Weak Leftist argumentation and playing the victim / Follow-up: The purpose of women-only competitions vs. inclusion of trans athletes

To follow-up on a sub-theme from earlier today:

The Feminists vs. trans activists conflicts are a good example of the extreme “we are victims” pushing that is so common on the current Left. As destructive and tragic as this is when directed at the non-Left, men, Whites, whatnot, it becomes almost humorous when the one group of “victims” comes into conflict with another. Here, e.g., we have a virtual dialogue of:

Trans activist: We are the victims!

Feminist: No, we are the victims!

Trans activist: No, WE are the victims!!!

Feminist: NO, WE ARE THE VICTIMS!!!!!!

(Etc.)

It is particularly telling that there are many Feminists (or women in general?) who come out to protest certain behaviors today, when they are used by some other group(s) to gain advantages at the cost of Feminists/women—while the decades of use by Feminists, at the cost of others, never was deemed worthy of criticism. (Ditto, m.m., certain attitudes, certain lines of pseudo-argumentation, whatnot.)

This consistent pushing of “we are the victims” (and related/overlapping “us vs. them”, “X are evil oppressors”, “we are good; they are evil”, etc.) also shows the lack of factual arguments of the Left. The popularity of such tactics arises from the facts that (a) they work, and (b) the Left has no real arguments: With very few exceptions, Leftist factual arguments do not differ mainly in their degree of correctness, rationality, whatnot, but in how much inspection is needed before they turn out to be incorrect, irrational, or otherwise specious.

Apart from “we are the victims” (etc.), Leftists resort to sloganeering, emotional arguments, personal attacks, or even outright shouting, because they do not have the arguments on their side.

Indeed, even when the Left might have a reasonable argument, it resorts to these tactics over attempting that argument. Abortion* is a great** example. Here pro-abortionist could raise arguments about what should be considered life in a meaningful sense, what intelligence in a meaningful sense, where human rights should begin, whatnot, and what value any “preliminary” interests of a growing fetus should be given relative the interests of the mother-(not-)to-be.

*Discounting the question of whether abortion is truly a Leftist issue, as specifically the strong U.S. pro-abortion movement definitely is Leftist and the methods that it uses definitely those of the Left and/or Feminism. More generally, however, (a) conflicts around abortion are typically rooted in religious or, more rarely, philosophical objections, not “Left vs. Right”, (b) there is much less conflict in most other Western countries than in the U.S., and opponents to abortions in (at least!) the first trimester are very rare throughout the entire political spectrum in e.g. Sweden and Germany.

**So great that I find myself coming back to abortion for the umpteenth time, although I do not have a strong opinion on the underlying issue—just on the pseudo-argumentation of the Left around abortion.

Instead, the most common argument is a cheap slogan—which, to boot, entirely misses the point! Cf. e.g. My body, my choice—my ass! and note that it is actually the body of the fetus which is at stake. (Which is why the above areas of argumentation would be so much more valuable, relevant, and constructive.)

Lesser arguments include claims that pro-lifers want to “oppress women” (instead of preventing what they often see as murder), that access to abortions would be central to a woman’s rights/opportunities/whatnot,* and similar rhetoric—much of which falls exactly in categories like “we are the victims”. The post-Dobbs situation brought a number of examples, including misrepresentations of new U.S. abortion laws,** misrepresentation of the motivation of the court as anti-woman instead of pro-constitution, and, of course, the claim that Dobbs made abortion illegal—when it just moved the decision of legality back to the democratically elected law-makers in the individual states or, as case may have it, the federation.

*Another non sequitur, which overlooks factors like the option to avoid careless sex and to use contraceptives, that many women of the past did exceptionally well without abortions, that being pregnant and having a child need not be e.g. a career interrupter in most jobs in the current West, that it might be better for both mother and child with a birth now rather than in ten years, etc. (Note that women who do not want children at all, be it today or in ten or twenty years, can have a tubal litigation.)

**For instance, misrepresenting laws with rape and incest exemptions as not having such, misrepresenting laws with a time interval (e.g. the first trimester) with legal abortion as not having such a time interval, and misrepresenting these time intervals as more restrictive than e.g. those in Europe. This often along the lines of “abortion is now illegal in state X”, with no qualifications, where a truer statement might be “late-term abortion is now illegal in state X, unless the life of the mother is at risk, and unless the pregnancy arose through rape or incest”.

This while a strong-seeming argument, which I have mentioned myself in the past, seems to have stood on shaky legs from day one: that legal abortion avoids highly dangerous illegal abortions, with a correspondingly reduced risk to the women involved. Not only is there a problem with historical/propaganda claims likely being highly exaggerated,* but this also glosses over improved abortion technology, the existence of “plan b” pills, and better preventative methods compared to “yore”.

*I read some material on this around the time of Dobbs and/or the preceding leak, but do not remember where. A brief web search found e.g. [1] and [2], which appear to cover similar ground. (I do not vouch for the details of these pages. Note that both focus on misrepresentation around deaths, which does not rule out that there is a higher number of non-lethal complications.)

To this might be added how problems with abortions are glossed over, e.g. that there is a remaining physical risk to the woman (even with a modern and legal abortion), that some (many?) develop psychological issues in the aftermath, and that a too easy availability of abortion can lead to more careless behaviors. However, such glossing over is quite common in politics, even outside the Left, and exemplifies a more general problem of the politically active being more interested in convincing others than in finding the truth and refining their own opinions.

To look at another family of victim argumentation: I have recently heard several complaints about U.S. media using phrasings like “hit hardest by” to push a victim image. While I do not want to bagatellize the U.S. situation, it is worse in Sweden. In particular, there is a very clear division between how a male resp. female advantage/disadvantage in outcomes is handled (barring cases where e.g. an ascription to the “Patriarchy” or similar takes place): if women come out ahead, the formulation, with minor variation in detail, is “kvinnor är bättre på X” (“women are better at X”); if women come out behind, it is “kvinnor hårdast drabbade av X” (“women hit hardest by X”). A “män hårdast drabbade av X” (“men hit hardest by X”) I have seen once (!)—and I was so surprised that I almost fell off my chair. I have at least one prior reference to the topic (cf. [3])—from 2011.

Note that these formulations do not just have a one-sided “women are victims; men are not” take, but are also asymmetrical with regard to women’s success/failure: if women fail, it is because some external force has effected their failure; if they succeed, it is something that women have actively achieved through their own qualities.

To boot, there is often an odd angling where the situations of men and women are not measured according to the same standard, e.g. in that men are assumed to do something voluntarily and women something similar out of necessity or that the personal gain/cost is misrepresented. Note e.g. how [3] discusses proportions of children helping with housework and how what-more-girls-than-boys do for their own benefit is considered such help.* Also note (which I failed to do, myself, when writing [3]) that there is an asymmetry in how activities indoors (more stereotypically female) and outdoors (more stereotypically male) are handled: the indoor tasks are split over three or four entries,** while the outdoor ones are grouped into a single generic entry. (The “three or four” arises through “Takes care of siblings”, which could be seen as either an indoor task, for “four”, or a location-neutral task for “three”.) Moreover, the intensity and duration of a task is not given due consideration—contrast e.g. mowing the lawn with emptying the dishwasher.

*The original angle of [3] is “incompetent researchers”, and this might well be the truth of the matter; however, the contents otherwise fit well in the current context, and I have grown more open to “researchers had a hidden agenda” over the years.

**As quoted from the source. I suspect that the list is abbreviated, which could increase these “three or four” further, while the single generic outdoors entry would almost certainly remain a single entry.

Excursion on a likely “Jerusalem Post” victimizing distortion:
Earlier today, I encountered the claim that Jerusalem grocery bans women at certain times of the day. Deeper in the text, I found the more nuanced claim that men and women had different “special times”. If so, the headline severely distorts the situation in a “women are victims” manner, as there would equally be times when men are banned. In fact, the reverse headline “Jerusalem grocery bans men at certain times of the day” would have been equally justified. (I tried to find a better source to clarify this, with an eye at writing a text on the topic. Unfortunately, I found no such source and contend myself with this brief excursion. Note that much of Israel-internal news is in Hebrew, which I do not speak.)

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The purpose of women-only competitions vs. inclusion of trans athletes

The issue of trans athletes and of men competing as/against women seems to be on the table again. However, every discussion that I have encountered so far has missed the core question of why there are separate classes for men and women in most sports. Instead, we have, with minor variations: (a) The one camp whining about women’s rights, “abolishment” of women,* and whatnot, thereby demonstrating that it does not understand or care about the underlying core issues, but is merely an offspring of mindless Feminism and/or self-centeredness. (b) The other camp insisting that being allowed to compete as a woman, never mind the results of the competition or any unfairness in terms of sporting outcomes, would somehow be a divine right for all those who “self-identify as women” or a critical aspect of living the life that they want to live. In both cases, claims about “discrimination” are common; in both cases, destructive identity politics is a major issue,** just that the one prioritizes women, the other transsexuals/-genders.

*An absurd non sequitur even by the standards of modern Feminism.

**Often including an implicit common idea of a favored group, whose interests trump those of everyone else, common methods, whatnot. In some ways, the trans-movement is just the result of applying modified Feminism to another group.

