There's really nobody to cheer for in the ongoing battle about "rape culture." The hysterical liberals / feminists are cheapening the charge of rape when they apply it to situations where a girl, usually intoxicated, gets taken advantage of. That involves a betrayal of trust, not the threat or use of violence.
Liberals used to concern themselves with matters of unfair treatment, injustice, one party taking advantage of another, and so on. You'd think the common-enough case of a drunk girl getting taken advantage of would be right up their alley. Hard to think of a better textbook example of someone using a higher bargaining position (clear-minded vs. intoxicated) to take advantage of another person.
Yet liberals these days don't talk much about the little person being taken advantage of (umm, vote for the Tea Party much? Cuh-reeeepy...) Most of them became numb to populism a couple decades ago. Hence every objection must be about preventing harm and providing care, no matter how unfitting this approach may be in any given case.
On the other hand, much of the so-called conservative reaction is to say, "Meh, what was she expecting? Anyway, no crime, no punishment. Next topic." While at least seeing past the blubbering about violence and harm, this response still shows a callousness toward a growing problem of young women getting taken advantage of while intoxicated, and while away from anyone who would look out for her interests, i.e. her family.
Sure doesn't sound like a world any of us want to live in, but pseudo-cons are so concerned with kneejerk reactions against the side of political correctness that they won't admit how unwholesome the situation is.
More and more, in fact, the pseudo-con position on any aspect of our fucked up world can be simplified as: "Unwholesomeness -- if you can't get used to it, you're a pussy." Real I-like-Ike kind of values.
This is the gist of some comments, copypasted below, that I left at this post at Uncouth Reflections about how hysterical accusations of rape are getting, that they're claiming ever less harm-based forms of not-so-consensual sex as rape.
That post was in turn motivated by this item at Time about Lena Dunham's new book, in which she relates a story about being "raped" in college. She was drunk and/or on Xanax, was insistent about going back with the guy who took advantage of her -- over an explicit attempt by a hapless white knight to steer her away from it -- and talked dirty to the guy during the act.
It never occurs to her that she was raped (she's thinking of actual rape, including force / violence). Her friend is the one who tells her she was raped, and convinces her. They are now thinking of metaphorical rape, and literal getting-taken-advantage-of. In the comments below I speculate about how our society has gotten here, making use of Haidt's framework of the moral foundations that liberals vs. conservatives draw on in their moral intuitions.
* * *
Incidents like Dunham’s are obviously not rape, they are getting taken advantage of. Why can’t today’s leftoids speak out against vulnerable people getting taken advantage of? Partly because the women make themselves vulnerable in the first place by blasting their brain with so many hard substances in rapid succession, in a public place where they know strangers only have one goal on their mind.
But there must be something more to it. We would object to a sleazy pawn shop owner offering a couple bucks for pristine 1970s receiver if it came in from a clearly stoned-out customer who says he just wants some cash to feed the munchies, man, you gimme anything for this thing?
These cases involve not harm or force but violation of trust. She trusted the guys at the party not to be that type of sleazeball, the stoner trusted the shopkeepers to give him honest treatment. When they wake up the next morning worrying, “Oh God, what did I do?” they feel betrayed or lied to.
Why insist on framing it as harm when it is not? Liberals are becoming so infantilized that it’s the only moral foundation they can appeal to anymore. “Mommy, that person hurt me!” No, they took advantage of you — it’s still wrong, but different from harming you. Kids don’t get it because they’re naive and don’t know about the possibility of having their trust betrayed.
Grown-ups should, though, and the fact that liberals cannot even appeal to their second-favorite moral foundation — fair treatment — shows how stunted this society has become.
Betrayal also taps into the moral foundation of community or in-group cohesion, but liberals are numb to that. If you’re both members of the same community (and typically they are even closer, being at least acquaintances), how could you think of taking advantage of her? Shame on you. Get out, and don’t come back until you’ve made up for it.
But liberals value hedonism, laissez-faire, individual advancement, and other quasi-libertarian leanings that most Republicans do. Hence they cannot object on the basis of wanting to prevent people from taking advantage of others. Under hedonism, that is guaranteed. And if laissez-faire and non-judgementalism are sacrosanct, who’s really to say that we’re in a place to judge a mere sleazeball who takes advantage of others? I mean, it’s not like he’s using force or violence.
Therefore, yes, he must have used force or threatened violence — that’s the farthest that the liberal is willing to draw the boundary. If they have an instinctive revulsion, it must be framed as some kind of harm, because anything less severe than that but still repugnant (like taking advantage of a drunk chick at a party) lies on the “fair game” side of the moral boundary line. Cognitive dissonance kicks in, so they rationalize what happened as harm / rape.
