BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
This whole "rape" line of discussion keeps going well for Dawkins. He should keep it up ;P
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Richard Dawkins says 'date rape is bad, stranger rape is worse'
- Thread starter gerg
- Start date
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People are often moronic about things that are not their expertise.
See: Economics majors
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
There's a lot going on here.
Let me just state some qualifications up front. I've never been raped - but I have spoken with (as in 95% listened to) many victims of rape over the last 30+ years, between 2 months and 20 years after the event, between 6 years and 40-odd years old at the time of the event, varying between family rape, boyfriend rape, ex-boyfriend rape, stranger rape, and including one case of a false accusation of rape and one case of kidnap/torture/rape, and with varying degrees of violence and non-violence.
Upshot is that severity of rape is not a scalar quantity, which I guess comes as no surprise to anybody at all.
But I thought it worthwhile to try and put some of this stuff in a bit more perspective.
Mumei pretty well hit the nail on the head early on. The impact on the victim is one potential "measure" (quotes because it's not measurable in any meaningful sense) of severity. That, over time, depends a lot on what support the victim has (or doesn't have), on what alternatives she has in life in the short and long term (for example, family child rape is particularly difficult because there is nearly always no means of escape), and especially on whether she is able to externalise the experience.
Those are bland words for traumatic things, but I hope you get the drift.
But he was making blanket statements about date rape and stranger rape. And these are things that maybe you can't sensibly make blanket statements about. Not without being called out anyway.
That depends largely whether you are prosecuting or defending. And no, it doesn't usually involve date rape drugs. That's one out of many unwarranted generalisations in this thread (and in the Twitter stuff, and everywhere else).
As a human being, Dawkins is entitled to an opinion. He's also entitled to having that opinion called out as being wrong if it isn't based on evidence, as he should be the first to recognise.
He's certainly all too ready to point out the unreliability of empathy and imagination in other peoples' arguments.
Now that line riles me. Women have no special line into this just through being women. And if Dawkins were female it would not make her point any more valid. Even women who have been raped are in no particularly privileged position to compare rapes.
This sort of argument comes dangerously close to saying that all rapes are the same on some level. They aren't. Obviously.
It suggests more than that, it suggests that it affects the victim's experience in one direction only (namely that it less bad if you know the perpetrator). Now, given limitations of Twitter and all that, this is just not true. All the in-family and position-of-trust and protected-by-authority-or-fame cases give the lie to that. So I agree with you gerg.
I'm willing to concede that Dawkins didn't intend to enter into that particular arena (and if he'd thought about it he might not have used rape as an example).
But this is probably a good point to bring up one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far. There's a big difference between the impact on the victim (which is what everyone's been talking about so far) and the impact on society - and they aren't the same thing.
Arguably (if anyone were to dare argue it) an individual predator stranger-rapist is a greater threat to society (as in, more often, to more people, more unpredictably and maybe with more violence) than is an individual in-family breach-of-trust rapist. This is an uncomfortable thing to consider, but it may be why in law and in sentencing stranger-rapists are viewed more seriously.
The gross impact on society might be the other way round - seems to me the incidence of in-family rape is way higher than stranger rape, but that it goes mostly unreported.
I know you can't measure it with a rape-ometer or something, but please tell me you're not saying somehow all rape is the same?
I know this was the source of the whole thing, but I know nothing at all about it, so no comment.
No. It isn't. Consider two cases I have come across.
One - recent ex-boyfriend rapist, threats of violence and death, some actual violence enough to amount to aggravated assault but the victim knows the guy enough to know the threats are unlikely to come to anything. Nasty episode. Broken bones. Police called eventually, support sought, evidence taken, conviction got, good ongoing support, got on with life.
Two - sexually abused in-family from age 6, raped from age 11 knowing full well there is no escape for another six or seven years and faced with the perpetrator across the dinner table every damn day.
It is not clear at all which is worse.
We can. And we should at least make the effort to. Because otherwise we are likely to find ourselves thinking of all rape as equivalent to the "typical" rape, and what we think of as the "typical rape" depends solely on what we have come across which might not be at all typical and thankfully is mostly is not the worst.