The best that can be hoped for is that someone acknowledges the unfairness of allowing men into women’s competitions or, in some sports, the increased injury risk for female competitors—which comes close to hitting the core issue, but still falls short.

The true reason for the classes is that it was assumed that women would not be competitive* in most sports and that they would need own classes for competitive sport to make sense—just as it is assumed that boys are not competitive among men, girls not among women, lightweight boxers not among heavyweight boxers, etc. Usually, the assumption is correct. There are even cases, notably chess, where women are allowed to compete against (only) other women or against men, as they see fit, but where the reverse is not true—despite the absence of the obvious physical advantages of men so relevant in most other sports.**

*With a secondary, partially overlapping, reason being that women’s competitions sometimes arose because women were not allowed into men’s competitions. In both cases, the aforementioned injury risk might have been an additional/contributing factor; in the secondary, sufficiently early on, that some sports might have been seen as too dangerous for women regardless of the other competitors.

**Implicitly, this amounts to there being an open class and a women’s class (or some other specific set of non-open classes), which might be a fine solution to the overall problems, including the issue of trans athletes and whether women should be allowed into men’s competitions. However, the result of this is that the trans athletes end up in the open class (or in e.g. a specific trans class), not the women’s class.

If we now allow men to join women’s competitions, this will invalidate the reason for having separate classes and competitions for women. The logical conclusion would then be to abolish these, and just have men and women compete together in general—which would be fine by me, but would likely lead to loud female protests, for obvious reasons, and trans protests, as the artificial advantage that trans-opportunists like Lia Thomas have would disappear. (Note that even an alternate rule like “everyone is allowed to compete with men or women as he/she sees fit” would be pointless, as there would then just be two roughly equivalent classes, both dominated by men, and both watered down relative the single men-only class of old.)

From another (if overlapping) point of view: Having female classes is inherently and per se discrimination. Changing the criterion for participation from “must be a woman” to “must self-identify as a woman” does not reduce the discrimination—it just alters the criterion of discrimination.* Moreover, it alters the criterion in a manner, which, again, goes against the justification for the division into male and female classes.

*Note that this applies even if the word “woman” is misleadingly redefined to include “men who self-identify as women”. The meaning matters—not the words used.

As an aside, the fact that members of the PC movement are trying to force male participation by redefining what woman means, when they could, instead, have lobbied for new classes,* points to a hidden agenda—that it is not truly a matter of sports participation but of something more perfidious. Maybe, this “something more perfidious” is the redefinition, it self; maybe it is something else, e.g. an attempt to create a big symbolic issue, a further attack on individuality, or an attempt to divide-and-conquer by turning more and more segments of society against each other. (The options and their relative likelihood will, in part, depend on who or what is the ultimate driving force.)

*E.g. a formal division into “men-who-feel-like-men only” and “everyone else”; or “men-who-feel-like-men only”, “men-who-feel-like-women only”, “women-who-feel-like-women only”, “women-who-feel-like-men only”. Also note the above footnote on open classes.

Excursion on medical adjustments:
A common idea seems to be that a competition involving both men and women would become fair once the men had undergone some type of medical correction, e.g. by bringing their testosterone levels down for a long enough time. There are two fundamental flaws to this idea: Firstly, there are advantages that do not change even with e.g. hormone therapy.* Consider e.g that a lack of testosterone does not cause someone to retroactively grow shorter, and that more than marginal, if any, changes to limb proportions and similar are unlikely. Secondly, even if we were to assume that such interventions worked sufficiently well, there is no realistic way to tell when fairness has been reached. There is a near certainty that any regulation of the “may compete after medical correction X” type will either over- or undershoot the mark. Moreover, it is likely to fail through individual variation, as different competitors are likely to react differently to X.** We could, of course, try something like measuring a performance level and allowing those in who hit the exact right level—but competitive sport would border on the pointless, if the competitors were all equally good.***

*At least, after some point of bodily development has been reached and barring much more invasive procedures—and procedures that need not even be feasible in the foreseeable future. In some cases, this “point of bodily development” might be prenatal, e.g. in that success in some sports might depend on physical aspects of the brain that diverge at a very early stage.

**With the additional complication that it would be hard or impossible to tell what individual variation is, in some sense, fair resp. unfair with an eye at what would have been a fair individual variation, had the man at hand been born as a woman.

***To which must be added practical complications like someone pretending to be worse than he is, that the level of performance might change over time in a different manner for different persons, that the sport might change over time, that finding out what to measure might be impossible, etc. Worse, the sport might change because men are let in: Assume e.g. that we have a sufficiently fair measure of basketball ability to allow men into the WNBA. Chances are that doing so, even at a fix average ability, will slightly change the game by increasing the average player height, hand size, ability to dunk, whatnot, while decreasing some other aspects. As the game changes, a previously fair measure need not remain fair.

To this, note that even a comparatively small advantage can have major effects. In sprinting, for instance, the difference between a victory and a missed medal can* amount to a one percent difference in performance—and five percent amounts to an eternity of time. How do we ensure that any remaining advantage, in either direction, is less than one percent? Is even one percent sufficiently little? As an analogy, imagine that Marathon runners were given the choice between running the full distance, as is, and running a shorter distance with a weighted vest. What amount of weight would correspond to what distance for a fair competition? (And note that this problem is much easier than the one posed by trans athletes.)

*With a reasonable level of probability. Much smaller margins can occur. A particularly interesting case is the 2019 men’s world championship in shot put, where the three medals went at 22.91/22.90/22.90. (Although, admittedly, the difference to 4th place was considerably larger.)

Feminism as a one-sided women’s rights movement (a.k.a never not rotten)

A while back, I wrote:

In reality, Feminism is, and always has been, a one-sided women’s rights movement, which has rarely shown much concern for men’s rights or for equal responsibilities and equal duties. (Here, I wanted to reference a recently encountered and very informative text by someone else, which likely was https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/; however, this link currently leads to a message of “This domain expired”. For a semi-replacement, see a text on Ellen Key. For issues with more modern Feminism, see any number of earlier texts.)

Since then, I have found a link to the missing contents through an archiving service—and I strongly recommend it to my readers:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191009062955/https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/

(In addition, just in case, I will reproduce the full text below.)

Doing some additional research, I found a few other interesting links, including:

1. A review of “There’s No Place Like Work” by Brian C. Robertson.

   Some claims made in the review are quite interesting, e.g. that:

   The first [misconception] is that the women’s movement of the 19th Century was like its 20th Century counterpart, an effort to liberate women from the bondage of housewifery.

   The facts show exactly the opposite. Women’s organizations throughout that century fought to liberate women not from the kitchen but from the workplace.

2. A series of excerpts from “Woman and the law; a comparison of the rights of men and the rights of women before the law” (1875!) by Russell H. Conwell, which deal extensively with a surprising favoring of women over men in the U.S. 19th century, e.g. that:
   

   She may be worth a million, and he have nothing but his labor; yet he must support her in good style, and supply the needs of the family from his wages, without assistance from her. If both together commit a trespass, or assault, or any like misdemeanor, he is punished and she excused. Worse than that is the law whereby the husband is punished for any wrongful act of the wife in his presence, although it might have been beyond his power to prevent it. If she strikes a man, the recipient of the blows has no right to strike back unless to save his life, and her husband must pay for the damage by fine or imprisonment.

3. Excerpts from works by Belfort Bax, “The Fraud of Feminism” (1913!) and “The Legal Subjection of Men” (1908!). (The titles should be self-explanatory.)

Disclaimer: All the aforementioned authors and books were previously unknown to me. I do not vouch for their quality, beyond the excerpts encountered, nor for their correctness. (If I find the time, I might do some deeper reading later.)

In addition, if off topic, I found a brilliant and brilliantly mocking series of texts on “Why I don’t take feminists seriously” by Mike Adams of Townhall, which shows much of what is wrong with modern Feminism. See respectively part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, part VII.

As an aside, with an eye at a few earlier texts on abortion, I note him quoting (in part VII) a deranged-seeming woman saying

And the baby, when it is inside of her, is her body.

If this is taken to imply that the baby is actually part of “her” body, and if this horrifying ignorance is common among women/feminists/pro-abortionists/whatnot, it would explain quite a lot about that idiotic slogan “my body; my choice”. The baby is, by any even remotely reasonable standard, a separate entity in a separate body, only connected over the umbilical cord, with its own DNA and (beyond a certain point) own brain, heart, and whatnot. To see the baby as a part of the woman’s body, similar to an appendix, is as untenable as considering a human in a car a part of that car or a human on a dialysis machine a part of that machine. (In contrast, if mere ownership is implied, this ownership claim is extremely dubious, as noted in one of the previous texts.)

The same deranged-seeming woman also made claims about the baby as a parasite, which are, at best, highly misleading (but not unknown to me from others): A parasite is something that deliberately* exploits something or someone else against the nature and will of the something or someone, and to the disadvantage of that something or someone. The baby, on the other hand, has been put in the womb without having a say in the matter, almost* always by an act of and by the mother (!), in correspondence with the nature of both the mother and the womb, and it usually is (has until recently been?) considered a good or very good thing by the mother, herself. (This entirely apart from any arguments about the relative value of humans vs. e.g. hookworms.)

*Where “deliberately” should be seen in an extended sense. That hookworm is following its in-built reactions without true thought.

