Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wright and the Black Church: Reverend Wright claims that the repeatedly aired clips of his speeches are an attack on the Black Church, not on him. This implies that black churchgoers generally believe the things he believes.

I showed in an earlier post that a large minority of African Americans hold Wright's racist and conspiratorial views, and contrary to what all the pundits are saying, young people are more paranoid than older folks. I only reported mean age in the earlier analysis, so now I would like to display the percentages who agree by age group, and I would also like to add some additional questions about Jews since Wright says that Farrakhan is a great man of this and the last century:


Percent agreeing (somewhat or strongly) by age group

Jews are bloodsuckers
18-29 37.3
40-59 30.3
60+ 34.1

Jews financed the slave trade
18-29 43.0
40-59 30.7
60+ 35.5

FBI/CIA provide a steady supply of drugs into black neighborhoods
18-29 57.1
40-59 42.8
60+ 35.0

White scientists invented AIDS to kill blacks
18-29 27.4
40-59 23.9
60+ 32.7

First, these odious beliefs are fairly common, but most blacks--in Chicago at least--do not hold them. And it is clear that attitudes have not improved among young blacks. The pundits are full of it.

But Wright is not really claiming that all blacks are like him: it is the Black Church and he that are inseparable. We can get at this entity by limiting the analysis to blacks who attend services weekly:


Percent agreeing--weekly churchgoers

Jews are bloodsuckers 30.5
Jews financed the slave trade 32.9
FBI/CIA provide a steady supply of drugs into black neighborhoods 43.5
White scientists invented AIDS to kill blacks 22.3

The numbers are not much different among religious blacks, so Wright does not represent the Black Church, but just a sizeable minority of all blacks.

Since most Chicago blacks do not think this way, why did Obama go out of his way to pick a church that does? If it was for political reasons, why not pick a church that was more mainstream among blacks?

He claims that he chose it because of all the community work it does. Let's take him at his word. Belonging to a church that is a little more active than the next is more important than not being associated with a black racist church?

I think this shows that his politics end where his (black) family begins. (At least, that has been the case, but now Wright his forcing his hand). His feelings must have become familial for Reverend Wright (he always uses family terms when speaking of him) and he chose an angry black women for a wife. He feels that he is among family and at home among anti-American blacks. He may or may not agree with many of their ideas, but he feels more emotionally at home with them than with moderate blacks.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Age at marriage: The conventional wisdom is that the later you marry, the more likely that the marriage will last. This idea stems more from elite rejection of the 1950s model of family life than it does the research. (Research shows that teen marriages are the ones at risk).

Getting married while young is now considered low-class. By contrast, a long stretch of lies, used people, broken hearts, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and abortions is a sign of enlightenment.

Tens of thousands of Americans have been asked about their age and marriage and their current marital status by the General Social Survey. I divided people into groups based on age at marriage, and looked at marital statuses after at least 20 years had passed:


Percent in each category

Married in teens
Married 58.9
Divorced/separated 19.9
Widowed 21.2

Married between ages 20 and 24
Married 68.2
Divorced/separated 13.6
Widowed 18.2

Married between ages of 25 and 29
Married 69.2
Divorced/separated 11.2
Widowed 19.6

Married between the ages of 30 and 34
Married 65.7
Divorced/separated 11.0
Widowed 23.3

Married between the ages of 35 and 39
Married 57.9
Divorced/separated 10.4
Widowed 31.7

Married between the ages of 40 and 44
Married 56.9
Divorced/separated 11.1
Widowed 32.0

The benefit that is gained by waiting is gained by your early 20s. The chance of being divorced or separated is roughly the same for everyone else, and the rate of widowhood is higher for those who married late.

Many of those who married later had failed cohabitation experiences which would add to the rate of relationship failures if they were counted.

Which reminds me of another research finding that contradicts the modern attitude toward family formation: people who cohabit before marriage are more, not less, likely to get divorced.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Blacks are 13 times more likely to commit a hate crime: Law enforcement statistics show that blacks commit hate crimes at higher rates than whites, but the difference is not huge. The problem with this kind of data is that criminal justice officials must decide whether an incident should be categorized as racially motivated, and hate crime laws were simply not made with the intention of protecting white victims.

Another limitation is that Hispanic offenders are lumped together with whites under the "white" category.