I alluded to it by calling Republicans quasi-libertarians, but let me say that too many conservatives don’t know how to react to these scenarios either. They know that the liberals are hysterically over-exaggerating, and like to invent new classes of victimhood, so their instinct is to dismiss these cases altogether.
But a drunk girl getting taken advantage of at a party isn’t a brand-new victim class. I’m sure that was a concern in Biblical times when the wine began flowing. It’s not as though she were a black who was denied admission to law school due to low LSAT scores, or a mentally ill tranny who feels robbed because ObamaCare won’t fund his castration / mangina surgery.
Brushing the Dunham type cases aside, like “Bitch deserved what she got for getting drunk,” or “Bitches need to learn to fend for themselves when drunk at college parties,” is too far in the anti-PC direction, however understandable the revulsion toward PC is.
I don’t sense any of that here — that’s more of a shrill Men’s Rights thing — but it’s worth emphasizing that it isn’t only liberals who are dumbfounded when they try to articulate their reaction to “drunk chick gets taken advantage of.” They both rely too heavily on laissez-faire and hedonistic norms to be able to say there’s something wrong with someone betraying another’s trust.
By and large both parties are equally drunk, and if one is more drunk than the other, it is usually the male.
ReplyDeleteBut, in truth, this does not make any difference to the way you feel about it. So, you are rationalizing.
The ever rising standard of consent reflects the victorian belief that females can do not wrong, and if it ever looks like a woman was doing wrong, must be because a man made her do it.
In the eighteenth century, the marital contract was enforced on both parties. Around 1820 or so, it started not be enforced on women, while continuing to be enforced on men.
This had, of course, entirely predictable consequences. So, just as today black and female underperformance is deemed to be caused by people noticing black and female underperformance, in the victorian era, female misconduct was blamed on people noticing female misconduct.
Women who get drunk in male company away from family are sluts, and thus incapable of being raped.
We used to have a coherent, civilization-preserving rule for when sex is legitimate: no legitimacy until marriage, whereupon legitimacy is permanently granted to both spouses. The disappearance of that rule created a moral vacuum. The concept of "consent" rushed in to fill the vacuum, and quickly acquired a sacred standing that it's too flimsy to support. It's proving to be like filling a flat tire with wet concrete; it causes more problems than it solves.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to prove that consent was granted, and hard to prove that it was not. Being the volatile, emotional creatures they are, women grant and withdraw consent capriciously, sometimes multiple times per second, and often retroactively. And the mismatch of solution to problem has given us the insane concept of "marital rape," which is one reason why some successful men like me are refusing to marry. Though it's not as well known as it should be, many studies have shown that false rape/molestation accusations are as common as actual rapes/molestations. We have now entered an era where Millennials are recording their sexual acts, at least the audio and sometimes the video, in case they need exculpatory evidence.
The hysteria about drunken sex being "rape" becomes particularly galling when you discover how many college girls get falling-down drunk expressly for the purpose of steeling themselves for sex and disclaiming responsibility for their actions. And what happens when two drunk students have sex? Although it hasn't been expressly written into law, it's perfectly obvious that the feminists intend that the rules be interpreted so that the man is the villain and the woman is the victim. Notwithstanding the recent surveys that show that male college students report themselves to have been coerced into sex roughly as often as the female students reported. The Marxist narrative where one party must be oppressing the other rarely fits the reality where the balance of sexual power among individuals is ambiguous and continually fluctuating.
I like your ideas about leftists labeling everything as "rape" because they can't appeal to in-group cohesion as a basis for not taking advantage of people; it makes a lot of sense. It does seem odd that, as you point out, they don't appeal to fairness; only to harm. Will leftoids soon be down to one moral principle? They say that Satan lures his victims to sin by placing one virtue above all the others.
But even as we contemplate how leftoids fail to balance the virtues, don't underestimate the degree to which they're motivated by Pride, Envy, and concomitant hatred of men. In the English-speaking countries, the men don't hate the women, but the women really do hate the men--they've imbibed resentment starting with their mothers' milk--and I think the vocal feminists really do want to create a legal climate in which any woman can have any man imprisoned any time they want.
As for what conservatives think...the real conservatives think a woman's sexuality should be guarded by her father until it becomes her husband's property. The "conservatives" of which you speak have acquiesced to the irreparable "consent" paradigm, and therefore are not conserving anything. But they are giving the best response possible under he-said-she-said circumstances: there really is nothing you can do. Some problems really don't have solutions. We'll go back to the old paradigm after a century or two of social collapse, but until then, we'll be convicting one innocent man for every guilty one.
Our civilization is not the first to learn that you cannot have sexual license, defend women against predators, and avoid punishing innocent men en masse. Pick any two.
(Sorry for the length, but this sure helped me organize my thoughts.)
"Women who get drunk in male company away from family are sluts, and thus incapable of being raped."
ReplyDeletesperrrrrrrggggggg
"The concept of "consent" rushed in to fill the vacuum, and quickly acquired a sacred standing that it's too flimsy to support."
