white people would be upset by the prospect.

Similarly, when friends and relatives of a rational suicide are deeply upset, people of good will should help them work through the reasons for it. They can analyze their denial of death and seek to overcome it. They can try to understand the sort of calculus the suicide went through and not assume they knew that they weren't suffering all that much. We can look forward to a world where most people's psychology incorporates the inevitability of death.

Of course, some suicides are not based on rational consideration but are impulsive, and survivors may not be able to determine which kind it was. But the concerns about wishing they had noticed and intervened all fundamentally apply to the impulsive suicides, not the rational ones.

For some perspective at the end of a topic with "negative energy", let me say that I consider life to be a wonderful and miraculous gift. We overcome temporary setbacks and enjoy the time we have here, and one big part of a good life is enjoying our relationships with other people. We mourn those who die of natural causes, but this does not upset the harmony of the world. Those who after careful consideration choose to end their lives should not upset this fundamentally upbeat view of the world either.

Pinker too optimistic on climate change

In "Enlightenment Now" (my main review of it is <here>, Pinker freely admits that climate change is a big problem and potentially very disruptive.

He notes that it is a serious free rider problem -- we suffer collectively from the emissions of everyone in the world, but any cost we pay to reduce our emissions is borne by us alone. He feels that radical de-industrialization is totally unrealistic. He feels that some people inappropriately measure their contribution by how much they sacrifice rather than how much good it actually does. I can't help have this reaction to exhortations to save paper by not printing out emails. So I agree with him about all that.

He thinks there are many promising technologies that could help reduce emissions a great deal, and his overall assessment is that it's not cause to panic or conclude that "humanity is screwed". I've made posts suggesting we are heading for <profound disaster> from climate change. So I started with separate assumptions, and I hoped he could convince me that we're better off than I think.

Among the good ideas he mentions are carbon taxes and much-expanded nuclear energy (from a few standardized well-tested designs). I was arrested protesting nuclear power at Seabrook in 1977, but have come to feel that in the era of serious climate change it can be well worth the risks. Pinker speaks of carbon capture and mentions a number of technologies, but with no convincing evidence that they are actually practical.

Having considered all the methods for controlling emissions of greenhouse gases, he gives this sobering quote: "the effort needed to prevent climate change is immense, and we have no guarantee that the necessary transformations in technology and politics will be in place soon enough to slow down global warming before it causes extensive harm."

"No guarantee" seems to me punting on a probability estimate right when one is needed most. I put it at around 90%. I expect most climate scientists would agree with me. Of the other 10%, 9% is uncertainty is around whether high CO2 levels will cause extensive harm, leaving only 1% for the chances we humans will change our behavior enough to make a difference. Despite the melting of the arctic ice and the hottest years on record, there is nothing resembling a political consensus developing around such proven measures as carbon pricing or nuclear power.

But following this quote, he brings us to the "last-ditch protective measure", climate engineering to reduce how much sunlight hits the earth. He mentions dispensing sulfates, calcite, nanoparticles, or seawater into the atmosphere. He quotes only one scientist on this, the physicist David Keith. There is no consensus that any of those things would work without causing unacceptable side effects. I would also prefer an engineer rather than a physicist to declare this would work. How many tons of this stuff do we need to dispense, how much of what comes out of the planes will be effectively deployed, and on what timetable do we have to repeat it? (In its favor, this solution does get around the free rider problem -- any one rich country could do this on their own without needing the cooperation of others). His previous quote about "no guarantee" should come after this discussion of last-ditch protective measures rather than before it, as this leaves the erroneous impression we have a proven solution if all else fails.

So where does this all leave us? It seems to me that there are many generalizations with conflicting implications.

One is that technology has over and over again allowed us to improve the human condition in ways that people did not foresee.

Another is that doomsayers have said doom a great many times before and so far none of them has been right.

Another is that it only takes one kind of doom to doom us -- as Pinker recognizes when discussing "entropy" early in the book.

Another is that if we look at the subjective probabilities of various dire possibilities, they all seem to be very low -- with the one exception of global warming. Others might not accept my 90% estimate, but I can't see justifying an estimate below 40%.

While a realistic appraisal of our fate is important in its own right, the more practical question is what we should do right now. He argues that suggesting unrealistic changes such as de-industrialization or simply saying we're doomed don't lead to productive action. He says our best bet is to go right on getting richer and using a portion of our riches to find technological solutions. I don't have any clearly superior course to suggest.

