It isn't just that your heated rhetoric is unhelpful. You're also demonstrably wrong.
What Evans is advocating has been the standard(approximately) nearly everywhere for nearly all of history. There isn't anything particularly "medieval" about it. Most places it is currently the norm. Here in western places it was the norm until the 20th century. We westerners started emphasizing personal freedom and risk taking a few decades ago. Most people, most places, for most of history, emphasized propriety and security and still do.
Unsurprisingly, one of the outcomes of modern western prioritizing is an upswing in irresponsible sexual behavior, including rape. Whether the downside outweighs the upside is a matter of personal opinion. But is not at all unpredictable. There is a reason that interaction between men and women is restricted most places. It is to prevent the sort of problems being discussed in this thread.
Extremely conservative countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan have extremely high sexual harassment rates despite the fact that they heavily practice gender segregation and force women to cover most (if not all) of their bodies. I think it is evidently inaccurate to suggest that restricting interaction between men and women leads to reduced rape and sexual harassment rates. Actually, in countries like Afghanistan where reporting rape can lead to honor killings, a lot of rape cases go unreported and therefore some people end up believing that rape happens less frequently than is actually the case. Not only are restrictive sexual "values" something that the civilized world started to move past since medieval times, but they are also demonstrably harmful in that they can lead to things like unreported sexual harassment and assault.
I don't know if you've ever been to Saudi Arabia, but to use it as an example, sexual harassment is
extremely common there despite the fact that women aren't even allowed to go out without wearing the
abaya. Even female mannequins inside shopping malls aren't displayed without being clothed (yes, it is
that strict). Furthermore, gender segregation is practiced to the point where there are some female-only malls to prevent men and women from being together in the same place. You know what happens frequently in malls and other crowded areas there? Men just wait for women outside the buildings and then sexually harass them verbally.
I think one of the biggest myths about sexual harassment is that sexual freedom and lack of gender segregation increase it. It seems to me that anyone who says that has either never been to a country like Afghanistan/Saudi Arabia or just hasn't sufficiently examined statistics concerning rape and sexual harassment in conservative cultures.
I do not share the opinion that we can "educate" our way out of a problem that is a result of instincts as deeply ingrained in humans as the sex drive and mating dance. It would be nice if we could, but I don't see it happening any time in the foreseeable future. Putting up with rape and other forms of sexually irresponsible behavior or putting up with social restrictions look like the choices to me.
Tom
Rape is not a result of sex drive. That's another common rape myth, and a particularly destructive one at that. By saying that rape is the result of "instincts deeply ingrained in humans," you basically seem to be saying that all people have some inclination to rape that they may act on if they have sexual freedom.
Also, rape isn't really a "sexual" behavior; it's a criminal behavior that results from a desire to exert power over others against their will and utter lack of respect for other people's boundaries. Sex drive doesn't really have anything to do with it, at least not if you consider the evidence that is currently available regarding the common mentalities and motivations of rapists. But we have been over all of this in different threads and the discussion only seemed to go in circles, so I'm not sure anything will change if we do that here as well.