ReplyDeleteIt focuses too much on the moment-by-moment process rather than the eventual outcome. Someone can take advantage of another even with their consent, but that doesn't make it any less loathsome -- look at how many payday loans, pawn shops, etc. there are in some places. It's all consensual but exploitative.
The same goes for objecting on the basis of purity and taboo -- the girl was corrupted, and it doesn't matter if she consented or not. "Bitches these days got no purity to begin with," the spastic Men's Rights representative objects. But corruption is not just a black-and-white thing. Christmas has already been desecrated by the New Atheist / Jewish chauvinist coalition, but that doesn't make it any less loathsome when they launch further attacks and further pollute what is already only half as pure as it used to be.
The sanctification of "consent" is part of the broader laissez-faire, hedonistic norms of our neo-Libertarian, neo-Utilitarian society. Let any two people do whatever they want with, to, or at each other, as long as both consent (and there's no harm).
What ended such a climate the last time around? It was the twin forces of the Progressive and Temperance movements, both with a strong puritanical streak in their own ways. Progressives didn't care if workers consented to working 80-hour weeks in sub-human conditions for subsistence wages. And the saloon-shutterers didn't care if the drunks consented to getting tossed, or whether the whores and johns both consented to sex for money. The red light districts were disgusting and had to be shut down over objections about consenting adults.
"And what happens when two drunk students have sex?"
ReplyDeleteThat does not involve one taking advantage of the other. Guys who rely on drunk chicks to get laid are not going to get blitzed on Saturday night, though. A few drinks, but nothing where they're really out of it -- wouldn't further their goal.
When both are shitfaced drunk, the objection comes more from the basis of purity and pollution. There, not only does consent not matter, neither does intent of the polluter. Things can get polluted or contaminated by all sorts of unintentional sources.
In fact, in a culture of honor the man who defiles a woman is coerced into marrying and supporting her (contra the Men's Rights delusion that forced child support is something new and anathema to the hard-as-fuck olden times, or that there used to be a sex-blind standard -- it was always the woman's purity that mattered). The alternative is getting killed or run out of town by the woman's male kinsmen. This is all to restore purity as much as possible, not to alter his intentions, or her consent (she also has no say in getting married to him).
In some cases there was someone "taking advantage," but you're underestimating the depravity of women. They are deliberating impairing their brains so that strangers can have their way with them, and then they savor the additional thrill of playing the victim. Their expectations were not betrayed (unless they wake up untouched), and if they could go back in time they would do it again. This is their default sexual behavior, the rape "issue" is entirely political, it's about power and money for females, they use it because it works. Who is taking advantage of whom?
ReplyDeleteWhat you say about the purity motivation makes sense. I suspect that many leftoids have some vestigial feeling that purity should not be violated, at least in the most egregious instances, but they can't say that; their feelings go against their stated beliefs that everything is okay between consenting adults. So in those cases, they make an unprincipled exception to their usual rules. Which they try to justify by a contorted appeal to harm-based morality. Because if they articulated their real motivations, their friends would laugh.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why some day, a man is going to go to jail for having sex with his wife while she's drunk.
"They are deliberating impairing their brains so that strangers can have their way with them"
ReplyDeleteNo, in most cases they're getting sloshed because Millennials are too socially awkward and retarded to enjoy a party when only mildly buzzed. Soaking their brain in booze lets them open up more than they normally would. No, not just when looking for men -- when it's a girl's night in or a girl's night out ("we came together, we're leaving together").
Ditto for why guys get as tanked as they do. They feel too awkward just being themselves. But down shot after shot, and now you have social permission to be more open and social -- it's not you opening up and being vulnerable, it's just the booze controlling your brain.
And in any case, even when the girl is just looking to get laid with plausible deniability, that doesn't make it less disgusting that there are hordes of desperate dorks who are too eager to make it happen for her.
Ditto for obviously molested sluts who show up to a hardcore porno shoot with the sole intent of making fast easy money, and there being dozens of pornographers only too happy to broadcast the girl getting her mouth fucked.
Men have always been held to a higher standard than women because women are more childlike and men more mature. Insisting on a sex-blind, equal treatment for men and women is feminist delusion. The fact that the Men's Rights crowd deplores the traditional double-standard (with the onus on men, and women as quasi-children) shows how radical and experimental their worldview is.
That young women should not go out, get hammered and dispense their favors to casual acquaintances or complete strangers is one of those moral assertions that 99% of the world's civilizations would have regarded as blindingly obvious. Much of the ancient rhetoric against such practices is couched in terms of the moral foundations to which liberals tend to be blind, i.e., loyalty / betrayal (depriving her future husband of her virginity or her ability to pair-bond with him, depriving her family of honor and potentially depriving the tribe of its genetic continuation, especially if the recipient of her favors is an outsider), authority / subversion (no sane father wants his daughter to do this, and it's not healthy for society for lots of young women to do this) and sanctity / degradation (sluts are disgusting and prone to venereal diseases). To speak in terms of these intuitions, in modern America, is tantamount to quoting the Bible and marking oneself as a fundamentalist.
