It’s an interesting thesis! Maybe a subject for a separate post, because I imagine this view is controversial, and I don’t want this comments section too off-topic.
My parents had an Indian arranged marriage and came from a very conservative culture, so I’ve thought a bit about this. Transitioning to San Francisco liberalism was indeed a culture shock. Here are two controversial speculations so please take them with some salt, for I don’t necessarily agree with them: a) It’s possible that if every sexual encounter has an n% probability of being in bad faith, and you have more sexual encounters, the probability of getting assaulted just increases. The opportunities in sexually liberal cultures are simply higher. b) Now for a very controversial statement, with low epistemic status: It’s also possible that women have different types of leverage in more sexually conservative cultures.
I did feel that rape was taken much more seriously in my family subnetworks in India, and I felt more protected there than in America, despite media stereotypes about gang rape. But this also has to do with complex cultural norms, including the protection of the nuclear family, worship of female goddesses like Kali and Parvati, India being anthropomorphized as a women (instead of Uncle Sam), India having had a female Prime Minister (compared to the US, which has never had a female president), having sex with someone’s fiance is considered “rape,” accused men are guilty before proven innocent, men can get jailed for staring at a woman for too long, India has never had an Epstein/Weinstein-level crime ring (at least that was surfaced), etc. Obviously, India is a huge and diverse place with a large spectrum of norms, but these were the norms of my subnetwork.
I’d expect the answer to look something like “sexually liberal cultures have a larger possibility space of going poorly or well,” but are not sexually toxic by default. There are sexually liberal consent cultures out there.
It’s an interesting thesis! Maybe a subject for a separate post, because I imagine this view is controversial, and I don’t want this comments section too off-topic.
My parents had an Indian arranged marriage and came from a very conservative culture, so I’ve thought a bit about this. Transitioning to San Francisco liberalism was indeed a culture shock. Here are two controversial speculations so please take them with some salt, for I don’t necessarily agree with them: a) It’s possible that if every sexual encounter has an n% probability of being in bad faith, and you have more sexual encounters, the probability of getting assaulted just increases. The opportunities in sexually liberal cultures are simply higher. b) Now for a very controversial statement, with low epistemic status: It’s also possible that women have different types of leverage in more sexually conservative cultures.
I did feel that rape was taken much more seriously in my family subnetworks in India, and I felt more protected there than in America, despite media stereotypes about gang rape. But this also has to do with complex cultural norms, including the protection of the nuclear family, worship of female goddesses like Kali and Parvati, India being anthropomorphized as a women (instead of Uncle Sam), India having had a female Prime Minister (compared to the US, which has never had a female president), having sex with someone’s fiance is considered “rape,” accused men are guilty before proven innocent, men can get jailed for staring at a woman for too long, India has never had an Epstein/Weinstein-level crime ring (at least that was surfaced), etc. Obviously, India is a huge and diverse place with a large spectrum of norms, but these were the norms of my subnetwork.
I’d expect the answer to look something like “sexually liberal cultures have a larger possibility space of going poorly or well,” but are not sexually toxic by default. There are sexually liberal consent cultures out there.