**Rape would be a rare exception. However, even an accidental and/or unwanted pregnancy through consensual sex is self-inflicted by the mother, be it by negligence or through taking a risk and having bad luck.

Finally, the full text of “Feminism was never Not Rotten” by Karen Straughan (a.k.a. GirlWritesWhat). (With reservations for loss of e.g. formatting through copy-and-paste.)

Years ago, when I embarked on my investigation into the feminist movement and what it has become, I subscribed to the understanding that there had once existed a magical age of feminism. Of course I did. It was common knowledge, even among anti-feminists, that early feminism was a noble and well-intentioned movement, and that somewhere along the way it was hijacked by lunatics and man-haters bent on female supremacy.

I was curious as to exactly when, and by what means, this virtuous movement had been corrupted, so I went on something of an archaeological expedition, digging through piles of documents and old news articles and treatises from as far back as the late 1800s and earlier, transcripts of speeches given by well-known suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony.

My unexpected findings were as follows: Feminism has never been a righteous movement seeking equality. The “noble” Suffragettes were soaked in sexism, classism, racism, eugenics enthusiasm and the mindless pursuit of female privilege. The Declaration of Sentiments, widely believed to be the official manifesto of the First Wave, was nothing more than a hate-filled screed, simultaneously indicting and convicting the male sex of the wholesale criminal enslavement and subjugation of all women, through all of history.

I found a First Wave populated by terrorists and elitists who did little to conceal their malice, dishonesty and thirst for power. They were skilled at isolating any given statute from its full context and declaring it as discrimination against women, even when the overall set of laws to which it belonged conferred immense privilege on women. And always, their “reforms” focused on the one, isolated statute, always leaving those privileging women untouched.

They sought, and received, the automatic right of mothers to custody of children after divorce, but did nothing to change the financial obligation of fathers to provide all material necessities to said children.

They sought, and received, the right within marriage to hold and keep their own property and income untouchable by their husbands, but did nothing to change the legal obligation of husbands to financially support their wives, to pay their wives taxes, or to repay their wives debts.

They sought, and received, the right to vote, but did nothing to change the civic obligations of men toward the state, including military conscription, which had informed the primary justifications for universal male suffrage, nor did they campaign to impose any such obligations on women.

And through every effort on the part of those early feminists ran a vein of resentment, blame and indifference toward men. Resentment of “privileges” that were bought and paid for by men through their formal obligations to others. Blame cast on men for single-handedly constructing the entire system with no care or concern for women’s wellbeing, safety or happiness, seats in lifeboats nothwithstanding. Indifference to the responsibilities imposed on men by this same system, or the male sacrifice, hardship and suffering which resulted.

While men were dying in their thousands to win the right to form a union and earn enough to support their wives and children, early feminists were campaigning for a woman’s right to take a man’s children away from him through separation or divorce, and still enjoy the same access to his wallet she’d become accustomed to in marriage.

While men were dying in their millions to protect societies in which most men didn’t have the vote, early feminists were terrorizing and injuring innocent civilians, demanding votes for women.

I was, to be honest, appalled by the entitlement of those early feminists, and by the nonchalance with which they portrayed men, as a sex, as not just capable of, but guilty of, treating their own wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters with sociopathic disregard. Little wonder these selfish, elitist, divisive women were, contrary to the revisionist history we’ve all been fed, no more popular among ordinary women back then than their modern counterparts are today.

A friend of mine has said that modern feminism is simply feminism without the mask. But my investigations showed me that feminism has never worn a mask. It has never needed to conceal the bitter core of hatred, blame, prejudice and supremacy that form its nucleus

Suffragettes were notorious domestic terrorists, lobbing bombs, lacing letter boxes with acid, setting fire to train stations, and even attempting to assassinate the British Prime Minister. But far from attempting to conceal their crimes, they relied on traditional notions of chivalry to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. And the very subjects of their ceaseless hate campaign — men — eventually gave them everything they wanted, and more.

Pretending that First Wave feminism was virtuous not only erases the systemic injustices of which they were the primary architects, it erases the anti-male resentment and blame that have always infected the roots of the movement. It’s time we stop idealizing them, and begin seeing the entirety of feminsism for what it really is.

History is written by the victors, and feminism has been on a winning streak since its inception. Within that official history we are told only good things about the “brave women who risked their lives for women’s equality”. Some may find it deeply upsetting to discover that feminism has never been the righteous movement we’ve been told it was, but we have a moral obligation to examine political movements and history with our rose-tinted glasses off before we form an opinion. To do otherwise is to indulge in the wishful thinking of children.

Feminist nonsense in Germany / Disturbing news

Another cosmic-joke day:

Checking the news shortly after wakening*, I am met with two absurd German news-items in the “poor discriminated women” genre:

*Viz. being prematurely awakened by some type of ruckus, which, from its length, is almost certainly a part of the construction works.

1. CDU, an allegedly Conservative party, has decided on an internal women’s quota of 50 (!) %. In effect, women should be guaranteed at least half of all positions for “group elections of board members, such as deputy chairpersons and assessors” (according to an English source ([1])).

   Apart from the general dubiousness of quotas and the observation that equality of opportunity does not lead to equality of outcome, through e.g. different preferences and priorities, I note that: (a) An effective minimum of 50 % for women implies a very strong distortion that could move the party even further* into Leftist ideas and/or deepen its cowardly hiding under the label “Center” (instead of “Right”). (b) This is a party with traditionally more male voters and members than female ones, implying that the quota is inherently unfair and amounts to a massive pro-woman/anti-man step away from equality of opportunity—a woman who wants to make a CDU career will have it much easier than a man. (c) It is likely to move the party further away from the wishes of its voters, as women tend to have different political preferences than men.** (d) This, obviously, is yet another case of a women’s quota, despite there being no reason whatsoever to not use a generic sex/gender quota (if a quota is used at all).

   *Note a drift towards the Center in more than name for a long time, repeated absurd coalition governments with nominal archenemy SPD (Social-Democrat), increased acceptance of “New Left” ideals (including e.g. Gender-Feminist/-Studies propaganda), and a disturbing past of doing more to increase than decrease the redistribution state and the nanny state. As to why I am concerned about too many women, see e.g. [2].

   **The rise of the allegedly extreme “Right-wing” AfD is to a large part old CDU voters defecting due to alienation and disappointment with CDU’s behavior in the Merkel era.

   Ah, and this is apparently a “compromise” … To me, it looks more like a blanket capitulation.

2. “Minister of Family” and SPD member Franziska Giffey is pushing a “national strategy for equality of women and men” (“nationale Strategie zur Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern”, see a German source ([3])).

   Newsflash: Men and women have been equal in Germany since before I moved here in 1997—almost 23 years ago. (How long before, I leave unstated. On paper, it is much longer.) Looking at my own experiences in the office, being a woman appears to be a career bonus, in and by it self. Looking at overall society, very much of is geared at women. Looking at laws and redistribution, women appear to be heavily favored, through e.g. mechanisms like paid baby-breaks that come out of the pay of everyone else and the way that men’s health-insurance fees subsidize women’s.

   Particularly annoying is that Giffey is quoted as mentioning a payment difference of more than twenty percent and requiring governmental intervention. This despite the 77 cents on the dollar fraud having been debunked countless times, by countless people, in any major Western country where a version of it has been claimed. This staple of Feminist rhetoric is one of the worst cases of “fake news” in the history of politics.

   The claim amounts to demanding that women receive equal pay for unequal work, including shorter working hours; and it disregards the result of personal priorities, e.g. risk taking during negotiations and whether someone loses career years through a baby break. It also disregards the extensive transfers that take place from men to women.

   This is yet another case of women being given a major leg up based on the lie that they would be the victims of “discrimination” and whatnot.

Excursion on baby breaks:
At least in Sweden, I have seen the actual, but likely fringe, opinion that women who come back from even a lengthy baby or child break should not only have the right to be rehired by their old employers into the old position, but that they should actually receive promotions and pay raises on par with the men who did not take the same break … Say that a woman drops out today to have a baby and comes back seven-or-so years later, when the kid enters school. She has now been out of the game for seven years, she no longer knows the company internals*, she is unlikely to have kept up with the field (and whether she has is irrelevant to this fringe opinion), she has not put in the years of hard work to prove her dedication to the company, etc. (And she has not had to face the risk of a major screw-up leading to a firing or side-ways “promotion” into a career dead-end during those seven years.) Nevertheless, she is to be reinstated with a promotion and a pay raise …

*The importance of this can vary depending on the exact job and company, but the effect can be quite large, especially for more qualified positions. In e.g. software development, my own old field, it is not just a matter of forgetting large parts of the often enormous amounts of knowledge needed, but the world can have changed so much that she might have to start over from scratch. We have changes to the domain knowledge, internal processes, technologies used (possibly, even the programming language), best practices, … We are not talking weeks to get up to the old speed, but months or even years.

The motivations for this nonsense, in my recollection, has fallen into two families: It is only fair (how?!?) and being a mother will have brought so many new skills that she will be more valuable than before (naive beyond belief).

To the latter, I note a parallel in nonsensical calculations like The Telegraph on housewives—-who “deserve an annual salary of £159,137”.

The 2019 Nobel Prizes: Women and the Nobel Prize

Time for the yearly Nobel-Prize update:

Compared to 2018, the historical male dominance has returned.

