mjg59 | Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist and why this matters

(This post contains some discussion of rape and sexual assault but does not go into any specifics)

There was a brief controversy at Linux.conf.au back in 2011. The final keynote speaker gave a compelling presentation on online privacy, including some slides containing sexualised imagery. This was against the terms of the conference policies, and resulted in an apology from the conference organisers and the speaker. The situation was unfortunate but well handled, and that should have been the end of it.

Afterwards, there was some pushback on the conference mailing list. Concerns were raised about the policy being overly restrictive and the potential for it to be used to stifle speech that influential groups disagreed with. I don't agree with these arguments, but discussion of why policies have been implemented is completely natural and provides an opportunity for a community to determine what its expected standards are.

And then Ted Ts'o effectively called rape victims liars[1]. At first I assumed that this was just some sort of horrific failure to understand the implications of what he was saying, so I emailed him to check. The reply I got drew a pretty clear distinction between the case of a drunk college student raping another drunk college student in their room and the case of knifepoint rape in a dark park. You know, the difference between accidental rape and rape rape. The difference between the one any of us might have done and the one that only bad people do. Legitimate rape and the "rape" that those feminists talk about. The distinction that lets rapists convince themselves that they didn't really rape anyone because they weren't holding a knife at the time.

Ted Ts'o argues that only a small percentage of rape really counts as what people think of as rape. Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist.

There's an ongoing scandal in the UK at the moment. A well known DJ, Jimmy Savile, died last year. He grew up in a working class family, but through hard work and natural talent was one of the most significant figures in promoting pop music in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and worked in various parts of the BBC for the best part of 30 years. He spent significant amounts of time raising money for charity, and it's estimated that he raised over £40 million for various causes. Since his death, around 300 people have accused him of sexually abusing them. The BBC is desperately trying to explain why it cancelled an expose shortly before it aired. Multiple people who worked there at the time claim that everyone knew he was involved in indecent activities, but saying anything would risk both their career and the charities that depended on his fundraising. Nobody said anything, and he was allegedly free to continue his abuse.

Ted Ts'o is a significant figure in the Linux kernel community. He has expressed abhorrent beliefs that damage that community. Condemnation was limited to a mailing list with limited readership, meaning, effectively, that nobody said anything. Last week the Ada Initiative published a blog post pointing out the damage that did, and I realised that my effective silence was not only helping to alienate 50% of the population from involving themselves with Linux, it was also implicitly supporting my community leadership. I was giving the impression that I was basically fine with our community leaders telling people that it wasn't really rape if you were both drunk enough. I was increasing the chances of members of our community being sexually assaulted. Silence is endorsement. Saying nothing is not ok.

In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I'll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I'm compelled to as a result of my job. I won't be attending any Linux Foundation events he's involved in organising. If I'm running any events, I won't be inviting him. At a time when we're finally making progress in making our community more open and supportive, we don't need leaders who undermine that work. Support organisations who encourage that progress, not the people who help drag us back.

Footnotes

[1]The original archive has vanished. I've put up a copy of the relevant thread here. Throughout, Ted states that he's actually arguing against the idea that women need to be frightened of sexual assault, and not against the definition of rape. Except saying things like This one does a pretty good job of taking apart the Koss / Ms. Magazine study, which is the source for the "1 in 4" number. For example, it points out that over half of those cases were ones where undergraduates were plied with alcohol, and did not otherwise involve using physical force or other forms of coercion is difficult to read in any way other than "Half of the people you're counting as having been raped haven't really been raped", and favourably referring to an article that asserts that the rate of false rape reports is probably close to 50% is pretty strong support for the idea that many rape victims are liars.

(Update 2012/10/30: Adam Williamson suggests in this comment that this mail is a better example of Ted's behaviour - there's some explicit victim blaming and a lot of "Is that rape" questioning with the obvious implication that the answer should be "no". Ted Ts'o is a victim blaming rape apologist.)

(Update 2012/11/05: It's been suggested that I haven't been sufficiently clear about which of Ted's statements justify my claims. So, here we go.

In this mail, Ted links to and endorses this article. He explicitly links to it because of its treatment of rape statistics. Quoting directly from that article:
the rate of false reports is at least 9 percent and probably closer to 50 percent
Ted explicitly endorses an article that claims that a significant percentage of reported rapes are false. The study that generated that figure is held in poor regard by other researchers in the field - Australian police figures indicate that 2.1% of rape accusations were classified as false. Ted asserts that he was trying to argue against poor use of statistics, so it's a fair assumption that he agrees with the alternative statistics that he's citing. Ted believes that many rape victims are making false accusations. Ted believes that many rape victims are liars.

