On Tuesday I opened a topic titled “Would you rape the only other person alive?”
My original post and first reply (click to show/hide)
About three hours later engineer_comp_geek closed the topic pending review by a Great Debates moderator, who shortly issued not only a warning but also suspended me.
I have no issue with engineer_comp_geek’s closing of the topic - that is standard procedure when too many flags come in.
I understand that warnings and suspensions are grave matters, especially when a suspension is given out for the first offense - something I thought would probably not happen. Therefore I wish to dispute my warning/suspension.
By personal message What_Exit clarified that he issued sanctions because
- My thread was “misogynistic despite a few weasel words”
- My thread was excusing rape, and “[any] thread excusing rape is highly offensive”
My defense:
-
a. my posts were not misogynistic; (details below)
b. even if my posts were misogynistic, misogyny is not itself prohibited by the rules; -
a. the topic was about the morality of rape in a specific situation, and in my opinion it is not highly offensive to debate the morality of rape in that specific situation;
b. I admit that a reasonable person (even myself) knows some people will take offense with my topic, but in this case there is no way to discuss the topic without offending some people;
c. I did not start the topic for shock value, but as an academic debate (details below);
d. my topic did not stray beyond the pale of civil debate (Split_p_j rule, details below); and
e. offensiveness is not itself prohibited by the rules
My posts were not misogynistic
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Misogyny is the hatred of women. I do not hate women, and a reasonable reading of my posts does not indicate that I hate women.
My original post was not bashing on women specifically or generally. It is written to be gender-neutral because I was soliciting moral analysis for two related hypotheticals, one where a man decides whether to rape the last woman alive, and another where a woman decides whether to rape the last man alive.
you and one other person who is of the opposite sex
Do you rape him/her?
My response laying out my opinion was not misogynistic either. For one, I wrote that I would not rape her.
I would not [rape her].
I gave a number of reasons why it would be wrong to rape her. So it is not like I’m out there trying to argue in favor of raping women.
Before I posted the topic my personal opinion was that it would be less wrong for the woman to rape the man than vice versa, because pregnancy disproportionately burdens the woman. This is hinted at in my reply, where among other reasons for not raping her,
The pregnancy must be borne out, and as I am of the male sex, it would be a forced pregnancy. Furthermore I may have to prevent her from aborting the child.
It is true that I did not, in my posts, mention the woman’s right to withhold consent for sex. I must have thought that was too obvious of a point, but more importantly in this particular scenario her withholding consent literally spells the end of the human race* - debatably a powerful and compelling reason to overcome a single person’s bodily autonomy in any context, such as with vaccine mandates (recent debate on that topic). I did not explicitly write this out, perhaps a mistake on my part, because I thought it would be obvious that the one justification for rape was being weighed against the woman’s right not to be raped.
The only rationale in favor of rape in this instance is propagation of the human species. But […]
You don’t have to agree with me about my moral argument, but I think it is unreasonable to sanction me for misogyny due to this.
* Kimstu rather convincingly pointed out to me that the human race cannot repopulate from a single breeding pair, but this was after I had posted the topic and my opinion on it.
I did not start the topic for shock value, but as an academic debate
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The topic arose organically out of a linked discussion. From my original post,
Continuing the discussion from Do sexual preferences make one a bigot? :
And from that linked post,
I think, under no circumstance is it morally wrong to refuse sex. (I could imagine contrived situations like you are the last couple alive but for all intents and purposes…)
I thought this would make for an interesting debate, not often does one consider why rape is wrong, or how wrong.
This is not a case of me coming out of the blue and stirring up trouble, or being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
My topic did not stray beyond the pale of civil debate (Split_p_j rule)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I do not consider this kind of question to be beyond the pale of civil debate. The hypothetical is entirely academic - it posits a nuclear holocaust with only two human survivors. Arguing for the rape of one of those survivors does not directly or indirectly affect any actual living person today. Another poster indicated that a recent movie involved this situation.
This is unlike the Split_p_j incident, where a member was “suggesting that a person who becomes inebriated thereby consents to, or is deserving of, assault or other crime.”
~Max