Spot on.
I'm in two minds about this Devo. With you in that qualifying date rape consistently as less bad seems to devalue things (as mentioned in Mumei's earlier post). But as to discouraging discussion - whether it is Dawkins or not (and I seriously wouldn't recommend Twitter as a vehicle) - I think you are wrong. If it sparks a discussion like we are having here then it has done something.
You have a talent for putting in a nutshell Mumei.
I see where Dawkins is coming from, but I don't think he saw where he was going to.
You done it again Mumei. But don't hang too much on the violence issue. That is by no means the sole aggravating factor.
Let me just state some qualifications up front. I've never been raped - but I have spoken with (as in 95% listened to) many victims of rape over the last 30+ years, between 2 months and 20 years after the event, between 6 years and 40-odd years old at the time of the event, varying between family rape, boyfriend rape, ex-boyfriend rape, stranger rape, and including one case of a false accusation of rape and one case of kidnap/torture/rape, and with varying degrees of violence and non-violence.
Upshot is that severity of rape is not a scalar quantity, which I guess comes as no surprise to anybody at all.
But I thought it worthwhile to try and put some of this stuff in a bit more perspective.
Mumei pretty well hit the nail on the head early on. The impact on the victim is one potential "measure" (quotes because it's not measurable in any meaningful sense) of severity. That, over time, depends a lot on what support the victim has (or doesn't have), on what alternatives she has in life in the short and long term (for example, family child rape is particularly difficult because there is nearly always no means of escape), and especially on whether she is able to externalise the experience.
Those are bland words for traumatic things, but I hope you get the drift.
But he was making blanket statements about date rape and stranger rape. And these are things that maybe you can't sensibly make blanket statements about. Not without being called out anyway.
That depends largely whether you are prosecuting or defending. And no, it doesn't usually involve date rape drugs. That's one out of many unwarranted generalisations in this thread (and in the Twitter stuff, and everywhere else).
As a human being, Dawkins is entitled to an opinion. He's also entitled to having that opinion called out as being wrong if it isn't based on evidence, as he should be the first to recognise.
He's certainly all too ready to point out the unreliability of empathy and imagination in other peoples' arguments.
Now that line riles me. Women have no special line into this just through being women. And if Dawkins were female it would not make her point any more valid. Even women who have been raped are in no particularly privileged position to compare rapes.
This sort of argument comes dangerously close to saying that all rapes are the same on some level. They aren't. Obviously.
It suggests more than that, it suggests that it affects the victim's experience in one direction only (namely that it less bad if you know the perpetrator). Now, given limitations of Twitter and all that, this is just not true. All the in-family and position-of-trust and protected-by-authority-or-fame cases give the lie to that. So I agree with you gerg.
I'm willing to concede that Dawkins didn't intend to enter into that particular arena (and if he'd thought about it he might not have used rape as an example).
But this is probably a good point to bring up one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far. There's a big difference between the impact on the victim (which is what everyone's been talking about so far) and the impact on society - and they aren't the same thing.
Arguably (if anyone were to dare argue it) an individual predator stranger-rapist is a greater threat to society (as in, more often, to more people, more unpredictably and maybe with more violence) than is an individual in-family breach-of-trust rapist. This is an uncomfortable thing to consider, but it may be why in law and in sentencing stranger-rapists are viewed more seriously.
The gross impact on society might be the other way round - seems to me the incidence of in-family rape is way higher than stranger rape, but that it goes mostly unreported.
I know you can't measure it with a rape-ometer or something, but please tell me you're not saying somehow all rape is the same?
I know this was the source of the whole thing, but I know nothing at all about it, so no comment.
No. It isn't. Consider two cases I have come across.
One - recent ex-boyfriend rapist, threats of violence and death, some actual violence enough to amount to aggravated assault but the victim knows the guy enough to know the threats are unlikely to come to anything. Nasty episode. Broken bones. Police called eventually, support sought, evidence taken, conviction got, good ongoing support, got on with life.
