Never Walk Alone
The good Charles Johnson has written a lengthy entry explaining “rape culture” theory in libertarian terms. The piece also has general value as a caution against slippery and naive uses of the core Hayekian concept of “spontaneous order.” Spontaneous order is very important to my world view, but Johnson makes the excellent point that
But if widely distributed forms of intelligence, knowledge, virtue, or prudence can add up, through many individual self-interested actions, into an benign undesigned order, then there’s no reason why widely distributed forms of stupidity, ignorance, prejudice, vice, or folly might not add up, through many individual self-interested actions, into an unintended but malign undesigned order. Moreover, if you consider that spontaneous orders can emerge as unintended consequences of certain widespread forms of violence, then it ought to be especially clear that not all undesigned orders can be considered benign from a libertarian point of view.
As a supplement, I highly recommend his two lengthy comments to my Art of the Possible entry on the same topic.
Comment by kid bitzer —
May 19, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
that’s actually, kind of, astoundingly interesting.
i must say that i don’t expect much, intellectually, from libertarians (present company excepted, of course).
most of them are tedious johnny-one-notes (and yes, most of them are johnny’s), well deserving of the ‘glibertarian’ slur.
but this piece on re-reading brownmiller is really, really interesting! many thanks for spreading it.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 19, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
You know, real gratitude might lead one to dismount one’s anti-glibertarian hobby horse for the duration of a comment. Just sayin’.
Comment by kid bitzer —
May 19, 2008 @ 11:46 pm
nah, it’s not a hobby-horse with me. i’m not sure i’ve ever said it before, for that matter. plus, i usually ride a bike.
but the gratitude is real.
Comment by Avram —
May 20, 2008 @ 12:19 am
This reminds me: Remember that BSG post a few days back in which you mentioned status work, Jim? Did you notice how much the markers of high status (maintain eye contact, take up space, invade partner’s space, stand tall) resemble a list of things a man is expected to do when flirting, or to appear attractive to women? While the markers of low status (short eye contact then look away, tilt head while talking, touch face and hair, giggle) resemble classic female flirting cues?
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
May 20, 2008 @ 12:33 am
You’re like ten minutes from breaking out the Rawls, aren’t you, Henley?
Comment by LarryM —
May 20, 2008 @ 8:37 am
kid bitzer’s annoying (and ignorant) snark DOES sadly have an understandable basis in the state of contemporary libertarianism. The loudest “libertarian” voices tend to fall into 2, or 2 1/2 categories – (1) people who happen to be socially liberal and economically conservative, but with no principled devotion to libertarian principles (think Glenn Reynolds) or (2) paradoxical defenders defenders of corporatism (think Reason magazine). The “1/2,” is Randoids, though they often end up in one of the two above categories.
Now, Reason type libertarians do have interesting things to say (the Reynolds type shmibertarians, not so much), but it sometimes gets obscured by their large blind spots. IMO the most interesting thinking being done among lbertarians is being done by left lbertarians like Johnson & Roderick Long. But they are so marginalized that most libertarians (at least the ones who comment at, say, Hit and Run) don’t even acknowledge that there is such a thing as a left libertarian.
Comment by LarryM —
May 20, 2008 @ 8:39 am
Re comment 5, left libertarisns such as Johnson tend to be more,/i> anti-statist than conventonal libertarians.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 20, 2008 @ 10:37 am
Reason’s articles cover a pretty broad spectrum of libertarianism. The commentariat at Hit and Run should not be confused with the spectrum of views in the magazine.
Reason’s worst sin was on the Iraq war, and even there the magazine wasn’t so much a cheerleader as it was “balanced.” In that regard, the magazine was no different from most of the rest of the media. That isn’t really a defense of Reason, FWIW, because what it shows is that being libertarian does not confer any immunity against the problems generally present in society at large.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 20, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Regarding the original topic:
I have to admit that before reading Rad Geek’s post I never understood a lot of the talk about “rape culture” and whatnot. I mean, yeah, I got that there’s a big problem with blaming the victim and downplaying assaults that occur within the context of existing relationships. But I always viewed that as a problem relating to how we respond to crimes. A lot of the talk that I heard on campus went further than that, and seemed kind of accusatory. What am I benefiting from? What am I contributing to? I’ve never doubted a victim or encouraged an attacker or anything, so why the rhetoric that seems to be throwing a lot of blame around?
Rad Geek’s presentation of it makes more sense. Not sure I agree with all of it, but now it makes sense and I can think it through. I think it’s because he didn’t lead with things that could be considered blanket accusations, whereas a lot of stuff I heard in college sounded more broadly accusatory. Maybe it wasn’t really all that accusatory, but it sounded that way, and college kids are pretty sensitive to anything that might be accusatory.
