You’ve clearly done a considerable amount of excellent research, but I do have to ask given this is Effective Altruism: Is this effectively altruistic? Before you mod me troll, please let me explain:
I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the case in most other countries too, but I’m travelling right now and can’t do real research. It’s true that the perpetrators of the violence against men are mostly men, but I’ve never understood the implied notion that that makes it fine.
* Women commit domestic violence against men, possibly more so (not that it’s a competition!). (It’s a complicated topic and I can’t find any decent research on this right now, again, travelling). There are a few reasons it’s not talked about as much: ** No-one really cares about it. It’s “normal” in an acceptable way, whereas our natural “protect the women” instincts mean we actually care if a woman is victimised. ** Men don’t report it as often. ** Women, being physically weaker than men (statistically), are less likely to cause physical harm.
* Violence in LGBT relationships is *higher* than violence in heterosexual relationships. To me at least this strongly suggests that the reasons for the heterosexual-relationship violence is more because many humans are just terrible people, rather than because there’s a sizeable contingent of men who enjoy beating on women. (https://domesticviolence.org/domestic-violence-lgbtq-community/ - can’t find any scientific references right now).
TL;DR: This is a problem, but violence against men is objectively a *bigger* problem (at least in the UK). Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving this problem? Because otherwise how do we know whether we’re being effective prioritisation?
Please note that this topic can get heated for several reasons:
abuse/violence is already a topic people understandably have strong feelings about
the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).
In particular, there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.” The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
More generally, we want to ask everyone to be especially careful when discussing topics this sensitive.
None of that is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying. My unstudied priors are that the problem of intimate partner violence is more tractable than most forms of violence, but I’m open to being persuaded that non-IP violence reduction is a strong area too.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
Interesting, I wonder if anyone can explain why this post received such a negative reaction (all the downmods)? As someone new to the community, and who’s trying hard to keep an open mind and not revert to his natural cynicism, I’m struggling to come across any interpretation of this result beyond people either wrongly concluding I’m a troll (so not giving me the benefit of the doubt and ignoring my (admittedly limited) linked evidence), or bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases. This would seem to play into the posts about EA groupthink that seem to occasionally pop up here.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense? My post is attempting to raise discuss that. Is any part of it wrong? I’ve received no responses so don’t know.
Maybe I summed up my post wrongly, so I’ll try again: The purpose of this thread is to abate violence against women, yet an objectively much bigger problem is violence overall. It would seem reasonable to conclude that maybe trying to solve the later will help with the former. I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
Here are some responses, one by Jason, and one by Lizka.
I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
I’ll pick out some excerpts because it seems like you haven’t read those messages:
“the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).”
there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.”
The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
None of [your comment] is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense?
It is! Feel free to write up a post about why you think interventions that abate violence overall is a highly cost-effective thing to do.
You haven’t done this though. What you have done is bring up the violence that men face in response to a post exploring interventions around the violence that women face, without engaging with ~any of the object level claims mentioned by the author.
Your suggestion isn’t well argued for (it’s unclear that UK men being 2x likely to be the victim of violent crime means that you can have an intervention that will avert a DALY for ~$200), and it doesn’t seem like you have actually done much work on this yourself, (since you ask “Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving [violence against men]?”)
This means that it’s easy for people to interpret your comment not as trying to “achieve the best result with the least expense”, but simply using it as a way to suggest VAWG interventions are not worth considering, because you think another group has it ‘worse’.
For someone asking for the “benefit of the doubt” and not wanting to be ignored, it doesn’t help your case that you have in fact missed both of the responses you received, and are assuming that anyone who downvotes you are dismissing you as a troll or “bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases”.
You’ve clearly done a considerable amount of excellent research, but I do have to ask given this is Effective Altruism: Is this effectively altruistic?
Before you mod me troll, please let me explain:
* In the UK, violent crime against men is twice as high as it is against women. As in, if you are a man you are twice as likely to be the victim of a violent crime than a woman is. In fact, for just about every type of violent crime, excepting sex crime, the victims are predominantly male. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2016/overviewofviolentcrimeandsexualoffences#characteristics-associated-with-being-a-victim—“Men were more likely to be a victim of violent crime measured by the face-to-face Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) interview than women (2.2% of males compared with 1.4% of females”
I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the case in most other countries too, but I’m travelling right now and can’t do real research.
It’s true that the perpetrators of the violence against men are mostly men, but I’ve never understood the implied notion that that makes it fine.
* Women commit domestic violence against men, possibly more so (not that it’s a competition!). (It’s a complicated topic and I can’t find any decent research on this right now, again, travelling). There are a few reasons it’s not talked about as much:
** No-one really cares about it. It’s “normal” in an acceptable way, whereas our natural “protect the women” instincts mean we actually care if a woman is victimised.
** Men don’t report it as often.
** Women, being physically weaker than men (statistically), are less likely to cause physical harm.
* Violence in LGBT relationships is *higher* than violence in heterosexual relationships. To me at least this strongly suggests that the reasons for the heterosexual-relationship violence is more because many humans are just terrible people, rather than because there’s a sizeable contingent of men who enjoy beating on women. (https://domesticviolence.org/domestic-violence-lgbtq-community/ - can’t find any scientific references right now).
TL;DR: This is a problem, but violence against men is objectively a *bigger* problem (at least in the UK). Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving this problem? Because otherwise how do we know whether we’re being effective prioritisation?
Please note that this topic can get heated for several reasons:
abuse/violence is already a topic people understandably have strong feelings about
the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).
In particular, there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.” The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
More generally, we want to ask everyone to be especially careful when discussing topics this sensitive.
None of that is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying. My unstudied priors are that the problem of intimate partner violence is more tractable than most forms of violence, but I’m open to being persuaded that non-IP violence reduction is a strong area too.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
Interesting, I wonder if anyone can explain why this post received such a negative reaction (all the downmods)?
As someone new to the community, and who’s trying hard to keep an open mind and not revert to his natural cynicism, I’m struggling to come across any interpretation of this result beyond people either wrongly concluding I’m a troll (so not giving me the benefit of the doubt and ignoring my (admittedly limited) linked evidence), or bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases.
This would seem to play into the posts about EA groupthink that seem to occasionally pop up here.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense? My post is attempting to raise discuss that. Is any part of it wrong? I’ve received no responses so don’t know.
Maybe I summed up my post wrongly, so I’ll try again: The purpose of this thread is to abate violence against women, yet an objectively much bigger problem is violence overall. It would seem reasonable to conclude that maybe trying to solve the later will help with the former. I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
Here are some responses, one by Jason, and one by Lizka.
I’ll pick out some excerpts because it seems like you haven’t read those messages:
“the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).”
there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.”
The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
None of [your comment] is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
It is! Feel free to write up a post about why you think interventions that abate violence overall is a highly cost-effective thing to do.
You haven’t done this though. What you have done is bring up the violence that men face in response to a post exploring interventions around the violence that women face, without engaging with ~any of the object level claims mentioned by the author.
Your suggestion isn’t well argued for (it’s unclear that UK men being 2x likely to be the victim of violent crime means that you can have an intervention that will avert a DALY for ~$200), and it doesn’t seem like you have actually done much work on this yourself, (since you ask “Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving [violence against men]?”)
This means that it’s easy for people to interpret your comment not as trying to “achieve the best result with the least expense”, but simply using it as a way to suggest VAWG interventions are not worth considering, because you think another group has it ‘worse’.
For someone asking for the “benefit of the doubt” and not wanting to be ignored, it doesn’t help your case that you have in fact missed both of the responses you received, and are assuming that anyone who downvotes you are dismissing you as a troll or “bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases”.