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Tags misogyny , rape culture , sex scandals , sexuality issues

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Old 21st May 2018, 06:01 AM   #241
fuelair
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Originally Posted by Delvo View Post
Examples for people who might be about to get into similar situations in the present to think about
This.
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Old 21st May 2018, 09:14 AM   #242
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Originally Posted by fuelair View Post
This.
That?

You think making a dramatic public example of, say, Krauss or Shermer or Carrier is going to convince younger men not to behave as they did? No more drunken hookups at conventions? No more polyamorous evangelism? No more arguably unsolicited sexual advances?

Skeptical dog is skeptical.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 08:59 AM   #243
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
No more drunken hookups at conventions? No more polyamorous evangelism? No more arguably unsolicited sexual advances?

Did anybody at all actually make those claims? How did you come up with these no mores?!


I find it interesting that interviews conducted with convicted rapists in India have at least one thing in common with the rapists mentioned in studies in this part of the world referred to in this thread above: denial and lack of empathy for the victims:

Quote:
In the interviews, many men made excuses or gave justifications for their actions. Many denied rape happened at all. “There were only three or four who said we are repenting. Others had found a way to put their actions into some justification, neutralize, or blame action onto the victim.”
A woman interviewed 100 convicted rapists in India. This is what she learned. (Washington Post, Sep. 11, 2017)

In my opinion, the woman doing the interviews exhibits too much compassion for the rapists.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 09:31 AM   #244
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I think you'll find most people who do horrible things find justifications for their actions and blame some outside force (sometimes the victim).

Generally speaking people even find justifications for their minor faults.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 09:43 AM   #245
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
<snip>
I find it interesting that interviews conducted with convicted rapists in India have at least one thing in common with the rapists mentioned in studies in this part of the world referred to in this thread above: denial and lack of empathy for the victims:
The article you quote does not say anything at all about lack of empathy. I don't think you are understanding what it is really saying.

Quote:
In my opinion, the woman doing the interviews exhibits too much compassion for the rapists.
Wow, that's a really weird observation. Here's something else she said:

Quote:
When I went to research, I was convinced these men are monsters. But when you talk to them, you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really ordinary. What they’ve done is because of upbringing and thought process.
She dares to think these men aren't just evil sociopaths? But dann is so convinced that they are! She concludes that they use rationalization/justification? Silly naive girl!

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
I think you'll find most people who do horrible things find justifications for their actions and blame some outside force (sometimes the victim).

Generally speaking people even find justifications for their minor faults.
Yes, this is such a well-understood facet of human psychology that I wonder how dann can argue so vehemently against it.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 10:42 AM   #246
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
The article you quote does not say anything at all about lack of empathy. I don't think you are understanding what it is really saying.

No surprise, really. I understand what it's saying, and some of the things it's saying are wrong.
That you apparently consider the following things empathic also doesn't surprise me:
1) "these men have the power to make you feel sorry for them." This is something that psychopaths are extremely good at.
2) "In my experience a lot of these men don’t realize that what they've done is rape. They don't understand what consent is." The American study mentioned that convicted rapists also in this part of the world readily admitted to having forced women to have sex. They just balked at the word rape.
3) I've already quoted that many of the convicted rapists denied having raped or blamed the victims.
4) A 49-year-old (apparently one of only three or four who expressed some kind of remorse) had raped a 5-year-old and wanted to make it up to her (and, I guess, her family) in this manner: "‘I would accept her, I will marry her when I come out of jail.’"

Quote:
Wow, that's a really weird observation.

Since your contribution to this thread primarily consists of your claim that rapists are compassionate, I'm not surprised that you find it weird that I disagree with somebody who is much too understanding when it comes to rapists.

Quote:
Here's something else she said:
Quote:
When I went to research, I was convinced these men are monsters. But when you talk to them, you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really ordinary. What they’ve done is because of upbringing and thought process.

And that is the mistake she makes! Distinguishing between "monsters" (who would come up with an idea like that?) and men who have been turned into rapists by a misogynistic society, which she knows that India is!

Quote:
She dares to think these men aren't just evil sociopaths? But dann is so convinced that they are! She concludes that they use rationalization/justification? Silly naive girl!

You can roll your eyes as much as you want. That they are misogynistic sociopaths is not disproved by pointing at the circumstances that made them misogynistic sociopaths. I never claimed that it was a question of nature rather than nurture.

Quote:
Yes, this is such a well-understood facet of human psychology that I wonder how dann can argue so vehemently against it.

