“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is not a established set of rights afforded to American citizens. It is merely a catchy rhetorical flourish employed in a letter that an early official of the nascent US government sent to the king of England one time. It carries no legal force whatsoever.
The US constitution, however, does carry some amount of legal clout and establishes that the state is not permitted to deploy cruel and unusual punishments. Imprisonment is an allowed punishment by this standard, as although it is arguably cruel, it is perhaps the least unusual penalty that can be conceived. As far as I know, however, there exists no precedent for including a prohibition from obtaining a specific measure of medical care in the terms of a convict’s sentence, so it is clearly a rather unusual punishment. And certainly, making someone give birth who doesn’t want to seems pretty darn cruel to me.
So I’d argue that until you manage to overturn the eighth amendment, you’re going to have a tough time establishing this punishment as legal.
Your stats are so out of whack. Statistically a man being raped against his will by a woman is rare. Is it a bad thing? Of course it is. I have worked with rape victims for years, and to say I am perpetuating rape is disgusting. If you believe one in four men is raped by a woman against his will…then so something about it. Make that your cause because of course it is serious. But I will work with women…who are raped and sexually abused by men
Men are anorexics, but statistically it is a women’s issue.
I choose my battles…I also work with battered women though there are men who are battered.
I believe that your use of the phrase “the real problem” is the offensive part. Certainly female on male rape is far less frequent than (probably) any other type but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a “real” problem.
You know, and I know, that many, many rights can and are taken away from people who have committed crimes. Sometimes the rights are taken away as punishment, sometimes out of practicality and sometimes because the criminal/supposed criminal’s rights conflict with those of the victim. For example, in some places, supposed rapists are not allowed the right to face their accuser. Not all rights are taken away as a punishment.
And again, waving the Eighth Amendment around sheds no light on the “should” question.
This changes nothing because no issues of practicality or rights violations arise from a convict getting an abortion.
So are you asking if we should try to amend the constitution so that it lifts the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition but only for people convicted of rape? No, I don’t think we should do that because it is a terrible idea.
Since you’ve already apologized I’m not going to belabor this, but I wanted to point out that I too have worked with rape victims. Some of them were women, some were men. Some were gay and some were straight. Some were trans. Some were bi. They were raped by men and women, both cis and trans, and by people who identified as gay and as straight and as bisexual. They were all victimized. I tried to help them all, and I think I did. The men I talked to often struggled a lot more than most of the women, and it was very hard to see.
In my opinion perpetuating the kind of sexism you espouse does nothing to help rape victims. It only makes certain victims (men) feel even more worthless and marginalized. As I said, statistically it is very likely a male victim of female rape will read what you’ve said in this thread. How do you think your words make them feel?
I also choose my battles. I choose to be against rape, and to fight the rape culture. Period. I don’t discriminate based on gender.
Interesting that you used the term that men struggle “a lot more than women”. That is indeed sexist . Perhaps they suffer as much as women, but to trivialize the suffering of women speaks volumes. It is very sad that you choose to do battle with me, when it is obvious we are on the same time given our history. You raised my consciousness and I apologized but you can’t seem to let go . Sounds to me like you have a different agenda and a different life experience
It might be sexist if I’d said that, but I didn’t so it isn’t. I said men often struggled more than most of the women. This is because, as hard as it is to be a female rape victim in our society, there’s at least something of a script for it. It’s sad, but in a way, having more female victims makes it easier for other female victims. They can turn to each other for support. They see narratives like their own portrayed in the media. Obviously it’s true there’s a ton of victim blaming for women, but there’s also a large support network.
Nothing like this exists for men who’ve been raped by women. Our culture tells these men that they should feel lucky, in fact! The idea that a man was overpowered by a woman can be deeply emasculating for a man. They deal with all the feelings of shame that a female victim does, but there’s an added dose of mockery, frankly from people like yourself. There’s a trivialization of female on male rape that doesn’t occur for women who are raped by men.
I never trivialized the suffering of women. You are the only person who trivialized the suffering of rape victims and you’re doing it again here. Perhaps men suffer as much as women?
I don’t think your consciousness has been raised one iota. I’m glad you apologized, and I acknowledged that, but saying you’re sorry while continuing the behavior for which you apologized does ring a little false. And at any rate, there’s no obligation for people to overlook your transgressions simply because you say you’re sorry.
An yes, because there “is a script for rape of women” it is easier. No it’s not! People like you trivialize it by saying they have support, they also have accusations like they were asking for it etc. this is analogous to your “men suffer from mockery”
And how dare you say I am trivializing rape victims… I am one. I just don’t think once again we should say it is worse for men. “Sometimes”. You are the one who rings false and in my opinion with an agenda. You are looking for an argument from someone on the same side…but then again, you did say you wouldn’t get I to it. How insincere that is.
No woman should be forced to bear a child against her will…period. That is like asking if a rapist should be castrated. We punish through the court system, not our bodies.
I am not siding with the rapist. If he has been raped by a woman she should be punished by the penal system. Once she is pregnant only she has the final decision. They are two different issues. Biology is destiny
Cause the women are criminals and the men are innocent. The law should be consistent where it can, but in this case, I support making an exception. No woman can be forced into an abortion, or forced to not have one, except when they raped a man in order to get pregnant and use that against him
You have 2 conflicting rights. The right of the rapist to not have an unwanted abortion and the right of the victim to not become a father against his will. You have decided that the rapist’s right is superior to the victim’s. That is siding with the rapist.
Does it matter that the circumstances that would make this an option are essentially impossible? Or is that why people are in favor of it, since it can never happen? And if the argument is that after a rape, the rapist loses rights over their reproductive organs, how do we feel about chopping male rapists dicks off with gardening shears?
If you don’t realize that biologically only a woman can get pregnant and never can a man..then I can’t explain it to you. Forcing a woman to breed against her will is equivalent to chopping off the hands of a thief. She should be punished, but there is a third party here…the embryo
We’re not Saudi Arabia. We don’t cut off the hands of thieves, we don’t castrate rapists, and we don’t force women to give birth when they don’t want to or submit to abortions when they don’t want to.
Beyond that, I do find it quite telling that whenever the subject of male rape comes up, those who complain about it focus almost exclusively on women raping men rather then men being raped by men.
It suggests to everyone with a functioning brain that those who focus on the former and ignore the latter are more motivated by their feelings regarding women than they are about male rape victims.
For the record, I’ve known several men who’ve been subjected to rather graphic rapes/sexual assaults and I would agree that overall they have a slightly tougher time admitting to it and coming clean then female rape victims, so it’s certainly not anything I’d minimize.
If anything I tend to hold those who obsess over these for all intents and purposes imaginary instances of men being raped by women over the vastly more common and frankly more violent and physically and psychologically damaging instances of men being raped by men to be quite offensive.
They remind me of the people who get horrifically worked up over Palestinians getting mistreated by Jews in the West Bank while ignoring the wide-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Kuwait or those who scream about the relatively rare “honor killings” in the Middle East and ignore the vastly more common domestic killings of women in the US.
Edit: This isn’t intended as an attack on Yog or anyone else in particular on this thread.