Two - sexually abused in-family from age 6, raped from age 11 knowing full well there is no escape for another six or seven years and faced with the perpetrator across the dinner table every damn day.
It is not clear at all which is worse.
We can. And we should at least make the effort to. Because otherwise we are likely to find ourselves thinking of all rape as equivalent to the "typical" rape, and what we think of as the "typical rape" depends solely on what we have come across which might not be at all typical and thankfully is mostly is not the worst.
Spot on.
I'm in two minds about this Devo. With you in that qualifying date rape consistently as less bad seems to devalue things (as mentioned in Mumei's earlier post). But as to discouraging discussion - whether it is Dawkins or not (and I seriously wouldn't recommend Twitter as a vehicle) - I think you are wrong. If it sparks a discussion like we are having here then it has done something.
You have a talent for putting in a nutshell Mumei.
I see where Dawkins is coming from, but I don't think he saw where he was going to.
You done it again Mumei. But don't hang too much on the violence issue. That is by no means the sole aggravating factor.
I'm sorry, but it seems rather clear cut which case of rape(s) is worse in this scenario.
I mean, I understand your point that how an individual is affected by rape is largely specific to an individual, but at the same time, it also seems true to me that some acts of rape are rather more egregious than others as in your example.
To put another way, we can easily quantify acts of violence - a full on beating, involving punches to the head, kicks to the gut, stomps, etc, is significantly worse than been pushed onto the ground.
But we can also conceive of a situation where the victim in the former situation survives, while the victim in the latter situation dies; injuries dependent on the personal constitution and specific angle of impacts as well as chance physiological issues (blood vessel rupture, etc).
If we are to treat rape without the accompanying emotionality of rape in the legal system, it seems that the severity of it is considered on a combination of the harm it causes as well as the nature of the act itself. (e.g. First degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter).
Having said that, I'm sympathetic to the idea that sorting out variations of rape may leave various victims feeling undersupported or actually undersupported - and that's clearly an issue that needs to be rectified; all rape victims need to be thoroughly socially supported in order to reduce the negative impact of the act.
To put another way, the incidence of harm is increased when people around the victim piles on emotionally and mentally to what is largely an emotionally and mentally devastating act.
But that to me seems just like we should provide unequivocable support to all victims of rape - as much as is necessary for them to reduce the burden - which seems to me is largely dependent on the nature of the victim themselves and less on the nature of the act. To put it another way - we wouldn't not treat a persons physical injuries and wounds irrespective of how they were received.
Pegosaurus
Banned
Excuse me while I try to decipher the error of his words
Slick.
StickSoldier
Member
It's a silly argument to even make. It's all bad, period. I don't think rape victims take solace in knowing that they could have been raped worse or not... I mean, it's rape... That's horrifying no matter how you put it. I feel equally bad for all victims of rape. I'd imagine it's a terrifying thing to experience.
elrechazado
Banned
Dawkins has always been a jerk, not surprising.
Intheflorsh
Banned
Maybe next time he could use an analogy that isn't, you know, needlessly provocative.
Response to a bizarre Twitter storm
This morning (29th July 2014) I posted three tweets together, making a simple logical point. It seemed barely plausible that such an obvious point needed making, but the subsequent tsunami (as one tweeter called it) of agonised attacks, not only on Twitter but in some blogs and even some newspapers, actually demonstrated the opposite.
My first tweet set out the logic without any specific example. It’s hard to imagine anyone objecting, and I don’t think anybody did:-
X is bad. Y is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of X, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.
I fleshed it out with two examples:-
I should of course have said RELATIVELY mild. Obviously I don’t think any pedophilia is mild in an absolute sense. But I presume most victims would agree that being touched by an adult hand (though very unpleasant, as I know from my own childhood experience) is RELATIVELY speaking not SO unpleasant as being violently penetrated by an adult penis. But the logical point is, or should be, uncontroversial: no endorsement of the less bad option is implied.
