AronRa on feminism

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Finally, something positive about feminism. Anyway, I've been extremely disappointed with Thunderf00t (Phil Mason) in the last several weeks or so. I've been subscribed to Thunderf00t's channel on Youtube mainly for his science videos, occasionally which I've posted here, however the reason why I'm disappointed with him is because several weeks ago he posted a video arguing against feminist anti-rape campaigns, and the video contained blatant rape apology and victim blaming. Then, following the strong reaction against his video, he posted another video, supposedly to "clarify" his position but it unfortunately made him look even more douche, showing that he either strawmanned or completely missed the point of the anti-rape campaigns that he was arguing against.

AronRa on the other hand, has a completely opposite view on feminism to Thunderf00t and mostly supports it. AronRa and his wife have been personal friends of Thunderf00t for a number of years and have on numerous occasions tried to persuade him and show him why he was wrong about his views of feminism, but he hasn't budged unfortunately. Which brings me to the point of this thread - When AronRa gives a lecture, he normally either talks about atheism, evolution or creationism being pushed into school curricula. However, unusual for him, he recently gave a talk on feminism at the "Sexy Secular Conference" in Akron Ohio and it was largely positive. The video of his talk is below and while it's a bit long, it's one of the most balanced and objective talks on feminism and gender equality I've seen. He also goes into a bit of detail about the fact that he doesn't understand why the issues brought up by feminism appear to be so divisive in the atheist community. Here's the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd_0hjHuDMo[/youtube]

Tell me what you think.

Hard to hear his descriptions of growing up as a boy - a lot of that seemed like parental malpractice to me.
I was at my step mom's family's house for Thanksgiving one year, and her father was chastising his 5 or 6 year old grandson (my stepmom's nephew) for crying after he fell down or something. It made me mad, but I felt like there wasn't anything I could do because I was a guest.

In general, I thought that it was a really good talk. However, there was still this part where he said (and clarified in questioning that this is what he meant), basically, that women need to shut up and accept sexists into the movement so that we can all be unified against the theists. He called the fight against sexism a 'triviality.'

FFS. One of the major battles last year was asking JREF to have a policy on sexual harassment for TAM. Not that JREF do anything, not that anybody be blacklisted or barred - just that there be a written policy about how complaints of sexual harassment would be handled. It created a huge firestorm... but that's a triviality, and women should just shut up about it? Come on. I appreciate AronRa's support of feminism, I really do, but if they can't even be bothered to have a policy about threats to my physical safety, I don't see why I should be bothered to show up - and I speak as someone who has, for example, supported Dr. Harriet Hall when she was criticized on the Skepchick blog for wearing an 'I feel safe at TAM' shirt. When the fundies try to push the theocracy through legislation, I'll gladly join PZ's Horde and crash a poll, write letters, vote against their bills, and so on - but that doesn't preclude asking that a standard modicum of that 'women are equal' idea be codified in our discussions and at our meetings. Calling women c***s and saying that they should be raped should be out of line in online discussions, even between atheists, even when the woman in question is an outspoken feminist.

PZ Myers, oddly enough, has pissed off a lot of bigots in the atheist movement with his feminist views. I know there's some cretins boycotting his blog because of it.

Actually, AronRa is entirely in favour of making women feel welcome at meetings and in discussions, though I don't know how it would be possible to control online behaviour other than banning people from specific forums, websites and blogs etc (and most internet forums already have those rules), you can't really censor the whole internet unfortunately. He also entirely supports sexual harassment policies at conferences (which by the way, are entirely gender neutral because, believe or not, men can also be sexually harassed at conferences and there's been a few instances where they have). I know the he supports sexual harassment policies at conferences because he's previously argued with Thunderf00t about it (one of the reasons why Thunderf00t was kicked off of Forethought Blogs was because of his stance on the sexual harassment policies and his constant blogging about it).

