Simon Paynton

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Instead, tell me how she’s wrong.

She doesn’t actually come up with a figure for lifetime sexual assaults and rapes.  She comes up with a figure for one year, from the crime survey.  This crime is vastly under-reported according to the Department of Justice.

The lifetime rape figures for the US (1 in 6 to 1 in 5) aren’t too different from the UK statistics of lifetime rape/sexual asssault (1 in 4).

I applaud the fact that she’s trying to be more accurate and direct resources where they’re needed.  But I think she might be misguided.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Girls are still in a bad bargain with patriarchy.

I don’t know about this article.  I get the central premise, that women aren’t listened to and have to keep their mouths shut to avoid rocking the boat.  The statistics don’t lie.  That’s a valuable lesson for men, to listen to women more.  But it seems a bit incoherent overall.  I think the comment at the end, which says that sometimes girls are the ones doing the silencing, is more balanced.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

You’re arguing that men (individual men) retain their mates via the patriarchy (which you characterize as unconscious) rather than through making themselves more attractive (which would be conscious, presumably). But I don’t think women marry men they don’t find attractive somehow.

What men try and do, and what women want to do, are two separate and distinct things.  Even in the non-human primate world, when the alpha male tries to dominate all the available females, these females often sneak off to have sex with lower-ranking males, risking punishment for them both.

But you raise an important point – what’s the link between patriarchy’s ultimate (evolutionary) reasons, and everyday life?  Patriarchy is a tendency for society to repress females to the benefit of males.  It does this because of deep evolutionary motivations that are unconscious.

Yes, women can go along with it because they’re brainwashed – wouldn’t you, if all of society was telling you what is right and wrong?  But I would imagine that most women resent it.

is that just another one of your impressions or due to what you’ve observed firsthand in your rather bizarre social circle where females are raped on a regular basis?

1 in 4 women have been sexually assulted as adults.

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

If the GOP represents patriarchy to a greater extent than the Democratic Party, it’s interesting that white women tend to lean toward voting GOP. (source) I guess you would characterize that as “liking to be repressed.”

Another reason might be the way in which patriarchy gets confused with pair-bonding, since both are general methods of mate retention – the first by coercion, the second by consent.  Conservatives believe strongly in families and marriage.  So patriarchal ideas about how women should behave, can be given a gloss of legitimacy by their association with family values and monogamy.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

The patriarchy we have, such as it is, is through the assent of the citizenry. Women now have the vote and tend to slightly dominate voting. For starters, there are at last count (2022), there were 7.4 million more women than men registered to vote (source)

But the patriarchy isn’t voted in.  It’s actually a fundamental orientation of males, given the male-female reproductive differences where the male gives up millions of cheap sperm while the female carries a few costly babies.  So, the male reproduces by finding as many females as possible, and the female by finding as much resources as possible.

Now, I think it exists for two reasons: 1) it’s an easier and surer form of mate retention than the alternative, of making oneself attractive; 2) it mainly thrives in (male-male) unequal societies, where it exploits societies’ inequality to exclude and repress females.

So, it’s not voted in or out, it’s a biological reality, but not an inevitable one, since the alternative is more fun although more difficult.

Unseen wrote:

it’s interesting that white women tend to lean toward voting GOP. (source) I guess you would characterize that as “liking to be repressed.”

You’re right, that is a funny one.  I guess they just like conservative ideas.  Many of them take it on willingly as a choice.  A healthy person doesn’t want to be actually dominated by a bully.

It may be imposed by a government as in Saudi Arabia, it may be there due to social inertia, or it may simply reflect, in a democracy, voting patterns. What the people want, given the choice, in other words.

But it’s only really what men want.  Even the conservative women don’t want to be pushed around.  If they want to be submissive and obedient – they’re just a drip, or damaged.

The Y’s may naturally look to the X’s for protection and thus may defer to them and accept certain disadvantages.

Yes, it’s part of the classical (Barbara Smuts) model of evolutionary patriarchy that the dominant male gorilla provides for and protects “his” group of females.  Aside from that, we see female chimpanzees having male friends who protect them.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Belle Rose wrote:

The grandson ponders this for a moment and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee smiled and simply said, “The one you feed”.

I think that’s very true.  There’s even a precise definition of light and dark: achieving one’s goals to mutual benefit, or achieving one’s goals at the expense of others.  It’s all too easy to do the latter.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Kaufman, Scott Barry; David Bryce Yaden; Elizabeth Hyde; and Eli Tsukayama – “The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality: Contrasting Two Very Different Profiles of Human Nature”: Frontiers in Psychology, 10:467, 2019

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00467/full

It was 1518 people, not 1800 as I stated.  I think it’s interesting how some data points are jammed up against the top of the scale, suggesting that they’re much more good than the study allowed for.

Scott Barry Kaufman does a lot of stuff in this vein.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Belle Rose wrote:

But now I also know that people are monsters and they don’t really give a shit about anyone but themselves

I’m sorry to hear about your mother.

What I’ve learned is that people enjoy doing things together, that benefit them both.  People are “mutualist”: what’s good for you is good for me.  Also, I always remember this: people are mostly good, and a few are really good.  (study of 1800 people.)

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Davis wrote:

You are indirectly victim blaming.

Yes, maybe it’s the fault of rapists, rather than, you know, the people being raped.  I saw on Facebook this column called Trad West (I think it was them – some right-wing Christian group) where they were saying that men would control themselves if women dressed modestly.  Most sinister.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@unseen – you seem to be thrashing around somewhat in your efforts to say that patriarchy doesn’t exist, or that women like being oppressed, or something.

A (as a group, with the help of all society) oppresses B (as a group, and individually).  Does it follow that B people are “Weak-willed quasi-children lacking the will to exercise any sort of agency.”?  No.  It follows that B is likely to want to fight back.

Patriarchy is not presented as a “conspiracy among men”.  It’s not that conscious.  It exists as a set of social norms we’re born into.  The fundamental premise is that there are two ways for men to reproduce with women: control and coercion, or making themselves attractive to women by various means.  Control and coercion has been enshrined in society’s norms, because it’s easier and surer.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

we seem to have good, practical reasons for inheriting a patriarchic society

Because men hold onto their power by force, and by more insidious, manipulative means.  Women go along with it because they’ve been told it’s right / don’t want to be slut-shamed etc.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Belle Rose wrote:

And guys like that dumbass pastor never see any sort of real justice. Karma is a bitch tho

Yes, on the one hand he’s come out and said sorry, which is a big thing in today’s climate.  On the other hand he’s enabled a lot of rapists.  I hope now he goes on a long journey of working to eradicate the rape culture he previously enabled.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Even you has to know that such evidence only prove you have questionable taste in whom you choose as friends and associates and the wife-beating circles they move in. Either that or The Gods of Randomness got you real good.

You could say it’s evidence that patriarchy is everywhere unless reconstructed by feminism.

All the women I know have been raped and/or spiked and/or had domestic violence.  None of the men have, although a couple were abused as children.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Anecdotal.  I heard about it happening to actual people, and also the feminists were complaining about it.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

I don’t see liberal democratic/Democrat males playing much of a role, so I don’t see it as a gender thing.

Wife-beating used to be the norm in left-wing circles, long before they got into feminism.  However, you raise an interesting, unresolved question: what’s the link between societal and domestic patriarchy?  Presumably men follow society’s norms to some extent, so just parrot what they’ve been told or what they find attractive.  Other patriarchy is a symptom of personal narcissism.  The two are very similar.

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