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 -
What a questionable assertion to make.
Do you want to take that line of thought to the conclusion that if a married woman develops, say, a bout of mild depression, it's the job of the police and her psychiatrist to stick on a chastity belt against the wishes of her and her husband?
A mild case of OCD? BPD like the women Brand was probably fucking?
In medicine and law, it's not just a matter of having "a" mental illness, unless the person is a ward of the state or their family, then it's incredibly dumb to refer to them as incapable of extending sufficient consent for sex, an incredibly common and fundamental activity, when they're not disbarred from doing a great deal more they can't weasel out of on grounds of mental incompetence.
Not that I think that even the grossly retarded, like a person with Downs, should be stopped from having sex, but even broader society doesn't hold the insane assertion you make as true, de facto or de jure.
Let's bite the bullet here. We've both got significant experience in the medical field, you more than me. But we both know that even the best psychiatrists aren't perfect. We also know that college age is prime time for development of psychotic disorders and bipolar disorder. So what's the odds, given that, that a woman that is mostly OK but maybe a little manic, maybe just an energetic person that can totally consent...when she has sex with Brand becomes floridly psychotic three days later, winds up in a psych ward, and then truly doesn't recall whether the sex happened before or after she was manic or psychotic?
Hell, it is possible (although unlikely) that someone that is a ward of the state (or otherwise in State custody/guardianship) manages to bust out of their group home or whatever, get to Brand, and seem like a more or less sane and put together person. Maybe 99 percent of the time or even 99.9 percent of the time wards of the state don't look competent, but 0.1 percent of the time on any given day they do, and occasionally they break loose or run away from their group homes to live on Christmas tree farms or follow rockstars or something. Intelligent schizophrenics can cook up at least superficially plausible bullshit from time to time...it is a matter of slinging enough bull feces at enough walls and ultimately something sticks.
A) Brand is screwing hundreds of women, maybe thousands, over his career.
B) Such groupies are significantly more likely to be BPD, manic, or just a little off kilter in a million ways. The kind of people who are jumping at opportunity to do blow and blow rockstars aren't quite the average women, even if I wouldn't pathologize them outright.
Then now, does it strike you as particularly unlikely that over a career of several decades, one of them would experience such an episode?
The odds per any given groupie might be miniscule, but when you consider the massive number of them he's fucked over the years..
If someone has slept with hundreds of women, then you shouldn't be particularly surprised if one documented incident overlapped temporally with something concerning. It's just not nearly as damning as for a dude who's getting poon every 6 months in college.
This is kind of my point. Joe Average has like ten partners in a lifetime. If he's more or less prudent he has let's say a 99.9 percent chance of not sticking it in someone that might not be able to consent. That's probably going to keep him out of trouble. Not so for Brant.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hello, hello, guess why the offence of marital rape was created in law?
A depressed woman may not feel like having sex with her husband. If her husband goes ahead and insists on his "marital rights", maybe even forcefully, then whaddya know - it's rape!
You're being obtuse here, intentionally or not.
You claimed that any kind of mental illness (without bothering to specify degree or type) makes a woman unable to consent, presumably above and beyond plain old saying "nah dawg, not feeling it tonight" and turning over.
So the relevant comparison is where a woman with depression voluntarily has sex with her husband, not where she denies it. It might be begrudgingly, but couples regularly do things for the sake of the other they find less than maximally enjoyable. Marital rape where the husband forces himself upon her, this is clearly not.
Perhaps you might well beg to differ, but society broadly doesn't consider "get thee to a nunnery" to be the appropriate response when encountering women with any kind of mental illness. If I couldn't fuck because I was depressed, I'd be more depressed.
More options
Context Copy link
You're ignoring the quoted part that this comment is, obviously a response to.
That's the same language we, as a society, use for minors. That seems arguing for making consensual sex with a mentally unwell person count as statutory rape, or at least I feel this is a valid interpretation.
It is, more or less. Certainly with mental retardation and possible with schizophrenia. If you're consulting a lawyer regarding your sex life, you had better have a damn good reason to be swimming in those murky waters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link