And where exactly did I argue against this "facet of human psychology"?!
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"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 23rd May 2018, 10:48 AM   #247
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
I think you'll find most people who do horrible things find justifications for their actions and blame some outside force (sometimes the victim).

Yes, they do. That is what characterizes psychopaths: They do horrible things and blames somebody else, very often the victim.

Quote:
Generally speaking people even find justifications for their minor faults.

Yes, ordinary people also have bad excuses for their minor fault, but they don't go around raping 5-year-olds. The difference is that they usually don't commit the horrible crimes that psychopaths do. (Unless ordered to do so by the state, which usually requires intensive training to remove their reluctance to harm fellow human beings.) One major difference between the ordinary people and psychopaths is that the latter lack remorse. No empathy, no remorse.
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx

Last edited by dann; 23rd May 2018 at 10:51 AM.
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Old 25th May 2018, 01:03 AM   #248
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
Why do you find it hard to believe when there are so many examples of it happening?
His argument is from personal incredulity. So despite not being an argument, he is still in charge of making it if he wants to.

Genghis Khan's DNA was, last time I looked, in 16 million people, something like 8% of the population over the land mass that was once the largest land empire on earth. He's the world record rapist. Nobody else even comes close. And he is also the world record replicator.

Statistically that's already conclusive, but he's just one example. The king of Swaziland, when I lived with a guy from there, had something like 86 children at the time. So another exampe of the 1:1 correlation with top rapist and top replicator.

And so on. Right now in primitive tribes worldwide, the remnants of earlier times for homo sapiens, it is common for the Chief to have five wives and they have no choice in the matter.

Droit du seigneur. The tradition goes back as far as the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's just thousands of years, all of written human history.

So genetically it's a proven replication "strategy", like #1 in recorded human history. We are complex creatures that, even when we have certain genes, can be either recessive or dominant depending on who our parents mated with. We all have contradictory impulses that are stronger in some, weaker in another.

The rapist/serial killer science is fascinating and is pretty conclusive that you have genetic and childhood upbringing both working to produce personality. A psychopath can become a surgeon and his psychopathy turns out to be socially beneficial.

You put another psychopath who is raised by a violent drunk grandfather introducing him to rape porn as a child, raising him with his mother as his sister, etc. then you get a Ted Bundy.

The rape fantasy is surprisingly high only because it's a taboo subject. It's higher for women, over 50%, than it is for men, under 50%. But hey, that's the data.

Likewise the Milgram experiment. Pretty much everyone is going to pull the switch that electrocutes someone if a guy in a lab coat tells us it's okay. The Stanford Prison Experiment. Same thing. What's new about any of this, just look at the history of lynchings.

Way more people are prone to what they claim themselves to be ghastly, sadistic behavior. It's pretty straightforward that most of us reason we aren't going to get away with it, so we suppress a pretty powerful genetic impulse until such time we think we can, lol.

That's why getting all sanctimonious about it is pretty silly.
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Old 25th May 2018, 02:34 AM   #249
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
people can have empathy in general but not for their victims. Kind of blows the lid off your, "Every rapist is a sociopath," theory.
Well for that matter we also don't even agree on what "rape" is when crossing state lines, international lines or even religious lines within a state or nation.

In my wife's country, Philippines, you have Sharia law operating alongside "Christian" law, or at least non-Sharia. So you have arranged marriages, multiple wives, huge difference in rape definitions in the very same city all over the country depending on whether you claim to be a muslim or not. You can marry a 9 year old against her will, no problem from what I understand.

Even in Europe in the immigration virtue-signalling disaster zones you are seeing rape ignored or forgiven in significant part because the rapists culture looks at it differently. When you teach men it's okay to rape an unescorted girl without a hajib, what do you expect to happen? She deserves it. That's what they are taught to believe.

When you hop across a border and the age of consent drops from 18 to 13 or even less, you go from calling someone sick to someone normal for the very same act. I was at an airport in Chile, and there was this guy about 35 making out with a girl who couldn't have been more than 12, really french kissing furiously. I thought wow, that's pretty crazy, looking around to see if anyone else was taking notice. Nope. That relationship would have gotten the guy life without parole in my own state.

Some of the founding fathers owned slaves. Wow, again that is potentially a life without parole offense if you did it now. Were they sociopaths? Not by the standards of their time and place. Their wives too, so genteel and proper at the lynchings. Don't give women a free pass on this sort of thing.
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Old 25th May 2018, 01:35 PM   #250
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So rape, harems, women having "no choice in the matter", are all part of a proud tradition and "a proven replication "strategy""; more than 50% of women have "rape fantasies", "But hey, that's the data."

