Ben Hughes

6 Apr 2012

Misogynists around me

Or, how I started to see the light on rape culture

I have a knee-jerk defensive response to the term rape culture. It feels accusatory. It feels like the intent is to say that “all men are rapists”. I think I’ve had it all wrong.

Even living under my news rock it was hard to miss the controversy about Girls Around Me:

“It’s not, really, that we’re all horrified by what this app does, is it? […] It’s that we’re all horrified by how exposed these girls are, and how exposed services like Facebook and Foursquare let them be without their knowledge.” – Cult of Mac

Actually, that’s not what horrifies me. Some people are misogynistic creeps, and some of those creeps are app developers who will use data in unintended ways. That doesn’t make me happy, but it doesn’t particularly worry me. What horrifies me is that the focus on “women being exposed” perpetuates the predator/victim dynamic between men and women. It is victim blaming (don’t want to be hunted by sexual predators? Better not share your location!) and it takes as given that men are inherently dangerous.

Instead of the privacy of women’s location data, we should be talking about why that data being shared is “dangerous”. In our attempt to “protect” women I think we are unintentionally normalising and spreading the myth (please God, let it be a myth) that men are sex-obsessed beasts ruled by their cocks, who don’t much care who they fuck. That we are obsessed with impressing and obtaining women while simultaneously hating them. And of course that women and helpless victims who need saving (except when they’re treacherously plotting to steal our manhood).

I’m a guy trying to raise 3 boys into decent, humane men. I want them to grow up being conscious of how they treat other people, especially sexually, but without carrying the baggage of being “potential rapists”. I don’t want them to think of women as “potential victims” in any sense.

We teach boys that they are dangerous. We joke about men being ruled by their dicks. We normalise and excuse attitudes that are eerily similar to those held by rapists. We unquestionably accept that Girls Around Me will be used by leacherous men to hunt women.

This is rape culture. While I still despise the term, I don’t think I can dismiss the concept any more. And honestly, that makes me pretty sad.

Of course, all of this is from the perspective of a 30-something white guy. For a different (but I think complementary) perspective, check out Rosie Ryan’s post.

12 Mar 2012

Creeping Libertarianism

Is it just me, or is there a growing support for broadly Libertarian ideals? I don’t mean that people are self-identifying as Libertarians (why would you? Libertarians are horrible and mean), but that Libertarian-compatible views are creeping their way into the mainstream.

Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet looks to be a rusted-on Lefty, having managed Democratic Party fund raising and happily taking pot-shots and crazy Libertarians on Twitter. There’s a lot of interesting, and essentially apolitical, ideas in his book. But his advice to concentrate on local news and local issues, because they are both more relevant and something we can act on, has a fundamentally Libertarian flavour to it. It is in essence “think local, act local”, with the implication being that if we each concentrate on improving our local areas we will in aggregate, improve things everywhere.

Clay’s preference for source data, rather than trusting aggregates, also has a Libertarian feel to it.

Then there is the Occupy movement and the wider group of “anti-Capitalists” (who I would argue are actually anti-Corporatists). One of the fundamental shifts I see here is a growing mistrust of the government, and the recognition that Big Business and Big Government are rather closely related. There seems to be a move away from the idea that government can come in and save us from the evil corporations. And while the die-hard socialist and anarchist elements still exist, there seems to be a growing support for sustainable, distributed business. And although they rarely mention it, that idea is fundamentally compatible with free markets.

I don’t think the Occupy movement has a particularly clear or coherent political philosophy, and that’s part of its charm. But from an outside perspective it seems that a lot of the broad goals and concerns are compatible with Libertarianism. In particular, the distrust of concentrations of power and the recognition that, regardless of its source, these power concentrations tend to collude against the rest of society.