Comment by LarryM —
May 20, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Thoreau,
I agree, on the whole, and I think my criticism of Reason was a bit too broad brush. Certainly the views of the magazine tend to be more sophisticated than those of its commentariat.
That being said, and of course agreeing that Reason’s not very libertarian position on the war is a rather serious sin, the “mainstream” libertarian movement in general, and Reason in particular, seems to be – not unaware, but insufficiently aware – of the extent to which our modern corporate capitalist system bears little if any relation to a true free market.
Put it this way – unlike their commenters, the editors and writers of Reason are certainly aware of the existance of thinkers like Johnson and Long. They just are’t, IMO, sufficiently influnenced by those thinkers.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
May 20, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Odd; I always thought this was a weakness of most of libertarianism’s critics.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
May 20, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
Eric, in an environment as target-rich as our society, both sets of critics can be correct simultaneously. :/
Comment by Eric the .5b —
May 20, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
As for the original article, I’m less impressed than others. The sheer commonality of sexism and patriarchy in human history demands a non-coordinated cause. Coordination is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to oppression. Lynch mobs are an archetypical example of emergent order.
This strikes me as less revelatory than a case of “No shit; that’s why I’m not an anarchist.”
This bit just descended into “Well, duh.” The single group of people I’ve ever seen most genuinely interested in addressing violence against women in any way other than telling them to appeal for the help of a man in or out of uniform have been right-wingers and libertarians in favor of women owning guns and learning how to defend themselves.
I’m dead serious – are there a significant number of people who really think spontaneous order never, ever produces bad things (like, oh, government)? Or are we talking random idiots – or strawmen along the lines of “the naive scientists who don’t realize discoveries can lead to bad things”?
Comment by Mark Z. —
May 20, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
Odd; I always thought this was a weakness of most of libertarianism’s critics.
When anti-libertarians bash the free market on the basis of what some parasitic defense contractor or intellectual property rent-seeker does, they fail.
When libertarians reflexively defend said parasite as a free association of individuals producing goods and services that the market demands, they also fail.
Comment by LarryM —
May 20, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
What both Neel and Mark Z. said. I’d also add that, while sophisticated libertarians are aware of the fact that, even apart from “corporate welfare,” regulations that actually favor corporate interests, and other types of rent seeking behavior, the modern limited liability corporation is at the most basic level an artificial creation of the state, they don’t give sufficient weight to this fact.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 20, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
Heck, Larry freehold tenure itself – aka “private property” as we think of it – is substantially a state creation, instituted to simplify tax collection. I daresay most liberterians “don’t give sufficient weight” to that fact either.
(Ooh!)
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
May 20, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
Eric: I think there’s a significant fraction of libertarians who think that any spontaneous order will quickly self-correct to be better than any comparable deliberate order, and a much larger fraction who don’t actually believe it – being sensible enough to know good examples to the contrary, and understand how they work – but who have an emotional inclination to it. It’s a temperamental thing, a thing that one wishes could be true, comparable to the temperamental socialist’s wish that a truly centrally planned economy could nonetheless accommodate every individual’s shifting wishes, or the extropian and dispensationalist views of their respective raptures as truly inevitable. A friend of mine used to call it the “stupid spot”, with a smile. It’s only a problem to the extent we’re human beings, basically
, in that our hopes to escape some unpleasant limit of the external world can lead us to willful denial.
Jim, fascinating article. Thanks for the link.
Comment by LarryM —
May 20, 2008 @ 10:33 pm
Well, yes, Jim, of course, but that’s why those libertarians who DO realize that (or, more than realize it, take the realization seriously) deserve a good listen. People like Long and Johnson.
And I know that you’re aware of this, but most people, probably including most people who self identify as libertarian, aren’t.
OTOH, the solutions proposed by people like Long and Johnson are … gonna be a bit too much for most libertarians, let alone most most non-libertarians.
Comment by Jeff in Texas —
May 21, 2008 @ 11:35 am
Eric, I don’t understand this as criticism of the article:
“The sheer commonality of sexism and patriarchy in human history demands a non-coordinated cause. Coordination is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to oppression.”
Isn’t that the point of the article? That although it is uncoordinated, and mostly unacknowledged, we nonetheless have a (spontaneous) order that keeps women in line with the implied but everpresent threat of rape? That pervasive and systemic badness does not have to be coordinated at all?