So no, I don't think AronRa is saying that women must just "shut up" about those things, he completely supports women on those particular issues. I think what he's saying is that, since there are bound to be so many differences of opinion among atheists, because the only thing atheists can really be guaranteed to agree on is the non-existence of deities, it is sometimes more productive (in fact usually) to put the differences aside when opposing fundamentalist theists. After all, the theists have these schisms and differences of opinion too. Now, unfortunately some of these differences of opinion may include certain individuals with sexist opinions with regards to particular issues, however sexism is a spectrum in a way (which is really the same for any kind of prejudice, including racism and ableism). There is still a difference between a complete and total misogynist and someone who believes in equal for women generally but still has sexist viewpoints with regards to other particular issues. So, while the community would be completely justified in telling the total misogynist who goes around calling women c***s etc that his behaviour is completely out of line (and we probably should), the only thing we can practically do about the milder sexists (the ones who believe in gender equality but still have some opinions), is to persuade them that some of their views are still sexist and it's also probably a bit counter-productive to alienate them if they don't even realise they're being sexist.

He's got that completely back to front IMO. /r/atheism and the likes need to accept females, and particularly feminists.

See my explanation above. I think he'd agree with that.

I'm surprised that only 3 people have had something to say about the video. I thought that there'd more considering the length of most other feminism threads lately.

You mean the video where he (quite correctly) contests the feminist propaganda campaign that labels all men rapists and suggests that mothers should "teach your sons not to rape"? If you think that video was "blatant rape apology and victim blaming" you either didn't watch it completely, misunderstood it or have a man-hating feminist agenda.

Oh boy. Yes, I have watched the video from ,beginning to end actually. I've also pointed out several problems with his argument in the comment section, with all my comments being voted down, of course, as seems to be customary. Look, nobody is saying that women shouldn't take precautions but a lot of he was saying in that video was just plain rubbish. Apparently, telling women to "watch their body language" so as not to "give out the language of victims", and using stupid analogies like comparing potential victims to "wasps" and rapists to "mountain lions", is not victim-blaming according to you and many other people. He even showed a screenshot of a British website that was set up to provide help and support to rape victims, where it had the words "remember, it was not your fault" and then literally proclaimed in the video that that was absolutely not true and that was definitely partly the victims fault for being raped. If that is not victim-blaming, I don't know what is.

Also, the "feminist propaganda campaign", as you call it, does not cast all men as rapists. What it was trying to do was tackle rape culture, where people make excuses for rapists and place responsibility on victims, such saying that they shouldn't of dressed sexy etc. The other thing that is missed here, is that it actually does make sense to teach people about consent. Thunderf00t's argument that rapists already know that what they're doing is wrong and will rape anyway just like thieves will steal misses the point that the issue is more complicated than what it's made out to be. For example, the two boys that were convicted in the Steubenville case actually thought that what they did wasn't rape because the girl didn't say "no" (despite the fact that she was unconscious and didn't have that capability). So, actually if you can tackle both of those issues then I can guarantee you that the incidences of rape will go down. That is not the same thing as casting all men as rapists, in fact it's probably still only a minority of men who would do it but the problem is that many people who are not rapists may still make excuses for people who are.

Thunderf00t did take his analogies and metaphors to places I personally wouldn't, but that didn't detract from the point he was making. His presentation of the psychology of sexual assault is based on an in-depth study of convicted rapists - though (as he points out elsewhere) is only actually applicable in the 10% of rape cases in which the victim does not know their assailant.

At no point did he state thet it was "definitely partly the victims fault for being raped". He did suggest that the phrase in that context is potentially harmful, at best disempowering the victim. The only issue I take with his interpretation is that it is, in his own words, over-simplifying the problem. It does not, however, make him a rape apologist or victim blamer.



By "feminist propoganda campaign" I refer to the overarching message seen far too often in the western world that does indeed assert - amongst other things - that all men are rapists. The more extreme feminists will accompany this with explicit descriptions of their fantasy desires to castrate and/or subjugate all human males.

Perhaps it wasn't clear from context, and perhaps again the same can be said of Thunderf00t's presentation. While his initial point is a response to the Indian video, the rest of his points are aimed at the ad hominem shame strategy widely used - and quite probably triggered more by the previous attacks by vocal internet feminists against himself than by the video.




It certainly does. It is not reasonable, however, to suggest that mothers need to "teach your sons not to rape".



