An informal poll about attitudes - REVISED

[unixronin]

Caution:  May be inflammatory.

Just for the sake of possibly-morbid curiosity:  I direct you to this article that perspicuity pointed out to me elsewhere.  Please go and read it.  Particularly the beginning.

Now, please answer only one poll.  First up, asking my readers of the feminine persuasion here:

[Poll #1472271]

For my chromosomally heterogeneous readers, I offer the following alternate poll with your own seven eight choices:

[Poll #1472272]

My personal feeling is that if you regard every male as a probable rapist lacking only the opportunity, I want some way to know in advance, because if the very first thought that goes through a woman's head is, "Is that man going to try to rape me?", I don't even want to start a conversation.  I find the whole attitude insulting, to say the least.  It's way too high a disadvantage to start out having to first of all convince someone that you're not planning to rape or murder them, and if I knew in advance that I was going to be up against that, I'd move on immediately to talk to someone saner.  I don't know how people who approach the world with that kind of level of fear every day can even function, but I do believe that it's not my responsibility to walk on eggshells everywhere I go, just to avoid triggering someone else's paranoia.

(Heh.  I just discovered I have to answer both polls to be able to see the results of my own poll.  Pretty obviously, so does everyone else.  Please note I am RESUBMITTING to add a "Just show me the results" entry to each poll.  If you already voted, this means your vote will be lost.  Feel free to vote again.  We apologize for the confusion.)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, I don't see it that way. Unless threats outnumber non-threats, it is more efficient to identify the threats among the non-threat majority than to eliminate the non-threats. (And if threats even come close to matching the number of non-threats, you probably shouldn't go out at all — though there are exceptions to this rule. See below.)

Consider this reasoning for a moment:
1. I am very seldom attacked. Therefore the majority of people are not tangible threats.
2. Those people who are threats are therefore a minority that differs from the majority.
3. Since I cannot detect internal motivation, I have to go by behavior. But if the internal motivation of the actual threats is different from the majority, then their behavior may be as well. Therefore I may be able to identify them by their atypical behavior, which will stand out from the norm.
4. Not all atypical behaviors are harmful or threatening. Therefore when I detect someone behaving atypically, I must assess whether that behavior differs in a threatening way.

I probably cannot detect ALL threats this way, because some threats may not be identifiable by their actions. But if I have identified and avoided a number of visibly identifiable threats without encountering a non-identifiable threat, it is probably reasonable to infer that the number of non-identifiable threats is small compared to the number of identifiable threats, which is in turn small compared to the general population. Hence if I avoid the identifiable threats, I have in all probability avoided a large majority of all threats; and I cannot screen out the non-identifiable threats in the first place.

It doesn't always work, of course. Sometimes you DO run into an unidentifiable threat. The driver who left-turned into me across a divided expressway in 1999 was not in a turn lane, did not slow down, did not signal a turn, and in fact gave no visible indication whatsoever that she was about to turn until she turned. It being about twenty minutes after sundown, I could not see where she was looking. When the threat finally became apparent, I only had maybe a second and a half in which to react and evade, and that wasn't enough.

(I note, by the way, that this specific situation — a motorcyclist sharing the road with other traffic — is a case in which the population is inverted, and there are so many other drivers who are thoughtless, simply inattentive, or even actively malicious that the only prudent strategy is to consider ALL other vehicles on the road as potential threats. But in this case, it is not cost-effective to try to screen out the ones that are not threats; you simply avoid them all as though they were all threats, and continually form updated escape plans. A vehicle that turns out not to be a threat doesn't cost you anything.)

No strategy is perfect. But as long as the proportion of actual threats in the population is small, I find looking for the odd-ones-out that behave differently from the majority to be much more efficient — and much less mentally demanding — than screening every member of the majority to see that they really aren't threats. The greater the margin by which non-threats outnumber threats, the more efficient it is.

(This is why concealed carry has been found to be a more effective deterrent to crime than open carry, even when only a very small percentage of people carry. Criminals can easily identify the people who are carrying openly, and avoid them. But they can't easily identify the ones who carry concealed, and the more of those there are, the higher the risk of getting it wrong, even if the absolute number is still small. Criminals turn out to be very risk-averse. A National Institute of Justice study in the late 90s, surveyed about 2000 convicted felons in Federal prisons, of whom more than 90% stated that on one or more occasions, they had decided against committing a crime merely because they thought it was possible their intended victim might be armed.)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

One thing to be said in the favor of our original Paranoid Woman -- talking to strangers *is* unusual behavior in our modern urban setting. If a stranger starts talking to me, my alert level goes up several notches.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Is it? People talk to me pretty regularly when I'm out and about.

OTOH, I appear to exude a strong 'knows where he's going' vibe since a lot of those are people asking me for directions.

When someone finally stabs me, I suppose at least I'll know how to get to the hospital ;-)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Further comment -- we tend to gloss over the difference between "all strangers are dangerous" and "all men are rapists" in this kind of discussion.