The Little, Tumid Platoons
(posted by Jim Henley)
RadGeek has an excellent post about how some libertarians can be pretty sloppy in their discussions of “spontaneous order” while some radical feminists can be pretty precise about it. He goes so far as to argue that taking the concept of spontaneous order seriously is a hallmark of feminist theory. Here’s an important passage from early in the essay-length entry:
First, the concept of
spontaneous order,as it is employed in libertarian writing, is systematically ambiguous, depending on whether one is usingspontaneousto meannot planned ahead of time,or whether one is using it to meanvoluntary.Thus, the termspontaneous ordermay be used to refer strictly to voluntary orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerge from the free actions of many different people, as opposed to coordination that arises from some people being forced to do what other people tell them to do. Or it may be used to refer to undesigned orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerges from the actions of many different people, who are not acting from a conscious desire to bring about that form of social coordination, as opposed to coordination that people consciously act to bring about. It’s important to see that these two meanings are distinct: a voluntary order may be designed (if everyone is freely choosing to follow a set plan), and an undesigned order may be involuntary (if it emerges as an unintended consequence of coercive actions that were committed in order to achieve a different goal). While Hayek himself was fairly consistent and explicit in usingspontaneous orderto refer to undesigned orders, many libertarian writers since Hayek have used it to mean voluntary orders, or orders that are both voluntary and undesigned, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings of the term from one statement to the next. It’s important to be clear about the difference between the two, because if you equivocate you are likely to expose yourself to certain confusions, and to find yourself wearing certain kinds of conceptual blinders.
Much more at the link. His core point is that spontaneous orders can be malign and even evil. His implication is that if we are serious about preferring spontaneous orders to state-mandated ones, and we’re serious about justice, we should give some serious thought to how to correct malign spontaneous orders without the tool of state violence. The further implication is that we have an affirmative obligation to make the effort.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
He is right to point out the vagueness of “spontaneous order” narratives. I don’t think alot of libertarians who discuss this realize that people who hear it think they’re advocating that people are unconscious of thier actions, but that “good things” result from it anyway. This definitely needs clarification.
As Rad points out, if this is relegated to the price system then yes it’s a useful term and important theoretical tool, but applied to broader societal bads (as opposed to goods) it’s pretty ambiguous.
I agree that fear of rape is a malicious form of spontaneous order, but I disagree with his male-female class analysis, as though males “benefit” from the fear generated by some horrible male actions. He writes:
Thus stranger rapists become the Myrmidons — the anonymous shock troops — of male supremacy, and the fact that nobody involved intends quite that, exactly, is quite irrelevant, because they serve their function in an violent undesigned order well enough whether anyone intended that or not.
I don’t know why this would be any more beneficial for males in general than would the negative actions of some blacks be beneficial to all blacks. I find it lamentable that women would be afraid of me because statistically speaking men are more likely to rape women than vice versa. And I certainly don’t value being thought of as a “protector” because I’m one of the good ones. Is that not a “manly” burden, another form of oppression stemming from this awful example of spontaneous order? (I agree this is NOT as bad as being on the opposite side, that of the woman who fears for her safety, but it’s not at all clear that this is all to the benefit of men.)
Incidentally, yesterday I spent half the day in the ER with my girlfriend who got sick from a codeine prescription. I got the distinct impression from the nurses and the doctor that they thought I might have been responsible somehow. Hm…
May 17th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
[...] then from race differences to gender differences, via TATP Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson points out the ambiguous nature of “spontaneous [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Dain,
I don’t like being in either the position of being feared, or in the position of being depended on for protection, either.
I don’t mean to suggest that male supremacy is all a bed of roses for men. Patriarchy Hurts Men Too ™, and all that. But the reason I’m willing to endorse Brownmiller’s claim, that the threat of rape redounds to the benefit of men as a class, including (especially) those who don’t actually commit rape, isn’t because playing the role of a “protector” is supposed to be pleasant in itself. Truth be told, it is pleasant for many men, or at least ego-stroking, and a lot of men have historically been quite explicit in expressing how much emotional satisfaction they get from providing for and protecting their wife and children. But that’s not the main point here.
The more important point has to do with ripple effects, and (1) the indirect payoffs that come from assuming the social role that men, as men, assume, as well as (2) the disadvantages that restricted mobility in physical space imposes on women, as women, vis-a-vis men.
