Okay, so rolled up in my one debate topic there are actually two questions with four total answers.
1 I, a man, would rape the last woman.
2 I, a man, would not rape the last woman.
3 I, a woman, would rape the last man.
4 I, a woman, would not rape the last man.
My position is pretty solid on #2 and I was barely leaning over the fence to reach #4 (if I were a woman). I did not think there is no debate to be had between #3 and #4, or even on my own method of reaching #2.
At least not before Kimstu pointed out a major flaw in my hypo.
I routinely come up with such hypotheticals, and as DemonTree noted I once published one here that she and I think is much more vile and sickly than this. But the purpose is not to out-gross someone, it is to find an edge case and test my own philosophy for consistency. This is a valid form of skepticism, in my opinion.
You know, I’ve wondered about a question that’s maybe the opposite of the one raised here — and now I’m wondering if asking it in GD could get me suspended, for, well, the opposite reason.
(Heck, I’m wondering if asking it here could get me suspended.)
I snipped the first part. It’s clear you’re not really getting the problem here - in the last handful of years, this board community, backed by the moderators, has collectively decided that we don’t play around with sexual violence. No threats, no jokes, etc., about sexual violence. And anything else better be phrased awfully carefully. Tread very lightly with this topic, both because it may bring up trauma in survivors here, but also, perhaps just as importantly, because we want to be a part of making society better, even if it’s just in the tiny way of a small internet community. That means being very careful about this topic that broader society has handled so terribly and so harmfully for so many years.
Your thread title and OP didn’t treat this fraught topic with the care the community has deemed necessary. And neither did the snipped part of the post this is responding to. You’re just treating sexual violence as another topic of conversation, no different than any other, and I don’t think that’s acceptable on this board.
All this is my opinion and understanding of this board’s community and culture over the years, of course.
As an aside, what is the more vile thread you’re referring to?
That’s something I did think about. I may have argued against it, and was deciding if it’s still worthwhile after Kimstu pointed out genetic decay from inbreeding. But I wrote into my hypothetical that the other human being explicitly thinks its time for humans to die out, and that is why he or she doesn’t consent to sex.
See now, the thing is that women walk through the earth knowing on a cellular level that no matter how important a question is to us, no matter how vital it might be to our wellbeing, no matter how viscerally upsetting it is that we can’t have the thing that’s so important to us–no matter what, the most important thing in the world to US is considered to be less important than the most trivial whim of white men. We know this because we’re constantly reminded of it with incessant microaggressions that are expected to be excused and glossed over because the man who handed them out didn’t “intend” to upset us. It’s like walking around with a rock in your shoe that you can’t remove, a flat spot on the wheel of your shopping cart that’s gonna clunk no matter what–it’s the constant background noise like the whine of a mosquito that you can neither swat nor ignore.
Those of us who have first hand experience of rape keep telling clueless men that there is NEVER a justification for it, no matter how you twist it and wring it and try to wangle a tortured concession that maaaaaaaaaaybe just in this OOOOONNNNEEE hypothetical case it might be okay but you just don’t fucking listen. The mosquito whine goes on and ramps up in volume. The blister on our foot breaks and bleeds and floods our shoes with noxious liquid. And still we’re gonna hit “new posts” on a message board and there’s gonna be another fucking JAQoff with his “But what if [stupid tortured hypothetical about rape that you just know he’s gonna be JAQing off to all night] what then, huh? HUH??”
But sure, tell us all how your one day suspension is SO MUCH WORSE than a rape survivor having to see that same shitty title you worked SO HARD OVER and decided was a great idea to post. Do tell.
I think, a topic like “why is rape wrong?” is pretty offensive but also of some utility, at least to someone who honestly isn’t sure about the answer. But even more useful and less offensive is the answer, “it doesn’t matter, rape is just always wrong”. And I think this goes for pretty much any offensive question where I already know and am settled on the answer, and someone else asks me why. Broad and authoritative moral codes like the golden rule or religion can help fill in the blanks for most edge cases in real life. And religion probably does provide answers for my hypothetical, if I was so inclined to look there.