ReplyDeleteWhich is a problem because the feminists and liberals are focused on the liberty / oppression intuition (nobody should be allowed to tell a young woman what to do with her sexuality, especially not those stupid redneck fundamentalists with their invisible sky daddy, patriarchal oppressors).
Liberals do tend to be able to see the care/harm intution, hence "it's rape," and proportionality / reciprocity, hence, "well, maybe she shouldn't do it every night, and he should call her in the morning, otherwise it's really not a nice thing to do." But in matters of the zipper, liberty / oppression trumps all, and it's not healthy.
What the post is proposing, in Haidt's terms, seems like it's somewhere between loyalty / betrayal (hurting the group by taking unfair advantage of one of its members) and fairness (a component of proportionality / reciprocity, taking unfair advantage of the girl's relatively weaker position and lowered inhibitions to take from her what she likely wouldn't agree to give if sober).
Unfortunately, the reciprocity argument only goes so far, and arguments inviting liberals to care about the loyalty / betrayal norm are one of the few things that actually do prompt liberals to see a sanctity / degradation problem. ("Eww, creepy patriarchal homophobic slut-shaming oppressor! Disgusting!")
All of which is to say, liberals are some messed-up people.
Redneck: Your last argument is particularly interesting. In short, liberals defend the sanctity of the slut. (I just Googled the phrase "sanctity of the slut" in quotes; no hits, so I guess you can claim originality.)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the 1% of civilizations that didn't regard those moral assertions as blindingly obvious are particularly interesting. If I understand right, most or all of them were wealthy empires in their final decadent stage of steepest decline. As the American Empire is now.
Kapustin, I suspect that's mostly right. Consider this description of Weimar Germany:
ReplyDeletehttp://28sherman.blogspot.com/2014/09/weimerica.html
Is it taking advantage of someone to ask them what time it is? They have a watch, you don't. Should they be upset with you?
ReplyDeleteEither sex matters or it doesn't. If it matters, it needs to be protected or controlled in some fashion (preferably self-). If it doesn't, almost by definition no one "take advantage" of someone else. The more "liberal" strand of American society (which has aligned itself with Democratic Party) says it doesn't. If it feels good, do it.
This is the problem with jettisoning tradition. Tradition happens because it works to the advantage of individuals that make up the society holding them.
awhile ago, a relative claimed this may have happened to her in high school, though she doesn't remember - there were rumors. What can/should I do about it?
ReplyDelete"In fact, in a culture of honor the man who defiles a woman is coerced into marrying and supporting her (contra the Men's Rights delusion that forced child support is something new and anathema to the hard-as-fuck olden times, or that there used to be a sex-blind standard -- it was always the woman's purity that mattered)."
ReplyDeleteThe old standard was that the man was forced to be the woman's husband, and the woman forced to be his wife - to obey, and to submit.
This was radically different from child support, and supplied children with they actually needed, which is fathers.
This is not the same as the present standard, rather it is the opposite, for the old standard was intended to protect children, and the new standard to get them killed.
Further the old standard was not a it was a woman's purity that mattered. The old standard was that you needed certainty as to who the father was and that all the children of a woman were by the same father so that children could have fathers.
I don't know for sure but you sound like just another white knight fucktard out to save women from their own choices.
ReplyDeleteAt the core of feminist rape politics is the basic conceit that a certain group of people not only have the 'right' to cruelly dangle raw meat in front of a hungry dog but actually expect to not get nipped in the process much less get their hand bit clean off.
The wholesale internalization of this meme as the natural order of the cosmos, even by those that consider themselves to be 'red pill', is the most egregious piece of misandric slight of hand ever perpetrated by women against men.
the stoner trusted the shopkeepers to give him honest treatment
ReplyDeleteYeah, but maybe if the stoner cares, it's because he thinks his interests have been harmed - even if he benefited at the time, overall he's been cheated out of the value of the receiver and lost out financially and suffered long term financial harm. So it's hard to separate in this example.
Like, if he was lied to and given more money than it was worth that would help him over time and not harmed, he probably wouldn't care or would be thankful (depends on how much value he put on the thing). Loyalty or unfairness seem often to function like intensifers of harm ("I've been harmed by my kinsman, who I'd expect better of") that are more than the sum of their parts, not really something which stands alone. Exploitation needs harm - it relies on the idea that someone has been placed in a relatively worse situation than they would otherwise, not that they've been misled only, or that a ritual act of betrayal with no real significance has occurred. That's why Liberal morality is vulnerable to stripping out this complexity adding intensifier.