Taking (2) first, living with certain spaces or times closed off to you by the threat of physical violence, without being able to safely and comfortably walk through many public spaces in a big city, or in certain male-dominated spaces (certain kinds of workplaces, certain kinds of clubs and bars), or much of anywhere at night has direct effects on what you can and cannot realistically do with your time. The lack of freedom that comes from the realistic fear of rape, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual aggression directly effects women’s ability to participate in civic life, in politics, and in certain kinds of work. It has direct effects on women’s prospects for business, on women’s prospects for work, on where and when and with whom they can socialize, and in any number of other ways on their economic, social, and political participation. It also has indirect ripple effects: the effects of living with constant warnings and a constant feeling of confinement, as well as the effects of having to find, please, and satisfy the Right Man in order to safely navigate everyday situations that most men have no worries about navigating. (It’s worth considering how much of stereotypical American femininity is linked, either directly or indirectly, with the threat of rape and with the need for male “protectors.”) That works to the systematic disadvantage of women, which means that it works to the systematic advantage of certain men who are, or would otherwise be, in competition for jobs, promotions, socio-political status, etc. (The connection between the traditional “protector” role and the traditional “provider” role for the male “head of household” is not accidental.)
As for (1), those indirect payoffs have largely to do with the way in which women are socially expected to defer to men, both in public forums and in interpersonal relationships, and to focus on finding, pleasing and satisfying the Right Man. How women are expected act as sexual “gatekeepers” and not to be assertive about their own sexual desires, and to have a sexual experience more or less on the man’s terms. Also with corresponding, often subconscious entitlement that men have acted on and continue to act on. Expectations used to be very strong, and quite explicit in social norms; in these days — by which I mean the last 40 years or so; the change was very dramatic and quite recent, in the grand scheme of things — we have largely shifted towards unspoken, or covert versions of the same thing. But they are still there. If you see more or less what I’m talking about in your own life and the lives of people you know, then that’s what I’m trying to point out when I endorse Brownmiller’s claim that stranger-rape serves to promote male power and male privileges over women — even, or especially, the power and privileges of men who do not themselves commit rape. If you don’t see it, then I’ll just plead that I don’t have the talent or the space to really get you to see it within the space allowed by a blog post or a comments thread. What I’d want you to take away is an some idea, even if only in rough outline, of the kind of stuff I mean when I say that non-rapist men get concrete privileges out of the violent undesigned order that arises from the violence of male rapists against women. For a fuller and more convincing elaboration of the specifics, I’d just have to point you to extended treatments in the feminist literature, starting with Brownmiller’s book itself–which, after all, only had a few short summary paragraphs quoted and discussed in the course of my post–and with other work that discusses sexism in contemporary language, media, culture, sexuality, etc. My post wasn’t really intended to give you a full panoramic view of Brownmiller’s theory of rape, let alone her whole theory of patriarchy; my aim was just to help point certain of my readers towards the right lens to use when you try to get the view.
This is really a separate issue. The reason that white stereotyping of black people as violent or criminal — and the fear that results — is harmful to black people is that that fear is projected onto all black people, and then used by politically and socially well-connected white people to justify individual practices and large-scale policies that hurt black people (e.g. economically deserting certain neighborhoods, or the racist War on Drug Users, or increasingly violent policing and punitive imprisonment). There’s no real equivalent in the situation between men and women as depicted by Brownmiller. Firstly because the fear is not universally projected onto all men, or at least not equally onto all men. (The key move in her theory has to do with men who are seen primarily as protectors, rather than as rapists.) Secondly, because the fear of rape is not usually used to justify increased violence against men as such. (After all, it’s men, not women, who have the advantage in terms of access to economic and political resources; so women’s response, by necessity, is to depend more upon the “good” men as a defense against the bad, rather than to push through policies and practices that punish the “good” men along with the bad.)
Hope this helps.
May 18th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Rad Geek-
Thank you for explaining to me the reasoning behind much of the talk of “rape culture” and so forth. I had never before heard a sensible explanation of it. Generally, it was offered up as accusatory, and I’m left standing there thinking “But I haven’t done anything!” I’m not sure I agree with every point of the idea, but I finally understand it now.