My second hypothetical example, which caused most of the trouble, was this:
In both my hypothetical examples, I made the mistake of forgetting to put quotation marks around the hypothetical quotations. The second one, for instance, should be amended to
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse.” If you think anybody who said that would thereby be endorsing date rape, go away and learn how to think.
Actually, it’s rather plausible that some people might find date rape WORSE than being raped by a stranger (let’s leave the “at knifepoint” out of it). Think of the disillusionment, the betrayal of trust in someone you thought was a friend. But my logical point remains unchanged. It applies to any hypothetical X and Y, which could be reversed. Thus:-
“Being raped by a stranger is bad. Being raped by a formerly trusted friend is worse.” If you think that hypothetical quotation is an endorsement of rape by strangers, go away and learn how to think.
I wasn’t even saying it is RIGHT to rank one kind of rape as worse than another (that caused an immense amount of agony and a scarcely creditable level of vitriolic abuse in the Twittosphere). You may be one of those who thinks all forms of rape are EQUALLY bad, and should not, in principle be ranked at all, ever. In that case my logical point won’t be relevant to you and you don’t need to take offence (although you might have trouble being a judge who is expected to give heavier sentences for worse versions of the same crime). All I was saying is that IF you are one of those who is prepared to say that one kind of rape is worse than another (whichever particular kinds those might be), this doesn’t imply that you approve of the less bad one. It is still bad. Just not AS bad.
I was only talking logic, with no desire to make light of the seriousness of any kind of rape or any kind of pedophilia. And the hypothetical comparisons that illustrated my logical point could, in all cases, be reversed without in any way changing the validity of the logic.
-Richard
Source: Response to a bizarre Twitter storm
I don't even.
Yeah Dawks. If you added RELATIVELY mild rape it would be legit.
The only rational rape I see is how you rape logic into strawman arguments.
Ok this makes more sense now but its still a bad analogy. Could have made his point much better imo.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Basic paraphrasing: Saying something is bad and then throwing a potentially worse situation does not mean endorsing the former. Think harder.
I mean you can ignite reactions fast by saying date rape is bad but gang rape is worse. It's rape, but situations can very of the similar crime to horrifically increasing degrees, it doesn't make the former good. Masses, especially the internet masses can get very emotionally responsive, but reading it I get his point. Would it have been better that he said murder, then mass murder? Although that would be perplexing then, that rape would get a more emotional response than murder if that was somehow better.
But if it was his intention to bring an instant emotional response, I guess it worked.
I mean you can ignite reactions fast by saying date rape is bad but gang rape is worse. It's rape, but situations can very of the similar crime to horrifically increasing degrees, it doesn't make the former good. Masses, especially the internet masses can get very emotionally responsive, but reading it I get his point. Would it have been better that he said murder, then mass murder? Although that would be perplexing then, that rape would get a more emotional response than murder if that was somehow better.
But if it was his intention to bring an instant emotional response, I guess it worked.
But, in determining sentencing, that's exactly what a judge needs to do.
MetalGuardian
Banned
The most hilarious part is that he is even discussing this. Bad thing can sometimes be worse than other bad thing??
No. Fucking. Way. Now that I've learned this I'm an atheist - thanks for the enlightenment, Rich!
No. Fucking. Way. Now that I've learned this I'm an atheist - thanks for the enlightenment, Rich!
I didn't even bother reading the next however many pages because this pretty much sums it up. Yeah this "controversy" is silly, it's pretty much guaranteed that if any well known person mentions to word 'rape' without immediately clarifying that obviously it's wrong and rapists should go to hell then there's going to be a "controversy" (i.e. a huffpo post designed to generate clicks).
That said, the 'logic argument' is a dumb one to make. What you said sums it up pretty well. If you've been through either of those situations, I doubt you give a fuck which is worse or better. Sure if you take all of the emotion out of it the statement is most likely true, but it's another case of a man taking the emotional weight out of rape and telling women 'how it is' (yes, men get raped too, but more often it's women being raped and men deciding how things go down afterwords). He's making a simple statement that taps into a larger cultural vein and pretends that it doesn't because it's a logic argument.
