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Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

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The Central Scrutinizer said:
I think it's going to be 90% nerd guys, hoping to learn some nerdy pick up lines. The other 10% will be angry man-hating lesbians, hoping to learn new ways to be outraged.
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"New Ways To Be Outraged" could be a topic for a whole separate talk.
 
Giz said:
I disagree. Sometimes victims are too caught up emotionally or culturally to realize how much they are being victimized. For example, we could condemn a manipulative cult for preying on vulnerable people even if none of their converts felt like complaining.
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Yes, that is entirely possible, that they're just going along with it because it fills some need to belong to a group.

OTHO, with this issue, we're repeatedly told that rape has devastating and lifelong emotional consequences yet I'm unable to find any evidence that these girls are behaving like rape victims.

Harm is a social construct.
 
Stout said:
Yes, that is entirely possible, that they're just going along with it because it fills some need to belong to a group.

OTHO, with this issue, we're repeatedly told that rape has devastating and lifelong emotional consequences yet I'm unable to find any evidence that these girls are behaving like rape victims.

Harm is a social construct.
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So you are saying that if a culture has normalized rape, teaching girls from a young age that men can have sex with them regardless of their own wishes, we should not condemn rape in that culture because the girls wouldn't act like rape victims, and therefore no harm has actually been done?

That is sick.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
I think it's going to be 90% nerd guys, hoping to learn some nerdy pick up lines. The other 10% will be angry man-hating lesbians, hoping to learn new ways to be outraged.
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As funny as this sounds, I'll bet you're close to the mark. The nerdy guys delude themselves into thinking they've got a chance with the man-haters.
 
Fizil said:
So you are saying that if a culture has normalized rape, teaching girls from a young age that men can have sex with them regardless of their own wishes, we should not condemn rape in that culture because the girls wouldn't act like rape victims, and therefore no harm has actually been done?

That is sick.
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No, I'm saying what we're seeing with this virginity testing is not rape.
 
Fizil said:
So you are saying that if a culture has normalized rape, teaching girls from a young age that men can have sex with them regardless of their own wishes, we should not condemn rape in that culture because the girls wouldn't act like rape victims, and therefore no harm has actually been done?
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What looks like rape from one perspective might look different from another perspective.

Someone who comes from a culture that has normalized some specific hang-ups about sexual intercourse might feel very uncomfortable about performing intercourse in a context that didn't cater to their own culture's personal hang-ups. They might see other people, from other cultures, having intercourse in ways that offend their own hang-ups, and assume, in their ignorance, that it's rape.

But someone from another culture, who didn't share those hang-ups, might have a very different attitude, and might not consider it rape. Calling it rape from the narrow perspective of one's own culture?

That's sick.
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Maybe. And maybe you should check your privilege and make sure you're not erasing the experiences of people who are different from you.
 
bignickel said:
LOL! Excellent parody of A+ers!

(you, uh, meant that as a parody, right?
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Yes and no.

I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also trying to make an argument I believe in, using language that I hope Aplussers will understand.

I mean, depending on what your personal hangups are, or your culture's set of cultural hangups, your views on unpassionate sex might range from an easy way to keep your partner happy, to a convenient means to trade for cigarrettes, to a professional career, to date rape, to rape outright.

It's not as simple as judging some other culture's views on sex, based on one's own personal or cultural hang-ups about sex.
 
theprestige said:
Yes and no.

I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also trying to make an argument I believe in, using language that I hope Aplussers will understand.

I mean, depending on what your personal hangups are, or your culture's set of cultural hangups, your views on unpassionate sex might range from an easy way to keep your partner happy, to a convenient means to trade for cigarrettes, to a professional career, to date rape, to rape outright.

It's not as simple as judging some other culture's views on sex, based on one's own personal or cultural hang-ups about sex.
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That is some extreme moral relativism you've got going there. Under your philosophy the best way to deal with the problem of rape in Western society would be to train men and women to be OK with being raped, instead of finding ways to reduce the incidence of rape. If our society accepted non-consensual sex as a norm, according to your philosophy rape would be perfectly moral. Pedophilia? Depends on the society! Slavery? Depends on the society! Humans weren't making moral progress outlawing pedophilia and slavery, they were just shifting to a new moral code, just as valid as the old one that accepted those practices. Right? :rolleyes:
 
Fizil said:
That is some extreme moral relativism you've got going there.
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I think you're interpreting the argument uncharitably there. You're of course right that ethical cultural relativism is incoherent, but the argument as presented looks more like descriptive cultural relativism in action.

Cleaned up, the argument would be "Lots of other cultures and people have wildly different attitudes to non-passionate sex to yours, and that is simply a fact about the world. Therefore you need a really convincing argument to be entitled to the opinion that you are right and everyone else is wrong".

Under your philosophy the best way to deal with the problem of rape in Western society would be to train men and women to be OK with being raped, instead of finding ways to reduce the incidence of rape. If our society accepted non-consensual sex as a norm, according to your philosophy rape would be perfectly moral.
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Rape being bad isn't exactly a topic of major moral controversy in the developed world.

I would be careful about deploying the rape card in arguments like this. Unless it's clearly entirely appropriate, you risk both cheapening the issue of rape and being characterised as a person who tries to turn every conversation into a conversation about rape.

Pedophilia? Depends on the society! Slavery? Depends on the society! Humans weren't making moral progress outlawing pedophilia and slavery, they were just shifting to a new moral code, just as valid as the old one that accepted those practices. Right? :rolleyes:
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While we've generally settled in the developed world on sixteen as the lower end of the acceptable spectrum for sexual activity, and there's a limited amount of scientific evidence to support that being the least-worst line we can draw, there is plenty of scope to reasonably differ about how bad it is for a fifteen year old to have sex. Some people think it's catastrophically awful and calls for immediate witch-burning, other people think it's an unwarranted risk like doing 70 in a 60 zone.

In the same way I think there's legitimate scope to differ about how bad this "virginity testing" business is. I think we all agree it's bad in all sorts of ways, but we can differ about whether it's an outrage comparable to spousal rape or honour killings, or whether it's icky and sexist but not as bad as other things that happen in that part of the world.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
In the same way I think there's legitimate scope to differ about how bad this "virginity testing" business is. I think we all agree it's bad in all sorts of ways, but we can differ about whether it's an outrage comparable to spousal rape or honour killings, or whether it's icky and sexist but not as bad as other things that happen in that part of the world.
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I can agree that we can put virginity testing and rape on different parts of a spectrum of morality. However it is nowhere close to just being "icky and sexist", it is closer to child molestation. I'm not going to embrace the idea that something like that is alright in some other culture, anymore than I would accept that something like rape or slavery would be alright in some other culture.
 
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