One way around this problem is to ask victims of crimes themselves if the event was racially motivated, and give them an opportunity to separate whites from Hispanics.

The 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey asked respondents if they had been victims of a racially motivated crime in the past 6 months, and they were also asked the race of the offender with the option of "other" in addition to white and black. One hundred and five cases were identified. Here is the percent distribution of the race of offender:


Percent of all racial hate crime offenders

White 21.0
Black 53.3
Other 13.3
Don't know 1.9
Residue 10.5

So, the majority of crimes committed out of racial hatred are perpetrated by blacks, but even this does not show the magnitude of the difference since the U.S. population is only 13% black. Doing the calculations, a black person is 13.3 times more likely than a white to commit this type of crime.

Blacks have a much greater problem with hatred than whites do. That goes all the way up to Reverend Wright and all the way down to the street thug.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The last bastion of white racialism: Wandering around in General Social Survey data, I found a number that was surprisingly large. It seems that an impressive 61.5% of white high school dropouts in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky are in favor of a law banning interracial marriages.

Now, I wouldn't have been surprised at such a high number 40 years ago--the actual number averaging responses given in the 70s is 81.6%--but the revolution in racial attitudes evidently passed these folks by.

UPDATE: I'm going to have to amend this post some. I looked at the same group and was surprised again to find that 77.8% would vote for a black for president. The corresponding number for the 1970s is 57.6%.

So, these people are more comfortable, and have been more comfortable, with a black man running the country than one marrying their daughter. Perhaps many of them think a black man would help all lower-class folks.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Houston data on inter-ethnic marriage

Men


Women

The Houston Area Survey asked 813 residents about their ethnicity and that of their spouses. The two graphs above display the amount of intermarriage for each racial/ethnic group for each sex. While whites, blacks, and Hispanics are all numerous in Houston, the "Asian" and "other" categories are based on very small samples.

For both men and women, Asians mix the most, and it's almost exclusively with whites. This shows white-Asian compatability, and perhaps the difficulty Asians have finding a co-ethnic mate because of small numbers.

Whites, especially women, usually marry within their race: the percentages are 93.9 for females and 85.6 for males. When they marry interracially, it's most often with Latinos.

For black men, 92.5% are married to black women; 5.0% are married to white women. Almost all black women (97.2%) have black husbands. The tiny amount remaining are married to whites.

Roughly 85% of both Hispanic men and women have spouses of the same ethnicity. Approximately 10% of both sexes are married to whites.

Notice how in this sample no Hispanics or Asians have black spouses.

These results indicate that there is high compatibility between whites and Asians, and whites and Hispanics, and low compatibility with the two minority groups and blacks. Few whites are married to blacks as well: 1.0% of white men and 0.9% of white women.

The sample is really too small for an analysis limited to young people, but I will say that it looks like the trend is more marrying outside of one's group among young whites, blacks, and Asians, but less of it among Hispanics. Their growing numbers might be increasing homogamy.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Immigrants and white-collar crime: Steve Sailer has a new piece on his adventures as a juror in a case of an immigrant short-changing the State of California a lot of money in used car sales taxes. His experience suggests that white-collar crime might be common among immigrants since many of them bring to the U.S. a distrust of non-family, and loyalties are limited to relatives.

So, what does the General Social Survey say about this? Almost 2,500 people were asked if it is wrong to cheat on your taxes. Here are the answers by whether or not you were born in the United States:


Percent agreeing about cheating on taxes

Immigrants
It's not wrong 2.6
It's a bit wrong 9.5
It's wrong 56.6
It's seriously wrong 31.2

Those born here
It's not wrong 4.2
It's a bit wrong 11.4
It's wrong 53.3
It's seriously wrong 31.0

No differences here. Now, attitudes are not behavior, and it is possible that immigrants don't trust survey people (like they don't supposedly trust other strangers) and are more likely to give the "correct" response, but we can say, at the very least, that they know how they're supposed to answer.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Lesbianism and being the victim of sexual violence: I promised to report estimates of sexual violence victimization among 1,470 female college students across categories of sexual orientation. Respondents were asked if they had been the victim of various levels of sexual coercion since age 14. Here are the percentages who answered yes:


Percent who engaged in sex play between 14 and current age (college student)

Overwhelmed by male's coaxing and pressure
Straight 40.0
Bisexual 47.8
Lesbian 50.0
Unsure 42.9