Again in this mail, Ted argues against a claimed figure that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. One of his arguments is that Also found in the Koss study, although not widely reported, was the statistic that of the women whom she classified as being raped (although 73% refused to self-classify the event as rape), 46% of them had subsequent sex with the reported assailant. Ted disagrees with a statistic because some rape victims subsequently have sex with the reported assailant. This means that Ted believes that this indicates that they were not really raped. Ted is a rape apologist.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mjg59

Right. You're saying that Ted meant something other than what he wrote, and you're justifying this via various suppositions that don't obviously follow from what he did write.

From: (Anonymous)

"You're saying that Ted meant something other than what he wrote"

I'm saying that specifically his "the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent" is too vague, and it's very unlikely he meant that the inability to understand consent would automatically exclude someone from all responsibility. Note that the literal interpretation would not justify Valerie Aurora's description either.

"and you're justifying this via various suppositions that don't obviously follow from what he did write"

My view is justified by a lot more than just "various suppositions", including:
- That a drunk enough person could freely rape anyone without legal consequences is ridiculous enough that it's unlikely he'd really mean to say that.
- Interpreting it that way would make the logical structure of his post inconsistent. If he meant such a general principle, why would he only apply it to a case with both drunk? And other similar issues.
- Interpreting it that way would conflict with his other views on alcohol use. Given his other views, it does not look plausible he'd say something like "you were drunk at the time, so it's not your fault".

From:

mjg59

I'm saying that specifically his "the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent" is too vague, and it's very unlikely he meant that the inability to understand consent would automatically exclude someone from all responsibility

That's what he said. Despite having had ample opportunity, he hasn't claimed that he's been misinterpreted on that point.

Note that the literal interpretation would not justify Valerie Aurora's description either.

Going back to Ted:

Now, actually, the way the law works is that not only does the being raped be not able to give consent, but that the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent

and Valerie:

Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that rape was impossible if both people were drunk enough

If both parties are sufficiently drunk that they are unable to know that the other person was not able to give legal consent, a straightforward reading of Ted's claim is that it's not rape. The literal interpretation precisely matches Valerie's description.

That a drunk enough person could freely rape anyone without legal consequences is ridiculous enough that it's unlikely he'd really mean to say that.

It's exactly as ridiculous to claim that it's not rape purely because both parties were too drunk to realise that neither could grant consent.

Interpreting it that way would make the logical structure of his post inconsistent. If he meant such a general principle, why would he only apply it to a case with both drunk? And other similar issues.

Where is he only applying it to a case where both parties are drunk? He uses various examples to lead to his conclusion, which is that if you're drunk enough that you can't tell whether someone's given consent, you can't commit rape. It's a single thought experiment, not a series of them. The symmetrical case merely informs the asymmetrical one.

Interpreting it that way would conflict with his other views on alcohol use. Given his other views, it does not look plausible he'd say something like "you were drunk at the time, so it's not your fault".

He doesn't say it's ok. He just says it's not rape. There's no conflict with his other views on alcohol consumption.

From: (Anonymous)

"The literal interpretation precisely matches Valerie's description."

Her description matches it like "he supports voting rights for men of Aryan race" matches "I support universal suffrage". It's a consequence of the literal interpretation, but not an accurate description of it. An accurate description would be something like "one of his comments could be interpreted to mean that he believes drunk enough people are free of all legal responsibility related to rape". Even if you omit the "could be interpreted" part, this description would still make it a lot more obvious that it's unlikely to be his real view.

"It's exactly as ridiculous to claim that it's not rape purely because both parties were too drunk to realise that neither could grant consent."

I don't think the thought experiment case is ridiculous at all; due to the symmetry the only logical alternatives are that both are rapists of neither is.

Are you again trying to mix this up with other, asymmetric, cases?

Where is he only applying it to a case where both parties are drunk?

Immediately afterward he only applies it to the thought experiment with both drunk. His later questions about the study again mentioned "numbers might be skewed by cases where both parties were drunk". No mention of anything like "numbers might be skewed by cases where the 'rapist' was drunk", even though that would be an obvious consequence. Generally no discussion of the full consequences, even though they would be remarkable.

"He doesn't say it's ok. He just says it's not rape."

