[cauch]

> That's the main argument of the grandparent post.

Exactly, and I've answered that saying I'm not convinced, so, I've asked you if you had further arguments. I've said at the time why it was not convincing, and I've built even more in my previous comment.

> If a woman dates a man that's smaller than her, who should be more worried about violence?

I still think it's the woman, because not every parent beat their children despite them being smaller, which proves that being bigger does not mean being violent. You need something more. In this case, I think it's a culture that implies that violent men are manly and successful, which is present in the manosphere. Because there is no such culture (I guess you can find anecdotical case, far from being as common as the manosphere) that implies that women beating men is somehow "womenly", I doubt it implies that tall women will beat men at the same rate.

> But then you need a really good explanation for the data in the above post.

All the data adds up, everything is pretty well predicted by this model. Not sure which data you think this model does not explain (unless you think that somehow this model implies 0%-100%, which is of course not the case). On the other hand, I doubt anyone has ever proven that being taller in the relationship is really a strong causal factor (and not just correlation, as the manosphere is also into going to the gym) (but happy to get links if you have some).

[Dylan16807]

> Exactly, and I've answered that saying I'm not convinced, so, I've asked you if you had further arguments. I've said at the time why it was not convincing, and I've built even more in my previous comment.

You never made it clear that you understood the argument, because you went straight from "Not sure what is your point" to "Why would it be". That doesn't look like a request for more convincing, that looks like you never considered it.

> I still think it's the woman, because not every parent beat their children despite them being smaller, which proves that being bigger does not mean being violent.

What. Not every dating relationship involves violence either. We're talking about what's more likely here.

Also children and dates are different in so many ways that even ignoring that factor this doesn't disprove the argument at all.

> Not sure which data you think this model does not explain

If the root cause is culture encouraging men to be physically violent, why would the total amount of physical violence be the same in gay relationships, especially lesbian ones?

[cauch]

I'm simply trying to have an enjoyable conversation where we all learn and understand each other. I was just saying "I'm not convinced by this, but maybe I did not understood" to avoid assuming incorrectly, and to invite non-confrontationally to clarify if I'm wrong and provide more arguments.

I'm not saying that the children example means that "every bigger persons will be violent towards a smaller person", I'm trying to explain that the children example means that "violence is not the result of being bigger, it's the result of the individual propensity to be violent, which itself depends a lot of the individual 'world view'". What I call here 'world view' is how the individual understand the world, their role in this world, what they can or cannot do, ... This is something built based on their parent education, but also their personal experience, what they absorb from the ambient culture and how they identify with different societal messages.

Such influence is taken as obvious in plenty of places: we don't question concepts like "different countries have different cultures and therefore people act differently", or "the education that this person has received had an impact in the way they act now", or ...

I find strange that, when it is a discussion that we can frame as "men vs women", these things that we immediately considered impactful in other situations are suddenly considered as totally non-impactful in this context.

Because of that, it feels unrealistic to pretend that women will obviously be as violent if they were stronger than men and that the only thing that stops them is them being smaller.

> If the root cause is culture encouraging men to be physically violent, why would the total amount of physical violence be the same in gay relationships, especially lesbian ones?

I've mentioned that (when I've said "if indeed it is cultural, it implies that different sub-culture may have different ways of acting"). The propensity of violence depends on the "world view", which itself depends on personal experience, what is the message the society send to the individual their role is, ...

In the case of lesbians:

1) I don't think we can easily say "it's the same". Some studies even say it's more, but then, how do you explain that with your model? But looking into it, it looks like the consensus is that it is a difficult study and that we don't have a good statistical significance: the consensus seems to be that concluding "it's the same" is not scientific right now, all we can say is "it may be the same, but it may also not be the same, we don't know yet".

2) The life experience, the social message they receive, the relationship dynamics, ... are quite different in lesbian couples and in heterosexual couples. And all of this affects the propensity to violence. I can understand that a group where the members grew up in a society that sends the message their sexual attraction is "wrong" or "deviant" does not have, for example, the same self-esteem than a group where it is not the case. It is not fair to pretend that lesbian couples have the same background and the same situation than heterosexual couples.

So, in the case of lesbians, the data you provide is not challenging my model: it can easily be that men may be more violent in heterosexual relationship because of sociocultural message (such as "getting angry is the manly way to deal with frustration") or sociocultural role (such as "men are the breadwinner and are focusing more on their career, so they have more pressure and snap differently than women"), while lesbians may be more violent because of their sociocultural message inside their own subculture (maybe? Maybe for example "in a lesbian couple, we expect to have a butch one and a dominated one") or their life experience (maybe? Maybe for example "low self-esteem of both the victim and the abuser leads to a relationship dynamic that facilitate violence").

