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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (52438)	8/21/1999 2:16:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

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.

To: Ilaine who wrote (52438)	8/21/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: E	Respond to of 108807

P.S. The question of whether the woman's choice was "rational or irrational" never came up, btw, because the stipulation was that it was merely personal. She didn't want to have sex with this particular guy. But I asked Steven a question that does go directly to that question, and I think it's the bottom line most fundamental and interesting one for discussion. (Steven didn't think so, though. Remember when Steven used to argue on my side just because he liked to? What happened to those days? They were great!) I'll post it here again, and make one comment. What if her experience has taught her that life is ugly, cruel and joyless, and not a gift, but a curse? What if, to her, cessation of this species is a blessing? Maybe even, in her mind, it appears to be a blessing sent from God? Maybe she would like very much to have sex with the stud who's the only man on earth, but feels that it would be a terrible thing to do, a sin, to begin a new cycle of millions of years of almost unmitigated suffering? That is, ethically, a different question altogether. Clearly she is acting on conscience. Her conscience may tell her something different than his tells him. In such a case, it might be selfish of her to have sex with the man just because she found him attractive. If they are each planning to act on conscience, one could have a potentially interesting ethical argument, more interesting than the others, IMO. It becomes not only ethical, but theological, in this scenario. Theists may have a different view than Benthamites, for example.