The climate goal for a long time now has been to limit the rise in world temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius. Pinker does not get into what the consequences would be if the temperature rises by 4 or 6 or 8 degrees. We know they would be bad. <This article> suggests a sea level rise of between 3 and 9 feet by the year 2100 -- within the lifetime of today's young children. A great many people will have to move. Hotter temperatures inland may limit suitable places to move to and disrupt water supplies. Food production is likely to be reduced.

Naturally people who predict more dire consequences will get more press coverage than those who say things won't be so bad. With that in mind, the fact that the Trump administration <expects a 7-degree rise by 2100> is rather alarming.

I had been alarmed by the realistic prospect that seas will rise by 200 feet, but am comforted to learn that it would take thousands of years, which is ample time to adjust gradually.

One thing Pinker does leave me with is more optimism that as the exact environmental consequences become clear, we would develop clever technological solutions to mitigate some of their effects.

In my own <latest post> on the subject, I suggested we go right on extending human achievements, which Pinker would surely agree with. I also suggested we be prepared for true civilization-ending catastrophe, and if it becomes warranted, take for inspiration the Roman Empire and do such things as inscribing human achievements in rock for the benefit of those who emerge from dark ages hundreds or thousands of years in the future. We're not to that point yet, but we should get ourselves used to the idea of catastrophic disruption to civilization and think about what we should do then.

Pinker is on a roll of optimism, listing all the things that have gotten better and the low probabilities of anything getting substantially worse. He didn't ignore global warming, but he didn't make a probability estimate for bad outcomes. I think it is very high, and the question is just how bad it will be and how good our mitigation strategies will be.

Pinker's "Enlightenment Now"

I've always been a fan of Steven Pinker. I read "How the Mind Works" and "The Stuff of Thought", two books on the fairly narrow subject of cognitive psychology, Pinker's original specialty and an area I studied in grad school as well.

On the broader, more politically relevant issues, I enjoyed his 2002 book "The Blank Slate" (reviewed <here>), especially its embrace of good evolutionary psychology and its criticism of left-leaning attacks on it and attempts to shut down debate. I also enjoyed the 2011 "The Better Angels of Our Nature", which argued that the world is becoming consistently less violent over time.

I recently read "Enlightenment Now", published just last year. In an important way, this is a generalization from the special case of violence treated in "Better Angels" to a great many aspects of well-being. These are discussed one by one in chapters titled: lifespan, health, sustenance, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, knowledge, the quality of life, happiness, and existential threats. Each chapter names an aspect of human welfare that he claims has improved, with the reasonable expectation that each will continue to improve. The embrace of enlightenment values (reason, science, humanism, and progress) starting 300 years ago has led to vast improvements in just about any measurable index of well-being.

He notes that a great many people reacted with incredulity to his argument in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" that things are getting better, and expects many will react the same way to "Enlightenment Now". He has an explanation for how popular perception can be so far out of line with reality. The structure of news biases us strongly to perceive the world as more negative than it is. News is about events, most of which are disasters. Good things happen slowly and quietly. The magnitude of this distortion is very large, so great that even thoughtful people can see an improving world as one that is getting worse and on the brink of worse disaster. I agree wholeheartedly with him.

I think it's important to understand the limits of his claim. "Enlightenment" as it is understood in religious traditions deals with total peace and harmony with all aspects of existence. In no way does Pinker address such fundamental questions as, "What's the purpose of my life?", "Why are we here?" and "How can I feel OK about dying?" He suggests we focus on what we can measure and improve. And I don't have any problem with that -- fix what you can, and have the wisdom not to worry about what you can't. But "enlightenment" is a word with at least two meanings, and when he focuses on the values of the Enlightenment he is not addressing spiritual enlightenment.

There were just a few of his claims of improvement that I had doubts about.

I wasn't so sure about "happiness", because it's <elusive>. The chapter explains that if you expand from the simple "How happy are you?" to consider meaning and purpose, evaluation of one's life, and life satisfaction, then it is in fact improving.

I wasn't sure about some elements treated in his "existential threats" chapter. He scoffs at the idea of some emergent super-intelligent AI taking over the earth. He thinks malevolently constructed computer viruses pose little threat. I agree with him completely on those two points. Turning to biology, he thinks a devastating pandemic from a superbug is very unlikely, whether occurring naturally or engineered by malevolent humans. I'm not so sure about that. He also mentions events that seem unlikely but to which we have little basis of assigning actual probabilities, including a burst of lethal gamma rays, a collision with a meteor, or the earth's magnetic field reversing. He also addresses the danger of nuclear war, and he is more worried about that possibility than I am.