"Meh, what was she expecting? Anyway, no crime, no punishment. Next topic."
Pretty callous, but in practice seems like a reaction based in the idea that if women know there's no protection, they'll retreat from situations where there's a risk of rape (or cocoon, I guess you could call it).
It's probably unrealistic, like much "Starve the Beast" stupidity - women won't actually respond by avoiding situations being taken advantage of, perps will only get bolder without male hostility to keep them in check and women will get more hostile to men as a whole, as a child-like mindset of interdependence and deserving protection becomes upset.
But not *genuinely* based on the idea nothing wrong has happened, just the idea that giving women the idea they deserve protection only feeds the problem, because it encourages them to get into rape situations.
Many of them care, but don't want to translate that into an empathic response or legal presence to encourage the Conservative (or pseudo-Con?) dogma and mantra of personal responsibility.
Bear in mind these guys don't really want mate-target women going around hanging around lots of non-kin males - they probably skew towards generally monogamous "doofus dad" provider types uncomfortable with that whole scene.
They're not like PUAs who are genuinely out to exploit women and enjoy that climate (the real guys who would argue that you better embrace the unwholesome, you pussy) - instead they want to discourage women from hanging around lots of riskily exciting men who cut sharp, risky dance moves or whatever and encourage the idea that women that do are morally worthless.
Some of them are bitter Men's Rights Virgin Avenger type losers (see commentators above), who actually have great schadenfreude glee about rapes, but few of them are actually guys who would enjoy or thrive in the unwholesome environment and prey on women.
As people became less naive in the 70's and 80's was this hysteria about unpleasant phenomena less common?
ReplyDeleteI think that the relatively gentle, non-violent environment that has taken hold since the mid-late 90's has deluded some people into utopian type thinking about how certain nasty things "shouldn't happen". Even if potential victims do everything but tattoo screw me on their foreheads. Times of low domestic criminality seem to instigate a lot of naivete about human nature.
The sheltered upbringing of Silent Gen/Early Boomers eventually led them to be exploited by various forces (rapists, serial killers, radical professors, drug gurus, cults etc.,) in the dangerous late 60's-80's period. I think we're gradually transitioning to a period where Millenials/ Post Millenials will be easy prey for the predators who'll get bolder in the 2020's and beyond.
As Agnostic has pointed out several times, older Millenials literally look like children compared to the preceding generation. Hopefully they'll toughen and wise up a little with experience. Who wants them whining their entire lives?
There's a price to be paid for tranquility. Being around danger makes people grow up faster. A threatening climate makes people learn quickly what naive behavior to avoid while also more likely to take responsibility for such naive behavior and it's consequences.
The frat boy attitude that takes glee in others misfortune is sad. That also reflects how degraded and anti-social people have become in the post 1992 era. Course, in the ongoing war between the sexes I'm sure that some guys figure that sex with drunken sluts is an acceptable weapon.
The word conspicuously missing from this post is FATHERHOOD. And until that's publicly respected as the last word on a woman's behavior, all the complaining in the world about the polarizing effects of equality will be useless, because no fixed final authority means no ability to fix intermediate positions and punishments on the sliding scale of acceptable and unacceptable. Many excellent impressions can be had and communicated, to few or many, but there still has to be a universally and arbitrarily recognized authority before any intermediate social agreements can be made. Otherwise your structures collapse and your phantoms melt away in the hellish heat of naked self-interest.
ReplyDeleteAnd while we're on the subject of ignoring the constant vilifying of any end state goals for positive exercise of rooted male authority, did you see Gone Girl yet?
The obvious needs to be said:
ReplyDelete20 something girls consciously calibrate their drinking in correspondence with their receptiveness to sleeping with men who attract them.
Meanwhile, most girls, even of the socially awkward Millennial generation - if they're consciously making the decision to not have sex with a random guy - will have only a couple of drinks.
@ Feryl - Way I'd see naivity vs jadedness is that it mainly changes with Gen X vs everyone else and just leads to cocooning.
ReplyDeleteBased mostly on this blog :
Silents / Millennials - Naive, but early years in a dangerous / paranoid climate and socialising with paranoid Xers limit social experience so don't socialise much with non-friends and family (e.g. in community organisations, bars). Develop poor self control and interpersonal skills (bratty, toxic, touchy) and high risk aversion (cowardly).
Low socialising with strangers leads to low violence.
Silents were family men, who left their youthful friends behind and spend all their time with family (as family formation is encouraged by economics, Baby Boom) while Millennials hang around with friends all the damn time until almost middle age as family formation is late. But neither of them really socialise openly and publicly in public spaces with strangers very well.
