This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't really understand this consent-maximizing worldview.
What is the point of these statements? The best way to avoid rape is to avoid being in the physical proximity of any given person that would rape you.
What does telling your daughter this accomplish exactly?
Are you making a formal promise that she can freely get intoxicated around any given man and if anything she does not like happen, some kind of system will provide satisfying retribution on her behalf? Are you also teaching your sons that it is their duty to go and start fights with drunk men who are 'preying' on women who are enthusiastically following your teachings?
Is it rape if she is drunk? Is it rape if he is drunk? Is it murder if the killer of your son is drunk?
If your daughter is stranded on an island with Bob and Bob controls the one safe shelter, is it rape if they have sex? Sometimes the choice is between rape and murder, I suppose, or manslaughter by exposure.
But either way, nobody is likely to adjudicate any kind of justice or protection on her behalf any time soon. Making your daughter more fearful of consequences of being alone with a man might actually prevent her from taking that far-away vacation in a plane with a man that led her to being stranded on the island, however.
Which is a lot more practical if we establish a standard that "No person is ever justified in forcing himself on another person, regardless of what choices that other person made.", thus reducing the number of potential perpetrators.
Giving her advice that (1.) she can follow while still dating people of the gender to which she is attracted, and (2.) will steer her towards people who are not pre-positioned to decide that they are entitled to take advantage of her.
If by 'anything she does not like' means 'some arsehole decides that he is entitled to access to her body notwithstanding her clearly expressed unwillingness', and 'satisfying retribution on her behalf' means 'assailant not given leniency relative to the counter-factual case in which he grabbed a woman who was following the "Saved, Sanctified, Separated, and Suit-Wearing Baptist Church Manual for Godly Courtship" to the letter', then yes, society owes her such a promise.
No, but I would teach him that it is his duty to Notify The Proper Authorities; he would have a duty to personally intervene if (a.) he were one of the Proper Authorities, being issued with armaments and drawing a salary from all of our tax money, or (b.) he fell through a portal into an anarchist world in which the Proper Authorities did not exist.
Her being drunk doesn't make him less culpable for ignoring her unambiguous refusal. Whether enthusiastic consent can be invalidated by intoxication is a matter which will have to be left for a later time.
Yes.
If he makes access to the shelter contingent on sexual favours, or implies that it is, yes. If he lets her in unconditionally, and their liaison is solely motivated by mutual desire, no.
Until they get back to civilisation....
How is talking to your daughter going to reduce the number of potential perpetrators? Or are you talking about a different kind of action you are simultaneously undertaking to affect wider society? If you believe that a more comprehensive 'consent maximalist' approach is needed on a societal level, do you also simultaneously advocate for the mass importation of men from countries notorious for a comparatively more 'laisser-faire approach to consent', so to speak? 'Bad hombres' as one quite laisser-faire man himself put it.
Do you also teach your children that the most important consideration while crossing the street is whether or not the light says they are owed the right-of-way, and not whether or not the fast-travelling vehicles actually stop?
Given the fallout of the #MeToo movement in the past few years, is it not questionable whether the most vocal proponents of a maximalist approach to consent are not also themselves prone to consent infractions?
It seems likely to me that the people who need to come up with complicated rules around intoxication and consent in the first place probably are involved in higher-than-average 'complicated' sexual situations that may or may not have to involve a judge at some point.
Isn't that the crux of the matter? If her being intoxicated invalidates her 'enthusiastic consent', his being intoxicated also invalidates his own 'enthusiastic consent' to the rape, he is being falsely accused of what he did not consciously engage in.
Similarly for killing a family while drunk driving. Somehow the important factor is not whether or not the booze cruiser purposefully plowed into the minivan, but that they decided to get drunk in the first place.
In my humble opinion, it should be illegal to serve young women alcohol, as they may unknowingly be carrying a child, to spare potential fetal alcohol syndrome.
If
Well, for one thing, if her date tries to force himself on her using one of the aforementioned excuses, he is less likely to gain her acquiescence and more likely to end up with a face full of pepper spray, a kick to the nadgers, and/or a court summons.
