I think for reading around this it should be considered that it’s a recurrent problem and the root of sexual liberalism should be considered at fault. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry is a good example.
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.
I think Perry’s book was strongest on the the stuff around hook-up culture not being a good equilibrium for women because women are on average lower in sociosexuality than men, and would prefer a committed relationship to casual sex. I thought the rest of the book was considerably weaker and I don’t think it offers any good explanations for the prevalence of sexual harassment or assault in different contexts. As other commenters have noted, sexual harassment is probably (not sure though) generally higher in less liberal places, so it doesn’t seem like what is driving culture in the Bay.
I think a better book on this is David Buss’ Bad Men, which takes an evolutionary perspective on sexual conflict in general, seeking to explain sexual harassment, rape, sexual deception, etc. I think the book shows that men and women were not in a happy sexual equilibrium prior to metoo and are also not post-metoo: significant active efforts need to be taken to prevent abuse, and require norms that are much more strict that those extant in society. I found some of the data in the book extremely eye-opening.
“How many men actually force women to have sex without their consent and against their will? One source of evidence comes from studies that explicitly avoid using the word “rape” but instead ask men: “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force?”A study of 1,882 American men found that 120, or 6.4 percent, admitted that they had.79 Of these, about two-thirds were repeat rapists, averaging 5.8 admitted rapes. This sample consisted not of convicted rapists but of college students attending a midsize urban commuter university. Other studies have found that between 6 and 15 percent of college males admit to rape or attempted rape as long as the word “rape” is not included in the description.80
A large cross-cultural study used a similar method, asking 10,178 men from six different countries these two key questions: have you “forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex” or “had sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it”?81 The percentage of men who admitted having raped a non-partner was 4.3 percent in Bangladesh, 6.2 percent in Sri Lanka, 8.1 percent in China, 8.3 percent in Cambodia, and 12.8 percent in Indonesia. The most extreme country in the study was Papua New Guinea, which logged an astonishing 40.7 percent of men admitting to the act of rape when that specific word was not used. Most men are not rapists when evaluated by the criterion of actual behavior, but a subset of men clearly are rapists.”
Buss, David M. . Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault (p. 198). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
I’m pretty sceptical that sexual liberalism is at fault, though maybe some aspects of sexually-liberal culture don’t help. There’s just as much sexual abuse and assault in sexually-conservative communities, now and in the past, and maybe more.
I appreciate that you bring up an Overton-expanding point, but I have to disagree. I think this argument is a prototypical example of “second-best theory”.[1]
If a system is in a bad Nash equilibrium[2], asynchronously moving closer to a better equilibrium will usually look like it’s just making things worse. The costs are immediate while the benefits only start accruing once sufficient progress has been made.
A critic could then point to the most recently changed variable and say, “stop making it worse!” If they win, you may see marginal gains from the stability of the (tragic) system, giving people the empirical illusion that they were right all along (myopic marginalism).
> “In an economy with some uncorrectable market failure in one sector, actions to correct market failures in another related sector with the intent of increasing economic efficiency may actually decrease overall economic efficiency.”
When no individual benefits from changing their strategy in isolation, the system can remain in an equilibrium which is much worse for every individual, unless they manage to coordinate a simultaneous change to their strategies.
Crucially, nothing says that finding yourself in a bad Nash equilibrium[3] implies that there are no superior Nash equilibria above that level. It’s not about choosing “equilibrium” vs “fairy-tale story”—it’s about “bad equilibrium” vs “better equilibrium”.
And it’s feasible to get to a better equilibrium. Especially if you just need to pass the tipping point once, and you get to retry as many times as it takes. In such a scenario, it would be a tragedy to myopically preserve the Nash you’ve got.
Think about it like this: Both sickle-cell anaemia & malaria are bad when considered separately, but they’re also in a frequency-dependent equilibrium because the allele (HbS) that causes anaemia for a minority also confers resistance against malaria for the majority. Thus, a “second-best theory” would be to say that the HbS allele is good because it improves the situation relative to nobody having resistance against malaria at all. While it’s true, it’s also myopic.