Early Lost / Early Boomers / "Z" - Naive, raised in a peaceful climate, higher risk taking (memories of burnouts and casualties of risk taking are long gone), so gain more social experience and socialise more publicly = sharp rise in violent crimes (due to personality clashes, etc.). Booms in bars, speakeasies, live music as mass social movements rather than hangout joints for a hipster / scenester / muso minority.
Late Lost / Late Boomers - More streetwise and cynical, still high risk taking, positive view of other and naivety from peaceful early years and upbringing not yet outweighed by cynicism = continuing rise in mass sociability and violence.
G.I. / Gen X - Turbulent upbringing. Surrounded by acid casualities, etc. Opposite of naive, instead streetwise to the point of jadedness, cynicism, apathy and paranoia (more or less how they were described as kids and how people like Bret Easton Ellis still describe themselves). As teens and adults retreat from the social sphere, especially bars once Lost / Boomers age out of bar going age. Cocooning replaces "Cheers" style open, public, nightlife socialising typical of Boomers with "Seinfeld", "Friends", "Heathers" style intense socialising with small groups of acquaintances = falling social friction, vulnerability and violence.
Without large groups of passionate, excitable, naive, open young people music splits into a small authenticity focused muso faction ("You probably haven't heard of it. It's pretty obscure.") honing its techniques and textures (very complex jazz, electronica, math rock, etc.) and a larger corporate, inauthentic, plastic faction.
More public than Millennials / Silents as G.I. / X low sociability and low charisma comes from irony, guardedness, hostility, suspiciousness, pessimism and dismissiveness rather than low ability, lack of maturity, brattiness / dorkiness.
Assuming the predictions here line up, the difference between the distrustful, unrealistically jaded, closed off Xers and naive, kumbaya, outgoing Zs will probably become huge, just as it did between the GIs and Boomers. The Millennials like the Silents with Boomers will be broadly supportive of the Zs trust in people (late Millennials might even form the early counter cultural figures for the Zs), but won't quite understand the Zs' exuberance or confidence or the downsides of the risks they take.
"As people became less naive in the 70's and 80's was this hysteria about unpleasant phenomena less common?"
ReplyDeletePeople paid more attention to it and victims got more sympathy. Teen magazines and sitcoms were far more likely to cover issues like teen pregnancy, date rape, etc. than they are today. For instance, in the movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont Times", a freshman girl gets pregnant and has to get an abortion. Or there were the slew of exploitation flicks where innocents take a wrong turn, trust the wrong person, etc.
It is a paradox that, when there is a rising crime rate, people are nicer and more sympathetic to each other.
"Opposite of naive, instead streetwise to the point of jadedness, cynicism, apathy and paranoia (more or less how they were described as kids and how people like Bret Easton Ellis still describe themselves)."
ReplyDeleteThis applies more to the Late Boomers. Gex X were more idealistic, IMO.
I don't think Gen Xer's are very idealistic, sure they've had their causes, hopes, dreams and so forth but they've been through too much crap to fight very hard for anything or even have much conviction in anything. The smug as ever Baby Boomers still think they can fix it all even after decades of ample proof that they've caused many more problems than they've solved.
ReplyDelete"As people became less naive in the 70's and 80's was this hysteria about unpleasant phenomena less common?"
"People paid more attention to it and victims got more sympathy."
I'm not so sure it's about awareness/sympathy (though in less mind more heart periods people are warmer) as it is about appreciation and insight into how these things are a part of human nature. When so few people deal with various domestic "outrages" (murders, rapes, kidnappings, torture etc.that are NOT committed by foreign terrorists) people have an incredulous reaction on the rare chance that they occur. After enough exposure to these things people will be more stoic.
It's a sign of how autistic and immature people are that they can scarcely believe these things happen to begin with, let alone have any insight into the psyches of the perps.
It's also laughable when "experts" are cited for the supposed motivation of the scumbag. Reminds of the scene in Dirty Harry when Clint interrupts the shrinks by grumbling 'he does it because he likes it.' He being the villian Scorpio.
When people start to toughen and wise up again we'll begin to think for ourselves and trust our instincts instead of wasting our lives watching charlatan "experts" debating and lecturing when we could be doing better things.
As people got dorkier and PC in the 90's guys like Tim Mcvay were subjects of all kinds of half baked speculation and finger pointing especially on the Cable News channels that got huge in the 90's when people stopped having lives. "See, this is what happens to blue collar white guys who go too right wing". Really though, in hindsight McVay was actually a surly drifter who hung out with other losers and developed an autistic love of guns and a persecution complex. This eventually intensified into being able to rationalize killing hundreds of people. Because they were a symbol of the government that enraged him. Course he was too cowardly to, say, assassinate the president.
"When people start to toughen and wise up again"
ReplyDeleteI've been following the generational discourse on here for quite some time, but it still escapes me why we're supposed to wait with anticipation the arrival of a new tough and street-wise generation.
