Jad once asked his wife how often, as a woman, she felt that she could be physically dominated by a man?

Having never thought about it before, her response of “always” struck him as a little shocking. But the reality is that it’s completely true, the average woman can be physically dominated by the average man in virtually any situation. This is just something women are forced to live with.

We discuss a variety of situations where this applies in life. We also consider a recent situation in India whereby women anxiously want to arm themselves in order to feel protected. We’re joined this week by Tom DeLorenzo, a frequent guest to the show.

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Transcript of Podcast

[Recorded Audio]

Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

Speaker 2: No, sir.

Jad:     Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas.  We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality. 

Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow.  Welcome back to another episode.  Jad once asked his wife how often
as a woman she felt that she could be physically dominated by a man.  Having never
thought about it before, her response of, “always”, struck him as a little
shocking, but the reality is that it’s completely true; the average woman can be
physically dominated by the average man in virtually every situation.  This is
just something that women are forced to live with their entire lives.

Jad and I discuss a variety of situations where this applies in life.  We also
consider a recent situation in India, whereby the women there anxiously want to arm
themselves in order to feel protected.  We’re joined this week by our friend
and local author, Tom DeLorenzo, a frequent guest to our show.

Tom:   You know, along the feminist lane that we were
talking about, I thought of Wendy McElroy, she writes a lot about anarchy.  Are
you familiar with –

Jad:     Yeah.

Tom:   I don’t know if she has a website specifically for
it, but she’s just an anarchist feminist.

Jad:     Right.

Tom:   What do you think about the necessity of having
feminism as a subject as opposed to just you know, equal human rights?  Does it
warrant specific attention?  What’s the – I haven’t really read
too much of her feminist specific writings, is there a need for something that’s
aimed that way as opposed to just general human rights?  I mean I understand that
the balance has been the wrong way for a long time.

Jad:     Right.  Yeah, I think the value
for any of that stuff is that even your group of Star Trek DND pure logic emotionless
engineer droids, they have cognitive biases that they’re not – unless you
become introspective and at least get some empathy for yourself and learn how to listen
to your own inner dialogue, you’re not even aware of why you’re making the
decisions that you’re making sometimes, right?  The human ability to
rationalize something – and if you’re really top notch engineering material
in our generalization here, then I can tell you if you happen to believe anything X,
you can come up with a reason for it, right? 

That’s what the debate team is all about right is like I’m gonna flip a
coin, you’re gonna get one of two positions, and I want you to convincingly argue
it, right?  It’s the exact same thing that we all do in our own minds to
support the decisions we make in the positions we hold and I think the best you can
really hope for as a human being – and with our limited cognitive abilities and
whatnot – you can’t really hope to make perfect decisions.  The only
thing you can do I think is develop a capacity to examine why you make decisions,
right? 

And so you develop a capacity to notice patterns in your decision making and be
like, “you know, I keep doing all these things that always end up badly.  Am
I going to continue to blame other people and come up with elaborate justifications for
why this happens, or am I going to examine the possibility for a moment that this is
not what I want to do, this is something that I’m compelled to do by my fragile
brain hardwiring or programming”, or whatever. 
 

So my point – to make a long point longer – is to say that I think when
you have a group that says, “okay, we’re going to specifically analyze
history, and economics, and all this with respect to women, and we’re going to
lay out a narrative or a framework that will highlight to other people that no matter
how advanced you think you are”, with a nonaggression principle, you still have
attitudes that are conservative, part of a tradition, part of what your were raised to
believe, part of what your religion believes, whatever it is with respect to women that
it’s going to put you at odds with them and you’re creating or exploiting a
power relationship, even if in your mind you’re behaving in an entirely
libertarian manner –

Kevin: Right.

Jad:     – if that makes sense.

Kevin: Yeah, it makes sense to me.  I feel like you’re
addressing that explicitly [?] right now.

Jad:     And now just as an example, this is
something that never really occurred to me until I was just talking to Elisa maybe
five, six years ago and I said something about, “when are the times that you feel
physically dominated by a man”, and she said, “well, all the
time.”  Like at any time, at any instance, anywhere for your entire life,
any time that you are relating to a male, they can physically dominate you.  Like
if he decides to do it no matter what the context, whatever the reason, if that is what
he decides to do, it’s done like, you can’t do anything, you are always in
that position.  So just having that perspective makes it – like we were
talking about earlier with why do more men than women feel safe saying we don’t
need police around, well that’s because most males don’t have that
experience, unless you’re very, very tiny or just part of an extremely abusive
group of people.  You know, I’m not afraid of anything, I’m not afraid
of anyone ever, you know? 

