Rape culture

Imagine a society where rape is often glorified in television shows and movies, and people talk openly about how much they enjoyed the rape scenes.  Suppose also that some of the most popular religions in society view rape as a normal part of life, and even morally permissible.  In that society, rape is both a large part of the culture, and it’s a direct/open part of the culture.  It would probably be fair to describe it as rape culture.

When you think about whether something is ____ culture, it seems reasonable to think about both size and directness.   For example, it would be hard to argue that it is unfair to describe a society where violence was common and people openly talked about enjoying it, as ‘violence culture.’   Consider two other societies where it’s less clear whether the violence culture label is appropriate.  Imagine a society where there is indirect support of violence. There, the culture contributes to violence from less visible things (e.g., parenting styles that do not promote empathy). Alternatively, one could imagine a society where there is direct promotion of violence but on a small scale.  An example of this might be if there was some violence as entertainment, but, for the most part, it was not something that received much attention.  Would it be fair to characterize the latter two societies as ‘violence culture?’

I am confident that there are many ways in which american culture leads to a higher incidence of rape than we would see in a more rape-prevention-optimal culture.  I can think of candidate cultural contributors, including the following:   rape trivialization attitudes; overemphasis on the importance of beauty in girls/women; sex-negativity; glorification of alpha-males; alcohol over marijuana as high of choice (drug war)[1];  too many unsupervised people with under-myelinated brains (teens); too many unsupervised people with under-myelinated brains who further render useless their frontal lobes by consuming alcohol; not enough access to porn; too much access to porn[2]; glorification of violence; emphasis on competition; too much religion; not enough religion; the standard narrative of human sexuality; fewer economic opportunities for women; victim blaming; overrepresentation of men in law enforcement and the media; and lack of concern about prison rape. I’m sure I’m missing some obvious ones.

At the same time, the words rape culture have a shock element to them.  Almost everyone is against rape in the sense that they think it’s bad and wish it never happened.  I suspect a very small minority of people would enjoy seeing a rape scene in a movie, and even fewer of them would admit to it (because they would be judged harshly). So, we don’t have a culture that directly encourages rape.  We do, however, live in a society where 15-20% of women have been raped [3].  That number is so alarming/sad/horrific, that that alone might be sufficient reason to call this rape culture.

The Steubenville Ohio case cemented in many people’s mind that this is a rape culture.  Yet, I wonder how much of that perception came from misleading or inaccurate facebook memes.  If it’s so clear that this is rape culture, then why the need to mislead?

Even questioning whether rape culture is a fair term can get you accused of being pro-rape, anti-women, ‘part of the problem’, etc.  If you describe our culture as ‘rape culture,’ you immediately signal to everyone around you that you are strongly against rape.  This reminds me of something I read about pedophilia:

…people gain status by attacking pedophilia. And you gain the most status if you go the furthest attacking pedophilia, if you can separate yourself from the pack by attacking it more, if you can say “My opponents think this marginal case is okay, but I am so against pedophilia that I oppose even the marginal cases” so on even further into the margin. And it’s really hard to say “Okay, you’ve gone too far with the attacks on pedophilia”, because then the other person can just say “I notice my worthy opponent is trying to defend pedophilia” and you lose whatever debate you were having.

Most people are against rape, and there is a lot to gain but showing you are even more strongly against it than most people; there is little-to-nothing to be gained by questioning whether someone is taking their anti-rape arguments a little to far.

‘Rape culture’ efficacy?

All of the above are just some of my thoughts about these types of labels in general.  However, the important question is not whether rape culture is a fair or appropriate label, but whether it is an effective one.  The label ‘rape culture’ is kind of jarring.  I could imagine someone hearing if for the first time and thinking “Rape culture?  Everyone is against rape.  Why would they call it that?  Convicted rapists are some of the most hated people in society (right behind pedophiles and child murderers).”  And then the person might think deeper about the issue.  Perhaps they will think about the ways in which society does contribute to rape.  Perhaps they will start to notice things, like ‘boys will be boys,’ victim blaming, objectifying images of women, etc. Thus, the label, which has a shock element to it, might be very effective at raising awareness of these important issues.

Alternatively, perhaps people will find the rape culture description as too extreme, and want to take a stand against it.  In that case, you’ve just given them motivated cognition in the wrong direction.