No, it's not the data. Welcome to the 21st century!

Quote:
”I have fantasized about forcing someone to have sex.” 10.8% (women) 22.0% (men)
”I have fantasized about being forced to have sex.” 28.9% (women) 30.7% (men)
Her er de mest populære sexfantasier (Ekstra Bladet, Nov. 3, 2014)

"Likewise the Milgram experiment."

Likewise! Welcome to the 21st century: Social psychology textbooks ignore all modern criticisms of Milgram’s ”obedience experiments” (The British Psychological Society, Research Digest, Oct. 13, 2013)


And anyway, if people "are taught to believe something," they're really not to blame, in particular if they were founding fathers. Then even slavery becomes acceptable, at least "by the standards of their time and place."

So who are the only ones left to blame, then? The women, of course!

"Their wives too, so genteel and proper at the lynchings. Don't give women a free pass on this sort of thing."

Even though I'm pretty sure that they also exhibited nothing but totally acceptable behaviour "by the standards of their time and place" ...
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Old 26th May 2018, 01:24 PM   #251
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What makes some people want to have sex with unwilling 'partners'?

The fact that they're very very bad people.
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Old 26th May 2018, 08:00 PM   #252
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Originally Posted by Ron_Tomkins View Post
What makes some people want to have sex with unwilling 'partners'?

The fact that they're very very bad people.
You define goodness/badness in terms of urges rather than actions?
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Old 27th May 2018, 02:09 AM   #253
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Then let's say that they have very bad urges, but that still doesn't explain why they have them.
In principle, you're right, of course: If we imagine that somebody has the urge to do something bad, fantasizes about doing it, but doesn't, then ... well, no harm done. Except, maybe, the harm that's been done to the individual with these urges, but I'll get back to that.

That is kind of what's portrayed in the movie The Woodsman (2004) where Kevin Bacon plays a convicted pedophile who is on the way to some kind of recovery: He sexually molested very young girls, but now he has realized that it was wrong, he fights his urges and helps catch a 'practicing' sexual predator.
But it doesn't make his urges easier to understand (and the movie doesn't try to do so), and the guys (see a few posts above) who seem to think that rape is the natural order of things because it results in offspring (unfortunately!), can't claim the same 'justification' for sexual abuse of pre-adolescents: They can't get pregnant, so the social-darwinists will have to come up with another way of making sense of that crime and those urges.

In the case of pedophilia, I'm not sure, but I think it's more than an individual problem, some random perversion. It may be a question of the whole culture. Take a look at Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It's not exactly a pedophile novel, but it has been described like this:

Quote:
"Salinger is the literary equivalent of a pedophile, the child's world equals good, and all adults are fake and phony."
Confessional Prose (The Hindu, May 5, 2002)

And that idea seems to be prevalent in much of today's society:

Quote:
First, to make a fetish of adolescent innocence isn’t quite the same thing as eroticizing children, pace Calvin Klein ads and child beauty pageants. Second, though we may not want to admit it, Esmé and Joyce and Phoebe and the young Brooke Shields and JonBenét Ramsey represent different aspects of the very same thing: America’s love of youthful promise, fresh starts, eternal renewal. Salinger’s continued popularity is due in part to the way in which the author reflects that love—which, granted, can take unfortunate turns.
Innocence Lost (Nashville Scene, Mar. 15, 2001)

In the case of sexual coercion, and also in the case of 'merely' fantasizing about sexual coercion, I think that the prevalent misogyny in almost all societies plays a bigger role than the default explanation of the social-darwinists: the genes make us do it!
Take a phenomenon like slut-shaming, for instance. It's almost like a repetition of the Fall-of-Man story: A man want to have sex with her, and she wants to have sex with him, so she's a slut! (And how do sluts deserved to be treated?) She makes me horny, so she must be bad ... and deserve to be treated accordingly.
Of course, this entails the whole attitude to sex: 'Sexual desire is bad, so [i]I'm[/] bad for feeling like this, so I find somebody else to blame, the dirty whore!'

I think that sexual coercion (and fantasies of sexual coercion) is a way of fighting the shame, the embarrassment of having sexual urges - whether you fantasize about forcing or being forced. Se the quotation in post 250.