Because of the male's position of authority
Straight 4.6
Bisexual 13.0
Lesbian 16.7
Unsure 28.6

Because of being forced
Straight 9.9
Bisexual 21.7
Lesbian 25.0
Unsure 28.6


Percent who experienced attempted intercouse between age 14 and current age (college student)

Because of being drugged
Straight 11.7
Bisexual 39.1
Lesbian 33.3
Unsure 14.3

Because of being forced
Straight 12.5
Bisexual 34.8
Lesbian 25.0
Unsure 21.4


Percent who experience intercourse between age 14 and current age (college students)

Overwhelmed by male's coaxing and pressure
Straight 22.1
Bisexual 39.1
Lesbian 33.3
Unsure 35.7

Because of male's position of authority
Straight 1.4
Bisexual 4.3
Lesbian 16.7
Unsure 21.4

Because of being drugged
Straight 6.6
Bisexual 21.7
Lesbian 41.7
Unsure 14.3

Because of being forced
Straight 6.5
Bisexual 17.4
Lesbian 25.0
Unsure 14.3


The pattern holds up for all these different situations: it is clear that more non-straights are victims. The possibility was raised in the earlier post that lesbians are more willing to report abuse (I have shown that liberal women are much more likely to say they have been sexually harassed) but the questions are specific enough, I doubt that the reporting differences are large.

Other readers have suggested a genetic explanation for that the correlation between early sexual contact and homosexuality, and they emphasize that much abuse is committed by family members. From this idea we would predict that lesbians would be more likely than straights to be victimized by family members.

There is some evidence for this. As children, 33.4% of abusers of non-heterosexual females were relatives, compared to 24.2% of straight women (I combined lesbians, bisexuals, and unsures to maximize the very small sample size). The percentages for the teen years are 12.5% and 3.5%.

And I found the same pattern for male victims: 26.9% of non-heterosexuals had early sexual contact with family members, compared to only 6.2% of abused straights. But even if we lower the share of non-heterosexuals abused by relatives to that of straights, a large difference in the overall risk of abuse remains.

So, these results shown here support both the idea that there might be some tendency for pedophilia and homosexuality to run in families due perhaps to genes, as well as the idea that lesbianism may, in part, be the product of early traumatic heterosexual victimization.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Am I American or White, and what are you? Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times that Americans have a huge Holocaust Memorial Museum because we prefer to mourn crimes not of our making. What we need, he argues, is a truth and reconciliation commission like the ones we have demanded of other nations.

If we did that kind of thing, an essential question to be asked is who will do the apologizing, and who will receive the apology? If America needs to say it's sorry to blacks who were victims of slavery, lynchings, etc., then blacks living today will need to feel as guilty as whites because we are equally Americans, and America and Americans committed those injustices.

If blacks--or Cohen, for that matter--say that blacks should not feel guilty because they are the victims not the perpetrators, then what that implies is that black Americans alive or dead are like an organism, and white Americans living or deceased are an organism, and the one was victimized by the other. Another implication is that these two groups are much more meaningful than the group we call "Americans." (To keep things simple, I am leaving out other groups).

If whites are expected to feel guilty for past crimes because race trumps citizenship, then race should also be relied on to frame accomplishments as well. America did not put a man on the moon: white Americans did. America has not invented so many great technologies that benefit the world: white Americans did. America did not build so many wonderful universities: white Americans did.

I'm pretty flexible. I'm just trying to find some fairness and consistency. If you are asking me to define myself as a cell in the White Race, I can do that but I will take credit as well as blame. If you're asking me to define myself as an American, I will take blame as well as credit, but you must do the same, and that's true if you're black, Jewish, Mexican, whatever.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Do childhood sexual experiences turn a girl into a lesbian? I showed in two earlier posts that homosexuals are much more likely to have intense sexual contact as children, and they also have an increased risk of witnessing their parents attack each other as well as being victims of parental violence.