I'm also interested to have more information about your view on the phenomenon like the manosphere. I don't think we have a "female manosphere" that promotes the same culture of violence towards the partner (I'm sure there are cases, but that is not at all the same order of magnitude in popularity and mainstreamness). Sure, the people who really fall for the manosphere rhetoric is a minority, but they are the extreme of a Gaussian curve that indicate that the mean value is not at the same place for men and for women. If it's the case, is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all (and if it has no impact at all, why people who defend that it has no impact will also be worried about "the image of the men" when it comes to talking about violence done by men? Why would be one message harmless and the other dangerous?)

[Dylan16807]

> I'm simply trying to have an enjoyable conversation where we all learn and understand each other. I was just saying "I'm not convinced by this, but maybe I did not understood" to avoid assuming incorrectly, and to invite non-confrontationally to clarify if I'm wrong and provide more arguments.

That's reasonable as a goal but I implore you to be clearer next time. You didn't address the evidence they gave so I couldn't tell if you understood at all or if you though other evidence was more compelling.

> I'm trying to explain that the children example means that "violence is not the result of being bigger, it's the result of the individual propensity to be violent, which itself depends a lot of the individual 'world view'".

I don't think that's good enough evidence for such a strong claim. Not at all enough to say the size factor is flat-out disproven by it.

And overall I do think world view is important, but I bet physical size is a significant factor too unless the evidence above is extra bunk.

> I find strange that, when it is a discussion that we can frame as "men vs women", these things that we immediately considered impactful in other situations are suddenly considered as totally non-impactful in this context.

I'm not saying totally non impactful but it's unclear what percentage.

> Because of that, it feels unrealistic to pretend that women will obviously be as violent if they were stronger than men and that the only thing that stops them is them being smaller.

The statistics given are not based on pretending.

> it looks like the consensus is that it is a difficult study and that we don't have a good statistical significance

That is a much better argument.

> while lesbians may be more violent because of their sociocultural message inside their own subculture (maybe? Maybe for example "in a lesbian couple, we expect to have a butch one and a dominated one") or their life experience (maybe? Maybe for example "low self-esteem of both the victim and the abuser leads to a relationship dynamic that facilitate violence").

Edited this line to make it clearer: Maybe but looking at that level of complication still makes it harder to evaluate man versus woman in any random relationship, especially those very individual life experience factors that can affect anyone.

> I'm also interested to have more information about your view on the phenomenon like the manosphere. [...] is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all

I'm not sure how much it impacts violence in particular, shrug. But whatever effect it has is divided by the relative rarity of believers.

> If it's the case, is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all (and if it has no impact at all, why people who defend that it has no impact will also be worried about "the image of the men" when it comes to talking about violence done by men? Why would be one message harmless and the other dangerous?)

Listen, I haven't heard this debate before, and I'm not taking part in it, but your comparison here isn't reasonable. Asking if one message increases violence and asking if the other message hurts someone's image are completely different things. If someone says no and yes respectively there's no hypocrisy.

[cauch]

> but I implore you to be clearer next time. You didn't address the evidence they gave

I did: I even quoted that part in my previous comment: this part is indeed in the first comment (the sentence starting with " Secondly, if indeed it is cultural, ..." that explains why the data does not prove the conclusion they proposed). But it does not matter, I think we cleared this.

> I don't think that's good enough evidence for such a strong claim.

The children example is not an evidence for a claim.

If you say "I only saw black cats, so all cats are black", I can answer "I'm not convinced, maybe you just saw black cats but non-black cats exist, after all, other animals, like dogs, horses, cows, ... have different color". You now say "the fact that dogs have different colors is not a proof". Of course it's not, nobody pretended it was. I just explain why the initial claim is not convincing. I'm not the one making any claim, I'm just saying that this claim is just a guess and that there are different models that explain the situation as accurately (or maybe even more accurately, as they are also compatible with other behaviors, while the presented model still need to explain why some mechanisms exist in some situation and suddenly disappear in others).

> Maybe but looking at that level of complication still makes it harder to evaluate man versus woman in any random relationship

And so is the reality: it is hard to evaluate man vs woman in any random relationship. Is your point that it is not the case? Or that we should reject models that imply that just because you prefer models more convenient? "Sure, quantum mechanism is interesting, but it makes things more complicated, so let's just pretend it is incorrect"

> But whatever effect it has is divided by the relative rarity of believers.