And then we've almost come full circle to pedophilia and the idealization of the innocence of children ...
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"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 27th May 2018, 10:10 AM   #254
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You are misusing the term "social darwinist". I think you mean "sociobiologists" or "evolutionary psychologists". Social Darwinism is a completely different thing.
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Old 27th May 2018, 11:46 AM   #255
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No, not really, but feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap.
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 27th May 2018, 12:49 PM   #256
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
No, not really, but feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap.
I don't see how you think that link supplies any support to what you are saying.

Herbert Spencer outlined the ideas of what's come to be known as Social Darwinism in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sp...l-statics-1851

And, no, there's no overlap between Evolutionary Psychology and Social Darwinism.
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Old 27th May 2018, 08:38 PM   #257
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
Herbert Spencer outlined the ideas of what's come to be known as Social Darwinism in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.

No he didn't.

Quote:
The term "Social Darwinism" originated in Great Britain with the work of Herbert Spencer, who used the phrase "survival of the fittest" in 1864.
Social Darwinism: Mid-19th to eary 20th centuries (Rational Wiki)

Quote:
Given the primacy which Spencer placed on evolution, his sociology might be described as social Darwinism mixed with Lamarckism. However, despite its popularity, this view of Spencer's sociology is mistaken. While his political and ethical writings had themes consistent with social Darwinism, such themes are absent in Spencer's sociological works, which focus on how processes of societal growth and differentiation lead to changing degrees of complexity in social organization.
Herbert Spencer: Sociology (Wikipedia)

About the book that you link to, it says:

Quote:
Despite its commonly being attributed to this book, it was not until his Principles of Biology of 1864 that Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", which he would later apply to economics and biology. This could be described as a key tenet of so-called Social Darwinism, though Spencer and his book were not an advocate thereof.
Social Statics (Wikipedia)
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 27th May 2018, 09:08 PM   #258
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Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot View Post
Genghis Khan's DNA was, last time I looked, in 16 million people, something like 8% of the population over the land mass that was once the largest land empire on earth. He's the world record rapist. Nobody else even comes close. And he is also the world record replicator.

Statistically that's already conclusive, but he's just one example. The king of Swaziland, when I lived with a guy from there, had something like 86 children at the time. So another exampe of the 1:1 correlation with top rapist and top replicator.

And so on.

Statistically??! What statistics? The last time I looked, Gengis Khan's body, and thus his DNA, still hadn't been found.
And Douglas Adams has a very different take on the story of Gengis.

Quote:
Smith et al. (2001) criticized Thornhill and Palmer's hypothesis that a predisposition to rape in certain circumstances might be an evolved sexually dismorphic psychological adaptation. They developed a fitness cost/benefit mathematical model and populated it with estimates of certain parameters (some parameter estimates were based on studies of the Aché in Paraguay). Their model suggested that, on average, the costs of rape for a typical 25-year-old male outweigh benefits by a factor of ten to one. On the basis of their model and parameter estimates, they suggested that this would make it unlikely that rape generally would have net fitness benefits for most men. They also find that rape from raiding other tribes has lower costs but does not offer net fitness benefits, making it also unlikely that was an adaptation.
Beckerman et al. (2009) disputed explanations of male aggression as a reproductive strategy. In a study of the Waorani tribes, the most aggressive warriors had the fewest descendants.
Criticism of evolutionary psychology: Rape and attraction to aggression (Wikipedia)
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 28th May 2018, 12:05 AM   #259
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
No he didn't.







About the book that you link to, it says:
So your contention is that because the term "survival of the fittest" didn't appear in that book, that it therefore doesn't contain some of ideas which have come to be known as Social Darwinism?

I don't think that follows.

You might be right of course, I haven't read the book, I'm going by what I read in other sources, but your logic doesn't follow.

What I do know is that Social Darwinism is very different from evolutionary psychology. One is an attempt to understand as much of human psychology biologically, using the same principles that we can apply to any animal. The other is a psuedo-scientific ideology which is more about politics and economics than anything else.
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Old 28th May 2018, 12:18 AM   #260
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
Statistically??! What statistics? The last time I looked, Gengis Khan's body, and thus his DNA, still hadn't been found.
It's also worth noting the there's an odd fact about ancestry that if you go back far enough and take an individual, that individual will be either the ancestor of all living humans or none. And if you take smaller populations the same will be true, but you don't have to go as far back for that to be true.