Next, let's see if the same is true of lesbians. Using the same survey data, here is what I found for 1,457 college females:


Percent experiencing sexual contact under age 14 at least once

Was shown a sexual organ
Straight 34.6
Bisexual 56.5
Homosexual 54.5
Unsure 28.6

Was fondled
Straight 27.6
Bisexual 47.8
Homosexual 33.3
Unsure 23.1

Attempted sexual intercourse
Straight 9.4
Bisexual 21.7
Homosexual 25.0
Unsure 21.4

Sexual intercourse
Straight 4.9
Bisexual 8.7
Homosexual 16.7
Unsure 14.3


Percent whose parents hit each other at least once per month

Straight 9.2
Bisexual 17.4
Homosexual 25.0
Unsure 21.4


Percent whose parents hit them at least once per month

Straight 26.2
Bisexual 30.4
Homosexual 33.3
Unsure 23.1

Like non-straight men, women who are not heterosexual were more likely to have childhood sexual experiences and to have been in violent families. So, compared to straights, gays and lesbians have less normal childhoods, and it is possible that this could influence sexual orientation--along with other factors.

In the earlier post, Razib made a good point that effeminate boys who are likely to grow up to be gay might have been targeted for sexual contact. Presumably, the person who initiated the contact thinks an effeminate boy is unlikely to resist aggressively, or perhaps the boy is more attractive, or is thought to be gay and interested in sex.

But what about a girl? Would she be targeted for being a tom boy? Or because she is thought to be a lesbian? Presumably, she would be less attractive and more resistant, which would lead to less victimization, not more. Ideas? Might childhood sexual contact be a cause of lesbianism but only spuriously related to homosexuality?

Notice how the differences are stronger for partner violence than violence against the child. It's possible that witnessing frequent parental conflict might lead some children to reject heterosexual coupling.

Next, I'll show that lesbians are much more likely to have been victims of sexual violence as teenagers.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Small-town folks are not clinging, they're de-clinging


Obama's claim that small town people cling to guns and religion because of job difficulties reveals elite Americans' over-use of economic explanations for behavior. Don't get me wrong--money is important--but there are many other things that drive behavior as well.

I come from that part of America and have watched those folks embrace gun culture and religion through the good times and the bad times--it didn't matter. The simplest explanation for these traditions is... uh... tradition. People have been doing these things for a long time, and many see no reason not to continue.

But that's not exactly right. I suspect that the Andy Griffiths types are "clinging" less to these activities as modern culture increasingly has its way with them. As usual, let's look at the General Social Survey.


Mean church attendance score for small-town working class

1972 4.44
1982 3.97
1993 3.81
2002 3.61
2006 3.41


Four means "once a month" and three means "several times a year." There has been a big drop in attendence among these folks.

Look at the graph above to see the same kind of story for guns. While small-town people are still more likely to have guns than urban dwellers, the numbers have fallen significantly since the early 70s. It really shouldn't surprise you very much: their WalMarts sell Playstations too.

So this demographic is not reacting against economic troubles: it is gradually joining the secular Couch Potatoes found in the rest of the country.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Kids and happiness II: Once again, Jason Malloy has brought an interesting article to our attention which challenges the traditional idea that having kids will make you happy. I had read research before suggesting that marital satisfaction drops a bit during the years you are raising children, especially when they are very small or very big, but I hadn't run across studies indicating that people are less happy in the moments they are caring for kids. I wouldn't be shocked if this were true because I have children and know how difficult it is to be a parent.

While the General Social Survey does not have anything like daily data, it can address the question about the relationship between happiness and having kids of certain ages. Following the same scoring method I used the last post, here are the means:


Mean happiness score by number of children of certain age ranges

Number of kids under 6

Women
0 1.20
1 1.19
2 1.21
3 1.13
4 1.12

Men
0 1.19
1 1.21
2 1.24
3 1.21
4 1.13


Number of kids ages 6 to 12

Women
0 1.21
1 1.17
2 1.22
3 1.16
4 1.17
5 0.91

Men
0 1.19
1 1.21
2 1.24
3 1.26
4 1.24
5 1.44


Number of kids ages 13 to 17

Women
0 1.21
1 1.17
2 1.16
3 1.12
4 1.22

Men
0 1.19
1 1.20
2 1.21
3 1.24
4 1.04


Regardless of the age of the children, their number, or whether we're talking about mothers or fathers here, children just don't seem to predict anything one way or the other--at least according to the GSS.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Kids and happiness: Jason Malloy in the last post raises an interesting issue about the connection between having children and happiness. The traditional viewpoint claims that kids are essential to being happy, but he links to evidence and arguments for the alternative view that children work against happiness.