More generally, my problem with the theory that spontaneous order will lead to some form of utopia, or even to a marginally better society, is, well, history. Historically, there tends to be some spontaneity and good times, followed by some raping and killing, which encourages less spontaneity and more deliberate order, which leads to oppression, then some more raping and killing, then even more deliberate order, etc., etc. And then you end up where we are today, or worse. We’re doomed.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
May 21, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
It’s a criticism of the idea that this point is some shocking revelation to libertarians. Admittedly, it’s an interesting argument that Brownmiller was actually talking about spontaneous order in terms of group identity…but it’s just not news.
Incidentally, I’ll agree that the mindless-slogan-repeating percentage among libertarians isn’t any lower than the idiot percentage among, say, Blues, but I’ll note some people would correctly object to judging Blues by the more brainless commenters on liberal blogs. Further, going on about every “self-described libertarian” (what, Eric Dondero, Glenn Reynolds, Bill Maher, and Noam Chomsky?) verges on a weird inversion of the No True Scotsman fallacy…
(”All True Scotsmen Fallacy”? “All Scotch Drinkers are Scotsmen Fallacy”? Hmm…)
Comment by dhex —
May 21, 2008 @ 3:03 pm
that was very interesting. though i must say i agree with eric in that i don’t think that many people – or rather, i *hope* – are simply knee-jerking in the direction of “spontaneous order” cause it sounds cool.
as an aside, where i fall down in this case, and always have, is the idea that rape is a political act – or primarily a political act – in and of itself. that just seems nonsensical in light of what i’ve seen in my own life in terms of people involved in and affected by sex crimes.
either i’m misunderstanding the context in which it is used – entirely possible – or it’s been severely misused, or a combination of the two.
Comment by Leonard —
May 21, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
So, violence creates fear and people respond to that? This is new? Private crime, just as much as “official” crime, can create fear. This is new?
It is rather surprising to me to see a bunch of libertarians claiming to be real impressed with this, but I’ve looked at some of these comments threads, and there it is. I guess I should also extend kudos to Johnson on that basis: apparently this stuff needs saying. Well, good, then.
Parenthetically, I have found that the radical left is often, perhaps even usually, a good source of criticism of the status quo, that libertarians can find agreement with. It’s just that their prescriptions for fixing any problem are almost invariably wrong, inasmuch as they are statists and will almost without exception advocate a state solution for any and all problems.
Still, I find the tone of Johnson’s article off-putting. Part of it is the confrontational tone of it, combined with the lack of actions offered, that are any different than anything libertarians already say. How, specifically, are we supposed to “fight rape” with our new understanding of “rape culture” or whatever? Johnson doesn’t even offer the libertarian standby, of trying to convince women to arm themselves.
Part of it is the non-acknowledgement of all the progress made so far in terms of “fighting patriarchy” voluntarily, with very little progress (arguably, regression) in “fighting the state”. The state is strong as ever, much stronger than it was in the 19th century. Whereas, women are far more empowered, and not discriminated against legally. Patriarchy itself is seriously challenged now, whereas then it was not. Whatever has caused these vast social changes worked, and is still working, if my reading (of “juicy” on women’s butts) is any indication. Complaints, then, are of the character “it’s not fast enough”. Well, speed is qualitatively different than direction, as in “it’s going backwards”, as is the case with the relationship of citizen and state. It is there we should focus effort.
But part of it is the hyperboli, as in this:
That is, something undesigned is as evil as something designed, something intended. No. Evil requires intent: mens rea. This is a category error. A set of things is not the things themselves; and neither do properties of set-members necessarily propogate to the set.
Consider a village, in India perhaps, where a man-eating tiger is loose in the neighborhood. People there are constrained by fear, in just the same way as the fear of rape restricts women. They don’t go out far alone, or at night, etc. Is this a “coercive” social order? Is a tiger “evil”?
Comment by Rad Geek —
May 21, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Eric:
Well, I don’t know about “shocking revelations.” But I think that we can safely infer from the number of comments, by self-described libertarians, describing the article as making an interesting connection that they hadn’t thought of before, that this does come as “news” to at least some libertarians. It may not come as news to you, but you are not all libertarians.
Leonard:
I understand that it can be frustrating to have a discussion of some big problem dumped in your lap without having much said about what you can do about that problem. But keep in mind that the post had a specific purpose, which was to consider Susan Brownmiller’s “Myrmidon theory” of stranger rape and the Hayekian notion of spontaneous order in relation to one another, as a means to getting a clearer understanding of each. It’s an intellectual exercise, not an attempt at offering either political strategy or personal advice. If you want to know what kind of antirape or more broadly feminist I think people should be doing, I’ve talked about that in many other places (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. etc. etc.), one of which I linked from the post, but honestly it’s a very big topic and a very hard problem, and it’s not something you can treat comprehensively, or even make much of an approach to, in the course of one article on the Internet which is already trying to deal with a related but distinct subject.