The three* regular Prizes (Physics/Chemistry/Physiology or Medicine) saw a total of nine laureates, all men.

*As noted for 2018, I will ignore Literature and Peace in the future. However, they would not have changed the picture this year, with both laureates being men.

The “extra-curricular” Economics Prize saw two men and one woman (Esther Duflo).

In total, there were eleven male to one female laureate, and 3.75 to 0.25 Prizes.*

*Note that, in my understanding, Duflo received a quarter, not a third, as the price was shared equally between Michael Kremer and the team of Duflo and her husband, Abhijit Banerjee.

Excursion on 2018:
The 2018 analysis was slightly hampered by the delayed awarding of the Literature Prize. It is noteworthy that the delayed award did go to a woman (Olga Tokarczuk), which makes 2018 a truly exceptional year for the women. Factoring in the rarity of a share of the Physics Prize, 2018 could be argued as even on par with 2009.

Excursion on the married couples:
With Duflo, we have another instance of a husband/wife team sharing a Price. While this is unremarkable when looking at husbands,* the proportion of female winners is sufficiently large that there could be a distortive effect, e.g. in that a brilliant male scientist has his merely good wife as a tag-along. Official information gives four** other cases, leaving us with five couples:

*Not because the reverse scenario of brilliant female with tag-along husband would be impossible, but because removing a few male winners would not affect the overall proportions.

**Not counting the also mentioned Gunnar and Alva Myrdal. While they did both win, they won in different fields in different years, which reduces the risk of a tag-along effect. To boot, Alva was awarded the Peace Prize (1982), which is not under consideration. Also note Marie Curie’s Chemistry Prize below.

1. Duflo/Banerjee, Economics in 2019. Duflo is only the second female laureate (in the field in question).
2. May-Britt and Edvard Moser, Medicine in 2014. May-Britt is one of twelve female laureates. With Gerty Cori (cf. below) this makes two in twelve or one in six.
3. Gerty and Carl Cori, Medicine in 1947. She was the first female laureate by thirty years.
4. Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Chemistry in 1935. Irène is still one of only five female laureates. She was only the second female recipient of any non-Literature/non-Peace Prize, behind only her mother (cf. below).
5. Marie and Pierre Curie, Physics in 1903. Marie is still one of only three female laureates, and was the first by 60 years. Indeed, she was the first female laureate in any category, Literature and Peace included.

   (But note that she won the 1911 Chemistry Prize unshared, a few years after Pierre’s death. Moreover, that the delays between effort and award were far shorter back then, implying that Pierre need not have had any effect on the Chemistry Prize, even had he had one on the Physics Prize.)

(Additional data from a Wikipedia page listing female laureates. With reservations for oversights on my behalf.)

A similar tag-along effect could, obviously, exist even without a married relationship, when a team is jointly awarded a Prize but the contributions of the laureates vary in importance. Again, such an effect would have only a small impact on men, while the impact on women could be considerable. (Most winning teams have been all-male, implying that the number of male laureates could drop, but it would still be far larger than the number of female laureates, and the number of “male” Prizes would remain almost or entirely unchanged.)

Excursion on the Economics Prize:
With repeated awardings of the Peace and Literature Prizes for “being Left”, I have some fears that the Economy prize will eventually be similarly politicized. The motivation for the 2019 Price could point in this direction: “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”, which might be an indication that the award is less for scientific accomplishment and more for choice of topic. (I have not attempted the very considerable leg-work needed to judge this in detail.)

Other potential suspects include “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” (William D. Nordhaus) and “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare” (Angus Deaton).

As a depressing contrast, this years Literature choice, Peter Handke, has been criticized for reasons unrelated to literary accomplishment—his opinions relating to Serbia et co. appear to be considered unacceptable.

(All motivations from official information.)

Follow-up: Changes to Swedish rape laws

About a year ago, I wrote about a change to Swedish rape laws that threaten the Rechtsstaat and could interfere with “normal” behavior.

These concerns are validated by the recent first test of the law in the Swedish Supreme Court (Högsta Domstolen): a man has been convicted to eight months in jail on almost absurd grounds. To boot, these eight months were actually a shortening of a harsher punishment from lower courts.

Going by a Swedish source, a man visited a female online-acquaintance*. They consensually slept in the same bed, but the woman had originally declined sexual intercourse. During the night, the man still attempted sexual intercourse—and instead of making clear that she was not willing, the woman did and said nothing. After a while, the man drew the conclusion that she was unwilling, and stopped. (The source is not explicit on whether penetration had occurred at this stage.)

*It is not made clear what the purpose of this acquaintance was; however, it seems highly plausible that it had a long-term goal of romance or casual sex. The below holds even absent such a goal, but if the goal applies, it holds even more strongly.

For this comparatively trivial incident, the man was sentenced to eight (8!) months of jail on account of “negligent rape” (“oaktsam våldtäkt”).*

*Which in turns validates one of my detail concerns in the original text (look for “1 a §”)—that this newly introduced type of “rape” would lead to great complications with interpretation and whether the “rapist” would even be aware that he “raped”. Indeed, the lower courts had originally convicted him of regular rape; indeed, the man appears to not have considered his actions rape (even by the standards of the current law—by saner laws in a saner country, his innocence of rape would be highly likely, even if some other charge might have applied).

If anything, this “rape” incident proves how important it is that refusal, not consent, be explicit. Any sane person in the woman’s situation, absent any type of threat/violence/whatnot, would have clearly stated a refusal, pushed the other party away, or similarly made a disinterest clear. Moreover, if a man and woman (or two lesbians or two gays) land in bed together under such circumstances, no-one can be the least bit surprised if one of the parties “tries something”—and the other party (if not interested) must be prepared to react correspondingly. If the man above had tried the same thing in a “co-ed” sauna, I could have seen a point, depending on how fast* the situation escalated, because there are some types of behavior that are not typically encountered in a sauna—but here he consensually was in bed with a woman, and an entirely different set of reasonably likely behaviors apply.**

*I am uncertain exactly where to draw the line, but on the extremes a simple inquiry is perfectly OK (also cf. an example from my original text) while just jumping someone is not.

**But, knowing how the PC crowd tends to react, I stress that I do not say that sexual advances are a given in such a situation—just that they are sufficiently common and accepted that no-one can legitimately be surprised. Indeed, entirely platonic relationships and bed sharing is quite unusual among adult pairings of men and women.

This type of law also presents a major problem with interpreting when a set of actions moves from e.g. “making out” to “attempting sex”: Let us say that penetration had not occurred above: would it still be “rape”? What if the woman had at some point just kneed him the nuts and then run to the telephone to have him arrested: how do we now whether it was an attempted “rape” or just an attempted make-out session, given that we do not know where he would have stopped voluntarily? (Or, for that matter, whether he would have stopped, had she simply asked him…) In reverse, if penetration had taken place, is penetration that much worse than e.g. having a penis touch a thigh? Is a penis touching a thigh that much worse than a kiss?* Etc. Consider the Sorites paradox and tell me when we have or do not have a sand-heap/rape. With a clear signal from the unwilling party, that attentions are not welcome, we have an automatic, clear-cut border—without such a signal, we have guesswork and arbitrariness. Indeed, even in more general situations an “explicit consent” system is quite vulnerable to such problems, because it is virtually impossible for the one party to know when consent from the other is required (short of the absurdity of demanding consent for every single escalation of the situation). Do I need explicit consent to put my hand on a woman’s thigh? To pull her pants down? Only when I insert my penis? Moreover, if the situation above actually escalated so far that penetration took place, noting e.g. that both were originally in underwear, how can any reasonable person see a lack of protest as anything but consent. Who lets things go so far without actually being willing?!?

*In the reverse situation, depending on the woman, I might have been less on board with an unprompted kiss than e.g. an unprompted blow-job. Further, with roles reversed, is it only rape when a woman accomplishes penetration or is it enough that she e.g. grabs the penis? The law was obviously never truly intended to apply to women, but if and when it is applied to women, they might be even worse off than men.

For my part, I can only recommend visitors to Sweden to abstain from sex entirely and permanent residents to only have sex within long-term relationships or with actual paper-work to prove consent—anything else is too dangerous with this utterly idiotic law.

Excursion on misrepresentations/misunderstandings:
In the intervening year, I have seen several claims along the line that only with this law, consent became a requirement. This is a gross misrepresentation, be it out of incompetence or for rhetorical reasons: Consent was already needed. Was has changed is that the consent must be unnaturally explicit. I have repeatedly noted a similar tendency when it comes to e.g. Feminists to claim that a law that pushes the border too far would achieve something that already had been achieved by much older laws. (At least one earlier text, [1], deals with a similar topic.)

Bad-faith assumptions in debate / allegations of e.g. sexism

Accusations of e.g. sexism are often entirely unwarranted and accusations (in general) from the PC crowd are often exaggerated in a highly distortive manner, often involving undue speculation about motives or the assumption of a hidden agenda, e.g. in the form “criticizes immigration policy” => “must be a racist”.