First, my opinion on the subjects treads the middle ground that it's basically a wash, and that common sense dictates that people are happy when they are doing what they want to do ( in fact the statement is almost tautolgoical). In my view, what people want to do is influenced by what their culture tells them is worthy of pursuit, and unfortunately American society is telling women of all types that stay-at-home mothers are brood mares, while Hillary Clinton is what it's all about.

So, in the last analysis, my approach is to... umm... analyze. Data, that is. So, let's see what the crystal ball called the General Social Survey has to say.

I looked at more than 2,200 people ages 40-60 (presumably they're reached the point where the parent/non-parent choice has become final) for the survey years 2000-2006 in order to get the most current pattern. On happiness, people were given a 1 for "very happy", 2 for "pretty happy", and 3 for "not too happy." I calculated the means and subtract them from three so that high scores indicate greatest happinness:


Mean happiness score by number of children

Women
0 1.19
1 1.16
2 1.21
3 1.12
4 1.07
5 1.15
6 1.18
7 1.42
8 1.38


Men
0 1.08
1 1.10
2 1.24
3 1.30
4 1.18
5 1.10
6 1.24
7 1.30


There is no evidence here that happiness is undermined by having children, but neither does it help much either. There is basically no difference between a childless woman and one with two kids, and a father of two is only a quarter of a standard deviation above the childless man.

From studies I've read and some data analysis I've conducted as well, relationship and work satisfaction are the most powerful predictors of being happy: there is no obvious pattern with respect to kids, at least in contemporary American society. In a culture where women are given high status for raising a large family, the results might be different.

Thursday, April 10, 2008


Elton vs. Orwell: Elton John gave a fundraising concert for Hillary and claims that all the misogynists in America might be hindering her bid for the White House. Getting lectured by a guy who dresses like him might turn this country homophobic, but I'll go with another Brit, George Orwell, who said that the U.S. is a female-dominated country.

Here's an example of what he meant: The World Values Survey asked people in 43 countries if a woman needs a child in order to be fulfilled. Only Finland and the Netherlands had lower numbers than the United States.

More evidence that rape IS about sex: Feminists portray rapists as men who crave domination over women, and using one's penis on her is incidental. If this were true, why would rapists also frequently rely on non-violent techniques to push sex on a women?

With data I've used in a number of recent posts, 851 college men were asked if they had raped anyone in the past year. Two percent said they had. Of that group, 76.5% also admitted that they had used alcohol or drugs to have sex with a woman when she didn't want to. The same number also said yes to a question about getting a female to have sex who didn't want to by using his authority over her (boss, teacher, camp supervisor, etc.). Finally, 94.1% reported that they had overwhelmed at least one woman with arguments and pressure.

So rapists use a variety of techniques to get sex from a woman. They coax, pressure and use drugs and power as well as threats and force. This is inconsistent with the image of a man driven to humiliate a woman, but matches perfectly with the idea that men crave sex, and some men are willing to ratchet up the harshness of their means of getting it until they are successful.

The numbers also show that the percentage of men willing to use some technique increases as the degree of coercion falls. Two percent used threats and force; 2.2% used their authority; 3.8% used alcohol or drugs; and 9.8% used arguments and pressure. Some men will use techniques short of violence, while a smaller number will use whatever it takes.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Hitchcock!




If you like Hitchcock as much as I do and are nostalgic for the pre-60s, check this out.
Sexual orientation and family dysfunction: In my previous post, I showed that homosexual and bisexual men, compared to straights, were much more likely to have experienced intense sexual contact as children. Looking at the same survey of 760 men, I observed that these men witnessed much more parental violence and were hit much more by parents (i.e., physical blows, kicking, throwing to the ground). Respondents gave answers ranging from "never" (=1) to "more than 20 times per month" (=5). Here are the means:


Mean score for parents hitting each other

Straight men 1.07
Homosexual men 1.75
Bisexual men 1.47
Unsure 1.29


Mean score for being hit by parents

Straight men 1.36
Homosexual men 2.10
Bisexual men 1.74
Unsure 1.57


For both types of violence, homosexual men averaged around a two which is the score for "1 to 5 times per month." The typical experience for straight men was to experience and witness little physical abuse. The responses given by bisexual men and those who are not sure about their sexuality are somewhere between straights and gays.

