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A continuation of a discussion started on the abortion thread.
http://www.warhw.com/2012/04/16/abortion-birth-control-whatever/#comment-1989
All Non-Verbal Communication Is Ambiguous
Well, that’s the hypothesis, anyways. Or to hedge slightly and clarify, “most non verbal communication contains some ambiguity”, but either way, I think it describes a point.
Over here: whatever.scalzi.com/2012/08/09/an-incomplete-guide-to-not-creeping
Was a thread on Whatever called “An Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping”. It seems to be geared towards giving advice to individuals interested in not freaking other people out by their behavior, rather than trying to map out some description that might operate at a systemic level to enforce what is and is not creeping or sexual harrassment which might result in punishment of some kind. It’s an interesting read.
Like I said, it seems to be geared to be advice to individuals, specifically people who may not have learned all the social cues and whatnot that would allow them to avoid creeping people out. And so, the advice err’s on the side of caution. Keep some space between you and anyone else, like an arm’s length. Don’t touch, let the other person initiate any touching. If you’re not sure if you’re creeping someone out, leave them alone for awhile.
Eventually, someone by the name of Timmy showed up and interpreted the article as general advice for everyone, or perhaps as an attempt to define at a systemic level what would constitute sexual harassment. Personally, I think if the world in general operated by these rules things would be very… weird. A lot of communication occurs nonverbally, and if you know how to read non-verbal cues, you can operate in society fairly well without these rules. Also, for a specific example of where the rules fail if they were used by everyone, if everyone waited for the other person to initiate physical contact, then no one would touch, ever. So, for the rules to really make sense, they can only be taken as individual advice to an individual who doesn’t know the social cues but wants some rules of thumbs so he/she can start trafficking in social circles with more success, or at least with fewer failures of coming across as “creepy”.
Anyway, Timmy said this: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/08/09/an-incomplete-guide-to-not-creeping/#comment-351048
I’m talking about the kind of situation when you’re in a club and some girl is dancing/grinding with you and you sense, based on your interpretation of the available social cues, that it’s the right moment to go for it; this was how I met most of my girlfriends in my teens, and yes I occasionally got it wrong, but I recognised my mistake and backed off if that was the case
Grinding, for those unfamiliar is a kind of dancing described in wikipedia as this:
a type of close partner dance where two or more dancers rub or bump their bodies against each other, especially a male dancer rubbing his crotch against a female dancer’s buttocks, in imitation of rear-entry or “doggie-style” intercourse.
The thread wound down and another one started up, sort of in direct response to Timmy’s initial post and follow up comments. At some point, the comments swung back to Timmy’s specific posts and I posted a hypothetical scenario based on what Timmy said and my vague recollections of how dance clubs work.
I’m dancing in a club, a woman starts dancing next to me, I start interacting/dancing with her, we’re talking, I buy her a drink, she buys me a drink, we dance some more, talk som more, drink some more, dance some more. she starts grinding her body on me, I put my hands on her hips, she puts her arms around my shoulders, we’re dancing really close, I kiss her, and her reaction is STOP THE PRESSES! CALL THE POLICE!
If you were the cop on site, you’d arrest me? If you were the DA, you’d prosecute? If you were the person on the jury, you’d find for a guilty verdict?
Those who responded suggested that yes, in fact, they would consider it assault worthy of jail time and prosecute.
I fail to see how the form of dance gives him any sort of pass.
Furthermore, even if you have been grind dancing with a woman in a club, if you grab her and kiss her, you can still get arrested for sexual assault.
The relevant legislation here in planet England is the Sexual Offences Act, 2003 and kissing someone without their consent constitutes sexual assault, for which the maximum sentence is ten years.
Getting back to Timmy, what he says he did might not have been worthy of jail time, but it was assault,
So, in my hypothetical situation, I’m interacting with some woman at a club, we’re talking, getting to know each other, I buy her a drink, she buys me a drink, we dance some more, she starts grinding with me, and based on all our interactions, I think that a kiss would be mutually acceptable, so I kiss her. But for those who responded, their attitude was that if the woman objected to my kiss and wanted to press charges, I should end up in jail for sexual assault.
It is at this point, that it seems clear to me that the people who responded want to relate to the world of human interaction as if it is possible to interact with zero ambiguity. And this is simply impossible. And it’s silly. And it’s dangerous.
