I don't see it that way at all. The author mentions all sorts of criteria she uses to assess the danger level: where are we, is it light or dark, who else is around, how is this man dressed, what is his demeanor. And she adjusts her level of caution accordingly. Much of the article is pointing out to men how these variables affect women's attitudes, fears, and receptiveness to being approached.
Yes, but her predication is still "This man is a threat." As opposed to "This man is likely not going to try to hurt me." Her conclusion doesn't exclusively follow from her premises. I'm not saying that it's necessarily any worse than my proposal, her's just isn't the only possible conclusion and I don't see that she's given convincing reasons to accept her viewpoint as the most reasonable.
I've come to realize that perhaps the most fallacious thing of all was ever treating this article as a cogent logical argument to begin with. There are far too many enthymemes to be able to ascertain whether or not she's being reasonable. I think it's incredibly difficult to defend her specific conclusion, logically over a less conservative approach or "The best way to avoid being raped by men is to cut off contact with men altogether. " (Or numerous others.) It's a matter of ideology and while any of these conclusions may be subjectively valid, they're far from being objectively true.
If you were only assessing the validity of the argument, that would be true. But you were also making consequence-based arguments, claiming that her attitude is bad because it is antisocial. "Antisocial" is not a logical flaw in an argument, it's an assessment of consequence. So I think you're moving the goalposts here, unless you'd like to state that you're not claiming any negative consequences.
It's definitely tangent from the OP. It wasn't my intention to use consequence-based arguments as support against the validity of her argument. You demanded, in several posts, what some potential consequences where and I said consequences were irrelevant to the validity of the argument, but attempted to give an answer anyway. As it's just conjecture and not really the issue anyway, I'm happy to drop it.
I've dealt with the racial analogies repeatedly in this thread. I don't find it a persuasive argument, mainly because it seems to rely on just citing the magic words "racism" and "discrimination" without giving thought to why we consider racial discrimination a bad thing, and whether or not those same considerations apply here.
I don't really feel as though you've 'dealt' with racial analogies. You've dismissed them and said they're not convincing, but you haven't shown they're fallacious.
Even if you don't agree with what I've said above I think that my contention that she's "judging the likelihood of an individual's actions based on the actions of a minority, some of whom belong to the same group as the individual." still stands. If it's acceptable to judge the potentiality of an individuals future actions based on actions which were committed by another person in the past, is there not a logical pathway to taking action against those future actions? Wouldn't that be removal of individual rights, and, ergo, discriminatory?
(I acknowledge that this is still on the 'consequences' side of the discussion.)
Should sex-separated bathrooms be banned? If your answer is "no," then does it follow that you support racially segregated bathrooms? I assume not.
Having sex-separated bathrooms is, in theory, due to physiological differences between the sexes. (Although, the sex-separation is largely a social tradition, there's no real objectively valid reason to have them, it's just for mental comfort.) The intention to rape, and therefore the threat to others, is a psychological one - an area where men and women are the same. The mental differences between men and women are not inherently significant, just as the differences between races are not inherently significant. ie. Men's brains and women's brains essentially function the same way; all human DNA is essentially the same. The comparison between sexual difference and racial difference for bathrooms isn't analogous to comparison between sexual discrimination and racial discrimination. For bathrooms, one is actual difference vs. perceived difference, whereas for discrimination, they're both perceived differences.
Saying that it's justifiable to see men greater threats than women doesn't stand to reason. Unless you're appealing to statistics, but then we get in to that whole thing again.
Fine, it's explicit. I wouldn't call it a fallacy; at most it's a claim. And if you want to insist that the author is claiming that every woman on the planet thinks the way that she does, then I will agree with you that it would be an inaccurate claim. But I think interpreting remarks that literally is taking things a little too far. When you write about rape or dating advice or any other gender-related topic, you either end up making some generalizations along the way, or making your article unreadable because you're constantly inserting disclaimers like "most" and "many" and "of course, this may not apply to you."
I would still call it a fallacy. I don't think it would render the article any less intelligible to have said "Because, for many women, it is." instead of "Because, for women, it is."