He also acknowledges that "environment" could be an existential threat but treats it in a separate chapter. He argues that a moderate amount of pollution is acceptable. He notes reductions in oil spills, declining rates of deforestation, and increases in areas set aside for nature. He criticizes "sustainability", arguing that we find new solutions to old problems. For instance, wood, coal, oil, and natural gas form a sequence, and the later energy sources on the list came along to largely replace the earlier ones before they ran out. He introduces the concepts of "density" and "dematerialization" to show how we can often get more value while consuming fewer resources. I agree with him about all of that.

What he actually means by "existential threats" isn't clear. At one extreme, it would mean the literal extinction of humanity. But against his basic premise that the world is getting better, what he seeks to debunk is that we're in a position where "humanity is screwed". If something happens to kill half the human population, that is a serious setback to the idea that things are getting better and better. And on everything considered up to this point, I agree that the probability of such an event is very small.

But then there is climate change, which is part of his "environment" chapter. I consider it separately in the next post. I don't think that the probability of devastating consequences to interrupt the "things are going to keep getting better" narrative is very small at all. I think it is very large.

Compassion for the rich

Lest anyone think this is anything resembling a classic right-wing view, I favor increasing taxes on the wealthy to fund needed programs. Read with that in mind.

If there's any enemy all progressives can agree on, it's the rich. The one percent, or the tenth of one percent. Surely it's open season on them, right? They're our class enemies?

Let's think about them first as people.

Consider the person who is born into a very wealthy family. They come of age and let's say they control $500 million. What do we expect them to do? Should they consider themselves evil? Should they consider their parents evil? Should they instantly give away the vast majority of what they own? Is it understandable if they feel this would be a betrayal of their parents' values? It's not obvious how to give it away. Some of them solve this problem by giving to a charity. Many might hold onto it for a while while they figure out what to do with it. Maybe there will be a better charity next year. Once you give it away, you never get it back. Realizing you've given a lot of money to a fraudulent organization could be very painful.

People get rich in the first place from some combination of luck (neutral), hard work, wisdom and insight (positive), and unethical or criminal dealings (negative). You might have different feelings about rich people depending on what combination got them rich.

What you do with your capital is largely independent of how much you actually spend on yourself each year. You certainly could be very rich and live modestly. On the other hand, if all your relatives have one sort of lifestyle, it is against human nature to freely adopt a much more frugal one.

If this is hard to understand, consider yourself a citizen of the world rather than an American. Think of your lifestyle. Compare it to that of a poor person in the Third World. You did nothing laudable to deserve being an American. They made no mistake to deserve being a poor person in the Third World. So why don't you adopt a lifestyle intermediate between yours and theirs and give most of your money to benefit them? Can you come up with a convincing justification for why you don't? I doubt it. Most likely, you're accustomed to living a certain way, your family, friends and peers live that way, and you want to keep living that way. I suspect rich people feel the same way.

You can identify an opponent (I still hesitate to call them an enemy) if they give money to right-wing causes and candidates. The Koch brothers are a famous case. On the other hand, there are a few billionaires, notably Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have promised to give most of their assets to charity and who (I believe) support Democrats rather than Republicans.

Instead of lumping all rich people into one class, consider the ways they differ, and do not alienate them unnecessarily. Some will join your cause.

I'm not saying that government policies have to avoid hurting the feelings of the rich. Higher income tax rates, a reinvigorated inheritance tax, and a new wealth tax all make sense. We desperately need money for infrastructure and social programs, and they are the only people who have the needed assets (and they have a lot). But there's nothing inherently good about taking their money. We should sympathize with the pain they will feel -- though it shouldn't stop us from enacting those policies.

-----------------
7/20/2019. A reader pointed out that while I suggested taxing income, inheritance, and assets of rich people, I said nothing about campaign finance reform limiting what rich people can spend or at the least requiring transparency in political donations. The issue just never occurred to me while writing the post. I am strongly in favor of such limitations. In line with my general point, I also sympathize with rich people who want to be able to spend their money however they want, though I still favor the limitations.

Don't punch up OR down

I came across a concept that intrigued me. It was called "Don't punch down, punch up." The idea is that it is OK to make fun of classes of people who have power and privilege, but not classes of people who are oppressed.

This fits into the intersectional way of looking at the world, where people are primarily evaluated based on their membership in various classes. A gay white man dependent on a wheelchair is privileged on account of being white and male, and oppressed on account of being gay and in a wheelchair. So someone could poke fun at his whiteness and maleness, but not his gayness or physical disability. If it's an able-bodied straight black woman, you can make fun of the straightness and the able-bodiedness, I guess.