That idea gets a lot of play on college campuses. I have to admit that despite all my time in academia, I’ve never really tried to understand it. Of course, when it’s offered up as an accusation, the safest thing for me to do is just nod my head and then get back to the science building, where those sorts of theories aren’t discussed much. And even when the women in the science building do discuss sexual assault they’re usually talking about getting better lighting and callboxes for the bike paths, or something. Of course, maybe if I tried to get into the topic more with them, I would have learned something sooner. However, my general thought was that sexual assault is a depressing and scary topic, and so it’s not like I go out of my way to bring it up, and it’s a bad idea to bring up theories offered up in an accusatory manner.
Anyway, thanks for explaining it. I wish that the people who try to explain this on college campuses would offer it up in a more explanatory and less accusatory manner. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to offer up excuses for more than a decade of not trying to understand something, but, well, the situation is what it is. Thanks for helping me understand it, finally.
May 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thoreau,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad if you found what I wrote useful.
I understand that it’s easy to get defensive, and hard to know how to deal with the conversation, when something like the rape culture comes up. It’s natural to want to defend yourself when it seems like you’re being implicated (morally, if not legally) in crimes that you didn’t personally commit, and which you personally would oppose and condemn. What I’d want to say is that — while obviously I can’t speak for people that you’ve talked to and I haven’t — I know that, in my experience, most feminists who talk about a rape culture are much less interested in ripping on random men than they are on trying (1) to shake up a settled power and a kind of institutional inertia among the administration, (2) to make certain kinds of unhelpful responses to rape (apathy, victim-blaming, etc.) publicly unacceptable, and (3) to make it clear to their audience (sometimes men, but also, keep in mind, other women on campus) how certain sorts of danger and violence, imposed on women by a hard to identify but always present subset of the men on campus, are connected to a broader set of issues. There’s a necessary element of urgency, and impatience, and of very real and very justified anger, which may make something seem like a personal accusation when it’s not really intended as such, and would be better understood if not taken as such.
Robin Warshaw wrote a very good book, some years ago, called I Never Called It Rape, which offers a good overview of some of the research on acquaintance rape and offers a gentle introduction to some of the feminist critique of rape myths, and the role of common norms in heterosexual dating and sexuality, in particular, and rape culture. (By “gentle” I mean it doesn’t presuppose much about your ideological or academic background. It’s an unpleasant book to read, given the topic.) It may help explain in more depth part of what I’m talking about, in one area. It also provides a good walk-through of Mary Koss’s 1985 study of rape on college campuses, which has been the object of quite a bit of ill-founded, uncharitable, and sometimes downright dishonest criticism, including an unfortunate amount of it in self-described libertarian forums.
One thing I should note is that in my post and in these comments, I’ve mainly been talking about one direction of causation: the way in which certain social phenomena may be unintended ripple-effects of the prevalence of rape and the threat of rape. But feminist who write about a “rape culture” have something to say about both directions of causation: they think that what they call a “rape culture” is not only partly the effect of rape, but also a contributing cause, in that it promotes cultural norms that partly motivate rape (and encourage rapists to justify their crimes to themselves), makes it easier for rapists to act with impunity, encourages non-rapist men to dismiss or smear rape victims and make excuses for rapists, and very strongly discourages women from speaking out about their experience of rape except in those limited cases where it conforms to a stereotypical script and serves the interest of one group of men as against another group of men. So the view is not just that rape culture is the effect of rape, but that the two are mutually reinforcing of each other.
Hope this helps.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
[...] a supplement, I highly recommend his two lengthy comments to my Art of the Possible entry on the same topic. Posted by Jim Henley @ 11:14 pm, Filed under: Main « « Fanboys Unlimited | Main [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
[...] Rad Geek: Thoreau, Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad if you found what I wrote useful. I understand that it’s easy to get defensive, and hard to kno… [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 am
[...] book, but I really like this idea of better defaults a lot. Jim recently had a post up about how spontaneous order does not necessarily lead to good outcomes. Libertarians often take that for granted, but it’s always struck me as wishful thinking. But [...]
June 9th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
[...] into something more honest, multifaceted, and interesting. See also in this respect Henley’s Art of the Possible post, and the site as a whole: Liberals and libertarians on common ground… and otherwise. Henley says [...]
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
[...] into something more honest, multifaceted, and interesting. See also in this respect Henley’s Art of the Possible post, and the site as a whole: “Liberals and libertarians on common ground… and [...]
June 29th, 2008 at 11:07 am
guns for home protection…
You must put a lot of work into blogging this much!…