You’ve just removed all signaling content from every non-verbal communication. You’ve reduced all human interactions to require written consent forms if you think “grinding” communicates nothing.
Now, the reason this they want to remove this ambiguity is because the existence of ambiguity is misused by people committing sexual assault to try and say that the ambiguous signaling actually meant “yes”. This is perfectly reflected by Kat here:
A man explaining to women his version of issues: … “If you grind dance with a man at a club, he can fondle, kiss and do what he wants to your body, even if you protest, because you have given him non-verbal consent which cannot be rescinded and you are now his property.”
Because sexual assaulters use the ambiguity in nonverbal communication to twist the intended signaling to mean “yes”, Kat (and a whole lot of others) want to remove ambiguity from communication altogether. And they’re willing to strawman and slippery slope ambiguity into the worst possible interpretations so that supporting some notion of ambiguity in communication must necessarily mean supporting sexual assaulters and must necessarily mean “she didn’t say NO, so it wasn’t rape when she struggled against me while we had sexual intercourse.”
But the fact is human interactions will always have ambiguity to them because most human interactions are non-verbal. And all nonverbal communications contain some ambiguity.
Which is the hypothesis central to this thread.
All Non-Verbal Communication Is Ambiguous
Or, most nonverbal communication contains some ambiguity.
Think of two people meeting on a blind date for the first time. When they first meet, there are plenty of nonverbal signals going on. And every one of them could reflect interest or disinterest. If a person smiles, the smile could mean they’re genuinely happy or they’re trying to put on a good face, or they’re nervous and want to leave.
We could look at any nonverbal signal as having some probability of indicating disinterest on the other person’s part. A smile might be 50% chance of disinterest. A hearty laugh might be 30% chance of disinterest. A touch of a hand might contain a 10% chance of disinterest. A hug or kiss might contain 5% chance of disinterest.
(numbers are obviously totally fabricated with values selected just to show how it might work.)
Courtship could then be viewed as going through a series of verbal and nonverbal cues to get a more accurate perception of disinterest on the other person’s part about the relationship, and to try and predict whether the relationship is strengthening, weakening, or staying the same.
Say a smile is 50% chance of disinterest. and a touch of a hand is 10% chance of disinterest. If both occur within a short amount of time from each other, then one might be able to multiply the percentages and guess that there is a 0.5 * 0.1 = 5% chance of disinterest and a 95% chance they’re interested in continuing the interaction the way it’s going.
A first date might contain a number of verbal and non-verbal cues that each suggests interest, which causes the other person to signal interest, and back and forth, each cue reducing the percentage of likelyhood of disinterest, resulting in a date that might start with a business-like handshake and end with a passionate kiss goodnight.
But even with a series of cues, the communication is never unambiguous. A cue with a 1% chance of disinterest followed by a different cue with a 1% chance of disinterest, results in a likelyhood of there being only a 0.01% chance the other person is disinterested. But it’s still a chance. It could be that you’re misreading their cues, or they might not be intending to send the cues they’re sending, or they’re sending them in an attempt to “be nice” and not hurt your feelings, whatever.
Even with verbal communication, an explicit “yes” doesn’t mean the person can’t change their mind. They might say “yes” to “lets go out again sometime” and never return your calls.
So, back to Timmy, and back to the hypothetical situation:
I’m dancing in a club, a woman starts dancing next to me, I start interacting/dancing with her, we’re talking, I buy her a drink, she buys me a drink, we dance some more, talk som more, drink some more, dance some more. she starts grinding her body on me, I put my hands on her hips, she puts her arms around my shoulders, we’re dancing really close.
That’s a series of verbal and nonverbal cues. Each one reduces the likelyhood that the woman is disinterested in our interaction. But nothing ever reduces it to zero. There is always some chance that she’s really not interested.
So, at this point, I kiss the hypothetical woman. And I have some sense of what her response will be. Based on our interactions, based on all the cues, verbal and nonverbal, there’s a good likelyhood that she’ll like a kiss. Or at least, not freak out about it and call the cops.
But there’s a small chance that she will freak and will call the cops.
And there’s no way to know beforehand unless I explicitly ask her. I’ve been on dates where I’ve asked a woman if I could kiss her. And I’ve been on dates where I just kissed the woman without asking. I’ve taken a chance that she’s not going to call the cops and try to charge me with sexual assault. Because there’s some ambiguity in non-verbal cues.