In this and many other posts, my main interest is in improving the world we live in. I'm all for a <goodlaugh>, but I'm not inclined to laugh at the expense of others -- even if they are rich white men. I considered myself a Quaker for a couple years when I was younger, and one of the founder's exhortations was, "Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one." I continue to like this concept when translated out of religious terms. It's not, "Answer the best you find in ordinary people, but ridicule rich white men, for they are the enemy".

Looking for and answering the best in every person is the right thing to do, just in terms of being a good human being. But I also think it's an excellent place to start in actually changing the world for the better.

Consider the two most prominent categories in the intersectional world, race and gender. Let's suppose that whites have a certain pride in being white and males have a certain pride in being male, since those are the categories they were born into (they had no choice) and people of both classes have naturally done many good things. The intersectionalist makes jokes about whites (ha ha), and jokes about men (ha ha). So they've alienated both whites and men, and who is left? Black women. One quarter of our 2x2 intersectional diagram. Not the way to build a coalition. Did those jokes have some compensating positive effect on the blacks and the women? It's hard for me to see it.

It's been suggested that one factor in the election of Donald Trump was that Fox News listened to the comedy shows with a liberal slant like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and reported (accurately) the jokes that were being made at the expense of middle Americans, who were not pleased to be ridiculed. They were white, but not a group of whites who viewed themselves as privileged, and not actually all that privileged. My intuition is that an energetic, intelligent black woman in a vibrant urban area has more privilege than a white man or woman of more modest energy and intelligence who grew up in a dysfunctional family and who lives in a depressed Rust Belt community -- and, sadly, that describes a lot of people. Intersectionalists might derive this result from some complicated formula, but I'm just going on intuition. The white coastal leftists who enjoy the Daily Show are certainly on average more privileged than that white man in the Rust Belt. If intersectionalists have come to understand that the Daily Show was actually punching down and declared that to be a bad idea, I haven't heard of it.

Donald Trump is a man who invites humorous criticism. I can't deny that I find some of it funny, but I tend to think it is not a good idea. It also has separable pieces. His orange hair, his down-turned mouth, his chubbiness, and his being physically out of shape fundamentally have nothing to do with anything important. Making fun of them is just taking cheap shots. A great many of his other attributes are very troublesome, but he shares many of those qualities with his base of supporters. Making fun of them is likely to alienate those supporters. Why not instead respectfully and earnestly explain your problems with the President? I would like to allow Trump supporters to come quietly to the conclusion that they made a mistake -- if only 5% of them did so, it could flip elections. Making fun of the man who they used to think highly of works against that purpose.

I've seen "punching up" described as a positive thing, and perhaps they have in mind energizing the base. My hunch is that it might amuse them, but in terms of action it will reinforce detached cynicism. It won't motivate them to organize or even to vote.

I had a very negative reaction to <WhiteFragility> . But I did allow that organizers letting off steam by privately bemoaning how fragile the whites were in some particular workshop was fine and understandable. Private exasperation at the behavior of any group, privileged or not privileged, seems fine.

Regardless of anything I say, I'm sure stand-up comedians will continue to ply their trade and make fun of people, and they will have audiences. I would urge the audiences to think of this as a separate sphere of life which is something like a guilty pleasure, but contrast it with a more everyday outlook where you try to engage the best in every person and make fun of no one.

Progressive coalitions need all the allies they can get. Instead of casting any class as the enemy, reach out to each person as an individual, listen to and respect their story, and try to persuade them of the justice of your cause.

Reaction to "Under the Banner of Heaven" (about Mormons)

This is a 2003 book by Jon Krakauer about the Mormon Church, focusing in the present on the breakaway fundamentalist sects that consider polygamy a key part of the religion, but it also described the early history of the church, which I found to be the most interesting part.

Joseph Smith was a sort of con artist before he became a prophet. It's impressive that he could make up the entire Book of Mormon while staring into a hat with a special stone at the bottom (someone else writing down his thoughts). He must have had a fabulous imagination.

Joseph received direct revelation from God, and told those who followed him that they too would directly experience God's presence -- a popular aspect of the religion. The problem was that if God could give revelations to Joseph, it could give them to anyone else too. So within a couple years Smith had a revelation that God only gave revelations to him, not the other folks, but it was too late. And it set in motion the Mormon history of splintering into factions, because pretty often some man listening to the voice of God will hear that they are destined to be the leader "mighty and strong" who will reveal God's plan on earth, which is mostly incompatible with a faction where someone else has already claimed that role.