Soulscribe
Member
He's not wrong necessarily, but it's all a moot point to me when you fail to foresee that saying shit like this is going to get misconstrued by your audience. It's like teaching calculus to a class of 1st graders and then getting mad that they can't keep up. Just leave Twitter for hashtags and plugs, Rich.
Also what's even the fucking point. Rape across all categories is terrible, why do we need to compartmentalize them and add varying degrees of evil to them? Human brains are wired against handling that in a logical way (most of the time) so you're just asking for trouble to me. Meh
Also what's even the fucking point. Rape across all categories is terrible, why do we need to compartmentalize them and add varying degrees of evil to them? Human brains are wired against handling that in a logical way (most of the time) so you're just asking for trouble to me. Meh
Tesseract
Banned
eating poop is less desirable than tasting poop. if you think that’s an endorsement of eating poop, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.
~ spock dawkins, 20xx
lettuce pray for more stilted, unfeeling declarations from this godless heathen
~ spock dawkins, 20xx
lettuce pray for more stilted, unfeeling declarations from this godless heathen
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Pretty much. He is the Ultimate Logic Man who doesn't understand people have valid feelings about things.
Son of Sam
Banned
figadapaura
Member
So he typed out a response.
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/are-there-emotional-no-go-areas-where-logic-dare-not-show-its-face/
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/are-there-emotional-no-go-areas-where-logic-dare-not-show-its-face/
Haha, he should play dota, he'd fit right in with a lot of pubs out there. "Wasn't me that did anything wrong, everyone else is just a moron!"
Even after all these pages it's still entertaining to watch posters flail about and claim Dawkins or anyone suggested logic dictates how types or conditions of rape are ranked relative to one another. If this is your takeaway, you haven't looked into any of this adequately or perhaps have simply failed to understand it.
Yup. It seems that some have some investment in bashing Dawkins, considering how adamant they are in their willful misunderstanding.
Tesseract
Banned
I gave it the response I felt it deserved.
I wonder how quick you'd be to defend his point if it had been made by a Republican senator from the South...
That's great for you, but I've been involved in a few too many debates about Richard Dawkins on the internet to know that typing out a long response wouldn't be worth it to me. Other posters on this page have responded to his post better than I did, go talk to them.
I think people assuming that Dawkins thought any at all about the message he was sending on rape are mistaken. He blindly grabbed at what he thought would be the highest emotional effigy he could use and set it aflame in order to prove a point he could have made without shitting on years of academic thought on rape in American society.
That said, his point was perfectly valid.
Ah excuse me, I didn't realize he typed out multiple responses. Regardless, I'm still not taking your bait, have a nice day.
Lol. "Is torture ever justified tho???? Think about it!!! Have you guys heard of Kant?" No, Dawkins. No it isn't. Shut up.
Are you fucking serious? What a putz. This isn't about logic and emotion, this is about I have the powers of reason to answer this question: the answer is--categorically--"no". When he asks "Is eugenics ever justified?", I'm not letting emotion cloud my mind when I say "no" and walk away making farting sounds. Some questions are easy to answer.
And in any case, exactly all of this blog post is him missing the reason why people pushed back against his statements anyway. He's fighting strawmen here. "Oh you know, those women folk, always letting their feeling get in the way of their brains. Good thing I'm so clever and brave." --Dick D, 2014. Instead of considering that so many people reading something differently than he meant it indicates his own failure to articulate, he continues to insist that it's everyone else's fault for not being logical.
Also he says "Or is there a slippery slope that we should consider? Which again, I will answer in one word and walk away blowing raspberries: "no". I thought you were some king of Logic, Dawkins. Slippery slopes aren't a thing.
And he goes on to misquote himself.
So, great. Thanks Dicky D for being a stand up guy.
Why are you singling me out? I just scrolled down the last page over a ton of similar drive by posts as I made. You have no response to them, but continue to pester me to elaborate on my opinion like I'm writing an essay for school or something.
