My reflexive thought is to disagree but you could be right. I do think trolls roam the internet posting any kind of nonsense to get people upset. But usually they are poor at it and its obvious.
So, so many more rapists running around than operators of ovens from almost a century ago. Although, watched the news lately? Actually plenty of both around but still more garden variety rapists.
I agree that there are far too many rapists out there. But some people like the OP talking about rape doesnt make him fantasize about it, does it?
No no no, he was just dreaming up various scenarios where rape would be justified and hoping others would join in on it. Wait a minute…
Most guys here have mostly understood what women go through once it was pointed out to them (some of you are still assholes, though). Walking through a parking lot, being in any public setting alone, etc., etc., we’re subject to unwanted attention from men, and what might happen if they get angry and escalate: violence and potentially rape.
Rape is at least an existential threat to most women, as well as to some men. To discuss it as an “academic exercise” trivializes the fears of more than half the population of the earth. It’s not possible to discuss some level of acceptability without insulting, demoralizing, and marginalizing everyone who fears it. At least have the empathy to recognize that.
Well, y’know, if men had a reasonable aggregate level of empathy the world would look very different now, wouldn’t it?
Assumptions that people who want places where anything can be discussed lack empathy are, at best, baseless dime store psychology, and at worse a personal attack.
If you cannot try to see the position your opponents are trying to take based on what they say without casting aspersions on their motivations when their words are sufficient to explain their position, it’s no wonder you don’t really understand or value the merits of open debate. You are just trying to bully someone into silence rather than to beat them with the merits of your ideas.
This is entirely consistent with the failed personal attack you made against me earlier in the thread, which you then pretended you won (because omg I’m not going to read several paragraphs while participating in an internet discussion!!! the fact that you wrote those paragraphs obviously means you lose!) after it was completely destroyed.
The posters on the board who are survivors of war and have expressed discomfort with funsie war debates are imaginary. I have no idea whether you realize that.
Duuuuuuuude. We’re all slowly dying. The universe is slowly dying. We can but conduct ourselves with decency and dignity until our inevitable passing.
Man, that leporiphobia quote really captures something real. This isn’t an assumption about a lack of empathy, it’s a conclusion. When you’re characterizing the discomfort of rape survivors as a “pet issue” or as being “easily offended,” it’s very difficult to draw any other conclusion.
Do better.
Who needs assumptions when y’all are telling on yourselves quite briskly and without being asked? As per usual.
Let’s carry this to its logical conclusion, then. I believe that we should be able to talk about the holocaust, including unpleasant hypotheticals. I must hate Jews, Romani, gay people, the disabled, and a few other groups, right? I think we should be able to have hypothetical discussions about murder and torture. I must hate and have no empathy for direct and indirect victims of murder, nor anyone tortured. Hey, we can even have a hypothetical discussion about whether you’d end the universe if you had that power, and you can say I hate not only all life on earth, but everywhere in the universe, and the cosmos itself.
Or… or… I can be doing exactly what I said I’m doing, advocate that any topic should be fair game if presented as an intellectually honest discussion and that no topics should be banned under the assumption that they are too offensive to be discussed.
Sure, the latter suggestion has logic, reason, parsimony, and consistency going for it, but the first interpretation allows you to make a personal attack against someone you cannot beat with the merits of your ideas and must attempt to discredit with an ad hominem about their motivations. Hmm…
We’ve got a real problem, A, which can be addressed, A1.
But wait! you cry. I can also imagine problems, B, C, D, E, F, G, all the way to Z, and if they were real problems, you could address them B1, C1, D1, all the way to Z1.
Okay, sure. So what? I ask.
So that means that if you address the real problem with A1, you must also enact B1, C1, D1, and so on, and that sounds awful!
I’m not impressed by this argumentative structure. A1 can be enacted to address real problem A, with no implications for addressing imaginary problems B through Z. If B turns out to be a real problem–and only then–we can consider B1.
No. You don’t appear to understand the objection. That said, if you called Elie Wiesel “easily offended” or talked about Anne Frank’s “pet issue,” you betcha I’d be looking at your posts askance.
You are really hung up on the “pet issue” thing. Maybe I’m using it correctly. As far as I’m aware, “pet issue” is an issue that’s especially important to you, especially if you practice advocacy work about it wherever you can. Is that not a useful definition?