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[1] “In 47% of rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking.”  I can’t help but wonder to what degree ‘drinking culture’ is a major factor in ‘rape culture,’ and to what degree that is caused by our stupid marijuana laws (i’m pretty sure someone high from pot is less likely to be aggressive than someone who has been drinking, but I’m not sure about this)

[2] I have heard arguments on both sides (that access to porn leads to more objectification of women and leads to more rape; that access to porn gives people a sexual outlet and makes them less likely to rape;  I think the data are more supportive of the latter theory, but I am not an expert)

[3] Data on rape are not particularly reliable for a variety of reasons, but those are the numbers I found on wikipedia, and they seem pretty consistent with what I’ve seen from other sources.

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High-end faux friendliness at low-end prices

In general, how happy to interact with customers employees pretend to be depends strongly on how much they are getting paid.  If we’re lucky, someone working at the cash register at a fastfood place or a pharmacy chain might manage to not seem annoyed at having to deal with us.  Waitstaff at a low to mid-end restaurant will likely be fairly friendly, in hopes of receiving a decent tip.  At a high-end restaurant or clothing store, the staff will treat you like you are someone who is very important.  And, if you pay enough money, employees might even pretend to be sexually attracted to you.  Even though we all are aware that we are essentially paying people to act happy or treat us like we are important, it apparently still makes us feel good.

That seems to be the economic-behavioral relationship in this culture.  Most people accept that that’s how things are, and don’t seem to comment on it. However, I have witnessed the following on several occasions.  Someone who has a lot of money shops at a store (or restaurant) that is known for having very low prices (and not paying their employees much money).  This high status individual complains about how the employees aren’t very friendly or attentive.  For some reason, they are expecting high-end faux friendliness at low-end prices.

One explanation is that this is just standard classist behavior.  However, a wealthy person really wouldn’t gain much by trashing (e.g.) walmart employees — we all already know that the wealthy person makes a lot more money than the employees.  Usually agressive class signaling is reserved for people who are barely below you in SES (the signaling is an attempt at increasing the perceived distance).  I have an alternative explanation.  Perhaps self-important people believe that lower social class folks should be happy to interact with them, even if they aren’t being paid (i.e., that they are so important that it should be a privilege for anyone to interact with them).

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Humanism

In this entry, unless otherwise noted, humanism will refer to the belief that humans have special status (i.e., superiority) among species (in the same spirit as the way sexism refers to views about the sexes, and racism refers to views about races).

Science has gradually chipped away at humanism.  Evidence for heliocentrism, evolution, the cognitive map of bees, super organisms, the evolution of culture, and evidence against dualism and free will, to name some examples, have had a big impact.   However, humanism still persists in various ways throughout our culture.

Consider language.  Here are some humanist words/concepts:

• ‘natural‘ – If humans build a skyscraper it’s unnatural, but if bees build a beehive it’s natural.  If humans clean a new environment with antibacterial soap, it’s unnatural, but if Jewel Wasps do it it’s natural (note: ants also make antibiotics).  And so on.
  All living and non-living things affect the environment around them.  Humans have their own niches in that regard (in terms of how we do it), but so does everything else.
  
• ‘humanist’ / ‘humanism’ – Sometimes people use the word ‘humanism’ as a synonym for being nice.  That definition of humanism is itself humanist (the bad kind), because it suggests that humans have some special ability for kindness.
• ‘animals’ – The word ‘animals’ often implies only non-human animals.

Humanist thinking also includes greatly overestimating how many things are uniquely human.

It’s great to see people like Neil Shubin trying to get people to see the evolution of living things as a small part of the evolution of the universe.  Humanism will be difficult to defeat, however, because we have egos interacting with paradigm shift resistance.

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Charity at checkout

When paying for items at a store, sometimes an employee (or the self-checkout computer) will ask the customer if they want to donate to a particular charity.  This is some major pressure, because it is hitting on these near-niceness signaling desires that are such a huge part of our brainware.

While you have your bank card out, the nice employee smiles and asks “would you like to donate $3 to feed the hungry?”  They see that you have already spent $200 on groceries, including organic vegetables, alaskan king crab, and speciality cheese.  What kind of a selfish monster would not spend just $3 to feed starving children?  Even if you only bought essential budget items, you cannot spare a few dollars?

A lot of people probably say yes to the donation.  They get to feel good about whatever cause they contributed to and for appearing to be a nice person to the employee (and/or whoever is shopping with them).  The company benefits by being able to brag about how much money they raised for the charity.  The charity wins by getting a big donation.  So win-win-win, right?

Which charity?

Most people have some preferences in terms of which causes they care more about (e.g., cancer, environment) and what qualities the charities possess (e.g., effectiveness, efficiency, visibility of outcomes).  In addition, the amount of money that each person could potentially donate to charity varies and is not unlimited.  Thus, given preferences and finite resources, some people might not be very enthused about having other people try to pressure them into donating to non-preferred charities.  I have my favorites. You have yours.  Why should I try to pressure you into donating to mine or vice versa?