I would have to be dropped into an extremely foreign context with lots of angry
people around or something before I would actually be physically afraid of another
person, you know what I mean?  So it’s just not something we can experience
so having that perspective though allows you to kind of get some empathy and insight
for the situation like say, when a woman is approached at four in the morning in a
hotel lobby when there’s no one else around and she feels threatened.  A man
might not be able to understand that and think she’s overreacting, but
that’s just because they don’t have empathy for the position of ultimate
vulnerability like that.

Kevin: Hmm, that’s a pretty wise point.  We would have
to make – Tom and I or at least me – certainly revisit the potential racial
stances of the libertarian party or even the gay population being libertarian I mean, I
would say that certainly all applies.

Tom:   Because unfortunately, most people in those
positions have come to kind of rely – hence my word dependence – a little
bit upon the government for protection because they perceive that society itself is the
main danger.

Kevin: Yeah, I actually have to go back on that and agree with you
that my analysis of maybe it being more of a marketing word is I think you might be
correct.  I think maybe the dependence actually is a better word given that more
empathetic point of view.

Jad:     Well and I’m not necessarily
sure that flips that position, it may or may not, but of course there is no actual
value, right?  Having the police around does not actually prevent assault except
in maybe the most rare of cases on 6^th Street or something like that, but I
mean like that’s the whole point of the police is they don’t prevent crimes
from happening and in fact, any analysis – and this is again – feminist
analysis of the justice system will show you that something crazy, like 90% of rapes
don’t go reported because the judicial process is so demeaning to the female who
is claiming that she’s been assaulted that most women won’t even pursue
it.  If you look at the evidence of course, the dependence is a false
dependence.  The thing that they’re depending on is not protecting them,
which is a pattern in the state to citizen relationship.

Tom:   Right.

Jad:     But I think that it is that
perception.  It’s that perception that needs to be understood by
libertarians who are interested in reaching out to a wider community to try to convince
them of their positions.

Tom:   Yeah, it’s very interesting that maybe women
in general may look to the police for protection and even though they can’t
protect except after the fact, maybe pursue whoever did it, if that’s [?] of
punishment as a protection, but they’re also – again, generalizing –
tend to be more against things like owning a gun when in reality, that would be the
best equalizer there is if someone’s physically stronger as a group than the
physically weaker people, if they have guns you’ve removed a lot of potential for
oppression right there and yet, that’s the tool that’s generally not
advocated for by women.

Kevin: Well it’s a pretty big talking point right now,
too.

Jad:     Yeah.  Well that’s a good
transition to our other topic, but it’s kinda funny because I realized that we
have actually talked about something very similar to this at my behest –
previously as well – and it was a woman who was basically saying that the
relationship between women and the state tends to be a little bit [?] as well because
poor women don’t typically want to call the police because they understand that
they’re not likely to be helped, they’re very likely to be abused further,
or they’re likely to have the police show up and then withdraw, and then
they’re gonna have her criminations from their community and wherever else. 
So I think that group also understands the value of being armed. 

I think when you’re talking about the population of women that advocate
against or advocate gun control I guess – and I have no evidence for this –
my guess is is that it is women who do not need weapons because they are in community
like you know, they’re in Steiner Ranch right, where there is security that will
prevent you from being attacked by a man and you’re in a socioeconomic class
where – and this is not as true as we’d hope it would be – but
you’re a lot less likely to be abused by your spouse, so you’re in a
situation where you don’t need to be armed.  I think when you get down to
the lower socioeconomic class where there actually are those kinds of threats; I think
they do understand the value of weapons. 

So the transition point, the thing in India, there’s this big huge movement
now among women – not a political movement – but they’re just
attempting to get higher gun registration, trying to get the amount of permissions or
licenses or whatever they’re giving out to be increased so that they can be armed
because they live in such a society in which they’re completely powerless in
almost all other respects.

Kevin: Yeah, I did not watch this whole interview because it just
turned me out after a while, but when Alex Jones was on Piers Morgan the other day,
that was one of his big talking points that he was bringing up with him because they
had a – I don’t know if you heard about it but it was all over the news –
but he had like this 15 minute talking sequence with Piers Morgan about the gun control
basically and that was one of the points he brought up was, he’s like, “but
you don’t wanna talk about this, this is actually happening in India right
now.  These women, they want the weapons.  The women want the guns because
they recognized that they’re not safe and they need a way to make themselves feel
safer and presumably to actually be safer by having the same advantages as the man,
who’s trying to assault them.”