I did not trivialize rape. At no point did I ever say anyone’s trauma from rape is insignificant, or that rape is no big deal. Your assumptions about me are pathetically wrong, and if you told anyone at all who actually knew me in real life what you’re saying about me here they’d laugh your pathetic attempts at ad hominems off.
However, I do stand by “easily offended” - if you come on a message board dedicated to open debate about any subject, have a free choice of avoiding any subjects you’re sensitive to, and then demand that posters be banned and discussion topics be banned when you could’ve easily avoided them instead, I would classify that as being easily offended. Maybe that language lacks precision, but I think the sentiment more or less applies.
All of my points here have nothing to do with rape specifically. If we were talking about how hypotheticals about torture should be banned, or hypotheticals about murder, or whatever, my logic would be exactly the same. I do not want any topic to be inherently off limits. YOU are the people making it about rape, and when someone pushes against the idea of banning any topics from conversation about the forum, you pathetically accuse them of being pro-rape. It’s absurd.
You called someone a rape apologist which is a completely meritless accusation. Your posts that try to belittle a point with silly words like ‘funsie’ serve what purpose? Again, war is not imaginary, torture is not imaginary, extrajudicial punishment is not imaginary (and is quite often advocated on these forums), abortion is not imaginary. None of these are ‘funsie.’
If you watch troops of baboons you’ll kinda see them suddenly decide “Ah-HA, we are going to show our TERRIFYING STRIPY ASSES to our foes and they will become terrified MUAHAHAHA!” and every other creature around is all like “Yeah, dudes, you got stripy asses, you think we didn’t notice or sump’n? Cuz nobody’s terrorfied of y’alls stripy asses.” And then the baboons screech “AHAHAHA PWNT U LOL WOOOOO!!1!” as they rampage off into the woods and the rest of the critters are all like “Dude, what the fuck was that?” and a couple old ones are just all like “Baboons, whaddaya gonna do?”
On the contrary, I have stuck to the issues, making my point in the way that you’re supposed to do when engaged in a debate of reason. You have attempted to distract with a consistency ad hominem in #110 which was pathetically off base and destroyed in #118, to which you essentially said “TLDR” as though that’s a response to an argument. You then moved on to asserting that because I want open discussion on any issue - whether it be torture or murder or genocide or whatever hypotheticals anyone wants to discuss - that because you’re offended by a discussion rape and want to shut it down, and I’m on the opposite side of your position (wanting to prevent a blanket ban of any topic), then I must hate rape victims and lack any empathy and all that, which is another pathetic and misguided personal attack.
I’ve stuck to the issues and refuting your personal attacks on me. You lack substance, you are not letting ideas guide your position in the debate, but rather attacking anyone who disagrees with you. Your behavior is closer to the shrieking babboons than mine.
Incidentally, spell out for me what the new policy should be.
Is rape the only topic about which you cannot have an unpleasant hypothetical conversation? If not, what’s the criteria? Is it something that a certain percentage of the population has been victimized by? Is that worldwide numbers, or adjusted by the demographics of the SDMB? Do we have to occasionally re-evaluate our demographics to see what topics are forbidden?
Well, no, that doesn’t quite work, because a common and unpleasant but not horribly traumatizing experience that most people have would likely be allowed. So we need some sort of criteria for determing how unpleasant an experience is to require it.
Is it based on the number of complaints a thread receives? How many people have to be personally offended that a topic is too sensitive to them before it gets banned? Is there a ratio of participants to people who are offended, perhaps?
Or perhaps we can just ban all hypotheticals between two unpleasant choices to cover our bases?
Give me a workable proposal about which topics are forbidden from discussion or how we go about determining that as the issue pops up. Or are we just going to arbitrarily ban people when it turns out the right people find something offensive?
ISTM, although IANAMod, that it would be perfectly feasible to have an unpleasant hypothetical conversation in general terms about two hypothetical humans as the lone surviving representatives of humanity, and whether they would have any moral obligation to try to perpetuate the human race, and whether that obligation could ever outweigh the moral obligation not to force sexual activity on somebody unwilling.
None of that discussion requires asking posters “Would YOU rape this other person, in these circumstances?”
If you want to discuss unpleasant moral dilemmas associated with a very remote and unrealistic hypothetical, you don’t have to phrase it in terms of individual posters’ own willingness to commit a violent crime. That does come across as rather prurient and ghoulish, and I don’t think it belongs in a forum for serious debate.
We really need a name for what you’re describing!
I love this post. I wish we had sigs because Id like to use it. Great job.