When we cure malaria, there will no longer be any selection-pressure for HbS, so we cure sickle-cell disease as well.
To unpack the metaphor: I think many traditional & strict norms (HbS) around sex & relationships can be net good on the margin, but only because they enforce rigid rules in an area where humans haven’t learned to deal with the complexities (malaria) in a healthy manner. “Sexual liberalism” encompasses imo an attempt to deal with them directly and eventually learn better norms that are more likely to work long-term.
I think for reading around this it should be considered that it’s a recurrent problem and the root of sexual liberalism should be considered at fault. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry is a good example.
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.
I think Perry’s book was strongest on the the stuff around hook-up culture not being a good equilibrium for women because women are on average lower in sociosexuality than men, and would prefer a committed relationship to casual sex. I thought the rest of the book was considerably weaker and I don’t think it offers any good explanations for the prevalence of sexual harassment or assault in different contexts. As other commenters have noted, sexual harassment is probably (not sure though) generally higher in less liberal places, so it doesn’t seem like what is driving culture in the Bay.
I think a better book on this is David Buss’ Bad Men, which takes an evolutionary perspective on sexual conflict in general, seeking to explain sexual harassment, rape, sexual deception, etc. I think the book shows that men and women were not in a happy sexual equilibrium prior to metoo and are also not post-metoo: significant active efforts need to be taken to prevent abuse, and require norms that are much more strict that those extant in society. I found some of the data in the book extremely eye-opening.
Buss, David M. . Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault (p. 198). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
I’m pretty sceptical that sexual liberalism is at fault, though maybe some aspects of sexually-liberal culture don’t help. There’s just as much sexual abuse and assault in sexually-conservative communities, now and in the past, and maybe more.
I appreciate that you bring up an Overton-expanding point, but I have to disagree. I think this argument is a prototypical example of “second-best theory”.[1]
If a system is in a bad Nash equilibrium[2], asynchronously moving closer to a better equilibrium will usually look like it’s just making things worse. The costs are immediate while the benefits only start accruing once sufficient progress has been made.
A critic could then point to the most recently changed variable and say, “stop making it worse!” If they win, you may see marginal gains from the stability of the (tragic) system, giving people the empirical illusion that they were right all along (myopic marginalism).
> “In an economy with some uncorrectable market failure in one sector, actions to correct market failures in another related sector with the intent of increasing economic efficiency may actually decrease overall economic efficiency.”
When no individual benefits from changing their strategy in isolation, the system can remain in an equilibrium which is much worse for every individual, unless they manage to coordinate a simultaneous change to their strategies.
Crucially, nothing says that finding yourself in a bad Nash equilibrium[3] implies that there are no superior Nash equilibria above that level. It’s not about choosing “equilibrium” vs “fairy-tale story”—it’s about “bad equilibrium” vs “better equilibrium”.
And it’s feasible to get to a better equilibrium. Especially if you just need to pass the tipping point once, and you get to retry as many times as it takes. In such a scenario, it would be a tragedy to myopically preserve the Nash you’ve got.
A subset of which can be called “inadequate equilibria”.
Think about it like this: Both sickle-cell anaemia & malaria are bad when considered separately, but they’re also in a frequency-dependent equilibrium because the allele (HbS) that causes anaemia for a minority also confers resistance against malaria for the majority. Thus, a “second-best theory” would be to say that the HbS allele is good because it improves the situation relative to nobody having resistance against malaria at all. While it’s true, it’s also myopic.
When we cure malaria, there will no longer be any selection-pressure for HbS, so we cure sickle-cell disease as well.
To unpack the metaphor: I think many traditional & strict norms (HbS) around sex & relationships can be net good on the margin, but only because they enforce rigid rules in an area where humans haven’t learned to deal with the complexities (malaria) in a healthy manner. “Sexual liberalism” encompasses imo an attempt to deal with them directly and eventually learn better norms that are more likely to work long-term.