pecunium | Rape. and values

Rape. and values

The rheotoric on the right, about the "moral relativism" on the left (for those like me who are for choice, and against capital punishment, unlike those who are against abortion and for capital punishment), has always amused me.

I am neither an absolutist, nor a relativist. I am a moral pragmatist. Barring some amazing, and irrefutable revelation from on high, there is nothing which can be said to be wrong, if a society agrees to it (suttee comes to immediate mind, which brings up the caste system, and a host of other things Europeans found strange, if not horrible among the natives. Our marriage customs were/are bizarre, and immoral to the indians of the Pacific Northwest, because we didn't/don't take the proper sorts of consanguinity into account).

So I tend to take the "swinging fist" rule as primary, and the value of life as pretty damned high. Since I don't think the State can be trusted to make the right choices all the time in issues of punishment (and the evidence is overwhelming that it can't) I am against capital punishment, because mistakes can't be corrected.

Not that I am against killing people, per se, but as a state action it's wrong. In the same way I value the present life of the woman over the potential life of the fetus. No more than I would mandate abortions by the state, will I allow it to prohibit them.

Ok, that's to address the issues of, "moral relativism."

VoxDay (a wretched example of blowhard given credence because he is extreme, and sadly one who is given a pulpit because his father is wealthy and there are too many who either think it amusing to see him foam at the mouth, or actually agree with him, said the following recently.

I’m just curious what basis the moral relativists have for condemning rape in the first place. If I deem the slaking of my desire for lust - or violence, if you prefer that theory of rape - to be an intrinsic good, who are you to condemn it? Certainly, one could argue that it is a violation of private property rights, but then, what of those moral relativists who reject the notion of private property. If all property is held in common, then how can a woman object if I decide to make use of that which belongs to me?

If only this were something over the top, a bit of satire (like the comment Michelle Malkin lifted from Eric Muller's blog for her recent book, the one which was satirically pointing out the difficulties of her arguments; in context it was plainly tongue in cheek, and she [as a public figure, open to such skewering]. She paints it as a sign of how much more virulent is the hate on the left than it is on the right), but it isn't.

It is, sadly, typical of both how he seems to think, and how he presents himself, and those he sees as his foes.

Actual rape is another area in which the feminists shot themselves in the foot. Back in the day, women had the protection of their fathers, husbands and brothers. Their fathers, husbands and brothers usually had guns. So what have the feminists been trying to do? Get rid of the men AND the guns! I’d take the protection of a man or a gun over a chastity belt any day!

Yep, women as property. If they'd just give up this whole idea of being real people, then they wouldn't get raped. After all it rape didn't exist before the rise of Feminsism... (what, it did... oh! Never Mind.)

For those of us who thought rape was about violence, or even sex, well Vox is willing to put is straight, because rape, you see, is life affirming, Yes, in a profound and awesome way, rape is actually the possibility for life, whereas the other crimes - stealing, lying, murdering - are all about destruction. which is, I suppose, an argument against hormonal birth control, because that would prevent the rape from leading to conception.

Then again, he seems to think paternity as a possibilty is a reason to be against rape, which means we can blame it on feminism again, because that nasty birth control removes that nagging fear.

Actually, the only thing that makes me consider rape to be as awful as it is IS the possibility of life, and also STDs. In of itself, while [rape] can be fairly painful, is not that much of a big deal. Certainly, it’s trespassing against your property and could result in great bodily harm, and you have the right to defend yourself, but mostly it’s psychologically damaging more than anything else.

I’m always very skeptical of women who claim they were raped- especially to completion- because it is actually extremely difficult to rape a struggling, dry woman. Now, if there’s a weapon involved I could see why a woman might not resist, but for the most part I think that if a woman regrets having sex, she thinks it was rape.

Yeah. Sure. Can't rape the unwilling (sort of a vagina dentata where lack of interest equal dryness to the point of sandpaper I suppose). I'm sure the women in Bosnia really wanted to be raped, that's why it happened so often, and in a culture where chastity is so important that a rape victim is shunned.

And, because rape is really just buyer's remorse (he says that, honest), we know the accusations of it (like the girl in Orange County who was unconscious, and filmed, and the similar case, also filmed, with the girl, I forget where, who was mentally disabled, and in a wheelchair. We know they really wanted it, it wasn't rape)

In the middle east a woman needs a Man as a witness to charge another man with rape. Women are not smart enough to realize what they are doing to innocent men.