DNA spreads through the gene pool, so the idea that any individual becomes the ancestor of millions of people over time isn't surprising and doesn't actually require any crazy reproductive success on that individual's part. S/he could have 2 kids (or 1) and still end up with millions, or billions, of descendants given enough time.

I mean, Ghenghis Khan was born in 1162 and his first son was born either in 1185 or 1187. That's 830 year ago, which, at 20 years/generation, is 41 generations. 241 is 2 trillion.

So there's been plenty of time for his genes to spread through the gene pool, even if only an average of 2 kids survive and reproduce in each generation.

So if he really only has 16 million descendants now, I'm not very impressed.
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Old 28th May 2018, 12:31 AM   #261
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
So your contention is that because the term "survival of the fittest" didn't appear in that book, that it therefore doesn't contain some of ideas which have come to be known as Social Darwinism?

Your contention is nonsense.

Quote:
I don't think that follows.

You might be right of course, I haven't read the book, I'm going by what I read in other sources, but your logic doesn't follow.

Then maybe you should read the book and correct your sources:

Quote:
Given the primacy which Spencer placed on evolution, his sociology might be described as social Darwinism mixed with Lamarckism. However, despite its popularity, this view of Spencer's sociology is mistaken. While his political and ethical writings had themes consistent with social Darwinism, such themes are absent in Spencer's sociological works, which focus on how processes of societal growth and differentiation lead to changing degrees of complexity in social organization.
Herbert Spencer: Sociology (Wikipedia)

Quote:
What I do know is that Social Darwinism is very different from evolutionary psychology. One is an attempt to understand as much of human psychology biologically, using the same principles that we can apply to any animal. The other is a psuedo-scientific ideology which is more about politics and economics than anything else.

I never said that they weren't one and the same thing. What I said was: "feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap."
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Old 28th May 2018, 12:36 AM   #262
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
Your contention is nonsense.
How do you know? The logic you used to dismiss it is simply wrong.


Quote:
Then maybe you should read the book and correct your sources:
Evolution was an idea that preceded Darwin. Darwin added the idea of natural selection, however Spencer was a Lamarkian (which is mentioned even in your quoted text).



Quote:
I never said that they weren't one and the same thing. What I said was: "feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap."
While I disagree with AlaskaBushPilot, I don't think anyone in this thread has said anything that remotely resembles Social Darwinism. I also disagree with the idea that evolutionary psychologists tend to overlap with social darwinists, but if you'd like to support that contention feel free.
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Old 28th May 2018, 02:37 AM   #263
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
How do you know? The logic you used to dismiss it is simply wrong.


Evolution was an idea that preceded Darwin. Darwin added the idea of natural selection, however Spencer was a Lamarkian (which is mentioned even in your quoted text).

Your claim was that:

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
Herbert Spencer outlined the ideas of what's come to be known as Social Darwinism in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sp...l-statics-1851

However:

Quote:
Given the primacy which Spencer placed on evolution, his sociology might be described as social Darwinism mixed with Lamarckism. However, despite its popularity, this view of Spencer's sociology is mistaken. While his political and ethical writings had themes consistent with social Darwinism, such themes are absent in Spencer's sociological works, which focus on how processes of societal growth and differentiation lead to changing degrees of complexity in social organization.
Herbert Spencer: Sociology (Wikipedia)

Spencer appears to have been inspired by Malthus rather than Darwin, at least at first, but his ideas resembling "Social Darwinism" were expressed later, not in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.

Quote:
While I disagree with AlaskaBushPilot, I don't think anyone in this thread has said anything that remotely resembles Social Darwinism. I also disagree with the idea that evolutionary psychologists tend to overlap with social darwinists, but if you'd like to support that contention feel free.

AlaskaBushPilot seems to think that jumbling a couple of anecdotes together with references to a couple of misunderstood psychologists or social psychologists constitutes an argument, so you have to consider what his point is in the context of the text, and it seems to be that rape is the natural order of things because (some) rapists appear to have produced a lot of offspring. His (false) claim that more than 50% of women fantasize of being raped seems to go in the same direction: rape is the natural order of things. This allegedly "proven replication "strategy"" being "like #1 in recorded human history" actually makes it difficult to explain why rape isn't a well-respected strategy of reproduction in modern societies since it's "pretty powerful genetic impulse" that we just don't act on ... until we do at "such time we think we can, lol."

Disagree all you want. Spencer doesn't support you.
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Old 28th May 2018, 02:48 AM   #264
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What makes some people want to have sex with unwilling 'partners'?

