This thread has finally dropped right off the cliff into surreality.
How did “vocation” ever get introduced to this?
I want to re-state a point I’ve made several times, which seems very relevant here, which is that there’s an ENORMOUS difference based on context. Let’s take two extreme examples:
Example A: You happen to know a woman who works as a prostitute. One morning she calls you up and says that she was raped last night. You immediately respond to her “well, you’re a prostitute, so it’s really not that big a deal, so better you than a nun!”.
Example B: There’s a long SDMB thread about rape, all in the hypothetical, definitely not due to an actual SDMB member having just been raped. The conversation turns to a discussion of factors that can make different rapes more or less traumatic (with some posters presumably taking a “there are no gray areas, rape is all awful” stance), and someone asks whether the purely physical trauma might be greater for a woman who has rarely or never had sex than one who has had lots of sex, using a prostitute and a nun as examples.
Example A is utterly massively dickish. Example B is clearly an potentially uncomfortable direction for a debate to take, but is certainly not something that to me seems out of bounds.
Followup: I also personally believe that “well, my crime wasn’t so bad, she was a prostitute” should have zero impact on how society judges a rapist, either criminally or ethically.
Of course. We can easily imagine scenarios in which the nun’s rape and the prostitute’s rape are fairly evaluated differently.
If the nun’s rape was because she got tipsy at a bar, and decided to accompany a guy to his hotel room, willingly but drunkenly had sex, and then when sober realized that her partner had taken advantage of her intoxication and her putative willingness was not due to actual consent, that is certainly rape.
If the prostitute was at home with her six-month old child and an assailant broke into her home and threatened harm to her child unless she consented to sex, that is certainly rape.
I regard the second crime as worse than the first. So in that context, it would be correct to say the rape of the prostitute was worse than the rape of the nun. No reasonable interpretation of that last statement is that I condone or apologize for the actions of the nun’s rapist.
In the context of this particular thread I’d submit that the differences argued by Broomstick were both utterly irrelevant and pretty much a non sequitur. Bringing that point up was a huge misstep that did her absolutely no favors. Arguing that technically she is correct* is all fine and good, but it is an argument over an irrelevant non sequitur that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I don’'t really see the point - I do think folks are getting a little overheated, but to some extent she made her own bed on that one.
I still don’t think you deserved that kind of slap you got, but I also think you’re wading in quicksand.
*Technically, I think she is wrong - there are certainly different levels of bad possible, but personally in this context there is not a farthings worth of difference to me between 3 and 10, nor do I believe pubescent-looking ten-year olds abound. I’ve seen a few twelve year-olds that can pass ( a few ), but ten have got to be as rare as albino hummingbirds. I don’t doubt they exist at all, but it’s a fucking silly argument to hang your hat on.
I’ve just started working with a charity to get prostitutes off the street and into housing, rehab, and job training. Just the other night the caseworkers were talking about the hundreds, if not thousands, of cases where prostitutes are raped - not by their “Johns,” but by anyone who has a chance. Why? Because in her experience unfortunately the judges and juries in the city pretty much will never convict someone who is on trial for raping a prostitute. In addition, most of them have a crippling fear of the police. So the prostitutes almost never turn the perpetrators in.
It’s sick but it’s reality.
Also ignores that while some few girls may pass that early, boys mature at a different rate - I can honestly say I’ve never, ever seen a 10yo boy who could pass for a 16yo, ever (progeria excepted) and it’s 10-yo boys that are in consideration.
Exactly. Whatever point is being made is obscured by the fact that it sounds very much like grasping at some kind of straw to mitigate the crime.
Not exactly a defensible reaction from a group of people supposedly interested in “fighting ignorance,” is it?
Then the “fighting ignorance” reaction ought to be to acknowledge that there is a technical difference but point out it in no way mitigates the crime. And that’s a very valuable distinction to make: two acts can be compared to each other, with one being worse. But both acts are still unambiguous criminal, and in that sense are identical.
What, preferring a discussion about the actual topic, rather than a diversion into irrelevant minutiae? No, that’s perfectly defensible (if not your preferred kind of discussion, as we all know)
Well, maybe, but when the arguments made rely on far-fetched irrelevancies that in aggregate seem like a desperate attempt to make a crime seem less bad or somehow justifiable, it’s natural for the discussion to become about that (whether the argument is relevant and displays a desire to defend/excuse), and not so much about whether technically speaking the argument is literally true or holds some water as a stand-alone point.
The problem I see with this rejoinder is that it elevates what the argument “seems” to be about over the actual words used.
Let’s say you’re right: Broomstick and/or MaxTheVool sought to make certain acts of child rape justifiable by offering these observations.
The only way they can succeed is if you fail to address their supposed claim.
Which you have, by instead addressing their perceived personal failings and motives.
Instead, I would argue that the appropriate response is to emphasize that despite the technical accuracy of their words, nothing does either defend or excuse either crime, and the mere fact that one crime may be somehow less despicable than another is in no way an argument that EITHER crime is in the slightest way acceptable. There is praise in being the cleanest cockroach under the sink, in other words.
So even if your concern is correct – and I am utterly confident it is not – your proposed response misses the “fighting ignorance” boat. (In my view.)
And hopefully it should be clear that I have little reason to defend Broomstick, as our past posting history will reveal.
Max and I have more of a love/hate relationship: I love his ability to soundly and precisely identify and pursue arguments and hate it when he turns that talent against my positions.