I also take what she's written literally because it's what she wrote. I'm not interested in conjecturing about how literal she was being. If she didn't mean it, she shouldn't have wrote it. I think good writers can be articulate and unambiguous without sacrificing entertainment value. (Another tangent, I'm really not trying to start an analysis of her writing style.)
"Increased" from what? From what you think is appropriate? Well, yes, for you that would be inadvisable. I'm not quite getting what your point is here. We all decide what precautions we feel are reasonable for ourselves, and there are subjective factors that affect that. This woman seems quite familiar with the relevant data, so it's not an issue of her being uninformed or ignorant.
Increased from the individuals normal, day to day, perception of threat. She says her threat level is lower when at church with her mother, (seems odd to me, but it's her prerogative,) than it is in a dark alley by herself. It seems, she's advocating making the increased "dark alley" state the baseline and then tempering it when appropriate. Why not make the "church with mom" state the baseline and increase it as necessary. Is there a logical reason to adopt one over the other?
I think we're back to semantics, because you seem to be interpreting "is a threat" with "is a rapist." A "threat" is something that has potential to harm you. From her point of view, every man has that potential. Every dog I see on the street is a threat to bite me. The vast majority are probably well-trained, well-behaved dogs, but while there may be clues, I can't tell for certain which. I personally might choose to stop and pet some of them (with their owner's permission), but someone else -- either because he doesn't like dogs as much as me, or considers a dog bite a more serious harm than I do -- might choose to give every dog a wide berth because they're all threats to bite, and I can't say that's faulty reasoning.
I agree, this is semantics. Unfortunately, it has repercussions on the validity of the argument. Even people on this thread who are on the "good article" side of the fence have difference perceptions of what she meant by 'threat'. How are we to know? Saying my criticism isn't valid because I'm not using a specific definition of 'threat' doesn't do anything to the integrity of my criticism, unless you can show unequivocally that your definition is correct.
With your dog analogy - which is your default stance? Do you automatically cross the street unless the dog looks especially docile, or is your default stance to assume the dog is probably safe unless you see evidence otherwise?
I don't get your point here. Some guys (claim to) misinterpret body language, and try to claim it as justification for rape, so therefore trying to interpret body language to decide whether and how to start a conversation with a woman is bad? That seems to be throwing an entire nursery of babies out with the bathwater. I'm sure you don't mean that, so I'll wait for you to clarify.
I'm saying she's suggesting that is possible to subjectively generate an objective interpretation of ambiguous behaviour. Just because a women is reading, doesn't mean she doesn't want to be disturbed. I've had times where I'm reading on transit, but would welcome an interruption. Just because a women is facing me and looking me up and down, doesn't mean she wants to talk to me. This happened to me three or four times coming home yesterday. They were likely looking at the large, irregularly shaped object I was carrying, but it took me a minute to realize it, as I carry it all the time and don't think of it as anything out of the ordinary. I'm offering the anecdotes only as examples of how signals could be misinterpreted.
And what's wrong with that? That's what considerate people in a society do. Those who don't are regarded as inconsiderate.
In this situation, there are a wide range of considerate actions that are available. The author is suggesting to extrapolate, based on subjective interpretation of ambiguous data, which one is correct, before any interaction begins. In the absence of convincing data, all men should assume that all women share her particular point of view.
If you replace "all" and "universal" with "many" and "general tendencies regarding" then I think that's probably accurate. She's making some claims about how women generally perceive and react in particular situations, and asking that men avoid putting women in fear.
That's a fairly moderate interpretation. I think if you take what she's said literally, the language is stronger than that and she's putting the responsibility of preventing women from being frightened on men.
Perhaps the generalizations bother you a lot more than they do me. Again, I defy you to write any article on this or a related subject that doesn't employ either the occasional express or implied generalization, or bogs down in disclaimers
What bothers me is that she presents the article as giving practical advices and then muddles the whole thing up by citing extreme examples of poor behaviour by men.
Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck
There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?
Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.
These, to me, are not indicative of the normal behaviour of otherwise balanced men and don't contribute anything to the supposedly informative natural of the piece. I certainly hope she doesn't actually think that the average man can't tell that these behaviours are unattractive to a [insert qualifier here] of women.