In the border-areas of these two problems there are some interesting special cases that I have seen repeatedly over the years,* often involving clear non-sequiturs and/or bad faith. The latter in two variations: Firstly, in that the attacker can be acting in bad faith, e.g. maliciously distorting for rhetorical purposes. Secondly, in that the attacker assumes that the attacked spoke in bad faith, making the attack a case of incompetence. (I also point to Hanlon’s Razor and the standard recommendation for Wikipedia editors to assume good faith for further thought.) While I will not necessarily point explicitly to these complications below, they are almost always present to some degree, and I ask the reader to actively consider them when reading the reminder of the text.

*Because I have learned my lesson and try to stay away from Feminist debates, they have been much rarer to me lately than in the past. For this reason, I have few specific examples and links. Similar topics have occurred implicitly in a few older texts, however. I point e.g. to [1] and to my conflicts with and concerns about German blogger Antje Schrupp, discussed in e.g. [2] and [3]. An old debunking of a “male privilege checklist” is likely to contain some examples and/or some material overlapping with the below items.

A few (likely incomplete) examples:

1. Interpreting criticism of Feminism as misogyny or as having an anti-woman agenda.

   Even if Feminism was a true equality movement (it is not, outside its own propaganda), criticism of it must be allowed. Jumping to (or, possibly, pretending to jump to) conclusions beyond the criticism it self is almost always unwarranted. Equating anti-Feminism with e.g. misogyny is comparable to equating anti-Communism with hatred of the working class.

2. Interpreting opposition to equality of outcome as misogyny.

   Apart from the renewed non-sequitur, equality of outcome is not equality at all—true equality is equality of opportunity.

3. Interpreting the belief in physical differences, be they speculative or well-documented by science, as misogyny.

   We must try to see the world as it actually is—not the way we want it to be. This includes being open to possibilities that do not match a preconceived opinion or an ideological agenda, and to respect that others might have a deviating opinion for a non-misogynistic (non-racist, non-whatnot) reason. (It does not include agreeing with that reason, but I would welcome it if e.g. Feminists were to take the trouble to actually research matters with an open mind, instead of blindly believing claims by other believers and the pseudo-scientific field of gender studies—they would find reason to modify a great number of opinions.)

   As an aside, a common sub-problem is that members of the PC crowd fail to consider individual variation, or that their opponents understand individual variation, resulting in absurd conclusions like the opponent who says that the average X of group A is better than that of group B being taken to imply that every single member of group A has a better X than every single member of group B. This including implicit variations, e.g. that the existence of one single member of group B of who excels in X is taken as counter-proof. (Where “X” can refer to a wide range of measures, abilities, whatnot, e.g. IQ or the ability to play chess. Height and the ability to long jump are good examples of similar measures that do not usually* receive this misinterpretation, and that implicitly show why the misinterpretation is idiotic.)

   *Exceptions can exist. Apparently, e.g., the opinion that Serena Williams would not be competitive with even fairly low-ranking male tennis players has been condemned as sexist—without bothering to actually investigate the factual correctness or faultiness of the claim. This shows an element of wishful thinking that is common in PC circles—I want the truth to be this-or-that; ergo, the truth is this-or-that.

4. Interpreting criticism of an individual woman as criticism of women in general. For example, the claim “Hillary Clinton would be a useless President” has been extrapolated to “Hillary Clinton would be a useless President because she is a woman” (implying “any female President would be useless”)—where the speaker is far more likely to have his eyes set on her weird opinions, disputable morals, relative lack of qualifications, … More extreme extrapolations like* “women are useless in politics” or even “women are useless” are not unheard of.

   *I do not recall whether I have seen such in the case of Hillary Clinton, but similar extrapolations have definitely occurred. I use examples on the same base for consistency.

   This item (and the following) is outright baffling, and one that makes me believe that these interpretations are often either deliberately dishonest (to allow e.g. an ad-hominem attack) or based on the (horribly misguided) blanket assumption that a significant portion of the male population is deliberately trying to oppress women.

5. Interpreting factual and valid criticism of an individual woman as being motivated by misogyny, a wish to put women in general down, or similar. As a special case, (typically incorrectly) assuming that a man who had displayed a similar behavior would not have been criticized in a similar manner.

   (See preceding item.)

6. Interpreting any and all mention of women’s looks, irrespective of reason, as misogyny (cf. excursion). Slightly off-topic, we also have the related problem of taking any and all depiction of women that could be seen as sexualized as misogyny, objectification, or whatnot. In rare extremes, even the depiction of too good-looking women is deemed unacceptable, e.g. through “setting unrealistic standards” (cf. another excursion).

   See below for a more specific example.

   This item is not just a non-sequitur, but also often paradoxical in that implies that praising a woman for some aspect of her being would diminish her. If an accomplished women is also good looking, what is wrong with enjoying her looks—especially, when she is obviously deliberately trying to look good? If anything, the implied assumption that men would not be able to appreciate a woman for her brains or her accomplishments is the true sexism… For that matter, I suspect that more women appreciate men for the “wrong” reasons than vice versa.*

   *This is speculative, obviously, but no more so than corresponding claims by e.g. Feminists. More generally, I have the personal impression that men might e.g. like a beautiful actress because they enjoy looking at her, but leave it at that, while women are more likely to jump to a broader admiration of handsome actors, assuming that they are handsome and X, Y, Z even when the evidence is scant or outright contradictory.

7. Interpreting any negative treatment, any treatment construable as negative, or even the lack of preferential treatment, as misogyny.

   For instance, just a few days ago, sexism accusations were raised when Australian TV failed to interrupt the broadcast of an on-going men’s game in favor of a women’s game about to start ([4]). True, one of the women, Ashleigh Barty, was both Australian and the women’s world number one—but also true: both men were Australian; their match was hard fought, while Barty’s was expected to be (and, indeed, was) a formality; their match was already far progressed, while the women’s were about to start; the men’s match was likely to end before the women’s, had the women’s match been hard fought, implying that the most interesting part of the women’s match could still have been shown; and viewer interest* appears to have favored the men’s match. Even those who would see the case for the women’s match as stronger would be hard-pressed to make a convincing argument for sexism as the motivation—not e.g. someone simply coming to another conclusion based on objective criteria.

   *Of course, some Feminists appear to reason that this disparity in interest is it self a sign of sexism, in need of intervention…

   I have found it a useful exercise to just reverse the roles in a situation and see how the interpretation changes. Assume that the sexes above were reversed and that the broadcast had been changed—would this have been OK or had loud accusations of sexism still followed? My money is on the latter, because in situations like these it is rarely a matter of what is fair on objective grounds—it is a matter of what is to the advantage or disadvantage of women. Generally, this exercise is excellent in revealing the enormous hypocrisy that applies pro women, e.g. behaviors that are tolerated when they would be inacceptable from a man, claims that would or not would not be OK with the roles reversed, etc.

Notably, such interpretations are typically made in a blanket manner, in an obvious assumption of “bad faith”, and without considering whether there might, e.g., be a valid reason for a given criticism. Consider e.g. the poster “Gabriella2” on the Track and Field News forums, which I have occasionally visited: I have noticed him* going off on absurd “bad faith” tangents on a number of occasions. Finally, in what was the trigger for writing this text, he seems to have gone too far and actually received a ban.** The originating*** incident is “bambam1729”, a physician, making an aside remark that he is concerned about Konstanze Klosterhalfen, a very thin female runner, being anorexic. This sets Gabriella2 of again, with claims likes “And then attention is turned to Klosterhalfen. Women are either too muscular, or too thin…Jesus give me strength!”.****

*According to mentions in the linked-to thread, despite the name, the poster appears to be male. While I am myself skeptical, both because of the type of the repeated accusations and because of style of writing, I will use pronouns based on this claim. Certainly, there are plenty of men who are similarly stupid.

**Note that this thread originated as posts in another, likely for a Diamond League event, and appears to have been split-off after the fact. Further note that some of Gabriella2’s posts might have been deleted by the moderators, as is often the case when a ban occurs.

***There was some prior discussion not included here that might have set the mood or agitated people in advance. Parts might be present in another split-off thread (but I have not tried to track what of the original discussion eventually went where).

****I note that phrases like “give me strength”, “here we go again”, “not this shit again”, and similar, are quite common with this type of debater—but that it is usually the rest of the world that needs strength to put up with them and their ever-recurring crap.

Well-reasoned posts by others have no effect, including:

(By bambam1729)

I brought up Klosterhalfen, and if you think that’s inappropriate you have never treated a 20-25 yo woman with stress fractures in their hip, or operated on hip fractures, and seen all the problems that are caused by the female athletic triad. As I said, it was my doctor coming out. I don’t give a shit what she looks like from an appearance point of view, I do care what anorexia does to a female body. The loss of bone strength from it at her age is not recoverable.

With “female athletic triad”, a term not previously familiar to me, he likely refers to something discussed in [5].

(By DrJay, presumably also a physician)

[…]

And I share bambam’s concern about anorexia, and had the exact same thoughts about Klosterhalfen. And take note that posters on this board have not been pointing at the many, many other female (or male) middle or long distance runners about their slender or skinny builds, i.e. Klosterhalfen is an exception and looks like stress fractures and more waiting to happen. Has nothing to do with some sort of “ideal” body, but everything to do with a sometimes fatal mental illness.