Charity has large social component

If I walked up to you and said “will you give me $20 so that I can donate it to my favorite charity?,” you would probably think that that was a strange and inappropriate request.  But if I make that request more social, it becomes socially acceptable (and even encouraged).  For example, I could say “I’m running in a 10K for Alzheimer’s research.  My father had Alzheimer’s.   It’s such a terrible disease.  I’m looking for people to sponsor me.”   Here it was made personal by citing my father.  By donating, you are showing me that you care about how tough it was for me and my dad.  Also, it is social by participating in a run with many other people.  People getting together to build a house is directly related to charity.  But people getting together to walk or run? Why?  Apparently, the social component greatly increases donations (or these events wouldn’t exist).  We love to get together with other people to feel like we are all in supporting this cause together.  We like to contribute to such activities.  (although I suspect if the charity event was “everyone dig a large hole and then fill it back up again,” it wouldn’t get as much support.  It would feel more pointless than a run for some reason (even though they are both exercise and exercise only))

The end result is you got somebody to donate their money to your preferred charity.  There is an understanding that you might return the favor, which has the feel of reciprocal altruism, but sort of is not (‘not,’ in the sense that person A could have just donated double the money to their own charity and none to person B’s, and vice versa, and the outcome would be the same).  This sort of fake reciprocal altruism really demonstrates the extent to which it’s social.  I donate to yours, you donate to mine, and we both bond with each other over it and feel great.

Summary

With that as background, when an employee asks me if I want to donate to a particular charity, these are the thoughts that flash in my head:

• I don’t know anything about this charity.  Maybe it does more harm than good.  There are plenty of charities that fall into that category (unintended consequences and all that).
• Even if it does more good than harm, I’m sure there are more effective and efficient charities out there.  I could take that (e.g.) $3 and spend it on one of (e.g.) GiveWell’s recommended charities.
• I can’t help but resent the fact that a store is putting me in a position of either donating to their charity of choice (rather than mine), or looking like I want kids to starve.
• I don’t want to encourage this kind of social pressure. I feel bullied.
• Some people can’t afford to donate even a few dollars to charity.  It probably harms them to ask for a donation (they might experience shame or guilt).
• But maybe I’m just rationalizing.  Maybe I won’t take that $3 and donate to my favorite charity.  Maybe I really just want to keep the money for myself and am using these arguments to justify doing so.  I know that if I could push a button and donate to a charity that has been proven effective (at something I care about), I would do it right now.  But realistically, I’ll go home and forget about this and not donate.
• I know that this is mostly just a social thing.  Why can’t I just play along and feel good that I signaled caring?  Maybe if a lot of people say yes to the $3, the employees will feel like there are a lot of caring people in the world, and they will feel better about humanity (that’s worth something).
• It really could be that the policy of stores like these leads to more total charitable donations, and even if the charities aren’t the most efficient, there is a net benefit (over the counterfactual world where no stores try to pressure people to donate)
• But I really don’t think that this is the best way to distribute money to causes.  Is there reason to believe that the people making these decisions for businesses are better than the public at picking out good charities?

(that is a very good summary of my thought process.  my life is endless debates with myself about all kinds of things. is this common I wonder?)

I do not know how to estimate which potential world is better.  There are reasonable arguments on both sides.  I will probably continue to just say no to these requests (primarily because I want to discourage social pressure), but I do not know if I am net helping or harming the world.

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Broken BS detectors

Hopefully it is not controversial to say that most humans have BS detectors that do not work very well.  How often, for example, does someone tell you something that you immediately know isn’t true (which can be demonstrated with two seconds of googling or going to snopes)?

I think it is very difficult for logical brain people to understand that when social brain people say they believe X, they are not saying that they’ve given it a lot of thought, have looked at the evidence, and decided that X was true.  Saying that they believe X is telling you what social group they belong to — it’s throwing up a gang sign.

Given that humans have large social brains, perhaps it is not surprising that having good BS detectors is not important.  To bond with your in-group, it’s important to trust them.

However, it is not hard to imagine people having good BS detectors and signaling trust.  If you think of it in terms of multilevel selection, you could reap the group benefits by signalling agreement, while enjoying the individual benefits by not believing in non-sense.   So why doesn’t that seem to be how our brains evolved?