The history of polygamy fascinated me. As best I can tell, it arose from the fact that Joseph Smith was surrounded by lots of very attractive women, many of whom idolized him. It couldn't really be that he was not intended to enjoy them sexually, could it? You can imagine some prophets might just figure they could sleep with them but not marry them, but not Smith. Thus he had a revelation that plural marriage was a great thing. As such, he didn't just enjoy them sexually, he got to own them. The next fascinating part is that he floated a trial balloon to his followers about plural marriage, and the reaction was swift and very negative. So he had another private revelation that while plural marriage was great, the time was not right to reveal it publicly. He did take several wives during this period, but apparently it was known only to an inner circle. It caused some consternation. It was only after Smith's death, as the Mormons were on their way to Utah that the doctrine of plural marriage was revealed to the entire community.

Mormonism is historically a very hierarchical religion, to say the least. Only in 1978 did the head of the LDS church have the revelation that black men might be full human beings and thus be eligible for the priesthood. Women are never allowed into the priesthood -- they are spiritually inferior beings. If church elders tell someone what to do, they are expected to obey unquestioningly (at least traditionally).

Much of the book that is set in the present describes a pair of gruesome murders carried out by Ron and Dan Lafferty. That didn't interest me all that much, since there are wackos all over and I don't like to focus on some particular heinous crime unless it's a symbol of a bigger pattern. The Mormon traditions of violence and direct revelation may have made that crime more likely, but it did not strike me as a dramatic effect

But also in the present Krakauer maps out the sizable fundamentalist sects that continue to believe in plural marriage as a key component of the faith. It's not unreasonable, since only with the prospect of the LDS religion being forcibly dissolved by the US government did the leaders finally receive the revelation in 1890 that polygamy was wrong -- and they continued to carry on plural marriages secretly for many years afterwards. In the fundamentalist sects today, girls are told who they will marry, often at age 14. They are also told that if they refuse or disobey their husbands in any way, they are going straight to hell. Some seem content with this reality but naturally some do not. I find little to admire in the LDS, and find this form of the religion even more repugnant.

What did surprise me about the book is that there was not a single mention of how the other men feel who never get to have any wives at all. That is the inescapable result of the leaders taking multiple wives, but somehow it is never addressed at all. I would be interested in some statistics on just how many of the women end up in plural marriages, how many in monogamous marriages, and what percentage of men ever marry.

I have heard it suggested that worldwide, polygamous societies are associated with greater violence. An oversimplified view is that the large numbers of unmarried men lack the stabilizing influence of a wife and family.

The joys of virtual tourism

I didn't mind traveling as a child or young adult, but as I've gotten on into middle age, I have found traveling more and more tiresome. I don't like waiting in lines, I don't like fitting my 6'2" frame into airline seats, I don't like sleeping in strange beds, and I don't like eating strange food, which often gives me mild indigestion. I don't like getting carsick on buses, I don't like having to decide how much to tip, I don't like being jet-lagged or short on sleep, and I really dislike modern airport security.

A notable development of the past 20-odd years is the increasing availability of still pictures and videos of just about any place in the world, easily accessible by search engines. You can see any tourist destination in perfect lighting, including shots from places tourists are not allowed to go. There are no crowds. You can also find videos posted by ordinary people giving some indication of how they live and how they talk. You can see their food and their daily routines. Here's a 2-hour <walkdown the streets of Kolkata> . Care to see Machu Picchu or Mount Everest? High-quality video awaits, including aerial video.

I suppose there are a few things you don't get from images. Smells, and the taste of genuine local food. Perhaps an overall geographic gestalt of a place. You don't get to see how the locals react to you as an individual. But given my tastes, I will happily forgo those opportunities.

One easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to take fewer tourist trips. It surely is a way to save money.

Part of our mindset in recent decades has been that travel is good. "I've always wanted to go to place X" is a common thought. But I wonder if the thought might be outdated. If you think about why you wanted to go to X, you might find that looking at video will serve most of the same function. You could spend the time you would be in transit reading a book on the history of the place, and you will understand it better than by visiting.

Obviously people's reaction to the annoyances of travel varies on a continuum all the way from my strong dislike through indifference to actually enjoying the challenges and minor inconveniences. Perhaps my position on the continuum fits me to have this revelation earlier than some others. Maybe the best form of tourism, more often than not, involves staying home.

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Addendum, 7/10/2019:

I forgot to add the large role in virtual tourism played by Google Maps and street view. I wrote of an in-person visit as a better way to get an overall geographic gestalt, but Google Maps probably allows an even better experience of this. You can zoom to street view in any particular location to see what things look like there. You can get a self-guided tour of the Palace of Versailles.