(By DrJay, replying to Gabriella2’s accusations of hypocrisy in treatment of male and female athletes)

Most (all?) world class male shot putters are overweight, carrying a lot of extra body fat. Most world class distance runners, male and female, are skinny, underweight by many standards, and I don’t recall seeing concern or criticism for that here before. The difference is that Klosterhalfen, anthropomorphically, is an (extreme) outlier among outliers. She is, as bambam said, cachectic.

Maybe you should start a thread discussing the health risks incurred by the body habitus of male shot putters. I doubt any of us would argue that they are not at increased risk for cardiovascular disease later in life.

As for bambam1729, he finally had enough of Gabriella2 and his nonsense:

OK, Gabriella, that’s it. Call me at [number^*] and we’ll discuss this like adults.

As for the message board, that’s it for me. Its been a fun 10 years or so. Don’t care to deal with people who tell me my medical license should be taken away, or I don’t know anything about medical journals, when the people telling me that don’t know shit about medicine.

I’ll await your call.

*The original post does contain the real number, but I prefer to remove it on a “just in case” basis.

Excursion on attention to women and misogyny:
This is possibly the largest non-sequitur of all.

For instance, why should attraction to a woman be something negative?!?! Why would it diminish an accomplished woman if people who appreciate her accomplishment also take note of her looks? If people who do not care for her field* appreciate her for another reason than her accomplishment? This especially when it comes to women who obviously strive to look good.

*A particular common variation is someone who does not care for women’s sports, but who still can appreciate a good looking female athlete. Another is someone with only a casual or an “Olympics only” interest in sports in general, who takes note. (Based on age and physical training, athletes are, obviously, more likely to be admired for their looks than e.g. physicists.)

Why would it be wrong to (as above) raise concerns about a woman potentially being too thin for her own good? Similarly, too fat for her own good? Etc.

When it comes to negative opinions about optics, I can see a partial point along the lines of “if you cannot say anything positive; do not say anything”*; however, while a violation of this principle might be rude or insensitive, there is nothing misogynous about it.

*But I would limit the validity of this principle to specific circumstances, to the degree that I support it all, e.g. when speaking directly to the potentially insulted party and having no specific reason to say anything hurtful. (A specific reason could be e.g. a sub-standard piece of work that needs replacement.)

Talk of “objectification” is particularly absurd: Either it is nonsense or such an everyday matter that it cannot be considered bad, because, by the same standard, admiring a singer for his voice would be worthy of condemnation—as would seeing a baker as a source of bread, without bothering to build a personal relationship.

Excursion on “setting unrealistic standards”:
This is something that has long puzzled me—why should the average woman be depressed because she cannot match a “professional beauty”? Someone who has not only had great luck with genetics, but also has had that more time to spend on her looks, access to better advice and helpers, is wearing professional make-up, and has been photographed (or even re-touched) professionally? (And if she is, why should she not feel the same way when e.g. hearing of a Nobel Laureate?) Would this not rather point to a problem with e.g. the self-perspective in the individual woman than to a problem with modern media? A more rational attitude is to take things for what they are, understand that not everyone can be good at everything* and that looks are not all that matters, use the professional beauties as inspirations or a means to find ways to improve one self (should this be wanted), etc.

*In contrast, if someone dedicates years of work to excellence in a particular area and then falls short of the original hopes, then I would have larger sympathies.

By all means, I too was fairly insecure when I was a teenager, but (a) I grew out of it, (b) I never saw e.g. Schwarzenegger* movies as a problem that put me down, (c) by and large, media influence was a positive, because it contributed** to moving me to improve myself (and even at that, I trailed most of my male class mates by years). If anything, seeing that I was (then) considerably below average in athleticism, my class mates were a greater source of insecurity—and should we then go down the road of “Harrison Bergeron” to protect the feelings of teenage boys and girls***?

*To boot, as an adult, I consider him too bulky for my own preferences.

**To what degree depends on how inclusive “media” is taken and the exact intent. Movies certainly were a part; fashion magazines were not. Certainly, the brain-washy aspect often implied in Feminist rhetoric was not present—but an aspect of seeing e.g. how the same actor could come across extremely differently in different roles, or in the same role in different seasons of a TV series, was.

***Absent fashion magazines and whatnot, they will still have comparisons in their vicinity—taller girls, girls with bigger breasts, girls with better faces, girls who are slimmer, girls with more muscle, girls with more expensive clothes, …

From another point of view, should we deny others the right to look at depictions of beautiful women or muscular men? Should we ban magazines from using images that people want to see, even at the risk of damaging their profits? Should we force advertisers* to use images that are hurtful to product sales?

*Note that I am generally negative towards modern day advertising, and would be open to some legal restrictions, including on the amount of advertising, the use of animations, and profiling. Beautiful women are one of the very few positive aspects about advertising, however. I also note that some attempts to use “real” people have been less than appetizing, and are better avoided out of concern for the viewers. For instance, during my visits to Sweden, I was repeatedly exposed to an advert of an old crone lying in a bath tub—WTF! I did my best to look in other directions and do not even know what the advert was for…

Overlooked explorations of the male role, etc.

After my recent review of “Pride and Prejudice”, I have spent some time thinking on actually and apparently simplistic literature vs. something that has long annoyed me immensely: Common claims from (almost invariably female) “gender theorists” and their ilk that men would spend too little time analyzing the “male role”, that questions of “manhood” or “masculinity” would not be sufficiently explored, and similar. (While the same, apparently, does not apply to women—presumably, courtesy of the same “gender theorists”.)

These claims show a gross ignorance of the type of influences those men who are interested in fiction are exposed to since childhood—and the considerable efforts, conscious or not, spent exploring such topics in fiction, since long before “gender studies” arose as a social construct*. To boot, it severely underestimates the amount of time many men spend privately contemplating related issues, let alone the apparently universal** male question of when one ceases to be boy and becomes a man.

*Two can play that game…

**With reservations for societies where some type of initiation ritual is involved, as well as sub-cultures where it is tied to first having sexual intercourse. (Going by my own experiences, I suspect that the question is raised so commonly mostly because the process is gradual, both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of the surroundings.)

Take “The Lord of the Rings” and consider the wide variety of characters, character developments, and situations: Take as positive examples Frodo and his heroic march; Sam and his undying loyalty; Merry and Pippin, and the sacrifices they make for friendship; and how all four grew to become so much stronger than they originally were (or proved themselves to be vs. thought that they were). Take as negative examples Boromir committing evil* in an effort to do good; Saruman being corrupted by a wish for power; Theoden falling prey to his personal Iago; or even Frodo, unable to give up the Ring during the deciding moment. (With many other examples to be found.) There are (mentally/morally/whatnot) small men and great men, there are small men growing, there are great men shrinking. There are dilemmas and decisions. There is heroism and cowardliness. There are good ends and means; and there are bad ends and means—even intermingled (cf. Boromir). A particular point of note is the epilogue in the Shire—unlike in so many other stories, defeating the main evil does not ensure that the world is safe and sound, and the work still goes on. (Incidentally, while the text is dominated by male characters, the few women that do occur are by no means house-wives focused on child-rearing. Most notably, Galadriel is a ruling queen, is one of the most powerful beings that appear in the story, and appears to wear the pants in her own family; while Eowyn disguises as a man, rides to battle, and slays one of Sauron’s greatest champions—both much worthier examples** than any of the female characters in “Pride and Prejudice”.)

*And from another perspective, we have the ethical dilemma of when what actions are justifiable, and the opportunity to consider ourselves in different situations (also see another recent text.) Unlike many other instances of evil being done in the name of good (or “the greater good”, as case may have it), the attempted evil was, on the surface, small and the situation one involving the fate of the world, making his actions easier to understand. (The more severe flaw was, likely, that he failed to comprehend the nature of the Ring, and that things would have ended much worse, had he been successful, than they actually did. My last reading being too far back, I do not recall the degree to which his actions were caused by an active influence by the Ring. The interpretation of these actions might need some corresponding adjustment.) Similar concerns about motivations and what-would-the-reader-do-in-the-same-situation apply in other cases too.

**I caught myself originally writing “examples for a young woman”. I immediately stopped to change this, although not unreasonable in this specific context: While their might be some areas where the sex of an example or role-model is relevant, it is almost always better to focus on the admirable characteristics. The feminist insistence that young women be given female role-models for this-and-that is highly misguided and contra-productive. If we want a role-model, we should pick someone suitable in a manner that ignores both our own and the role-models sex (and color, religion, nationality, whatnot).

Take “Hamlet”; take the “Iliad”; take “Le Morte D’Arthur”; take any number of other works by a great number of authors, even (particularly?) in the fantasy and sci-fi genres; take, even, the lives and adventures of Spiderman and the Hulk, in those despised super-hero comics, those heights of male “immaturity”. To a thinking mind, the right work can raise more questions around what it is and takes to be a man, how to be good, what dilemmas and problems can arise in life, whatnot, than the field of “gender studies” does (even discounting problems like ideological bias within that field). Moreover, in my impression, they do so to a far higher degree than does, m.m., the corresponding age-group literature for women, as demonstrated by e.g. “Pride and Prejudice”.*

*I must make the great reservation that I am not overly well-read in this area; however, what works I have read/watched with a similarly “for girls/women” image (as e.g. “The Lord of the Rings” has a “for boys/men” image), have usually fallen similarly short as “Pride and Prejudice”—with questions like “Who gets whom?”, “Does he love me?” (or even “Do I love him?”), “Which of my two suitors should I pick?”, “Do I dare to have that chocolate bar?”, “Should I remain friends with that other woman, even though she is a horrible person?”, and similar shallowness. While some of these questions might, on a personal level, be important, they do not contribute much to personal growth, to developing a sense of ethics, to gaining insights, whatnot. (Note the difference between works written for women and works written by women—the latter can be quite insightful.)