Jad:     Yeah.  I mean that’s I
think the missed selling point or whatever, if you wanna go back to the marketing
thing, and it’s what you were saying, Tom, is like, there is no equalizer like
that.  I mean even a stick is not – or a sword or you know, it doesn’t
– until you have a gun, that relationship is always going to go to the stronger
person.

Kevin: Right.

Jad:     Well once you have a firearm that
you’re entirely level unless you’re within five feet of each other you know
or whatever.

Tom:   And you know, when you look for political
solutions for things like this, you’re not fixing the problem because if
society’s going to evolve to the point where people are more enlightened and
don’t take advantage of the power they have over certain people, if you just
install the government system of punishment, it’s a prohibition –
prohibition just never works in fact, it probably causes more of the problem to
happen.  So if women, or a minority, or an oppressed group wants long term change,
there’s gotta be ways to get society to change that does not include government
using force to punish that activity because that doesn’t have any deterrent
effect whatsoever.

Kevin: Right.

Tom:   So one good step would be if more women were armed
then I think – I’m gonna characterize people who pick on weak people as
kind of cowards and bullies and if there’s any resistance, they pretty much give
up on it.  So it’s kind of using force to transform society, but it’s
yeah I don’t know, if it dulls up a certain respect because people understand well,
those people are no longer powerless, I can’t pick on them because they’re
gonna fight back and you know, it’s a lot different than I can pick on them and
then there’s somebody else who’s gonna tell me I can’t.

Jad:     Right.  Actually, so I don’t know
if we want to make this an all rape, all sexual assault episode, but I’m totally
for the radical arming of women, I think that’s great, so don’t mistake my
point but the interesting thing if you read anarcho-feminist literature and –
actually, this is just straight up feminist literature coverage[?] for the most part
– you know, the rapes don’t happen when some guy jumps out at you and
you’re walking home at night, they happen to women that are wasted at bars or
whatever or fall asleep you know, pass out somewhere and they’re raped by an
acquaintance or somebody who offers to take them home or whatever. 

Like again, it’s something ridiculous like 80%, 90%, 95% of sexual assaults
happen in that manner and again, I’m not sure I believe this personally, I think
the evidence supports it to some degree and there is evidence that I can link to that
shows that the biggest deterrent to sexual assault in a – I think the place they
did this actually had public service announcements – but in general is those
places where when someone says, “oh yeah you know, she was totally passed out and
so you know, I took her home and slept with her”, or fucked her, whatever, then
the places where that person’s peers say, “well, you just raped that woman,
that’s rape.  You’re telling the story as if it’s something
innocent but it’s not, what you did is sexually assault that person”, and
in those situations incidence goes down pretty quickly because it is the fact that
people are willing to turn a blind eye or to say, “well, she was drunk at a bar
and she was”, you know, whatever, “wearing a mini-skirt and she went home
with the guy, so how can that possibly be rape scenario?” 

In those contexts, the people who want to rape don’t jump out of alleys and
attack women who might be armed; they go to bars or go to frat parties or whatever and
pick their targets there.  So it’s an instance in which even though I always
advocate the defensive violence, the real solution tends to be social ostracism, a more
widespread enlightened attitude, right?

Tom:   Right.

Jad:     And horizontal peer-to-peer
enforcement tends to shut that stuff down pretty quick so it’s like the only
reason it happens is because people dismiss it as not a problem in their peer
groups.

Kevin: Oh, yeah.  About a month ago maybe, I was driving into
work, listening to the talk radio and they were talking about the drunk driving laws
that they’re trying to pass throughout Texas and Austin in particular I think,
and there was a guy from England who brought up the point how they actually completely
eliminated it and he’s like, “you can pass all the laws you want,
you’re never gonna fix it because that’s not the problem, people
don’t care about the legal deterrent. 

What they care about is the actually peer pressure of other people”, and
apparently they launched these hugely aggressive campaigns to make people aware that
it’s a terrible thing and they did it in such a way where if the general
population got behind saying if you’re like, “I’m gonna drive
home”, you just couldn’t as a social stigma all of a sudden if you’re
the guy driving drunk at a party, people are like, “dude, who the fuck is this
guy?  Don’t ever come back”, and it’s the same thing to your
rape point where it shouldn’t be the comical frat guy sort of one-liner as you
pointed out, it should be a, “wait a second, you can’t do that”, and
if you have a whole group of people that are actively responsible for one another like
that then I think the problem goes away rather quickly actually.

Jad:     And that’s where we leave it for
this episode.  Thanks to Lee Caffee and Chris Baton [Sp?] for providing us with
quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without
them.  Hosting services are provided by City Core, LLC.  Our graphical
caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Hasham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and
transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.

If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we
love receiving email.  You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com.  Thanks again for tuning
in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.