I also think that there are many sources other than me who can do a much better job than I can in providing ideas on what to do — especially women who are involved on a day-to-day basis in local antirape or feminist activism in or near your own community. My goal, as far as concrete actions are concerned, is mainly to get more libertarians to a place, in our analysis and in our priorities, where we are ready and willing to seek out those people and those groups, to ask them what they are working on and what they need help with, and to get involved. I think that’s unlikely to happen unless and until more libertarians have a sympathetic understanding of the feminist analysis of rape culture. Since that’s something I feel I’m in a good position to try to address, by means of trying to translate feminist analysis into terms that some of my readers may more readily understand, that’s where I’m trying to devote my labor and exploit my comparative advantage.
As for women arming themselves in self-defense, I think that’s a perfectly fine idea, as is organizing other forms of women’s self-defense training (e.g. Rape Aggression Defense and similar mixed martial arts systems for women). Neither is a comprehensive solution, or ideal for every woman’s individual needs, but, then, nothing is; I think that what we need are a bunch of small parts, loosely joined with each other, attacking many different aspects of the problem from many different angles.
The word “evil” has many different usages in the English language. Some of them require specific individual intent and others do not. (Many do not involve individual action at all; for example, “natural evils,” often used in English to refer events like hurricanes or earthquakes, or “social evils,” often used to refer to conditions like ghettoized urban poverty, without any suggestion that the evil in question is the result of anybody’s conscious intent.)
Of course, if I were using the sense of evil you have in mind (something along the lines of a deliberate sin of commission), then I would be committing a category error. But I wasn’t. So, as far as I can see, I’m not.
No. Tigers are not deliberating moral agents. They aren’t the sort of being which could be said to have either coercive or consensual interactions with human beings.
Men who commit rape, unlike tigers, are deliberating moral agents, and, unlike tiger attacks, rape is a deliberate, coercive act committed by men who are morally responsible for their actions.
A spontaneous social order that emerges in response to the danger posed by a natural evil, such as random tiger attacks, will have some things in common with the spontaneous social order that emerges in response to the danger that some people within the society force on other people by committing deliberate acts of violence. It will also have some important differences, both in terms of how appropriate certain kinds moral and political criticism are, with respect to that social order, and also in terms of the best way to try to deal with the situation.
Comment by Barry —
May 21, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
Comment by dhex —
May 21, 2008 @ 3:03 pm
“as an aside, where i fall down in this case, and always have, is the idea that rape is a political act – or primarily a political act – in and of itself. that just seems nonsensical in light of what i’ve seen in my own life in terms of people involved in and affected by sex crimes.”
the article is pointing out that individual non-political acts have collective, political impllications.
Comment by dhex —
May 22, 2008 @ 11:14 am
right, i get that. but where i’m confused is using the term “political” to mean “affects other people” which seems kinda expansive.
i’m presuming there’s something here i’m missing.
Comment by Rad Geek —
May 24, 2008 @ 12:01 am
dhex,
Well, “politics” derives from the Greek root “polis.” At the time the word was made, “polis” was ambiguous between (or consistently conflated) (1) the organized government of the city, and (2) civil society within the city. So when Aristotle wrote about “politics” he was talking about government processes, but about public life broadly, including many institutions within the city (religious, civic, educational, etc.) which today would be thought of as part of the private rather than the government sector.
Nowadays most people use politics to refer mainly or only to the business of the government, but some traditions (especially on the Left and in the feminist movement) use “politics” in a broader sense to include not only government processes but also struggles within civil society, especially if they have a common impact on a lot of people and if the civil society dynamics are structured by the balance of power between different social classes (such as men and women, or white people and black people, or…).
So “political” is not being expanded so far as just to mean “affects other people” (presumably remembering your friends’ birthdays affects other people, but I wouldn’t call it a political commitment); rather, “politics” is being being used to describe anything that acts to systematically structure public life in terms of the power relationships between groups of people. That includes governmental processes but it also includes a lot of other things, such as the way in which rape dramatically constrains the freedom of movement of all women, as women, and puts women in a state of greater dependency upon men.
Does that help clarify?
Comment by Rad Geek —
May 24, 2008 @ 12:04 am
Incidentally, I’ve discussed the use of the term “politics” at some more length in section 2 of the Libertarian Feminism essay that I co-authored with Roderick Long.
Comment by dhex —
May 24, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Does that help clarify?
it does.
i don’t think i necessarily buy it, but it does explain some of the rhetorical turns of the people who do. that’s a powerful tool to have in one’s kit, as it were.
i passed that essay along to a few people – it’s very good.