I think the problem here is that in cases where the BS detector would benefit you individually, pretending to agree with the group would harm them (costing you the group benefit).  For example, if your group says that everyone should eat berries that you know are poison, you will not get the group benefits if your group members all die (while you secretly spit out the berries).  On the other hand, if their beliefs are more benign (like belief in a rain god), you would not get much (if any) individual benefit from awareness that what they believe is false.

Without multilevel selection pressure, I think that group benefits of bonding via trust trump individual benefits of being a critical thinker.  Thus, broken BS detectors.

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Who should get over it?

Here are two memes that seem worth discussing together:

In one case, the message is to make sure we never forget this bad thing that happened. In the other case, the message is to forget what happened and move on. Why the different message?

Is it because 9/11 occurred more recently than slavery? Well, the message is ‘never forget’ not ‘remember until 150 years from now.’ Further, slavery affected more people for a much longer period of time than 9/11 did, so if anything, I’d expect slavery to be something we should remember longer.

I wonder how people would react if we changed the memes a bit:

I suspect people wouldn’t react well to being told to get over 9/11.  In addition, I think a lot of people would be annoyed by a successful black man saying to never forget slavery.

How would people feel about the following meme?

If we have a different reaction to “holocaust get over it” than we do to “slavery get over it,” why is that the case?

I think one factor is who the perpetrator was. Slavery is something that a substantial part of the US population supported, whereas with 9/11 we were attacked by scary foreigners. We want to never forget being attacked by low status others, but we want to quickly forget when members of our high status in-group were the perpetrators.

The other major factor is who the victims are.  If you are part of a lower status group, you will be expected to ‘get over’ bad things that happened to you.  For example, I suspect a low SES woman who was punched by her husband would get less sympathy than would a high SES woman who had the same thing happen to her.  People would probably assume that the low SES victim did things to contribute to it:  drinking, drug use, unstable aggressive behavior, etc.  People would be more likely to think that she should just ‘get over’ her abuse.

It’s similar with slavery.  No matter how much black people are targeted and treated poorly, they are supposed to get over it.

Having sympathy for someone signals that they are part of your in-group.  Saying someone should ‘get over it’ signals that they are not part of your in-group.  As a result, the least powerful people tend to get the least sympathy.

—

based on conversation with charlene estornell-lewis

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Awww, neonate features

Parasites

If someone approached a person and requested some of his/her resources, the typical response would be to reject the request.  For example, if someone comes to your door and asks for money with nothing in return, you send them away.

Think of this action or whatever action the person took to reject the request as their immune response to a parasite.

In general, many of the most successful, and in my opinion the coolest, parasites have evolved ways to evade the immune response of the host. For example, Trypanosoma brucei is coated with molecules of Variable Surface Glycoprotein (VSG).  The VSG coat ‘shields’ and ‘switches‘ to prevent an effective immune response.

Well, parasites are not the only great hiders. Some organisms are great at exploiting the existing traits of other organisms. Consider that people have evolved to feel protective of babies, and hence are drawn to things that have features similar to neonates.  Small cute animals take advantage of this trait, and are able to gain resources from humans while avoiding the ‘immune response.’ Essentially, pets have used their cuteness to hide from the normal detection that leads humans to send other resource grabbing organisms (other humans asking for money, cockroaches  or other “pests” that try to take from us) away or kill them (e.g., with insecticide).  Since their cuteness is so successful at evading eviction,  they have a symbiotic relationship with the host. Both pet and human consider it a win.

Farming

There is also another curious aspect about the friendly, cute animal phenomenon. It occurs to me that animals such as cats, dogs, and ducks are food producers, just like human farmers.   We readily understand that humans produce food primarily based on conscious planning, learning, etc (planting a seed, watering it).  However, pets have managed to do the same thing. We often think about how we use animals, so it is difficult to see how they can use us.  Animals can essentially ‘grow’ food by being cute and friendly. The cuter and friendlier the animal, the more successful they are.  When your dog runs around with excitement when you come home, think of it as watering the seed.  It is ensuring that there will be a bountiful crop this year.

Membrane and Brain Elitists

We do not think of pets as parasites, in part, because they are not contained within our skin membrane.

We do not think of friendly, cute animals as producing food, primarily (IMO), because we give special status to things that were accomplished with cognitive planning.  However, consciousness is just another evolved tool for physical stuff to get what it wants.  Friendliness and cuteness is another way.

I think giving special status to stuff that is within a membrane and to stuff that was created from conscious planning leads to a myopic view of the physical world [I plan to expand this idea into a blog post at some point].

—

co-written with Charlene Estornell-Lewis

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Why follow ‘evil’ orders?