These findings, in combination with the earlier post on early sexual contact, suggest that non-heterosexual men are much more likely to grow up in disturbed families.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Goodbye, Mr. Heston


Charles Heston's passing is one more marker of cultural decline. Where are the days when movie stars were 6' 3" and loved to hunt in their free time? He was a little before my time, but my parents were wise enough to raise me on real-man role models. Every Easter growing up, I saw this guy tell Yul Brenner--a pretty tough guy himself--to repent or be destroyed, and I watched him open a can of whoop ass on a golden calf. (Only later did I ask myself, "Why is the whole country watching Moses' story on a day when we're celebrating Jesus' resurrection?").

On the other side of the cultural divide, my female teachers, and female classmates later on tried to turn me into a woman with a penis, and it might have worked if the conditioning hadn't run up against the image of a Man--someone who looked something like Charlton Heston.

So, in his honor I just watched him kick ass with a chariot in Ben Hur. You should also check out Touch of Evil if you haven't already. A fine movie with a fine actor.
You're right--It is time for an apology: On the 40th anniversary of MLK's assassination, we white folks have been treated to the ritual dressing down for all the ways that we have ruined and continue to ruin the lives of black folks. We deny them economic justice, we don't provide them enough jobs and enough good jobs, we don't provide them the capital to get them off the ground financially, we need to apologize for slavery, Jim Crow, etc., etc.

We tell blacks that their leaders accuse us of inventing AIDS to commit genocide, and instead of an apology, the response we get is that we continue to be bigots and must do more.

I can't speak for other whites, but I certainly know my feelings. If the black community wants to improve race relations with me, how about apologizing for the shoddy work, endless excuses, and constant hustle that insult me in the classroom every day. How about an apology for all the thought police who chew me out and threaten to tell my superiors if I say the wrong thing during class discussions.

How about an apology for all the commuting I have to do to be able to live in a decent neighborhood. How about an apology for how I get hit up by black panhandlers every time I get out of my car to get gas. How about about an apology for the scourge of graffiti I see all over my town, and all the litter in the streets. How about an apology for all the thumping, blaring "music" coming out cars I have to endure.

How about an apology for making my wife fearful in many parts of town, and for making it hard to find good schools for my kids. How about an apology for jumping my friend, beating him senseless, throwing him unconscious into a dumpster, and his spending a week in the hospital, all because he was alone in the wrong place at the wrong time. How about an apology for the group of guys who tried to scare me out of my new shoes on the bus. How about an apology to my brother who has to put up with unreliable, unproductive black employees.

How about an apology for my being like the last kid to get picked for the team when I apply for an academic position. ("Nobody left? Alright, pick the white guy.") How about an apology for the thousands of dollars in taxes I've had to pay for all costs that blacks impose on American society. How about an apology for the drag that you folks are on the economy, the culture, and the society.

How about an apology for our pulling our kids aside so you can get jobs and into good schools because we feel bad for you--not because we did anything wrong--and instead of a "thank you" we get "you're a bigot--do more."

Even a little less finger pointing and and little more hard look at self would be a good start. But I ain't holding my breath.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Censorship at Taki's Mag: I rarely read Taki's these days since the same message over and over again that neocons suck has gotten a little old, and now it's gotten even less interesting since they are deleting all the stimulating comments along with the over-the-top stuff. I absolutely hate having my comments deleted which is one reason I never do that here, so let me paraphrase my post that was just removed.

On Larison's post concerning white identity politics, I argued that the only reason why whites have the luxury of being colorblind is because they are two-thirds of the population and for the most part are running things. If demographic trends continue, race-blind whites will increasingly pay a big price. At some point, they will have to imitate other groups or put themselves at a disadvantage.

I then argued that race-conscious whites are focused on the future and see what's coming, while the luxury of the current situation enables short-sighted whites to be race-neutral which they do out of an idealism, or a desire for status, to feel superior over unenlightened brown people who like to stick together and race-conscious white trash low-lifes. Finally, I wrote that the longer that colorblind whites have their way, the worse it's going to be down the road when ethnic politics really kick in.

Thought-crime, yes? The indelicacy might give the madams at Taki's the vapors, perhaps? There are fewer and fewer places to say whatever the hell you want--people are much more concerned with image and standing than the free exchange of ideas, and paleos now appear to be as guilty of this as anyone.