Moreover, there's a sort of hubris that assumes that such a generation is right around the corner. I've said it again and again - but let everyone who makes such predictions be available ten years hence when the results are in.
Curtis This applies more to the Late Boomers. Gex X were more idealistic, IMO.
ReplyDeleteDon't see how that description fits the Late Boomers very well, but X may be idealistic in some ways. I wouldn't shit on tough times (economic or crime) making people more idealistic in some ways. I'm thinking about how their idealism translates in idealism in public behaviour.
If Gen X are idealistic, it seems more like "My parents got divorced, and it was horrible. Ideally, children wouldn't have to go through divorce, so ideally I don't get married" or "These freaks / mainstream people don't meet my ideals, so I'm not even going to approach them". Probably tuned up beyond a realistic level. Very much to be the sort of idealism, tending towards harsh or avoidant idealism, not a naive optimism where people go out and take chances. X are tight and loyal with whatever Frat Pack style small group they've got.
I don't think Gen X were like this as much when the Boomers were still young and calling the tune in music, film and nightlife, and there was more expectation to live their lives in the open, but it seems really striking how this took hold as soon as they began to become tastemakers and role models in the late 80s through the 90s.
The GI Generation was seen by the Boomers as grey, cold, old men much more than Silent by X or Boomers by Millennials (Silent seem like they seen by Boomers as frazzled, repressed people missing out on life, not really mean old men?). I think it might be that way with X and "Z". Thankfully they'll both be relatively small generations so that'll limit the cross generational outright culture warfare some (although it'll have an ethnic twist with X being mostly White and Z being much more other).
it still escapes me why we're supposed to wait with anticipation the arrival of a new tough and street-wise generation
Supposedly violent crime and public behaviours follow a more or less 30 year epicycle, although it's more open vs closed generations initially. We'll see if this is actually the case.
You'll wait with anticipation for them if you liked the way of life and culture of such times (I've never lived through one really, not sure if I do).
I wasn't specifically referring to a particular generation, I'm talking about people of all ages becoming more stoic and less naive in the face of bad things after a sustained period of greater non foreigner/non terrorist perpetrated violence.
ReplyDeleteNaturally some gens will have an easier time adjusting; I think that the 1990-2005 cohort will have it a bit rougher since they didn't deal with wildness (drugs, violence, abuse etc.) at all in comparison to a fair amount of people born in the 80's. the Post 2005 births will have the benefit of adolescence (in later births, their childhood and adolescence) of encountering increasing wildness within 5-10 years if they aren't already.
Also people will lose interest in talking heads psycho analyzing dirt bags. In the Warriors from 1979 the only motivation given to the villian Luther is when he says "I just like doing stuff like that". Not like the long winded pseudo intellectual discussions about motives we've been having regarding real and fictional villains since the early 90's.
I like M's observation that the mistrustful Gen Xer's basically halted the outgoing, chaotic period of the 70's-early 90's because they didn't have the temperament to put themselves in volatile situations like the Boomers did. 70's and 80's movies sure featured a lot of bar brawls. Roadhouse ('89) basically is one long bar fight with the mullets flying as fast as the roundhouse kicks.
"Supposedly violent crime and public behaviours follow a more or less 30 year epicycle, although it's more open vs closed generations initially. We'll see if this is actually the case."
ReplyDeleteIts followed this pattern in the 20th century. Going back, it appears more irregular in the 19th century and before. For instance, crime is reported as falling for most of the 19th century in America.
However, that may have been because of poor methods for reporting crime, or something like that.
I'm not sure if the cocooning is a natural part of human affairs. Maybe some kind of dysfunction caused by overpopulation - John Calhoun's experiments with mice showed that overpopulation caused young mice to become asocial.
ReplyDeleteThe philosopher Nietszche argued that cocooning("Apollonian") culture is fairly recent in human history, not happening until Socrates, but maybe he was wrong.
I've always thought that taking advantage of a drunk girl, even if she is coming onto you, is a shithead move. But I thought the big issue was when they are both drunk. Even in that situation the guy always seems to be the only one responsible.
ReplyDeleteCurtis - Going back, it appears more irregular in the 19th century and before. For instance, crime is reported as falling for most of the 19th century in America.
ReplyDeleteCurtis - I'm not sure if the cocooning is a natural part of human affairs. Maybe some kind of dysfunction caused by overpopulation - John Calhoun's experiments with mice showed that overpopulation caused young mice to become asocial.
Yeah, can be slower.
Not sure mental illness is involved, I think it's mostly like predator-prey dynamics like agnostic says, only with actual predators taking a peripheral role (but they're there for sure).
People become outgoing and open so get into more incidental conflict, so begin to perceive the world as more dangerous so get less outgoing and open, so get less incidental conflict, so perceive the world as less dangerous, so get more outgoing and open, etc. (with an adjustment that I think the Millennial generation tends to view other people as not that dangerous really but has some poor / fragile social, risktaking and emotional ability thing going on from their developmental environment which still keeps their preference for being outgoing low).