This may sound a bit confusing – I mean, don’t Libertarians love big business? While within the broad range of Libertarianism there are certainly some elements that fit that bill, I think on the whole it’s a misconception. Libertarians distrust all concentrations of power, and they do tend to distrust government power a bit more than corporate power. That’s because government is a very specific and unique form of monopoly: it makes and enforces laws, with force where necessary. From a Libertarian perspective, corporations should also be treated with suspicion, but the belief is that competition from other firms in a free market is more of a check than democracy is on government. I certainly don’t think that free market competition is a perfect foil for corporate power, or perhaps even a good one. But it is certainly better than the current Corporatist arrangement, where government uses its lawmaking power to protect and entrench corporate power, and continuing the vicious cycle, corporate power is used to get compliant politicians re-elected.

The Internet’s sprawling, decentralised, unregulated chaos has produced both amazing and terrible things, but on the whole I think most people would say that it has been a very beneficial addition to society. And by and large, people seem to be extremely worried by the idea of government coming in and messing things up. I’m not trying to say that the Internet proves the validity of Libertarianism: there are fundamental differences, in, say, the cost of moving between communities in a physical vs online society. But I do think that some of the Wild West freedom of the Internet is affecting how people think about the physical world.

Libertarians and the Left have lot in common in terms of progressive societal goals; the main point of contention is how to achieve them. The Left thinks government intervention will get us there; Libertarians worry that when you give government more power, they eventually use it against us. Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle: I think neither completely free markets nor government are perfect solutions, but, in general, that markets are less corruptible than governments.

There are certainly plenty of people on the Left who acknowledge the problems with government and who think the answer is either better oversight or choosing better politicians. But if I’m right, and on the whole the Left are slowly losing their faith in government, where does that leave us?

5 Feb 2012

The Transition Movement

A friend asked me what I thought of the Transition movement
(http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/great-transition), this was
my response.

I've only read the exec summary, but here are my initial thoughts.
>
> One major issue is that they seem to play down or ignore the general
> problems of government. For example, regulations and policies with
> unintended consequences were large contributing factors to the GFC.
> Fannie and Freddie were essentially told by the govt to take on
> sub-prime mortgages to increase the number of home owners.
>
> Throughout they seem to assume that it's possible for government to
> set appropriate price levels that include social costs. In principle I
> agree that we often don't include social costs, but the answer isn't
> central price setting. I don't think there's a single historical
> example where that's worked out well.
>
> Basically I think they base their entire implementation on the ability
> and independence of government. I don't think governments are
> (generally) malicious: they believe that their actions are helpful.
> But regulatory capture, campaign funding and the incestuous
> relationship between industry and regulatory heads makes it hard for
> impossible for govt to make truly independent decisions. I don't think
> that we can rely on govt to "save" us.
>
> Possibly the biggest problem I have is with the 2nd last paragraph:
>
> "...but also to finally rid the world of the scourge of poverty and
> inequality. Business as usual has also failed in this regard. Just as
> within countries, trickle down approaches at global level have brought
> us to the brink of environmental disaster, while also increasing
> inequalities and entrenching grinding poverty in many parts of the
> world"
>
> That's demonstrably false. The 200 years has taken the West from
> $5/day and a life expectancy of 40 to $100/day and a life expectancy
> of 75. It has taken the Chinese from $5/day to $30/day, and in two
> generations they'll have caught up with the west. I can't take
> seriously any proposal that ignores the single largest improvement in
> human living conditions ever known.
>
> It's not all bad though: their tax policies are solid. Progressive
> consumption tax has a lot of nice side-effects (encourages saving,
> discourages debt) and taxing socially harmful activity, while a bit on
> the authoritarian side, is probably a the best way to combat
> undesirable behaviour. It has to be done carefully though (do you
> think the alcopops tax had any impact on teen binge drinking?)
>
> I liked what they were saying about moving decision making to the
> lowest level possible, but that seems in conflict with their desire to
> centrally plan things like prices and the size of industries.
>
> Resilience (in individuals, communities, businesses, society) is A
> Good Thing. I'm not entirely sure how we should encourage it, but we
> should aim for it.
>
> Although it also has a bunch of things that bug me, I think The New
> Capitalist Manifesto does a better job of addressing the ways in which
> the current Western corporatist states are failing.
>
> Anyway, that's my 2c.