It’s a form that’s going to wind up destroying any philosophy or morals at all, IMO.
There is always some weird edge case that makes it possible to argue that x, whatever x is, is a less worse thing to do in that situation (though I don’t think your example being discussed here is anywhere near being one; which is part but not all of what’s wrong with it.)
That weird edge case doesn’t make x not wrong. X is still wrong, even if it’s possible to imagine a situation in which not-X is even more wrong.
(Which, again, you haven’t even succeeded in doing; and inbreeding depression is only one of multiple reasons why.)
No, I meant beginning by granting right at the start that rape is wrong, and then discussing whether a given philosophy (a) arguably okays it, and not in an edge case; and so (b) should, to that extent, be railed against.
Another way to put it, I think: there is a conflict between A. treating sexual violence the same as any other topic of discussion and B. having a welcoming and safe community for survivors of sexual violence (and many others, for that matter), and this community has decided that B is much, much more important than A.
I wasn’t joking or threatening anybody with the posts in question. And my attempt to take survivors with trauma into consideration backfired spectacularly. My takeaway from posters like BippityBoppityBoo, thorny_apple, naita, Sunny_Daze, TroutMan, heck even you, is that the topic is inherently beyond the pale. No amount of politeness or phrasing will make the discussion I wanted to have acceptable - in their eyes and apparently yours too. So I am really confused with this latest post.
Supposedly justifiable rape (even the suggestion) is beyond the pale, but not necessarily anything relating to sexual violence (there have been many of the latter threads that didn’t cross any lines, by my memory). What do you find confusing?
To be clear that I understand you, “the most important thing in the world to US” means not being raped, and “the most trivial whim of white men” means me getting to hear other people’s opinions on a message board. Right?
ETA: (other matchups because I’m not 100% clear)
not being raped | survival of the human race
not being retraumatized by reading justification for rape | posting a hypothetical on a message board
I don’t believe that any intellectually honest discussion should be suppressed because the topic makes people uncomfortable. Think of how useful the trolley problems are in exploring the uniqueness and conflcts within the human mind and within our cultural values. But the trolley problems are hypotheticals about people being horribly dismembered by a runaway train. Why isn’t that a sensitive subject? Certainly there are people who have been hit by vehicles or had someone they cared about hit by who could be offended at the trivialization of a horrible gruesome death, but we have almost no taboos against discussing death and murder in this way. No one would get horribly offended at a trolley problem.
Morbid hypotheticals are interesting intellectal discussions to test the limits of our reason, empathy, ethics, and morality. They are not advocacy for doing horrible things, any more than the trolley problems trivialize or embolden people to run people over. They’re often also just interesting discussions, seeing where other people fall in extreme scenarios, and seeing where the limits and borders of our own worldviews lie.
I think the idea that we should avoid certain subjects, create safe spaces, and all that is unsuitable for the open, intellectual discussions this board should strive for. It should not happen at universities, it shouldn’t happen here. If a user is a problem because he seems to have a posting history to disguise advocating for some horrific pet issue disguised as a hypothetical, that could be a separate problem, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I don’t think a hypothetical like “would you eat an infant alive if it meant ridding the world of COVID-19” would be banned and shut down in this way, even though the idea of eating an infant alive is probably as horrific as rape. So I suspect the difference is probably in line with the push the board has been making in recent years to protect women and to fight misogyny, and rape is seen as something done to women, whereas murder is something done generically to people, so it gets labelled as problematic and banned far before any discussions about murder or other equally horrific things. I don’t think that’s a good policy on a board that should be dedicated to open and challenging discussion.
And it has, to some extent. As I’ve written above I tend to disavow any hard and fast rules such as X is always wrong. The logical conclusion is that one comes to question whether death or suicide is always wrong, that philosophical abyss that stares back at you. It was a question I used to struggle with.
As written above, it is really not safe to confront such questions in isolation.
I don’t know if I agree with that. Given a decision between two or more choices (X, Y, Z, etc.), the least-wrong choice is the right choice. So in that sense yes, X is right. But that only applies to the specific situation.