And the question would be, do we want to remove non-verbal cues from human interactions? At least as far as the law is concerned? Do we want explicit verbal permission to be requested and granted before certain behavior is guaranteed to NOT be considered criminal activity worthy of jail time?
I haven’t been convinced that would be a good thing.
Not only because it would make a lot of otherwise normal human interactions be weird, but because it’s solving a problem that could be more easily solved.
The problem is that people who commit sexual assault try to use the ambiguity in nonverbal communication to mean that consent was granted, when it wasn’t. They might argue: “she dressed provocatively, she must have wanted it” which is idiocy taken to extreme heights. But the solution isn’t to pretend that there is no ambiguity in nonverbal communication. The solution would be to acknowledge the ambiguity and assess the events based on how ambiguous the communications were. Kissing someone out of the blue has a high, high, likelihood of the recipient not wanting to be kissed. Kissing someone after courting them for weeks, has a low likelihood of the recipient being upset at being kissed. In between is an area that requires a bit of a subjective judgment call as to what a hypothetical “reasonable person” would feel in the moment.
If you spend an evening at a dance club, get to know a woman you’ve never met, talk with her, interact with her, dance with her, she starts dancing you with lots of physical contact, her hands touch you, your hands touch her, and after an hour or so of this, you decide to kiss her, then I don’t think the decision as to whether this is sexual assault can be left solely to that individual woman. I think it has to take into account what a reasonable person would consider to be what the communications were signaling up to that point.
Of course, if the woman says “No! Stop!” and there’s any continuing of the kissing or other behavior she doesn’t want, then it’s clearly against her wishes and call the cops. But that initial kiss is based off of nonverbal communication over a period of time which is signaling lower and lower probability that she’s going to reject the kiss. Within the context of the evening, the question of whether it is assault or not should be decided based on whether the kiss was unreasonable based on the level of ambiguity.
There’s always going to be some ambiguity in nonverbal communication. The question is was the action reasonable considering the amount of ambiguity.
Once the person says “No! Stop!”, the ambiguity is removed. Or if the person communicates “no” nonverbally, such as pulling away, walking away, talking with someone else, dancing with someone else, then the communcation is signaling a high probability to stop. To continue doing something the person has clearly indicated they don’t want would clearly land in the realm of assault.
Abortion, Birth Control, Whatever
Just cause…
Libertarian
Discuss
Obama v. Obama
Candidate Obama in 2007:
As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists.
President Obama in 2011: Gitmo is back in business and KSM will be tried in a military court.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/07/obama-guantanamo.html
Candidate Obama promised to protect whistleblowers, saying
Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.
http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/
President Obama took Bush’s war on whistleblowers and ran with it. He may become the first president to ever imprison two whistlblowers in one term.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/25/whistleblowers
Obama’s war on whistleblowers has culminated in President Obama approving of the torture of an American citizen, Bradley Manning, for whistleblowing on illegal wars, war crimes, coverups, and other immoral government behavior.
Manning has not yet been convicted of any crime, but has been treated in a manner that experts say is torture and legal experts say is torture and illegal.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/11/manning/index.html
Candidate Obama on presidential war mongering:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
President Obama launches a secret war in Yemen without congressional approval and a public war against Libya without congressional approval.
In other areas:
Candidate Obama campaigned on a Public Option for health care reform. He called it a “Health Care Exchange”:
“any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it.”
President Obama secretly met with industry lobbyists and promised them there would be no Public Option. Two months later, President Obama is telling America that the Public Option is still on the table.
President Obama goes on to MOCK people who wanted the public option.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/17/obama-mocks-public-option-supporters/
Peace
Peace on Earth.
Good will to all.
Most days, this wish is something I try not to think about too much because it feels like we are so far away from it that it’s just too painful to think about.
But not today. Today I feel a little more hope than usual. Christmas makes peace feel possible.
Merry Christmas everyone.
May we all feel a little peace today.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repealed
On 18 December 2010, the US Senate passed a measure which would repeal the Don’t Ask,Don’t Tell policy in the military. The Secretary of Defense said the Pentagon will begin implementing the repeal immediately.
Prior to the repeal, the Pentagon did a study to predict what impact repeal would have. In a survey of nearly half a million servicemembers, 70% said repeal would be positive, mixed, or no consequences.