Unless you believe that the Steubenville case is representative of the majority of rape cases, I fail to see the significance. More importantly, the victim in that case was a 16 year old girl who was, by all accounts, completely intoxicated. This therefore constitutes an expansion of Thunderf00t's advice on taking measures to protect yourself - namely that the girls parents should assume some responsibility for allowing their child to attend an unsupervised party where alcohol was served. By the same measure, an adult woman who knowingly puts herself in a vulnerable position must accept a measure of responsibility for her own actions. This in no way absolves the attacker of blame.

A short anecdote:

On his first visit to the US, my cousin wandered into an area of New York that is well known for its high crime rate. He was parted from his money, his possessions and his dignity by a trio of youths carrying firearms. Upon his return, he recounted the tale in the following manner.

"Well, I had a few beers and should have taken a taxi back to the hotel instead of trying to find my way through a strange city. I was f****ing stupid."

Sure, he found himself in a situation where he suddenly wasn't in control. He's smart enough to accept that he put himself in that situation, yet wasn't smart enough to avoid it. Would you consider his admission to be "victim blaming" or "apologist"?



No. Explicitly stating, as is disturbingly common, that all men are rapists is casting all men as rapists.



As I hope I've shown with my anecdote, it is possible to teach people the importance of risk-minimisation without asserting they are responsible for the actions of an individual who chooses to attack, rob, rape or victimise them.

Which specific study? He doesn't usually cite his sources when making a video, so you can't really verify the claims. A number of points here, first of all, some of his information runs contrary to information given in official resources, including statistics given by the CDC, for example. For instance, there is no correlation between what the person is and their chances of getting raped, those kinds of rapists are opportunistic and they will target whoever is easy to get to, even if they were wearing burkas. Secondly, even if they look at body language as a way to identify targets, it's still unreasonable to expect anyone to change their natural body language, so as not to become targets. Women generally already take precautions in this regard anyway by for instance, always making sure they're with friends, watching their drinks, so they are interfered with etc, but the types of campaigns Thunderf00t was targeting were specifically about targeting men about consent issues, not about targeting women on safety tips, that's why they are called anti-rape campaigns, not personal safety reminders. So, I don't understand the need to rebut them with personal safety tips (a lot of which Thunderf00t got wrong anyway) since that is not what they are about. Thirdly, if 90% of the rapes are not the situations that are described here, and the rapist is actually known to the victim, then how is this going to help in those (which is the majority of) situations. You can't continuously guard against people that you know and trust unless you live like a hermit, locking yourself way so as not to socialise with anyone. Obviously, that 90% is hard to anticipate because it's someone you trust.



He went onto a British support site for rape victims where it says "remember, it's not your fault", and he said that was wrong. The reason why it says that is because people usually do not go to such a website to look for safety tips, they go there because the rape has already happened and they are looking for support. Perhaps, that is not what Thunderf00t was trying to say, however that's still what he said, or to put it another way that's how it came across. Here's a general rule of thumb, if you advise people how to avoid a bad situation before it occurs, they could be considered safety tips, if you tell them afterwards, it's generally victim-blaming because you're basically saying it's their fault or partly their fault.



Citations please? I haven't heard anyone say anything like that except for maybe a few radical feminists who also appear to be transphobic, among other things. Not even any of the anti-rape campaigns claim that all men are rapists, none that I've seen anyway.



What ad hominem shame strategy? Citations please? Also, while I don't necessarily agree with the way he was initially treated on Free Thought Blogs, Thunderf00t wasn't addressing those people in this video.




It's kind of the same thing because rape is all about consent. Also, I think that everyone should be taught about consent, not just men. And no, it's not as simple as teaching them not to steal.



There you go again, that is still victim blaming. While one can try be cautious, in order to lower risk, if someone does something wrong, the responsibility of wrongdoing always lies with the person who does something wrong. Just like a thief always bears the responsibility for stealing, a rapist always bears responsibility for raping. The responsibility does not lie on the rape victim for getting raped, the moral imperative lies with the perpetrator.



Sure, he could of taken steps to be safer but the responsibility still lies on the three assailants who mugged him for committing a crime.



