I agree with most of your thoughtful post on the subject, or with its implications. And it's true that originally a simple question was posed about whether an only vaguely specified situation (probably standing for whether 'any' situation ever) would justify rape.
I thought that it wasn't answerable as it was; I myself would have different answers for different stipulated scenarios. In this post of yours you stipulated some, and we are in visceral agreement about them.
But I thought it could be made interesting, and revealing, if I broke the original question down into two questions.
One, what do we think of a woman with those stipulated 'personal' reasons for declining to have sex with the black guy to perpetuate the species when she had thought human life delightful when it was her turn at bat? How do we characterize such a person?
Two, [would forcible procreating with an unwilling woman be justified], I never got into, except vaguely, because I couldn't ever get agreement from anyone except two conservatives to describe the woman even as 'selfish.' I think 'gigantically selfish' is probably wiser to use than 'sociopath' or 'anti-social personality disorder' because the latter lead to definitional byways.
If life were infinite, I would address the 'enslavement' wrinkle you introduced with certain discussion-saving stipulations, in an attempt to see if anyone, anywhere, who isn't a conservative, would EVER find ANY scenario in which they thought rape could be justified. Of course in non-hypothetical situations, reality will make it impossible to see played out 'pure' hypotheticals. But it's quite standard in having discussions to attempt to isolate a certain hypothetical principle for discussion, by stipulation.
Hardly anyone wants to discuss the stipulated hypothetical, though. Or even to call the woman as described 'selfish.' Only all the ways in which these hypotheticals can't be discussed as is, because in real life this would happen, or that.
It's disappointing to me. |
