Debunking Denialism

Note: while this post attempts to highlights some of the limitations I perceive with the “Schrödinger’s rapist” post, I accept most of the central claims made in the analogy (such as don’t rape, that women set their own risk tolerance, that men need to be aware of the first person cognitive evaluation made by women, respecting women and don’t harass them etc.). Therefore, this evaluation should not be understood as providing any support whatsoever for men’s rights activism (MRA) and/or those strongly opposing the “Schrödinger’s rapist” analogy. See “Summary” for a short explanation of what I think of the analogy if you don’t feel like reading through the entire post.

There is one special blog post that has become iconic for social justice vigilantes online. It got over a thousand comments in five days (on a relatively small blog) before the comment section was closed and has probably been linked and shared thousands and thousands of times. I am, of course, talking about the “Schrödinger’s Rapist” analogy, composed by Phaedra Starling on the now defunct blog called Shapely Prose.

Needless to say, the blog post caused a storm of both approval and praise, but also criticism and vitriolic hate. However, as the dust slowly settles, I think it is time to take a close, disinterested look at the advantages and drawbacks of the analogy. As we will see, it correctly captures something fundamental about the experience of women and the general message of the blog post is genuine and reasonable. However, it does not fully appreciate the complexity of the situation and also makes a couple of statistical and factual errors that should be acknowledged.

Strengths

I find that the strengths of the Schrödinger’s rapist analogy primarily lie in the emotional impact of the text on the reader who genuinely did not understand the inside cognitive view of being a woman in such a social context. I have separated the strengths into four different categories: common sense, conscious-raising, empathy and realism.

Common Sense: the blog post makes a lot of common sense points that every rational person should accept. These include things like don’t rape, don’t grope, don’t threaten with or use physical force, as well as the importance of social context when trying to approach women. If everyone would understand and implement these lessons in their everyday life, the world would be a much better place.

Conscious-raising: reading and understanding the innermost thoughts and feelings of someone is a very conscious-raising experience. Things that you either did not know at all, or suspected but never fully appreciated the scope of, can become abundantly clear in an instant. The “Schrödinger’s rapist” analogy is a very good conscious-raising piece for those that did not understand the specifics of the experience of women in this context.

Empathy: because the analogy portrays the cognitive inside view of how it is sometimes like to be a women and thereby taps into empathy and compassion, the central points makes a much stronger impact than if it merely was a cold reporting of facts.

Realism: the “Schrödinger’s rapist” analogy may very well realistically explain the experience of many women around the world. It does not appear to be written in an exaggerated form just to cause controversy, but to be a genuine piece with an important message. Of course, it does not necessarily represent the view of all women but judging by the support it has garnished so far among various Internet feminists, it does not appear to be a fringe view either.

Drawbacks

There are also a few weaknesses with the blog post. These are primarily statistical and factual mistakes.

Quantum quackery: the analogy uses the phase “Schrödinger’s rapist” to indicate that a given women does not know for a fact if the man is a rapist or not. She can only assign subjective probabilities (corresponding to degrees of belief) for the two competing hypotheses. While this is true, it is unfortunate that Starling alluded to quantum mechanics in naming the analogy. Had the women had complete knowledge of the situation (including the man’s intentions), there would probably not have been much doubt regarding whether or not the man would rape her or not. This is not the case for quantum-scale particles. The uncertainty principle does not exist due to imperfect measuring equipment, but is a fundamental aspect of nature. It does not involve subjective degrees of belief.

Two thoughtful counterarguments can be made to this objection: Read more of this post