Citation needed. Who said that? If it's about ant-rape campaigns, then that's a strawman because none that I know has ever said that.



Again, risk-minimisation happens before a bad situation occurs, victim-blaming happens afterwards.

He said no such thing. I'll repeat it again, he suggested that the message itself is poorly phrased - implying that it is a form of disempowerment of women. Are you sure you watched the original video rather than a response from one of his detractors?



Let the record show that, according to Jono, women are inferior to men and cannot be held responsible for their own actions. This is the only possible way that he could get from "women are responsible for their own actions" to "that is victim blaming". I say the only possible way, because it is unthinkable that Jono could possibly be reinterpreting my words to suit his own agenda. Much as it's unthinkable that he completely misunderstood the video that he's trying to condemn.

Or do you prefer the patronising answer that goes a little like this:

Person A gets drunk.

Person B rapes person A.

Person B is responsible for raping person A.

Person B is not responsible for person A getting drunk.

Person B is not responsible for person A making stupid choices.

Person B relies on people like person A making stupid choices in order to enable their immoral fantasies.

Question 1) Did person A make a stupid choice?

Question 2) Did person A 'deserve' to be raped?

Question 3) Is an affirmative question to both of the above questions required to label the respondent "victim blamer".

Discuss.

You've asked me to cite studies, and while I doubt you'll find much to alter your prejudices, I suggest you take a look at Ullman's work. Among her findings are included a breakdown of the factors included in victim selection, a set of factors not dissimilar to a certain video. If your agenda is a genuine desire to disseminate fact from fiction, I suggest starting with the assumption that deliberate misinterpretation of a person's views is not only dishonest, it is morally unacceptable.

Differentname, does your opinion on any of the above change if the 'person A' who got drunk at a frat party is a man, who got raped by another man? In other words, is it "stupid" for men to get drunk too, or just women?

I didn't actually state that getting drunk is stupid, but I'll let that slide as the question is an honest one. The situation remains no different regardless of gender. If an individual becomes intoxicated to excess, that individual must accept responsibility for compromising his/herself - especially when said intoxication leads to poor decision making. I'll again repeat that this in no way justifies the actions of any attacker upon said intoxicated person, in no way is a suggestion that drunk people deserve to be raped, robbed or harmed.

If I get drunk and decide to drive a vehicle, I'm endangering not only my own life, but that of others. Were I to smash into a building as a result of this, damaging property and in all likelihood myself, the responsibility for my actions falls squarely on my own shoulders. For further clarity, I do not believe that every rape victim is completely responsible for the actions which led to their being assaulted. Even taking minors out of the equation, there are many cases where a rape was virtually unavoidable for the victim. This does not mean that you should not take steps to ensure your own safety.

Yes, I have actually watched the video (though I don't want to post it here) but what you have just said above misses the point I was making. Let's put it to you this way, are you seriously against reassuring rape-victims? So, if a rape victim goes for trauma counselling (and it's actually quite a traumatic experience, I might add), and they somehow have feelings that they were responsible for their own rape (which is also quite common), are you seriously saying that trying to reassure them that they're not is wrong? Because according the same logic that both you and Thunderf00t are using here, reassuring them is a form of disempowerment, so that means that telling them what they should of done to avoid it, thereby adding to those feelings of shame, is very empowering apparently.



Oh dear, please show me a link to a legal document that says that the victim of a crime can be held even partially responsible for their own victimisation, even if it's just as mitigating factor. Such a concept simply does not exist, whether it's either from a legal point of view or from a moral point of view. Let me try and make an analogy here, despite the fact that property crimes are not equivalent to personal ones like assault or rape (which is partially why Thunderf00t's "locked door" analogy fails, by the way):

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I was a bit careless with my very expensive Macbook Pro, and I left it alone for minute in my laptop bag at an airport. So now of course, my laptop bag get's stolen. Is the responsibility for the theft on me for leaving it unattended or the thief for stealing it? From a legal point of view, the entire responsibility is still on the thief for stealing it. While I could of been less careless (and it probably would of been wise to), I do not bare partial responsibility for the theft of my laptop because regardless of what I could of done to be less careless, the thief would still face the penalties as if he had stolen my laptop when I was more careful, carelessness on the part of the victim is not a mitigating factor nor would I be held responsible by the law for the theft of my own laptop because I was careless. It's not a mitigating factor morally either since just because someone left their luggage unattended, it does not give anyone else the right to steal the luggage, the entire moral responsibility lies on him. Of course, it's wise to be more careful because being more careful would make it less likely for luggage to get stolen but that is not the same thing as being partially responsible for the theft. Does that make any sense?