I doubt alcohol would make him stop considering it rape from non-legal terminology perspective, and I'd expect him to say something about it if he thought there was a difference in this case.

From:

mjg59

Ok, so you don't object to one of his comments means that he believes drunk enough people are free of all legal responsibility related to rape. Rephrasing that as Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that he believes drunk enough people are free of all legal responsibility related to rape still seems to match the meaning. That seems equivalent to Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that he believes drunk enough people are innocent of rape, which seems to be Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that if both people were drunk enough they were both innocent of rape and I honestly can't find a meaningful difference between that and Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that rape was impossible if both people were drunk enough.

Are you again trying to mix this up with other, asymmetric, cases?

You're basing this asymmetry argument entirely on the belief that Ted meant something other than what he said. Get Ted to say that and I'll pay attention to it.

Immediately afterward he only applies it to the thought experiment with both drunk. His later questions about the study again mentioned "numbers might be skewed by cases where both parties were drunk". No mention of anything like "numbers might be skewed by cases where the 'rapist' was drunk", even though that would be an obvious consequence

Of course - he's questioning it in the context of women not themselves classifying the attacks as rape.

I doubt alcohol would make him stop considering it rape from non-legal terminology perspective, and I'd expect him to say something about it if he thought there was a difference in this case.

Ted says there's no rape that has taken place. He doesn't say "Legally, no rape has taken place". He doesn't say "Many people would not regard this as rape". He doesn't draw a distinction between legal and non-legal terminology. He clearly and explicitly says that if both parties are drunk, it's not rape.

From: (Anonymous)

About your rephrasing of his comments, I think the exact phrasing matters as I consider the comment at least vague, and something he'd likely clarify if questioned about it specifically. "Clarifying" his sentence to something you consider equal makes its original likely inaccuracy less obvious. Compare with someone writing "I'm a nazi" when he meant "I'm not a nazi"; if you expand this to an explanation about how he denies holocaust, wants to preserve racial purity and so on, then the possibility of a typo becomes a lot less obvious.

The essential difference between what his sentence could literally be taken to mean and what Valerie Aurora said is whether it depends on one person only. The first would say that it's legally OK to rape anyone on the street you can catch in your drunken state; the latter wouldn't. Another difference is that the first was clearly about interpretation of (US?) law only, while the latter wasn't.

"You're basing this asymmetry argument entirely on the belief that Ted meant something other than what he said."

Where did you get that idea? I'm not. His thought experiment was a symmetrical case. The "meant something other" question is whether his legal analysis of that case would imply a drunk can never be a rapist in any other case either.

Your line I was responding to was "exactly as ridiculous to claim that it's not rape purely because both parties were too drunk". Maybe that's just nonsense? I thought you were saying he implied (before the legal analysis, in addition to it) that in the symmetric case there would be no rape, and this would be the "other claim" compared to. If not, that I don't see what your "exactly as" would mean.

"He clearly and explicitly says that if both parties are drunk, it's not rape."

He clearly and explicitly says his symmetric thought experiment case with both Alice and Bob drunk is not rape. He does not say that any case where both parties are drunk would not be rape. That's exactly what you got wrong originally, so you shouldn't confuse those. (The questionable sentence about law could be taken to imply that ONE party being drunk would be enough to say that party can't legally be a rapist.)

From:

mjg59

The literal interpretation of what Ted says is that if you're too drunk to know that someone hasn't granted consent, it's not rape. Maybe that's not what Ted meant. He's had the opportunity to say so and hasn't. But until he does, you're reading something into his claims that isn't actually written, and everything you're then saying follows from that. I don't think Ted limited that claim to the symmetrical case. I don't see any reason for that to be the natural reading of what he wrote. You clearly disagree, and neither of us is going to change the other's mind. If Ted wants to clarify that point, he's free to.

From: (Anonymous)

Your interpretation is based on a single sentence out of Ted's mail, "Now, actually, the way the law works is that not only does the being raped be not able to give consent, but that the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent.". While this could be interpreted to imply absurd consequences, nowhere in the mail does Ted himself actually make such claims based on it. And the sentence occurs within the explanation of the symmetric "thought experiment" with Alice and Bob, so there's every reason to believe he did not mean the consequences such interpretation would have for other cases.

Your "everything you're then saying follows from that" is false. Obviously I've said a lot not related to this particular claim at all. And about this particular sentence, even if it was considered plausible to interpret it literally, that still would not justify Valerie Aurora's "rape was impossible if both people were drunk enough"; that's not an accurate representation of the sentence.