That all seems very natural but could be that urban living accelerates these cultural patterns agnostic's noticed so they're faster and maybe deeper / more extreme?
Previous cultures maybe don't have as much breakneck generational change as smoother clines.
Might be due to mental illness or something like that causing overly extreme reactions (e.g. people become unnaturally outgoing then unnaturally closed off), and mental illness correlates with urbanization and dense living. Or there could be other explanations - e.g. one pattern in the past was for urban cultures to be replaced by fresh influx of young people from the country - internal and external migration. And people may not locally have always been on the same cultural epicycle, we forget how isolated a lot of the world used to be, at least for poor people). So it might be that cultural "learning" that changes attitudes (in one direction or another) was slowed down by this.
That cycle of naivety / caution or outgoing / cocooning could change on a 2 or 3 generation scale in slower moving / slower cultural learning cultures.
"In fact, in a culture of honor the man who defiles a woman is coerced into marrying and supporting her (contra the Men's Rights delusion that forced child support is something new and anathema to the hard-as-fuck olden times,"
ReplyDeleteOld Testament, I believe. So, if you can convince America to return to its Old Testament roots, Men's Rights Activism will be unnecessary.
"or that there used to be a sex-blind standard -- it was always the woman's purity that mattered)."
Yes, but the purity of the woman mattered the most to the men who both ruled, and saw their sons as ruling after they had gone. So once you convince America to return to patriarchy, Men's Rights Activism will be unnecessary.
"The alternative is getting killed or run out of town by the woman's male kinsmen."
So once you restore family unity apart from the state and the ability of that family to take extralegal actions with little to no expectation of punitive consequences, Men's Right's Activism will be unnecessary.
"This is all to restore purity as much as possible, not to alter his intentions, or her consent (she also has no say in getting married to him)."
So once you restore a society-wide public and legal representation of the importance of female purity over female consent, Men's Rights Activism will be unnecessary.
I just get the strange feeling that anyone who makes knee-jerk condemnations of MRAs is either a liberal fully invested in the destruction of his society who recognizes them as a threat, or a conservative too worried about what the cool kids in HR will say about him to go for broke on what he really wants. I WANT SEX or I WANT RIGHTS is at least an actionable demand, but I've seen very little systematic I WANT PATRIARCHY or I WANT ADHERENCE TO OLD TESTAMENT LAW or I WANT UNANIMOUS SOCIAL RECOGNITION OF THE FOLLY OF ALLOWING FEMALE DECISION-MAKING coming from you or a lot of the so-called secular reactionaries.
"
ReplyDeleteNot sure mental illness is involved, I think it's mostly like predator-prey dynamics like agnostic says, only with actual predators taking a peripheral role (but they're there for sure)."
Part of the theory is that cocooning psychologically damages the younger generations, the ones that mature during the crime decrease.
this is why I believe cocooning may represent dysfunction rather than a natural cycle of human history. for one, its irregular, and for two, it causes people to become dysfunctional.
ReplyDeletethe cycling between equality and inequality, on the other hand, seems even, changing every 50-60 years, and does not make the younger generations dysfunctional.
Part of the theory is that cocooning psychologically damages the younger generations, the ones that mature during the crime decrease.
ReplyDeleteSee I differ in that I think that I think very sharp, fast change, whether of the sort where people are socially withdrawing or where the environment appears to be getting more dangerous, can't be good for the mental balance of the young either way.
Although a protective, withdrawn environment is probably going to be worse than an environment which seems to be getting more dangerous but people are socially connected.
I don't really believe in the idea that dangerous environments encourage people to become pyschologically stronger and work together - maybe to a certain extent, but it seems that people, at least modern people, when it happens fast, become overwhelmed to the degree that they just start to withdraw, drop trust, etc.
Changes in violent crime rates, as I see it, are mostly just a consequence of a shift to a more outgoing disposition that has built up during the tail of peaceful but boring times where people have stopped getting more paranoid (particularly in generations that have their formative years in these times). I don't really think people respond to violent crime by becoming more cohesive and daring.
Look at Generation X - they have some strong qualities compared to complacent, enthusiastic, go-with-the-flow, positivity embracing Boomers, but these mostly seem to me to end looking like varying kind of distancing self and other skepticism, not really full blown inabilities to cope emotionally in groups, but exaggerated beyond a useful degree.
If you compare early Boomers who grew up during a falling violence period to early Generation X who grew up during a rising violence period, I don't really think the early X come out as more psychologically healthy.
Probably the most psychologically healthy people grow up during slow rates of change, whether higher violence, higher outgoingness or lower violence, lower outgoingness, because stability of the environment is more important.