My problem is not his logic, but his use of a rape analagy. An obvious tactic to get people upset and cause controversy. And he got exactly what he wanted and now he gets to write a response on HuffPost and get a shit bunch of attention. He's a professional troll, so I rolled my eyes at him, that's it. Now please leave me be.
Hey, updates on his twitter. He's further discussing this! there's even a post up on his site.
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/...-go-areas-where-logic-dare-not-show-its-face/
(Unless my adblock is malfunctioning, there's no ads on the site, so don't go "I don't want to give that site clicks")
Although, it's basically a rant on "I try to point to the moon, and fools complain my finger is dirty", completely missing the point again.
I don't think this can't be intentional. Dawkins knows the internet like the back of his hand - And knows that stirring up the beehive that is the twitter\tumblrsphere generates a lot of attention.
Probably the most relevant part:
Note: Trolling -> voluntarily triggering emotionally driven over-responses.
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/...-go-areas-where-logic-dare-not-show-its-face/
(Unless my adblock is malfunctioning, there's no ads on the site, so don't go "I don't want to give that site clicks")
Although, it's basically a rant on "I try to point to the moon, and fools complain my finger is dirty", completely missing the point again.
I don't think this can't be intentional. Dawkins knows the internet like the back of his hand - And knows that stirring up the beehive that is the twitter\tumblrsphere generates a lot of attention.
Probably the most relevant part:
TL;DR - I'm trolling, and i'm GODDAMN GOOD AT IT.Dawkins said:To quote one blogger, prominent in the atheist movement, ‘What would have been wrong with, “Slapping someone’s face is bad, breaking their nose is worse”? Why need to use rape?’
Yes, I could have used the broken nose example. I accept that I must explain why I chose to use the particular example of rape. I was emphatically not trying to hurt rape victims or trivialise their awful experience. They get enough of that already from the “She was wearing a short skirt, I bet she was really begging for it Hur Hur Hur” brigade. So why did I choose rape as my unpleasant hypothetical (in both directions) rather than the “breaking someone’s nose” example? Here’s why.
I hope I have said enough above to justify my belief that rationalists like us should be free to follow moral philosophic questions without emotion swooping in to cut off all discussion, however hypothetical. I’ve listed cannibalism, trapped miners, transplant donors, aborted poets, circumcision, Israel and Palestine, all examples of no-go zones, taboo areas where reason may fear to tread because emotion is king. Broken noses are not in that taboo zone. Rape is. So is pedophilia. They should not be, in my opinion. Nor should anything else.
I didn’t know quite how deeply those two sensitive issues had infiltrated the taboo zone. I know now, with a vengeance. I really do care passionately about reason and logic. I think dispassionate logic and reason should not be banned from entering into discussion of cannibalism or trapped miners. And I was distressed to see that rape and pedophilia were also becoming taboo zones; no-go areas, off limits to reason and logic.
“Rape is rape is rape.” You cannot discuss whether one kind of rape (say by a ‘friend”is worse than another kind of rape (say by a stranger). Rape is rape and you are not allowed even to contemplate the question of whether some rape is bad but other rape is worse. I don’t want to listen to this horrible discussion. The very idea of classifying some rapes as worse than others, whether it’s date rape or stranger rape, is unconscionable, unbearable, intolerable, beyond the pale, taboo. There is no allowable distinction between one kind of rape and another.
If that were really right, judges shouldn’t be allowed to impose harsher sentences for some rapes than for others. Do we really want our courts to impose a single mandatory sentence – a life sentence, perhaps – for all rapes regardless? To all rapes, from getting a woman drunk and taking advantage at one end of the spectrum, to holding a knife to her throat in a dark alley at the other? Do we really want our judges to ignore such distinctions when they pass sentence? I don’t, and I don’t think any reasonable person would if they thought it through. And yet that would seem to be the message of the agonisingly passionate tweets that I have been reading. The message seems to be, no, there is no spectrum, you are wicked, evil, a monster, to even ask whether there might be a spectrum.