Marriage, they normally seem to be quite willing up to that point.
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Old 28th May 2018, 05:06 AM   #265
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Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot View Post
Genghis Khan's DNA was, last time I looked, in 16 million people, something like 8% of the population over the land mass that was once the largest land empire on earth. He's the world record rapist. Nobody else even comes close. And he is also the world record replicator.
Not exactly. First, the dating of that haplotype has recently been called into question. Second, it is not physically possible to spread your genes that persistently merely through mass rape. It requires your descendants to be quite a bit fitter than average as well. Instead, the argument for it being Chinggis Khan is that claiming descent, especially patrilineal descent, from the Great Khan was a way to bolster your social status among steppe tribes that persists to this day; this would have provided an advantage to his male descendants, even otherwise peripheral ones, and increased their odds of passing along their genes. Thus, it is more about the social impact and structure of steppe society (concubinage, etc) than Chinggis Khan being some kind of rape prodigy.
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Old 28th May 2018, 06:43 AM   #266
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
You define goodness/badness in terms of urges rather than actions?
It's amazing how much stuff some people can read into a short sentence meant as a tongue-in-cheek line.
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Old 28th May 2018, 06:50 AM   #267
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Originally Posted by Ron_Tomkins View Post
It's amazing how much stuff some people can read into a short sentence meant as a tongue-in-cheek line.
Dann's reply was vastly more enlightening.
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Old 28th May 2018, 08:04 AM   #268
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
Your claim was that:




However:




Spencer appears to have been inspired by Malthus rather than Darwin, at least at first, but his ideas resembling "Social Darwinism" were expressed later, not in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.
I'm willing to concede that I may have been misled about the content of the 1851 book. However, it's still clear to me that Spencer's ideas were very different from Darwin's, as you also acknowledge.


Quote:
AlaskaBushPilot seems to think that jumbling a couple of anecdotes together with references to a couple of misunderstood psychologists or social psychologists constitutes an argument, so you have to consider what his point is in the context of the text, and it seems to be that rape is the natural order of things because (some) rapists appear to have produced a lot of offspring.
"The natural order of things" is a little loaded. I think his point is that rape was selected for and thus it's a reproductive strategy which exists in human psychology. There's no moral connotation to that, it's a descriptive rather than prescriptive statement.

I think his evidence for that statement is rather weak, which is where I disagree with him, but I don't think he's trying to make an argument that rape is good because it's natural.

Quote:
His (false) claim that more than 50% of women fantasize of being raped seems to go in the same direction: rape is the natural order of things. This allegedly "proven replication "strategy"" being "like #1 in recorded human history" actually makes it difficult to explain why rape isn't a well-respected strategy of reproduction in modern societies since it's "pretty powerful genetic impulse" that we just don't act on ... until we do at "such time we think we can, lol."
I agree that he's made several counterfactual claims. I think you are misconstruing the argument however. The point is not that rape is somehow a good thing, only that it's common, that even those who don't rape would under different circumstances, and thus it shouldn't be viewed as being a pathology, but rather as a human vice to understand in that context.

I actually don't think that rape as a reproductive strategy was specifically selected for. But, one more time, that hypothesis has nothing to do with social darwinism.


Quote:
Disagree all you want. Spencer doesn't support you.
You still haven't supported your contention of social darwinism in this thread.
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Old 28th May 2018, 08:12 AM   #269
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Dann's reply was vastly more enlightening.

I don't know why this thread, i.e. my question, bothers Ron_Tomkins to the extent it seems to do.
The closest he got to a serious answer was "adrenaline rush", which is like saying that we enjoy the things that we enjoy because we enjoy them (which is always the problem with that 'explanation').
After that, xjx388 more or less took over from there insisting on his idea of “compassionate rapists” (my words) overcome by “situational callousness” (xjx388’s).
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Old 28th May 2018, 08:18 AM   #270
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
You still haven't supported your contention of social darwinism in this thread.

Which contention, now? That they tend to overlap?
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 28th May 2018, 08:26 AM   #271
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I do appreciate this thread. There is certainly something hard to understand about things like rape. But I also think there's some real insight in the quote:
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being

And I think pathologising evil is very dangerous. If evil is pathological, it's something that those people do, it's restricted to psychopaths and other instances of mental illness, not something that every individual is capable of if we don't guard against it.

There's certainly some sort of spectrum of empathy based on brain chemistry. But I think a lot of what we consider to be evil is simply a combination of human weakness with selfishness, and a little bit of addiction thrown in.