There are plenty of examples of people following orders to commit what are widely considered immoral acts.   Some argue that people do so because they follow the crowd, are afraid to defy authority, or believe they are not responsible (lost agency).  However, I wonder if in many cases people identify with the authority figures (and the group the authority figure presides over) and adopt their beliefs.

Jim Emerson discuss this in his article on good and evil in superhero movies:

It’s so easy to claim that Evil People just decide to Do Evil because they are Evil (totally unlike the rest of us!). But the truth is, many Nazi war criminals and those ordinary people who actively or passively collaborated with them weren’t all, as the cliché has it, “just following orders.” They believed the horrors of genocide served what they saw as a greater purpose: maintaining the purity of their beloved Germany, their race and their empire. So, as difficult and terrible as it might be…, the Final Solution was, they believed, a noble calling in the long run. …They weren’t monsters — they were people like you and me who found themselves capable of doing monstrous things in the name of a Great Cause in which their faith was pure and fervent and unshakeable.

Emerson also pointed to Alex Haslam’s appearance on Radiolab, in which he argued that participants in the Milgram experiment identified with the group (and authority figure) that were carrying out the experiment:

They’re engaged with the task. They’re trying to be good participants. They’re trying to do the right thing. They’re not doing something because they have to; they’re doing it because they think they ought to.

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Good genes

David Brooks:

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status … mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room. [bold emphasis mine]

Oh, those clever elites!  They can multitask!  If only poorer people could learn to sit in a waiting room and take part in conference calls at the same time, then their kids would be successful too!  Unfortunately, poorer people can only perform 1 task at a time (at most).

If I work 2 hours in front of a computer doing stimulating work for high pay, and you do 1 hour of work moving heavy furniture on a hot day for low pay, I worked longer hours than you did!  You lazy f*ck!  And if I come home from work with the energy and money needed to engage my kids in fun, enriching activities, and you come home too tired and poor to take them to  and/or afford piano lessons, then I am the superior parent.   Further, while you’re at home cooking dinner (because you can’t afford a personal chef), I’m watching my kids perform, while networking over my cell phone at the same time, because, you know, my job involves networking. 

No excuses

David Brooks is a strong proponent of ‘no excuses.’  What ‘no excuses’ means is that he does not want to hear about anyone’s circumstances (the Haiti earthquake would not have been as damaging if Haitians were not so “progress-resistant”).   In my view, the phrase ‘no excuses’ is an attempt at censorship.  It’s a way for people with privilege to live a guilt-free existence.

David Brooks believes that it basically comes down to some people working hard and others not.   Essentially, there are good genes and bad genes.  This belief that the elite are that way because of their genetic superiority is pervasive in elite circles (no surprise), including academia.  Unfortunately for the Brooks’ of the world, reality is not that way.

When people talk about a good genes, like genes for altruism say, what they really (should) mean is:  this gene is part of a network that, when the right combinations of them are on (expressed), tend to lead to more acts of altruism in the environments we’ve studied.  Everything is gene-environment interaction.  Even things that people would think of as purely genetic, such as whether a guppy is colorful and has descended testes, are in fact affected by the environment.

I happen to enjoy my job and am well paid.  But I can point to particular events in my life that, had they gone differently, could have put me  in a much different situation.  I could have ended up with a much lower paying, more stressful job.  In that case, I probably would not be as good of a parent.  I wonder why it is so hard for people to acknowledge that the reasons that they succeeded when someone else failed, was at least in part due to things outside of the control of either person. Rather than implicitly boasting that they have good genes, they could instead boast that they had good gene-environment interactions.

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Flaws of humanism

My friend Mengsen discussed how people see amazing things in human society and assume it must have been created in prompt fashion:

For example, the belief that a social contract or something like that suddenly emerged, and only, in human society, is like a theory of “the civilization of atoms” saying “suddenly, a group of special atoms were created. After a short period of chaos or aggressiveness, they finally sit down and discuss how to set things right.  Later they made an agreement called DNA to keep social order. But in local conversations you can still hear something like: ‘you know the ATP girl? She’s completely a whore.  And the clover-looking dude…he talks too much.’”

Oftentimes ‘uniquely human’ is really not something unique to humans.  In a great article, Selin Kesebir notes “slime molds bear a striking resemblance to human beings.”  The context is that “When food is abundant, slime molds are invisibly dispersed on damp forest soils and wander around as single cells. But when the conditions deteriorate, these cells secrete chemicals that make the individual cells coalesce into a multicellular body. This body then crawls as a single superorganism, and once a better spot is found, cells are dispersed again and return to their single-cell life.”  This is similar to how humans behave, when, for example, they “rally around the President” after a perceived threat to the country.

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