I think its a good thing to get rid of bigotry. I dont know if it was worth the 500 billion dollar tax cut for millionaires the Obama gave away in trade to win this. I think it shoukd have been possible to repeal this a lot cheaper. But if Obama has shown us anything about his presidency, he has made abundantly clear that he is no horse trader.
I get the impression that he would see an item at a yard sale for $1 and demand to pay $3 for it just on principle. But only if the seller also allows him to provide free advertising and a ride on air force one.
When I Use a Word Definitions Dont Matter
I ran across a blog discussing privilege. The thread started by. someone asking how to explain the concept of white male privilege to their white male boyfriend. I replied that privilege means a lot of different things to different people. And I said the strict definition would be a benefit the dominant class gets as a result of djscrimination that raises them above the equality waterline. The response?
“You’re boring.”
I guess diving into the nitty gritty of vocabulary can get boring. But they were asking for help for explaining a term to someone, so I sort of assumed that an exploration of meaning might occur at some point. But OK.
They also posted a thread here:
The thread talks about how a scene in Dr Who is ‘sexual assault’. I disagreed and pointed out the definition of assault and sexual assault didn’t match what was in the scene. Their response?
“The legal definition of anything is wholly irrelevant to this discussion”
I am not sure what ‘sexual assault’ means to a person if they think the legal meaning of the term is ‘wholly irrelevant’, but I assume discussing the issues of the world are a whole lot easier when you get to throw around words and phrases and ignore any rigid definition of your words.
And call any attempt to discuss those terms ‘boring’. And then ban anyone from commenting who posts a definiton you don’t like.
I really shouldn’t be surprised. There is no possible way for the idea of ‘privilege’ to evolve into an all things to all people definition without people like that. People who call definitions boring, who use terms with legal meanings but say the legal meaning is irrelevent, and who ban folks who post links to dictionary definitions of words.
There is no other way to have humpty dumpty usages of a phrase without individual humpty dumpties running around in the world.
I don’t why it surprises me every time I run into a real live Humpty Dumpty. But it does.
Bias Failure Modes
Many discussions of bias and discrimination fail because of a lack of awareness of the distiction between being and doing. Jay Smooth pointed out long ago to focus on the bias reflected on what a person says and does rather than attempting to say that the person IS a bigot. Focus on what they say/do, avoid commenting on who they ARE.
There has been a little bit of a flap on the internet because Charlie Stross ranted about a bunch of things he doesn’t lime about SteamPunk as a genre. This was essentially a behavior based complaint, in the form of ‘I don’t like steampunk stories that do this or do that.’ One complaint was that a lot of steampunk glosses over how brutal the world was during the industrial evolution, his much discrimination there was, and how steampunk glosses over that brutality. Basically the way i complain about how military fiction glossed over the realities of war, Stross was complaining about how a lot of steampunk glosses over the realities of the time era it places its stories in.
Stross’s rant generated somewhat of a kerfuffle. I am not going to attempt to categorize all the reasons people were disagreeing with Stross, but I do want to point out anecdotal evidence about one complaint I saw. Someone accused Charlie Stross of secretly writing his rant agai.st steampunk because the accuser assumed steampunk had more female authors than science fiction, and Stross was really trying to squeeze out female competition.
Stross wrote a rant saying he didn’t like what steampunk stories DO. Someone turned around and accused him of BEING sexist.
The flip side of this is that while it has become less socially acceptable to prejudge someone based on who they are (black, female, gay), there seems to be more social acceptance to judge a person on what they do.
Bigots might try to take their prejudice about who people ARE and attempt to repackage it as if it’s purely based on behavior. A racist might try to say that blacks are statistically more likely to be stopped by police as an attempt to say clacks behave differently (completely disregarding the existence of systemic racial profiling by police). Misogynysts might try to repackage their prejudice against who women ARE and try to cast it under the shadow of something women DO. Homophobed might try to claim their resistance to gay marriage has moving to do with who gay people are, but rather try to cast it in terms of something behavioral based. I recently saw someone attempt to justify opposition to gay marriage by attempting to redefine marriage as something really only for people intending to procreate children, and since gays can’t procreate in what would be their spouse, then they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
And it occurred to me that this is two different sides of the same failure coin.
People fighting discrimination sometimes mistakenly takes what some does and turns it into a pro.ouncement of the kind of person they are.
And sometimes people try to take their discrimination based on who people ARE and try to camoflage or justify it as judging someone on what they DO.
In both situations, it’s a problem of failing to distinguish the fundamental difference between doing and being.