Rape in this country, in many places, is a worse crime than murder. What’s striking is that there are only 15k convictions for 85k accusations. It has the lowest conviction rape of any major crime. Which is scarey and tells us that women are not capable of making decisions on their own.

It couldn't have anything to so with the idea that the women are the victims, and somehow, (like people who respond to 419 spam, or "update" their accounts with e-bay) not only asked for it, but really wanted it. That much of a rape trial is often the accused's lawyer painting the woman as a slut. That the rapist is given not just the benefit of the doubt, but allowed to turn the trial around and the victim much prove the crime was committed, preferably by getting injured during the attack.

Just in case it isn't plain that this is the way he thinks, Isn’t this obvious? Not to “blame the victim” or anything, but you have to take responsibility for your actions. If a woman dresses like a ho and flirts like a streetwalker, she is probably going to have to deal with a few sexual advances. What else would you expect?

It’s a bit like approaching a group of Crips late at night and calling them a bunch of bleepin’ faggots and then slapping one in the face. They still wouldn’t be within the law when they promptly shot you and stole your jeans, but you still reap what you sow.

Yep, if you wear revealing clothing you deserve to be raped; only it isn't really rape because, well he doens't believe in rape, and he's gonna blame the victim, even if it was rape, which of course it probably wasn't.

The problem isn't that VoxDay is so extreme, but that so many of his underlying mantra are still at large... women could avoid rape if they didn't provoke men being the most prominent.

Men could avoid rape by, avoiding rape. Those who advocate the punishment model could prevent rape by seeing to it that those who rape get convicted.

And those who favor either of those can prevent rape by smacking down idiots like VoxDay. It's a lot like playing whack-a-mole, but it needs to be done.

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"If all property is held in common, then how can a woman object if I decide to make use of that which belongs to me?"

What? WHAT?!!!! *sputter* There's smoke coming out my ears. My vagina is MY GODDAMNED PROPERTY, thank you, and who the flying FUCK does he think he is, referring to women as "property held in common"? Does that mean I can chop his penis off because it's "common property"? Can I shove a baseball bat up his ass and say he wanted it?

*fumes*

No, of course not, because he is a Man (capitalization his) and you couldn't because his manliness prevents such an unnatural event from occuring.

I, however, being a man (if somewhat wussified by being associating with feminists, quakers and the modern army) am more than capable of introducing him to several concepts he might not like, and will point out that his body, no matter how abused, is common property, and so I had the need to practice my marksmanship on his knees, elbows and testicles.

Nothing personal, just had an urge.

TK

Heh. By the way, fuming aside, it's only the fact that the existence of men like you counterbalances (and, to me, outweighs) cockroaches like him that keeps me from despairing.

Yes, please.

But see, in order to say that, VoxDay first rejected the notion of private property. He doesn't think that you can object to his use of your body, because there is no property.

Of course, then, despite having rejected the idea of private property, he refers to a woman's body as belonging to him. You can't object to rape because your body is his in the first place, to do with as he pleases.

VoxDay is disregarding one of the key things about common resources, which is that they don't work very well if the users are jerks. If a village decides to plant a field, and one night VoxDay decides to go out and play with matches, he is not destroying that which belongs to him, he is screwing over all of his neighbors. If there is no common property, then no body is VoxDay's to use as he pleases, including his own - he'd have to get consent from the entire community of potentially involved individuals in order to do anything.

Yeah, that's the problem, and what I was getting at by saying I should then have the right to remove his penis - if there's no individual property, then I have as much "right" to do that as he does to rape. Except, of course, for the loathsome double standard that invariably crops up at that point, since, as you say, "Of course, then, despite having rejected the idea of private property, he refers to a woman's body as belonging to him."

"VoxDay is disregarding one of the key things about common resources, which is that they don't work very well if the users are jerks." Indeed, and precisely. Of course, it's always the jerks who are first in line to argue for that sort of arrangement....

Grrr.

Vox, of course, if one calls him on this, will say he was engaging in a reductio ad absurdum, to point out the fallacy of common property, and the hypocrisy of the left/moral relativists.

Never mind that almost no one (and no one with any sense, if you ask me) says people don't have the right to their own bodies (see above, the swinging fist rule).

When the rest of his writings are taken into account (heck, just the rest of this post) his views are plain.

He thinks women are properly treated as property.

