Comments on: How Sex Is Different, Part I

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:07:38 +0000

Robert, if Steve has gotten something wrong, shouldn’t you point it out?

Will, it’s not just that women have an incentive “as well”, it’s that they have a greater incentive than men, though you only laid responsibility at their feet in the original post.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:07:00 +0000

Robert, if Steve has gotten something wrong, shouldn’t you point it out?

Will, it’s not just that women have an incentive “as well”, it’s that they have a greater incentive than men, though you only laid responsibility at their feet in the original post.

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:30:04 +0000

Steve, Don’t be a jackass. I completely agree with the point that women have a strong strategic incentive to promote slutshaming norms as well. I thought about this, and would have said something about it, but needed to get on the plane. I don’t think that changes things much other than reinforce the point that the peculiar evolutionary psychology of sex helps explain why we will be inclined to conspire against women’s sexual autonomy.

Yes, I am a moralizer. I think it is both right and useful to denounce immoral people. Often they are moralizers, too. Many people are wrong about morals!

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Yes, I am a moralizer. I think it is both right and useful to denounce immoral people. Often they are moralizers, too. Many people are wrong about morals!

By: Robert S. Porter

Robert S. Porter — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:30:24 +0000

Yes, because Steve Sailer, maestro of foreigners, is a known as someone who gets all the facts right.

By: Robert S. Porter

Robert S. Porter — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:30:00 +0000

Yes, because Steve Sailer, maestro of foreigners, is a known as someone who gets all the facts right.

By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:41:39 +0000

As other commenters have pointed out, Will has got slut-shaming backwards.

I’m fascinated by what a moralizer Will is, despite all his denunciations of moralizers. His natural first reaction is not to try to get the facts straight, but to start moralizing about things that he only vaguely understands.

By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:41:00 +0000

As other commenters have pointed out, Will has got slut-shaming backwards.

By: JA

JA — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:18:13 +0000

You write, “To reify or essentialize this pattern, and to unthinkingly endorse it, is to compound mistake upon mistake.”

This is true in its weak form, but as presented I think you overstate it. The human pattern of moralizing concepts related to reproduction is not _necessarily_ a mistake; if it’s not, unthinkingly endorsing it could very well be the best strategy of a skeptical species.

Also, this type of moralizing is something of a frozen component in human psychology, and you’re right that it’s this fact of homo sapiens which creates (for us) the distinction between the sex-act and more banal activities. But I wonder how far you allow this train of thought to go? I refer, of course, to your certainty that moral obligations actually exist. If prostitution is, in your words, not wrong in general, but judged wrong by us according to our evolutionary psychologies + socialization, then you must agree that there is no moral obligation in general, just moral obligation judgments which emerge out of our evolutionary psychologies + socialization.

And so I’ll repeat: “To reify or essentialize this pattern, and to unthinkingly endorse it, is to compound mistake upon mistake.”

By: JA

JA — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:18:00 +0000

You write, “To reify or essentialize this pattern, and to unthinkingly endorse it, is to compound mistake upon mistake.”

And so I’ll repeat: “To reify or essentialize this pattern, and to unthinkingly endorse it, is to compound mistake upon mistake.”