I don’t think rationalists and sceptics should have taboo zones into which our reason, our logic, must not trespass. Hypothetical cannibalism of human road kills should be up for discussion (and rejection in my opinion – but let’s discuss it). Same for eugenics. Same for circumcision and FGM. And the question of whether there is a spectrum of rapes, from bad to worse to very very much worse, should also be up for discussion, no less than the spectrum from a slap in the face to a broken nose.
Note: Trolling -> voluntarily triggering emotionally driven over-responses.
Tesseract
Banned
indeedle-doopers
dude is riffing some radically archaic philopoo straight to the moon. raspberries away!
Or maybe he's not trolling and trying earnestly to get across the point that rationality and logic should always be utilized in the careful understanding of complex moral systems.
I don't see how he's trolling and he's making perfectly valid sense.
Your focus on the subjects of these hypotheticals only really serves to prove his point. He didn't write an article discussing if torture could be justified or if eugenics could ever be accepted.
No, he addressed that specifically. The whole thing is addressing a problem he believes exists in society currently where topics are considered taboo and emotion shuts out discussion. He assigns the blame for those reactions to that problem, not misunderstanding a point he articulated poorly. That's his whole argument and precisely why he chose the topics he chose to include in his analogies.
The bolded is nonsense.
I saw the response posted and then I saw you comment on it. I wondered why you felt that was justified. Then you cried a bit and finally you've decided supporting your initial drive by might not be the worst thing in the world. Can you believe I tricked you into having a discussion? What a dick.
He dedicates large sections of that response to addressing why he chose the topics he chose. Wat about his justification do you disagree with? Don't just lazily throw the whole thing out with "omg what a troll"
Its from the same person who replied to sexism allegations towards the atheism-community with this:
It wasn't a happy little accident. He is a sexist.
figadapaura
Member
I think he may have been trying to make a point to people who call him sexist, but say that Islam isn't. Or they don't attack Islam with the same fervor. Idk.
The principled employment of logic and rationality is ultimately essential for ensuring a view point that fairly takes into account the emotionality of all parties vested in the issue.
Without this... we would be doomed to tyranny by the emotional majority.
... and given that people can attach emotionality to a wide variety of abhorrent ideas and thoughts as has been repeatedly proven in the past... we can see why this is necessary.
Because emotions will always feel right and true absent of logic and reason to dissuade and inform.
How does one resolve an issue when both sides are heated in their emotions? It seems like without recourse to reason and logic, we just get a clash of arms.
And ultimately, more harm... more sullied emotions emerge.
Alternatively I can employ an emotional outburst telling you to get back into your troll house, but that doesn't really help either of us.
People didn't crack back at him because he broke taboo. It wasn't emotion that "shut down the conversation", it's that what he was saying had at best no value and at worst played into a pervasive conversation in our society that gets rape wrong to actual real life detriment of lots and lots of people. He keeps trying to frame the conversation here back to his little logic zone but he's missing the part that people cracking back against the rape comments don't care at all about his original point about logical constructions. They aren't "shutting down the conversation", they're having an entirely different conversation around his comments. One that's actually valuable.
The torture and eugenics examples he pulled actually illustrate perfectly why I think his initial "date rape vs stranger rape" thing was vapid. There is no value in pursuing some hypothetical about "would torture be ok if it prevented a bomb". There's nothing to gain from that conversation because his premise is broken. Torture isn't an effective method of coercion. Likewise, assigning categorical assessments of "badness" to "types" of rape is asinine. Assigning a type to rape at all is asinine.
The whole aside into "well but we have to do it because sentencing!" is worthless too. He proceeds from the premise that the penal system has as some goal "punishing things in accordance with how bad they are" but that's another broken premise. Sentences result from a whole constellation of factors: has this person offended before, has this person demonstrated remorse, how likely is this person to offend again, is this person black. Assigning relative or absolute badness to a crime isn't necessary, that's why we have flexible sentencing determined on a case-by-case basis in the first place.
This isn't a case of me being too emotionally close to the issue to have a worthwhile conversation, it's a case of him being too "intellectually" far.
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