This is a false dichotomy because many people who are "victim blamers" will not directly use the word "deserve". If you take the Steubenville case for example, there were many people in the town of Steubenville who actually blamed the girl by posting on twitter and other social media that "she was responsible" because she snuck out at night, got drunk etc, while at the same time actually making excuses for the boys who did it. That's still victim blaming.



I've looked up Ullman's work, at least I think it's the same Ullman that you're talking about and this is what I found:



See the part in bold? Apparently, she agrees with the part about teaching men about rape and consent, which is exactly what I've been arguing all along here. Also, that is what the type of anti-rape campaigns that Thunderf00t is arguing against, are doing as well. The link to the whole article is below:

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComputer/Rape%20myths/10-Year%20Update.pdf

Now, since you've asked me to look her up claiming that she lists similar risk factors to what Thunderf00t does, can you please show me where in that article, she lists body language and the clothes a victim wears as risk factors? In fact, it basically backs up what I said before that such rapists are opportunistic, so they wouldn't care what the victim wears. The only thing that she says, that was similar to Thunderf00t was that there's a correlation between drinking and sexual assaults, which I have never contested and I already knew about.

Just another clarification, you have claimed previously that such campaigns paint all men as rapists, and I assume that you were talking about the specific targeting of men with campaigns about what rape and consent is, as quoted in that paragraph. However, as you can see, they are not saying that all men are rapists or even that the majority are. The justification for targeting men is that the majority of rapists are men, not the same thing. Anyway, the point is that when teaching about consent, one could consider that there are two approaches to go about, we can call them the practical approach and the principled approach. The practical approach is to look at the statistics and note that because the majority rapists are male, it makes sense to target the problem where it mostly is because that will likely have the a greater impact than if it were gender neutral. The principled approach is to approach the issue from a more ethical standpoint than a practical one and so that would involve teaching everyone about consent, regardless of gender and in spite of the statistics say. The reasoning behind a principled approach might be that ethics should apply everyone and that inspire of the majority of rapists being men and victims being women, there are still some male victims and there's still a minority of rapists (even if it's a tiny minority) that are women, and so women, to some extent need to understand issues of when consent is valid too, just like men also need to understand how to be cautious. That's an entirely gender neutral approach. When they specifically target men with anti-rape messages, I don't think it's out being sexist, I think that they're just taking the practical approach, justifying that it would make a greater impact than a gender neutral approach due to the statistics. Now, while I'm not an expert, I personally think think that the two approaches can both be justified in different contexts. For example, I think that when one does poster campaign like the "Don't be That Guy" campaign they did in Canada, then the practical approach actually makes sense, it makes sense to target men specifically. However, if it's in the form of seminars and even the teaching of consent in high school sex education, then a gender neutral principle approach would make more sense. I don't know if everyone will agree with me but again, I'm not an expert.



Right, Thunderf00t should learn that too because his "rape" videos misrepresent other people's views.

By the way, this is a false analogy. First of all, one problem with this analogy is that when you drive while drunk, you're endangering other people but when you just get drunk on your own, without friends etc to look out for you, then you're not endangering anyone else even thou you may be vulnerable. Secondly, a drunk driver is actually not entirely held responsible for their own actions. That's why when a drunk driver has a road accident and kills someone, they are charged with manslaughter (called culpable homicide in South Africa), not murder. The reason is that the element of intent isn't there. So, they are charged with manslaughter if they end up killing someone, or just "drunk driving" even if they don't, only because they happen to of gotten behind a wheel while drunk, but their responsibility for the death is still diminished, that's why they get a lesser charge and lesser sentence. Now someone who gets raped while drunk cannot be held accountable at all because a victim cannot be held accountable for their own victimisation.