Men are the proper rulers of the world, and part of that role is the subjegation of women.

He, in such a properly run world, would be at the top of the pecking order.

I assume, as he is not at the top of the pecking order (even with the benefits of a well-to-do daddy) that he is a trifle bitter that women (and other men, his natural allies) don't seem to appreciate his greatness.

TK

*applause*

Now, the problem with me is that I am not sufficiently compassionate to not think, after reading this, "wouldn't it be such a horrible shame if Voxy-boy got raped?"

As moral failings go, however, I suppose I'll have to live with it; it's far less than any one of several moral failings he's demonstrating here....

Oh, while I wouldn't actually go and hurt him (nor Adam Yoshita, IIRC that idjits name correctly) I am not going to weep should he be forced to face the flip side of the things he advocates.

I don't know if I'd try to help him, if I knew it were him, drowning.

And that is my failing as a person.

TK

What rock did this asshole crawl out from under? I'm serious. Where can I find him?

Google Vox Day, or head to worldnetdaily.

He has quite the following. Larger than one might like to suppose.

TK

Hopefully so we can send a squad of Army women to beat the life out of him?

Actually, the only thing that makes me consider rape to be as awful as it is IS the possibility of life, and also STDs. In of itself, while [rape] can be fairly painful, is not that much of a big deal. Certainly, it’s trespassing against your property and could result in great bodily harm, and you have the right to defend yourself, but mostly it’s psychologically damaging more than anything else.

I’m always very skeptical of women who claim they were raped- especially to completion- because it is actually extremely difficult to rape a struggling, dry woman. Now, if there’s a weapon involved I could see why a woman might not resist, but for the most part I think that if a woman regrets having sex, she thinks it was rape.

Okay, first I'd like to see him say it's not that much of a big deal after he's had his body painfully invaded.

Second? His comments on how hard it is to rape a struggling, dry woman? Does anyone else have the sickening feeling that maybe he's TRIED?
Weapons, in this case, obviously do not include a man's fists, or his feet, or the likely height/weight advantage.

Women are not smart enough to realize what they are doing to innocent men.

So, in other words, it's OUR fault for having a vagina, and driving men to attack us.

Rape in this country, in many places, is a worse crime than murder. What’s striking is that there are only 15k convictions for 85k accusations. It has the lowest conviction rape of any major crime. Which is scarey and tells us that women are not capable of making decisions on their own.

WHAT F*CKING PLANET DOES THIS ASS LIVE ON?

And those who favor either of those can prevent rape by smacking down idiots like VoxDay. It's a lot like playing whack-a-mole, but it needs to be done.

Do you mind if I link to this post in my journal?

DV

Not at all. Everything not locked is free to link. I don't mind quotations, so long as the link is there to avoid confusions of context.

Heck, I like being linked to, it's a form of ego-boo.

TK

Second? His comments on how hard it is to rape a struggling, dry woman? Does anyone else have the sickening feeling that maybe he's TRIED?

Gruesome and tactless:

If he'd actually tried it, he'd realize that once the skin tears, blood can lube things up real good.

Just to set the record straight, the comment from Vox Day's site about how difficult it is to rape a struggling, dry woman was not written by Vox, but by one of his female readers.

Ah, that was my fault. I was sifting this together from a couple of other people's outrage, and didn't manage to find the parent post (there is only so much VOxDay one can stand in a given year).

TK

It's a lot like playing whack-a-mole, but it needs to be done.

Yes. The Pox -- can't just ignore it and hope it'll go away.

(I took a careful look at him last time he polluted my friend's list, and he's one of the very few unpleasantly opinioned people I disliked more the more I found out about him)

Thank you for taking such an insightful turn with the mallet :o)

I'm not sure which is stronger, my urge to applaud your post or my urge to wish unspeakable acts upon this VoxDay moron. Good lord, what fuckwittery.

I think Vox Day's started out with the idea that he would attack "moral relativism" by attempting to demonstrate that moral relativists actually condone rape. And then ... he realizes that rape is a pretty good thing, all things considered. It's a graphic way to display his awesome male primacy -- because 1) women are weak because they must live in fear of rape, and 2) in order to not live in fear of rape, they must subjugate themselves to the power of their fathers and brothers. Voila! Not only must we reject "moral relativism", but we must accept a brutal patriarchy in its place! Take that, feminazis!