This is a key point. I honestly don’t see Broomstick as trying to make some larger point of that sort. She was involved in maybe 3 distinct sub-squabbles about various things in this thread. But a bunch of people seem to have interpreted that as her trying to in some way defend MZB, like she was at some point going to pop in and say “see, now that I have argued A and B and C I have definitely proven that MZB was actually totally pure as the driven snow”. And I just don’t see any such overall pattern or scheme or thrust of argument. At this point she seems quite convinced that MZB was guilty of horrific crimes against children. If you think that a quibble about whether those crimes are horrific or ultra-horrific counts as “defending” MZB, well, that’s on you.
Furthermore, even if Broomstick WAS trying to actually defend MZB, that still doesn’t mean that somehow anyone arguing with her gets a free pass to make any hyperbolic or inaccurate statement they want without getting called on it. For instance, “Child rape is either acceptable or unacceptable. There aren’t any shades of gray.” I think that’s a clearly and immediately false statement, so I argued with it. It would be a clearly and immediately false statement even if the person that CrazyHorse was arguing with when he made was actually a literal child rapist.
Yeppers. Thanks!
What group of people does that? Pileons are more fun …
This is exactly the point.
In this discussion specifically, stubbornly clinging to this need to discuss some idiotic distinction about the degrees of wrongness of one form of child rape versus another is at best obtuse, unhelpful, tone deaf, boring, and moronic.
If we were discussing a 10 year old who was gunned down in cold blood in a drive by shooting, we would have Broomstick chiming in “well you know, some 10 year olds can be real assholes. Not that I’m saying this one was! And not that I support murder of any child, even assholes. But I’m just saying…people sometimes kill other people for being assholes and some 10 year olds really are assholes…” And someone says “this one wasn’t, and it doesn’t matter anyway you idiot!” So then we have MaxThevool chiming in with an equal level of Asperger-like inability to see the big picture, instead focusing in on some minutiae that nobody cares about or finds relevant. “Well, she’s right you know… she is! Some of them really are. Why can’t you people accept this?”
Now that we have Bricker on board as well, it is clear that any shred of hope for an interesting or meaningful discussion of the important aspects of this thread has been lost in favor of a boring, irrelevant, repetitive review of a totally meaningless argument about a point of fact that has no significance to the OP, and misses the big picture entirely.
The only possible relevance it can have when insistently discussed in the context of this thread is to say “Raping some kids is OK” period. The only other possibility: the three posters in question are tone-deaf, stupid, boring and toxic people who actually don’t get it that everyone understands their point and insists that it is totally irrelevant to the subject, is hurtful to some and at best, very unhelpful to all.
We disagree about how hard of a slap the mouthbreathing dumbfucks deserve but sometimes, occasionally, a glass of icewater in the face can awaken someone caught in such a downward spiral.
Very well said, Crazyhorse.
I must confess it eludes me completely why on earth “fighting ignorance” means that we need to stop in the middle of a discussion in order to confirm that we agree with irrelevant points of fact. And why it’s not better to ask the person who posited the point of fact as an argument why they think it IS relevant. Fine, here you go…the point of fact at issue is that it’s more normal/less deviant to be attracted to post-pubescent people than pre-pubescent people. OK, granted. True. Are we good now to discuss the actual topic? Can we discuss why in god’s name this is supposed to be a relevant point? Can we discuss what the odds are that any of the children involved are one of the 1 in a million ten year olds who could pass for somone in their late teens? Can we discuss why anyone would conjecture that this extremely unlikely scenario may be playing into this situation? Because now that we’ve “fought ignorance” I’d really like to fight some sheer idiocy.
Because I don’t think Broomstick WAS particularly persistently trying to bring up that point. The conversation wandered over to a kind of weird place, Broomstick made a tangential observation, and then got insanely piled on, and some of the piling on seemed to me to be both bizarrely uncalled for and clearly wrong. So I interjected, which continued the hijack. Hey, it happens, hijacks take on a life of their own.
What there has never been in this thread, as far as I can tell, is a concerted effort to downplay either the crimes of MZB or her husband due to the age of the children, nor a concerted effort to keep this thread hijacked. I certainly have no vested interest in hijacking the thread. Why would I? What would I have to gain? On the other hand, I’m not going to let people insinuate that I like to molest my cousins and then just let it drop so that we can get back to the OP. That’s particularly true when there’s basically nothing left to say about the OP. MZB and her husband were both evil criminal scumbags. Every single person in this thread agrees with that, with perhaps the most trivially minor caveats of exactly how they would phrase that. Different people will choose to let that affect their reading choices in different ways. Which is fine. What exact important discussion is being preempted by this hypothetically semi-intentional hijack that Broomstick and I are perpetrating?
Then concede it, and get back to the brilliant, insightful discussion you were having, about how fervently each participant can agree that the rape of children is bad.
Once again, the fallacy of the excluded middle raises its head. It’s unclear to me why you feel you can simply announce that the only two possibilities are two that appear at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
How about the interpretation in which Broomstick makes a valid, if somewhat unhelpful, observation, and other posters surge forward to bury her, at which point Max points out that she was accurate if unhelpful, and the mob turns its attention on him?
Context, Bricker, context. In a GD thread about rape and various degrees of severity, sure… have at it. In a thread about a real person who was really raped and is living today and very likely to find the thread, not so much.
The irony is that Broomstick was obviously concern trolling in the first place. She cannot possibly be that stupid and obtuse (although I don’t reach that decision easily as she is certainly somewhat stupid and obtuse) But as far as I know you and Max don’t usually troll even if your opinions might cause tempers to flare.
You are both falling right into line like little puppets though, giving life to a point that was only raised to undermine the severity of a sexual assault in the hopes that others would say “Gee, she does have a point about that even if it doesn’t exactly apply in this situation.”