My hypotheis for the latter acts in the following way: some small selfish act hurts others but leads to a pleasurable outcome. The person might feel initial guilt but the desire for that pleasure hit leads them to do it again, and this can be combined with rationalisation to lower those guilt feelings further. Over time the feelings of guilt become less and less whereas the action that leads to the same amount of pleasure requires something more and more.
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Old 28th May 2018, 08:31 AM   #272
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
Which contention, now? That they tend to overlap?
Both the contention that Social Darwinism and evolutionary psychology overlap, and that anyone in this thread is promoting social darwinism.

Maybe I misunderstood your earlier posts and you haven't made the latter contention, in which case I apologise.

For the former, I did read your linked wikipedia page and I'm not seeing any mention of evolutionary psychology there. Yes, social darwinists will tend to use evolutionary arguments (which is what I'm seeing is supported in your link), but A is B doesn't equal B is A. Just because social darwinists use evolutionary arguments doesn't mean those who use evolutionary arguments are social darwinists.
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Old 28th May 2018, 09:03 AM   #273
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The articles at the Danish version of wikipedia are blissfully (in this context) short:

Evolutionær psykologi er relateret til andre områder af videnskab som sociobiologi, socialpsykologi og antropologi. (Wikipedia: evolutionær psykologi): Evolutionary psychology is related to other areas of science like sociobiology, social psychology and anthropology.”

Kritikere mener også, at der er paralleller mellem sociobiologi og sociale darwinistiske og racehygiejne bevægelser i begyndelsen af det tidligere 20. århundrede. (Wikipedia, sociobiologi): "Critics also think that there are parallels between socio-biology and social-darwinist and eugenics movements in the early 20th century."
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Old 28th May 2018, 10:07 AM   #274
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
I do appreciate this thread. There is certainly something hard to understand about things like rape.

This is where we agree 100%, I think, and I don't understand why so many just seem to take it for granted as if there's nothing that needs to be explained or understood.

Quote:
But I also think there's some real insight in the quote:
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being

And this is a point where we disagree. People have different interests, and in a competitive society, the competition becomes the enemy: 'You are in my way, so your intentions are evil.' (Even when, or maybe especially when, our interests are almost identical.) This is the point where people with empathy recognize what is happening and try to come up with solutions that both parties can live with. Psychopaths, on the other hand, simply insist on their own right to use and abuse their opponents, which they deserve because they are either bad or weak. (A certain president comes to mind at this point.)

Quote:
And I think pathologising evil is very dangerous. If evil is pathological, it's something that those people do, it's restricted to psychopaths and other instances of mental illness, not something that every individual is capable of if we don't guard against it.

There's certainly some sort of spectrum of empathy based on brain chemistry. But I think a lot of what we consider to be evil is simply a combination of human weakness with selfishness, and a little bit of addiction thrown in.

I have had the unpleasant experience of psychopaths who seemed to use alcohol to get even more in touch with their psychopathic side, but in general I think that the rest of us are much too preoccupied about not being too selfish. There's nothing wrong with wanting a good life for yourself and the people you love, but in a society that isn't geared to enable most people to get that, the ideal that people have, the American Dream, for instance, clashes with reality. And when some people realize that they get nowhere by being nice, they blame the others for their own lack of success even more: Not society with its rules and regulations prevents me (and an awful lot of others!) from 'living the dream.' And since I know that I'm a good person, the others must be to blame because they're not good, they didn't abide by the rules, so they deserve whatever I choose to do to them. This way of thinking is described in great detail in the book Psychology of the Private Individual: Critique of Bourgeois Consciousness.

Quote:
My hypotheis for the latter acts in the following way: some small selfish act hurts others but leads to a pleasurable outcome. The person might feel initial guilt but the desire for that pleasure hit leads them to do it again, and this can be combined with rationalisation to lower those guilt feelings further. Over time the feelings of guilt become less and less whereas the action that leads to the same amount of pleasure requires something more and more.