When he attacks "moral relativism" he's actually attacking people who reject his particular brand of fundamentalist Christian insanity. He's essentially saying that the only foundation on which a morality can be based is that of naked power -- be good or God (or the guys with guns, who are God's proxies) will torture you. He refrains from going out and "slaking his lust" indiscriminately, not because such actions are wrong in any a priori sense, but because his Father in Heaven has a whipping in store for him if he does.

The moral cretinism of his position is jaw-dropping.

Barring some amazing, and irrefutable revelation from on high, there is nothing which can be said to be wrong, if a society agrees to it

This is the textbook definition of Moral Relativism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism).

I've found that most people who think they are ranting against moral relativism are not in fact understanding the actual concept. All moral views are not equivalent: morality is not absolute and inherent.

If it was called "Moral Externalism" it would probably be more accurate and less misunderstood.

Barring some amazing, and irrefutable revelation from on high, there is nothing which can be said to be wrong, if a society agrees to it

By the way, I disagree with this position, and so would Kant. He actually spent a lot of time arguing that we can have moral absolutes without an external law-giver.

You mistake the idea; well maybe not.

How does one define those absolutes? The Foré, by way of example, thought that killing one's enemies, and eating them, was a good.

They would reject the Kantian arguments against such a thing, and find his various appeals to moral absolutes to be specious.

We even disagree among ourselves (and that incluse both those who use an external lawgiver; cf the Bible, and those who don't) as to just what those absolutes are.

I am not willing to ascribe to a platonic ideal of absolutes we can't divine on the cave wall.

In short, I think Kant was wrong.

TK

I think my head is going to explode. What an asshat.

I hope that dude gets raped, really hard, in the ass, with a chainsaw.

I think he needs to be smacked down, but I think someone else is going to need to do it other than me. Unfortunatley, when faced with that level of insanity I lose my capacity to make anything resembling cogent arguments.

What a sicko.

Me too, and I've looked at his site, which leads me to think persuading him, and his accolytes, is wasted effort.

So I vent in places like this, where someone else may see it, and my head doesn't explode.

TK

If by "smacking down idiots like VoxDay", you mean "working for the election of politicians who stand for the things he despises", I wholeheartedly agree.

If you mean "engaging him and his friends in discussion so that you may show them the error of their ways", that sounds less like playing whack-a-mole than playing bash-head-against-brick-wall.

*makes nasty feral gurgling sound in back of throat*

Damn, I wish people would leave their sick little fantasies out of these things. It's so much easier to play whack-a-mole when you don't have a faint, far off feeling that the mole is reading and typing one-handed.

Actually, that is my main reason for taking the for me extremely unusual position that arguing with this sort of yobbo is one of the few things that by and large peobably OUGHT to be left largely to other men. It's not so much whack-a-mole as wrestling a pig: you get covered in pigshit and the pig thinks you're just playing.

Quoting the ass: Isn’t this obvious? Not to “blame the victim” or anything, but you have to take responsibility for your actions. If a woman dresses like a ho and flirts like a streetwalker, she is probably going to have to deal with a few sexual advances. What else would you expect?

The corollary to that would be that if a man forces his penis into a woman he isn't sure wants his penis in her, then he runs the risk of being charged with rape. What else would he expect?

Alas, for some of us, VoxDay and his sick ideas are not new. I fell into the cesspool that passes for his beliefs when PNH linked to Vox's women are too stupid to write SF article. I'm sure you remember Vox and a bunch of cronies jumped into the comments on Making Light and things got very interesting for a while.

Vox and his followers are a very sick group of people. Not only do they believe that women are put on earth for the sole purpose of getting men off when ever they feel the urge-- following links to blogs via the Making Light posts I found discussions where they bragged about the different ways they'd found to abuse their children without it being detected by the police. One blog was a primer on how to beat your kids without getting caught or the ER docs being able to prove anything.

It was a case study in mental illness, all justified as upholding the Christian belief of spare the rod, spoil the child. Mrs. VoxDay was one of the participants in this, chiming in with tips on how to keep the kids from spilling the beans in front of strangers.

This man is dangerous, only because so many people listen to him and believe what he says is true. It would be easier to ignore him, to hope he goes away, but he won't, his poison will continue to spread unchecked. Exposing just how vile VoxDay is, how ever distasteful, is a good thing.

I think the phrase is know thy enemy. It applies here. Thanks, Terry.

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