These works often (similar to “Pride and Prejudice”) work with shallower and more unnuanced characters, proving that this, in and by it self, need not be a problem. However, where “Pride and Prejudice” gives the impression of either lack of insight or lack of effort (which, I will not presume to judge), they often do so for deliberate reasons, in order to e.g. make a point more obvious or to be allegorical.* (Also note that my complaint against “Pride and Prejudice” was not lack of character depth, per se, but the compounded lack of almost everything, character depth included.) More generally, many works of fiction can be quite thought-worthy despite having a reputation that goes more towards entertainment literature. For instance, many with only a fleeting familiarity see Terry Pratchett as just a humorist (he was much more); for instance, many see the “Narnia” books as just children’s literature (they have insight even for the adult reader and can be read on several levels). Also see an excursion in the aforementioned review.

*However, many, especially for younger readers, can take this to a point that important insights are lost, most notably the realization that the bad guys usually consider themselves to be the good guys.

Interestingly, questions like those discussed above do not necessarily have any stronger connection with being-a-man-as-opposed-to-a-woman*. Instead, they center on being-a-man-as-opposed-to-a-boy, or, more generically, an-adult-as-opposed-to-a-child; or forego such divisions entirely to focus on e.g. what is right, with no restrictions on who is concerned (being-good-as-opposed-to-bad**, to stick to the pattern). If then, a criticism against one of the sexes should be extended, it would be better directed at women*** for not paying enough attention to the child–adult (or good–bad) division and favoring the female–male division. To some degree, a man is a plain vanilla adult, making issues like a (specifically) male role largely uninteresting; while a woman is a strawberry adult with a scope of cream, chocolate flakes, and a cherry on top, making an investigation of a female role more understandable. (And while I have no objection to women being strawberry instead of vanilla, do they really need all those extras?)

*However, some do, at least in public perception, e.g. in that the demands on a man to take responsibility are larger, ditto to be a provider or protector, ditto to, in a life-or-death situation, give his life to protect his wife’s, etc. Apart from these being unlikely to cause dissatisfaction among feminists, they are also usually of a type that does not require an adjustment of the male self-image or whatnot—if anything, they suggest that women should step up more, that society should to put larger demands on women, and/or that women should revise their image of men.

**I use “bad” over “evil” for two reasons: Firstly, it is not necessarily a matter of e.g. ethics or consequences for others, it can also be a matter of e.g. capabilities and consequences for one self. Secondly, even when ethics is concerned, “evil” might push the contrast too far. For instance, in the parable of the good Samaritan, do we really wish to call those just walking by “evil”? Indeed, even “bad” might be too strong a word in at least some contexts.

***Or at least the type of women who tend to be found in areas like “gender studies” and feminism. Still, in my personal impression to date, women often see “being an adult” as the equivalent of “having a family”—while a man might be more focused on “carrying responsibility” or “doing the right thing”.

But here we might have the crux: These efforts deal with topics like right and wrong, good and evil, positive and negative behavior and developments, human strengths and weakness; often contrasting or putting in conflict egoism and altruism, loyalty towards two different things (say, a brother and country), duty and safety/comfortability, whatnot. What they do not do, is ask questions like “Should I wear a skirt to work?”—and why should they? That is a small and mostly irrelevant question, starting with the low probability that a man would want to do so. (The reverse questions around some women can have a greater value, e.g. to move them towards more practical clothing, but are still not truly important.)

True, in the area between these extremes, there are questions that might be worthy of some exploration (and do not obviously fit in the context of an epic fantasy adventure). For instance, we might consider “Is it unmanly to be a stay-at-home dad?”: It could be argued that someone who avoids that role for that reason is lacking in maturity. On the other hand, this constellation is not very common, with more common reasons including a greater drive to accomplish something professionally and a lesser tolerance of children. A typical intelligent and educated man will not fear what his blokes in the pub will say,* but he will have concerns like loosing ground in his career**, earning less, being bored by a less intellectual type of work, being driven up the wall after spending the whole day, week in and week out, with his children,*** etc. In contrast, here duty can come in, and a man who unexpectedly finds himself a single parent, might very well stay at home out of a sense of duty. His friends might give him a minor ribbing, but they would hardly think less of him—they would see a man doing something manly (viz. doing his duty by his children).

*A recurring issue is that “gender theorists” and feminists present a very stereotypical, prejudiced, and often outright incorrect image of men, e.g. through ignoring individual variation and over-focusing on sit-com “proles”—if men are painted as Al Bundy, then we should equally paint women as Peg Bundy. Similarly, if we do not look at the people with some modicum of intelligence, there is no point in discussing the matter: Stupid people will, barring a revolutionary medical break-through, remain stupid, no matter how many treatises are written on their behavior—and if we look at the behavior of stupid women, they are certainly not something for the female sex to be proud of.

**But is not a career drive also something to analyze/problematize/deconstruct/…? That depends on why the drive is there. Believers in the out-dated “tabula rasa” model of the human mind might jump to the conclusion that a career drive is necessarily something artificial, which explains much of their wish for further investigation (but, obviously, only within their own “everything is a construct” frame-work). However, there are strong signs that such differences are largely caused by biology, making a further investigation a low priority—if in doubt, because this drive is mostly beneficial. A major reason behind the continual failure of various modern feminist, PC, Leftist, whatnot attempts to create equality of outcome is simply that they push past the point where inborn characteristics become a deciding factor—they fail to realize that differences in outcome are not ipso-facto proof of differences in opportunity. (Similar arguments apply to other points above.)

***Note that a love of one’s children is not an obstacle to such irritation.

The 2018 Nobel Prizes: Women and the Nobel Prize

Time for the yearly Nobel-Prize update:

Unlike 2017, women did reasonable well, with participiations in three out of five categories and putting up a total of three laureates out of twelve.* This even included a share in the Physics Prize—for only the third time, after 1903 and 1963.

*Including the Economy Prize. The Literature Prize is moot (cf. below).

The Literature Prize was not awarded (so far?) for 2018, due to an extremely chaotic situation within the awarding “Swedish Academy”. The situation is worthy of a longer text of its own; however, the information that has reached me through the press over months has been confusing, incomplete, and often looked like a game of mutual blame, which makes me unwilling/unable to write said text.

With this chaos on top of my previous criticism of both the Literature and Peace Prizes, and factoring in their very different character, I will probably ignore both of them in any future updates—I can no longer take either seriously. (And to the degree that they can be taken seriously, they are not that relevant to the original context of my interest.)

Changes to Swedish rape laws

Themes like the “Rechtsstaat” and government intervention into the lives of the citizens are important in my recent writings, including several upcoming texts. The greater my annoyance as I learned that my native Sweden had just* fallen victim to a moronic rape law, which not only weakens Sweden’s status as a Rechtsstaat, but also potentially interferes considerably with the “normal” behavior of its citizens:

*The law took effect on 2018-07-01, but was decided months earlier. I am unclear how the original decision got by me: I do recall hearing repeatedly of suggestions for laws like this, but was under the impression that they had always been defeated in light of heavy criticism from e.g. jurists and defenders of civic rights. This including lagrådet.

Sexual acts now require an (almost: see below) explicit consent from both* parties. This does not only turn human behavior on its head**, but it also introduces enormous difficulties of interpretation for both the involved parties and, in case of trial, judges (cf. below).

*In theory: In reality, this will likely amount to “the woman must have consented; the man could not conceivably not have consented”. (While the law, obviously, makes no difference between hetero- and homosexual couples, I will assume a heterosexual for the purposes of this text. This partially for simplicity of formulation; partially because the bulk of the problem cases caused by this law are likely to be in heterosexual relationships.)

**Notably, very many sexual interactions include gradual and unspoken escalation by one or both parties, with the expectation that a party that wants to draw a line is explicit about not consenting to a certain step (e.g. in the form of a “not yet”, “not today”, or a slapping away of a hand). With this law, taken literally, both parties would need to give repeated consent at each stage. Absurdly, it is likely theoretically possible for a mutually consensual sexual act to amount to a mutual rape…

To make a brief comparison of parts of the old and new version of the law (Brottsbalk, 6 kap. Om sexualbrott)*/**:

*With some reservations for my translations, especially with regard to legal language, exact legal definitions, etc. Notably, the Swedish original is manifestly not written with clarity in mind.