That is not at all what I say. I explain it in the ellipsis you removed from your quote. I'm saying that the extreme of the distribution shows that we cannot simply assume that the mean is at the same place. For example, women lives older than men, and you can also see it by looking at the very old persons: they are extremely rare, but yet, women are more common.

I don't say at all that violence against women is due to manosphere, the same way I'm not saying that if you ignore people older than 100 years, you will not see any life-expectancy difference between men and women.

What I was saying is that, culturally, "men behaving towards women in ways that may lead to violence" is more assimilated as normal in our society than "women behaving towards men in the same ways". The manosphere is the extreme, as is "people older than 115 year old", but the fact that the manosphere is only about "men towards women" and that there no significant equivalent "women towards men" shows that the average assimilation of default behaviors are different.

> but your comparison here isn't reasonable

I'm not comparing the two.

What I don't understand is that on one hand, the claim is that violence is mainly due to a "mechanical fixed parameter" such as the size of the person and that societal messaging has no significant impact. But that on the other hand, these people are also saying that it is very bad that we hurt the image of men, because societal message has consequence.

[Dylan16807]

> "I'm not convinced, maybe you just saw black cats but non-black cats exist, after all, other animals, like dogs, horses, cows, ... have different color".

Well the actual argument wasn't nearly as extreme as "only black fur", and a better (but still messy) analogy would be you citing one other animal and we don't have good stats for any other kinds of animal either. That's part of why I'm saying the child example isn't very good at affecting convincedness.

Also you used the word "proves", I feel like if you say X proves Y then it's not weird for me to call that a "claim". I don't think "I'm not the one making any claim" is valid here; you're responding to the original claim with arguments that include your own claims.

> there are different models that explain the situation as accurately

I'd say that so far none of the models here reach "very convincing" for all the data at hand. They're all big maybes.

> I'm saying that the extreme of the distribution shows that we cannot simply assume that the mean is at the same place.

Well even with a completely isolated size factor, the means are different. I don't think anyone was saying that.

And sure the distributions might have different shapes. There's a lot of analysis here that hasn't been done.

> What I don't understand is that on one hand, the claim is that violence is mainly due to a "mechanical fixed parameter" such as the size of the person and that societal messaging has no significant impact.

That's too binary. One thing can be the main effect while another is still quite significant. Like 75/25 just to toss out a number.

[cauch]

The places I've used "prove" are in totally different contexts that the context in which you pretended I was claiming some proof.

For the rest, it feels like you are moving the goalpost. The initial discussion was about the fact that if there is an impact of the societal messaging, it is smart to acknowledge that (and I insisted that it should still be done carefully). If now you are saying 75/25, then you are still saying that the societal messaging has an impact. Therefore I still think it's smart to acknowledge it.

(I understand the objection that it may be too dangerous, but unfortunately you did not go into this direction. I come back on that on my last paragraph.)

Why this impression? Your initial main argument was initially resting on "lesbian couples have the same amount of violence", but this argument does not make sense if it is 75/25: if there is a 25% effect, what does observing the same rate means? If you observe exactly the same rate, does it mean that we have a societal impact that somehow canceled itself, or does it means that in fact the "natural rate of violence from women" is less than men (the exact thing you pretend this data proves impossible), but that the societal impact increases it up to reach the same value? If indeed you believe in the 75/25, then the "same rate amongst lesbians" cannot prove anything. And on top of that, now, you also need to justify why it is 75/25 and not 85/15 or 65/35, and the whole argument seems to be "it's my gut feeling" (not that it is bad in itself, but then you cannot use that as basis to pretend that the lesbian data proves something).

I can be wrong, but because of that, it feels to me that you were not really agreeing to 75/25 at the beginning of the discussion (otherwise you would not have used the "lesbian rate" argument as you had), but now that the discussion advanced, you are making some concessions but still try to find some reasons why the conclusion you prefer is still valid. If my impression is correct, it means that instead of looking at the arguments first and reaching the conclusion based on the arguments, you start with the conclusion that you prefer, and build arguments in order to defend this conclusion.

(and I understand that you instinctively prefer the conclusion where we avoid acknowledging that there is something specific to men, it's not a comfortable prospect)

I've mentioned that we could have discussed around the danger of acknowledging. Unfortunately, if now we start discussing that, it will just reinforce my feeling that you jump to another thread now that one ran its course because you want to defend the conclusion you like.

So, yeah, I guess there is not much more to add here.