From:

mjg59

Oh, right. I see what the problem is. You're interpreting what Ted said as "Both these things need to occur", whereas what Ted's saying is "If this occurs, this other thing is a defence against it". He's asserting that inability to know that the other party is unable to give consent is a statutory defence, not that both conditions are required to satisfy the scenario he's describing.

From: (Anonymous)

Yes, there is a single sentence in his mail, "Now, actually, the way the law works is that not only does the being raped be not able to give consent, but that the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent.", that can be interpreted as a general statutory defence leading to absurd interpretations. But there is nothing else in his mail to suggest he actually meant such absurd results. This sentence occurs in the discussion of the symmetric case, and the only thing he himself uses it for is to argue that in that symmetric case neither is a rapist.

So, yes, there is a single sentence in Ted's mail that can be taken out of context to imply absurd consequences. But there's nothing in his mail to suggest he actually meant such consequences.

Also, I have already explicitly addressed this exact point multiple times, starting at least from this post (http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/18505.html?thread=734025#cmt734025). NOW you suddenly "see what the problem is"? If this is the level of your reading comprehension, no wonder you have problems interpreting Ted's mail.

From:

mjg59

No, the problem is your interpretation of it. You're right, it's absurd to think that drunkenness is a defence against an accusation of rape. It's absurd if you attack someone in the street, and it's absurd if you're alone in a room with an equally drunk person. It's even absurd to believe that a situation could arise where people are sufficiently drunk that they can't give informed consent but are still able to initiate sex. Ted believes absurd things.

From: (Anonymous)

Yes, most of those things would be absurd. But as I've explained, there's little reason to think Ted would believe them. And one thing that is NOT absurd is to say that being equally drunk should rule out rape, if the only reason to make rape accusations in the first place was the drunkenness of one party (claiming this would mean there was no informed consent). And this is what Ted was talking about.

You say it's "absurd to believe that a situation could arise where people are sufficiently drunk that they can't give informed consent but are still able to initiate sex". So apparently you believe it's informed consent pretty much all the way until totally passing out. But the mail is talking about a study classifying sex as "rape" due to drunkenness. Did the study use this same high "practically passed out" standard for its classification? If it did not, or if was not clear to the participants in the discussion that it did, then talking about this problem case in the classification is not absurd at all.

From:

mjg59

Ted's hypothetical scenario is one where one party takes advantage of another party's drunkenness by repeatedly requesting sex until the other party gives in. He then asks what happens if both parties are equally drunk. The answer's pretty straightforward - the one repeatedly requesting sex clearly wanted sex, and so it's ridiculous to claim that they were unaware of what they were doing. For it to be symmetrical, both parties would need to be asking the other party for sex even though they didn't want it themselves. That's absurd. The situation isn't symmetrical, and Ted's defence doesn't rely on symmetry.

From: (Anonymous)

You keep searching for ways to read the mail in absurd ways. You've decided in advance that he must be wrong, and will always find a way to interpret his writing to support your preconceptions.

I don't believe Ted would be totally insane or demented. The parts of his mail under discussion can be read in a way that's totally sensible, except for one inaccurate sentence about the technical workings of law, which he could have plausibly missed himself. That interpretation is a lot more plausible than your absurd suggestions.

Also, basing your character assassination attemps on claims about his view on law makes them even less believable. It's one thing to claim someone has questionable attitudes, but even more ridiculous to claim that someone non-ignorant would actually have the most absurd beliefs about practical law that you've attributed to him.

From:

mjg59

How about we go back to the beginning.

Ted wroteNow, actually, the way the law works is that not only does the being raped be not able to give consent, but that the rapist has to know that the the other person was not able to give legal consent.

The context here is the idea that Ted is disagreeing with a set of statistics. He is not arguing that the definition of rape used in itself is incorrect - he is arguing that some (perhaps many) of the cases classified as rape weren't actually rape because they were cases where both the victim and the attacker were drunk. He has used a thought experiment to attempt to demonstrate that cases where both parties are drunk to the point where they are unable to give informed consent could be classified in one of two ways - mutual rape or no rape at all. He then claims that the law says that there was no rape, and as such the statistics are faulty.

His claims are problematic for multiple reasons. The first is the straightforward misstatement of the law - a limited number of jurisdictions within the US require that the attacker either was aware or should have been aware that the victim is unable to consent. Ohio law was used in the study, and has no such condition. Ted is already misrepresenting facts in order to discredit figures he disagrees with.