Yes. I am referring to the arcane art known as 'teaching my sons that a woman is entitled a veto over her nether regions, and cannot forfeit it by inchastity.'
I reject the framing of 'importation'. Immigrants are human beings with agency, who choose to relocate; they are not widgets brought in by the container-load.
However, I am in favour of (1.) more efforts to educate immigrants from such countries that women in the West have the right to say no themselves, without the involvement of a husband or a male relative, and that a woman not being under the control of a man does not make her a public accommodation, and (2.) prosecuting brown rapists to the same degree as white rapists.
No, but I would teach them that a driver who runs over a pedestrian does not become less liable because the pedestrian assumed that they would adhere to the traffic laws.
They are certainly not immune to such, but someone who publicly avers that, if a woman does XYZ, he is entitled to coitus with her regardless of her preferences, and to take it forcibly if she does not agree, is probably (1.) more dangerous, and (2.) not someone I want raising children.
Perhaps there was a mis-communication on my part. I am not at this time addressing the cases in which Alice and Bob were both drunk, did the dance with no pants, and Alice or Carol accuses Bob the next morning of rape. I am referring to the simpler case in which Alice does not want to be intimate with Bob, makes this quite clear to him, and he forces himself on her anyway. In that case, Bob is guilty of rape, and his guilt is not lessened one iota because Alice was three sheets to the wind.
And if they don't, what stops Alice from channeling Lorena Bobbitt?
And how does that work out for your daughter? The context being one of these:
I'm not advocating rape or anything but one must remember that men's facial bones are a lot sturdier than women's bones, and the same punch in the face has very different effects between the two. There are men out there who will tank several bullets before being incapable of further violence, and since all that matters to you is the practicality of consent and not the context in which it takes place, prioritizing violent resistance could spell big trouble for your daughter. Sometimes rape turns into murder.
After all, if Alice was previously having enthusiastic sex with Bob and Bob is a rapist, perhaps Alice has a thing for rapists.
Of course if you never told Alice that perhaps she should not be inebriated in the company of hulking gang members with face tattoos and multiple convictions for violent crimes, and you hold dear that whatever choices Alice make are reasonable ones that should never be looked at if she ever gets victimized, perhaps Bob is, shocker, prone to raping.
If Alice somehow survives one 'consent incident' with Bob, would you enthusiastically support her going drinking with Bob the following week?
This is apparently the accusation leveled against Eric Swalwell, that the same woman was taken advantage of in 2 separate instances of intoxication around him.
How could she make it clear to him if Bob is too drunk to consent and presumably understand that she is not consenting?
Indeed why aren't women just killing rapists left and right? This is just another version of choosing the man or the bear, and women pick the man.
Sounds like a character straight out of the latest top-selling romantasy.
Which is why I advise her to aim lower, and use the moments in which he is doubled over in pain to execute the Thirty-Sixth Stratagem.
I would advise her not to be inebriated at all; however, if she chooses to disregard my advice, and is sexually assaulted, her decisions are not relevant to the questions of "How much effort ought we expend to prosecute the perpetrator?" and "What sentence ought the perpetrator, if convicted, receive?"
Because have the alternative of involving the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders, both of whom consider sexually-based offences especially heinous.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That sounds like prostitution. This is a different sexual behavior than rape.
If Alice and Bob divide up the maintenance schedule for the shelter, and Alice subsequently offers sexual favours to Bob in exchange for his carrying out her share as well as his own, that would be prostitution.
Is he obligated to provide her with shelter?
Now requiring her to trade sex for it is a scummy thing to do. But it is not rape, that's the use of coercion or force to obtain sex from an unwilling partner.
If he controls the only safe shelter, he is obligated to not prevent her from using it.
Why?
I think a better question would be, "Why does he think he is justified in refusing her?".
Some possible answers to that question might lead one to the conclusion that he is justified, such as "I let her in last night and she tried to stab me.".
Of course you would think that, because you can't answer the question in a way that doesn't unfairly create a duty to one side.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link