To me it sounds too much like the ordinary 'guilty pleasures' that people have no reason to feel guilty about: the bar of chocolate you shouldn't eat, the bottle of whisky you shouldn't drink, or even the line of cocaine you shouldn't snort. You (may) harm yourself - in particular in the long run - but nobody else. And since this thread is about sexual coercion: I think that the particular role that fantasies play in this field need to be considered.
In other areas people may daydream: of the Lamborghini or the mansion, whatever. They may also imagine (more or less realistic) ways of getting there: working, winning, buying, stealing, but unlike masturbatory fantasies they don't have a similar kind of 'happy ending'.
When we're talking about sex, however, people have usually had a fantasy sex life years before they have one in reality.
And I think that this is where a lot of things go wrong for a lot of people. I think that the sexual coercer has dreamed of coercion a long time before he (she) actually hurts somebody in real life for the first time. I don't think that it starts with your scenario: "some small selfish act hurts others but leads to a pleasurable outcome."
I think that the only thing that gets hurt, at first, is the mind of the (future) coercer. And it may be because it was harmed before this process began.
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"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 4th July 2018, 06:00 AM   #275
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Male and Female Sexual Coercers

There are fewer female than male sexual coercers, but it is not an extremely rare phenomenon:

Quote:
In Germany, Krahe (2000) found that 9% of 248 sexually experienced women reported attempting to have or having sex with a man against his will. The strategies employed were exploitation of a man in an incapacitated state, (reported by 6% of women), verbal pressure (3%), and physical force (2%).
Tactics of Sexual Coercion: When Men and Women Won’t Take No for an Answer (The Journal of Sex Research, March 2003/Research Gate, Aug. 6, 2017)

Quote:
Although prior sexual abuse seemed to be part of a cycle of sexual coercion among both men and women, key predictors of sexual coercion among men were sexual dominance and sociosexuality, whereas the key predictor of sexual coercion among women was sexual compulsivity. These findings support the notion that whereas men may behave coercively to obtain or maintain an impersonal sense of power and control, women may behave coercively to achieve some level of interpersonal connection when feeling out of control.
Sexual coercion in men and women: similar behaviors, different predictors (PubMed, Mar. 28, 2009)
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"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 5th July 2018, 06:39 AM   #276
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So, have we yet figured what is the internal cerebral mechanism that makes someone want to have sex with unwilling partners, and that would allow Dann to finally understand/accept that it is possible for other people to want to have sex with unwilling partners, so that he can finally get some sleep and peace of mind?
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Old 5th July 2018, 07:00 AM   #277
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Originally Posted by Ron_Tomkins View Post
So, have we yet figured what is the internal cerebral mechanism that makes someone want to have sex with unwilling partners, and that would allow Dann to finally understand/accept that it is possible for other people to want to have sex with unwilling partners, so that he can finally get some sleep and peace of mind?
The real question is what makes the rest of us not want to have sex with unwilling partners.

The thing that makes some people want to have sex with unwilling partners is that lack of whatever the answer to the first question is.
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Old 5th July 2018, 08:20 AM   #278
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
But how can anybody enjoy to have sex with an unwilling partner?!
(And please don't tell me about the numerous historical cases! I know, I know!)

It was obvious from the very beginning that my question bothered (not only) Ron Tompkins' peace of mind immensely but that of many others too, which is why I specifically asked people to avoid the strawman that he now finds it necessary to repeat: "... would allow Dann to finally understand/accept that it is possible for other people to want to have sex with unwilling partners."

So Ron, could you at least attempt to make it probable that I don't understand or accept the possibility of people wanting to have sex with unwilling partners?
(That it's not only a possbility but an actual fact that some people not only want to have sex with unwilling partners but insist on having it was the starting point of this thread!)
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx

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Old 5th July 2018, 08:34 AM   #279
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
The real question is what makes the rest of us not want to have sex with unwilling partners.

No, not really. I consider it the default mode. But maybe Ron Tompkins can explain what is so awesome about coerced sex since he seems to simply take the predilection for granted, thus making the explanation superfluous.

Quote:
The thing that makes some people want to have sex with unwilling partners is that lack of whatever the answer to the first question is.

I think that this is the point where xjx388 usually suggests situational callousness as the answer.
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"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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Old 5th July 2018, 08:54 AM   #280
dann
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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Originally Posted by dann View Post
Quote:
These findings support the notion that whereas men may behave coercively to obtain or maintain an impersonal sense of power and control, women may behave coercively to achieve some level of interpersonal connection when feeling out of control.
Sexual coercion in men and women: similar behaviors, different predictors (PubMed, Mar. 28, 2009)

I have found a case story that seems to imply that at least one guy raped in a situation where he felt out of control. Unfortunately, it's in Danish - and most of it is behind a pay wall: Kan flinke fyre begå overgreb? (Can nice guys be sexually coercive?) (Politiken)
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/dann
"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx
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