I'm pleased to say that this blog is different. Few people say outrageous things here--except for me, perhaps--since they're too sensible, but they can if they want to.

By the way, I'm proud to say that the list of websites that have banned me is growing, and why am I not surprised that they are all on what could be called the Right: Free Republic, Chronicles, Taki's, and... Stormfront. And in only one case--Chronicles--was it possible that I was banned for insulting someone. In all other cases, it was simply argument or statistics. Love of freedom, my ass.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Is homosexuality caused by childhood sexual experiences? One challenge to evolutionary theory is to explain why homosexuality is so enduring, if the researchers are correct in claiming that the orientation is the result of genes. I've wondered if the environment might play an important role in some way. Specifically, I have speculated that many boys, perhaps passive, attractive boys in particular, might be targets for childhood sexual contacts which have a powerful impact on their subsequent sexual tastes.

The stereotype of childhood sexual experiences is of traumatic abuse, but the reality is that most contact does not involve fear, intimidation, or coercion, but is likely to involve other children--often older--and to be playful, experimental, and experienced as pleasurable. The body is wired to feel pleasure, and a naive child might have little idea about what is appropriate or inappropriate.

There is empirical support for my idea in The Longitudinal Study of Violence Against Women. The study asked men, as well as women, about sexual victimization (N=782). Here are the percentages of males who experienced sexual contact as a child:


Percent who had experience at least once as a child

Shown a sex organ as a child
Straight 40.1
Gay 62.2
Bisexual 84.2

Fondled
Straight 30.8
Gay 50.0
Bisexual 68.4

Attempted sexual intercourse
Straight 4.9
Gay 35.0
Bisexual 42.1

Sexual intercourse
Straight 1.6
Gay 33.3
Bisexual 40.0

Reason for participation--straight men
Felt good 20.1
Curiosity 70.1
Felt loved 1.8
Was told it is ok 6.5
Threatened or coerced 1.4

Reason for participation--homosexual men
Felt good 18.8
Curiosity 62.5
Felt loved 18.8
Was told it is ok 0.0
Threatened or coerced 0.0

Reason for participation--bisexual men
Felt good 41.2
Curiosity 29.4
Felt loved 17.6
Was told it is ok 5.9
Threatened or coerced 5.9


First, we can see that childhood sexual contact is common, and is almost always non-coercive. Gay and bisexual men are both more likely to report various kinds of experiences, and the differences with straight men are the most glaring when the experience is the most intense (i.e., attempted or completed sexual intercourse).

We shouldn't make too much of the "reasons" numbers for gay and bisexual men since the sample sizes are too small, but it is clear that experiences are not traumatic most of the time. Also, keep in mind that these data do not tell us how many encounters were same-sex.

While there are other factors at play here--some homosexuals report none of these kinds of experiences--there is evidence here that early sexual contact might influence sexual orientation: men who develop a gay or bisexual orientation are much more likely to have experienced sexual intercourse--some of it presumably anal sex--as children.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Evidence for the outrageous thesis that rape is sexually motivated: The Longitudinal Study of Violence Against Women asked 718 college girls their attitudes about when it is appropriate to have sex, and if they have been victims of rape. Here are the percentages:


Percent raped by when it is okay to have sex

Any time 10.1
On casual dates 26.1
If dating regularly 8.6
If in love and engaged 9.1
After marriage only 5.6


There is a clear pattern here of risk increasing with openness to sex, but why are girls who will sleep with guys at any time less likely to be raped than those who approve of sex on casual dates?

I have long suspected that, contrary to the theory that sexual assault is about control, most rape is sexually motivated. A man is after sexual gratification and will use force as a last resort to get it.

One central fact here is that most sexual assaults are "date rapes."

A girl who will sleep with anyone, on the one hand, exposes herself to a lot of men which elevates her risk above that of the girl who, say, only wants sex after marriage, but she rarely resists the men who attempt sex with so her risk is lower than the more discerning girl who thinks sex is only appropriate if you are on some kind of real date, even if a casual one. This girl experiences the highest rate of assault because she has encounters with many men--some of whom are brutes--but she isn't going to have sex indiscriminately, and on those occasions where she resists advances, the guy might decide to use coercion to get what he wants.

To those of you who subscribe to the "rape isn't about sex" thesis, please explain the numbers displayed above.

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