The second is the association between the idea that the rapist has to know that the victim is unable to give consent and the idea that if the rapist is drunk, the rapist is unable to know that consent can't be granted. The scenario Ted's discussing is one where both parties are, according to him, "partially inebriated". They're still functional - Ted is just asserting that judgement is impaired to a point where someone may not be able to grant informed consent. Leaving aside the idea that partial inebriation is sufficient for that condition to arise (which is unlikely - it's typically used in scenarios where the victim is entirely unable to function), it's absurd to argue that mere partial inebriation is insufficient to know whether or not someone is able to provide consent.

The third is a pretty fucking fundamental problem. It's the idea that you have a scenario where two people are both drunk enough that they can't provide consent and yet simultaneously initiate sex with each other. That's the scenario required for Ted's putativeOr did Alice and Bob rape each other? Let's throw them both in jail! outcome to arise. It's an absolute straw man. The logical outcomes of the scenario where you have two drunk people are that either no sex occurs at all, mutually consensual sex occurs or one of the parties initiates sex without consent. Ted's carefully constructed a straw man where an impossible scenario could have absurd consequences, and then saved us with a reading of the law that means we have to ignore the statistics he finds so offensive.

Anyway. Let's look at an actual example of such a law:Any person who subjects another person to sexual penetration (a) without the consent of the victim, (b) who knew or should have known that the victim was mentally or physically incapable of resisting or appraising the nature of his or her conduct, or (c) when the actor is nineteen years of age or older and the victim is at least twelve but less than sixteen years of age is guilty of sexual assault in the first degree.

Note the lack of any kind of symmetry requirement. Going back to something you wrote earlier:For an extreme example, suppose that one side was completely passed out in his/her own room, and a stranger walked in. I'm quite sure he'd consider sex in that situation to be rape no matter how drunk the stranger was

The distinction between Ted's claim and an actual example is the "should have known" present in the law and not present in Ted's claim. The rapist in your case should have known that they were no longer able to judge consent, and so the law would be unlikely to accept that as any kind of defence. But the same argument applies to the case that Ted describes! Either Ted believes that being drunk is sufficient to be unable to determine whether someone is able to provide consent, or he doesn't. He explicitly claims that he does.

I'm done here. You're trying to invent some distinction that means he only believes what he wrote in certain circumstances, but that distinction isn't backed by law or by anything Ted wrote. His claims are absurd, offensive and factually wrong, and arguing otherwise is ridiculous.

From: (Anonymous)

Your description of the context is sort of in the right direction but not quite correct. Let's take an obviously flawed hypothetical "rape" study question, "Did you have sex because of alcohol when you didn't mean to?". You can use a similar thought experiment to show the flaws with this question; both partners could easily answer "yes". What's going on should be more obvious in this blatant case. I think you should read Ted's mail as explaining this problem and questioning how many flaws the actual study shared with this example.

As for the specifics, your "unable to give informed consent" is ambiguous; the relevant interpretation here is drunk enough to possibly qualify as "raped" in the classification OF THE STUDY, not the view of actual law. I think his comment about law was more of a side explanation, not the core of his argument (he's not saying that "as such" the statistics are faulty).

Your second objection fails because it does not distinguish between the assumptions of the study and the law. The question is whether the STUDY clearly refused to count events as rape with anything less than "entirely unable to function" standard. You can't blame Ted if he uses the study's assumptions when criticizing it.

Your third objection has a pretty basic logic error. You assume there would always be a side who obviously "initiated" sex. Two people have sex while drunk. Neither intended it before getting drunk, both regret it afterwards, and their memories of what exactly happened are likely hazy. Are you sure the study always correctly identified which side counts as "initiating" the sex, and did not count that side as "raped"?

"You're trying to invent some distinction that means he only believes what he wrote in certain circumstances"

Intentionally misleading rhetoric. I've said his statement was too general and inaccurate, and it's unlikely he would mean all the absurd consequences a literal interpretation would have in other contexts. Suppose you try to explain some feature of Linux, and make a remark in your explanation that could be interpreted to apply more generally. Now saying that "Matthew Garrett believes that Microsoft Windows does absurd thing X" would be an inaccurate description of what you said, and likely false, even if that would follow from a literal interpretation of your comments.

BTW I tried look up the study to check what exactly the phrasing of the question was; it seems that even the authors of the original Koss study later agreed that it really was flawed and produced inflated statistics.