**Here I focus on the respective “1 §”, dealing with rape/full intercourse and equivalent scenarios. The respective “2 §” extends, with lower punishments, the more-or-less same reasoning to sexual interactions falling short of full intercourse. (“sexuell handling”/“sexual act” other than mentioned in “1 §”.) I lack the specialist knowledge to judge exactly what acts will fall in the realm of which paragraph, and what might fall outside entirely; however, it is clear that an escalation, e.g. going through the “bases” and ending in a “home run”, will require multiple instances of consent. Note that this law, unlike some similar and similarly heavily criticized U.S. college rules, is not targeted at teenagers having their first experiences—it also includes e.g. what happens between indisputable adults, married to each other with children…

Old:

Den som genom misshandel eller annars med våld eller genom hot om brottslig gärning tvingar en person till samlag […]

(Whoever forces a person to intercourse through assault, violence, or threat of criminal deed […])

Detsamma gäller den som med en person genomför ett samlag eller en sexuell handling som enligt första stycket är jämförlig med samlag genom att otillbörligt utnyttja att personen på grund av medvetslöshet, sömn, allvarlig rädsla, berusning eller annan drogpåverkan, sjukdom, kroppsskada eller psykisk störning eller annars med hänsyn till omständigheterna befinner sig i en särskilt utsatt situation.

(The same [punishment etc.] applies to whoever performs intercourse or a sexual act comparable to intercourse according to the first part with a person, through undue exploitation of the person being in a particularly exposed situation through unconsciousness, sleep, serious fear, intoxication or other drug influence, sickness, bodily injury or psychological disturbances, or otherwise [original phrasing is hard to translate, but “otherwise” catches the gist].)

This is not an unreasonable definition, which mostly should work. Off the top of my head, I would offer four, partially related, criticisms: Firstly, the text is open to interpretation when the unwilling party verbally declines but passively complies; here it would be better to be explicit, especially since the involved parties can legitimately experience some such situations differently. Secondly, the circumstances of the second paragraph can be hard to judge, e.g. if one party has an unwarranted fear that the other party is not aware of*, and this would be better combined with a responsibility for the fearing or whatnot party to be explicit about not consenting (if in a position to speak, obviously); this in particular when we come to the vague “otherwise”. Thirdly, in a strict interpretation, this could be seen to rule out some entirely consensual situations. It might e.g. be illegal for two drunk spouses to have sex with each other… Something more along on the lines of a generic “is physically or mentally unable to consent” might be better than such a listing. Fourthly, the “comparable to intercourse” phrasing could, depending on intentions, stretch the rape concept too far, and is certainly a point where different interpretations are possible.**

*To give a specific example that I read of in a Swedish news paper during, likely, the early 1990s: A man and a woman were alone in a sauna. The man requested oral sex. The woman complied, later claiming that she was afraid, but apparently without protesting and apparently with no actual threat uttered by the man. She then proceeded to file rape charges… There might, obviously, have been important details left out of the paper; however, even so, this stands as a type example of why non-consent should always be explicit and the immense problems that can occur otherwise. I note that some feminist extremists actually have proposed variations of retroactive revokal of consent: If a man and a woman have consensual sex today, and she changes her mind tomorrow, then the event was a rape. What happens to a man who has sex with such a feminist in a country with so vague laws?

**This might even be the main source of the problematic extension of the rape concept compared to other countries.

New:

Den som, med en person som inte deltar frivilligt, genomför ett samlag eller en annan sexuell handling som med hänsyn till kränkningens allvar är jämförlig med samlag, […] Vid bedömningen av om ett deltagande är frivilligt eller inte ska det särskilt beaktas om frivillighet har kommit till uttryck genom ord eller handling eller på annat sätt. En person kan aldrig anses delta frivilligt om […]

(Whoever performs intercourse or another comparable sexual act with a person who does not participate voluntarily […] For estimating whether participation is voluntary or not, particular attention should be given to whether/if consent [literally roughly: “voluntariness”] was signaled by word, act, or by some other means. A person can never be considered a voluntary participant if [listing similar to the description of the original].

A first observation is that this leaves some of the criticisms against the original unchanged—and jumps from the ashes into the fire with the rest…

While the “voluntarily” part is obviously a good thing on paper, things get iffy quite fast in practice: How, absent explicit verbal confirmation, can someone be certain of consent? (And how is sex to be practically workable if verbal confirmation must be given again and again?) For instance, a man might take it as a positive invitation if, naked in bed, the woman spreads her legs—but this could have other implications. If she extends this by grabbing his penis and trying to guide him in the right direction, he can now be reasonable certain—but how does she know that he consented to the penis grabbing? The situation is absurd! It is even unclear whether the judge* is allowed to assume consent absent explicit signs, which could reduce the intended protection for the victims.** To boot, we have the “whether/if” in the translation that goes back to an ambiguity in the original; depending on which reading is chosen, the implications could be different.

*Sweden has no jury trials.

**However, from the context of the law and the discussion that I have seen, some explicit sign is almost certainly needed, even if this is not clear from the law it self: The intent is to satisfy feminist demands for explicit consent only.

Some light might have been shed by the new “1 a §”; however, it does more harm than good. The main effect is to introduce a new category of rape—“oaktsam våldtäkt” (roughly, “negligent rape”). This has the implication that if someone is “grovt oaktsam” (“grossly negligent”) when it comes to not noticing the absence of consent, it still counts as rape, no matter whether “mens rea” was present—someone might be raping someone without even knowing it! On the positive side, there seems to be some room for letting off people who acted in good faith; however, this increases the room for interpretation further yet. A special complication is that while the main text speaks of “gross negligence”, the qualifications do not discuss “lesser negligence”—only a lesser deed. Is the intention now lesser negligence or is it rather that someone who is grossly negligent will be left off if the deed, it self, was less serious?

A particular complication is the increased possibility for false accusations, a woman changing her mind after the fact (cf. above), whatnot: Contrary to feminist propaganda, false accusations already form a considerable portion of all accusations. With the combination of added vagueness and greater need for confirmation, the falsely accused will have greater problems with reaching “reasonable doubt”. In a worst case scenario, we could end up with cases like a man and a woman lying naked in bed, consensual sex spontaneously resulting, and the woman later claiming that she never explicitly consented—ergo, he “raped” her. Word-against-word cases were bad enough with the old law; the new makes it that much worse. With a law like this, chances are that fanatic feminist, unfair debater, and false accuser Anna Ardin would have been successful in getting Julian Assange into a Swedish jail (cf. [1] and links from there).

Looking at Swedish “sex legislation” in general, the tendency over the last decades has been depressing, with characteristics like fairness and Rechtsstaatlichkeit being ignored in favor of feminist whims. I note e.g. the absolutely idiotic ban on prostitution: Not only is such a ban highly disputable in it self, but the law actually turns reasonable procedures on their head and makes only the purchase, not the selling*, of sexual services illegal—something so patently absurd that I would not have believed it, had I not been used to the mindset** of Swedish feminists. An interesting consequence of law changes is that Sweden, going by naive interpretation of statistics, has one of the highest rape frequencies in the “civilized” world, despite (a) the male population being exposed to feminist messages from early childhood, (b) Sweden being one of the last countries even someone willing to rape should consider doing it in***. Many see the Swedish laws, including a very wide definition of rape, as the reason for this.****

*When the buyer/seller situation is asymmetric, it is common sense and established practice to make the selling illegal, while giving the buyer some leeway, as e.g. with drugs in some jurisdictions. It is the professional drug-seller that brings the for-own-use buyer to commit a crime—not the other way around. It is the prostitute (i.e. professional sex-seller) that brings the buyer to commit a crime—not the other way around. (Assuming that prostitution is considered illegal in any form—which really should not be the case in modern society.)

**Including e.g. a world-view based on men as oppressors and women as victims and the misogynist attitude that women are incapable of consent and self-determination (unless properly indoctrinated).

***Based on both laws and the unusually large tendency to believe female accusers.

****Others blame the immigrants.

Excursion on rape occurrence:
To put the “problem” of rape in perspective: Looking e.g. at a Wikipedia page titled Rape in Sweden, we can see that there is considerably less than one rape reported per 1000 people and year—even with these wide definitions. (Something feminists like to explain away with the unsubstantiated claim that only a small fraction of all rapes would be reported.) The simple truth is that the vast majority of all women will never in their lives be raped—and the vast majority of all men will never in their lives commit a rape.

Excursion on statutory rape:
The legal fiction of rape through “statutory rape” is a major weakness in many jurisdictions: It is very possible that even consensual sex involving someone from a particular group (notably those below some age) should be illegal. However, the abuse of the term “rape” for cases where this is the sole* cause of illegality is indefensible—they should be referred to by a more appropriate term**. In addition, it is very important that these not be considered strict liability crimes: Not only is strict liability something which must never be part of the criminal code for natural*** persons acting in a private**** capacity, in general, but with sex we often have a disproportionate risk of innocent mistakes and compliance by the “criminal” to the wishes of the “victim”, especially in countries with a high “age of consent”: Consider e.g. someone in the U.S. being picked up by a 17 y.o., who claims to be 21, shows an ID implying 21, is in a bar drinking alcohol, …***** With strict liability and the idiotic term “statutory rape”, this someone would suddenly be a rapist in the eyes of the law.

*Obviously, the term “rape” should be used if the criteria for non-statutory rape are also met.

**Exactly what would depend on the group and the circumstances.

***There might be cases where strict liability makes sense for e.g. corporations and government agencies, for reasons that include their greater expected knowledge of the law, the greater expected general competence level, and the greater risk and/or consequences of abuse.

****For similar reasons as in the previous footnote, an individual acting e.g. as a government agent might need to underlie stricter criteria.

*****Note that many U.S. states have 21 as the legal minimum age for alcohol consumption.